by Sarina Bowen
“In a crowded room, with the bartender watching me. I’d already had a conversation with him about needing to lose those two. You just walked in at the wrong moment. It looked worse than it was.”
“The wrong moment?” he repeated incredulously. “Fuck. I can’t even show them exactly how wrong it was, because getting stuck in Idaho an extra day will fuck up the schedule and torpedo the fucking budget.” He slapped the dashboard with two hands.
“Well, I wouldn’t have called you if I knew it would endanger your precious budget,” Stella snapped.
Bear took a deep breath through his nose. “That is not how I meant it.”
“That’s what you said.” She was not willing to drop it. Bear had originally described this film as a labor of love. But now he’d transformed into the grumpy CEO. She was willing to call him on it, even if nobody else would.
With a sigh, Bear pulled away from the curb again. “I shouldn’t have put it like that, Stella. I’m just stressed out."
Stella collapsed back against her seat. It was hard to stay mad at Bear when he sounded so defeated. And it was hard to stay mad at him when they were alone together. The dashboard lights revealed only a cursory outline of his rugged face and broad shoulders. But she’d been conditioned since the beginning of time to appreciate those. She didn’t need light to see how perfect he was. The only flaw was the way his shoulders were tensed with the weight of worry upon them.
“We’re heading to Alaska tomorrow,” Bear continued, “and that’s the trickiest shoot. It all adds up to a lot of details to take care of, you know?”
“Who takes care of you, Bear?” she whispered.
He just shook his head.
“Maybe you don’t have to go it alone all the time. I know I tried to apply for the position once. But my application was rejected.”
Bear stared through the windshield, jaw tight. “That is not what happened.”
“The hell it isn’t,” Stella whispered. That was as far as she was willing to push, though. If she threw herself at his feet, proclaiming her everlasting love, it would only make the next decade of their friendship even more awkward.
The rest of the short trip happened in silence. Soon enough, Bear pulled into the hotel’s circular drive and stopped the van in front of the door.
Stella turned to face him. “You didn’t have to drop me at the door, Bear. I know you’re not a taxi service.”
He gave her a wry half-smile.
“Okay, tonight you were kind of my taxi service. But I really appreciate it.” Grovel, grovel. Stella wondered how long he’d stay mad at her.
“You’re welcome, Stell,” he said gruffly. “I’m dropping you here because I park the van beside a wall, and it’s a tight fit on the passenger side.”
“Oh,” she said, stupidly. “Goodnight.”
Nineteen
BEAR EASED THE VAN into the unholy spot where the hotel had asked him to park it. He shut her down, but did not get out right away. Instead, he listened to the tick of the cooling engine and the distant howl of coyotes.
If he thought he’d been stressed out three hours ago, it was nothing compared to seeing Stella physically restrained by two drunk idiots. The sight of their hands holding her down made him almost physically ill.
Hell. His blood pressure might never return to normal. If something happened to Stella while she was working on his film? He would never get over it. And Stella? She’d laughed. Even after everything that had happened to her brother, she still had the Lazarus deathwish.
He got out of the van and checked the locks. Though he kept the cameras in his hotel room, there was other equipment in the van. Life felt like a string of liabilities. Guard the cameras. Monitor Hank’s attitude. Watch the weather. Look out for Stella. Bear’s lower back was tight and painful. He hadn’t really felt relaxed since he and Hank had started shooting four months ago.
Bear used his key card to enter the hotel’s back door. It was late now, after one a.m., but when he got to his room, he was still feeling too strung out to sleep. He poured himself a little glass of cognac and picked up a snowboarding magazine. But the cheap hotel bed wasn’t helping his stiff back.
Fidgety, he slipped his shoes onto bare feet, grabbed his key card and wandered into the quiet hallway. Each time he’d used the back door, he’d smelled chlorine. A few turns later and he found what he was looking for. A placard reading HOT TUB was affixed to a door. Bear reached for the knob, hoping this was at least a nice enough hotel to supply towels by the hot tub because he hadn’t brought one.
He hadn’t packed a bathing suit, either.
To his surprise, the little hot tub area was outdoors on a patio surrounded by a very high wooden fence. Also surprising? He wasn’t the only one here.
“Hello,” a bikini-clad Stella greeted him from the tub. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Hi,” he said after a beat.
He must have done a poor job of keeping his features blank because Stella’s face fell. “Don’t ever play poker,” she said, crossing her arms.
“I’m not bad at poker,” he argued automatically. Life would be easier, actually, if card games were still the only conflict between them.
“Uh huh,” she said, unconvinced. “Well, are you just going to stand there all night, or get in?”
He looked down at himself, taking stock. “I’m not exactly dressed for it. I just wondered what was out here.”
Stella opened her arms wide. “It’s the nicest spot in the hotel. I’ve been in here every night.”
It’s a good thing I didn’t know that, Bear told himself. But now he was caught between getting in with Stella or hightailing it out of there.
“In or out?” she said, raising an eyebrow. She’d read him like a book, of course. Stella always could. “You could at least pretend I’m not the last person you hoped to find here.”
“Stella.” He toed off his shoes. “It’s not like that.” Self-conscious now, Bear removed both the shirts he was wearing. He unzipped his jeans and removed them.
“Nice tights,” Stella teased, eyeing his long underwear.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m sure they’d look better on you than me.” Filming in the snow all day, a guy got cold. He peeled this last layer down over his quads, stepping out of them. Naked, he turned to catch Stella watching him, a guilty look on her face.
Without comment, he grabbed a towel off the stack, dropped it beside the tub and climbed in. Now he was covered, at least. He moved a few inches so that one of the jets went to work on his achy back. It felt great, actually. Right. This was the reason he’d come looking for the hot tub in the first place.
“The heat is nice, don’t you think?” Stella asked. “I feel a little banged up from today’s shoot.”
Bear opened his eyes. “Are you okay?”
Stella let out a little snort of laughter. “Yes, Dad. But a girl can’t bomb through those saplings without taking a beating.”
He didn’t argue. What Bear felt toward Stella wasn’t very fatherly, either. And if he’d looked uncomfortable to find her here, it was only because he was forced to remember the last time they’d sat in a hot tub together in Tahoe. Sitting in hot, churning water with Stella again was like inviting the elephant into the room and asking him to sit on your lap.
Bear needed a fresh topic of conversation. His gaze traveled around the small patio. Tacked to the wooden fence was a sign that read: Maximum Occupancy 8. Eight people in here? Impossible. Two felt awfully goddamned intimate. That could be the Stella effect, though.
He pointed up at the sign. “That would be a tight fit.”
Stella pushed curling tendrils of hair from her face. “I suppose it depends on what they were doing.” She gave him a naughty smile, and Bear felt it low in his groin. Damn. With the water swirling everywhere around his bare skin, that smile of hers had twice its usual potency.
“Why did you go off with those guys tonight?” he heard himself ask.
Stella tipped her
head back to rest against the lip of the tub. “I was just bored, that’s all. There was the possibility that the bar might be fun, you know? It was for a little while. I beat a college kid at darts.”
“Win any money off him?” Bear smiled at the image of Stella hustling a tourist.
“It was just a friendly game, or he would have been in trouble.” Under the water, Stella moved her feet to rest on top of his. It was a perfectly chaste gesture, but it sent an electrical charge up and down his spine. The warm, frothing water grazed him everywhere. Fighting his body’s reaction pointless — he was just going to have to sit here in this decadent place feeling turned-on and tempted. There were worse problems. In fact, lounging horny in a hot tub with a beautiful woman was more fun than he’d had in days.
“I knew they were tools, you know,” Stella continued. “I’m not stupid.”
“I know.” He tipped his head back too. It was a good night for stargazing. He didn’t know the constellations very well, except for the one or two top-sellers. Orion wasn’t visible tonight and that meant spring was coming. In a couple of months, all the snow would melt. His film would be finished shooting whether he was ready or not. Maybe then he could stop being such a stress case.
“What do you see up there?” Stella asked.
He chuckled, the question reminding him of something funny. “Stella, when you were little, you told me that your name meant ‘star.’ And you were so proud of that.”
She groaned. “How old do I have to be before you and Hank stop reminding me of all the stupid shit I said when I was five?”
“I dunno, buddy. You were a pretty cute kid.” She had been, too. Bear had a very visual memory, so he was able to picture Stella at every age. He could see her in a dress on the first day of kindergarten, clutching Hank’s hand. (The hand-clutching had lasted one day. After which, if he remembered correctly, she’d practically run the elementary school.) He could picture her snowboarding behind them both a few years later. He could see the shine of the braces on her teeth in middle school.
It was such a rare thing to really grow up with someone. No wonder he had an unrealistic attachment to her. They’d been breathing the same air for so long. He didn’t know how to unhook his consciousness from hers. And he wasn’t at all sure he wanted to.
But appreciating Stella’s company and deserving her love weren’t the same thing. He’d played this little game more than he cared to admit. The game of: What Would I Have to Do to Deserve Her? And he always tried to see it in Hank’s eyes. Or her parents’. They might like him as a companion and a neighbor. But as the life partner of their baby girl? Who would want a washed-up athlete turned wannabe filmmaker?
If he was truly successful as a filmmaker, perhaps that would be enough. But the gulf between Still-Lives-With-His-Father and industry domination was as vast as Arapaho Basin.
Funny. When they were little, Stella occasionally made him pretend to marry her. She’d hold a messy bouquet of wildflowers in her hand, and wear one of her father’s handkerchiefs over her face. Stella’s mother had thought it was hysterical.
Little kids are allowed to pretend anything. When you grew up, the rules changed.
Stella straightened up, removing her feet from his. She reached over the side, fishing for her towel. “Well, my nose is cold, but the rest of me is going to pickle in here,” Stella declared. “I’d better call it a night.”
Bear felt a stab of disappointment that she was ending this quiet little moment together. Not that he’d say so. “That’s a bold move. You’d better go first. If you freeze into an icicle before you make it to the door, I’ll yell for help.” He sank lower into the water. In truth, he needed Stella to get out first, because that made it easier to hide the effect sitting naked in a tub with her had on his body.
Stella rose to her feet, the water sluicing down her curves, shining on her skin in the moonlight. “It will be hours until I’m cold. I think I understand why Norwegians like to plunge from a hot bath into the Baltic.”
“You go ahead. I’ll watch from the fjord.”
Stella chuckled. She climbed out and began to towel off. “I wonder if the vending machine works. I feel a Snickers craving coming on.” She wrapped a robe around her body and stepped into her shoes.
“Consider the Oreos. Mine didn’t fall down, so you might get two.”
“Some kid probably got to them already.” She gave him a wave. “Good night!”
When the door shut behind her, he climbed out. The cold blast of air against his skin quickly took care of his boner. Bear wrapped himself in a couple of towels and calculated the distance to his room. It wasn’t far at all. Making a run for it would be so much easier than dragging cold clothes over damp skin.
He shuffled to his room with his clothes under one arm and holding his towel closed with the other. HIs hotel key card he held in his teeth. When he reached the door to his room, he spent a moment trying to figure out how to unlock it without either dropping trow or setting his clothing onto the hotel’s well-trodden hallway carpeting.
“Shorthanded, sailor?” a voice asked behind him.
Bear turned automatically toward the warmth in her voice and was walloped all over again by Stella’s sparkling eyes. First she slipped two snack-sized packages of Oreos on top of the pile of clothing under his arm. Then she slipped the hotel key from his teeth and swiped it through the device on the door jam.
“Thank you,” he said, feeling inadequate.
Instead of answering, Stella gave him a funny little smile. Then she rose to her tiptoes and pressed a very soft kiss to his lips.
Not just a quick peck, either. She took her time, melding her lips to his, slowly kissing him for several beats of his heart. There was something mournful about it. But the kiss stole his breath all the same. He heard her sigh as she finally retreated. “Goodnight,” Stella breathed, turning away.
Still stunned, he watched her disappear around the corner, standing there with his hands full like an idiot. Wanting more. Barely holding it together. “Goodnight,” he finally remembered to say.
But she was gone. And the only reply was silence.
Twenty
STELLA WAS PROUD OF herself. She made it all the way into her hotel room — with the door closed — before she let herself cry. The ache in her heart erupted then, even as she got ready for bed. With tears dripping off her face, Stella changed into a roomy Aspen T-shirt and brushed her teeth.
Kissing Bear goodnight had been stupid. But she’d been trying to take just one more hit off her addiction before letting him go.
Tonight on the phone, Anya had told her to sort it out. To come to terms with a lifetime of unrequited love.
Her friend was right, too. She had to shut off that trickle of hope that kept her awake at night. For years, that steady drip of yearning had prevented her from finding someone else to love.
Habits were very hard to break, though. Tonight, when Bear had walked through that patio door, Stella’s heart had leapt. Her chest had begun to flutter just because he’d shown his face. That old saw about hope springing eternal? It was one hundred percent true. Every time they came face to face, Stella couldn’t stop her foolish heart from wondering if today would be the day he’d kiss her again. If he’d love her as much as she loved him.
Instead? He’d sat across the tub looking uncomfortable.
Enough is enough, Stella had finally decided. But she didn’t have a clue how to stop reacting to him. If there was a course called Moving On 101, she’d take it. If there was a YouTube video, she’d watch it. If there was a pill for getting over Bear, she’d happily swallow it.
Stella climbed into bed, turned off the light and wiped her eyes one more time. It didn’t help that her mind played tricks on her. When she looked into Bear’s eyes, she sometimes swore she saw heat in them. But that was just a flicker, sparked by one really amazing night that they’d shared.
“A flicker isn’t enough,” Stella whispered into the darkness. She’d
just have to learn to accept it.
Calmer now, she lay in bed thinking of Alaska. A personal pep talk was very much in order. Alaskan footage, girl. It’s all about the big mountain footage. The sponsors she hoped to court cared about exposure. Bear’s film could help a lot, especially if her shots were featured prominently. If the Alaska scenes went well, she had no doubt that he’d give her good screen time.
If she couldn’t have the man, she could still have the career. It was something.
She’d been waiting years to ride the Chugach. And now it would finally happen. The mountains were waiting for her, even if Bear was not. She had a ridge all picked out, too. She’d been scoping it out on Google Earth every time she got the chance.
There came a light knock on her door.
In the dark, she opened her eyes. “Yeah?”
Bear cleared his throat. “Stella, it’s me. If you’re still up, can I come in?”
If Stella opened that door, Bear would want to know why her eyes were red and swollen. But he wouldn’t be knocking this late unless it was important.
Here we go again. Her foolish heart couldn’t help but wonder what Bear had to say to her at this hour. Let’s fly to Vegas and get married? Stella snorted as she climbed out of bed. He probably needed more change for the vending machine.
She opened the door. When the latch gave, she retreated into the dark room, hoping that Bear would not get a chance to see her face.
“Sorry to wake you,” he said immediately, closing the door behind himself.
“S’okay,” Stella said. “I was just drifting off. What’s the matter?”
Bear made an irritated noise. “Duku is fucking some guy in our bathroom.”
That wasn’t even on the menu of things she’d imagined he might say. “Oh. Sorry. So… you need to hang out here?”
“Only if it’s okay. I went to the desk to try to get another room. I mean… Hank just checked out of one, right? So that he could go stay at that fancy place with Callie. But they’re full up.”
