Sparked (city2city: Hollywood)

by Edie Harris

  Their parents had never missed a single competition, nor had they missed a single one of Jon’s games.

  A pang, stronger than the pangs he had experienced in the months since his parents’ death, rippled through his chest at the memory, and he blinked away the stinging in the corners of his eyes. He would not cry in front of pretty little Sadie. He would not.

  Hefting the duffle over his shoulder, he followed her through the car, out the door and onto the platform, gaze locked on the collar of her purple coat peeking through that long fall of straight ebony hair.

  Chill air swirled around them as Sadie turned to face him, fingers tightening on the strap of her purse, expression somber as dark, dark eyes met his. “So…this is the end of the line.”

  “I—” There was no explaining this connection, Ryan realized. That she was beautiful was almost negligible next to the bright light living inside her. She smiled at him. She listened to him. She comforted him when he was nothing more than a stranger. Never in his life had he met someone whose goodness glowed through her whole body, like sunshine.

  She was sunshine to him, scattering the cold, gray clouds of winter with her warmth. “I don’t want it to be. The end, I mean.” He swallowed nervously, mouth gone dry, and lifted a hand to tuck a silky strand of hair behind her ear. “Is that okay?”

  “Is what okay?” She sounded breathless, cheeks turning pink as his thumb gently petted the sweet curve of her jaw.

  “That I don’t want to say good-bye to you right now.” He shook his head and dropped his bag at their feet before stepping closer, until he felt the press of her body through the placket of his coat. Her face, so delicate, so lovely, fit perfectly between his cupped palms. “That I…can’t say good-bye.”

  He was alone on Christmas Eve in a foreign city with nowhere to go. He needed to find an ATM and a phone book, and figure out where the heck he would sleep tonight and if the limit on his credit card would allow him to book a return flight back to Chicago, or if he would be forced to stay in England until his original roundtrip ticket said he could go home, three days from now. He needed to not think about Jon or his mom and dad, and he needed…he needed….

  Sadie. He needed Sadie. Standing on the quickly emptying platform in King’s Cross, the puff of their breaths clouding the air between them, she warmed all the places deep inside him that had been cold since the day he’d found out his parents never made it home from O’Hare International Airport.

  He shivered, once again blinking away the threat of tears. He was twenty-two, and not a boy anymore. Not for eleven months and eleven days. He was a man now, alone in the world, and men who were alone in the world did not cry.

  But he wondered, a little bit, if it might be safe with Sadie, just to let one tear fall. Only the one. And then he could—would—get control of himself and be a man again, for both of them.

  Moisture collected on his lower lashes against his will. So he leaned down and covered her perfect mouth with his at the same moment she went up on her toes to meet him halfway, grabbing him by the lapels.

  She was…she was. Oh, God. He sensed tears trailing down his cheeks, but he didn’t care. Her lips were soft, sweet, open and giving. So giving.

  She gave and gave and gave to him, filling him with her glow as he held her face with large, often-clumsy hands. Harsh, panting breaths, the slick slide of lips and tongue, her quiet moan—or was it his?

  No, it was hers, the vibrations of which tingled across every last one of his senses until his hand slid from her jaw to cup her skull, his other moving around to palm her lower back, urging her petite frame to mold itself to him.

  Then it was his turn to groan. Even through their winter layers, he could feel every subtle curve with exciting clarity. Thighs and hips and bellies and chests, separated by far too much clothing, but it didn’t matter because she caught his upper lip between her teeth, the barest nip of a bite, and he forgot what it was like to ever be cold.

  Pulling away seemed impossible, but he did it anyway, though the sensation of her body sliding against his as she lowered onto flat feet nearly had him grabbing her up once more.

  He didn’t let go of her.

  She didn’t let go of him.

  Instead, she stared up at him, gaze flicking over his face, lips parted and swollen. He watched her as intently as she did him, and when she broke into a smile, an answering one curved his own lips.

  “Wow,” she said, eyes alive with some emotion he couldn’t identify but which mirrored the storm of feeling that swirled dangerously beneath his rib cage.

  “Yeah,” he whispered. “Wow.”

  THREE

  Los Angeles, Present Day

  They took the stairs leading to the balcony level quickly, but instead of pulling her into the theater, Ryan led Sadie toward a door labeled STAFF ONLY and tugged her into the empty projection booth.

  As soon as the door closed behind them, she tugged her hand free with a scowl. “Any reason why you decided now was the proper time to talk?”

  God, she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Being this close to her after steering clear for so long made the perpetual ache in his chest—the ache that had blazed to life when he had seen her again for the first time last April, on the set of Vendetta—morph from a bruise to an open, oozing wound.

  He had messed this up, so badly he was fairly certain he stood no chance of fixing what he’d broken between them.

  If he were honest with himself, he still didn’t know whether attempting to fix that break was the right thing to do. Their one and only chance may have been Christmas Day, ten years ago, and they both knew how that had turned out. “Because we might never see each other again after tonight.”

  It was true. After the premiere, there would be no reason to see Sadie again. Sure, they might wind up at the same social events from time to time, particularly if she stayed friendly with some of the Vendetta crew, but it was easy enough to imagine another decade passing before their paths crossed again. He’d done a darn good job avoiding her this long.

  Her lips, painted a vixenish red, pursed as she watched him, dark gaze wary—and hurt. Yes, he could recognize the hurt lurking within her, her natural glow diminished with every minute she spent in his company. He knew what he did to her; more, he had a pretty good idea of what he’d done to her when they parted ways all those years ago.

  The break he needed to fix was the one he feared he’d to her heart. He just didn’t know if he was the man for the job. He stuck his fisted hands in his trouser pockets and cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.”

  “You said that already.”

  It was almost a relief to be presented with proof of her anger. The months they’d spent working together on the film had been months spent watching her shift from the initial surprise and excitement of seeing him again after ten years apart, to confusion and frustration and, finally, to pained resignation. Her vibrancy had dimmed with every passing day, poking painfully at his conscience like a cattle prod until he stopped talking to her, looking at her, thinking about her. Ryan had spent the past four months, since reshoots had wrapped in September, trying to convince himself that he’d never met Sadie Bower.

  He had absolutely never kissed her, wild and breathless, on the platform at King’s Cross. Or made love to her, back when he’d barely known that making love was exactly what they had been doing.

  Glancing around, he took in the projection booth’s sound boards, noting the masking tape marking various switches with instructions for board operators, optimal levels preset to reduce any confusion, should a new employee have to run the equipment. A couple of old-school projectors sat in the far corner collecting dust, the newer machines required for screening digital film taking up a majority of the booth’s space. Carefully labeled reels were stacked in a quasi-organized fashion along the utility shelves lining the longest wall of the room.

  He almost smiled when he saw the case for Inglourious Basterds resting next to Reservoir D
ogs, instead of alphabetized where it should be. Someone at the theater was a Tarantino fan; no doubt there were a few after-hours shenanigans involving buttered popcorn and a double feature, not unlike what Ryan himself had done when he moved to Los Angeles after nearly five years working out of Harper International’s “green tech” division in Boston. His first few months on the West Coast had been spent working weekends at a movie theater. He’d been grossly overqualified, of course, but he had also been finding his feet after realizing that corporate life, even on the R&D side of things, wasn’t for him.

  Jon probably still thought he was an idiot for leaving Harper, but Ryan couldn’t regret his decision to join the film industry. Not when it had given him the opportunity to figure out what he really wanted in life. Not when it led him to Sadie. “I can’t apologize enough.”

  Bare, slender arms crossed beneath her breasts, one hand holding her clutch purse in a death grip. “Perhaps you could explain what, precisely, you’re apologizing for.”

  “Ah.” That was a bit trickier, because he was still debating, internally, whether or not he’d done the right thing with his decision to freeze her out once Vendetta had gone into postproduction. He wasn’t sure he could even bring himself to think about Christmas ten years ago, and what sort of apologies he owed her for that particular incident. It would likely involving serious time spent on his knees in front of her—and not in the fun way. “I should’ve talked to you before now, instead of leaving you hanging about where we stood.”

  “Where we stood,” she repeated, her accented voice stripped of its inherent sultriness. “You’re behaving as though I was some…some one-night stand.”

  He struggled against a wave of sadness unlike any he’d felt since the months shortly after his parents had died. “That’s what we were, Sadie. When it comes right down to it, a one-night stand is exactly what we were.” The words tasted like a lie, not only on his tongue but in his heart. Who was he trying to fool here? Hers wasn’t the only heart that had broken on Christmas Day. The only difference was, he had been responsible for both injuries. Sadie, beautiful, bright Sadie, was now and had always been the victim of his decision.

  He never should have approached her tonight.

  She paled at his statement. “I can’t believe you’ve reduced us to something so tawdry.”

  The short bark of laughter escaped him, though he wasn’t amused. Not at all. “I don’t think I’ve heard anyone under the age of eighty use the word ‘tawdry’ in conversation before.”

  “It’s appropriate.”

  “It’s ridiculous.”

  Color began to return to her cheeks. “No, Ryan. Ridiculous is what I have been, chasing after you the past few months, and I regret every last second I spent wishing things were different.” She blinked as if fighting tears, and something in his chest clenched at the sight. “I should regret it, shouldn’t I? This is where I’m supposed to say you’re not worth it, or that you don’t deserve me.”

  Agreeing with her on both counts, he decided to keep quiet.

  “I find I don’t have the capacity for it.”

  “For regret?”

  A shaky sigh escaped her as she caught his eye, luscious mouth twisting wryly. “For regretting you.”

  Footsteps sounded outside the door, followed by voices. Two theater employees chattering excitedly about the Who’s Who of Hollywood they had seen loitering downstairs. Without pausing to think, Ryan snatched her upper arm and dragged her toward the far side of the booth. “You can’t be found here.” He wheeled the unused projectors out of the way of the closed door he’d noticed earlier, murmuring a quick prayer of thanks when the knob turned easily in his hand. Before she could argue, he shoved her into the pitch-black space and swiftly closed the door behind them—just as the door to the projection booth opened, and the two employees brought their gossip inside.

  “—see Bianca James interviewing Declan Murphy down there? He’s so fucking hot.”

  “His accent is, like, panty-dropping. Seriously. Omigod.”

  “Most beautiful man I’ve ever seen in. My. Life.”

  “I dunno about the beard, though. He’s hotter without it.”

  “Are you high? The beard is the best fucking part. He’s like all lumberjack-y and shit.”

  “You’re such a weirdo. If you ever saw a real lumberjack, you’d be like, ‘Ahhh, save me, Janey, he has an axe and doesn’t believe in soap! Ahhh!’”

  Much giggling ensued as the two young women went about checking the status of the equipment for the evening. Which was when Ryan realized he still had a grip on Sadie’s arm, and that she stood silently pressed against his side.

  Dizzying heat flashed through him as he bent to whisper, “You know they would’ve whipped out their phones and tweeted your picture to TMZ before you could even so much as offer to sign an autograph.”

  Her breath shivered over his throat, and suddenly, his collar and tie were far too tight. “I know,” she whispered back. He listened as she fumbled around for a moment, then her face was lit by the soft blue glow of her cell phone’s home screen. One tap of a finger later, and a low-beam flashlight illuminated their hiding place. “Oh, my goodness.”

  Christmas had exploded in this storage room, with all the subtlety of projectile vomit. Giant plastic candy canes leaned in one corner, next to a six-foot fake fir dressed in silver tinsel and unplugged strands of colored lights. Garland had been shoved onto the upper shelves of a metal wall unit, dozens of ceramic winter village collectibles on the lower half, and an oversized Santa suit—complete with fleshy pink cotton padding to go underneath the coat—hung on a wire hanger from the unit’s side. To the left of the door were two midsize filing cabinets, the only flat surface seemingly saved from the viral strain of holiday cheer that had infected the rest of the closet.

  Silently, Ryan released her, only to direct the hand holding her phone toward the door. No interior lock, but a rubber gasket ran along the door’s bottom edge. The rubber along the floor would prevent any light from peeking out into the main projection booth, though it had been designed, more likely, to keep in the stuffy air from the non-temperature-controlled storage closet.

  He moved her hand where he wanted it, aiming her phone’s light at the tree, and knelt in front of it, reaching through the lower branches until he found what he needed: a cord plug and a wall socket. The closet was immediately drenched in warm color—an amalgam of blue, green, gold, red—from the strands of bulbs wound through the branches.

  With a faint smile, Sadie turned off her phone, sliding it back into her clutch before setting the sparkly thing atop one of the filing cabinets. She gestured him closer, and he stood, trying to ignore the blood singing in his ears at the prospect of being beckoned close to her again.

  Because regardless of the women outside, they were alone. Alone alone.

  He dipped his head to catch her murmur of, “This will make talking difficult.”

  And yet it was perfect for so many other activities that didn’t require talking. Instead of voicing that inappropriate sentiment, he shrugged, trying to ignore the handful of inches separating his body from hers. “Maybe we should take the time for…quiet reflection.”

  “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing since April?”

  Guilt dogged him. That was exactly what they had been doing, and quiet reflection no longer cut it. Forcibly keeping his distance during filming and after had birthed an itch beneath his skin. No matter how adamantly he ignored the itch, its intensity increased, spread. Only Sadie’s nearness seemed to soothe him, bone-deep relief slicing through him even as his frustration grew. “What do you want, Sadie?”

  Her gaze locked with his. “From you?”

  He nodded, jaw tight.

  “All I want, all I’ve ever wanted, was to see if we feel the same now as we did then.” She took a deep breath before straightening her slim shoulders. “Because I remember the wow.”

  So did he. That wow was a tattoo on his brain, fore
ver inked into him, at a cellular level.

  Slowly, she reached out and grasped the length of his black tie. One tug urged him closer still, until he felt the press of small, firm breasts against his chest and the brush of sequined satin around his legs. Her breath hit his chin, warm and enticing, and he realized she was pulling him down, as though she meant to kiss him. Or force him to kiss her.

  He could say no. She was as petite as ever, and he had bulked up some since his college days—not enough to overcome his inherent lanky build with its tendency toward leanness, but he worked out. He was strong. And he could push her away if he wanted to. Time to face facts and accept hard truths.

  Fact: He saw her face in his dreams.

  Truth: He was harder than he’d ever been, at the mere idea that maybe, just maybe, she was going to let him put his hands on her again.

  Her other hand lifted, a single fingertip tracing the line of his jaw, and his back teeth clamped shut. There was fire in her touch; no shock there, because she’d always seared him with the heat and light of her. “Do you think we still have it?” she whispered. “The wow?”

  For such a tiny woman, she took up so much of his space. He exhaled, steeling his body against the damage he knew she’d wreck on his self-control. “Only one way to find out.”

  He didn’t allow either of them time to think, to consider. One moment he was standing there, trying to keep his hands to himself, and the next he was dragging her arms around his neck, clutching her hips, and sweeping his tongue past soft, perfect lips to glide against hers.

  Sweet warmth flooded his senses, heating him from head to toe as he gorged on her. Tastes he’d nearly forgotten, the usual sensations of desire amplified to the max by ten years and ten thousand miles. His ears rang with the quick, unsteady beat of his pulse, and his lungs ceased working as she dug her fingers into his scalp and moaned into his mouth. A shudder of yearning chased a path down his spine when bossy hands attacked the button of his jacket, shoving it from his shoulders.