Stripped

by Edie Harris

  “Oh, God. Baby. Oh, fuck.” Shuddering, he clung to her as he came. For a minute, he had her squished between his body and the window, but eventually looped both arms around her waist and, still intimately connected, carried them to the bed. Sleep claimed them almost immediately, a blissful, blank-minded sleep, for which Fiona was eminently thankful.

  Later in the night, she woke and rolled toward him, suddenly strangled by a panicked need she’d never felt before. Unable to breathe, she stroked a hand over his ribs, finding one lean hip and clenching it. Wake up, she willed him as the panic swelled inside her. Wake up and…and…

  He woke up, his smile sleepy and all the sexier for it, and she watched as he grabbed a condom from the nightstand.

  The words left her in a rush, nearly soundless with her lack of air. “Do you…do you still love me?”

  “O’ course I still love you.”

  The pressure in her chest eased, fantastic, amazing oxygen filling her lungs.

  But he wasn’t done talking. “It’s not somethin’ that just…goes away.” Tossing back the blankets, he bent to drop a kiss to the scars on her belly. “If I didn’t still love you a few weeks after breakin’ up, what kind of love would that be?”

  “I don’t know.” Except that she did, and she was so damn grateful for the simple honesty in his voice that she wanted to cry.

  “Weak love. Shallow love. Selfish love.” Lifting her knees to his hips, he slowly, slowly slid into her. “I might be a selfish man in some respects, but I don’t love you like one.”

  Each heavy glide of his body into hers made a moan catch in her throat, and when she came, he followed her, stifling his own pleasured groans against her neck. After disposing of the condom, he curled around her

  He breathed her name as he fell asleep, and the tight ache in her chest returned.

  She’d told him straight, earlier tonight: She loved him, but hell if she knew what to do about it. Love didn’t change the fact that they’d be separated for long periods of time. His career was too nascent for him to put any restrictions, geographical or otherwise, on it. He needed to go where his job took him and work his ass off.

  Sure, there would be downtime—there always was for actors—but the same could not be said for her. She had a contract with the studio, and as soon as Vendetta ended, another production would take its place.

  But that was here in L.A. Not in Cape Town, or in Dublin, or wherever it was that Declan would be. There was the house in Pasadena, with its porch and its lawn and its bills and its washer-dryer unit that was…was just the perfect height, not to mention the housewarming party she’d promised to host.

  The man she’d promised to have her way with atop the washer, however, was an impossibility. Strange, that he would feel so very far away even as his arms wrapped around her, holding her close as deep, warm breaths huffed against her nape. He slept peacefully while she lay here, painfully awake and more aware than ever that being together simply wasn’t logical.

  He would advance more rapidly if he were unattached. She knew he wanted his name in proverbial lights, if not stardom. He’d accepted this role and come to L.A. not to be a mere replacement, she realized, but to do work that would set the tone for the rest of his career.

  Chance of a lifetime. That was what he’d said to her the day she’d met him two months ago. That exhausted, scruffy-faced foreigner in wrinkled flannel who had collapsed in her makeup chair, who had looked at her with that appealing mix of wry humor and genuine pleasure—he deserved his name in lights. He deserved every wonderful thing that she knew would come his way, if he wasn’t worried about flying to Los Angeles to spend time with her every chance he got.

  One of his hands drifted to rest on her stomach, fingers finding the grooves between the scars and settling there as naturally as if they’d been fitted to his hand. As if the doctors, when they’d stitched her closed three years ago, had said, “Someday, there’ll be a man, about six-foot and one-eighty, and he’ll have these hands that’ll need to sit right here, like this. So let’s space these correctly, shall we? Just for this man.”

  Hot, silent tears tracked down her cheek as she placed her own hand over Declan’s. As it turned out, he was her wonderful thing.

  She couldn’t bring herself to be selfish over her wonderful thing. She would not steal his hours and days, not when he needed each and every one of them.

  Ten minutes later, she closed the door to his hotel room behind her, and went to collect her car from the valet.

  SIXTEEN

  The house where Fiona had grown up was a sprawling ranch-style home with a red-tile roof and limestone exterior. The front yard was well-tended, green and shaded, the steps leading to the heavy wooden door flanked on either side by tidy, flowering bushes bearing blooms in vibrantly tropical colors.

  Declan rang the bell next to the latch with his heart in his throat. Last night had been… Christ, it had been the best and worst night of his life. Fiona shed her control enough to let his bossy side out to play, and tore his heart to shreds in the process. Purring one moment, whimpering the next, she’d gutted him with the feelings he had been attempting to stifle for the past three weeks.

  And then she really had run away from him, likely for good this time, leaving his bed as he slept, gone when he’d turned toward her an hour before sunrise, wanting—needing—to hold her.

  I love you, she’d said.

  Fucking hell.

  But she would be here today, at her parents’ house, and he intended to pull her aside. They would talk, and she would understand that any distance they faced was not only temporary, but relatively insignificant compared to the sorts of obstacles with which other couples were presented. For a few years, he’d be busy. She’d be busy. But the times when they weren’t busy they could spend together, and wasn’t some time together better than none?

  I want more than a few stolen hours.

  So did he.

  The door opened to reveal a silver-haired woman who looked to be in her mid-fifties, sleek and trim and wearing a pair of purple cat-eye glasses. “Here for the barbeque?” she asked with a welcoming smile. “I’m Janelle, Rick’s wife.”

  Fiona’s mother. “Declan Murphy.”

  Her smiled faded. “Oh. You’re Declan.” Her gaze skated over him, measuring, assessing, and he fought not to shift uncomfortably where he stood on the stoop, especially when she said, “You’re not quite what I expected.”

  He couldn’t help himself. “What did you expect?”

  “A blond.”

  The laugh felt punched out of him, lifting a bit of the weight from his shoulders. “Sorry to disappoint.”

  Another visual sweep from head to toe, a hint of humor glinting behind her glasses. “Who said I was disappointed? Come on in.” Janelle stepped back, opening the door wider to allow Declan entry into the air-conditioned coolness of the house before closing it again behind him. “Everyone’s out back.” She led him away from the foyer and into an open-plan space that included a living room, eating area, and spacious state-of-the-art kitchen.

  “Everyone?”

  “Everyone but my daughter. Since that’s what you’re really asking.”

  His heart sank. “Fiona’s not here, then.”

  She shook her head, pausing in the kitchen. Through the open glass doors leading from the kitchen onto the patio and into the backyard, Declan could see and hear his happy cast-mates and crew members milling around with drinks. Small children splashed in a blue pool, shouting at one another and floating on brightly hued inflatables. Several people had congregated around a gigantic grill built into a long section of stonework and shaded by a vine-laden trellis. Rick stood at the center of the crowd, wielding a pair of tongs in one hand and a beer in the other.

  Fiona was nowhere to be seen.

  “He worries about her, you know.”

  Declan turned to Janelle. “Who?”

  “Her dad. Rick worries about her. I do, too, of course, but not to the same
extent that he does.”

  “Because of what happened in Vegas?”

  “Because of why she ended up in Vegas in the first place.” Janelle rounded the marble-topped kitchen island and went to the fridge, grabbing a pitcher from the door. “Water?”

  “Please.” Deciding this conversation was far more essential than any he’d have out on the patio, he pulled a stool from beneath the island and sat on it, thanking her for the glass of water when she set it in front of him. “I don’t know that story, about why she left school. Rick mentioned….” What had Rick mentioned, that night at the cantina? “He mentioned that someone had said somethin’.” And how was that for vague? Taking a sip from his water, he glanced at Janelle. “It’s important, isn’t it—what happened before Vegas.”

  Janelle took the stool across from him with her own drink, elbows propped on the countertop as though settling in for a long chat. Her silver braid curled over one shoulder, and Declan suddenly had a vision of what Fiona would look like thirty years from now. Softer, rounder, grayer…and sharper—those eyes behind the purple frames were sharp as tacks, and Declan found he had no complaints when presented with this picture.

  Her fingers, bare except for a gold wedding band and ruby nail polish, linked beneath her chin. “I was still an attorney when Fi was growing up, so Rick was the one who took her to dance classes and competitions, because I was always swamped with work. So she was his girl, if that makes sense.”

  Declan nodded.

  “I didn’t quit my firm until she went to college, and by then it was a little too late for me to reclaim the position of ‘primary parent.’ But she was fine. She was dancing and doing a wonderful job, and yes, there were times when we worried she wasn’t eating enough, or socializing enough, or having what we considered the quintessential college experience.” Janelle dropped her hands to the water glass. “When she called her senior year to tell us she’d met someone, we were thrilled.”

  “Met someone,” he repeated dumbly. Again, he sipped his water, sorting through the quick-fire emotions racing across his brain: jealousy, sympathy, anger, relief. It was the relief he couldn’t quite figure out, not yet.

  Janelle smirked at him, but not unpleasantly. “Breathe through it, Declan. She’s obviously not with him anymore.”

  He tried to laugh. He failed.

  Sighing, Janelle took pity on him. “We didn’t find out who he was until it was too late. Alexei Wolkov. Ever heard of him?”

  “The name sounds familiar.”

  “It should. Wolkov is this generation’s Baryshnikov.” She met Declan’s gaze, held it. “He was her choreographer and director and about ten years older than she was. He had a position of power, and he abused it.”

  His hands turned to fists on the counter. “Did he…did he hurt her?” Pain shot through his neck from how hard his jaw was clenched.

  “Not physically, no. But he undoubtedly took advantage of her.” Janelle’s fingers tapped briefly, aggressively, against her glass. “Fiona never told us what, exactly, he said to her, how he broke it off between them, but as soon as their production closed, she’d gone to the registrar to drop her classes, packed the Jeep we’d bought her as a high school graduation present, and left Arizona. We didn’t hear from her again until Christmas.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you?” Her voice carried a note of doubt. “Because here’s what I can tell you about my daughter: She has been conditioned, because of the situation with Wolkov, to believe that if she gets involved with a man, seriously involved, the rest of her world will fall apart.” Janelle raised her hands when he opened his mouth to respond. “I know that it sounds extreme and illogical to you and me, but it’s the connection her mind makes. I don’t have to be the primary parent to understand that. So I have to ask you, Declan”—she leaned forward, weight resting on her elbows—“do you see how Fiona might feel as though her life will fall to pieces if she falls in love with you?”

  “I see,” he said again, and he did. For one, blinding second, he was able to see all of their interactions, his and Fiona’s, cast in the light from this single event. He saw how it colored their relationship, shadowed it, and he wished he had asked her why she’d left school, why she’d run off to Vegas.

  Instead, he had been wary. He had been afraid that if he pushed her—Fiona, the most cautious woman he’d ever met—she would retreat from him, so he’d accepted her father’s throwaway explanation in the cantina, taken it at face value, and allowed them to float along happily. Until they weren’t happy anymore, because he’d pushed her and, well, she’d pushed back.

  Wait a minute. Fiona had pushed back. Suddenly, he understood his earlier relief. “Your daughter loves me.”

  Janelle’s mouth quirked in a small smile. “I figured as much.”

  He drained his water glass. “I won’t let her life fall apart.”

  “Fiona is a strong woman. She won’t let her life fall apart, if she decides it’s worth risking on you.” Hopping down from the stool, Janelle collected his empty glass and placed it in the sink alongside hers. “I think she should take that risk, so you’d better do a good job convincing her.”

  Declan stood. “Where is she?”

  Laughing, Janelle gestured toward the patio. “Oh, no. I’m not telling. You’ve still got to earn the Dad Stamp of Approval.” When Declan sighed, she moved to link her arm through his, dragging him out of the kitchen and into the party on the patio. “Talk to him. He actually likes you.”

  His cheeks flamed. “He caught me makin’ time with Fiona in my trailer.”

  “I’m sure he was just as embarrassed as you are.” She sounded highly amused. As they wove through the guests toward the grill, she called out, “Rick! Look who’s here.”

  The costume designer’s smile was genuine when he turned from the grill, tongs in hand. “Dec, glad you could make it. Drink station is by the pool. Help yourself.”

  “I’m good, thanks.”

  Silence fell between them as Janelle began maneuvering the people closest to them away from their corner of the patio and toward the umbrella-covered tables dotting the terra-cotta tile surrounding the pool. A couple of fluffy dogs tussled in the grass, capturing Declan’s attention momentarily. Did Fiona want a dog, or was she a cat person? There was a fence in the backyard of that house in Pasadena, perfect for a dog or two.

  “So.”

  “So,” Declan echoed, tucking his hands in his pockets as he studied the array of meats on the grill top. The delicious scent of cooking meat, smoked and charred, clouded the air. Brats, burgers, chops, and steaks, and little sliders and hot dogs off to the side, obviously intended for the kids. “Nice spread.”

  “Barbeque is good for bringing folks together. Hard to do in this town sometimes.” Rick set the tongs aside, taking a swig of his beer. “Fiona’s not here.”

  “Your wife already told me.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want a drink?”

  Declan shook his head. “I want a clear head when I go to see her.” Whatever words he managed to string together, he wanted them to be the right words for her, and there was no point in fuzzing them up with alcohol.

  But he also needed the right words right now, with Rick. “I feel like I’m sayin’ this a lot today, but I love your daughter.”

  Another swig of beer. “What’s not to love?”

  “I’m in love with her, and I need her to believe it’s okay to love me back.”

  “So, what, you want advice?” Rick set his beer bottle on the condiments station next to the grill before picking up the tongs again, as though he needed to keep his hands busy.

  Declan didn’t blame him. His own hands fisted in his pockets. “No. Just wanna know where she is.” When Rick remained silent, Declan sighed, allowing the tension in his shoulders to dissipate with his exhalation. “I’m not a bad guy, Rick.”

  Rick’s laugh was almost sad. “I know you’re not. Truth be told, I liked how happy you made her, when you were
together.”

  “So why is it that, after the nice little heart-to-heart between the two of you in my trailer, she dumps my ass?” Irritation flared, simmered. “You said somethin’.”

  “I did. But I shouldn’t have.”

  “Oh?”

  The tongs banged on the grill as he flipped the steaks first, then the pork chops. “I think I scared her. I told her to be selfish and think about her future, because I didn’t want to see her throw it all away, like she did when—”

  “When Alexei Wolkov came into her life.”

  Rick shot him a sharp glance. “You know about that?”

  Declan said nothing.

  Clearing his throat, Rick stared down at the tongs in his hand. “Yes. Well.”

  “That was five years ago. Five years is a long time. People change, your daughter included.”

  “I’m aware.”

  Declan stepped closer. “Fiona’s too smart to mess up her future over me.”

  “I’m aware of that, too.” A heavy moment passed between them. “I want her to succeed in whatever it is she chooses to do, whether that’s dance, makeup, or something else that she doesn’t even know about yet.” Rick shrugged, raising his gaze to meet Declan’s. “Maybe she won’t do this for the rest of her life. Maybe she’ll decide she wants to write children’s books or teach dance lessons, or finish her degree and join corporate America. It doesn’t matter to me what she does, so long as she’s happy. Happy and healthy and safe.”

  “Safe?”

  “Yes, safe. Secure.” Picking up an empty plate from the condiments station, Rick piled it high with burgers. A moment later, he was filling another plate with brats, then another with the steaks and chops. “Come and get it, everyone!” he called before ushering Declan aside, away from the suddenly swarming mass of humanity lining up—decidedly not in an orderly fashion—for the midday meal.

  A red-and-white plastic cooler sat against the side of the house, and Rick bent to grab a bottle of water from within, wordlessly offering one to Declan, who took it, nodded his thanks, and popped off the cap for a long, refreshing swallow.