Watching You

by Leslie A. Kelly

Plucking at her red dress, she added, “Or maybe a she-devil?”

  “Always with the jokes.”

  “That’s me. All big mouth and enormous ass. Men always want one but not the other.”

  Somehow refraining from admiring that ass, he took her by the shoulders and made her focus on him. She needed to hear what he had to say. “You’re so full of it.”

  “What?” she said, her jaw falling open.

  “Do you think I don’t recognize a defense mechanism when I see one? I grew up in this town. I learned before my tenth birthday how to hide my feelings by shooting off my mouth.”

  She licked her lips. “I don’t know what you—”

  “Yes you do.” His hands tightened. “The smart aleck is funny. The sexpot is amazing. But the real woman was just here, and she’s the one I want to spend the night with.”

  He heard her suck in a breath and hold it.

  “Let me see her. Let me be with her. Trust me, Jessica.”

  She lifted a trembling hand, smoothing her hair, considering his request. He knew why she had a hard time trusting, especially after the missteps he’d made. He only hoped she’d gotten to know him well enough to finally take a chance and lower those defenses.

  Finally, she spoke. “What about you, Reece Winchester? Who are you really? The controlling man who pursued me relentlessly the other night? The one who threw himself on top of me to protect me? The one who gave me a job?” She smiled. “Or this flirtatious guy who laughs and jokes. Am I seeing the real you tonight at last?”

  The real him? Who was he? Honestly, he wasn’t sure anymore. He’d played a lot of roles in his life, and he didn’t mean in front of the camera. He’d been a twin, a son, a sibling. A star. Those were the positives, for the most part. But he’d also been a rotten bastard. A vigilante. An accomplice. A criminal. That he’d gotten away with his crimes—and helped others do the same—didn’t make that truth about himself any easier to acknowledge.

  Funny, he had long ago accepted who he was. But for a little while at least, Jessica made him wonder if he could actually be somebody else.

  His silence probably answered more than he’d like it to.

  “Now who’s being secretive?” She placed a hand on his chest, as if she could feel the waves of the past hitting him and pulling him under, away from the frothy surf where he’d been playing with her. He wanted to swim back, to let go of the dark currents swirling in his heart and his mind. What would it be like to be the kind of man she thought he was?

  “Let me see him,” she ordered. “Let me know him.”

  Their stares met and locked. It was a big thing they were asking of each other. A monumental thing on his part, and, he suspected by a few things she’d said, on hers.

  He wished he could do it, let go of the past and become the man he might have been, if not for his dark, twisted history. He didn’t want to be the cold, arrogant son of a bitch. Not with her.

  If he didn’t have others to worry about—their lives, their memories, their freedom—maybe he’d say to hell with it. What wouldn’t he give to stop worrying that the past would catch up with them all? He couldn’t imagine how it might feel to stop doing what all those people in the ballroom were doing: playing a part.

  She waited for his answer, her eyes sparkling, her expression entreating. While he knew it was impossible, something in him had to relent, to at least accept the possibility of change.

  “I’ll try.” It was as far as he could go, and it was further than he’d gone in many years.

  With a slow nod, she met the challenge, too. “So will I.”

  They shared one more intimate look, and then a few people walked out of the ballroom, chatting as they crossed the marble-tiled floor, away from them. Knowing they had been lucky to have escaped notice for this long, he turned toward the banquet. She fell in beside him, letting him take her arm. Her body was no longer tense. She seemed ready to face the night.

  As they stood in the doorway and the roar of the crowd flew directly at them, she mumbled, “Maybe I’m not playing a screenwriter. I feel more like a zookeeper about to throw raw meet at the lions and hyenas.”

  “Funny. That’s exactly what you’re about to do.”

  “Only I’m the raw meat. And the lions and hyenas walk on two legs.”

  He slid an arm around her waist. “Don’t worry, Jessica. I won’t let anybody bite you. I promise.”

  Chapter 9

  As Maisy Cullinan watched tonight’s most talked-about couple mingle in the crowded ballroom, nausea turned her stomach into a volcano. While they moved around the room, her stare followed, at least until rage blurred her vision. She could almost feel herself ripping out fistfuls of red hair by the roots, scratching those cheeks, tearing off the slutty dress.

  She couldn’t believe Reece had brought the tramp here. This was supposed to be their special night. Only the who’s who of Hollywood should have been allowed—movie stars and rich philanthropists, like her. Maisy had the right to be here, bought and paid for. Maybe she hadn’t grown up with a silver spoon in her mouth, but her lottery winnings could be spent just as well as movie money. So she deserved to be among these people. She fit in. The slut in the red dress did not.

  “She looks like she belongs in Penthouse, not at a charity dinner.”

  “What did you say, darling?”

  Maisy flinched, knowing the blonde seated beside her had heard. She couldn’t remember the woman’s name—Candace? Carla?—but knew her husband produced crappy films.

  “Oh, nothing,” she said with a bored smile, one she’d seen on other woman and practiced daily in front of the mirror. Hers was probably fine, considering everybody’s looked as fake as their tits and their tans. “I was talking to myself. Don’t you ever talk to yourself?”

  “No, I don’t,” the producer’s wife said with a smirk, so condescending. As if Maisy hadn’t paid every bit as much for her plate of food as this spoiled bitch. “But if you were talking about the woman with Reece Winchester, I hear she’s his new, uh, assistant.”

  “Assistant, my ass. Abigail’s his administrative assistant,” Maisy snapped. She knew all about Reece’s employees, just as she knew all about his life.

  “Abigail?”

  Realizing she’d sounded more interested than she should, she said, “I, uh, met her once, when I stopped by Reece’s office.” He had been out of town, on location. But she’d needed to be near him, at least to smell his unique scent, be close to the desk where he worked.

  “I see,” the woman said, so pleasant, so phony.

  It was so hard to know what to say, and who to say it to. People here weren’t like the ones in Scranton. They were better at hiding what they meant, disguising their meanness behind polite talk. Not that there weren’t mean people in Pennsylvania. Everybody had been mean to her back in the day. Crazy Maisy, they’d called her. She’d slaved at the grocery store six days a week, ringing up their melons and their cucumbers, but she wasn’t even worth saying hello to.

  Then she’d won a record-breaking lottery jackpot. She’d suddenly had more friends than Miss Congeniality in a beauty pageant. But she hadn’t given a penny to any of them, and had traded her small life in Pennsylvania for a big one in Los Angeles.

  Her windfall had obviously been fated. She’d always known she would end up with Reece, ever since he’d smiled at her from a giant screen. She’d waited, and she knew he had, too. It was why neither of them had ever married, and why his relationships never lasted. They were meant to be together. He was the man she was going to spend the rest of her life with.

  “Well, not assistant, I suppose. He’s introducing this one as his new summer intern.”

  So he really had hired her, the cheap piece who’d lured him upstairs the other night? She was going to be around him constantly, flaunting herself? Her anger boiled. “No, no, she can’t be.”

  “Who can’t?”

  She couldn’t even pretend to be friendly. “I’m talking to myself again.
Do you mind?”

  The woman stood up, so graceful, like she was rising from a couch where some man had been dropping grapes into her entitled mouth. No matter how she practiced, Maisy hadn’t yet been able to copy that languid LA style, and envy made her bitter.

  “Darling, you shouldn’t let people know you talk to yourself. You can’t possibly know how wicked gossip can be in this town.” She patted Maisy’s shoulder in pretend concern. “After all, you wouldn’t want anyone to think you’re crazy.”

  A roar of denial came to her mouth. I’m not Crazy Maisy! Nobody better ever call me that again. I’m rich, and rich people don’t get put in hospitals and drugged with pills and tied up to bed rails. But she didn’t say anything at all as the woman walked away. Her focus was elsewhere: on her primary enemy.

  Whether it was the showy clothes or the hair, the devil who’d caught Reece’s eye now caught hers. The dress was too low, the shoes too high, the jewelry too big and obviously fake. Everything about the woman screamed cheap and poor. How Reece could have been sucked in, she didn’t know. Maybe he was just being protective because of the gunshot.

  That gunshot. She gulped, glad Reece hadn’t been hit. At least the timing of that had been good. It had made them stop the hanky-panky they’d been doing upstairs in that private gallery.

  It had almost killed her to see them kissing up there. Maisy had left the gallery, needing to stomp and rant because he’d gone upstairs with the woman. So looking up and seeing them in the window had just about made her head fly off.

  She pushed the memory back into the darkest part of her brain, where ugly things lived, and focused only on the future. On her and Reece. Miss Red Dress would give him what he wanted—what all men wanted—and then he’d get bored and pull away. He would settle down only with someone who was his equal. Someone like Maisy Cullinan.

  Unfortunately, that didn’t ease the sting of the thought of the redhead sharing his bed.

  “How would you like her if she wasn’t pretty?” she mused, her stare clawing at the woman’s back from across the ballroom. “If her hair was chopped off, and her skin was scarred, and her fancy dress was ragged and torn, would you still want her then?”

  Maisy relished the thought. She imagined the scene, thinking like a film director. And suddenly, one of her excellent ideas popped into her head. She could make it happen.

  She’d have to find a place—the bathroom—and would need supplies—from a maintenance closet. It could work, if she could only find a way to get the little tart alone. It might not be easy in this crowd; she would have to think carefully. Even with the best plan, however, she would need some real luck to pull it off.

  Then again, everybody knew Maisy was lucky. She was the one-in-three-hundred-million woman, and had the bank account to prove it. If that luck held, by tomorrow the redhead would look entirely different. After that, men wouldn’t stare at her with lust. Only with pity.

  * * *

  This evening was so not what she had expected.

  Jess had pictured a lovely charity event with people focused on good causes acknowledging those who went above and beyond in supporting them. Reading about the three awards being given out tonight—to Reece and two others—she’d envisioned a boatload of tender hearts, floating on a sea of compassion, on a planet of goodwill.

  Uh…no. Philanthropy might live in the checkbooks of these members of the LA elite, but their charity ended at their lips.

  She’d never been around a cattier bunch in her life. This crowd could give lessons in snottiness to contestants in a reality TV matchmaking show. Considering one such former contestant was here tonight, maybe they actually did.

  “You know, I kind of hate you right now,” she murmured as she sipped her champagne.

  Reece lowered his own glass, which held sparkling water. Not surprising. Drinking could lead to a loss of control, and publicly losing control was one thing he wouldn’t do. He barely did it privately, judging by how in-check he’d kept himself their first night. She’d been quivering with need. Reece had merely directed the scene. At least until a bullet came through the glass.

  Nothing could have prepared either of them for that action sequence.

  As for what had happened in the car, well, he’d lost control for a while, as had she. She’d been tempted to tell the chauffer to keep driving forever. But she wanted tonight for Reece, wanted him to get recognition for something other than his incredible looks, his acting, or his films.

  “I thought we’d moved past your hatred of me.”

  “I said kind of.”

  “Moderately better. Didn’t the shoes at least bump me up to more than dislike?”

  The kiss in the limo had. She wasn’t going to admit that, however, not when they were in the middle of a crowd and couldn’t do anything about it. “The shoes put you on the pie list.”

  “Pie list?”

  “I mean, I love cake. But I’ll eat pie. It’s okay. You’re now pie. I only hate certain kinds of it, while I love any kind of cake.”

  He shook his head, his eyes twinkling. “Oh, to be smothered in cream cheese icing.”

  Yum. Her favorite. How delicious it would be to lick it off his powerful body.

  Annoyed at her own vivid imagination, she forced herself to remember she was scolding him for not warning her about this dumb gala. It had ruined all her illusions. “I can’t believe I actually expected an evening of kindness and shared philanthropy. These people are awful.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. Two hundred heads swung and four hundred eyes stared. Jess caught her lip in her teeth, and she could almost hear the whispers from the rich and nosy, people dying to know what had caused his amusement.

  “Did you really expect anything else?”

  “Actually, yes, I did.”

  “Sorry to tear off your blinders, but if you want to work in this business, you should see it as it is. Brutal, cutthroat, seething with ambition and jealousy.”

  “Gee, you make it sound so appealing.”

  She couldn’t help wondering how old he had been when he’d learned that lesson. Being raised in this world might explain why he was so closed in, so mistrustful. Why he always had to maintain a distance and control his interactions with others. Including women. Including her.

  Taking her empty glass away and putting it on the tray of a passing server, he said, “Come on before somebody interrupts to ask what was so funny, and oh, by the way, is dying to tell me all about his new raunchy comedy about a bunch of groomsmen.”

  “I think that was called The Hangover. Or Bachelor Party. A classic.”

  “Movie fanatic.”

  “Guilty.”

  As amusement swirled between them, other things came with it. Liking. Even, she thought, the beginnings of trust. So she didn’t ask where they were going and simply went with him when he took her hand. She hoped they were headed for the exit.

  Unfortunately, he instead steered her toward the crowded dance floor. Jess tried to change direction, but he was quick to block her path. He swung her into his arms and pulled her along to the music before she could even protest: But I can’t dance!

  Only, apparently, she could, at least with the right partner.

  They fit together. With this man, her height was not a negative. Their bodies melded, angle to curve, hardness to softness. They were two pieces of a puzzle that snapped together to form a perfect picture. She relaxed in his arms and let him lead her, knowing they were being stared at, but not caring. Besides, it was him they were staring at. Him they always stared at. Women imagined being with him, men just imagined being him.

  He was so tall, straight, and masculine. Even wearing a tuxedo, with his thick hair perfectly combed and his jaw closely shaven, he gave off an aura of utter masculinity. Although the clothes were perfect for Mr. Hollywood, she knew he would have looked equally sexy in jeans and a T-shirt. Or an intergalactic space pilot’s uniform.

  “I really have to stop thinking of you as Ru
nner Fleet,” she muttered.

  “My favorite role.”

  “Really? I would have thought he was too funny for you.” Realizing she might sound insulting, she quickly added, “Not that you’re not funny. Well, you’re not.” Bad to worse. “I mean, you play funny well, even though you didn’t do it very often.” She never understood why. He’d been really good. “I just can’t picture it now that I’ve gotten to know you.”

  He tilted his head quizzically. “Was there a compliment in there? Or a question? Or are you just calling me humorless?”

  “Oh, lord,” she muttered, not wanting to admit her brains were scrambling just being in his arms, smelling the spicy cologne blended with his own unique scent. He was hard and strong, and…and…she wanted him. She just wanted him. She’d been unable to think of anything else except how amazing it would have been to remain in the limousine, exchanging more of those long, hungry kisses, stripping off their clothes, and making love for hours.

  Despite everything she’d been telling herself about him, she was caught. Even knowing he had set up their meeting like a puppet master, knowing exactly what was going to happen when he lured her up to the gallery, she would say yes all over again. He’d tempted her with a job, but she didn’t regret taking it. Maybe he’d done the same thing to get her here tonight.

  Whatever. It didn’t change a thing. She craved the man.

  It wasn’t smart. It definitely wasn’t professional. It probably wasn’t safe for her heart. Or, judging by the icy stares and invisible knives being thrown at her from other women, her body. Nobody had ever accused her of doing the safe, easy thing, however.

  He had to know what she was thinking. Only a whisper of fabric separated their bodies, so he must feel her rapid, shallow breaths brushing his neck, and the thudding of her heart against his chest. At the very least, he must have noticed her nipples were hard and her legs weak enough to make her lean into him more than was strictly necessary for the dance.

  “Jessica?” he murmured. “Look at me.”

  She swallowed hard and lifted her eyes.