‘Talking about walking the abyss, have you told Lachlan about the McKinsey thing yet?’ Jack asked, fitting the key into the lock.
‘Why would I?’ Wary. ‘It’s not important.’
He turned the key. ‘I thought that was the main attraction – that he looked like Guy.’
‘No – just the initial attraction.’
He turned back to me. ‘So what’s the main attraction, Evangeline? His job?’
‘Umm … well … yes, I guess. And don’t do that!’
‘I’m not doing anything.’
I put my finger on one of my eyebrows and pushed it up, demonstrating.
‘Oh, that – no Botox, remember. My facial muscles do move when I hear something stupid.’
I gave him a haughty look. ‘There’s nothing wrong with admiring someone because of what they do. You could try it yourself. You know, give up your next starlet for someone like … I don’t know, like … like …’
‘No, you clearly don’t know. But I can tell you that being a starlet is not a prerequisite.’
I was about to launch into an argument about that, but Jack grabbed me, hugged me, and dropped a short, hard kiss on the top of my head. He released me suddenly and stared down at me.
My breathing was all over the place, and it stopped altogether when he reached out to tuck one of my curls behind my ear.
‘You know, Evangeline, there’s not a lot of difference between people who only fall in love with, say, doctors, and people who only fall in love with actors,’ he said.
I just stood there with my lips pursed, frowning, trying to get a normal breath out.
‘And frowning and pouting won’t change that,’ he added, huffing out a laugh. ‘I’m not pouting.’
‘Sure you are.’
I wiped all expression from my face. ‘Okay – how’s this?’
‘Not as cute. Oops – rolling your eyes now.’
I giggled – couldn’t help it. ‘All right. And I know you’re right about the job thing, too. But I can’t help it if I admire people who do things for the good of the world.’
‘Acting and doing good deeds are not mutually exclusive. I have a lot of friends – actor friends – who make huge donations to charities, do publicity for good causes, volunteer in a hundred ways.’ He smiled. ‘Some of them even make documentaries about things like … hmmm … tuberculosis?’
‘Okaaaaay. Point taken.’
‘Then maybe you can try keeping your claws in when you meet all those actors at my party.’
‘Oh, the party.’
‘Yes, the party,’ Jack said patiently. ‘On Sunday – my one and only night off from the theatre. At my apartment. Where you will be – so don’t bother dreaming up an excuse – with your claws in for a change.’
‘Not that any of your friends will be too concerned about what I think of them.’
‘Well, we’ll see, won’t we?’ Jack’s quicksilver smile glimmered as he handed back my keys. ‘Good luck with the date on Thursday.’
‘Date?’
Up went the eyebrow. ‘Hmmm,’ he said.
I burst into my house on Thursday as though a rabies-mad Rottweiler was snapping at my heels.
Lachlan had made an early dinner reservation and I was late. Late, late, late.
I started stripping the instant the door closed, flinging shoes and clothes around the entrance hall, the living room, and up the stairs.
I was naked by the time I reached the bathroom, where I leapt into the shower, scrubbed myself energetically for two and a half minutes, leapt out. Towelled myself dry and sprayed myself with perfume.
Time check. Yay! I was going to make it. Just.
I grabbed the dress Chloe promised would have Lachlan’s tongue hanging out. Soft, scarlet, clingy jersey. Straps just wide enough to enable me to wear a bra without advertising it to the world. Deep, round neckline – a little too deep considering the size of my boobs. I felt ridiculously conspicuous the moment I put it on and fiddled with a wrap, wishing it offered more cover.
‘Well, you wanted lust,’ I told myself as I looked in the full-length mirror stuck to the outside of my wardrobe. ‘Go ignite the dormant spark and get laid, girl.’
But first – jewellery. I sorted purposefully through the contents of the small box on my dressing table, looking for my fake-gold hoop earrings and finding only one. I frowned, thinking back to the last time I’d worn them. To work, then Chloe’s on Tuesday – after which I was clearly too wasted to register that I was putting only one earring away in the box. Not that it mattered – they were worth all of about ten dollars. I fished out a pair of silver drop earrings instead.
Nothing much could be done about my hair in the time available, so I twisted it into a knot on top of my head and shoved in a few pins. Assorted curls sprang free, too heavy to stay in place. I spent a minute trying to balance the number of errant curls per side of my face, before admitting defeat. It would have to do.
I gave my eyelashes a quick brush of mascara, attacked my lips with a vibrant red lipstick, grabbed my only evening bag – a black velvet blob on a string – then headed downstairs and hit the entrance hall just as the doorbell rang.
So, of course, I opened the door, because I was ready – hooray! – and that’s what you did when the doorbell rang.
It took two seconds for my hooray! to wither and die.
‘Jack.’ Not that it mattered, but really? Another solo visit?
‘I just wanted to drop this off.’ He held out my gold earring. ‘Must have fallen off in your epic struggle to get in and out of the back seat of my inconvenient car.’
‘Thanks.’ I took the earring, opened the evening bag and dropped it inside.
I looked at Jack. He looked back. Now what? ‘Do you want to come –’ I started to ask automatically and then stopped. ‘No, you can’t.’ Jack’s eyebrow shot up. ‘I’m going out. And you’re supposed to be at the theatre, aren’t you?’
‘I’ve got time.’ Jack looked past me and his eyes widened.
I spared a glance over my shoulder, zooming in instantly on my purple cotton undies – the usual boy-leg style, not at all worth leering at – discarded halfway up the stairs. ‘If you were any kind of gentleman, you’d pretend not to notice,’ I said, blushing.
Jack shoved his hands in his jeans pockets, and then – as his eyes refocused on another spot behind me – his mouth twisted.
Oops. I swivelled around. Aaarrrggghh. My bra. It had fallen over the banister and was on the floor downstairs. A large – and I mean almost-Dolly-Parton large – creamy splotch on the floorboards.
Mental note – do not open door without checking for stray underwear.
I turned back, agonised.
‘All right, I’ll stop looking,’ Jack promised.
‘Yes, now you’ve already seen all the interesting stuff.’
‘Well, we were debating underwear not so long ago, weren’t we?’
‘No – you were trying to debate it and I was resisting. And now you know why.’
‘What do you mean?’
I snorted. ‘If someone threw a bra that size at you, you’d get a concussion.’
‘I’ll risk a concussion. Hell, I’ll risk a coma if you throw the one you’re wearing at me.’
Okay, I couldn’t help it, I giggled.
But then his eyes dropped to my chest and – ping! It was like a string connected his eyes to my nipples and supersized them. Up they went. Making me wish I’d worn a more concealing bra tonight – but, of course, I’d been aiming for sexy, so had chosen the flimsiest one I owned, which did approximately nothing to camouflage what was happening in there.
Jack, still staring, dragged in one long shaky breath, then licked his lips.
I felt my nipples contract even further and scrunched my eyes closed, twitching desperately at the low neckline of my dress – then I felt Jack’s fingers on my shoulder and my eyes flashed open.
He was adjusting the strap of my dress. ‘It’s
cool tonight,’ he said.
‘Oh, I have – I have … a … a thing.’ I looked down at my hands, expecting to see the wrap I’d been holding.
Jack bent to scoop something off the floor at my feet. ‘This?’
‘Yes.’ I took the wrap from him and hurriedly draped it around my entire torso. ‘Wish me luck,’ I said, as a polite sort of you can go now message.
‘Not tonight, Evangeline.’ Jack tucked a loose curl behind my ear. ‘It’s too soon.’
It’s too soon? What the hell kind of thing was that to say? Not tonight, Evangeline?
Why not tonight?
This wasn’t like that last time when he’d basically ordered me not to go out and get laid. It wasn’t like I was going out with my wingman to find a random warm body tonight. I was going out with the man of my goddamn dreams!
Not tonight, Evangeline.
Talk about date infiltration!
To add insult to injury, the departing Jack had run into the arriving Lachlan on the street and had been charm personified – even inviting Lachlan to his party – causing Lachlan to sing Jack’s praises at depressingly frequent intervals. How amazing he was. How friendly. How approachable, considering. Considering what? I felt like snapping back. Except that I knew what the ‘what’ was. Jack’s career. His celebrity.
I was gobsmacked. Lachlan was the one saving lives. Couldn’t he see that what he did was so much more important, more impressive, more everything, than what Jack did for a living? Eventually, I managed to turn Lachlan’s attention to other topics, but my enthusiasm had been dampened.
I rallied as Lachlan drove me home. ‘Come in,’ I urged as he pulled up at my house. ‘I can make coffee.’ Oops, not if I wanted to see him again. ‘Or a nightcap?’
Lachlan checked his watch. ‘Better not,’ he said.
I felt a stab of frustration, but then he unbuckled his seatbelt and reached for me. Thank God.
Lachlan’s mouth was warm, firm. Nice. Pleasant … although I had a sudden, inconvenient reluctance to go to the mucus membrane stage with him. But tongue action was what Drew had said was needed. Tongue action! So I forced myself to open my mouth and Lachlan’s tongue swept inside.
Not … bad, I decided, trying a little tongue tangling of my own. Hmmm. I could feel … something … sort of …
But before I could decide exactly what I felt, Lachlan brought the kiss to an end.
He was smiling, all confidence. ‘Goodnight, Evie. I’ll call to arrange a time to pick you up for Jack’s party.’
And then I was on the footpath and Lachlan was driving away and I found myself wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.
Not exactly according to plan.
CHAPTER FOUR
I woke feeling jittery the day of Jack’s party. And Lachlan’s early morning phone call, trying to convince me we should arrive at Jack’s at the seven o’clock start time, didn’t help.
Er – no. I was not going to arrive on the dot like a red carpet groupie.
I argued for nine o’clock, and felt a moment of apprehension when Lachlan did some umming and ahhing. He hovered, apparently on the verge of suggesting we arrive at Jack’s separately. I refrained from suggesting sarcastically that if he got there at five o’clock he could help with the canapés – just in case he decided to actually do that.
We reached a compromise of eight o’clock, but sheesh! Way to feel desirable – coming second fiddle to Jack with my own date.
But I was going to fix that. Because I had a plan – well, half a plan. It involved me looking gorgeous, Lachlan driving me home, me inviting him in …
That was the first half.
The other half was presenting a problem: I couldn’t seem to picture the clothing-removal-sliding-into-bed-naked part. As hard as I concentrated, the scene only materialised in words; the mental picture wouldn’t follow.
There was nothing for it but to slot Wuthering Heights into the DVD player, because I figured a dose of Guy McKinsey should get the blasted ‘pheromones’ juiced up in preparation for tonight’s seduction. But three and a half hours later, with both Wuthering Heights and Walking the Abyss under my belt, I still felt remarkably unable to imagine sex with Lachlan.
Annoyingly, I had no trouble conjuring the mental picture of Jack staring at my breasts and licking his lips.
And somehow that memory had me leaping to my feet and thinking about the ‘looking gorgeous’ part of my plan, because I had no idea what I was going to wear. Fashion was not my speciality; in the nutty professor Parker family, clothes had only ever been regarded as something you wore to cover nakedness so you could function in society. Nothing more than that.
A quick zip through my wardrobe revealed … nothing! I cast a wistful glance at the red dress I’d worn on my dinner date with Lachlan, but I couldn’t wear it to the party. It was the last thing Lachlan – and Jack for that matter – had seen me in.
I took a sanity break to watch two episodes of Spy Time – which still didn’t do the pheromone trick (maybe it didn’t work without an actual physical presence?) – and then I did what I should have done earlier and called Chloe for advice.
‘The emerald dress I made you buy,’ she said instantly. ‘The knitted one.’
‘Oh – I didn’t see that when I looked.’
‘Well find it, Evie. It’s perfect for tonight.’
It took twenty minutes and the removal of my shoe rack, but I found it – in a plastic bag crumpled in a corner of the wardrobe. I pulled out the dress, gave it a shake, and understood why it had been in the wardrobe equivalent of No Man’s Land – because I’d had no intention of ever wearing it. It was just too out-there.
Nothing wrong with the rich, deep colour. Or the high, straight neckline and long, tight sleeves.
But it was so freaking short.
Which wasn’t the end of the world, because I could wear my knee-length black suede boots, which covered a lot of skin.
Then I turned the dress around and sighed. That was the problem: no back to speak of.
Not that a perfectly ordinary bare back had ever caused an international incident.
However …
Sigh.
Backless meant I couldn’t wear a bra – unless you counted those adhesive cups, and the last time I’d taken that route, one had fallen off and re-stuck itself to my rib cage. That wasn’t an experience I felt like repeating in front of a hundred or so celebrities.
And going bra-less was a major issue. My boobs were just too big for the rest of me, let alone that clingy dress.
But since I didn’t have the option of an on-the-spot breast reduction, I figured I could wear my black wraparound knitted coat over the top. That way, if I ended up being too self-conscious when I got to Jack’s, I could keep the coat on.
Yeah – there was no way I wasn’t going to be self-conscious. I knew it the moment I heard the expertly mixed dance music thumping through the walls, before Lachlan and I had even reached the door to Jack’s apartment.
And once we were out on the deck of his amazing penthouse with its 360-degree city views, self-consciousness took a back seat to utter panic. The deck was decorated with coloured paper lanterns and enormous vases of flowers. Trays of champagne and cocktails were circulating. Exquisite bite-sized morsels of food were being exclaimed over.
And the people? Well, it looked like a Hot-200 Model convention.
My coat would be staying on – perhaps for the rest of my life.
I spied Jack – momentarily and miraculously on his own – with his back to us. Gritting everything that could be gritted, I walked swiftly over to get the hello-to-the-host out of the way. Lachlan – apparently caught in kid-in-a-candy-store mode as he took in all the famous faces – would have to follow at his own pace, because I reckoned I had a thirty-second window of solo-Jack.
I tapped Jack on the shoulder, and he turned quickly, inhaling so sharply I thought a surreptitious sniff of myself might be in order, just to make sure I’d actually put
on deodorant.
‘What the hell …?’ said Jack – as I hunched, sniffing in the vicinity of my underarm.
The humour of the situation got the better of me and I laughed. ‘Just checking my … perfume,’ I said.
He leaned close – a little too close – and sniffed. Really! Who the hell sniffed their friends? ‘Nice,’ he said, with a smile that I can only describe as challenging. ‘Kind of like a bakery … yum.’
Bakery! Exactly how did he get ‘bakery’ to sound like a sex word? And seriously? I wasn’t so sure that was a compliment when I thought about it – I mean, were we talking cherry Danish, custard tart or garlic bread? It had me frantically thinking of what I’d eaten for lunch.
I was so preoccupied, I basically just shoved the tiny gift I’d bought him into his hands. It was only a two dollar button badge I’d chosen more as a joke than anything else, because what did you buy a wealthy guy who had the world at his feet? But now I refused to be embarrassed about it. Bakery. Good Lord.
He unwrapped the box and smiled – a dazzling, my-teeth-do-need-to-be-insured-immediately smile. Ran his thumb over the surface, where the word Star was picked out in glittering silver across a violet background. ‘Ran out of all the ones with the rude words, did they?’
I wrinkled my nose at him. ‘I’ve got my claws in tonight, remember? Like you asked.’
Jack pushed the pin of the badge through his fitted charcoal knit top and clipped it in place. ‘And you listened? Wow!’
‘Don’t push it, Jack. I’ll be hanging on by a thread in this crowd.’
He leaned down to kiss my cheek. ‘I love it, Evangeline. Thank you.’
It flustered me, the way goose bumps raced from my cheek to my fingertips. My reaction was to pull the belt on my coat even tighter.
Jack seemed about to say something else, but Lachlan bounded over at that moment and put his arm around me.
‘Everything looks wonderful, Jack,’ he said.
‘If you’d like to have a look around the apartment I can give you a guided tour,’ Jack said pleasantly. ‘You’ve seen it, Evangeline, so we won’t drag you along. Drew was looking for you. He’s over at the bar, I think.’
Wanting Mr Wrong Page 5
