Take My Breath Away

by Christie Ridgway

  * * *

  WHO THE HECK are you? Before Ryan would answer Poppy’s question, he had one of his own to pose. He gestured toward the towhead who was staring at him with blue eyes round as marbles. “Who the hel—heck is that?”

  Poppy opened the back passenger door and climbed out. “My son, Mason. He’s been in Florida with family.”

  “You have a kid?” He supposed he should regret the note of accusation.

  Her pursed lips told him she hadn’t missed it. “Well, you apparently have a cultlike following.”

  He grimaced. “It’s about now that I wish you’d watched television.”

  “I wish you’d take me back to the Chalet.”

  Ryan shook his head. “Not a good idea...at least not at the moment.” He glanced up the long drive, to the gates where the chase team was gathering. “We should get inside.”

  She eyed the house as first the towhead and then the dog slipped out of the car. Her hand reached down to grasp her son’s.

  Ryan had to look away, and it was then he saw the first of the photographers climb out with their cameras in hand. Cursing beneath his breath, he took her elbow to hustle her through the doors. “Come on.”

  Her shoulders squared. “We don’t go anywhere with strangers.”

  He stifled another string of swear words. “Poppy, don’t make me drag you up the steps.” When she opened her mouth again, he pinned her with a stare. “As for me being a stranger...remember where you were when you first opened your eyes this morning.”

  Though that sleepy, blushing Poppy of the early a.m. had been replaced by a wary woman with a maternal militancy in her gray eyes, Ryan hadn’t forgotten her. That was the woman who’d compelled him into a torrid goodbye kiss that had caught the attention of the paparazzi. It was her fault for being so damn appealing, he decided, though guilt rewarded that thought with a vicious pinch. It was his notoriety that had put her in this position. So he softened his voice. “Look, we need to get into the house.”

  “Why?”

  He forked his hand through his hair. “Because they have telephoto lenses. If they can get Kate Middleton’s bare—” remembering the kid, he found a substitute word for tits “—parts from an estate away, they can focus down 300 feet of flagstone and snap us arguing.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “Are you sure...?”

  “I’ll show you once we’re inside.”

  Their group tromped into the house, Grimm’s leash dragging along the marble floors. Ryan immediately directed them right, into the spacious office with its walnut built-ins, leather furniture and plush area rugs. There, he opened a cabinet and keyed up the views from the security cameras onto their respective screens. In the upper left, three photographers stood near their respective cars, peering through the metal gates.

  Ryan couldn’t help but notice Poppy’s kid seemed fascinated by the security setup, his eyes roaming over the equipment. Poppy turned her own gaze from the black-and-white images, fixing it on Ryan’s face. “I don’t understand what’s going on,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “It may seem a bit of a tangle at the moment—”

  “Unknot it,” she ordered.

  He stifled a wince at her sharp tone. “Poppy—”

  “Mason.” She ruffled the boy’s straight blond hair. “See that chair?” She pointed to one by a window. “Why don’t you take Grimm over there and introduce him to Mickey Mouse.”

  “Not there,” Ryan put in softly. “Not by a window.”

  She slid him a look, then focused back on her son. “I mean the other, by the fireplace,” she said, indicating a love seat situated far from the glass. “Sit over there and tell Grimm all about your adventures.”

  As the boy moved to obey, she rounded on Ryan, her face set. “Explain. Right. Now.”

  He owed her at least some of it. So he told her his real name and about the TV show that had turned him into a teen star. The action movies he’d made in his twenties. The production studio he now ran.

  “Today we caught the interest of some paparazzi. The unfortunate fact is there are magazines and websites and nightly entertainment TV programming that spew celebrity news and speculation every day. To get what they need, there are agencies that employ teams to trail A-listers twenty-four/seven.”

  “That’s you, an ‘A-lister’?”

  He shrugged a shoulder. “I think we got caught in the tail wind of Grant and Anabelle Lester, the latest Hollywood ‘it’ couple. That’s who was coming out of the restaurant when we were spotted. They’d been borrowing my house for a few days.”

  “Still, the photographers must have an interest in you, if they abandoned this Grant and Anabelle to chase us down.”

  Here was where things might get sticky. He didn’t want to tell her all his history. He couldn’t bring himself to speak of it, not with that towhead of hers in the room. Not when he now knew she was a mother. “Who knows what goes through their minds?”

  Poppy returned her gaze to the security screen. The photographers had set up tripods now, that were aimed in the direction of the house. “Are they...dangerous?”

  He shook his head. “Only to your privacy.”

  “Ryan—”

  “Mommy,” her kid called from across the room. “I’m thirsty. And Mickey’s hungry. Grimm, too.”

  “Just a minute, honey.” She glanced at Ryan. “Do you mind if I get him a glass of water in the kitchen?”

  “You’re welcome to whatever is there. If you walk out to the hall turn right, then left, you’ll run into it. Scrounge for something to eat, too.”

  He watched them—woman, kid, dog—proceed from the room, and he fully intended to stay in place where he could keep an eye on the paps and also think through the situation with a clear head. When Poppy was front and center, his thoughts kept wandering into dangerous territory, recalling the sleek heat of her rib cage against his palms, the tight, wet clasp of her around him, the shy way she’d buried her face against his neck when she’d come.

  That last fevered kiss that he hadn’t stopped himself from taking and even now wasn’t regretting, though it had been the cause of this current mess.

  But then he heard a stifled shriek and he hustled to find her standing at the threshold to the kitchen, her eyes big, her hand over her mouth. “Oh, my God,” she breathed, glancing over at him, then back at the big room. “This is your kitchen?”

  It was edging on twilight, so he flipped on the lights to expose the bank of windows overlooking the lake and the gleaming pots and pans hanging from an iron rack suspended on chains. There were two sinks, two dishwashers, an immense granite-topped island, a refrigerator as big as a king-size bed, a separate ice maker, a wine cooling unit the size of a regular fridge and a beverage center complete with gleaming espresso maker.

  “I bought the place from a couple of professional chefs,” he told her.

  Her head swiveled to take in more of the room’s features, which included four ovens, two warming drawers and a range from which an army could be fed. “Do you cook?”

  “Uh...”

  “You have a cook.”

  “I have a housekeeper at my Laurel Canyon house in L.A. who leaves me things for me to heat up. I haven’t come here very often.” He’d bought the place the summer after the first horrible March when he’d held some vague hope that a new venue might shake him from his April-through-February stupor. With quick footsteps, he crossed to the pantry and opened the door to peer inside. “It’s pretty well-stocked, however. There’s enough food for days.”

  Poppy had opened the fridge. “I should say so.” She glanced at him over her shoulder. “No shortage of chilling champagne, either.”

  Ryan joined her at the open door. “Or milk or juice or fresh fruit and vegetables.” Grant and Anabelle’s assist
ants had laid in for a siege.

  Poppy set her son on one of the island’s bar stools and served him a glass of juice. The kid’s eyes were sleepy as he sipped. With a quick apology to Ryan that he waved away, she hurriedly prepared half a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. “He’s on East Coast time, it seems,” she explained. “It’s nearing Mason’s bedtime there.”

  The boy straightened in his seat. “Not tired.”

  “Of course not,” his mother assured him with a little smile, sliding the food in front of him. “Mason Walker is never tired.”

  Mason Walker. Huh. Ryan figured that Poppy must not have married the boy’s father or the kid would have a different last name. He didn’t know why the factoid interested him, however, because this was the beginning and the end of his acquaintance with the kid.

  Thank God.

  Ryan cleared his throat. “Here’s how we’re going to defuse the situation, Poppy. I’m going back to L.A. tonight, and hopefully our nosy friends will follow me down the hill. Then you can—”

  “Bro!” Ryan’s brother’s voice boomed through the halls, coming from the direction of the terrace. “You got meerkats lurking at the gates. They’re standing tall and twitching their whiskers, cameras a-ready. I almost clipped one with my car driving in. Does that mean your nasty porn princess has been singing your praises again?”

  Linus strolled into the room, then came to an abrupt halt that might have been comical if Ryan could find a laugh after seeing the aghast expression on Poppy’s face at the nasty-porn-princess remark. “Uh...” his brother said, looking from mother to son. “Hi?”

  Ryan sighed. “Poppy, this is my brother, Linus. Linus, this is my...Poppy, and her son.” When the dog shoved his head under the other man’s hand, he added, “That’s Grimm.”

  “I didn’t realize you’d brought company here,” Linus said, absently patting the dog. Then, aplomb recovered, he strolled over to the kid, whose hand he shook like it was a solemn promise. The boy grinned, apparently charmed.

  Next, Linus turned, smiling in that easy way of his. “Hello, there, my Poppy,” he said, bending to kiss her lightly on the cheek.

  “Hey,” Ryan protested, before he could hold back. At his brother’s curious look, he crossed his arms over his chest. “Poppy. Her name is Poppy.”

  “Oops,” Linus said, not looking the least concerned. He slapped his hands together. “What are we all doing, kids?”

  Ryan sighed again. Linus on scene was a potential complication the already problematic situation could do without. So with greetings and introductions out of the way, it was time to move the other man along. “This really isn’t a good time for a visit.”

  Instead of taking the hint, Linus draped himself over the nearest bar stool, crossing his right leg over his left so that his foot could swing with a lazy rhythm. He sent a smile to Ryan, the one that signaled his sibling was going to be especially uncooperative. “Oh, I don’t know. I’ll bet you could use my help in hosting this fine company.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IN A SMALL—by this villa’s standards—room off the kitchen, Poppy pulled a woolen throw over her son, who lay fast asleep on a sofa. Grimm settled on the floor nearby, and she tucked Mickey under one of Mason’s relaxed arms, then pressed a kiss to his warm cheek. Her sweet baby.

  He was exhausted, and so was she. But single mothers couldn’t afford to give in to the feeling. Nor, she decided, straightening up, could she afford to rely on Ryan to free her from her current quandary—in her experience men were rarely reliable.

  But how had this happened? she wondered, rubbing at her throbbing temples. How had everything gone south so fast?

  Clearly, going to bed with him had been a huge mistake.

  God. God!

  After years of celibacy she’d had sex...sex with gorgeous, dangerous Ryan Harris—no, make that Ryan Hamilton. And wasn’t that just perfect? The man had given her a fake name. She shook her head, chagrined. What an idiot she was, getting physically intimate with the kind of man who would have driven off without ever revealing his true identity.

  Just like Mason’s father.

  Well, sure, she’d known his name, but his true colors had only bled through once she’d shared the news of her unexpected pregnancy. He’d sped from her life faster than Ryan had taken the mountain roads to his lakeside estate.

  But Ryan didn’t leave you, a voice in her head whispered. When those celebrity hunters came in for the kill, he swooped you away.

  To this house, she reminded the voice, where they were confined behind iron gates. Not a house, a...a mansion, that was Architectural Digest-fancy with its marble floors, its soaring ceilings and its luxuriously appointed rooms. She couldn’t have dreamed up a domicile more opposite to the Walker cabins if she’d tried.

  So? You’re dry and warm within walls that are stocked with food and drink, and a dazzling man who knows how to touch a woman.

  But she wasn’t a woman, she was a mother, and she wasn’t going to let herself get all cozy—in the manor, or with the man of the manor, either. That had been a one-time affair, and surely the sexual urges precipitating it had been burned away in the process.

  Tiptoeing from the room, she stepped into the corridor and pulled her phone from her pocket. Ryan’s and his brother’s voices were faint murmurs coming from the kitchen as she thumbed on the device.

  Several missed calls from her sisters. Good, she thought. She’d get one of them to drive out here and pick up her and Mason. Or maybe her brother would be better. The scars on his face lent him a savage aura. One look and the photographers would probably run like hell.

  The fact was, though, he intimidated her a little, too, so she dialed her older sister, Mackenzie, who picked up on the first ring. “It’s about time. People have called, sent texts, emailed me video from their cell phones. What’s going on?” she demanded.

  Where to begin? Poppy swallowed. “Well, a few days ago, this man showed up, wanting to rent one of the cabins—”

  “The cabins.” Mackenzie’s voice held a note of near-loathing. “Didn’t we tell you no good would come from doing something with them?”

  “Some good will come,” Poppy insisted, bristling.

  “Yeah, it’s so ‘good’ that you’ve been spied canoodling with the infamous Ryan Hamilton. Rah rah.”

  “You know who he is.” She should have figured that. Unlike Poppy, Mackenzie was a consumer of popular culture.

  “Of course. Do you?”

  She refused to admit hers was a very recent acquaintance with the real Ryan. “Yes. Could—”

  “You know everything about him?”

  Not the porn-princess part. And she didn’t want to even ask about that. Poppy and Ryan were parting ways and the less she knew the easier it would be to forget that brief interlude in his bed. “I know everything I need to know.”

  Mackenzie groaned. “Poppy...”

  She bristled again, annoyed with her sister’s condescending attitude. “Why do you say my name like that?”

  “Because you’re naive, gullible and always overly optimistic.”

  “Hey—”

  “And because you have a terrible track record when it comes to men.”

  Poppy frowned. There had been her two high school short-term boyfriends who’d bored her to tears. Then Mason’s father. Followed by Ryan—

  Okay, fine. She had a terrible track record when it came to men.

  “All right, little sister,” Mackenzie said, “tell me what you need.” She punctuated the line with a long-suffering sigh.

  But now her sibling’s tone and Poppy’s own fierce pride made it impossible to ask for help. With temper coloring her voice, she said, “Never mind. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Thumbing off the phone, she shoved it back into her pocket. Wha
t now? There was still the small matter of getting out of here.

  After a little cooling-off period, she’d phone her brother, she decided, walking toward the kitchen. As she approached, Ryan’s brother’s voice floated through the doorway.

  “...it’s March,” Linus was saying, “and—”

  “She doesn’t need to know all that.” Ryan sounded as if he were speaking through clenched teeth. “There’s no reason to get into it.”

  Poppy didn’t hitch her stride. Surely they’d been speaking of her. “Get into what?” she asked, crossing the threshold.

  Linus rose from the bar stool where he’d been lounging. “You look as if you have a headache, my Poppy.” Then he glanced at his brother, amusement sparkling in his brown eyes. “Did you just growl?”

  “Her name is Poppy. Just plain Poppy.”

  Linus seemed to contemplate that as he crossed to the counter, where a bottle of chilled white wine sat sweating beside a lovely crystal glass. He poured the liquid, then strolled over to hand it to her. “She doesn’t look plain to me,” he murmured, then gifted her with such a charming smile there was nothing she could do but smile back. “Come sit down, Poppy,” he added, with another mischievous glance at his brother. “You can supervise the dinner preparations.”

  Ryan had a beer in hand that he lifted to his mouth, then tipped back. Poppy stared at the long, strong column of his throat as he swallowed, just a little bit fascinated. Last night, she thought, her mind drifting as she sipped her wine, she’d rubbed her cheek there. The skin had been warm, smooth, until she’d encountered the dark, raspy stubble of his beard. She’d run her tongue against it, tasting salt and heat.

  Her own body felt a little heated now, as a matter of fact—no! She’d already been through this. The deed had been done, the urges satisfied, the want assuaged.

  “Whoops, don’t drop it.” Her glass was removed from her inattentive hold, refilled and returned to the granite surface before her. Linus topped off his own, set aside the bottle then held up his wine. “Hey, gang, we forgot to make a toast.”