by Maggie Marr
“Hey,” Bradford said.
Christina tilted her head upward and toward him as he reached for the latte she’d brought. His voice was thick with the gravel of unrestrained emotion, his face drawn tight with his jaw hard. His lips were a tight seal formed after an hour of being forced to disclose emotion. His gaze met Christina’s for the briefest moment.
“Thank you for the coffee,” he said and pulled his cigarette pack from his back pocket. He sat on the edge of the seat across from her.
Exhaustion hovered about Bradford, and yet an underlying tension crackled across his skin., His jaw muscle worked as he bent forward to light his smoke. She wouldn’t ask about his therapy session. She didn’t ask about anything Bradford did at Clarity. She came, she brought coffee, she sat; sometimes in silence and sometimes not. Her undefined role was somewhere between supportive friend and companion. Their past seemed as though it might prevent them from ever being simply friends. There was too much emotion, too much pain, too much youth wrapped up in their long-ago love affair. She hadn’t seen Bradford, aside from a glancing hello at a premiere or a charity event, in years. But since his entrance to rehab, she’d been his companion of a sort.
She wasn’t clear on her feelings for him, but her feelings didn’t matter. She was here to support Bradford, to help in any way that she might to get him well.
“My grandfather found out I’m here.” Bradford blew out smoke and his gaze skirted toward the ocean.
Christina’s lips tightened. Bradford was third-generation Hollywood royalty. The product of a supermodel and an award-winning actor. Bradford's grandfather was an acting powerhouse. There were expectations that came attached to that high-level DNA. One expectation was success. Another was no failure. Christina remembered the late-night conversations during their long-ago romance in which they both disclosed the expectations laid upon them from entertainment families.
“He wants me to come and stay with him once I’m out of here.” Bradford stubbed out his cigarette and stood. He settled his hands upon his hips and stared at the ocean. “I’m not sure that’s a great idea.”
Bradford hadn’t spoken of leaving Clarity. He hadn’t mentioned where he was going or what he was going to do, and Christina hadn’t asked. She wanted to place no pressure on him, but instead to be a stable beam of support.
Bradford ran his fingers through his hair and even with the haggard looks and his body still too thin, it was hard for her not to let her jaw drop with the abject perfection of Bradford. From the cut of his jaw, the Cupid ’s bow of his upper lip, his nose, his eyes, every bit of his face was spectacular. Her heart quivered with the image of her beneath him, an image she’d not allowed herself to conjure up from the depths of her memory in years. She pictured his ass, firm beneath the palms of her hands. Christina looked away from Bradford, embarrassed by her own desire. Her jaw tightened. He was male perfection, even now, even still, and he had been, for a short while, hers.
“I talked about you in therapy today.”
Christina slowly turned her gaze back to him. Even with the gray sky she still wore her sunglasses. The deep black lenses were a protective cover for her innermost thoughts. The colored plastic allowed her an apparent nonchalance. Bradford watched her. His look was not unkind but studied, still serious with that undercurrent of agitation that permeated the air surrounding him on this day. He slipped another cigarette between those angelic lips. The lips that had kissed hers, that had dragged long hot trails of furious heat down her body, that had enveloped the tight bud of her nipple, that had spread her thighs and consumed her and pushed her toward the rough edges of pleasure. Those lips jerked upward into a smile. The flame of his Zippo flickered.
“She asked me when was the last time I was happy.” The fire was cast out with an iron clang.
Christina closed her eyes behind her sunglasses. She relaxed her lips. This was a compliment, not a heartbreak. Years ago she’d suffered through the tears of losing Bradford, and now she was being a steadfast and reliable friend. He flicked his ashes and they drifted on the wind.
“I’m supposed to get out of here in three days.” He said. The tension that crackled about him released with his words. “I can sign up for another twenty-eight days if I want.” His left shoulder jerked upward as if he were undecided on his fate.
Bradford's indecision at having to face the world evidenced to Christina that Bradford should stay longer at Clarity. He should be under supervision and his therapist’s care for as long as possible. He should stay away from the countless distractions and temptations that abounded in Los Angeles. If he asked her, if he reached for her opinion, she’d gladly give it. But he didn’t.
Bradford grabbed for his coffee once more and again nodded toward Christina. “Thanks for the coffee.” He flicked his cigarette toward the lawn and without another word to her, walked toward the door.
Chapter 23
Plotting on the Links
“Here’s my concern,” Ted said and faced the ball on the fourth tee at the Riviera golf course.
Rush stood behind Ted and waited. Ted was one of the most powerful men in the world and yet, as he stood behind his ball, club in hand, golf, the great equalizer, could lay the man low. His stance was good but a nasty shank often grabbed hold of Ted’s swing. On this golf course, Rush and Ted often discussed the security of Ted, his assets, his business holdings, and his family. Ted liked to work the expensive cover he’d created for Rush—up-and-coming young film producer. On the greens, at the tee, as they drove around the course, they had complete privacy. No ears listened and few eyes watched. During today’s game they would dissect the protection of Ted’s niece, Nikki Solange.
Whoosh! Ted’s swing cut through the air and the ball hopped upward. The perfect white sphere soared high into the blue. Rush’s sniper eyes lost sight of the round orb for a millisecond before it dropped to the green grass, yards down the fairway. Ted turned to Rush.
“I’ve spoken with the chief of police and the detectives on the case; they’ve scoured Jeb’s background. Known enemies, fan mail, anyone he owed money to and so far”—Ted tilted his chin toward the ground—“nothing.”
Rush settled his golf ball onto the tee. Ted stopped speaking and Rush pulled back his arms. His abdominal muscles and triceps tightened as he pulled downward into his swing. The jolt of the ball connecting with the head of his driver tingled through his fingers and forearms. Rush knew before he caught sight of the ball in the air that this was a good swing. The ball dropped five feet closer to the green than Ted’s had.
“Nice shot,” Ted said.
Rush stuffed his club into his bag and settled behind the wheel of the cart.
"That leaves one very free felon on the list," Rush said.
Ted sat in the passenger seat. “My primary concern is that Calvin Geckler may be involved in Jeb’s death.”
Ted was a man who tunneled toward a goal like a terrier after a rat. A calm knowing surrounded him, but an itchy persistence scratched beneath the surface. Even now, in the middle of this storm with a dead D-lister and a pedophiliac felon who had jumped parole, Ted clasped his hands loosely and stared down the fairway toward his ball.
“They’re looking. We’re looking,” Rush said.
“I want you to concentrate your efforts on Nikki's protection.” Ted locked the reflective lenses of his sunglasses on Rush. “I have someone searching for Geckler.” Ted unfolded his body from the cart. “I need you to remain as close to Nikki as possible. Be with her all the time. I’ve guaranteed her safety with Cici without telling her how I’m doing it. The only person who knows about you is me.” Ted stared forward, down the fairway. “I’d like to keep it that way.”
An unfamiliar hardness lodged in Rush’s chest. He refused to name the feeling. He had no time for guilt. Guilt was a luxury he couldn’t afford. He was being paid to do a job and as long as he remained emotionally distant, he would cover Nikki.
“She’s young and she’s vulnerable. I
think the rock star was her primary interest since she’s been in Los Angeles. We’re digging further back to when she was in high school, before her mother died. She seems to have been surprisingly tame—at least less wild than someone related to my wife might be.”
Celeste’s antics were Hollywood legend. Ted must be incredibly secure in his relationship with Celeste to poke fun at all the known and unknown lovers Celeste had maintained.
“So whatever is needed to keep Nikki safe.” Ted approached his ball. “Anything.” Ted glanced up. “Do I make myself clear?”
Rush nodded. The muscle in his jaw tightened. Ted was clear on what he required Rush to do, and in the beginning Rush had been clear on how he would do it. Lately as Rush spent more time with Nikki, got to know Nikki, his thoughts, his feelings, his emotions were growing muddled. Muddled got you killed.
He’d trudged long slogs to get to this pinnacle in his career. Desire and attraction were merely pheromonal responses that he could quash with rationale and discipline. Rush need not worry. He need only discipline his body and his mind.
Ted thwacked the ball.
“Yes, sir,” Rush said. “I’ll do whatever I need to do to keep your niece safe.”
Chapter 24
Hollywood High Life
The town car pulled to a stop in front of Jackson Nichols’s home.
“And I thought your aunt’s house was huge,” Christina said as their driver opened the door.
In the liquid black of the night with LA sparkling in the distance Jackson’s home looked as if it floated on a cloud in the sky.
“Amazing, right?”
“I guess when you’re a legend in your own time,” Christina said. They both climbed the front steps and entered the house. Sharp-edged nerves jangled through Nikki. Her fingertips tingled and her skin prickled along her arms. She’d not lived in LA so long as to fail to grow excited when walking into a screen legend’s party. She forced herself to fake a nonchalance that, before her arrival to LA, had been outside her repertoire. Nikki and Christina walked through the atrium filled with hundreds of pillar candles. They walked through the formal living room and toward the back sliders. Outside on the lanai and beside the infinity pool party guests mingled and scoped out the A-list scene.
“My darling Nikki.” Jackson’s voice boomed from across the patio. The screen legend ambled toward them. He wore a linen suit and blue silk shirt. On his arm was a bombshell of a blonde, all legs and sultry looks. She wore a white, barely there halter dress with lines of bright blue and gold threaded through the skirt. Her skin was dark and her eyes a deep chocolate brown.
Christina leaned toward Nikki. “Wasn’t she on the cover of Vogue last month?”
The woman had to be a model with those forever legs, sculpted cheekbones, and sultry pout of a mouth.
“So happy you came!” Jackson grasped Nikki’s bare shoulders into the palms of his hands, pulled her forward, and kissed each of her cheeks. He released her and turned his charisma toward Christina. “Who is this ravishing creature?”
“Christina Darmides.” She extended her hand, but instead, Jackson grasped Christina and pulled her forward to kiss each cheek.
“You’re Zymar’s little girl!”
Christina nodded.
“You won’t remember this," Jackson said and grinned, "but I spent an entire summer on your mother’s beach with her and your father. We were all three high and very naked or perhaps we were naked and very high. You were naked too.” His eyes raked down the front of Christina. “But you were only two.”
Christina’s fingertips covered her mouth and tiny smile curled about her lips. When Nikki was two, she’d been shipped to a foster family because her mother had disappeared for three days and left her with the neighbors at the trailer next door.
“And this…” Jackson half-turned his body toward the woman by his side. He ran his hands up and down her front as if showing off a new piece of exceedingly expensive art. “This is Wilhomena.”
The woman's gaze slid toward them. Her eyelids were lazy and her face made no hint of movement aside from the twitch of one perfectly plucked brow. She neither smiled nor spoke. Nikki guessed when you were that beautiful, your looks communicated for you.
“So, ladies,” Jackson said, “grab a drink and whatever else you want.” He placed the backside of his hand to his mouth. “Wilhomena and I have some business to take care of upstairs.” Jackson wiggled his eyebrows. He was all but advertising that they were scurrying away to fuck. “I shall return. With me as the jockey this little ride shouldn’t take more than ten or fifteen minutes—tops.”
Nikki watched Jackson steer Wilhomena through the crowd toward the staircase. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Christina said. “He is such a letch and yet”—her eyes watched Jackson and Wilohmena wander up the staircase—“and yet I’d change places with her in a minute.” Christina sighed.
“He’s already seen you naked,” Nikki said.
They walked toward the bar and Nikki ordered her usual V & T. Various faces she knew and executives she’d met through her aunt mingled around the pool. She sipped her drink. She couldn’t shake the feeling that eyes watched her. Nikki followed Christina toward the far side of the infinity pool where the DP who worked on Zymar and Lydia’s last films lounged beside an in-the-now hot actress.
Nikki was about to settle onto the chaise lounge beside Christina when she felt eyes upon her bare shoulders. They whispered across her back. Eyes like fingers traced along the curve of her neck. Nikki turned toward the blackness on the far side of the yard. There he stood, his hands clasped in front of him and his elbow on the bar. A drink in one hand. His eyes sultry and stuck on her.
Rush.
Breath blasted from her lungs and a heat simmered low in Nikki’s belly. She hadn’t seen him since the day they’d lunched at the studio. He hadn’t called, but neither had she. She couldn’t rip her eyes from him. Delicious liquid heat seared through her.
Christina turned her head up from her seated position toward Nikki. “What is it?” She followed Nikki’s gaze through the dark. A little hiss escaped over Christina’s lips as her gaze landed upon the man at whom Nikki stared. “Oh, I see.”
Nikki took a breath and willed her eyes to look away from Rush. She commanded her body to sit beside Christina, but Nikki could make herself do none of those things. She could merely stand glued to this spot as Rush walked toward her.
“He’s coming over,” Christina said and upended her drink.
Nikki’s pulse increased with each step he made. His presence captured her, made her stand and stare at his graceful stride as he moved toward her.
“You’re here,” Rush said, his voice sultry and low, his breath hot against her ear as his words glided over her skin and caused a tremor to cascade down Nikki’s spine. His was a statement, not of surprise, but knowledge that her presence at this party tonight had been inevitable. He placed his palm on the small of her bare back.
“I’m Christina.” Nikki’s roommate held out her hand as her eyes ate up Rush. Nikki glanced at Christina and got a look of approval.
“Do you know Jackson well?” Rush asked. He tipped his drink to his lips and let the amber liquid glide from the glass. Nikki was mesmerized by his throat as he swallowed. The tilt of his head. The way his dark eyes caught hers over the rim.
“He’s a friend of my aunt’s,” Nikki said and then squared her shoulders a bit. She wasn’t falling so easily for this man simply because of his magnetism, simply because of his charm and good looks. Hadn’t she done that with every man with which she'd been involved? She found them irresistible and then they harmed her or hurt her or used her. She tossed her mane of curls over her shoulder in a futile attempt to seem immune to Rush’s charms. “Jackson is doing my movie.” Nikki let her lips curl up at the corners. She was finally taking ownership, stepping into her role as the producer.
“Ah,” Rush said and nodded. He quirked an eyebrow. “Boundless
Bound.”
Nikki did not let surprise crease her face. Of course the title to the script would be tripping off the tongue of every producer and studio executive in town as they salivated over her luck. She’d scored a coup. She had the hottest director, the biggest box-office bombshell and—she glanced across the patio to where Jackson walked through the sliders, now wearing a red silk smoking jacket with Wilhomena still on his arm—she’d scored a screen legend… an icon to star opposite her aunt.
“The script is very good,” Rush said.
“You’ve read it?”
“I read everything,” Rush said. His eyes remained locked to hers.
“Rush!” Jackson called from the other side of the pool.
Rush dipped his head and nodded to their host. “Excuse me,” Rush said and quirked his mouth. “It seems I’m wanted.”
Nikki followed him with her eyes. She watched him in his black pants and cashmere sweater. The expensive cloth hinted at the well-kept, well-muscled, exquisitely male body beneath the expensive fabric.
“He is something,” Christina said. She, too, watched Rush walk toward Jackson.
Attraction palpitated through Nikki. Her heart raced and heat pulsed over her skin. Yet something else did too… something deeper, something darker, trailed through Nikki. Perhaps a hint of fear.
*
Rush watched Nikki. Watching her was his job, but it was also a pleasure. She had little knowledge of her power, but she’d begun to step into it tonight when she’d called herself the producer for Boundless Bound. He liked it. He liked chutzpah—respected it.
