by Pam Godwin
“Yes.”
I stiffen as my old insecurities flood in.
“Laynee.” He pulls me closer against his body. “If I meet someone who’s interested in me, it could be the break I’m looking for.”
Blake said those exact words, and I was too stupid in lust to understand he was using me. Hell, I pulled every string I had to launch his career in Hollywood.
“But that’s not why I’m going.” He lifts on an elbow and stares down at me, his face cast in shadows. “I’m your partner, your companion, your lover. Your security team is qualified, but they’re not me. I can’t sit here with my thumb up my ass while you’re on the other side of the country, being stalked by creepers, hounded by paparazzi, and sleeping in a hotel room alone. You’re not going without me.”
For all my cynical distrust, his response makes my chest swell with happiness. Makes me wonder if he’s capable of loving someone as messed up as me. Makes me hope for a life that’s safely and forever entwined with his.
I pull in a breath and shake those thoughts away. “Violet called earlier.”
“I know. I was there when you walked out on our conversation to take the call.”
“I’m sorry. That was rude. But you’ll like what she had to say.”
“She said you’re not to leave my side? Ever?”
My cheeks fill with a grin. “Close. Evidently, I’m doing a terrible job at proving I’ve moved on from Blake.”
“You haven’t left the house in a month.”
“Yeah, she expresses her frustration about that on a daily basis. She can’t keep me at the top of the news stories if I refuse interviews and public appearances and blah, blah, blah.”
“I’ve enjoyed having you all to myself.”
I’ve enjoyed that, too. Too much. “She wants you to go to L.A.”
“Good thing, since I’m going anyway.”
“She wants you to go as my boyfriend.”
CHAPTER 16
LAYNEE
The roar of the jet engines tapers to a dull hum as we reach coasting altitude. I stare out the small window, absorbing the majestic beauty of the sunrise over Savannah. At my request, Reese sat in the rear of my sixteen-passenger Gulfstream with the bodyguards, leaving me alone with the man who hasn’t taken his eyes off me since we boarded.
“Why are you staring?” I turn to face Decker’s smoldering gaze.
Sitting in the aisle seat beside me, he places a hand on my knee. “Can’t stop thinking about last night.” His thumb lightly strokes the skin beneath my skirt. “And this morning.”
My body’s still wired and vibrating after he followed me into the shower this morning, knelt at my feet, and buried his face between my legs. I came with my hands tangled in his hair and his name on my lips. Then he washed us both and rushed us out the door without finding his own release.
I rest my hand over his and weave our fingers together. “I owe you an orgasm.”
“I’ll collect before the end of the day.”
“I don’t see how. Today is going to be a whirlwind.”
The five-hour flight puts us in L.A. by eleven in the morning. The photo shoot will last a few hours, and because I refuse to stay overnight in L.A., we’re flying back home when the shoot is finished.
“Let me worry about that.” He slides a thumb over his sexy bottom lip, his eyes dancing with promises. “Why are you doing this photo shoot?”
He already knows it’s for a magazine spread, a promo opportunity that highlights the top hottest Hollywood bachelorettes. I’m the oldest of the four selected women by fifteen years. I fought doing this for months, but my agent and publicist won the argument. They’re right. It’s perfect timing on the heels of my divorce announcement.
“When the glossy goes to print,” I say, “it’ll shine a favorable light on my single status and in turn redirect focus on the mysterious man I’m dating. It’s all part of the sweep-my-divorce-under-the-rug strategy.”
“I like being your mysterious man.” He leans over, brushes my long hair behind me, and touches his nose to my neck, inhaling. “Goddamn, I love the way you smell.”
My breath catches. “What do I smell like?”
“Sweet, bite-sized temptation.” He pushes the collar of my blouse aside and nibbles on my throat. “Why don’t we stay the night in L.A.?”
The desire he’s igniting with his lips quickly dissolves with his question.
I sent Reese to the rear of the plane so I could use this time to give Decker some answers. He just gave me an opening, and my voice decides to abandon me.
“Laynee.” He lifts his head, and the concern in his huge brown eyes latches on to my heart. “You’re squeezing the circulation out of my fingers.”
Oh. I release his hand and turn my head toward the clouds outside the plane. “We need to talk.”
“Are you addressing me or the window?”
I drop my head back and close my eyes, unable to meet the gaze caressing the side of my face. “This…us…I’m going to mess it up.”
“Tell me why you think that.”
Where to start? “I try too hard. Or maybe I don’t try hard enough. Men like the idea of me. The stardom and the money. But when I let someone in and he gets to know me, something happens. He becomes cruel. Hateful.” Abusive. “But by then, I’m already attached.”
He grips my knee, his hand a warm heavy support. “That’s on them, Laynee.”
I shake my head and twist my fingers together on my lap. I have no right to take advantage of his patience, but the sharp pang in my chest is crippling. It takes several minutes to gather my thoughts and turn to face him.
“I have a void in my life. It’s always been there. The thing about being the only child of famous parents is that this void went unnoticed in my otherwise envious upbringing and lifestyle. I’ve always had money and stability and opportunities. My parents loved me, provided for me, and I lacked for nothing. Except their time.”
He squeezes my knee, urging me to continue.
I pull in a deep breath. “I didn’t have their attention. I was never as important as their public image and career aspirations. In fact, I wasn’t really on their radar. They spent my entire childhood on movie sets in different parts of the world while I grew up in Savannah with the hired help. My closest relationships consisted of a few dozen nannies and some superficial friendships at school. My peers weren’t from Hollywood, so they were much more interested in my celebrity connections than getting to know me.” I laugh hollowly. “It took years of therapy for me to come to terms with all this.”
He removes his seatbelt, unfastens mine, and drags me onto his lap. The gesture startles me, but I welcome it, settling against his chest with my head on his shoulder.
“I swear I’m not whining about my privileged life.” Kicking off my heels, I rest my bare feet on the seat I vacated. “I feel extremely fortunate for everything I have. But that void in my childhood, my lack of close relationships… It created a deep hole inside me.”
“Loneliness.” He cups my face, tucking my head beneath his chin. “That’s what you feel?”
“Yeah. I tend to force connections with men, connections that don’t exist. I deepen relationships that aren’t meant to be. I find love in little crumbs of affection, and I make excuses when those men hurt me.” I shift to look into his eyes. “When someone wonderful comes along and shows me a glimpse of kindness, I get attached. But at the same time, I don’t trust him, because I know his interest in me isn’t genuine. I know it won’t last.”
“Not all men are useless pieces of shit.”
“That’s exactly what I tell myself every time I meet someone.” I give him a pointed look. It terrifies me, but I really do trust Decker. “Trey McCree wasn’t my first bad decision, but he was by far the worst.”
“How did you meet him?” Decker slides a hand over the scars on my back.
I tilt my head and listen for a moment. A low din of voices drifts from the back seats, too far aw
ay to make out words. That means my security team can’t hear our conversation.
“I met him in a L.A. bar, of all places. It was a night of terrible decisions. I just came out of a bad breakup. I had an obsessed stalker on the loose. I sneaked away from my bodyguard, went to a bar, alone, wearing a disguise. I just wanted to be a normal woman for one night and hookup with a normal man. I connected with Trey instantly and went home with him.”
Decker’s entire body stiffens beneath me. “Is that when he tried to kill you?”
“No.” I’d be able to forgive myself if that were the case. “We spent the next six months together, inseparable and happy. He was wholly invested in me. He didn’t give a shit about my name or my money. He was protective, possessive, and ferociously jealous. I have a weakness for dominant men, and I thought his overbearing need to control me meant he loved me.”
Decker remains completely still against me. I’m not even sure he’s breathing.
“He moved in with me.” My voice weakens with remembered pain. “His jealousy grew darker, uglier. I was filming Angel of Fear at the time, and there were numerous love scenes. I didn’t use a body double back then, and Trey… He did not approve. We argued about it endlessly, and the words that came out of his mouth…” My throat tightens. “His words were familiar.”
“What do you mean?” he asks in a low, deep tone.
“I started receiving more and more menacing letters from that stalker. The notes obsessed over my relationships with other men, threatening to kill me if I took my clothes off with my costar or if I spent time alone with Elijah, who was my only bodyguard at the time. Not once did the letters mention my boyfriend, and every word was horribly similar to things Trey said when we fought. I started piecing it together.”
“Trey was your stalker.” Decker’s fingers clench and release against my back.
My chin trembles. “I asked him about it. Of course, he denied it, but I knew. He approached me at that bar because he was already stalking me.” A surge of grief burns through my chest and pricks the backs of my eyes. “I knew he was the stalker and told no one. Not Reese or Elijah or the PI I hired.”
“Because you loved the son of a bitch,” Decker growls.
“I thought I did. I thought I could handle him. I thought he loved me too much to hurt me. I thought wrong.”
He grips the back of my blouse, pulls it from the skirt, and glides his palm across my scarred skin. “You don’t have to tell me any more.”
“I need to.” I relax against his warm touch and close my eyes. “It happened the night of the premier of Angel of Fear. Reese and Trey went to the viewing with me. After, Reese dropped us off at home. Trey was quiet but affectionate when he took me to bed. He…” I cover my mouth to stifle the sudden break in my voice. “He kissed me, fucked me. It was rougher than usual. I don’t know where the knife came from. I didn’t even know he was holding it while he was…f-fucking me.” A sob rises up, and my hands shake against the onslaught of memory.
Decker crushes me against his chest, shushing me, but the tension in his muscles suggests he’s struggling to rein in his anger.
“I fought him.” Tears leak from my eyes and wet my voice. “But it happened so fast, and he was bigger, stronger, and armed.” I suck in a breath. “I’m alive because Reese came back to the house to return my phone. I’d left it in his car. He heard my screams. Grabbed the gun I kept in my office. Trey fled before Reese fired off a shot.”
“You said Trey was dead?”
“He died two weeks later in a car crash in Texas.” I straighten on his lap and let him see the words I’m not saying.
He searches my face, and his brown eyes widen. “You hired—?”
I press a hand over his mouth and glance toward the rear of the plane. Only Reese and Elijah know the details.
Twining my arms around his neck, I touch my forehead to his temple. “We didn’t call the cops that night. Didn’t involve law enforcement at all. Reese took me to the one surgeon I trusted, an old friend of my father’s. As for Trey… I had him hunted down and removed from the face of the Earth, efficiently and quietly.”
“Thank fuck.” His hand curls around my waist. “I’d hate to miss out on this”—he squeezes my hip—“because I’m serving time for killing that motherfucker.” His tone softens. “Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me.”
My breaths catch in my chest. Did I do the right thing? Or have I fallen into another lovesick trap?
“Why didn’t you involve the cops?” he asks.
“Shame.” I touched the sudden hardness in his jaw. “I let my stalker move in with me and embed himself in my life. If that story is ever leaked, it’ll ruin me. I never even told Blake how I got the scars. Our marriage was doomed from the beginning, because I never trusted him with that secret. Never trusted him not to hurt me with it. As it turns out, my distrust was justified. He slept with every starlet he worked with, as well as my housekeeper and female bodyguards. Each time I confronted him about it, he beat the shit out of me.”
“He what?” Decker surges to the edge of the seat, his arms locking around me to keep me from falling.
“I’m messed up, Decker. I can’t even stay the night in L.A. because I’m haunted by memories of the relationships I had there.” Placing my hands on his chest, I nudge him back into the leather recliner. “I make awful choices when it comes to men. That’s why I let Reese choose my lovers, and why I turned to Infidelity. They selected you. That alone gives me hope. Though I specifically requested a submissive man, and you’re—”
“You don’t want a submissive.” He grips my jaw. “You want a man you can trust. The two are not related.” He releases my face, his expression contemplative. “Your cheating ex-husband needs a fucking beat down. One he won’t walk away from.”
“Decker—”
“He’s the reason you don’t have a housekeeper?”
I nod. “And why my bodyguards are all men. Except Rachel.”
“Your chauffeur…” He angles his head toward the back, spotting Rachel among the men. “She’s a bodyguard?”
“And a lesbian.” I give him a small smile. “If you make a pass at her, she’ll shoot you.”
His chest rises and falls, and he reclines deeper into the seat, taking me with him. His fingers find my hair, stroking from roots to tips over and over, spreading a comforting tingle across my scalp. I threw a lot of shit at him, and instead of pushing him for his thoughts on it all, I surrender to his touch, relax against chest, and close my eyes. Just as I begin to drift off, his hand stops its hypnotic caress.
“I’m going to fuck you,” he says quietly but firmly. “Before the day is over.”
My stomach hardens, and I lift my head. “Only if Reese—”
He grips my hair, holding my cheek against his shoulder and his mouth at my ear. “You think putting Reese in our bed will keep things casual and safe?” His fingers flex, pulling at the roots of my hair, his voice grinding with anger. “We missed our opportunity for casual sex the night we met. After the trust you’ve given me, the intensity burning through every touch we share, and all the emotions we haven’t even vocalized yet, nothing will ever be casual between us. So get that idea out of your stubborn head. Whether you like it or not, I’m one-hundred-percent invested in us.”
“Why?” I break his hold to meet his eyes. “You’ve never committed to a woman. Why is this any different?”
“I don’t know.” His eyebrows pull together, and his gaze traces my face. “Maybe because I went into this mentally prepared to commit to you for a year.”
My chest pinches. He’s invested in the Infidelity agreement. Of course, that’s all this is.
“I’ve never slept beside a woman,” he says. “I’ve never enjoyed spending time with a woman I’m not fucking. I’ve never had to chase a woman so hard and for so goddamn long.” He flashes a huge grin, as if chasing me excites him. “And I’ve never felt this…this…” He shoves a hand through his hair and
looks away. “I feel anxious and sick when I’m not near you.”
That’ll wear off. Probably as soon as he fucks me. Then he’ll hurt me. Not physically. Maybe not even with words. But my heart’s on the table, right there for the taking. The more time I spend with him, the less I’m able to protect it. Someday, he’ll break it, and this time, I’m not sure I’ll heal.
CHAPTER 17
LAYNEE
The photographers and production crew bustle around the massive room, adjusting lighting and furniture. I lean against the wall on the far side, wearing a relaxed smile. It’s the smile I use in public to make me appear demure and content, when all I really want to do is go home.
I used to love L.A., the diversity of ethnicity and wealth, the microclimate of urban heat, and the way the sun illuminates the motley of neighborhoods in a unified glow. It’s the city of dreamers. But when I left two years ago, I was no longer chasing the dream. I was running from a nightmare.
Shutting the door on those thoughts, I look around the room. Where the hell is Decker?
When we arrived at the studio, he stayed with my security detail while the stylists whisked me into the dressing room. That was two hours ago. I haven’t seen him since.
Shifting my weight from one leg to the other, I try to ease the cramps in my feet caused by the strappy five-inch stilettos. My face itches beneath the heavy makeup and frozen smile, and my scars tingle under the Victoria Beckham form-fitting dress.
It’s been months since I put myself in the spotlight. While I loathe the scrutiny, I know this is good for me. This is the life I chose.
The three celebrity bachelorettes I’m posing with today gather a few feet away, droning on about shopping, spa treatments, and the hottest nightclubs in L.A. They sample the fruit selections on the refreshments table, taking delicate bites and tossing uneaten portions in the trash.
