It didn’t sit well.
As the driver took the exit into Summerlin, a residential area with another big bookstore waiting for Rochelle, Suzanne added, “She can relax a bit tomorrow morning, before we go to the university, but she’ll be having dinner with the dean and other bigwigs afterward.”
“And after that?” Shut up, Gideon.
Suzanne made a careless gesture. “She’ll have the weekend to decompress, but then she’ll be starting on her new book in earnest, along with a few more stops on a Cherry book-signing tour across the country in another week that coordinates with a few reader conventions.”
Rochelle stirred, taking in a deep breath and then sitting up, stretching. “We there yet?”
“Almost, hon,” Suzanne said, smiling at her pet and patting her arm. “We’re just about there.”
Gideon looked away, suddenly seeing Rochelle in another light—as a meal ticket. And one who was plumb tuckered out at that.
It didn’t sit well with Gideon at all.
10
Rochelle woke up late the next morning feeling as if someone had just popped the trunk of a car and let in a flood of light.
And she’d been passed out in that trunk.
She sighed and hugged her airy mattress, wanting to lollygag and daydream for a few moments while listening to the air conditioning kick on and cool the house from the ever-warming weather. But then she remembered that she’d be speaking to a few hundred students today about all the actresses she’d written about, including Cherry. Her part in Viva Las Vegas tied in with the university’s history because a big song-and-dance scene with Ann-Margret, Elvis, and a gaggle of supporting players had been filmed in the gym, so Rochelle would be chatting about that, as well as Cherry’s cautionary tale about seeking fame in all the wrong places.
Then there’d be the dean’s dinner and finally a few days of relaxation before diving into the new novel about Howard Hughes’ little mistress and continuing Cherry’s book tour out of state late next week.
Just thinking about all of it made Rochelle close her eyes again so she could hang on to these last minutes of sleep. But this was how life always got during a promo push—this was her job, and she wouldn’t trade it for any other. Plus, how could she be such a bummer when there’d been no creepers around lately? Sure, Boomer had reported yesterday that he’d come up empty with investigating any connection between Creeper One and Creeper Two, but the possibility of threats seemed to be dying down.
Things were going to be great from here on out. She just knew it.
She slowly sat up in bed, raising her arms over her head to work out the kinks, then hopped to the ground, going to the floor-to-ceiling paned window to peer out at the beautiful desert view: the Strip, the glimmering pool just waiting for her to splash into it for a midmorning swim, the cabana with its bright covers flapping in a slight breeze, and . . .
When she saw Gideon walking toward the cabana, it felt as if something was nuzzling her chest.
He was dressed in his black body-guarding ensemble, carrying what looked to be a pitcher of orange juice. Curious about what was going on since she knew that she and Gideon were the only people here right now, she rushed to the bathroom, brushed her teeth, washed up, combed out her hair and left it long. Then she grabbed a light robe to cover her white silk camisole and tap shorts and went downstairs.
Her mind ran through different scenarios about why Gideon was towing around an entire pitcher of orange juice by the pool, finally settling on the notion that he might be enjoying some morning time out there. And why not, since her cousins and Suzanne were absent? The boys would already be at work, and Suzanne had taken a group of bookseller friends to brunch to personally thank them for their support.
Definitely morning time for Gideon.
Maybe, since the creeper stuff had wound down, they were all due a little relaxation. The prospect lightened her steps as she approached the kitchen. She didn’t even mind that she’d be footing the bill for Suzanne’s big meal today—Rochelle Burton was a brand, a business, and she had everything Cherry Chastain had been striving for: a certain amount of fame, a comfortable fortune, and . . .
She skipped over the love part, something Cherry had never had in her life, either—at least as far as Rochelle’s research had told her.
But who needed love when Rochelle had so much else?
In the kitchen, the aroma of something delicious hung in the air, probably from her cousins or Gideon cooking breakfast. Then she went to the sliding glass door and peeked through it. Gideon stood at the entrance to the cabana as he shaded the sun from his eyes, and he was gazing up at her window, as if trying to determine if she was awake yet.
Absently, she laid a hand over her chest, her pulse jiggering just like it used to when she was a teenager and she would see Gideon pulling up to the ranch house in his pickup. But when she realized what she was doing, she lowered her hand and opened the door. She rushed out, leaving all her silly little-girl emotions behind.
“Morning,” she said, closing the door behind her, feeling the sun warm her skin. The weather was beginning to turn summery, gearing up to bake the desert soon.
He rested his hands on his hips, and if he was bothered that he’d been caught looking up at her window like a Romeo, he didn’t acknowledge it. He was wearing his holstered gun, and it caused her to remember why he was here.
“Mornin’,” he said. “I thought you said you’d be up around this time.”
“It was nice to have the luxury of sleeping in.” She gestured toward the cabana. “What’re you doing out here?”
A wry grin tipped his mouth, and he stepped back from the structure’s entrance. She could see inside the cabana, where among the spacious daybeds a linen-draped table had been set with juice and covered plates.
Surely Gideon hadn’t cooked her breakfast. Nah—not her uptight bodyguard.
Gideon laughed. “You’ve been running yourself ragged, so I figured you could slow down, even just for a morning, before you go to UNLV.”
“Did you . . .?” She pantomimed whipping up some eggs.
“I woke up early, had some time on my hands, so why not?”
It’d been years since she’d seen him in this kind of aw-shucks mode—not since her uncle Dennis used to kid around with Gideon, teasing him about all his girlfriends.
He ambled into the cabana, his back to her so she couldn’t see his face. “I might not be Chef Gordon Ramsay, but I know my way around a frying pan.”
“You know who Ramsay is?”
“He’s got restaurants all over Vegas, so I’ve been to them a time or two, guarding clients.” He jerked a thumb at the table. “Anyway, I remembered from way back that you like your eggs over easy, your toast lightly browned, your potato hash crispy.”
She didn’t know what to say. All this? Just for her? What had she done to deserve breakfast à la poolside?
Somewhere nearby, a bird chirped, reminding her that she had the capability of speech. “Well, cowboy, I knew that someday all those breakfasts you had at Uncle Dennis’s table would pay off. Looks like you were paying attention.”
“Yup. And the boys all liked their eggs scrambled. How’s that for memory?”
Okay, so he was trying to downplay this. It didn’t make his offering any less adorable, though.
But could she call a guy with a gunpowder burn on his face “adorable”?
He tamed his grin, as if thinking he was getting a little bit too familiar with her, but her heartbeat still curled into itself, like a sighing creature closing its eyes in happiness. When was the last time someone had done something like this for her when they didn’t have to? Of course, Gideon was on the clock as her employee, but he wasn’t here to please her or cook for her.
As she sat down, he uncovered her plates with the bowls he’d put over them.
�
�Thank you,” she said, so hungry that she dove right for the toast, slathering it with butter.
“You’re welcome.” He didn’t look it, but he sounded pleased at her enthusiasm.
She glanced at the empty space across from her as he went to stand by the cabana entrance.
“You’re not hungry?” she asked.
He seemed to roll the words over in his head. Was he sensing a double entendre about being hungry for her? Because sex-steeped implications were mainly how she’d been communicating with him when they weren’t talking about the creeper.
She hadn’t meant anything cheeky this time, but her body didn’t care, and a grumble of a different appetite enveloped her. She’d gone from appreciation to lust in record time.
Then, again, whiplash emotions weren’t exactly new when it came to her and Gideon.
She pulled her robe tighter so he wouldn’t see how her nipples had pebbled, affected just by the very idea of how famished she really was for him.
Finally, he answered. “I took care of breakfast for myself already.”
She poured herself some juice, still holding her robe tight. “What would Harry say if he knew you were serving me up a meal?”
“He’d get after my ass. But I won’t tell if you won’t.”
She saluted him with her juice, drank up, and sighed at the luxury of being in a cabana. It felt so good to slow down, and she smiled at him.
She hungered.
He looked away, scanning the area, back on the job. Now that they were alone, though, there were so many things for them to talk about, and Rochelle couldn’t let this opportunity go to waste. Sure she was pushing her luck, yet when wasn’t she pushing it with Gideon?
“I think,” she said, putting down her glass, “we might want to ask ourselves what my cousins would say if they knew you’d done this.”
He did that tensing-up thing again.
She busted in. “I’m not being disingenuous here. I’m pretty sure Tucker already caught on to . . . whatever it is between us. And he probably mentioned it to Buzz and Jonsey, although they didn’t say a word to me about it last night. But what if they ask me or you about it?”
“Then we tell them it’s all in their imaginations.”
She cut into her egg and speared it with her fork. “The thing is, Gideon, that’s not the truth. You know it, I know it.”
When he went utterly silent, she motioned at the chair opposite her with the fork. “Would you just take a seat? You’re jangling my nerves by standing around.”
“No can do.”
“I’m telling you to, Gideon. It’s an order.”
Ugh, she hadn’t meant to get high and mighty like that, but it wasn’t as if the creeper would jump off the roof and into the cabana. But if it did happen, Gideon would be ready. She had every confidence in him.
He paused, then reluctantly made his way over and pulled out the chair. He reached into his pocket to grab something and sat down. She wasn’t sure what he’d taken out, but it didn’t matter, not when she was free to run her gaze over his face, over that gunpowder mark just below his cheekbone.
That dangerous, sexier-than-hell burn that always had her wondering . . .
He started to fiddle with whatever was in his hand, as if he were already bored with the cousin topic. But what else could they say about it when he obviously thought they shouldn’t tell the boys anything?
Maybe he was even right.
“I finished your book last night,” he said.
So he had been reading it. Also, they were seemingly moving on. “Are you going to throw juice at me because you hated it?” she asked, then casually ate her egg. It was good, with the right amount of butter and seasoning.
“I spent too much time making that juice from concentrate to waste it,” he said, and even if he was joking, she still couldn’t read him. “In any case, I liked the story. A lot. It’s interesting to think about how much of what you wrote is true history and how much of it is made up.” He was still messing around with whatever was in his hand, as if a distraction was comforting to him. “What’s even more interesting is trying to figure out how much of Cherry is in you or vice versa.”
Rochelle drew back from the buttered toast she was about to eat. “What do you mean?”
“I suspect you put a lot of yourself into Cherry. You two seem to have some stuff in common.”
He flicked at the item in his hand, and Rochelle realized it was a lighter. He’d probably taken it out of his pocket because it was uncomfortable for him to sit with it. Or maybe he just didn’t want to focus on her.
At any rate, upon a closer look, she saw that the notorious Bettie Page was on the casing.
He concentrated on flicking the lighter, creating a flame. But then he seemed to get tired of that and tossed it onto the table.
Idly, Rochelle thought how Cherry and Bettie—and maybe even she herself—might’ve gotten along back in the day. Because Gideon was right—there had been a kinship with Cherry, from the day Rochelle had seen that painting in the Rough & Tumble to the day she’d gone online and found herself fascinated by the tidbits she unearthed about the failed entertainer.
But that didn’t mean she wanted to hear Gideon’s thoughts about what she had in common with Cherry beside the obvious.
As if that would stop him. “At some points,” he said, “it was like I was reading your story, especially when it came to the mother stuff.”
Ooof. “My mom ran off before I was old enough to walk. Cherry’s mom never left their household.”
“You know that’s superficial, Shel. Cherry’s mom was pretty much emotionally absent, just like yours was physically. And I’d venture to guess that both of you spent a lot of time trying to figure out what it meant to be a woman without a role model around.”
Whoa. He’d mentioned that he’d taken psychology courses for his bodyguard education, but this was extra spot-on. Rochelle had felt just like Cherry in the face of having no guiding female around. Rochelle had only her father, a distant man just like Cherry’s who loved her but didn’t know quite how to relate to her. Her dad was well off, as was Cherry’s, and they’d both been sugar daddies of a sort.
Here’s your money, honey. Now go off and play.
And Rochelle had played, just slightly less hard than Cherry.
“Wow,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “You sure profiled me, didn’t you?”
“Truth to tell, I was hoping the book would also give me some insight into what your creepers might be thinking. But I was far more successful with getting into your head, I believe.”
She shrugged, sat up straight again, then ate another bite of egg. After swallowing it, she chased it with juice, buying time. She wouldn’t sit here and be researched as thoroughly as she’d researched Cherry, so she turned the tables.
“I’ll make you a deal,” she said, knowing this would quiet him. “I’ll tell you about all my deepest, darkest secrets, and you tell me yours. I know you love talking about your parents, too. Not that you ever did that very much.”
She’d only heard from her uncle and cousins that his mom and dad were wildcats, bound to destroy themselves and probably Gideon one day.
As if not realizing what he was doing, he used his thumb to itch the gunpowder mark on his cheek. A muscle twitched at his jaw before he chopped out a laugh.
“Point taken, Boss, point taken.”
Silence fell as he touched the lighter on the table, clasping his fingers around it. Those fingers—long and sensual, beautifully experienced. Rochelle felt a lonely tremble inside of her, like there was a single flame in the wind keeping her own fire burning for Gideon.
A fire that had nothing to do with emotion and everything to do with righting the wrongs of their past—a sexual fire.
She kept eating, watching him as he watched the landscape out
side. As her gaze caressed him, the burning inside of her flared.
The craving for that closure they’d never gotten.
Soon, she’d be gone, on another book tour, then back in California. Who knew when she’d see him again?
She slowed down her eating, because hadn’t he told her to take it slow? So with languorous care she tore a piece from her toast and played with it before sliding it into her mouth. Gideon was clearly trying not to look at her—she could tell because his search of the area was too intense, his gaze narrowed.
Delicately, she picked up a slice of potato and in an equally provocative manner slipped it into her mouth. Umm, good. She sucked on her fingers on their way out.
His jaw tightened even more.
She loved getting to him, loved knowing that they wouldn’t ever have a future and that their present was right here in front of them for the taking.
They were alone. Why not now?
Why not get that do-over done?
She stood and sauntered to the front of the cabana. The liquid chatter of the water pouring off the edge of the infinity pool gave the atmosphere a lush cadence. She combed her fingers through the hair on both sides of her face and shook the rest of it out, knowing he would be watching whether or not he wanted to.
Man, she was a merciless, teasing bitch, and she owned that about herself, wallowing in every throbbing beat of her that liked being watched.
***
Gideon clutched the lighter in his hand as the slight wind played with Rochelle’s long, wavy, dark hair and blew her thin robe against her curves. He was clutching so hard that the casing bit into his skin.
An old flame, he thought. Or was she more of a new one that he just couldn’t extinguish?
The lighter wasn’t all that was biting him, though. Greed for her had its teeth out, and it was eating through him, making its way down the lining of his belly and straight to his cock.
She reached up, undoing her robe and letting it drop to the tile, and all he could do was suppress a sharp groan.
She was perfect, from the ripe breasts that were covered by the silk of her barely-there camisole to her ass, whose roundness wasn’t exactly hidden by those flirty short shorts. He could almost feel his fingers tracing her cheeks, her thighs, memorializing them.
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