by Tarr, Hope
Holding on to the sheet, she sat up and looked over at him. With his hair mussed and the sheet riding his waist, he looked rumpled and sexy and yes, good enough to eat. The only thing spoiling the picture was the wounded look in his eyes.
Hating that she’d hurt his feelings, or at least his pride, she reached out and laid her hand on his bicep. “Just be my lover, Max, that’s all I ask. That way when the book’s finished we can go back to our lives without any hard feelings on either side. No strings, regrets and above all, no sappy goodbyes, okay?”
Glancing down at her hand banding his bicep, Max almost laughed aloud at the irony of his situation. It was shaping up to look as if Becky really wasn’t that different from her character after all. Had he really survived the past year of hell and come back to life only to fall for the female equivalent of a player?
Hiding his disappointment, he reached down and covered her hand with his. “If that’s the way you want it, Miss St. Claire, then once again we have a deal.”
Chapter 11
Angelina sat cross-legged before the campfire, naked beneath the heavy quilt. Staring into the purple and orange flames, she felt dreamy and sated and altogether unlike herself. After her near miss at the mine shaft, she and Drake had come back and made camp for the night—and love for hours. Her typical post-coital reaction after such a vigorous sexual session was to mount her motorcycle and ride off into the sunset. Instead she didn’t want to move so much as a muscle.
Drake came up beside her and handed her the bottle of whiskey. “Here, love, have a drink of this. It’ll warm you.”
She smiled up at him. “You’ve already done that but thanks.” Taking the bottle, she sensed something was amiss. “What is it?”
He ran a hand through his short blond hair. “Scotland Yard just rang on the mobile. The two weeks we had to track down Falco and the plans for building the next-generation missile system have been winnowed to one.”
* * *
Max and Becky sat side-by-side on the family-room floor, toes stuck out toward the dancing flames of the fire, the printout of the first ten chapters of their book stacked on the floor between them. Red pen in hand, Becky had decided to give her eyes a rest and make the markups on the hard copy. Max sat next to her, head bent over the portable computer resting on his lap, typing out the next chapter draft. They were both trying hard to be good and work—just not quite hard enough.
Max set the laptop aside on the floor and turned to her. “Hungry?”
She nodded. “Always.”
He’d left a pot of lamb stew simmering on the stove, the delicious aroma floating down to tickle Becky’s nostrils, a far cry from the frozen dinners she was used to eating back home. Since she’d shown up on Max’s doorstep, he’d spoiled her with his dinners and his back-rub breaks and yes, his lovemaking. She was going to miss all of it once she went back home but mostly she was going to miss him. Her boyfriends before Elliot had, for the most part, been nice enough guys but there’d either been a sexual spark with little in common, or a lot in common with next to no spark. With Max, there was an abundance of both. It was really too bad she’d met him sooner rather than later. Once she was ready for a real relationship, she couldn’t imagine finding a man to match him.
Reaching over, he took her chin between his thumb and finger and turned her face toward him. “Me, too, though not for stew.”
He traced the outline of her bottom lip with the pad of his thumb, making her shiver. Running it along the seam of her lips, he teased them apart.
Torn between needing to be good and wanting to be bad, she shook her head, feeling as if a tiny devil was perched on her one shoulder and an equally tiny angel on the other. “You’re determined to distract me, aren’t you?”
“Uh-huh.” He slid the edge of his thumb inside. “How am I doing, by the way?”
“Pretty good.” Better than good. The devil was definitely winning the upper hand.
“Just pretty good?”
“Okay, very good. But you should stop.”
Blue eyes brushed over her face. “It doesn’t feel good?”
She started to answer, and he seized the chance to slide the tip of his thumb inside her mouth and then out. “Because—because we’re supposed to be working.”
He smiled his warm smile, gaze riveted on her mouth. “In that case, think of it as research.”
“Research, huh?” Giving up, she set the papers aside and reached for him, her hands sliding atop his shoulders, loving the strong, solid feel of him beneath her fingertips. “I usually rely on Internet search engines and books for that.”
He grinned. “See, that’s another area where we differ. Me, I’m into experiential learning. You might even say I’m a hands-on kind of guy.”
He leaned in and kissed her. His warm tongue tasted spicy from the mulled cider they’d drunk earlier. He slid it between her lips as he had his thumb. “Sorry.” Pulling back, he looked anything but. “There I go kissing you again, but how can I help it? You’re very kissable.”
“I am, am I?” She met his teasing smile with one of her own.
“Uh-huh. And you taste amazing.” The wicked look in his eye hinted he wasn’t only talking about her mouth.
A moment later he confirmed that by sliding a hand between them and palming her through her jeans. Becky sucked in her breath. At this point, the angel was out of the picture—completely.
“Three guesses where I’m thinking of kissing you next.” His hand’s slow, kneading strokes seared through the denim, bringing moisture pooling into her panties.
“Is it lower than my mouth?”
“Uh-huh.”
“My breasts, then?” she asked, warming to the game.
He lifted his other hand and cupped her with a slight squeeze. “You do have beautiful breasts. I want to kiss them, too, but in this case I’m thinking even lower.”
“Lower?”
His fingers went to the zipper of her jeans. Holding her gaze, he tugged the zipper down. “I want to kiss you there, right there. In fact, I could lick and tongue you all night, starting right now.”
She leaned back against the side of the sofa, opening her legs. “We don’t have all night. We have a book to write, remember?”
“I remember. But you know what they say about all work and no play.” He slid two fingers inside her open jeans and slid them along her damp, lace-covered crotch.
Becky’s breath hitched. She tilted back her head, a hairbreadth from coming. “Let me guess. It makes Becky a dull girl?”
“Uh-huh. And it makes Max a very frustrated boy.”
The office phone rang like a siren. Looking at each other, they shared a collective groan. Max rolled to his knees, resting back on his heels. “I should pick up. Not too many people have that number. It must be important.” He glanced at the manuscript she’d set aside. “Keep working so we can play when I get back.”
“Sounds like a deal,” she said though she seriously doubted she could focus now.
Watching his sexy, jeans-clad butt walking away, she held in a sigh. Distractions aside, in another few weeks the book would be done and there would be no real reason for her to stay on. Having a built-in relationship expiration date rendered every second of every minute they spent together infinitely precious. Instead of wondering where their relationship was headed and fretting over the future as she always had before, she could let down her guard and live in the moment.
Sexually she’d never been able to let go like this before, not even with Elliot. Her ex had kept her on such an emotional roller coaster straight from the start that it hadn’t been easy to relax with him in or out of bed. Lately she’d caught herself thinking that what Max and she shared might be the real deal, not just a fling. But then, blurring the line between fantasy and reality was an occupational hazard of fiction writing that had cost her big-time. She’d spent months deluding herself into believing Elliot loved her back, not to mention dealing with the financial fallout of having quit
her job. Max seemed as different from her ex as day was from night, but having made such a huge mistake in judgment once—and not all that long ago—how could she trust herself to know for sure?
Max’s return brought her out of her musing. “That was Pat. She says they need the book a month earlier.”
Still struggling with her dilemma, Becky took a moment to absorb the news. Once she did, the jolt hit hard. “That’s crazy, maybe even impossible.”
Max heaved a sigh. “Not impossible, but I agree, crazy.”
“Why the rush?”
“She found out through the publishing grapevine that a project being touted as the next big action-adventure blockbuster book is coming out around the same time as ours. Even though the mystery and erotica components set our story somewhat apart, she doesn’t want us to have to face that kind of stiff competition for the lists. If we can get this in by the end of next week, we might have a decent shot at beating them to the shelves—and the top ten.”
“She really thinks our book has bestseller potential?”
“She knows it does, and so do I. Don’t you?”
Becky hesitated. Like any other writer, she’d had her share of bestseller fantasies but before now, she’d been content simply to be able to support herself with her writing. Since teaming with Max, she’d found herself reaching for the stars on a daily basis. It was scary to build up her hopes that high, but it was exciting, too—an adventure.
“What did you tell her?”
She was almost afraid to hear his answer. Of course they’d do their utmost to make the new deadline. With so much riding on this project, what choice did they have? Still, if he’d signed them up for what promised to be two weeks of hell, two weeks of too much coffee and too little sleep, without talking to her first, she was going to be really, really pissed.
“I told her I’d talk it over with you, and we’d get back to her in the morning.”
We. She liked the sound of that. “Thank you.”
He sent her a questioning look. “For what?”
Smiling, she held his gaze for a long moment. “For being my partner.”
* * *
Max sat at the computer, putting the final spit and polish on chapter fifteen of the novel’s twenty chapters. They were down to the wire, with just another few days to go, but fortunately the manuscript was close to complete. There was the one fight scene yet to rework with a secondary character added in, but overall the manuscript was in good shape. He calculated they were another day from finishing. If they kept the momentum up, they might even wrap things up later that night. If so, not only would they have met the Deadline from Hell but beaten it by a day.
Even in its current form, the book was the best thing he’d ever written. He knew the cause, of course. Becky. The chemistry between them was coming out in their two main characters in a major way. The sex scenes between Drake and Angelina sizzled, but so did the rest of the manuscript. Reading over the working draft, he found himself agreeing with Pat. The book had movie deal written all over it. The downside was that the sooner they finished, the sooner Becky would be leaving. It was crazy but these last few days he’d caught himself coming up with distractions to draw the writing out.
Max ran a hand through his hair. It felt slightly greasy but then he hadn’t showered since the morning of the day before. His legs were stiff and the small of his back pounded as if someone was hitting it with a hammer. He thought of the all-nighters he’d pulled back in college and grad school and then those a few years back when he’d sat up with Elaina and shook his head. If he’d gone looking for a custom-made reminder he wasn’t a kid anymore, this was it.
“Okay, let me try this out on you. What do you think about Angelina…”
He stopped when she didn’t immediately answer. By now he knew she wasn’t shy about jumping in. It wasn’t like her not to have an opinion, especially where her fictional creation was concerned.
“Becka?” He turned to look at her over his shoulder.
She was asleep. Curled up on her side on his leather office couch, her delicate hands tucked beneath her head, she looked serene and lovely and innocent, the throw blanket slipping off her shoulder. This was his golden opportunity to shape the book without consultation or compromise, and yet at some point over the past few weeks he’d gotten used to doing both. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his talent or his writer’s instincts—he did. The thing was, he’d grown comfortable working as part of a team. More than comfortable, he’d grown to like it—a lot.
He crossed the room and went down on one knee beside the couch. Laying a light hand on her shoulder, he said, “Hey, sleepyhead, rise-and-shine time. We have a book to get out.”
She cracked open an eye and looked up at him. “I guess I fell asleep, huh?”
“Yeah I guess so, and I need to pick that plotting brain of yours. Our characters are trapped in that collapsed mine shaft and time and air are running out. There’s a crawl space at the top. The air will last longer if there’s only one of them there.”
She pulled herself up on her forearms, caramel-colored curls streaming her face. “Okay, give me a sec to wake up, and then I’m on it.”
“You got it.” He kissed the tip of her nose.
Feeling as stiff-legged as Scout, he got up and crossed over to the computer. Once she got up from the couch, he might trade places with her. He could use a power nap himself. In the interim, he reached for the remote and switched on the TV. One of the drawbacks of a tight deadline was that complete immersion in the work meant cutting oneself off from the outside world. He hadn’t read a newspaper or watched television in days. For all he knew, North Korea could have conquered the world.
He found a cable news program in progress and stopped surfing. Hoping to gather the highlights, he settled back in his desk chair to watch. The anchor was asking his guest, a good-looking gray-haired man in a dark suit, to weigh in on the issue du jour, something to do with subway safety in the context of the latest terrorism threat. The camera panned over to the guest commentator for a close-up. The guy’s lean, youngish face, deep-set dark eyes and broad shoulders filled the TV’s flat screen. Max couldn’t think of his name, but he’d seen him from time to time on similar programs as a consultant or special guest. Whoever he was, he was an authority in his field—some kind of counterterrorism work. For whatever reason, he’d always struck Max as a little too sure of himself, a little too smooth.
Staring straight at the camera, he addressed the host. “As I was saying to Katie Couric over coffee just the other day, since 9/11 the Feds and law enforcement have made enormous strides in ensuring that transportation security is tighter, and the public is safer than ever before. That’s ever, Doug. But in a free society such as ours, there’s always going to be some level of threat…”
Jesus, what a name dropper. Max would bet anything that off camera he was a first-class prick. He picked up the remote to switch channels but before he could, Becky shoved the quilt aside and marched across the room.
She punched the off button on the set and swung around to face him, eyes glittering in her very flushed face. “Is it possible to have some peace and quiet to work in around here or is that asking too much?”
Max looked over at her, wondering what her problem was. Ordinarily she preferred writing with the television or music playing in the background. “You must have woken up on the wrong side of the couch. What was that about?”
She shook her head, gaze sliding away. “I’m just worried about finishing on time, that’s all. Sorry.”
He got up to stand beside her. Touching her arm, he realized she was shaking. “Why is it I don’t think that is all?”
She shrugged and fixed her gaze on the computer behind him. And suddenly it struck him. Gray hair. Lean face. Dark, deep-set eyes. All-black wardrobe. Explosives expert.
He shot his gaze to her face. “That guy on the TV is Falco, isn’t he?”
Her eyes flashed open. She bit her bottom lip. “Don’
t be ridiculous. Falco is a composite character. I’m a fiction writer. I make up stuff all the time. That’s what we do, remember?”
“Sorry, Becka, but I’m not buying.” He shook his head, wishing he could get himself to the studio in New York where the program was being broadcast from in time to plow his fist into the cocky bastard’s face. “Ever since I first met you, I’ve had a gut sense that some jerk must have burned you pretty badly and then reading your last book confirmed it. Angelina is obsessed with Falco.”
“She is not.” She shook her head, though she still couldn’t look at him. “You’re letting your imagination run away with you.”
Max hesitated. They should be having this conversation with both of them fully awake and fully functioning, not buzzing on caffeine and adrenaline and the effects of sleep deprivation. And yet, who knew when he’d get another shot? Right now she was still sticking to her plan to leave in another week. This might be his one chance—make that his dazzling opportunity—to break through to her. Once he did, maybe he could change her mind about leaving. It was worth a try. Whoever this former G-man jerk was, it was obvious he’d hurt her badly. To react so strongly, she must still have feelings for him.
Pushing jealousy to the back of his mind for now, he said, “Come on, Becka, let it out. You’ll feel a hell of a lot better afterward. Trust me, I know.”
She looked at him, the raw misery in her eyes tugging at his heart. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s nothing to let out.”
He blew out a breath. She was a tough nut to crack, that was for damned sure. “Lying to me is bad enough but lying to yourself is a whole lot worse.”
“I’m not lying to anybody.”
“In that case, look me in the eye.” When she still wouldn’t, he grabbed hold of her shoulders. He brought his face down and rested his forehead against hers, willing her to see how much she meant to him, how much he…loved her.
Christ, he loved her, he really did. When they’d first met, he’d lusted after her and in the course of the past weeks of writing he’d grown to like her a lot, so much so that he’d admitted he wanted her in his life and not just as a writing partner. But love, well, that was a hell of a big deal. After Elaina, he hadn’t been able to imagine himself ever loving another woman again. Loving somebody made you vulnerable, it made you raw. Practically speaking, loving a woman still so obviously hung up on her ex wasn’t the brightest of moves and yet here he stood with his heart on his sleeve, head-over-heels smitten. Over the past weeks, his sexy Cinderella had gotten under his skin—and penetrated straight to his heart.
