The Complete Tempest World Box Set

by Mankin, Michelle

  “So you admit it.” Her voice held a sharp edge to it and projected loud enough to be heard over the roar of the rain swollen river raging beneath our feet. “You were trying to save me. That’s something good. Something worth preserving,” she muttered the last couple of words. She was wrong, but I heard her.

  She rose, a lot more gracefully than I had, dusted off her (I didn’t fail to notice—I might be down but I wasn’t dead—not yet at least) nicely shaped fuchsia outlined ass. She tilted her head back, curiosity or something else brightening her gaze.

  I was six one. Most chicks had to crane their necks to look up at me. I had a good foot on her, yet she didn’t seem to be the least bit intimidated nor had she acted that way since the beginning of our bizarre little encounter. She also didn’t seem to have any fuckin’ idea who I was.

  Interesting, I thought, grateful for the lack of recognition on her part. I sure as shit didn’t want to answer a bunch of questions about the crap going on in my life right now. Still, she must have been living a pretty isolated existence, held hostage at the top of a tall tower without Wi-Fi connectivity or something, not to have seen the pictures of me that had been blasted all over kingdom come since my mother’s murder.

  My head canted to the side, questions of my own about this woman buzzing in my brain. For the first time in recent memory my mind was on something else besides myself.

  I took a step closer, partly to see if I could rattle her, partly ’cause I decided what the hell, why not see if that skin of hers was as soft as it looked? I skimmed a ringed thumb across the round of her cheek.

  Yeah, it was soft, smooth as fuckin’ satin.

  I licked my lips, but she didn’t move. Her expression blank as though hypnotized she just continued to blink and stare at me with those startling light green eyes of hers.

  Deciding to push it further, I traced the line of her delicate jaw.

  Still no protest.

  Not one to pass up on an opportunity no matter what the setting, I framed her face in my hands and tilted her head back. Her glossed lips parted of their own accord. Warm minty breath spilled across my chilled hands.

  Ok, that hadn’t worked out the way I wanted. I was the one getting fuckin’ rattled. She was close enough now that her jacket brushed against my belt buckle. My dick got harder than the concrete that had so recently roughed me up. All I could think about now was slipping my tongue inside her delectable mouth.

  Now I might not be able to handle my liquor quite as well as my former best friend/guitarist, but I was no novice when it came to drinking. I knew that my current equilibrium problems had nothing to do with booze, but I wasn’t about to admit that to this toys in the attic chick.

  Cursing under my breath, I immediately dropped my hands and took a step back, a big step back. I did not need this kind of shit. “Get out of here.” I lifted my chin. “I’m tired of playing your stupid game. This is my bridge.” My tone was terse. “Go find your own.”

  “I’m not leaving.” Her voice was a thready whisper, but her pink frosted lips settled into a determined line. She closed the space between us, leaning in, her mittened hands curled into fists. “You think no one cares if you jump off that bridge, but you’re wrong.”

  My brow rose in response to her impassioned tone. “Hate to burst your bubble, Sweetness, but you’re the one who’s wrong.” I threw back with a liberal splash of sarcasm, my own arms stiff as drink stirrers at my sides. “Surprise? Maybe. Tears? Highly doubtful.” I pretended to ignore the plea in her eyes. No way that shimmer in them was for fuckin’ real. But as I did, I finally got a fix on that emotion in her eyes that had eluded me earlier.

  Pain.

  Something I could recognize. Too fuckin’ raw not to be real. Before I had time to wonder what the hell had ripped a hole inside of her that wide, her phone chirped with an incoming message.

  She didn’t even glance down. I don’t even think she heard it. She kept staring at me as if she were trying to persuade me to believe her by eye contact alone. It didn’t work, of course, but it was totally unnerving.

  “Your phone just went off,” I prompted, more than a little freaked by the intensity of her gaze. I didn’t mind being up on stage in front of thousands of screaming fans. In fact I craved that. Distant admiration was a fuckin’ rush, but not this. Not this one on one soul searching, emotional connection shit.

  “Huh?” she asked looking glazed.

  “Your phone, Pink. I think someone’s trying to get a hold of you.”

  “Oh.” She blinked a couple of times, then reached into her pocket and pulled out, I shit you not, a pink rhinestone encrusted cell. She glanced briefly at the display. “Damn.” She turned, looking over her shoulder at the forested area behind her as if she expected to see Sasquatch come crashing through the thick underbrush any minute. “I gotta go.”

  “Go on then. Don’t let me keep you from anything. Do me a fuckin’ favor and get lost.”

  I don’t know why I was surprised when she did the opposite taking a step closer. Nothing this bitch did made any fuckin’ sense. She must be bars in the window, over the rainbow crazy. Out here in the middle of nowhere, alone, at the crack of dawn acting out some old black and white movie. Only druggies, the homeless, and pick pockets hung out in Montliff Park at this hour. She looked too sweet and smelled too nice to be any of those.

  So then what the hell was she?

  She reached out, her mittened fingers latching onto my forearms with surprising strength. I felt my brows lifting in disbelief, my eyes moving from them to her face. Unfortunately, I didn’t know her well enough to figure out what was going on inside that wackadoo brain of hers, but as it turns out, I wasn’t even close.

  “Give me twenty-four hours.” Her hands dug in applying pressure. “Please. I promise I’ll prove to you that your life matters.”

  What the fuckin’ hell?

  “Listen, bitch. I don’t need a fuckin’ wing nut like you feeling sorry for me. And I sure as hell don’t need an intervention. You’re wasting my time and your own. Go. Away. Get lost.” I shrugged her hands off, turned my back on her, and went back to the rail, leaning my arms against the cold steel bar.

  No one feels sorry for Warren Jinkins. No one. Ever. Aggravation made my pulse roar in my ears as loud as the rapids below.

  Besides, the bitch had made me start to lose my buzz…and my nerve.

  I felt the warmth from her body just before her arms wrapped unexpectedly around my waist. Too caught off guard to avoid it, I sucked in a shocked breath. The scent of cinnamon filled my nostrils.

  Who the hell wears perfume that smells like apple pie?

  She held me tight as hell, and for some strange reason that I refused to psychoanalyze, the sight of those cute yarn covered fingers linked together low over my abs made me horny as hell. I swore I could feel soft breasts pressing into my back even though I knew that was impossible through that puffy coat of hers. Impossible or not, a sizzling bolt of desire brought my entire body awake, every single inch of me alert, something I would’ve thought nearly impossible given the alcohol content in my blood.

  That being the case, I decided to have a little fun with her.

  “Ok, Sweetness. You got me.” I twisted my neck to look at her. “I’ve changed my mind. Let’s do this twenty-four hour thing of yours.”

  “Good.” The lost panicky look faded, a careful, yet appealing smile forming in its place. “You won’t regret it. I promise.”

  Ok, I doubted that, but what the hell. “But only on two conditions. We do it back at my place. And we do it with you naked.”

  Instant red flashed in her cheeks. Looking stunned, she let go of me abruptly stumbling back.

  Finally, a reaction that made sense. A light bulb moment for this dim chick.

  Maybe now she’d clue the fuck in and leave me the hell alone.

  Suddenly, the thick foliage to the left side of the bridge parted, a tall man with large headset around his neck and a cell pre
ssed to his ear emerged from it. He stopped short when he spotted us. “I found her,” he announced into his phone. “Shaina,” he scolded her. “You said ten minutes. It’s been over thirty. Your dad’s pissed. You’re holding up the shoot.”

  “I know, Mark. Give me a sec. Alright?” She turned back to me and I could tell by the ring of authority in her voice that she was used to getting what she wanted without being questioned.

  “Ok, but your dad said not to dally,” Mark added.

  “Just one more minute,” she stretched out each word while holding up a mittened finger.

  The guy nodded, parted the underbrush with his arms, and disappeared back into the jungle.

  “What the fuck?” I shook my head. This whole thing just kept getting more surreal. “You an actress or something?”

  “Or something.” She sighed gaze unfocused, seeming lost in thought, one mittened finger going into her mouth. She mumbled something else under her breath, but it was too muffled for me to make out. After a moment, the mitten came out. Eyes sparking with fiery determination met mine. “Ok. I’ll do it.”

  “Do what, Sweetness?”

  “What you said earlier.”

  I felt my brows shoot sky high. If I had been wearing my usual rolled bandana around my forehead they would’ve disappeared beneath it. This was the most unreal encounter that I’d ever experienced in my life. And believe me that’s saying something. After all, I was the lead singer in a metal band. In my world, bizarre was commonplace. “You’re shittin’ me.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “But we’ll do it in my hotel room. Filming wraps up at two. I’ll meet you there after that. The Mayflower downtown. Room 312. And just so you know upfront, there’ll be no funny business. No touching. No sex. Just you and me talking this through. And you promise me right now that there will be no more attempts to do yourself harm in the meantime. Deal?” She held out her hand as if we were signing a record deal.

  Well, we’d see about her list of stipulations when the time came. But there was one thing I could say for certain. Impossible as it seemed, the bitch had gotten my mind off my own shit.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Shaina

  “Where the heck have you been, Shaye?” Eyes the same light green shade as my own glared disapprovingly at me the second I entered the trailer.

  “Taking a break. Geez, Dad. I was barely gone thirty minutes.” I stomped inside, the warm air cutting the chill in my bones. I unzipped my jacket, took off my mittens, and tossed everything onto the couch where he was sitting. “I think you forget sometimes that I’m much older than the character I portray.”

  “Time is money, Shaye. Not only that, it’s very unprofessional…” His voice droned on as the lecture continued. I stared out the window over his head my mind wandering. During my short return tromp through the woods, I realized something. Realized how my life felt as if it had been unexpectedly changed…no…altered by a pair of mesmerizing oak colored eyes. I didn’t know to what extent just yet, but knew that alteration more aptly described what had transpired out on that bridge. Also, alter was a more intelligent sounding word, but since this was an inner monologue I gave myself permission to go either way on that one.

  Unbeknownst (another big smart upperclassman collegiate word) to my parents, I’d been taking courses on line for several years. As soon as I completed my GED during our third season, I had gone right to work on a Bachelor of Arts degree, and because I started so young, never taking breaks and working straight through, I was almost done. Obtaining that degree would do more than just improve my vocabulary. It would prove to my parents once and for all that I was a grown up and not some frozen in time child.

  I wanted to be on my own, and I wanted everyone to take me more seriously. I had dreams…though they always seemed to simmer on the backburner behind everyone else’s needs and desires. I was going to be a real actress one day, not just a here today gone tomorrow teen sensation.

  Big words and dreams aside, I couldn’t shake how unsettled I felt today, especially after that unforgettable encounter with the intense caramel haired hottie from the bridge.

  I’d been momentarily paralyzed by fear when I first saw him, staring down at the water that strong jaw of his clenched tight. Agony had been clearly etched into every taut line on a face that otherwise remained indisputably handsome, though in a brooding, slightly foreboding kind of way. His scholarly brow was too heavy, his nose just a tad too arrogant, and his chin just a bit too pointed to be standard issue pretty, but then again I’d never been even remotely attracted to the usual Hollywood types. One reason for my long standing single status.

  Luckily he’d fallen for my hastily concocted ploy. Somehow I’d known, even before I put my foot up on the rail, that he’d stop me from jumping. Anyway, it’d been the only thing I’d been able to come up with on such short notice when I realized what he’d been about to do.

  Yet even then, I’d almost been too late. I hugged my arms around myself warding off the sudden chill. I remembered yet again another place and another time, and the burden of guilt that never went away. Nor would the memory of how cold her skin had felt and how unseeing her beloved eyes had been as I’d tried over and over again to wake her. Even after all these years I remained shackled by grief. If only I had been there a moment sooner, if only I had said the right things to her before. If onlys and guilt kept me from moving forward through life while my heart remained in stasis. Just like her bedroom, the one that had been turned into a memorial. Always and forever filled with a fifteen year olds’ things, but she would never be coming back to enjoy them.

  Posters of Brutal Strength her favorite band thumbtacked to a poster board over the bed and its eyelet lace comforter. Delicate worn toe shoes dangling from their ribbons on a peg on the lilac colored wall. A huge stuffed Fantasmic hippopotamus sitting in the same spot in the tufted chair where it’d been since my dad had won it for her on our last trip to Disneyland.

  I never even got the chance to tell her I loved her once more or say goodbye.

  Eight long lonely years. Coming up on nine.

  Panic as disturbingly cold as the touch of a specter suddenly flooded my veins.

  Had I done enough to discourage him from trying again?

  I prayed that I had. That the enticement I offered would prevent him from making another attempt. Even though I’d only just met him, I knew that he was wrong. There had to be someone who would care if he were gone. There was no way a man who was that captivatingly intense didn’t leave a mark. There was something about him. Something that spoke directly to me. Something that made me long to be the one to make him smile, that made me want to wipe the sadness from his eyes, that made me want to help him channel that intensity into a positive direction without diluting his sexy edge. The intelligence and the depth of emotion I’d seen behind those mesmerizing soulful brown eyes of his were clues to a mystery that I was determined to solve. I got the sense, despite the brashness and protesting and cursing, that there was a whole lot more to him that was worth saving.

  The fact that he’d rushed over to save a stranger like me for starters.

  I was resolute. I would get through to him. He needed to understand how devastating his passing would be to his family and to his friends. He needed to know how it was the ones left behind who never fully recovered when someone they loved did something like that.

  And if my getting naked was what it took to get that point across, then so be it.

  “Shaye?”

  I jumped. “Yeah, Dad.”

  “What’s wrong? I don’t think you heard a word I said. You seem really out of it today.”

  “No I heard you. Everything’s good,” I double lied, hoping he’d buy it. My dad knew pretty much everything about me. Not just because he was my parent, but because it was his business to know. He was also my personal manager. He might know everything about my career, but fortunately for me he wasn’t omniscient.

  “Good. Glad to hear it. Stay foc
used, Shaye. This movie’s a real big deal. None of your crazy shenanigans, alright? And no more wandering off by yourself.” He set his iPad down on his folded knees. “You know how important this movie is to your mom.”

  Yeah, I knew. Two point five million plus residuals worth of important.

  “To all three of us,” he added on the pressure. “Cassie’s Cause can do a lot to raise a lot of awareness. You’ll be saving lives with the money you’ve agreed to donate. Keep that in mind, alright?”

  “Yeah, Dad.” I’d heard this speech about two point five million times. But he was right. People needed to know that depression was real. It was nothing to be ashamed of. The shame would be in not doing anything about it. The shame would be in not turning around what we’d endured and using our experience to help others like Cass.

  I brought my hand up to the center of my chest, rubbing the familiar contours of the pendant she used to wear between my fingers. Touching it always grounded me, made me feel closer to her, and helped me focus. I tamped down my frustration. “Sorry I made you worry,” I mumbled.

  “Come here.” He moved the iPad to the bench and stood holding his arms out to me. I crossed to him and he enfolded me in a rare but coveted hug. “You’re a good kid, Shaye, baby.”

  I swallowed. “Thanks, Dad.” That’s all I’d ever wanted to be for him and mom. That’s what I had been every single day since Cass had been gone. I just didn’t know how much longer I could keep it up.

  It was a lot of pressure being the key to everyone else’s happiness.

  Olivia, my makeup technician appeared in the trailer doorway. My dad squeezed my shoulder as I moved to the chair in front of the mirror. I stared blankly into it, tucking the desperate emotions away, as she touched up my foundation and lipstick in preparation for the upcoming scene with my fictitious boyfriend, CJ.

  On my teen television series, Pinky Swear, I played the title role and though CJ and Pinky had been an item for an entire season now, they had never even kissed, but in this movie they would.