“Go where? It’s late.”
“I’ll call you.” She grabbed her purse. As she shot through the house to the garage, she wished he’d left his number so she could call him and tell him she was coming.
All the way to Morro Bay, she tried to figure out what had happened. She wanted to believe he’d finally realized he cared about her, and with each mile, her hopes grew. Maybe Friday’s events had forced him to stop looking at her as a kid sister.
It was after eleven by the time she passed through Morro Bay and found the turnoff marked on the map. The road was deserted, and she drove for almost ten minutes before she saw the mailbox that was her next marker. The steep uphill gravel road was treacherously narrow, with pine and chaparral stretching on both sides. Finally she saw lights.
The cantilevered wedge of concrete and glass seemed to grow from the barren hillside. A dimly lit drive curved up to the house. She parked and stepped out of the car. The wind tossed her hair, and the air smelled of salt and rain.
He must have heard the car because the front door opened just as she reached for the bell, and the light behind him outlined his tall, lean body.
“Flower?”
“Hello, Jake.”
Chapter 13
Fleur waited for Jake to invite her in, but he just stood there scowling at her. He wore jeans and an inside-out black sweatshirt with the sleeves chopped off. He looked exhausted. The bones of his face were sharper than ever and he hadn’t shaved. But she saw something on his face besides exhaustion, something that reminded her of that first day on the set when she’d watched him beat up Lynn. He looked hard-bitten and mean.
“Can I use the bathroom?” she asked nervously.
For a moment she didn’t think he was going to let her in. Finally he gave a tired shrug and stepped aside. “I never argue with fate.”
“What?”
“Help yourself.”
The interior of the house was like nothing she’d ever seen. Great concrete angles delineated the areas, and ramps took the place of stairs. The glass walls and soaring spaces blurred the boundaries between inside and out. Even its colors were those of the outdoors: the pewter of the ocean, the whites and grays of rock and stone.
“It’s beautiful, Jake.”
“The bathroom’s down that ramp.”
She looked at him nervously. Something was very wrong. As she walked in the direction he’d indicated, she spotted a study with a wall of books and an old library table holding a typewriter. Crumpled balls of paper littered the floor. A few had found their way to the bookshelves.
She shut the door and gazed at the biggest bathroom she’d ever seen, a cavern of black and bronze tile with a glass wall and a vast sunken tub that hung over the edge of the cliff. Everything in the room was oversized: the tub, the shower stall sculpted into the wall, even the twin sinks.
She caught sight of herself in the mirror and hated what she saw. The flesh-colored slip made it seem as if she was naked underneath the string knit dress. But then, as she thought about how forbidding Jake looked, she decided the dress wasn’t that bad. She definitely didn’t look like anybody’s kid sister tonight. The Glitter Baby had come to call on Bird Dog Caliber.
When she came out, Jake was sitting in the living room, a glass in his hand filled with something that looked like straight whiskey.
“I thought you only drank beer,” she said.
“That’s right. Anything else turns me into a bad-tempered drunk.”
“Then why—?”
“What are you doing here?”
She stared at him. He didn’t know. At that moment, it became horrifyingly clear. He hadn’t written the note. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment. How could she have been stupid enough to believe he needed her? She’d seen only what she wanted to. She couldn’t think of anything else to do but reach into her purse and hand him the note.
The seconds ticked by as he scanned the pages. Her mind raced. Was this supposed to be some kind of joke? But who would have done such a thing? She immediately thought of Lynn. Her costar was the only person who suspected how Fleur felt about Jake, and Lynn loved to play matchmaker. She’d done this, and Fleur was going to kill her. After she killed herself.
“Frigging door-to-door delivery.” Jake crumpled the note and hurled it toward the empty fireplace. “You were set up. That’s not my handwriting.”
“I’ve just figured that out.” She ran her fingers along the strap of her purse. “It must have been somebody’s idea of a joke. Not a good one.”
Abruptly he drained his glass. His eyes flicked over the little string dress, lingered on her breasts, then took in her legs. He’d never looked at her like this, as if he’d finally figured out she was a woman. She felt a subtle shift in the balance between them, and her embarrassment began to fade.
“What went wrong on Friday?” he said. “I’ve met actresses who don’t like taking off their clothes, but I’ve never seen anything like what happened to you.”
“Not exactly professional, was I?”
“Let’s just say that you blew your chance at a career as a stripper.” He headed for a bar made from wood and stone and refilled his whiskey glass. “Tell me about it.”
She sat on a couch that jutted from the wall and tucked her foot under her hip. The little string dress rode up on her thighs. He noticed. She watched as he took a deep swig from his glass. “There’s nothing much to tell,” she said. “I hate it, that’s all.”
“Taking off your clothes, or life in general?”
“I don’t like this business.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t like acting, and I don’t like making films.”
“Then why are you doing it?” He propped his arm on the bar. If he’d had a dusty trail hat on his head and a polished brass rail to prop his boot heel on, he would have brought Bird Dog to life. “Never mind. That was a stupid question. Belinda uses you.”
She automatically went on the defensive. “Belinda only wants what’s best for me, but lives get tangled up together. She can’t comprehend that people might be looking for different things from life.”
“Do you believe that? Do you really believe she’s only thinking about your welfare?”
“Yes, that’s what I believe.” She wouldn’t let anyone but herself criticize her mother. “I know how important the scene with Matt and Lizzie is. I’m really going to try on Monday. If I really try—”
“You weren’t trying on Friday? Come off it, kiddo. This is Uncle Jake you’re talking to.”
She shot up off the couch. “Don’t do that! I hate it when you do that. I’m not a child, and you’re not my uncle.”
Suddenly his eyes narrowed and his jaw set in a hard line. “We needed a woman to play Lizzie. Instead we hired a kid.”
His words should have wiped her out. They should have broken her into a million pieces and sent her flying from the house in tears, but they were too outrageous. She stared into that tough face and felt a primitive surge of excitement. He wasn’t looking at her as if she was a kid. Beneath those shielded blue eyes, she glimpsed something she’d never seen before, something she could easily identify because she’d been feeling it so long herself. Despite his hostility, Jake wanted her.
Her skin broke out in gooseflesh. In that moment, she understood everything Lizzie understood, and she knew exactly what gave Lizzie her power.
“The only kid in the room,” she said softly, “is you.”
He didn’t like that. “Don’t play games with me. I’ve played them with the best, and believe me, you’re still minor league.”
He was deliberately trying to hurt her, and she could think of only one reason. So she’d run. She settled back on the couch and slipped her fingers into her hair. “Is that so?”
“Careful, Flower. Don’t do anything you’re going to regret, especially when you’re wearing that dress.”
She smiled. “What’s wrong with my dress?”
“Don’t mess around, okay?”
&nb
sp; “How could I mess around?” she said with fake innocence. “I’m minor league, remember?”
His brow furrowed. “I’d better drive you into Morro Bay. There’s a nice inn where you can stay.”
Sunday Morning Eclipse would finish shooting in two weeks, and she might never see him again. If she needed to prove to him that she was a woman, now was her chance, while she wore this silly string dress with its illusion of flesh and its short hem that showcased the legs he couldn’t stop looking at. She saw the desire in his eyes. A man’s desire for a woman. She stood and walked over to the window. Her hair swished across her shoulders, the gold hoops skipped at her ears, and the little string dress played peekaboo with her hips. She tugged on one of the hoops and turned to face him, her heart pounding. “You seem jittery. Is there any reason?”
His voice snagged on a rough edge in his throat. “Maybe it’s because you’re not looking as ugly as usual to me tonight, Flower. I think you’d better go.”
She summoned all her cover-girl tricks. She leaned against the glass, angled her hips, and extended her legs. “If you want me to go…” She bent one knee just until it opened enough to expose the inner curve of her thigh. “…you’ll have to make me.”
Something inside him seemed to snap. He slapped his glass down on the bar just as he’d done in a dozen films. “You want to play games? Okay, baby. Let’s play.”
He started coming toward her, and she belatedly remembered this wasn’t a movie but her real life. She told herself to get out of his way, but he caught her before she could take a step. Her hips bumped into the window. He curled his hands around her arms. “Come on, kid,” he whispered. “Show me what you’ve got.”
His head swooped down, and he closed his mouth over hers. His teeth ground into her bottom lip as he forced her mouth open. She tasted whiskey on his tongue and tried to tell herself this was Jake. His hands slipped under her dress to her panties. He slid them down just far enough to cup her bare buttocks. When he pulled her hard against him, her newfound sense of power evaporated.
He pushed her dress higher, and the fly of his jeans scraped the bare flesh of her stomach. His tongue probed her mouth. He was too fierce. She wanted soft music and beautiful flowers. She wanted sinuous bodies blurred beneath a soft-focus lens, not this raw carnal attack. She pushed against his chest. “Stop.”
The harsh sound of his breathing rasped in her ear. “This is what you want, isn’t it? You want me to treat you like a woman.”
“Like a woman, not a whore.” The lover of her daydreams had vanished. She pulled away from him and stumbled toward the front door, desperate to get outside before she burst into tears. But she needed her purse. Her car keys. She turned back to get them in time to see him pick up the telephone.
Her lust-crazed attacker had vanished. He looked tired and sad. She studied him more closely, trying to see him with her head instead of her bruised heart. Suddenly he became as transparent as one of the glass walls in this cantilevered house.
He spoke into the receiver, all business now. “Do you have a suite available for tonight?”
She walked toward him, her keys and purse forgotten.
He fixed his eye on the fireplace so he didn’t have to look at her. “Yes. Yes, that’ll be fine. No, just one night—”
She took the phone from him and set it back on its cradle.
He wasn’t a man who could be easily taken by surprise. He pulled on his hostility like an ill-fitting costume. “Haven’t you had enough for tonight?”
She stared him straight in the eye. “No,” she said softly. “I want more.”
A pulse ticked in his throat. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Nobody’s ever accused you of being the world’s greatest actor, but even for you, that was a lousy performance.” She softly mocked him. “Big bad Bird Dog Caliber trying to scare off the good girl.”
He raked his hands through his hair. “Leave it alone. Just leave it alone.”
“You’re a chicken. No guts.”
“I’ll drive you to the inn.”
“You want me,” she said. “I know you do.”
His jaw clenched, but he kept his voice even. “After you get a good night’s sleep—”
“I want to sleep here.”
“I’ll pick you up at the inn tomorrow morning and take you to breakfast. How about that?”
She shaped her lips into a model’s pout. “Golly, Uncle Jake, it sounds super. Will you buy me a lollipop, too?”
His face darkened. “How much am I supposed to take? What the hell do you want from me?”
“I want you to stop trying to protect me.”
“You’re a kid, damn it! You need protecting.”
“That kid crap is getting old, Jake. Really old.”
“Go away, Fleur. Please. For your own good.”
She couldn’t take one more person telling her what was best for her, especially not Jake. “I’ll decide that.” She tried not to show her heart in her eyes. “I want you to make love with me.”
“Not interested.”
“You’re a liar.”
She saw the exact moment when she won. His head came up, and his lips thinned. “All right then. Let’s see what you’re made of.” He caught her arm and steered her across the room toward a ramp, not exactly dragging her, but coming close. They went up the slope, through an arch, up another ramp. She wanted to slow down. “Jake…”
“Shut up, okay?”
“I want to—”
“I don’t.”
He led her into the master bedroom, which had the biggest bed she’d ever seen. It rested on a platform directly beneath an enormous skylight. He scooped her in his arms, just like in her daydreams, climbed the two steps, and dropped her in an unceremonious heap on the gray and black satin spread.
“Last chance, Flower,” he growled, his expression forbidding. “Before we hit the point of no return.”
She refused to move.
“Okay, kiddo.” He crossed his arms over his chest and pulled off his sweatshirt. “It’s time to play with the big boys.”
Her grip tightened on the coverlet. “Jake?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re making me nervous.”
He opened the snap of his jeans. “Tough.”
He was still trying to scare her away, and he whipped off his jeans. Seconds later, he stood at the bottom of the bed, clad only in a pair of black briefs. She wished he were wearing friendly white cotton, or something baggy and faded like his swim trunks. She’d seen his chest a dozen times, but never so much of his stomach. It was flat and solid, taut, sculpted muscle. Her gaze dropped to the forbidding vertical shaft the briefs were too small and too tight to conceal.
“You’re overdressed.”
He wanted her to back off, but she wouldn’t. He needed to understand exactly how tough she was.
His hand shackled one of her ankles, and her toughness began to dissolve. He untied her sandal and pulled it off, then did the same with its mate. His eyes lingered on her exposed skin. She pushed herself into the pillows. He was so grim. “I don’t want it to be like this,” she said.
His eyes touched her breasts, her hips, swept down her legs. “Too bad.” He leaned forward and tugged open the tie at the top of her dress.
“I’d rather not—”
He caught her by the shoulders and drew her up into a kneeling position.
She gulped. “I think we should—”
He whipped the little string dress over her head. “I’m sick of playing the good guy around you. From the day we met…” He reached for the hem of her slip.
She pushed his hand away. “Not like this. This isn’t how I want it to be.”
“We’re playing by grown-up rules now.” He tugged on her slip and pulled it free of her hair. She was kneeling on the bed in nothing but panties and her swaying gold hoops.
“Now I can see all those parts of you I had to pretend not to look at on Friday.”
>
“I know what you’re trying to do, and I won’t let you. I won’t let you make this bad for me.”
His voice was tight and hard. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She curled her hands at her sides. “You’re trying to ruin this. You want to keep this from being important.”
“It’s isn’t important.” The mattress sagged under his weight. He covered her body with his own, and reached beneath them to tug off her panties. “It’s fun. That’s all.” His fingers found her, their touch almost clinical. “Do you like the way this feels?”
“Stop it.”
“How do you want it? Fast? Slow? Tell me how you want it, babe.”
“I want flowers,” she whispered. “I wanted you to touch my body with flowers.”
A shudder passed through him. He rolled away from her with a muffled curse and lay on his back staring up at the night through the skylight. She didn’t understand him at all.
“Why do you want to hurt me?” she asked.
He reached out and touched her hand. “If I were a better man…But I’m not.” He turned toward her and gently traced the curve of her shoulder with his fingers. “All right, baby,” he whispered. “No more games. Let’s do it right.”
His mouth found hers in a soft, tender kiss that melted the great chill inside her. It wasn’t anything like their kisses on camera. Their noses bumped. He opened his mouth and closed it over hers, the sound sweet and sloppy. His tongue slipped past the barrier of her teeth, where she touched it with her own. It was wet and rough and perfect. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pulled him so close she could feel his heartbeat with her breast.
Finally he drew back. His fingers played in her hair, and his eyes gazed gently down at her. “I don’t have any flowers,” he whispered, “so I’ll have to touch you with something else.” He dipped his head and caught her nipple in his mouth. It swelled beneath his tongue, and she moaned as waves of pleasure washed through her.
Like a lazy cowboy with all the time in the world, he roamed her body with his hands. His kisses trailed over her stomach while he stroked her thighs, setting fires in all the empty spaces inside her. Then he drew up her knees and gently pushed them apart.