by Mel Curtis
She was perfect. They were perfect. How had he not known this woman existed? How could he let her go come morning?
The thought would have scared him if the tension between them wasn’t building, buzzing through him with brain numbing speed. He thrust deeper, pulling her hips closer, until her cry of release sent him over the edge. Together, they drifted to the bottom of the shallow lap pool.
He pulled her to the surface, gasping for air. And still he wasn’t done with her. “Damn, this could go on all night.” He was already half ready for more. It had to be the long period of celibacy.
“Come on.” Blue tugged Maddy toward the narrow steps. “I’m pruning.”
“I hope not. If this is my Cinderella moment and I have to go back to being a pumpkin in the morning, I want the full-on, Blue Rule treatment.” She climbed out of the water, her body filled out and supple, not the stiff thinness of a woman who starved herself to fit into a pair of size zero jeans. “Look at those stars. We must be close to the ocean.”
Blue followed her out of the water. “I’ll never tell.”
She reached for him, efficiently ridding him of the condom. “Nervous yet? Want to switch to something more predictable, like the missionary?”
“Nope.”
Maddy laughed. The sound filled him inside like warm tea on a cold night – nothing too heavy, nothing too light.
“I have all sorts of ideas that will unfurl all those chakras Senge thought were twisted. And not a one involves the missionary position.”
She laughed again.
A spastic bird was singing. Maddy reached to pull the covers over her face. Instead her hand landed on a sturdy arm.
The night came rushing back to her. Blue had delivered on fantastic sex, none of which was missionary. But the night was done and it was time to step back into reality. She had her future to ensure and Poppa Bert’s albums to save.
She rolled over and faced Blue, who smiled in the dusky light of morning.
Champagne orgasms. Lap pool sex. Kitchen counter, pretzel-limbed lovemaking.
Don’t use the L-word.
It was morning. She’d promised herself that come morning she wasn’t coming any more.
“Good morning.” His tone was an invitation. So not happening.
She’d never be able to look at him through the camera lens without reliving the past six hours.
“I think you proved Senge wrong,” Maddy said in her best Auntie Maddy voice. “Now that we’ve gotten beyond that, could I borrow a T-shirt to get home?” Her shirt and bra were probably still wet and sticky. And she didn’t want to poke through his drawers. That felt too personal.
“You just woke up. Naked. In bed with me. Also naked. And you want to put clothes on?” Blue frowned. His hand drifted to her hip. “I don’t think we’ve proved anything.”
“Seriously, Blue. I need to get home and start editing. I promised Ivan I’d have a rough pilot within the next two weeks.”
“My manhood is in question.” Blue drew her closer, angling his lips to the hollow below her ear.
“Okay, but if we’re doing it one more time, it’s the missionary position.” Maddy shifted out of his grip and onto her back. “Take me and be quick about it.”
“Like you’re some vestal virgin? Or some bored housewife, making a grocery list while I get my rocks off? I don’t think so.” His hand found her nipple, rolling it into a taut bud. “I have a reputation to protect…according to you.”
She’d gone about this all wrong. He’d taken her boring, sexual demands as a challenge, while she was using them as an emotional shield – an ineffectual emotional shield. He was a generous lover, even if he hadn’t granted her missionary wish. Add to that his being kind to small animals and misfits, like Ulani Mott, Winnie Tiegler, and her…he was practically perfect. Which in her world meant he could break her heart.
Maddy tried another approach. “Don’t get me wrong. Last night was fantastic. But my brain is already starting to work and physical activity won’t turn my brain off.” Her heart? That was another matter entirely. Her heart was working overtime, trying to convince Maddy to succumb to his advances.
He nipped her neck. His hand slid down her rib cage, sending shivers down her spine and disproving her statement as her mind went languidly blank. “Have dinner with me tonight.”
“No.” A weak refusal.
“Maddy?” His breath warmed her skin.
“Hhmmm?”
“What happens when you shut off that video editor in your head and start thinking of me?”
“I’ll turn on Mr. Happy.” The vibrator she kept in her bedside drawer. “Or hop in the shower.”
His hand stilled, then drifted lower. “I can perform better than any mechanical device.”
“Yes, but Mr. Happy operates on my schedule and obeys my rules.” Blue’s rules were more like pirate guidelines.
His finger found a very sensitive part of her body and fell into a most intriguing rhythm.
Maddy melted beneath his one-fingered touch. Her body surrendered, calling to her heart and signaling her soul that this was important – this heat, this feeling, this man.
She tried to reject it, but she was panting, orgasm-needy, and hanging onto him. Words came clumsily to her lips. “I really need to go.” Who was she kidding? She wasn’t going anywhere.
Her skin felt hot and tight. Her legs were spread, feet caressing his sheets wantonly. Every muscle poised to burst into flame. At his command. At his touch.
His finger circled her opening and then dragged her juices over her bud. “Stay.” He knew how to convince a woman, using her own heat to spark a fire that kept her warm, that kept her in his bed. Over and over he worked her, until she writhed like a cat being stroked, one who wanted more.
And then he slapped his palm against her exposed, throbbing clit. Not hard, but it startled her.
She combusted, falling apart so completely tears prickled her eyes. Her body was his, doing things she’d never done before, letting him take her to places she’d never explored.
Maddy should have been afraid. She’d read that book about shades of grey. This wasn’t that kinky or controlling. But she could see how she could let mind-numbing, body-melting sex cloud her judgment and get in the way of her dreams. Women like her didn’t have sex with Hollywood hotties. How long could this last?
He could play me forever.
The logical side of Maddy rebelled, urging her to bundle up her hopeful heart and her lucky libido in her sticky clothes and sprint back to reality.
Instead, she closed her eyes and hung onto Blue as he pulled her on top of him and slid inside, filling her up again, building the nearly unbearable heat that made ashes of her resolve.
“Next time you think about reaching for Mr. Happy,” he whispered when he’d reduced her to rubble. “Reach for your cell phone and call me instead.”
Chapter 22
L.A. Happenings by Lyle Lincoln
…The billboard is up on Santa Monica Boulevard! The heartbreaking playboy is none other than Blue Rule! Is that why he needed a private session with Senge Tenzing? Has he been disappointing his ladies in the sack? I didn’t think that’s why his fan club was formed.
The price of a night in heaven was often a day in hell.
The calls started after he dropped Maddy off at her car, shortly after six a.m.
“Blackie, I just read L.A. Happenings. Say it isn’t true.”
The hair on the back of Blue’s neck started to rise. Blue jerked the wheel hard to the left to avoid getting on the freeway. Instead, he drove toward the billboard the Avengers had put up on Santa Monica. “It’s not true, Winnie.”
“I didn’t think it was. You’re nothing like the rascal those women are after.”
Blue wove through traffic, accelerating to make it through every light. The morning fog hovered above him. He could only hope it was so low no one would see the billboard.
No such luck.
Blue pulled ove
r and looked into the face of doom. His face was huge on the billboard. His name clear in Times New Roman.
“Shit, Blue,” Ivan said when Blue answered his call. “You’re lucky we’re in development or you’d never work in this town again.”
Blue hung up.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Jack Gordon shouted when Blue took his call. “You’re the man every woman loves to hate? No wonder you can’t get the job done with Viv.”
Blue hung up.
“Blue, tell me who these Avengers are and I’ll make them pay.” Blue refused Ulani’s offer of Hawaiian muscle. At least she and Quinby were hitting it off.
His phone rang again and again. It chimed to notify him of incoming text messages. Blue turned his phone off and headed for work, damage control on his mind. He’d need a press release. He’d have to work social media. And he’d have to spin it with Lyle Lincoln, whose bullshit meter was among the best in Hollywood. He’d use Maddy’s pilot to his advantage, perhaps spinning the billboard as part of her reality show’s promotion plan.
There was a lot to be done before the rest of L.A. realized he’d been had.
“I can’t believe you slept with him.” Vera sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee in front of her laptop. Her eyes were dark-rimmed. She looked like she’d pulled another all-nighter. “What happened to your dreams, Maddy?”
Maddy stood in the foyer. Vera’s words were more uncomfortable than the sticky clothes she’d decided to wear home. She had no words. No arguments.
“For a girl who doesn’t go to Vegas, you’ve gambled too much on Blue.”
“It was just one night,” she managed weakly. She couldn’t fall apart, not now. “Sex between consenting adults.” Such a lie. It’d been more than sex for her. This morning in Blue’s arms, she’d felt complete, as if he was what she’d been waiting for her entire life. As if she needed nothing else to make her happy. Not filmmaking. Not storytelling. “Damn it!” The truth of what she’d done froze her inside, until it felt as if her lungs were filled with ice.
“Yep. You might just as well enter the dry cleaning business now,” Vera said.
Her cell phone rang. Caught in a moment of self-loathing, she didn’t want to answer it. But then she saw who it was. “Mom, what’s wrong?” Her parents never called her in the morning.
“We’re driving to the shop and a Google Alert about one of those Rules came through on your father’s phone.” Her mother’s tone had an I-told-you-so quality that did nothing for Maddy’s spirits.
“Blue’s been named?” Maddy forgot everything and ran to Vera’s laptop.
Her roommate was already pulling up the L.A. Happenings site. There was a picture of Blue’s handsome face on the billboard.
“Your father wants to know if that means your project is cancelled.”
Maddy, who never hung up on her parents, hung up on her parents.
Because she had no idea what the billboard meant.
Cora hated being wrong. Wrong meant you had to apologize.
But she was starting to realize she hated being alone. She’d dumped Portia. She’d dumped Jack. Blue had dumped her. The only people she had left were men in her contacts file who wanted to fuck her, including Cal, not sit and talk over a glass of wine. Reality was harsh, but not as rough as the roiling pit in her belly that seeing the Avengers’ billboard created.
“I’m sorry,” Cora said from the doorway of Blue’s office. “The billboard sucks. Are you okay?”
“I’m not sure.” Blue sat on the floor in the corner, tossing a small ball for Mr. Jiggles. “I tried to cover my ass first thing, but…Ask me around eleven.”
“Okay…” She fidgeted, her fingers braiding and unbraiding. She never fidgeted, but she couldn’t seem to undo her fingers. She started to back out.
“I thought we were kind of a team.”
“Funny thing about that.” Cora cleared her throat, feeling as alone as she had when Daddy died. “You know how I don’t date? I don’t do teams either. I wish I could. I’m just…well…no one likes me. And when people don’t like you…” She was deep in pathetic territory now.
“You sound like an insecure high schooler. I’m your brother, not the enemy. I love you, even if I can’t stand you sometimes.” He didn’t look at her, but she recognized the gruff hurt in his voice from the days when Daddy gave out his unique punishments. “Maybe instead of submarining the people you care about, you should swallow your pride and do something to help.”
Before she could answer, Blue’s phone rang. And then the office phone rang. He didn’t move to answer either one. Almost as soon as they stopped ringing, they started up again.
“Aren’t you going to answer your phones?”
“No.” One word, filled with defeat.
I did this to him.
Regret lurched forward, bitter at the back of her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “The thing is I…I don’t think I know how to be a good friend…or a good sister.”
“Cora…” He gently tossed the ball for Mr. J, who raced after it, tiny ears flopping wildly. He sighed, a sound so filled with disappointment that Cora almost apologized a third time. “Someone recently told me there’s a difference between can’t and won’t. I think you can do relationships, but for whatever reason, you won’t.”
“Daddy used to say something like that.” He’d said a lot of things she’d ignored.
“It figures.” His cell phone started beeping. Blue glanced at it and reached for the dog carrier. “I have an appointment.” He stood, still not looking at her.
“Oh…okay.” She sounded pathetic. “I’ll just…stay here.” And feel like shit.
“I know I’m going to regret this.” He scrubbed a hand over his face and shook his head. “You can ride shotgun, but I warn you it’s going to be boring. Amber left me a list of companies to check out while she was gone. This one is getting a monthly retainer fee from us we haven’t used.”
Cora didn’t care about boring. She ran to get her purse, determined to become the sister Blue deserved.
Blue was unmasked. Texts, emails and messages accumulated in his phone like rapidly multiplying locusts. He’d become the village idiot, replacing his father as being more gossip-worthy than respectable. The reactions ranged from incredulous (wtf) to certainty (I knew it) to sympathetic (you poor bastard). His defenses were trickling out too slowly. Who would want him as their life coach? No one. Clients were canceling appointments. His chance at earning his inheritance began to fade.
Maybe he was in shock. Maybe he’d mourn later. Or maybe he was still cocooned in the afterglow of making love to Maddy. Yes, his shoulders felt heavy. Yes, his stomach felt like he’d swallowed a boulder. No, he wasn’t completely defeated. He had Maddy on his side and she was his sunny-side-up ray of optimism. He hoped.
She’d sent him a sympathy text first thing this morning. He’d replied back, but heard nothing else from her. He was starting to wonder if she was okay. The Avengers weren’t ones to make idle threats, and they’d threatened whoever he was seeing. Maddy was due at the office at eleven. If she didn’t show, he’d go find her.
In the meantime, he and Cora entered the Malibu Small Animal Rescue, which was located in a house in a rundown neighborhood in Malibu and was on a short list of contractors for the Dooley Foundation.
“And I thought Mr. Jiggles was a bitch beast.” Cora shouted to be heard above the raucous sound of twenty pint-size dogs, including Mr. Jiggles, doing their best to prove who had the biggest cajones.
The older woman who let them in wore a weary expression, olive shorts and a stained T-shirt. She tried to quiet the pack of little dogs – poodles, terriers, Chihuahuas, and all sorts of mixes – looking as harassed as a kindergarten teacher as she shooed them behind a child gate into her kitchen. When the dogs calmed down a bit, she turned back to them, slicking her peppery gray hair behind her ears. “I’m so glad to finally meet you. I’m Donna. Dooley was very generous to us and helped us pl
ace many dogs, who in turn helped so many.”
She caught sight of Mr. Jiggles in Blue’s carrier. “There’s a familiar face. How are you, young man? And when did you decide to go pink?” She opened the latch on the carrier.
“Careful. He doesn’t like strangers,” Blue said, despite the suspicion that Donna was no stranger to his dog.
She patted the poodle’s head. “They’re all difficult, or they wouldn’t end up here. Has he helped you?” she asked Blue. When he didn’t answer, she turned to Cora. “Or is he yours?”
“He’s mine.” Blue exchanged a guarded look with Cora that he hoped said: What the fuck?
Cora shrugged.
“He’s come a long way in three months. You must have made excellent progress. Your father would be proud.” Donna stroked the poodle’s ears, oblivious to the freight train roaring through Blue’s head. His father? “As you can see, we’re rather full. I have no more cages free. You haven’t helped us with any adoptions in months.”
“The Foundation has been in flux,” Blue said vaguely, trying to breathe the doggy-scented air evenly. Could this day get any worse? His father left him his dog in his will. Only his father didn’t own a dog. Mr. Jiggles was another of his father’s sick machinations. To what purpose? He didn’t know.
The dog lady was oblivious to Blue’s shock. “I was hoping your visit would mean things are back up and running. I have several dogs ready for the program.”
“Which program?” Blue asked carefully.
The dogs started in again – barking and growling and howling.
“Oh, dear. It’s time for their morning break.” Donna stepped over the child gate separating the living room from the kitchen and waded through the leaping, nipping, yapping dogs toward the back. The dogs scrambled after Donna, emptying the kitchen when she opened the door.
Blue and Cora followed. The back yard was littered with chewed up high heels.
“We get a lot of miniature misbehaving lords and ladies here.” Donna picked up a fluffy black Chihuahua. “Our goal is to have them ready for a Dooley Foundation adoption.”