Or at least that’s how I’d felt when I first put it on in my rented flat at oh-my-God-o’clock this morning.
Right now? The misty rain and morning dew had wet the hem enough so that it clung to my pale legs. When I looked down, my boobs still looked fantastic, but my nipples had pebbled up from the cold and were standing proud against the thin cotton of the dress. I felt exposed, suddenly wearing a more revealing, body-hugging outfit than I would normally choose.
I immediately crossed my arms over my chest. It seemed like a real possibility that the rain hitting the heat of my cheeks might create enough steam to completely obscure my face. I could only pray for it to happen.
But since I was Mallory Pritchard, Bad Luck Queen, my face remained completely visible. I imagined the way my makeup was likely running and smearing in the damp and wanted to cry. I tried to smile instead.
“What am I wearing? It’s a dress,” was my sparkling response.
His mouth twitched. There was even more dark gold stubble lining his hard jaw this morning, and it gave him a rough-and-ready look that made me vividly aware of my inner thighs rubbing together under my skirt.
“Yeah,” he said, unsmiling. “You look . . . cold.”
Not exactly the impression I’d been hoping to create, but accurate. I glanced down to check that my crossed arms were still shielding my unruly nipples from view. The wind kicked up, and I shivered uncontrollably.
The next thing I knew, warm, stiff folds of fabric were being draped around my shoulders. The collar smelled like leather, smoke, and somehow, impossibly, like the clean salt air of the ocean.
It was Ian Hale’s jacket. And it enfolded me as if I were the petite, waifish little thing I used to wish to be, warming me all the way down to my bones. The sleeves hung past my wrists and I immediately curled my fingers into them to wrap the jacket more closely around me.
“You don’t have to do that,” I protested, because I was never very good at accepting gifts.
He shrugged, massive shoulders straining at the textured cotton of his long-sleeved black Henley. “Cold doesn’t bother me.”
Of course not, I thought semi-hysterically. No one that hot could ever feel cold.
Before I could collect my thoughts, Pilot raced up the hill, barking madly around the ball clamped in his jaws. The muffled barks didn’t seem to unsettle Roxanne, who deigned to sniff curiously at Pilot’s ears when he skidded to a stop in front of us. He’d been gone a while, I realized, and he must have found a pretty wonderful mud puddle to play in because my mutt was now filthy. Even better, panting enthusiastically, Pilot dropped the sodden, lightly mauled tennis ball directly on the toe of Ian Hale’s battered desert boot. The tan suede darkened under the wet seeping from the mangled ball.
I squeezed my eyes shut. “We brought you your ball back?”
Dear Lord. Why hadn’t I figured out what I was going to say if this ridiculous plan worked and I actually saw him again? Mortified, I crouched to grab the ball and try to brush the mud off Ian Hale’s probably expensive boot. His foot flexed under my touch, the movement discernible through the sturdy, pliable suede.
He made a low sound above me, a sharp exhalation that was almost a groan. Startled, I turned my face up to find him staring down at me with a heated focus that shot through all my limbs and turned them to jelly.
I hadn’t meant to do anything provocative by crouching down. But kneeling there, with his scent and lingering body heat wrapped around me and my face mere inches from the heavy fly of his jeans, I felt an unmistakable filament of sexual awareness spark to life between us.
The look on his handsome, rugged face was . . . hungry. Starved, in fact, and I gasped at the answering lash of ferocious desire that coiled in my lower belly.
“I always seem to end up on my knees in front of you,” I said, and the voice didn’t even sound like mine. Throaty, sure and unhurried, and I watched the words hit him with an almost palpable shock.
One of his big, raw-knuckled hands reached out, so slowly. I couldn’t look away from his eyes, burning in his still face like the hottest part of a flame. My breath caught when his fingers were an inch from my face, and he paused.
I swallowed a whimper, a plea, but he heard it anyway because he let his fingertips ghost over the chilled, sensitized skin of my forehead. My eyes drifted shut and I felt him carefully, almost tenderly, brush back the wet strands of my hair. His hand lingered, broad palm caressing over the crown of my head to cup the back, and I felt myself go hot and liquid between the legs.
My thighs slid apart involuntarily, away from the sweet ache beginning to throb in my pussy, and I let the weight of my head rest in his hand. He bit off a broken noise and my eyes flew open.
Just when I was sure he was going to grab me by the arms and haul me to my feet for a kiss, Ian Hale stepped back.
Strong throat working as he swallowed, voice hoarse, he said, “Get up.”
Disbelieving, I knelt there in the rain for a full heartbeat before scrambling to my feet. My flats slipped a bit in the wet grass, adding to the graceless, ungainly sway of my poor, confused body.
Humiliatingly, my first instinct was to apologize. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to—”
I broke off, having zero idea how to finish that sentence. What, exactly, was I supposed to be sorry about? It felt like I’d crossed some line, but what? And how was I going to keep from doing it again when I had no clue where that line was?
Realizing that I’d somehow backed into a belief that there was going to be a chance to do anything again with Ian Hale, I winced and waited for him to make an excuse and leave. But he didn’t.
He never seemed to do what I expected.
Instead of walking away, he took a deep breath and said, “You never said why you’re all dressed up today.”
Ian Hale—at what point was I allowed to stop thinking of him by his full name? Was it after he’d cupped the back of my head while I knelt at his feet like a supplicant?—Ian seemed determined to ignore whatever it was that had almost happened between us. As though he wanted to keep this interaction going as much as I did.
But what was I supposed to say? I dressed up to attract your attention and I guess it sort of worked!
That seemed too awkward even for me, so I hedged. “I’m going back to the British Museum today to try again to convince the Britain, Europe and Prehistory curator to let me into the archives. Well, I say try again, but so far I haven’t even been able to get a meeting with her. So I thought maybe today I’d try something different. Like maybe it would be better to look a little less as if I rolled out of bed and went straight to work in my pajamas. I don’t know. It’s probably silly.”
He huffed. “Nothing wrong with the way you usually look.”
I licked my lips. How did he know what I usually looked like? Had he . . . noticed me before yesterday? “Thanks. I probably would’ve been better off in yoga pants and a sweater. I certainly would have been warmer.”
“Warm enough now?”
I smiled a little and ducked my nose down far enough to catch a whiff of that crazy-addictive salty sunshine leather smell. “I am. Now.”
“We should walk these monsters, eh?” Ian gestured down the hill, and Roxanne came to attention. “Sounds like you have places to be.”
Now I regretted coming up with a reason that had anything to do with work. How could this be interesting to him? “Oh, well. You know. The museum opens at ten but I’m not sure the curator will be in that early.”
We started ambling across Primrose Hill, the low, steel gray clouds veiling the London skyline in the distance, but the city was all around us. Even in the center of this royal park, I could hear the growl and bustle of traffic.
“You think the museum will have what you need.”
It wasn’t exactly a question, but I answered it anyway, caught up again in the strange, surreal pleasure of having Ian ask about my work. “Sure. They have first editions of the cookbooks I’m most interested in, and pr
obably more that I’m not aware of. A few manuscripts, even! I know I could get my hands on copies of later editions, or even study the originals online, but there’s nothing like being face to face with the actual article.”
“Sounds like you made the right choice, coming to London.”
That was interesting. I thought about it. In reality, I hadn’t ever really stopped to consider if I’d made a good adult decision when I packed up, lock, stock and barrel, and moved my ass across the Atlantic.
“I don’t know. I think so? It was kind of a snap decision.”
“After Tony.”
His dark tone made me laugh. “You sound like my sister. She always calls him Tony the Tool.”
“I like your sister.”
“Me too.” I slanted a look at him. “So. You live here?”
He slanted a look back at me. “Yeah. Mostly.”
Despite his distracting good looks and sex appeal, Ian was shockingly easy to talk to. But I suddenly remembered that celebrity interviews all mentioned how famously private he was, and how the location of his home was a closely guarded secret, so I let it go. “I’m from New York. Brooklyn.”
“I’ve never been to Brooklyn,” Ian said, jamming his hands into his pockets. “The studio usually puts me up at a hotel in Greenwich Village.”
It was jarring to hear him reference his movie star life. A reminder of how different we were. “Sure. That’s a nice part of town.”
He shrugged. “Nice enough. Lonely.”
For some reason, my heart picked up the pace. “Most New York hotels are dog friendly. Next time, you should take Roxanne with you.”
That got a hint of a smile out of him. “I’ve thought about it. But it’s a bloody long flight.”
“I guess you’d have to deal with the other passengers and their exaggerated fears about pit bulls too. That would be annoying. But you’ve got some trivia to throw at them now, if that would help!”
“Nah, I don’t fly commercial anymore. Not after the last time.”
Oh, right. Of course Ian Hale crossed the globe in a private jet. What was I thinking? I actually remembered seeing something about that incident in the tabloid headlines at the grocery counter. “The last time. Didn’t some out-of-control fan cause such a big disturbance that they actually rerouted your plane and landed in, like, Newfoundland?”
“Ah, that was a mad situation. She wasn’t a fan, exactly—just a woman who was off her meds, and thought because I was on the plane it meant that there were terrorists too, and I was there to save them or something. I talked to her for a long time, but I couldn’t calm her down.” He palmed the back of his head, an unhappy twist to his mouth. “Not much for talking, me. I probably would’ve done better if there really had been someone to fight.”
That hint of vulnerability, hastily papered over with self-directed irony, was the kind of thing I’d never be able to describe to my sister or anyone else—because they’d never believe it. Ian Hale, whose punishing workout routine went viral after the last Mount Olympus movie, vulnerable?
But he was, and it made me want to press one of his big hands between both of mine and kiss his long, blunt-tipped fingers. Then I’d drag his hand down the side of my neck and over my breastbone and then—
I snapped out of it when Ian let out a piercing whistle. Roxanne, who’d been investigating the gnarled roots of an ancient tree, came trotting back to his side, followed closely by Pilot.
“My dog is turning into a little bit of an obsessed stalker,” I said with a laugh that I hoped covered up my internal wince. Was that what I was too? An obsessed stalker?
Ian knelt, careless of the mud, to ruffle Roxanne’s ears and let her lick his face. There was no earthly reason why that should be so sexy to me, but I had to squeeze my thighs together and swallow a moan.
“He’s made friends, hasn’t he?” Ian turned his face from side to side so Roxanne could get a good taste of every square, stubbled inch. “Good on him. It’s not easy to make friends, is it.”
“Don’t look at me.” I laughed. “My best friend is my sister.”
The corner of his mouth kicked up as he glanced at me, Roxanne going to town on the underside of his chin. “My best friend is a dog.”
Pilot leaned his entire body weight into my legs, the doggie version of a hug, and my heart clenched. “Solid choice. I had to leave my sister back in New York, but at least I got to bring this guy with me. Can you bring Roxanne on set with you, when you’re shooting in the UK?”
I knew it sounded like the kind of question a magazine writer might ask in an interview, but I couldn’t help it. I was so curious about what his life was like.
“Sometimes,” Ian said, getting to his feet and swiping a casual hand over his damp cheeks and chin. “If it seems like there will be room for her to run. If I’m going to be penned up on a soundstage for days at a time, I leave her with a mate of mine who has a Westie.”
A memory stirred in the back of my brain, some adorable video or series of pictures my sister sent me a link to while trying to cheer me up after I moved back home. “Wait. Are you talking about Alec Ramsey?”
It made sense. Alec Ramsey was the classically trained, critically acclaimed actor who’d been brought in to class up the Mount Olympus movies. He played Hades, older brother and nemesis of Ian’s character, and a firm fan favorite. The two spent more time on-screen together, and had arguably better chemistry, than either did with any of the various scantily clad love interests who damselled their way through the series getting rescued and ravished by turns.
“Yeah, that’s him.”
The surrealism of the situation washed over me once more. “Right, sure. Alec Ramsey is your dogsitter.”
“Alec’s all right,” Ian said, as if I’d been making a comment about Alec’s fitness to care for an animal—although now that I thought about it, the things that showed up in the scandal rags about him didn’t necessarily inspire a ton of confidence. “But his shooting schedule tends to be pretty similar to mine. When he’s busy, Roxy and Alec’s pup both go to Damian Moore’s. He’s the clever one. Got a lovely wife and a little daughter to keep the dogs well occupied.”
The wistfulness in Ian’s voice distracted me from my starstruck dazzlement that the dog whose butt my dog was currently sniffing was regularly given kibble by either an Oscar winner or a stage actor who had literally played every one of Shakespeare’s most challenging roles, to packed houses and standing ovations. And these were Ian’s friends.
My friends were either related to me by blood, or had all faded quietly away during my messy breakup.
Attempting to play it cool, I said, “Sounds like Damian has a nice setup.”
“I called him the clever one, but maybe he’s the lucky one. His little Cora is a firecracker. She keeps us all in fits when we’re over for dinner.”
“You like kids,” I realized. “Do you ever think about having some of your own?”
Oh my God. That was the opposite of cool! It was a super intimate question to ask anyone, let alone a famously private near stranger!
But before I could walk it back, an odd look crossed his face. “Huh. No one’s ever asked me that before. I suppose they all assume I like the bachelor life too much to ever give it up.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being single,” I recovered enough to say firmly. I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation, or that any of this was happening, really. But I was in it now. “There’s nothing wrong with deciding not to have kids with your partner, either. But if you want it, why wouldn’t you go for it?”
Jamming his hands in his pockets, Ian angled his body slightly away from me so it was hard to read his expression. “Maybe,” he said vaguely. “Someday. But for the moment, I’ve got to stay accessible. Relevant. I have to keep the fantasy intact for my fans.”
“That’s . . . honestly, that’s kind of messed up.” Something about the way he was talking, almost robotically, like he was repeating lines he’d b
een told to say, bothered me. My inner mouthy New Yorker came out. “You give your fans your wonderful performances in movies they love! You don’t owe them your personal life.”
“That’s a kind thing to say.” He looked right at me, something like a smile pulling at his lips. “You’re kind.”
I squirmed, cheeks burning. “Another word for it might be ‘nosy.’ Look, I obviously have no business telling you about your business, especially as someone who truly loves her job and would sacrifice a lot for it. But I don’t really see why you need to sacrifice your chance at a family to keep being a movie star.”
He paused, his gaze finding mine and searching it. For what, I didn’t know. “It hasn’t been much of a sacrifice so far, to be honest.”
I knew what he meant, even if I found it hard to believe. “Don’t worry. The right person will come along. Or at least, that’s what I’ve been given to understand by my mother, sister, friends, and many forms of popular entertainment.”
He acknowledged that with a slight smile. “I’m not fussed about waiting. For perfection.”
My mouth went dry for some reason. “Is that all? You might be waiting a long time.”
“Then I’ll wait.” He blinked those fantastically blue eyes, a small, secret smile tugging at his lips. “But I don’t think it will be too much longer.”
Heart pounding, I pondered what he could mean by that. It almost felt like he was talking about . . . meeting me? But that couldn’t be right. He’d never even laid eyes on me before yesterday. Right?
Before I could figure out how to ask him to clarify, he turned back to me abruptly and said, “I’ve an idea. We actually shot a few scenes at the British Museum, a couple of films back. I think I still have a contact I can call. Shall we see if they remember me and want to do me a favor by letting my good friend look at the archives?”
I stopped dead on the walking trail. My cheeks went cold and my fingertips tingled as all the blood seemed to rush away from my head. “Are you serious? Oh my God, Ian. But I couldn’t ask you to . . . ”
Naughty Brits: An Anthology Page 26