Harlequin Desire January 2021--Box Set 1 of 2

by Maisey Yates

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Nina checked her phone to better give the impression that she was fine and everything was good. There were a few social media alerts, but she ignored them.

  “If it’s so comfortable, what’s the problem?”

  “I’m not putting you out of your bedroom. And that’s that.”

  “Why not?” He poured her a glass of water then riffled through a leather case on the dresser for a bottle of Tylenol. “You have a stronger claim to it than I do.”

  “Yeah, but you’re paying for it,” she said. “You are paying for it, right, JL Knight?”

  He handed her the glass and two pills. She lifted her head off the pillow, but that was all she could manage.

  “Need an extra pillow, Goldie?” he said with a smirk. But seeing that she was truly struggling, he stepped forward and scooped the back of her head in his palm. “Lean on me,” he said. “Now open wide.” He dropped the pills in her mouth, and Nina wondered why her imagination was running wild with those two simple commands. He held the glass to her lips. “Swallow.”

  When he lowered her onto the pillows, there was no question where she was spending the night.

  He ordered food: mint tea for her, a veggie burger for him and extra fries for them to share. He hung up and looked at her intently. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “This is a lot of fuss. I fell into a pool. That’s all.”

  Her words did not seem to reach him. “Don’t get out of bed. I’ll open for room service when they get here.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “Don’t be difficult.” He left to take a shower, waving goodbye.

  As soon as the bathroom door shut behind him, Nina reached for her journal out of habit. A hotel logo pen was tucked in the pages. She chewed on the cap for a minute, then jotted the first thing that came to mind.

  Welcome to Rock Bottom! Hope you stay awhile.

  It killed her that she’d had to be rescued by JL Knight like some damsel in distress. How did she get to this place? She had not been herself these last few days. It was as if she were on an emotional roller coaster: throwing tantrums, sneaking into hotel rooms, crashing into statues and now this!

  She listened to the sounds of the shower. When Julian came out of the bathroom in a clean T-shirt and soft sweatpants, he looked fresh. She likely looked as bad as she felt, because he rushed over.

  “Oh, come on, love. Don’t do that.” He sat next to her and stroked a lock of hair away from her wet cheek. “Don’t cry.”

  Nina jerked away. His touch hadn’t startled her, but his words had. Was she crying? Julian recoiled from her in one smooth ripple of muscle. She caught him by the hand before he got away. “It’s okay. You startled me, that’s all.”

  He nodded but stayed quiet. She gave his hand a little squeeze. “Thanks for rescuing me and…stuff.”

  God knew she owed him a debt of gratitude for all the “stuff” she was too embarrassed to mention now.

  He shrugged. “Anyone would have done it.”

  “No one else did. Just you,” Nina said. “So, thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” His face remained impassive, but she caught a glint in his eyes. The room went warm. Nina fought the impulse to shed the plush robe as images of him half-naked on the coast of Italy flooded her mind. She blinked the images away as he went to sit at the far end of the bed, as far from her as he could manage without falling to the ground.

  “Listen, Julian, I have something to say, and it’s important.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I don’t want to have sex with you.”

  “You’re in good company,” he said. “The queue of women who don’t want to have sex with me goes around the block.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll get in line.”

  “And take a number,” he added. “I like to keep things orderly.”

  JL Knight was self-deprecating and funny. Why hadn’t any of this gotten into the Vanities article?

  “All this is to say, we can share this bed,” Nina said. “It’s as large as a continent. There’s room enough for the both of us.”

  “We could build a wall, line pillows from top to bottom?” he suggested.

  She nodded in agreement. “I’ve heard walls are super effective.”

  And they laughed like kids until room service arrived with the food. Julian prepared her tea and set up a tray with her fries—the only effective cure for drunkenness. Nina’s headache was dissipating. How could she feel bad when she was receiving such excellent care? Her eyes drifted up to the angels floating above. She’d drowned, died and gone to heaven. That was the only explanation that made sense.

  Julian dragged a wingback chair over to the bed and settled in to eat his burger. Between greedy bites, he explained that he’d been raised vegetarian. He only ate meat on occasion.

  “What’s your deal?” she asked. “Are you here to film a movie?”

  “That’s classified information, Nina Taylor.”

  “You don’t trust me,” she said. “Even now. After everything we’ve been through. I trust you with my life.”

  “That’s because you’ve seen me in action,” he said. “You know what I can do.”

  He had a point. “Here’s the thing—I don’t have the energy to keep up this tit for tat. I trust you…enough. Could we just be friends now?”

  “My friendship is a complicated thing.” He picked up his phone, scrolled for a bit and handed it to her. “I’ll show you what I mean.”

  Someone by the handle @TheAimlessDayTripper had posted a photo of her and Julian standing on the balcony, facing each other, gazing into each other’s eyes. Caption: Kiss Already! The post had 5,470 likes.

  She returned his phone. “That’s not so bad.”

  He tapped the screen and showed her a video of him lifting her out of the pool, water pouring off his back. Her face was buried in his chest, and for that she was grateful. Caption: #RescueMeJLK

  Nina passed him the phone with a nervous laugh. She couldn’t look at the photos or video without cringing. There was something about them, something indefinable. Everyone was picking up on it.

  Julian fell back into the chair and read her a tweet. “‘JLK sliced through the crowd, dived into the pool and emerged the hero cradling the drowning woman in his arms. #RescueMeJLK.’”

  Nina repeated the hashtag. “Like from that time you saved the cat!”

  He looked up at her from the screen, brows drawn in confusion. “What cat?”

  Nina stuffed her mouth with fries. She couldn’t answer that question without admitting that she’d googled him.

  “I didn’t rescue any cat,” he said. “Does that even sound like me?”

  “How would I know?” She reminded him, again, that they’d just met.

  “You keep reaching for that tired excuse.”

  “Anyway. There’s a picture of you returning some little girl’s cat.”

  “Wasabi? That old goat didn’t need saving.”

  He sounded genuinely offended on the cat’s behalf. Nina grabbed her phone off the bedside table and searched the hashtag. The video had been shared thousands of times. Someone posted a screenshot with the caption: She’s all long brown legs and dripping hair. I see you, girl!

  Nina’s cheeks were burning when she tossed her phone onto the mattress beside her. Great! She was a New York Times most notable author and a bona fide damsel in distress. Fun times!

  He got up and loaded their plates onto the room service tray table. Nina scooted out of bed and took her case of toiletries into the bathroom.

  “Hey, Nina,” he called after her.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m going to be the best friend you ever had.”

  Nina shut bathroom door with a flourish. Cute, clever and overconfident—not at
all her type.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Julian had hoped to keep a simple routine until things picked up. He planned on staying close to the hotel and out of the spotlight. He intended to fill his days with early workouts, late swims, light meals and hard liquor. But here was Nina, attention-grabbing Nina—a lightning rod of a woman—sleeping on the other side of a pillow partition, her face soft, her long, brown fingers clutching the blanket and strands of black hair stuck to her cheek.

  Typically, he was the guy who slipped out of a woman’s bed before dawn, so waking up next to Nina felt intimate. The kind of thing you did with a girlfriend. Not that this was a hookup—far from it. She’d made her position clear. There’d been no funny business. Instead, they stayed up swapping funny stories and laughing in the dark as fireworks burst over the mansion and cast a colorful glow through the windows.

  He’d made her admit to having looked him up. How else would she have found Rosie’s photo of him returning Wasabi? Even Kat had missed it, and she received Google alerts for even the slightest mention of his name. Julian had asked her what had drawn her to writing. She told him about the journals she’d kept since childhood. He recalled how she’d pried the red leather-bound notebook from his hand. Then she asked him to tell her about the time he worked as a valet at the hotel.

  “You remembered!” he said, teasing.

  “Oh! Just get on with it!”

  So he told her about the time that he’d spotted soap opera actor Tony Cash on the same balcony that he and Nina had stood on the night before. She recognized the name of the soap star. “He played a gambler on Set the World on Fire.”

  “That’s the one.”

  He had just started his shift when the actor stepped out to soak up the last rays of sun and the adulation of his fans pressing at the hotel gates. He flashed a smile, waved then turned his back on the growing crowd. Julian was then dispatched to retrieve a Land Rover and ran off with the key jangling in his pocket. Up until that point he had never considered acting. He was no artist. The summer he’d worked building sets for a local theater company in England had convinced him of that. But he was also convinced that the man on the hotel’s balcony wasn’t setting the world on fire with his acting abilities. If the bar was set that low, couldn’t he step over it?

  “How did you get your start?” she asked.

  “It wasn’t easy.”

  It took leaving Florida for California, sleeping in his car for weeks, forgoing expensive acting classes and attending cheap matinees instead, getting laughed out of auditions then slowly, eventually, receiving callbacks and an offer to play the recurring role of a paramedic on Riverside Rescue. It was something. It was a start.

  “Ah, Malcolm!” She twisted onto her side, facing him. “I loved him.”

  Pride sparked in Julian. “And he loved the ladies.”

  She laughed. “He sure did!”

  And they talked like that well into the night.

  Out of habit, he fumbled around for his phone to check the time, weather and news. The phone rang in his hand, rousing Nina from sleep. Julian fought the urge to reach over the pillow partition and soothe her. The last time he’d touched her without warning, she’d leaped out of her skin. She was a bit jumpy. He silenced the ringer but couldn’t ignore the call. It was Amelia Chin, longtime family friend and his former landlady for all of one week. He’d promised to take her to the orchid market in Homestead. Was that today? Crap! That was today!

  “Hey! Amelia! Good morning.” Nina squirmed next to him and disappeared under the bedspread. Amelia suggested he pick her up before ten to avoid traffic and heat and all the rest. “Sounds reasonable. What time is it now?” Nina slipped out of bed and tiptoed across the room to the bathroom. Did she think he was talking to another woman? He was, of course. But Amelia was old enough to be his grandmother. And it was precisely because she reminded him of his grandmother that he was taking her out flower shopping. “Eight thirty? I better get a move on, then. See you soon.”

  Julian kicked back the sheets and rushed to knock on the closed door between them. She opened almost immediately, her toothbrush in her mouth, something hard in her eyes.

  “What? No good morning?” he said, teasing. “I saved your life last night.”

  She pulled the toothbrush out of her mouth. Again, he had to fight the urge to wipe at the smudge of blue toothpaste on her lower lip. “You were on the phone. And how long are you going to keep that up?”

  “Until it gets old, and it hasn’t yet,” he said. “Want to go orchid shopping today?”

  She stared at him, confusion marking her sleep-creased face. But she didn’t say no.

  * * *

  Julian sent for his car and driver for the trip to Homestead. When it arrived, he waited in the back seat of the Escalade for Nina to come down. Pete, the driver, sat drumming the steering wheel, humming a tune, as the wait dragged on. Julian was just so relieved that she’d said yes that he didn’t mind. No question, this outing would be more fun with Nina. They never seemed to run out of things to talk about or, more accurately, to tease and taunt each other about. And the long trip to Homestead promised to be tedious. He loved Amelia, but shopping for orchids wasn’t his idea of a good time.

  Finally, the gates parted and Nina stepped out in a pair of denim shorts and a cotton halter top, sunglasses on top of her head. Both he and Pete reached for their door handles. “Not so fast,” Julian said, stopping him. “This is my job.” He sprang out of the black SUV and held the door open for Nina.

  “Sorry I kept you waiting. I don’t do well with last-minute invitations,” she said. “I’m not that spontaneous.”

  He helped her climb in, taking a moment to admire the curve of her bottom. She might not want to sleep with him. He could make no such assertion.

  “I gave up on you,” Julian said, sliding in next to her. “Pete here kept me going.”

  “Hi, Pete,” she said, tugging the seat belt across her torso. “I’m Nina.”

  “Good morning,” he said, and pushed the start engine button. Julian had previously given him the itinerary. They’d make one stop in the neighborhood of El Portal before heading south to Homestead.

  Nina arranged her tote bag on her lap then eyed him with suspicion. “Orchids, huh?”

  “Okay, you got me,” Julian said. “We’re location scouting.”

  She brightened at this. “For a film?”

  He nodded. “I need a clear field to land a helicopter. In the scene, I jump out and fight ten men. I take them all out, but a grenade detonates and the helicopter explodes, sending me, or my stunt double, flying. I haven’t committed to doing my own stunts this time around.”

  “Can’t you make a movie without explosives?”

  “And disappoint my dwindling fan base? Not on your life.”

  She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. Today she wore it wavy and loose and still a little damp. He caught a hint of her perfume and wanted to lean close, so he did the opposite, leaning back and folding his arms across his chest.

  “Your fans will evolve as you evolve.”

  “Aren’t you a fountain of wisdom this morning! You must have slept well.”

  “It’s the truth,” she said. “You deserve the truth.”

  “And so do you,” he said. “We’re going to Homestead to shop for orchids. And that’s all.”

  “Okay. But who with?” she asked.

  “You and your questions…” he said, mocking.

  “Look. I agreed to be your friend, not your wing person.”

  “Are you always so easily riled up?” he asked. “You really need to work on that.”

  She bit back a quick response. “You know what? You’re right. I’m on vacation. I need to chill.”

  “You’ve decided to stay.”

  “Might as well. What do I have to rush back to?”
/>   “Work,” he suggested.

  “No.” Her shoulders slumped low. “I’m on sabbatical.”

  He would have liked for her to say more, to open up about her life down to the nitty-gritty, but she clammed up.

  “I’ve been on sabbatical a year,” he said.

  “That long?” she said. “Is it liberating?”

  “It’s soul crushing.”

  “Oh.” Her eyes flooded with concern. She blinked a few times and offered him a crooked grin. “Breeding orchids is an interesting choice, but I support you.”

  “You mock me, but it’s a billion-dollar industry.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “Oh, yeah. Easy money.”

  Pete cleared his throat, reminding Julian that they were not alone—much as it felt that way. “Traffic is light. The destination is ten minutes away.”

  Nina leaned forward to ask Pete a question. “What’s ten minutes away?”

  He glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “It’s not for me to say.”

  “Smart man,” Julian said.

  “Are you here from California?” Pete asked Nina, expertly changing the subject.

  “No such luck,” Julian replied.

  “We can’t all be California girls,” Nina said with a sigh.

  They arrived at Amelia’s house. Pete pulled up to the curb. Nina turned to look out the window, studying the modest yellow house sitting on a generous lot.

  “We are at the home of my mother’s childhood friend Amelia Chin,” Julian said. “They grew up in Jamaica together. Amelia gave me a place to stay when I got off the plane from England and didn’t know a soul. So today I’m taking her orchid shopping.”

  Nina was now studying him. “Julian Knight! I could kiss you, that’s so sweet.”

  He could not stop a foolish grin from spreading. “Please do.”

  She punched him in the shoulder instead.

  “Before you think too highly of me, I’m only doing it for the food. She always cooks my favorite meals after I take her out. You’ll see. She’ll invite us in for lunch afterward.”

  “Now that makes sense,” she said, grinning.