I wasn’t a girl who let my guard down. I didn’t need a man in my life who encouraged that sort of vulnerability. When I had tried that once, the results had been devastating. I’d told myself never again.
But if you’re only flirting, why would it matter? that voice that insisted on coming out at the most inopportune times asked me.
Okay, maybe the voice was right. If we were only flirting, and we were only here for another day—I was due to fly out in the morning—what could it possibly matter if he made me feel all sorts of warm and fuzzy?
A moment later, I was rewarded by the sound of someone shuffling books together and getting out of their seat. Footsteps began to follow me, and those feet were obviously wearing big leather boots. Not exactly good for sneaking.
I allowed myself a smile of victory and carried forward into the restaurant, my stomach flipping with anticipation.
The restaurant was deserted, much like the hotel itself seemed to be, so the hostess gave me my choice of seats. I picked a booth up against the bank of windows, of course. It gave me a terrific view of the rain-soaked evening outside, and I just couldn’t get enough of the green of that jungle. Besides, didn’t everyone pick a booth when given a choice?
I slid into my seat, took the menu she offered me, and asked for a glass of rosé. The girl smiled very politely and said she’d bring a bottle.
Well. I wasn’t going to complain about that. Not like I had anything better to do, and it wouldn’t even matter if I was a bit hungover tomorrow. Plus, I could have a guest to share the bottle with me…
The moment she left with my drink order, Rian slipped into the seat on the other side of the booth.
“Please, make yourself comfortable,” I said, tipping my head and giving him a ghost of a grin. “And thank you. I just won a bet with myself that you were waiting for me in the lobby.”
He gave me a modest shrug and a quick deepening of the dimples. “What can I say? I don’t like eating by myself. I was waiting for a charming dinner partner to appear and save me.”
“So, now it’s my turn to save you, I suppose,” I said, nodding solemnly. “Makes sense. It’s my turn. You can call me…Charming Dinner Girl.”
He leaned in and did his best to look like a smoldering hero. “And I’m glad to see you here, Charming Dinner Girl. The name’s Anonymous Hero Guy, as I said before. You can call me Hero for short.”
I started laughing at that point, unable to continue the charade, and he quickly joined me, then gestured to my upturned wine glass.
“What are we drinking?”
“I’ve been promised an entire bottle of rosé to myself,” I told him pointedly. “So you’re on your own.”
He nodded firmly. “You’ve saved me already. All I need is for someone to catch me drinking a glass of rosé and for my manager to see it—or, even worse, the label. God, they’d string me up alive.”
Well, that was telling. I was starting to look at him in a whole new light.
“So, let me guess…beer? Preferably a good craft IPA, from a brewery local to…let’s see…I’m going to bet San Diego.”
He did finger guns at me. “You guessed it. I’m a beer guy, which I guess is probably cliché. And an IPA from one of the smaller breweries in San Diego happens to be one of my favorites. Though I doubt they’ll have it here.”
I arched an eyebrow at him while he motioned for the waitress. “So, you’re a rock star who is secretly a bookworm and a beer aficionado. Curiouser and curiouser. Tell me more about yourself, Anonymous Hero Guy.”
“Call me Hero,” he reminded me, projecting a dashing, smoldering face for a joking moment.
Then, he launched into who he was when he wasn’t playing sold-out arenas and pretending to be someone he wasn’t.
“Shhhhh!” Rian hissed, ruining his attempt at quieting me by giggling in the middle of the word.
“You shhhh!” I said—not whispered—back, laughing too.
I ducked down behind the cart of hotel goods we were currently rummaging through, looking for the good stuff.
“Found it!” I yelled, digging through the container full of shampoo, conditioner, and shower caps.
I didn’t think. I just yanked one of the caps out of the plastic wrapper, shoved it onto my head, and popped back up, too drunk to care what I looked like.
“I found the goods!” I hissed dramatically, raising my eyebrows and widening my eyes. I must have looked like a complete maniac.
Rian made the same exact face, like I’d just given him the best news he’d ever heard in his life, and dropped to his knees next to me, starting to rifle through the stuff.
“Get the lotion. It’s the best,” he said.
I cast a glance at him out of the corner of my eye. “You’re attached to the lotion from this specific hotel?” I asked doubtfully.
Grinning, he shrugged. “Well, no. I haven’t even used the lotion from this specific hotel. But it seems like that should be the most valuable stuff, right? I mean…lotion.”
I collapsed into a fit of giggles on the floor, and he quickly slapped his hand over my mouth to quiet me.
Then, his eyes met mine and we both froze. Suddenly my heart was having trouble beating normally, and I couldn’t breathe right. It must have been the wine. Yeah, that was it. Wine always made me overly amorous.
I bit down on my lip, doing everything in my power to keep from sticking my tongue out and swiping it slowly up his palm the way I wanted to, and seeing exactly where that would lead us. I avoided thinking about where I wanted it to lead us. I absolutely ignored the wet heat between my legs, where my body was telling me in unmistakable terms what I wanted right then.
What I could see he wanted, too. Because his eyes had turned from those of a boyish troublemaker to the molten hot eyes of a man who wants to take a woman to bed and do unspeakable things with her.
One quick flick of the tongue. That was all it would take to follow through on what my instincts told me we both wanted.
But then, we heard the ding of the elevator arriving on our floor. With a quick jerk, we both jumped to our feet and sprinted down the hall, thrown right back into mischief mode, the heavy moment with too many meanings left behind us with the cart from which we’d stolen stuff that we could have gotten for free.
Alexis
The next morning, I awoke to a phone call. Or rather, a missed call that had gone straight to voicemail. As per usual, my agent had refused to leave a message and had instead sent me approximately eighty-three texts, each of them one sentence long.
I hated when she did that. If she had something important to say that took that many words, she should have left a message that I could listen to, a few times if needed. Rather than sending me enough texts to make up a novel.
Once I started reading those texts, I got even more upset.
Sophie: We’ve got a problem.
Sophie: The airline I had you booked on is having some sort of big protest or something. A strike.
Sophie: They’ve canceled all their flights. Trying to get you on another.
Sophie: Doesn’t look like it’s going to happen for another couple days. The only other running flights are full.
Sophie: Looks like you’re stuck, for the time being. I’ll let you know as soon as I have an update.
Sophie: Sorry. I’ve extended your booking at the hotel. XOXOXO
Those were really the only important ones. The rest of the narration was about how Pierre had complained about my attitude and how I needed to focus on my career. I was getting older, moving toward the end of the natural lifetime of any model, I couldn’t afford to be making waves, etc., etc., etc. Typical Sophie dribble.
The woman annoyed the hell out of me with her nonstop nagging. She should have been my biggest cheerleader and was instead my nonstop critic. But she was also really great at getting me bookings and negotiating contracts. Maybe she used up all of her charm and nice words about me during those negotiations. Either way, I’d made a deal
with myself years ago to put up with her text messages in the interest of better contracts. And that included the lectures about how old I was getting.
I was only twenty-six.
Yes, I knew the industry liked younger girls. Hell, I’d had my big break at sixteen when one of the most up-and-coming designers around chose me out of hundreds of girls as its face of the season. I’d been working nonstop ever since—paid for all my grandma’s medical bills and was now doing pretty well for myself. I was one of the leading models in the industry, and I still got all the runway work I could want. Still booked major contracts for both clothes and makeup, alongside being the head model for one of the biggest lingerie brands on the planet.
But none of it was ever enough. No matter how good I was, no matter how much I’d perfected my craft and worked on those contacts and hustled to get the next gig, it was never enough. I was constantly in this race against time—and against the younger girls coming up. I was only twenty-six. Sure, I should have been facing a quarter-life crisis right around then, and a lot of people my age would be switching careers at that point, trying to find something that fit better than whatever they’d chosen right out of school.
I hadn’t chosen this first. Modeling had chosen me. Under the circumstances, I’d had to do it to help my grandma. After I’d paid for all her healthcare, I was into modeling deep and didn’t have any other skills to turn to. I’d missed being one of those college students with a degree to fall back on.
But very few of them would be facing retirement already, and the very real chance of being pushed out of the industry they’d bled and sweated and cried and dieted for since they were a kid.
I pushed that right out of my mind. First of all, it was way too early for that. I’d just woken up and hadn’t had a drop of coffee yet. Secondly, there was something a lot more important to deal with. The industry was nothing new, and those problems would still be there tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.
The problem for today was that, evidently, my trip had been lengthened. Not by choice, but by some crazy strike going on with the airline.
Terrific. That was just what I needed: more time spent in the jungle with almost no one there for company, and very little to tether me to the real world.
Although…
Now that I thought about it, I might just take that back. Given how crazy life had been lately, maybe more time in the jungle, with nothing to stress me out, was exactly what I needed.
I swung my legs out of bed, snorted at the fact that I’d managed to sleep with one of my shoes still on, and then remembered exactly why I’d only slept with one shoe.
It would have been two. But Rian had the other.
Rian
I almost threw my phone at the wall, and I’m not even kidding.
“What do you mean, there’s a strike?” I asked sharply. “Can’t you, I don’t know, just transfer my tickets over to another airline? Doesn’t the airline have ways to handle this sort of thing, like an agreement with another company that they’ll just take the people that are being deserted?”
John, my agent, gave me one of his long, dramatic pauses. “Unfortunately, kiddo, everything else is fully booked.”
I hated when he called me “kiddo.” I was twenty-nine, for God’s sake. Sure, maybe he was fifty-something and had a few decades on me when it came to this game called life, and for sure in the music business.
But I was not a kid. Not anymore. I’d been in the business for too long to still answer to that sort of name. I’d lost my innocence a long time ago. Somewhere around when my label decided it would look better for me to have a girlfriend, and forced me to start a fake romance with my bandmate, Haley. The girl that hadn’t even been in the band until the label had decided that it would look better for us to have a girl playing the bass.
Look, I didn’t have any problem with a girl being in the band or playing bass. Haley was mad talented, and we’d become a better band because of her. But you’re damn right I had a problem with the label injecting her into our band without even asking us—and then deciding that I had to pretend to be dating her, so that it looked like we were all one big, happy family.
Hell, they’d even come up with a backstory. I’d been dating her for some time, courtesy of someone introducing her to me as a talented musician. Once I’d fully realized how talented she was, I’d decided she deserved a chance. So I’d kicked our own bass player to the curb—despite the fact that we’d been childhood friends and had started the band together—and brought Haley in.
Ugh. Even now, years later, the whole thing made me feel like I was going to throw up. But there were more important things to be angry about right then. Like the fact that John was telling me I was stuck there.
“So what, you can’t book me on another flight? I don’t care about the money; just get me another ticket and we’ll write off the first one as a loss.”
Another long, dramatic pause, and this time, I actually took the phone from my ear, ready to really toss it.
Luckily for my phone, John’s voice came through on the speaker before I could do anything like that.
“The flights are all booked solid, kid. I’m sorry. I tried, believe me. This is the main airline that flies between China and the States—all the other ones are would make you go all the way around the world through Australia and Hawaii with brutal layovers. The soonest I can get you out of there is in two days, and it would take you that long to get home anyway on other flights. Until then, I’m afraid you’re on a forced vacation. I’ve already called the label and let them know, and the publicist is cooking up something about an extended vacation so you can prepare for the coming tour. Welcome to the jungle, and all that jazz. I’m sure they’ll put a great spin on it.”
“A great spin,” I answered wryly. “That’s terrific for them. And in the meantime, I’m trapped here with nothing to do and nowhere to go. You don’t know what it’s like here, dude. I mean, we’re seriously isolated. And it’s been dumping rain on us since yesterday at around mid-morning. The whole place is flooded.”
“I know, Rian, I’m sorry,” he said—sounding not sorry at all. “This is the best I can do. Hold it together, and I’ll get you out of there as quickly as possible. I’ll be in touch.”
And then the line went dead, John no doubt moving immediately on to some other client with some other drama. I knew the guy well enough to know that he was an expert when it came to compartmentalizing. He’d give a problem his full focus for as long as he needed to, and then move right on to something else, leaving the initial problem in the dust until he had to deal with it again.
He was part of the reason I’d become so jaded about the industry. Great agent, terrible customer service. He didn’t care if I was alive or dead as long as he could prop me up on a stage somewhere and collect his commission. Which was a damn shame. When I’d first entered the industry—when our band had first broken in—I’d really thought that an agent would be like a father figure. A mentor. Someone who would invite me over to his house for beers, barbeque, and football when I’d had a bad day.
Damn had I been stupid back then.
But…now that he was off the phone, and I was starting to let my brain function again, get past the anger and into the logic of it, I realized that I wasn’t as upset as I could have been. In fact, I was sort of relieved.
I was dead tired of the noise and drama of the music industry. All those cities. All those people. All the constant hubbub of it, the lack of privacy, the lack of me time. I knew that the industry had made me what I was, and that I couldn’t leave it. Not yet. Though I had plans to do so soon, I promised myself. But a forced vacation where the paparazzi couldn’t follow me, in the peace and quiet—well, quiet from human noise at least—of the jungle?
You know, it didn’t sound like the worst thing. I had my books, there was a decent restaurant in the hotel, and…
I glanced over at the corner of my room and saw a cherry red stiletto sitting there, and m
emories of the night before came rushing back.
If I was stuck here, I was betting Alexis was, too.
Yeah, getting stuck here was starting to look better and better, the more I thought about it.
Rian
I hauled ass down to breakfast, hoping to find the woman on my mind down there dining, but when I entered the restaurant, it was virtually empty. Evidently, the airline strike hadn’t brought any new hotel-stayers into the place, and that was just fine with me. I liked the quiet.
I liked that it meant I had a better chance of running into Alexis Taylor without other people around.
The sudden feeling of my pulse in my jeans told me that my brain wasn’t the only one who liked it, either. I let my mind run back to where we’d been last night, crouched down in the hallway like two teenagers who’d been hiding from our parents, and the sparks I’d felt when my hand came down over her mouth. The sparks that had been shooting from her eyes that told me that she was feeling the same exact thing. The sparks that had flown between us as we sat there, our eyes saying everything that our mouths hadn’t figured out yet, my hand pressing up against those full lips, her tongue mere inches from my palm…
A groan almost escaped my lips before I could stop it, and I pressed my lips together, forcing myself to breathe again. A quick review of my body told me that my heart was racing—thanks a lot, imagination—and my breath was coming quick.
“Sir, do you need a seat?” a voice suddenly asked from directly to my right.
I jerked and turned in that direction, forcing my thoughts into something that resembled the real world.
“Y-yes,” I stuttered, thankful that my voice came out somewhat normal, with how dry my mouth had become.
The hostess flicked her eyes over my shoulder and then back to my face. “Just one?”
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