Seeing her so smug left a bad taste in my mouth. I was good at ignoring the memories it brought back, but now I felt silly having worried about her for so long. She was obviously fine. As always. She didn’t need me. She’d never needed me.
My thumb hovered over the reply on the text. I could tell Joe to drop the investigation. Save myself money and frustration.
But Amber’s phone message. The safe word. And something else niggling at me – what was it? Something about the picture.
“Ms. Wayborn. Ms. Wayborn!”
I startled at the assistant’s prodding. Dammit, I was late for my cue. Dropping my phone in my pocket, I threw back my shoulders and put on a smile before accepting the envelope from the security rep and walking out to take my place on the stage. My knees were wobbling, but my face gave the impression of confidence. The energy surging from the audience applause told me they bought it.
That was the funny thing about smiles – if you flashed the right one, no one knew there was more going on inside. I couldn’t drop an investigation just because I’d seen one picture. There wasn’t enough information to know if it told an honest story. Amber appeared just fine. But she always knew which smile was right.
“Ty is such an asshole.” Chris’s voice was low, looking out over the party as he talked to me. “He knew he’d win that award. Not being here was his way of claiming superiority over everyone. He’s such an asshole.”
“Mm,” I sounded in agreement, sipping from my champagne glass, wishing I could have skipped the after party. Usually I did well with fancy occasions, but my mind was too knitted in Amber and the picture and the question of why it had left me so unsettled.
Chris Blakely didn’t need me to be on, at least. He was as near to a friend as I had these days, and lately we really only saw each other at show biz events. We’d met almost three years before on the shoot of a national commercial for dog food. The whole premise of the ad was ridiculous, but Chris had made the day fun and when it was over I’d let him take me home. Then I’d let him take me to bed. Sometimes after that too, when I’d been lonely and couldn’t stand it, I’d call him up and take advantage of the benefits he freely offered.
Besides Chris, I hadn’t been with a man in six years. Men were my drug. Staying away from them had been the only way I knew to stay clean. The only way to reinvent myself. Sleeping with Chris had even been a risk. I hadn’t learned until after he’d taken me that he wasn’t my drug of choice. Lucky for me.
Lucky for him, I still enjoyed an occasional romp in the hay.
Now, he had a fiancée and I had a hit TV show. Casual hookups were off the plate.
“You gave a good speech, though,” he said, referring to the acceptance spiel I’d delivered when Ty had, in fact, won the award I’d presented. “Much better than that shithead would have.”
“You’re just upset that he landed that role and you didn’t.” Was it shitty that I was glad for that? I had no relationship with the actors on NextGen. I could do my thing and go home. If Chris had been cast, it would have been harder to stay detached.
“Damn right, I’m upset. Doesn’t change that he’s a douche. I’d have done a better job and shown up to receive my accolades. You know what? I’m glad he didn’t show.” His eyes stroked down my body. “You looked much better giving that speech than he would have too.”
“Stop it. Megan’s just in the bathroom.”
He shrugged, not seeming to care that his future wife could potentially catch him ogling another woman. “You’re a wet dream, Em. I don’t mind telling you – when I’m not in the mood and Meg is, you’re my go-to fantasy.”
“God, Chris. Are you sure you aren’t the one who’s the asshole?” Amber’s philosophy had been that men would try to get under a skirt no matter what. “Might as well charge them for it.” I’d hoped she was simply jaded, but in the years that had passed without her, her point was made more than once.
I lived in Hollywood, though. That did qualify my experiences. The environment was only a step away from a whorehouse on so many levels.
As if to demonstrate my thoughts, Chris leaned in close, whispering in my ear, “Can’t help it. You inspire the naughty. You’re that kind of beautiful.”
I groaned inwardly as I pushed him away. I’d gotten it my whole life. I’d exploited it, even. But I’d gained some self-esteem in recent years and now the comments and the looks rubbed me in ways they hadn’t before. It was shitty to be valued for genetics. It was shitty to be treated as though it were my fault men were horny pigs.
You sure didn’t seem to mind it when the remarks and heated glances came from Reeve. The chiding voice in my head sounded more like Amber’s than my own. Which made it a hell of a lot easier to tell it to fuck off.
Chris read the disgust on my face. “Too much?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry. I’ll behave.” He studied me, without any sign of desire this time. “Seriously, though, how are you? I was disappointed when you didn’t come to our New Year’s get-together.”
“It would have been weird.” When he started to refute, I added, “Besides, I was out of town.”
“Nice. Where did you go?”
And now I regretted the admission. Because now I had to tell him. “Just to the Sallis Resort in Palm Springs.” And now I was thinking about Reeve, an ache settling low in my stomach. Lower.
“God, I haven’t been there in ages.”
“You’ve been, then?” It was meant as small talk. Easy words that didn’t require much focus.
“I used to spend a lot of time there. With Missy.”
Required or not, he had my attention. “Missy? Mataya? I didn’t realize you knew her.”
“You didn’t? I guess that was before I met you. I did some modeling gigs with her when she was starting out. We hit it off and stayed close right up until she died.”
“She started out at fifteen. Oh, my God. You could have been her father!” Not that I hadn’t slept with my share of older men.
“I wasn’t banging her.” His eye twinkled with a wicked gleam. “Well. Not regularly, anyway.”
I shook my head. Honestly, I couldn’t have cared less if he’d been fucking a teenager or not. What I did care about was what Chris might be able to tell me. If they were friends when she died, if Chris had visited her at the Palm Springs resort, did he have any insight into her death?
I was still searching for the best way to ask when he said, “Look, it was back in my cokehead days. I was a mess back then. So was she for that matter. But shh about Missy, because there’s Megan, and I don’t like her knowing much about that part of my life.”
I made a mental note to call Chris sometime for coffee and gossip without his significant other and turned my focus to my greeting. “Megan,” I said, maybe too brightly. “I absolutely love your dress. It’s Terani, isn’t it?”
“Thank you, Emily.” Her voice rang with possession. Her carriage was guarded. Although we were the same height, she peered down at me. “And you – don’t you look… cute… with those pockets.”
The only thing shittier than the way men treated a pretty woman was the way women did. More often than not, the catty remarks and jealous eyes made me want to show how easily I could steal their men if I wanted to.
I swallowed against the desire to be malicious. “You’re too kind. I went for comfort. I figured no one would notice me anyway.” Okay, I was a little snarky after all. Because people noticed me. They always noticed me. “But don’t let me interrupt your evening. It was good seeing you, Chris.” I leaned in and gave him the faux hug that was popular in my crowd. That was spiteful too. While it played as genuine, the contact was only to irk Megan. I nodded to her. “Next time.”
I glanced at the clock on my phone. It hadn’t even been an hour since the party had started and I’d promised my agent at least two hours of “presence.” When I’d protested, he’d said, “Everyone assumes you’re ugly. If you want your next role to be more than a voiceover
, you have to show them that you’re not.”
But a scan over the Shrine Expo Hall told me that his plan was pointless. There were at least a couple thousand people in front of me – all of them trying to show that they weren’t ugly too. A flood of inadequacy poured over me, a feeling of I-don’t-belong, but if not here, then where?
The room began to close in around me, blanketing me with acute heaviness. I drained my champagne in one swallow then set it on a waiter’s tray as I pushed through the crowd and out to the overflow area that had been set up in the parking lot. Once the chill night breeze hit me, I gasped in a deep breath, swallowing the air in long gulps, as though I’d been underwater and had finally reached the surface.
With Amber, I’d been a glorified hooker. In Hollywood, wasn’t I pretty much the same thing? I’d simply left one bed to move to another. I chuckled at the paradox. It deserved a laugh, at least.
Footsteps sounded behind me, and I stifled the last bit of humor threatening to escape. Without looking over my shoulder, I felt the air change. The hair at the back of my neck bristled and the sting of electricity huddled around me.
I turned, somehow knowing what I’d find – who I’d find.
He leaned against the concrete doorframe watching me with eyes that pinned me in my place. He was captivating and magnificent, his tux fitting him better than clothing had the right to fit a person, better than any one of the pretty men that filled the room beyond him. Those men, my peers, they were a sea of beautiful – calm and serene. Reeve was the ocean, dark and commanding and turbulent. They moved in gentle waves. Reeve stood still and set the world crashing around him.
That easily, the breath I’d just managed to get under control was knocked from my lungs.
He spoke before I could regain my composure. “What a coincidence that you’d be at the same event that I’m at.”
The boldness of his accusation shocked me into response. “I’m not following you, if that’s what you’re insinuating.” My pulse fluttered in fear, in excitement. In irritation. I didn’t like the way he agitated me. Maybe I’d deserved it at his resort, but this? This was my turf.
With a surprising display of fierceness, I locked my eyes to his. “I’m the one who belongs at this event. Not you.”
He laughed and the sound of it fueled my indignation. It also sent heat rushing up my thighs, heat that turned my rage inward as well as out.
Hands in his pockets, Reeve stepped toward me. “Calm down, Emily. I was only teasing. Of course you aren’t here because of me. Perhaps I’m here because of you.” He paused long enough for panic to jolt through me with reminders of the ominous words he’d delivered to me the last time we’d seen each other. “Perhaps this time I’m the one who’s examining.”
My anger stepped up another notch, overwhelming my unease. “Examining me? Like, why – to scare me? To see if I’m as fun to mess with when you’re outside the home field? How dare you? Come here, into my world, and prod at me just because you feel like it. Proceed to make it your playground. How dare you?”
His lip curved into a chiding smile. “Now you know how I felt.”
I refused to acknowledge my humiliation, though the flush that swept down my neck more than likely gave it away. “Thank you for the lesson, Mr. Sallis,” I said, my voice surprisingly steady. “I assure you that I have more than gotten the point. You won’t be having to give me any further demonstrations.” I started toward the venue doors, praying I could manage the walk. High heels and weak knees did not make for a good combination.
I circled widely around him, wanting to keep as much distance between us as possible. But I could still feel the warmth pulsating off him like the driving beat of a dance club. It trembled through me, coming up from the ground, shaking me, gripping me. I fought through it, forced myself past him.
“Emily.” His address caught me midstride. Five more feet and I’d be back in the Expo. Just a few more steps…
I couldn’t help myself – I stayed. I didn’t turn toward him, though. That was my single act of restraint.
“What I did to you at the spa—” His voice was silk and stubble all at once. The texture of the sound, as much as the mention of the spa, was bait on a hook. I practically leaned into his next words. “It wasn’t very nice.”
I spun toward him. “You think?”
“I like my privacy. I was mad.” It wasn’t an explanation so much as it was a reminder. You provoked me, he was saying. You deserved it.
“So you made me think you wanted to kill me?” Admittedly, I had earned his admonishment. I hadn’t earned a death threat.
“Eh. I never said I wanted —”
I cut him off with a point of my finger. “You did. In every way you could without the specific words.”
He opened his mouth as if to defend himself further. Then his expression changed, his features darkened, his eyes gleamed. “Did it scare you?”
“What do you think?” A shiver ran down my spine. He knew he’d scared me. It had been his intent to rile me up, make me afraid. What I hadn’t realized was how much he liked that he had.
He moved closer. “But did it scare you enough?” His voice was sandpaper – abrasive, rough, yet it smoothed away a layer of my desire to run. “It didn’t, did it?”
I wanted to say yes. It was almost true, after all. His last speech had made me leave his resort. He’d frightened me away. I’d abandoned my plan.
But I had regrets. I’d convinced myself they were entirely because of Amber, but that was a lie. He’d intrigued me. I hadn’t stopped thinking about him, and now, even as he towered over me, even as he pressed in closer, even as he set a tornado of trepidation spinning in my gut, I didn’t leave. I didn’t want to leave.
He considered me for several seconds, his head cocked, his eyes narrowed. The heat pulsing off of him was even hotter when he faced me straight on like this, his stare searing through me. And just like sitting in front of a blazing fire, it was pleasant yet intense. Too intense.
Still, I didn’t leave.
“Should I tell you what I think, Emily?”
Walk away. “Actually, I don’t really give a fuck.” I tried to pretend I wasn’t completely hypnotized, but even I could hear the failed pretense in my tone.
“See, but I think you do. You came looking for me first, remember?”
“Then you told me to go. And I did. Now who’s doing the looking?”
Reeve reached his hand out and toyed with a loose tendril of my hair. “I’m going to tell you what I think, Emily.” His fingers kept me mesmerized as he rolled the strand between them, his pull gentle, so gentle. “I think you liked it. I think you liked being scared.”
Each word was like the tickle of a feather against sensitive skin, making me itch and squirm under the graze of their truth. I wanted to pull away. Yet I also yearned for an increase in pressure, ached for his fingers to tug, hungered for his words to turn hard or for his mouth to stop talking all together and crash against mine instead.
“I think it turned you on.”
My gaze flew up to meet his. “You mean like it turned you on to threaten me?”
He dropped his hand. Darkness crossed his eyes, and I suspected he was angry that I dared to challenge him. Or angry that I knew something so personal about him. Or maybe angry because it was honest, and maybe that pissed him off as much as his truth afflicted me.
Or maybe it wasn’t anger at all but something else, something more primal and raw and base. Slowly, he smiled. “I can’t deny that it turned me on.”
The tension between us stretched taut. We shared that. However not-very-nice his demonstration, however sick and twisted it had been – we’d both been aroused. And now that we’d both acknowledged it, the dynamic between us changed. Now the door was open. Now one of us just had to walk through it.
Reeve was the one to cross the threshold. He reached out and took my hand in his and caressed his thumb across my knuckles. Goose bumps took perch along my skin as his t
ouch sent electricity shooting up my arm and down to my core.
“Look” – he fixated on our hands – “I’m not going to tell you that I would never hurt you.”
Alarm skidded through my nerves with a delicious thrill, rousing my want, heightening my desire.
“Besides, I don’t think that’s something you’d want to hear from your lover.”
“Lover?” The term caught me off guard. It also brought me to my senses. What the fuck was I doing? I pulled my hand from his and took a step back.
Reeve’s expression gave nothing away. “What exactly did you think we were talking about?”
I hadn’t been thinking at all. That was the problem. There was a pull between us – that much was obvious. I’d meant to take advantage of that when I was using him to find Amber. If I had a reason to still believe he was involved in her disappearance, this would be a victory. But now there was no reason to pursue him. There was no reason to involve myself with a man who was at the very least dangerous if not also a killer.
Yet I still wanted him. “I don’t know, Reeve. Because you do a lot of talking, and all I hear are mixed messages.”
“I’m unmixing them now. Listen. This is the one I want you to hear.”
And what exactly was it he was saying? That he wanted to take me into his bed? That he wanted to scare me and possibly hurt me and I was supposed to be okay with that?
The horrible part was that I was okay with it. But to what end? It had been men like him that I’d run away from all those years ago. Because, even though I desired them, I knew they weren’t good for me. I knew that I didn’t have the capability of determining how much pain, how much fear was too much.
What was it that Reeve had said to me at his spa? “The problem with men who are actually a threat is that you don’t ever find out how unsafe they are until it’s too late.”
It was a wise warning.
He was waiting for me to respond, his eyes questioning.
“I hear you,” I said. Then with effort, I shook my head. “Your last message was louder.”
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