by Cat Johnson
He lifted a brow. “I figured you didn’t know by the look on your face when he walked in and told us. You’re not that good of an actress.”
Sierra frowned at the insult.
Howard continued, “But if I were you, I’d seriously consider the fact that he didn’t bother to tell you that he might have destroyed your movie because he thought you were sleeping with your co-star.”
An insult and now relationship advice? That was rich coming from a man on his fourth marriage.
Even if his point was valid, it wasn’t welcome, so Sierra didn’t acknowledge it. “Text me when we’re ready to shoot.”
Without waiting for a reply she stepped outside into the light and slammed the door behind her. She was done with Howard and his comments.
Time to confront Rick. They had a lot to talk about.
CHAPTER 6
“You didn’t have to do that. Take the fall.” In the bright light of outdoors, the bruising on Jamey’s face was more prominent. More visible.
Rick hoped that make-up girl was good at her job because over the next few days, that bruise was only going to get even more colorful.
He shook his head. “Yeah, I did. It was my fault. He needed to know that.”
“But I could have smoothed it over—” Jamey began.
“Listen, kid. You’re playing a SEAL so you should know this. At the core of being a good Navy SEAL is knowing the right action and taking the right action. A good SEAL seeks and accepts responsibility for his own actions every fucking time, no matter what.”
Jamey tipped his head. “So that’s why you confessed.”
Rick nodded. “That’s why.”
The kid looked bowled over. As if Rick had just delivered the secret to the universe.
Finally, he recovered enough to say, “At least Howard looked like he took it pretty well. I mean yeah, at first he threw you off the set, but now he’s letting you stay around and consult.”
Jamey’s exuberance over Rick’s being allowed to stay on the lot was palpable. He wished he could be as enthusiastic over his probationary status.
“I’m allowed to stay for now,” Rick said.
He had experience both in and out of the military with people who asked for his opinion but didn’t really want to hear what he had to say.
Rick could tell the director what was wrong with his movie, but he wasn’t sure he’d like it, or do anything to correct it.
He was glad of one thing though—being allowed to stay on set meant he also got to remain near Sierra. That was good for many reasons . . .
Although maybe not so good right now. She’d come out of the door and was walking toward them. He could see she was fuming as she strutted toward him.
“What the hell, Rick?” She hadn’t even reached them yet and she was already yelling at him.
“Uh, oh. She’s mad.” Jamey glanced sideways at Rick.
“Yup.” Drawing in a deep breath he braced himself for the rampage.
He had it coming. He’d fucked up in a major way and now he had to face the consequences.
Good thing they had a suite. He had a feeling he might be sleeping on the sofa again tonight and this time not by choice.
“You thought I was cheating on you? With Jamey?”
“But it’s really not his fault. You see he overheard me on the phone—” Sierra’s deadly glare silenced Jamey’s explanation in defense of Rick.
Rick shot him a glance. “Thanks, bud, but I’ll handle this.”
Jamey nodded and hooked a thumb in the direction of the make-up trailer. “Yeah, um, okay. I’m just gonna go see about covering this up.”
“Good idea.” Rick nodded.
Poor kid. He wasn’t used to Sierra’s rage. Rick, on the other hand, kind of liked it.
She was a passionate woman, in anger as well as in bed. Some fucked up Pavlovian kind of thing inside him saw a connection between the two.
As her chest rose and fell as she huffed with barely contained fury, Rick envisioned backing her up against the nearest wall and fucking her breathless.
He and Sierra had been together for a while and this wasn’t their first fight. He knew her.
She was going to have to get out her rant. Only after she was done would she even hear what he had to say, so he widened his stance, folded his arms and settled in to wait until she was ready to listen to his apology.
Now that they were face to face, she laid into him.
She kept her voice down but there was no doubt people knew she was unhappy. That was obvious by the wide berth anyone passing by gave them, along with some interested glances before they pretended to look elsewhere.
Unhappy. Talk about an understatement.
She was fucking pissed is what she was and Rick did his best to control his burgeoning hard-on as she went on and on.
“Are you even listening to me?” she asked, taking a step closer.
Busted. He had been but she’d circled back to the same points three times about how irresponsible he was and how this could harm her career and how could he ever think she’d cheat on him—he’d heard it all the first time so he’d kind of zoned out.
“I’m listening.”
“Then why don’t you look like it?” she accused.
Because she was the academy award winning actor and he wasn’t?
Rick kept that thought to himself. “Because there is nothing you can say that I haven’t already thought and agonized over. I’ve beat myself up since last night and it didn’t help or change a thing. The best thing I can do is help get this production back on track and try to minimize the damage I caused.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, a doubt-filled expression shading her oh-so-expressive features. “And how are you going to do that?”
“Actually, I have a couple of ideas.” He honestly did. It had been one of the things he’d been thinking about—besides stripping her naked and pounding into her—while he hadn’t been listening to Sierra.
She quirked up one pretty eyebrow. “Well, you’d better hope whatever you’ve cooked up works or this movie, and possibly my career too, are fucked.”
God, he loved when she cussed. He somehow controlled the smile that threatened to emerge when she dropped the F-bomb and said, “I’ll make it work.”
He’d been well trained. Taught that if plan A doesn’t work, than you’d better have a plan B, and then a C, because failure was not an option. He was a damn Tier One operator, for God’s sake.
After all that he’d encountered in his decade in the SEALs, if he couldn’t solve this problem then he should turn in his trident.
Sierra should realize that. She’d known him for long enough. Had seen first hand how he didn’t give up easily on something that was important to him. And this was. She was.
Judging by her expression, he was going to have to prove that.
He was about to elaborate on his plan—preliminary though it was—when his cell vibrated in his pocket.
“Shit. Hang on. It could be the guys.” In spite of her scowl at the interruption, Rick pulled the cell out of his pocket and glanced at the display. It was Jon calling.
“Hello.”
“Hey, man. We’re at the gate and they won’t let us in.”
“Yeah. I know. I didn’t have time to put you on the list. Hang on. I’ll be right there to get you.”
“All right. We’ll be here.”
Rick lowered the phone as the call disconnected. “Jon and Zane are here.”
“Howard’s letting you stay on as my security—unless you fuck up again. We don’t need your friends.” Sierra scowled.
“Actually, we might.”
“Why?” she asked.
“All part of my plan.” He smiled. She did not.
“What plan?”
“The plan to fix this.” And he wouldn’t rest until he did just that.
She blew out a breath. “All right. Go do what you want. You will anyway.”
Her final words, mutte
red as she turned away from him, had Rick reaching out and grabbing her arm. “Hey.”
“What?” She finally raised her gaze to meet his.
So many words were on the tip of his tongue. That he loved her. That they were going to be okay. That he’d fix this.
The words stayed right where they were—unspoken. Instead he reached out and pulled her close with one hand on the back of her neck.
He pressed a hard deep kiss to her mouth. A kiss he took deeper when he angled his head and thrust his tongue between her lips.
She kissed him back, in spite of the shocked expression he saw on her face when he pulled back.
“I thought we were keeping us quiet,” she said, glancing around them to see who’d seen.
He let out a laugh. “Yeah, well, I think the jig is up on that. I’m going to go get them at the gate.”
Looking a whole lot softer, less hard, less angry than she had before that kiss, Sierra nodded. “Okay.”
Rick would have to remember that. Next fight, instead of talking, he’d just kiss her. It sounded like a good plan to him.
Now on to his other plan. The one that he hoped would save this movie. And his ass.
CHAPTER 7
Rick couldn’t help but smile when he saw the achingly familiar figures of his friends waiting for him at the gate.
He’d been away from home, from them, for too long. Seeing them again, here, reminded him of that. He was and always had been an east coast guy . . . or he had been until Sierra entered his life.
His friends were in their typical poses. Jon was leaning against the bumper of the SUV, arms crossed as he visually surveyed his surroundings through the mirrored lenses of his sunglasses. The difference was instead of searching the horizon for the enemy, now the only thing he’d find is the rolling hills of Hollywood in the distance.
Conversely, Zane’s head was down as he scrolled through his cell phone, though Rick supposed now that Zane was married he wasn’t reading texts from his harem of girls like he would have been years ago.
Rick passed the guard at the gate with a quick nod and moved directly to his teammates.
Smiling, he strode forward. “Damn, I’ve missed your ugly faces.”
“No more than we’ve missed yours.” Jon slapped Rick on the back.
Zane put his phone down long enough to extend a hand to Rick. “Dude. Good seeing you again.”
“You too. How’s married life?” Rick asked Zane.
“Good. You should try it.”
Pfft. If he and Sierra made it through the current cluster fuck he might think about it. Rick kept that to himself and deflected the conversation. “So how’s things at home?”
“Your sister is spoiling the hell out of my kid.” Jon smiled.
“No surprise there.” Rick laughed. Darci loved kids. “The only surprise is that she isn’t having one of her own yet.”
Jon smiled. “Not for lack of trying, knowing Chris.”
Zane, back on his phone, let out a snort of a laugh at Jon’s joke. Rick however didn’t find it amusing.
Appalled, Rick shook his head. “Dude. No. That’s my sister and my friend you’re talking about. TMI.”
Jon rolled his eyes. “Whatever. They’re married now so get used to it. Anyway . . .” Jon tipped his head toward the lot and the gate they had yet to pass through. “What’s happening here? What’s going on that you need our guys for security?”
So much had happened in the past twelve hours, Rick didn’t know how to explain it all. But he knew he did have to start with an apology.
“Yeah, about that. I’m sorry you came all the way here from San Diego to meet with me, but it looks like I won’t need your help. At least not with that particular situation.”
“No worries. We were heading this way anyway. We have a meeting at Port Hueneme early tomorrow, then we figured we could grab a red-eye out of LAX.”
“Hueneme,” Rick repeated, intrigued why the guys would be there having meetings. “That sounds interesting.”
“It is. Very. And if you weren’t all tied up here you might have been a part of it.” The smirk on Zane’s face told Rick he was being teased.
Jon laughed. “You’re trying to make him envious of us? Look around you. He gets to spend all day surrounded by this.” Jon swung an arm to indicate what was just beyond the gate.
It was surreal. Hollywood had a version of reality all its own. The movie lot was a microcosm of that. Things looked real enough if you didn’t look too hard past the surface to find it was all fake.
But just the mechanics of it was fascinating to an outsider. At least it had been too Rick his first few times on the lot as Sierra’s full time security. After they’d found her stalker and he didn’t have to be on alert and on watch for snipers, that is.
Golf carts zipping between pedestrians, some transporting Hollywood A-listers. Gorgeous women. The occasional horse or camel. Costumes and vehicles from every era . . .
How so many people, working on so many different projects and spending such ungodly amounts of money could all occupy and function within the fenced confines of the same space was mind-boggling.
That aspect reminded Rick a bit of a military base in a warped, alternate reality kind of way.
Yet none of it made him stop missing his friends or the old days in the teams . . . Which brought him to his idea.
“There is something I want to talk to you about though. Something you might have some insight on.”
“Sure.” Jon tipped his dark head. “Shoot.”
Zane lifted his chin and glanced toward the gate and guardhouse. “We gonna do this standing here or head out for a drink somewhere? Looks like this place is harder to get into than the base.”
Rick laughed. “It can be. But don’t worry. For now, I still have the power to get you onto the lot and we can have a drink.”
Sierra didn’t have booze in her trailer, at least nothing he and the guys would drink since he didn’t count pink wine as booze, but he knew Jamey did.
He also knew the kid would gladly serve it up if it meant meeting some more real life SEALs. But more than that, he needed a copy of the script. More than one if he could get his hands on them—one for each of them.
Their collective brainpower might be the only way to figure out this mess.
It had worked before in far more critical situations. Times when it was their lives on the line rather than just a couple of hundred thousand dollars.
Christ. He couldn’t even think about that large of a sum without having heart palpitations.
Turning to Jon and Zane he said, “Come on. We can drive through with my ID.”
Time to get this show on the road—literally.
CHAPTER 8
Sierra had watched Jeannie perform magic in the past.
She was like Rembrandt but she worked in makeup rather than paint.
Her canvases had included some of this generations most famous actors . . . but even Jeannie was no match for the destruction Rick had wrought on Jamey’s face with one punch.
On some level Sierra knew that the fact Rick could do such damage with his bare hands should scare the shit out of her.
It didn’t. She knew he’d never lay a hand on her.
Apparently her co-star was another story.
She drew in a breath and let it out in a loud angry huff.
Airbrush in hand, Jeannie cut her dark brown gaze sideways. “I’m not done yet.”
“It’s not going to help.” Sierra scowled.
Professional makeup might cover the discoloration, but that swelling . . . Nope. No way.
Jeannie let out a humph. “Oh, ye of little faith.”
It wasn’t just faith in Jeannie that Sierra was lacking at the moment.
It was faith in Rick. Their relationship. Their future.
She loved him. But if he didn’t trust her after all these years, what future could they have? She wasn’t going to live in fear of the next time he went into a jealous rage.<
br />
The next guy might not be so understanding. Then there’d be lawsuits and media scandal . . .
“Stop.” Jamey’s single word command brought her head up.
Sierra noticed his gaze on her in the mirror. “Stop what?”
“Stop blaming Rick. It wasn’t his fault.”
“I beg to differ. So would Jeannie I’m sure, since Rick has made her job a thousand times harder for the next couple of weeks.”
“Don’t bring me into this. I love a good challenge. It’s been too long since I had to do anything besides make beautiful people look more beautiful. Give me a good zombie movie and I’m a happy girl.”
Sierra rolled her eyes. Jeannie might have a soft spot for Rick, but right now, Sierra didn’t share it.
Jamey turned in the chair to face her. “I want to tell you exactly what happened.”
“Fine. I’ll listen. But turn back around and let Jeannie finish her job.”
He nodded and let Jeannie spin the chair. “So I was on the cell phone. I don’t remember the exact words I used but all Rick heard me say was something like she’s a sweet ride and that I was going to take her for another spin and make her mine. I didn’t care who she belonged to.”
That did sound pretty bad and confusing.
Sierra frowned. “Who were you talking about?”
“A vintage motorcycle I’m trying to buy.”
She rolled her eyes. Men were weird. All of them. “That still doesn’t justify what Rick did. You never said my name, right?”
“No, but—”
“There’s no but. He jumped to conclusions. Irrational, ridiculous conclusions.” That part was bad enough, but then he went and punched Jamey rather than talking it out with her or him. It was all too much. “He’s possibly set this movie back by weeks.”
“Maybe not.” Rick’s deep voice behind her had Sierra spinning toward the door.
She had to admit, he did look contrite standing there in the doorway and looking too big for the small space.
Gone was his usual confident cockiness. In its place was an expression of remorse mingled with determination.