by Alexa Davis
Maybe I should have refused the money, it was never supposed to be about that, but if Vivian was being difficult with me, then it could be forever until I got a job again. I needed to build up my nest egg if I could. In any way possible.
“Yes,” I heard myself say. “Yes, I will come.”
Chapter Thirteen
Adam
Saturday
I felt my pride shrivel up into a bubble as I pulled up my car outside Lindsey’s home once more. I had been determined that I wouldn’t get involved with her again – as soon as she made that too close to home comment, I thought I would never want to see her again. Yet here I was, ready to pick her up for a barbecue, just because my mother liked her.
What is wrong with me? I thought angrily to myself as I grabbed out my cell phone to text her. I wasn’t about to fight with that weird intercom system again. I cannot believe I’m doing this with absolutely no control this time. I wasn’t sure what Lindsey was going to wear, I hadn’t prepared her for what questions might fly her way now at this much more relaxed event, and I didn’t know what was going to happen.
Maybe I should have stayed away. Probably, we both shouldn’t be about to set foot into the lion’s den. Who knew how torn up we would be when we finally left that place again.
‘Hi Lindsey, I’m outside. Adam’
My eyes traveled up as if a magnetic force was pulling them at the exact moment Lindsey set foot outside her apartment block. Immediately, my heart flew up into my throat, I could hardly believe it.
Sure, this was no Oscar de la Renta ball gown, but it didn’t have to be. She was wearing clothes that fit her so closely that they could have been designer, even though I was pretty sure that they weren’t. A red fitted top that clung to her like glue, showing off her sexy, slim frame, and skinny jeans that molded round her frame delicately. Maybe my family would now know for sure that she didn’t come from the same money as me, but she looked so beautiful it hardly mattered. Her long blonde hair fell past her face and down her shoulders, framing her features well. In particular, her gorgeous dark blue eyes popped from her head. She looked damn gorgeous.
So gorgeous that I forgot about the comment from the other night. It gave us a fresh start. “Wow, Lindsey, you look good,” I gasped before getting hold of myself. I coughed awkwardly and stuffed my hands into my trouser pockets. “I mean, thank you for coming at such short notice.”
She smiled, blushed herself probably matching my coloring right now and glanced down critically at her outfit. “Are you sure I look alright? I don’t feel as dressed up as you.”
I only had a shirt and dress pants on, nothing fancy so I shook my head and indicated towards the car. “No, not at all. You look wonderful. Step in.”
This time as she slid into the seat next to me, I grabbed the check right away and handed it to her. I wanted to get all the awkward money stuff right away. For a moment I saw her hesitate. I expected her to put up a bit of a fight, but obviously financial need got the better of her because she took it gently from my fingers and slipped it into her bag.
I could barely talk on the drive over to my parents’ home. I felt far too anxious and uncomfortable. I didn’t like dragging Lindsey into this mess again, even if it was only for money. At least there was no emotional attachment going on, that would have been much harder to deal with. Max might think I’m ready to settle down, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m still too happy just doing me.
Although… I couldn’t resist, my eyes sidled to one side and I took in Lindsey’s appearance without her looking back at me. She was undeniably beautiful in a sweet and understated way. Maybe if there was any thought about me settling down it would be with her, but I couldn’t start thinking down that dangerous path just because I thought she was pretty. I mean, we didn’t even know each other well, aside from a few random facts about our lives. I wasn’t even sure that we liked one another, and there certainly didn’t seem to be any chemistry at all… I didn’t think.
By the time we pulled up outside the house and stepped out into the backyard where all the guests were gathered, I was so wrapped up in that line of thought that I didn’t even notice what was happening until it was too late.
“Oh, Lindsey, Adam,” my mom’s warm tones made me happy, but feel guilt all at the same time. This wasn’t what she thought it was, and I felt horrible for tricking her. “I’m so glad you came. It’s wonderful to have you here.”
She embraced Lindsey, and they talked quietly to one another for just a moment, giving me a chance to scan my eyes over the pretentious idiots my father had invited for this event. An event to celebrate my idiot brother at that. Why the hell did I allow myself to get talked into something so damn stupid? I needed to start having my wits about me a bit more so it didn’t happen again. Why the hell did so many people want to gather for an outdoor barbecue in the middle of December? Sure, it was a nice day actually, there was a fairly warm winter sun, but still it was insane. What were they all getting out of it?
“Well, hello there.” I rolled my eyes to the back of my head when I heard his voice. “It’s good to see you, Adam. I’m so glad you could make it to my celebration.”
I gritted my teeth together and literally forced myself to turn with burning hate racing through my system. Brandon stood there with Helen in his arms, who was more than happy to act like the doting wife when he was the center of everyone’s attention. It made me sick.
“Good to see you, Brandon,” I almost spit out. I grabbed hold of Lindsey’s hand and pulling her away from my mother. I needed her, I couldn’t help myself. “You remember Lindsey, right?”
“Oh, yes.” He held out his hand to shake Lindsey’s, so did Helen. Even having them touch her brought out an angry protective beast inside of me that I didn’t even know was there. It roared loudly, tightening my chest and causing my breaths to come out short and shallow. “Pleased to meet you again, Lindsey. I’m so sorry that we didn’t get to spend much time together at my father’s meal, you know how those things are.”
Much to Lindsey’s credit, she kept full composure. I’m sure she could sense, just as I could, that my brother was like a rabid dog with a bone, but she didn’t let that bother her. She smiled and shrugged as if she wasn’t bothered, at all.
I glanced up over her head to see where Mom had gone, but she’d ben pulled to one side by Dad. I could tell that they were both in earshot though which only angered me further. Was this some sort of interrogation? And why? Did everyone somehow know that Lindsey wasn’t really my girlfriend after all?
To combat that thought, I threw one arm over her shoulder to hold her close as my heart thundered in my chest. A small part of me expected her to throw me off in shock, but she didn’t. She curled into my hug and laced her fingers through mine, making a united front.
“So, what is it that you do?” Brandon asked looking smarmier than normal. I narrowed my eyes at him but he didn’t seem to get the hint. “I presume you do more than my baby brother here.”
Fucker, I thought, almost spitting with rage, but Lindsey refused to let go of my fingers so I couldn’t pull away and do anything rash.
“Actually, I’m an actress,” she said with a sweet smile. Maybe if I wasn’t so full of anger that would have panicked me because it was too close to the truth of what she was to me, but my blood was throbbing in my ears, so I barely heard it. “Or I’m trying to be.”
Brandon stifled a nasty laugh which grated on my very last nerve. I balled up my free hand into a fist, ready to swing it right at him. “So, you haven’t been in anything I might have seen you in then?”
I glanced desperately over at my parents, praying for an intervention that was never going to come. My father looked like he was having a field day as Brandon took me down, and Mom looked like she was about to have an anxiety attack. This was all on me, and I was the only damn one who didn’t have any control over my emotions.
“No, probably not,” Lindsey replied, the strain wa
s starting to show in her voice. “I’ve done a lot of small scale stuff, not things you’ll have witnessed I’m sure.”
Helen snorted into her drink and rolled her eyes as if this was the funniest thing on the planet. I wasn’t sure what the fuck she had to be so gleeful about since she did nothing but live on her husband’s money. “An actress, classic,” she declared with pride.
“What do you mean?” I snapped, unable to keep it in any longer. I yanked my hand away and freed myself from Lindsey before taking a step forward. “What’s that supposed to mean, Helen?”
I could hear a hush fall over the crowd. Every eye was probably on me, but in that moment, I didn’t care. It was bad enough that my family spent my whole life putting me down, but to do it to my guest, my girlfriend as far as they were concerned, well that was something else. I couldn’t stand for it.
Brandon stepped in front of his wife, playing the protective role. “Watch it, buddy,” he muttered with his hand on my chest. He was acting as if I was about to hit Helen, which of course, wasn’t the truth. I just wanted her to explain herself. “I think Helen just means it’s a bit embarrassing, isn’t it?”
My eyes snapped over to him now, my nostrils flaring. It took every inch of self control that I possessed not to swing my balled fist around to connect it with his face. “What do you mean by that?” I demanded. Still no one else spoke, no one intervened.
He shrugged and smirked, knowing that was only going to piss me off more. “You’re dating an uneducated ‘aspiring actress.’” He actually dared to use finger quotes. “It’s just a bit…sad, isn’t it?”
That was it. I exploded. “Don’t you dare talk about Lindsey like that,” I growled while poking my finger hard into his chest. “You don’t know anything about her. She’s smart, cleverer than you, kind, sweet, beautiful.” I could feel myself going off on a tangent, but I just couldn’t care. “She’s genuine, too – not like your wife.”
All my muscles tensed in my whole body. I could feel myself about to react instinctively. Brandon could sense it, too, and he automatically took a step back away from me, showing weakness and fear. I wanted to, fuck did I want to, but I couldn’t. Not here, I just couldn’t. Plus what would be the point? It wouldn’t achieve a damn thing.
Instead, I needed to just go.
Chapter Fourteen
Lindsey
Saturday
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Adam grunted, much to my relief. As he held out his hand for me to take, relief flooded me completely. Every part of me had tensed up as I thought this nice family barbecue was about to turn into a fight…and all because of me. It was utterly unbelievable, I was supposed to help, not hinder! “Mom, we’re going. See you later.”
I shot Debbie a sorrowful look as the lavish garden and all the shocked faces within it faded away. I didn’t want to leave so suddenly when I was having such a nice time with her, especially since I was pretty sure that I’d been paid for way longer than under an hour, but I didn’t have any choice. Adam was dragging me away from his family home, so I just had to go.
She’s smart, cleverer than you, kind, sweet, beautiful.
Did he really think that I was beautiful? As those words circled my mind over and over again I wasn’t sure what to believe. He said them with such conviction that he appeared to really mean them, but maybe it was all just a part of the game. Maybe he was playing his role just as well as I was. Still I couldn’t stop the words from spinning and affecting me deeply.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered as soon as we were safely sat in his car and the engine was on. “That was my fault, right? I didn’t think that mentioning my job would cause such uproar.”
“It isn’t your fault,” Adam glowered as he pulled out onto the street. “It’s my family and their bullshit expectations of everyone. Honestly, you’d think that no one has ever struggled in their world. You’d think that everything was permanently hunky dory. You’d think…”
He trailed off shaking his head, but I noticed that his knuckles were white from where he was gripping the steering wheel too hard. Without even thinking about it, I reached across and rested my fingers on his to try and calm him down.
It wasn’t until he snapped his head around to stare at me in shock that I realized we were no longer in public and I didn’t have to play the girlfriend game anymore. I snatched my hand away and placed it into my lap as if it had been burned. It didn’t feel right there, though; I felt much better as I comforted him.
I twisted my neck and stared out the window as I tried to stop feeling so mixed up and crazy. I needed to remind myself that this was just an acting job, nothing more. Any emotional attachment I felt was all in my head, any meaning I lay onto Adam’s words was just me searching for something that wasn’t there. This was why so many co-stars fell in love. Sometimes it was hard to forget where the script ended and real life began…
“Erm…” It wasn’t until the car stopped that I realized I wasn’t at my home. Adam had pulled up outside his town house and parked up his car. “This isn’t-”
“Oh God, sorry.” He slapped his palm against his forehead as he realized his error. “I’m so mad I did that on autopilot.” He looked down at his shaking hands, seeing that he wasn’t in the best position to drive again. Not while he was such a mess. “I’ll tell you what, did you want to come inside? Have a drink and I’ll call a driver to come and get you?”
I knew I didn’t have any choice, so I nodded. It was probably for the best, then we could talk things out and both calm down before we went our separate ways. If I left right now I would be a mess, and I’d also be very worried about Adam. I hadn’t ever seen him like that, and I didn’t know how long it would be before he calmed down.
We walked inside and went straight into his kitchen. While he poured the drinks, I watched the muscles in his shoulders flex with tension. Then I idly ran my eyes down his back towards his butt. As my eyes explored him in a way that I hadn’t let them do before, I felt a stirring inside of me.
This man – the man who brought out a fire inside of me that I hadn’t realized was there – he thought I was beautiful. I thought he was very gorgeous, too, just too arrogant for it to work… But maybe he wasn’t that way at all, maybe I’d misinterpreted him. I wasn’t sure. All I knew for certain was that looking at him now made my head hazy and my chest gooey. I felt something burning off him, something floating between us, and it was oddly like chemistry.
I couldn’t ever have thought that I would share chemistry with Adam, but that was exactly how it felt. All electric and exciting, like a drug I needed a hit from.
No, I thought to myself while fixing my eyes on the ground. This is only a job, nothing more. I cannot start thinking these thoughts. It’ll only end in heartbreak.
“Here.” As my eyes move up again I see Adam standing a little too close to me with my drink in his hand. As I took the glass from him, lightening shoots between the areas where our skin brushed together, heightening the already very confusing sensations I was experiencing.
“Thank you,” I rasped back while taking a sip. Adam didn’t move. “And, thank you for sticking up with me with your brother. You didn’t have to do that.”
I was flooded with emotions and sensations when our eyes connected. Admittedly, it had been a very long time since someone had called me beautiful, but this was so much more than that. It was almost as if those words had unleashed something that we’d been fighting against for a very long time.
My heart thundered, my mind swam, and my feet pushed me up onto my tiptoes before I could think too much about it. We remained connected with our eyes, sharing feelings as our lips pursed. My head cocked, so did his, and all rational thought abandoned me completely, leaving me completely on my own, a slave to my body…
And then our lips crashed together and the whole world stilled. It was almost as if the moment had frozen in time, leaving me with nothing but wonderful feelings creeping right through me. A warmth started in my f
ingertips as I laced my arms around him and it swept through my body, leaving me utterly certain that this crazy move, which really should have felt so incredibly wrong, was the right thing to be doing.
Almost as if we had reverted back to horny teenagers who could not get enough of one other, clothes flew off our bodies as we moved towards the bedroom, hardly breaking apart from our kiss even once. I couldn’t stand to have his lips away from me now that we’d kissed because his hot tongue felt incredible in my mouth. He managed to unleash a sexual dragon within me, and since it was a part of me that had been dormant for ages, it pulsed desperately with need.
We didn’t step apart from one other until my skinny jeans had been kicked off, taking my panties with them, and I’d finally manage to wrangle Adam’s shirt off of his thick, muscular torso, leaving us both naked. We created a space between us next to his bad and panted desperately as we stared at each other, drinking in our naked bodies. I bit down on my bottom lip as I saw the thick, incredible length he had waiting for me. It made my soaking core ache for him even more, but I wasn’t sure now.
We’d broken apart for a reason, and I wasn’t sure whether that was supposed to make us stop before things got too far or not.
“Well,” Adam smirked and cocked his head to one side. The cheeky look made my pulse race faster. “I think it’s safe to say that our working relationship has been effectively ruined.”
I giggled, relieved that he wasn’t about to be awkward about it, but the laughter soon stopped as he scooped me up into his arms and lay me out flat onto his bed. There was absolutely nothing funny about what was about to happen, and despite the fact that it was probably wrong, I wanted to commit every second of this to memory. It was the best that I’d felt in a very long time. I felt sexy, happy, full of desire, and desirable, too.
“Oh God,” I muttered to myself as Adam reached across me to grab a condom. I was glad that there wasn’t any messing about, I didn’t want to give us any time to think. Now that this was happening, my whole body was consumed with lust. I wanted to feel him inside of me, filling me up, giving me that pleasure I hadn’t experienced in a very long time. I could imagine it now, and I just knew that reality would be even better. “Oh, Adam.”