Her Secret Life

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Head tilted, she was still studying him. More like she found him curious rather than repulsive, but he wasn’t sure he liked it any better. “You don’t have to sound quite so appalled at the thought,” she told him. “It’s not like I’m a leper or something.”

  What in the hell?

  “It’s just tonight. Here. The dinner. Your dress. You offering me a key. It got out of hand for a second, but it changes nothing.”

  She nodded. Her lips pursed now. “So you...liked how I looked tonight...” If she only knew. “I told you that my Hollywood persona gets me a lot of attention.”

  She was taking his situation in stride.

  He had a hard-on that was about to kill him.

  “You don’t have to act like it’s so distasteful...being attracted to me.”

  “Come on, Kace. You get this. You and me, sex isn’t a part of it. And it can’t be. Neither of us wants it to be. I still don’t. Mostly I didn’t want to make it any more than it is. I don’t want you to start feeling uncomfortable around me. Or thinking you can’t talk to me.”

  She nodded. “Michael, sometimes I wonder if I have to hit you over the head with something. You bring something into my life that I’ve never had before. I’m addicted to it. I trust you. Completely.”

  And then he realized he was the one who didn’t get it. “You aren’t upset that I’m attracted to you.”

  She half shrugged. “In my own twisted way, it makes me feel more secure. You have to understand, Michael. Since I was a little girl I’ve been taught that my value is in my looks. If you didn’t like them, at least a little bit, then I’d feel, deep inside, that you didn’t like me. I’d spend the rest of my life telling myself differently, but it’s how I’d feel. According to Dr. Freelander, it’s how most American women are programmed, at least to some extent, because of our society and the attention given to models and beautiful women, and sex. It’s everywhere. On TV, the only women you ever see nude, or partially so, are gorgeous. Dr. Freelander says I’m a little more programmed than some women because of growing up in that very industry.”

  Great. Okay. Good.

  He wasn’t sure where that left them.

  Or him. He was turned on by her. Not by every woman. Or any of the other beautiful woman he’d seen that night.

  “If you were ugly, I’d still be dazzled by you.”

  “And I think that’s why I’m addicted to you.”

  Her grin was totally the old Kacey. And he kicked off his shoes.

  “Welcome back,” he told her. And felt better than he had in a long time.

  Even with a painful penis.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  SHE NEEDED TO let him get to bed. Needed her own rest. The cameras weren’t kind to a woman with bags under her eyes, and she had another full day of shooting before three days off in Santa Raquel.

  Where Michael lived. And now their relationship was changing. She didn’t know what it all meant. Didn’t have any idea where anything would lead. She just knew that for the first time since she’d been shoved down on the beach, she felt...good.

  Like she was looking forward to getting up in the morning.

  The furniture in her living room was pleasing. The lighting she and Lacey had carefully chosen was soft and nurturing. The city beckoned beyond the sliding glass door. Everything felt filled with possibility.

  It felt...familiar. Dr. Freelander had told her those feelings of normalcy would return. They might leave again just as quickly, but they’d be back and stay for longer periods of time.

  She’d been doubtful. Had really believed that those terrible moments on the beach had stripped away her ability to feel joy.

  “I have a confession to make,” she told him.

  “What’s that?” Michael was sitting back, an ankle on his knee, an arm along the back of the couch, watching her. There were no lines on his face. And there was no concern in his eyes.

  “I’ve had the hots for you, too, tonight.”

  His foot went down to the floor. The rest of him didn’t move. “If you think you need to placate me...”

  She sat up. Leaned toward him. “Oh, come on, Michael. This is me. And you. It’s us. I confess all of my stuff to you.” Surely he could see that. “And why on earth would I need to placate you? You’d think you’re the only man who’s had the hots for me, and as you pointed out, you’re a guy and the feelings are natural. Surely you don’t think it’s up to me placate them all?” She was pouring it on a little strong. Probably because of the feelings coursing through her. But she meant every word, too.

  “You really expect me to believe that I turn you on?” His gaze was piercing.

  “Don’t you see, Michael? Any time in the past three weeks that I’ve thought about sex, or even about being alone with a man, I get all claustrophobic feeling. Even with Bo, and I used to find him really attractive. Now, when I see my skin, I just want to cover it up. When Bo suggested that I was frigid because of what happened, and intimated, at first, that it could last a lifetime, I asked Dr. Freelander about it. She told me that it could, but it might not, and with therapy there’s a good chance it won’t. But with all of my issues, it could.” The therapist hadn’t put it quite that dramatically, but it was the gist of what Kacey had taken away from the session.

  He was still focused on her. Sort of nodding. She couldn’t read him at all.

  “And tonight, here I am, alone with you, and ever since you got out of your car in the studio parking lot, I’ve been...feeling stuff. For you.”

  “It’s just a phase. Part of your recovery. Because you feel safe with me.”

  “Maybe. But I don’t think so. I’ve actually felt the feelings before. But they didn’t, you know...fit. Us. They weren’t appropriate.”

  “And you think now they are?” He sounded like he was asking her if she thought it was okay to run in front of a moving train.

  “No! I don’t know. At the moment I just feel good about feeling like that at all.”

  He grinned then. “It’s like I’ve always said, we make quite a pair.”

  He had said that. Many times.

  She was beginning to wonder if he might be more on the mark than either of them had known.

  “Would it be so wrong, Michael? For us to...for our relationship to grow in another direction?” He might think it was the wine talking. She knew it was not. Less than two glasses over an evening was nothing to a woman who’d consumed two bottles of wine on her own in a single night not all that long ago.

  He looked like he’d seen a ghost. But now was the time to talk about this. While they were in Beverly Hills, away from Santa Raquel and all of the reasons why they shouldn’t talk about it.

  They were in her home, and they had all night.

  “Yes,” he finally said, sounding a little like he was strangling. “It would.”

  She didn’t ask why. She could recite his reservations as well as he could. And acknowledged that he could be right about all of them.

  “I’m not talking about coming out about our relationship,” she told him, making things up as she went along, but driven by something stronger than anything she’d felt in years. “Or about trying to join our entire lives together. But if we both want it, would it be so wrong for our friendship to include a physical side? At least for a little while?”

  “And what happens to our friendship when one of us wants to sleep with someone else?”

  “You think I’ll walk out on you.”

  “No, because you aren’t walking in...there...to begin with.”

  “Okay, so let’s explore the physical side without walking in. I’m feeling heat, Michael. It’s the first time in a long time.”

  “That attack was less than a month ago, Kace. And, believe me, I’m glad that you’re coming back to life
, but...”

  She was shaking her head fiercely. He stopped talking.

  “No, Michael, I mean a long time.”

  “But you said with Bo...”

  She nodded. “And I stopped having relations with him months ago. Before that I had to work at getting the feelings. And before, Bo, too. It’s never been like this, Michael. Strong and tempting and...hot.” Just like him.

  He shook his head. “You are not going to talk me into this, Kacey Hamilton.” He looked her dead in the eye. “Not tonight, at least. We both need to step back. To—”

  “Take two aspirin and see how we feel in the morning?” she interrupted. She was okay with that. He’d said all she needed to hear. Not tonight, at least. He’d implied, unequivocally in her mind, that she’d have another shot at talking him into making love to her. And that there was every chance that she’d be successful.

  “Something like that,” he said. And with a hint of a grin, he stood. “Now, I’m going to bed. I assume the room you’ve given me has a lock on the door?” He was teasing her.

  And she loved him for it.

  “Yes, but I have a key,” she told him, standing, too.

  And then, because she was Kacey, she moved closer. And then even closer. Until her body was right in front of his. Her hips touched his. Her chest pressed against his. Arms at her side, she reached up on tiptoe and placed her mouth against his, as well.

  Just one kiss.

  He’d asked for time.

  They probably both needed it.

  But she needed the touch of his lips right now.

  * * *

  MIKE DIDN’T SLEEP WELL. Not only because he was in a strange bed—that smelled of lavender—and could hear street sounds from down below, but because he could not stop thinking about sex with Kacey. The idea raged through his body and seemed to be possessing his mind. He’d redirect his thoughts and before he knew it they’d be right back in the same place.

  The entire situation had been made nearly impossible by that kiss. A light touch of her lips to his. Closed mouth. Hardly intimate.

  For a woman who kissed on-screen as part of her job, he imagined it had been a pretty plebian experience for Kacey.

  He was a man who only kissed when he was in a relationship. Or pursuing one. His family weren’t kissers. No good-night kisses growing up. No kisses on the cheek for hello and goodbye.

  She was in the kitchen the next morning when he showed himself, fully showered, shaved and dressed. He’d stayed in his room until it was almost time to leave.

  “I made coffee,” Kacey said.

  “You don’t drink coffee.”

  “I had tea.”

  She’d made the coffee for him. Already had it in a thermos on the counter.

  “Listen, Michael, if I screwed you up last night...screwed us up, I...”

  Her eyes were clouded again. Like they’d been since that night on the beach. He couldn’t send her back there. Not if he could help it.

  “You didn’t mess me up,” he told her and found an easy grin. “I need to process...”

  In tight jeans and a cute off-white blouse that came in tight at the waist and then stopped short with frilly lace just below her waistband, she was every man’s fantasy. At least in his book.

  “I do know that about you,” she said, assessing him. “You are a processer. And I push right on ahead—”

  “Which we know and love about you,” he inserted.

  “So, we’re okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “And last night...you said you needed to think...”

  She was asking him if he would think about having sex with her. He could read the desire, the doubt in her eyes.

  “We can talk more when you’re in town this weekend.”

  He’d almost said “home,” but if he was going to proceed with any kind of relationship with her—and he knew that he was—then he had to keep his boundaries clear in his mind.

  It was the only way it could work.

  * * *

  ON FRIDAY MORNING, when Kacey came to his office after her class, Mike was waiting for her. He had a lunch meeting with a client after picking Willie up from school and dropping him at the Stand, so that gave him about half an hour with Kacey. He had to make it count.

  “How was class?” he asked first. With the struggles she was having herself, teaching a class about the benefits of looking good had to be a challenge.

  One Sara Havens had said, in their staff meeting, that she believed Kacey was up to. And added that it would also help in Kacey’s own healing.

  “It was good,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes as she set down a box, plopped into the seat she normally occupied during their Friday morning chats and put her feet up on his desk.

  She’d worn skinny jeans and a long-sleeved black sweater that met her waistband. When she moved, in any direction, he caught glimpses of her pale skin. The whole modesty in dress thing...he could argue either way. Kacey didn’t dress to flaunt. Her clothes were all part of her style.

  And in Southern California, they were appropriate, too. Women wore less. All sizes. All ages.

  “I’ve heard it said that we teach what we most need to learn,” she was saying, watching him.

  Daring him? To what? Tell her he didn’t want to have sex with her? Or tell her he did?

  “Today was an example of that. I look at the women in my class and I know so clearly, believe so fiercely, that if they take care of their hair, make the most of their features, dress in clothes that make them look good, then they’ll feel better about themselves, which in turn will give them confidence, which then will change how they act with and react to, others.”

  He almost smiled. Except that this was far too crucial to make light of.

  “And?” he asked. He knew there’d be more. That was Kacey’s way. Get something...and then apply it.

  “I have some work to do.”

  He waited.

  “I mean, I can’t just know this and then feel good about my sexuality. It got me attacked, Michael.”

  “No. Whatever was wrong with those teenagers is what got you attacked.” He knew she’d been told the same thing many times over the past weeks. Also knew she didn’t believe it yet. And from what she’d been told, that was normal, too.

  “I feel like, if I’d looked less...inviting...I would have been less likely to be attacked.”

  “So you think if say, a forty-year-old woman who was a little overweight was walking alone on the beach that night, that those boys, with evil on their minds, would have walked right by her?”

  She looked up at him. “What if the way I was dressed put evil on their minds?”

  “That’s impossible. Boys are exposed to female sexuality from the time they first watch television,” he said. “It’s even in cartoons. It’s all over every ad, the Super Bowl halftime show, on billboards, on movie posters. Every single time he walks through the mall, or goes to a big-box store, he’ll be exposed to images of nearly nude women modeling bras or panties. And here in Santa Raquel, as you well know, pretty much every woman on the beach is wearing little more than thick underwear.”

  “During the summer, yes...”

  His gaze was steady, assessing. As though he was waiting for her to hear what he’d been saying.

  “You really don’t think it’s my fault?”

  “I do not.”

  “Do you have any idea how it feels to be a woman—any woman—and know that the body parts she was born with can bring out the beast in a man who is, by the nature of biology, going to be bigger and stronger than she is?”

  “I do not.” He swallowed. “And as a man with female siblings and a female best friend, I can tell you that it’s a fact that makes me uncomfortable.”

 
“Has it always?”

  He shook his head and sat on the corner of his desk, his knee not far from her thigh. “I’m ashamed to say that until your attack, I’d given the matter almost no thought at all. I mean, working here, you’re aware of women being more vulnerable to violence, any violence. And I made both of my sisters read Lemonade Stand literature and take a self-defense class...but overall, I was pretty sure that everything would be fine.”

  “I took a self-defense class. Lacey and I both did. Advanced classes. Our parents insisted on it...you know...because of the business we were in.”

  “From what I heard from the guy I talked with at the local precinct, those classes are what kept you from further harm before help arrived. You’d managed to incapacitate one and might have smashed the other guy in the face.”

  “I was hoping I’d be able to break his nose,” she said. “And that a teenager would show up at a local hospital or urgent care with injuries.”

  No one had shown up anywhere. And he knew that made her recovery that much harder.

  His time was running out. Twenty minutes. Max.

  He hadn’t opened the box she’d brought. Couldn’t eat a bagel right then since he’d be eating an early lunch. If they were bagels. The box was different. Bore no markings.

  And she’d come to him for a very different kind of discussion.

  Because he’d promised her one.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  SHE WASN’T GOING to ask him. For once in her life, she wasn’t going to push. She wasn’t going to lose Michael, no matter what it took to keep him in her life.

  Because he belonged there. She knew that was a surety as solid as the one that told her she and Lacey would always find a way to be close. Michael touched her like Lacey did. Soul deep.

  “I promised you a discussion.” Michael looked far too manly in that dark suit. Did he realize red ties screamed have sex with me? Or maybe it was just her...and his red tie...

  She so badly wanted to tell him that her sexual feelings for him had definitely not dissipated since Wednesday night. They’d escalated to the point of filling her dreams with fantasies she’d never even entertained before.