A Very Daring Christmas (The Tavonesi Series Book 8)

by Pamela Aares

His tone was even, controlled. He probably had experiences like this all the time. And maybe she wasn’t as worldly as she’d thought.

  Light of day.

  She’d sleep on her dilemma—and on the urges pressing at her—and then make a decision. But already she knew what she wanted.

  “I’ll call you.” She fought for a steady breath. Barely hauled one in. “I have an idea for something we might do together. I have a few details to iron out first, but I think you’ll like it.”

  “I like ideas.”

  He stroked his hand along the curve of her waist. They’d danced, swirled and pressed hip to hip for hours at the club. But his gentle touch branded through her dress, sending shock waves of desire, more moving than any gyration on the dance floor, zinging through her. Suddenly, careful was a word shoved to the far reaches of her vocabulary. The light of day wasn’t going to make one bit of difference to her plan.

  Chapter Eight

  Jake pawed his ringing cellphone. Cameron’s number danced across the screen. Nine a.m. He never slept late, but what a night. They’d danced till nearly midnight. He stretched out in his bed and palmed the phone against his ear. His body ached, and not just from dancing. It had taken every iota of restraint not to pick Cameron up and carry her into her apartment and kiss her until she knew the pleasure her body was made for.

  “Want to get a head start on your surfing career?”

  “Pardon?” His brain cells were firing slower than usual. It’d been a long time since he’d danced like that. And since he’d ached for a woman as he did her. No private one-handed release was going to ease the desire she roused.

  “I have a cottage about an hour from here,” she said. “On a private cove. There will be good waves this weekend. Strong but not too big.”

  “Think I’m not ready for the big boys?”

  She laughed. “I know I’m not.”

  “Is dinner included?”

  She laughed again, but this time it came out more like a purr. “Okay, dinner. But only because I owe you one.”

  Her purring reminder that she owed him was a good sign. He wrote down the address she gave him and agreed to meet her at three that afternoon.

  She never let him drive her, which seemed odd. But it was actually fine with him. He liked having his own wheels.

  A cottage, she’d said. Cottages had beds, last he knew. He’d dreamed of her. Or had it been a waking fantasy? Either way, a bed would be a good place to continue the sensual journey he had in mind. He’d enjoy showing Cameron pleasure. She struck him as a woman who hadn’t been treated to the hidden delights of truly great sex. Just a hunch. But his hunches about women were usually on target.

  Driving down on his own would make it possible to keep to sacrosanct rule number one: never spend the night. Spending intimate time sleeping with a woman always sent the wrong message; he’d learned that one the hard way. And rule number two, never more than three dates? That rule had served him and the women he’d dated. In fact, the main function of the first date was to make sure the women he had fun with were on the same wavelength that he was before they took things into the physical realm. That way, no broken hearts and no messy endings.

  But this would be date number three for him and Cameron. Unless he didn’t count the picnic. Maybe he wouldn’t count the picnic. That hadn’t really been a date.

  A quick call to his agent to reschedule his afternoon appointments was a breeze. Tony wanted an afternoon of golf anyway. Jake liked the win-win.

  He shoved his board shorts into a gear bag and slung it over his shoulder.

  His body begged for caffeine. At the coffee shop down the street from the hotel, he ordered a triple espresso. While waiting, he scanned the headlines of newspapers scattered on the long wooden table in the middle of the coffee shop. A corner of a tabloid magazine showed under the edge of the piled papers. He’d never read one. He slipped it free from the stack.

  And cursed.

  The front cover featured a full-color photo of him kissing Cameron. It had been taken from somewhere in front of her place just hours ago. His gut knotted as he read the headline: Lighting up the Night—Will Cameron Kelley heal her heart with All-Star Jake Ryder?

  Hell. Just hell.

  In one gulp he downed the espresso the barista handed him, and then he called Cameron.

  “Having a change of heart already?” she said with a teasing tone.

  “Did you see Star Weekly magazine?”

  “I try to never look at those, Jake.”

  He told her about the cover. “How can they get something into print that fast?”

  “It’s a downside of digital technology and rapid distribution. But if it makes you feel any better, it’s probably only on the regional covers.” She paused. “I’m so sorry. I thought... Well, I should’ve been more careful.”

  He should’ve been more careful. Her world was one in which he didn’t know the rules. Or the dangers. Just the thought of some lowlife hiding in the bushes watching Cameron through a long lens made his skin crawl.

  “Bloodhounds,” Jake said with the vehemence of a curse. “No, not bloodhounds. I happen to love bloodhounds.”

  “Sleazeballs is my preferred term.”

  He couldn’t help but laugh at her frankness.

  “You still want to come down to the cottage? I can promise you there won’t be any of those jerks down there. It’s the one place I’m able to let my hair down.”

  The image of Cameron letting loose trumped any concerns Jake had about paparazzi. He’d survived the sports press for years—he’d survive one tabloid cover. But still, the invasion of privacy had stung. He treasured his privacy. And cared about hers. Any private anything with Cameron in the future would happen behind closed doors.

  Cameron adjusted the lace-like purple flowers in the vase on the small table in her cottage for the second time. She had already fluffed the pillows on the small couch under the windows facing the side garden more times than she wanted to admit. Her nerves sawed away as she paced the living room, drawing the knot in her stomach tighter. What had she been thinking, inviting Jake to come down for the afternoon? And for dinner? In the two years she’d dated Elliott, she’d never once let him come to her place in Laguna Beach. The piece of heaven she’d inherited from her grandmother was her only sanctuary.

  Buster, the little black-and-white cat belonging to the neighbor, slunk in through the French doors facing the sea. He ribboned through her ankles, purring.

  She rubbed Buster behind his white-tipped ears. His purr was more like a rumble, but she loved him. When her schedule settled down, she was definitely going to get a cat of her own. But one that would get along with Buster.

  “I wasn’t thinking, was I, Buster?”

  But she had thought. And thought hard. Right after she’d awakened from the hottest dream she’d ever had. A dream that starred Jake Ryder front and center in a performance that would’ve made her blush if she’d been awake. Just the memory had heat rising up her neck.

  The sound of the front-gate buzzer made her jump and spill her glass of iced tea across the table, sending Buster running out the door. The tea towel she grabbed soaked up most of the liquid. Ignoring the now soggy tablecloth, she pressed the button on the intercom. The sturdy gate and latch were the two bits of security her agent had insisted she install.

  “Flower delivery.” The laughter in Jake’s voice reached in behind her shoulder blades and lifted some of the tension lodged there.

  “Wrong house,” she said as she buzzed him in.

  She rounded the corner at the side of the cottage and stopped just sort of colliding with him.

  He ducked to avoid hitting his head on the low-hanging eaves.

  “Hadn’t thought of flowers as body armor.” He laughed and then held out an armful of blossoms—orchids, tuberoses, zinnias, delphiniums and full-headed heirloom rose blooms.

  “They’re beautiful,” she said, taking the bundle into her arms. “Thank you.” She dipp
ed her nose into the flowers and inhaled. Even through the aroma of the blooms, she was sure she could scent Jake.

  Male. And a male she wanted more than was good for her.

  He whistled as he took in the view. “That’s one amazing sight.”

  She’d never tire of the view down the coast, of the soft green lawn rolling toward the cliffs and disappearing into the vast horizon of the sparkling blue sea. But sometimes it took a visitor’s stunned reaction to remind her just how unbelievably awesome her little cottage on the cliffs above the cove really was.

  “Compliments of my grandmother. She once said leaving this place to me was to make up for delivering me into the hands of my mother.”

  She stopped. Now wasn’t the time for family confessions. It was never time for family confessions. Especially with the family she had.

  “I’ll just put these in water. Although as huge as this is, I might have to fill my neighbor’s kiddie pool to house them all.”

  His easy laugh as he followed her into the cottage loosened another knot binding her belly.

  “All the places around yours are huge,” he observed from the doorway.

  “This is the last holdout on the north side of town. This cottage has been in my family for generations. It used to be a mechanic’s garage, back in the early 1920s.” She tapped her foot on the linoleum. “Still has the hard cement floors. But the glory of it is the view and the private stairs to the small cove below the cliff.”

  She found a champagne bucket and stashed the flowers in it. Spread them with her hands. Elliott had never brought her flowers. He’d have his agent send them, and they’d always felt like a bribe. Or an apology. Or both. The flowers Jake had brought reminded her that she had an apology to make. To him. Dragging him into her press hell hadn’t been on the agenda.

  “It isn’t much,” she said, noticing him taking in the cottage interior as she reentered the main room. “Just a sleeping alcove, a tiny kitchen and a small bathroom with a shower that would seem small even to an RV owner.”

  But it was hers. And though she’d worried all morning, now that he was here and she was sharing her special hideaway with him, it just felt right. And that felt foreign. She had a ways to go before she could scrape the sludge off her heart and trust her instincts.

  “This your mom?” Jake held out a glamor shot of her mother from the seventies, one of the few she hadn’t sent to storage.

  “In all her glory. She won the Oscar that year.”

  “Runs in the family.” It wasn’t a question, but his tone was probing.

  “She wasn’t thrilled when I got my second Oscar, since I bested her record.” Cameron picked up the soaked dish towel from the table and ducked into the kitchen to wring it out in the sink. “It’s not easy when Hollywood is all you have. She’s still recovering from her fall from star billing.”

  “I imagine being a star is hard at any level.”

  She returned from the kitchen with a wad of paper towels and blotted at the tablecloth. “You would know.”

  He turned from where he’d been staring out the doors toward the sea. “No, Cameron, it’s different for me. Maybe it’s because you represent the power of story in people’s lives. You become a sort of portal to the soul, if you get my meaning. Because of the stories. Watching movies and living the events of the characters in them is almost a religious experience for some people.”

  “From what I’ve seen at the few ball games I’ve attended, baseball is a religious experience.” Was she actually arguing the merits of baseball with him? Maybe her common sense had taken a vacation.

  He laughed. “At least people don’t fight wars over baseball. The experience is more of a bonding. Even rabid fans of rival teams find common ground in the game itself. There’s a lot of love in baseball.”

  Stories as a portal to the soul? Love in sports? What kind of guy talked about such things? The only topic Elliott had wanted to discuss was his next PR move.

  In contrast, Jake reached in under her radar and rearranged her understanding of the world with his insights. And the aching yearning he fired in her? She needed to get a handle on that and fast.

  “Let’s walk down to the point. You can see Dana Cove. The tide pools and ocean here have been my true home for longer than I can remember.”

  She poured two fresh glasses of iced tea and handed one to him. They walked across the sloping lawn, past the small blue canvas cabana and down to the point overlooking the cove. The beach below them was dotted with the umbrellas of the few families who hadn’t yet gone home to their dinners.

  “In an hour, we’ll most likely have the whole cove to ourselves.”

  “That is the best prospect I’ve heard all day.”

  She heard the whisper of desire in his tone. But if she was going to enjoy any part of this day, she needed to get her apology off her chest. The need weighed on her and nagged under her thoughts. She wanted to relax into this time with him, and to do that, she needed to clear the air.

  “Jake, I’m so sorry about last night. I mean, I’m not sorry about last night, but I’m sorry about the whole tabloid thing.”

  “You can’t be responsible for everybody in the whole world. Especially not Peeping Tom idiots. I should’ve been more careful.”

  “No, I should’ve known the coast wasn’t as clear as it had looked—it almost never is these days. I hadn’t meant for you to get dragged into that part of my life.” A long draw of the iced tea didn’t wash away the chagrin needling in her chest.

  He spoke before she could.

  “What I was trying to say up there in your cottage is that sports fans, well, they’re different. At least baseball fans are. And playing for them is a humbling experience. When I first hit the majors and got a taste of the buzz, I thought the clamor was all about my performance. About me. I got caught up in the hype. But guess what? It’s all about the fan experience, not me. I know that now.”

  He pointed to a family making their way up the public path a short distance away. “See that guy down there? In the Giants cap? People like him are the ones paying me to do my job. They’re the reason I get paid to do what I love. Sure, players are important. But the game is the reason we all come to the diamond. Love of the game.”

  He took a sip of his tea and shook his head. “Sports fans have respect. They get the concept of boundaries, and they respect them for the most part. They know it’s about the game. But you? You touch people in a different place with your work, a powerful place. And the media exploits that power. The media entices people to think they can have a piece of you when they write those gossipy stories. And unstable people who read that stuff, who knows what goes on in their heads? I doubt all the hyped-up hearsay serves them. It obviously doesn’t serve you.”

  It was as though he’d reached in and untangled the mess of thoughts she’d been harboring about the tabloid press and just that easily made sense of them.

  “No one ever put it so clearly,” she said. “I mean about the whole storytelling business. I want to portray deep stories, stories that can lift people’s spirits, stories that entertain and help people leave their worries behind for a while. And if I’m lucky, I hope to inspire new meaning or new perspectives. It’s why I love what I do. But sometimes I think I just can’t take it anymore, having two lives, one public and one private. Trying to guard one from the other. Or even trying to find some comfortable common ground in between.”

  “From what I saw when I watched one of your films last week, luck has nothing to do with your performance.”

  He’d checked out her work. Millions of people had seen the films she’d starred in—but Jake taking the time to watch one? How could that feel so darn personal? She bit at the inside of her cheek to stop herself from asking which film he’d watched. And tried to pretend she wasn’t dying to know.

  “My agent told me to be more proactive,” she said. “That if I fed stories to the tabloids through my PR agency, like my friend Angelina does, then maybe they’
d back off on the more personal stuff.”

  His eyes narrowed, shuttering. “Terrible advice. The press goes for the sensational angle no matter what you feed them. They play to the market. I’m not comfortable anywhere near that territory. It’s why I stay as far away from publicity as I can.”

  The cool tea slid down her throat, but the truth of his words burned a path of unease straight to her belly. She nestled her glass into the grass at the edge of the cliff and motioned toward the stone stairs leading down to the beach. “Want to see the sea caves at the other end of the cove?”

  “What about my surfing career? I saw a couple of boards beside your cottage.”

  The sparkle in his eyes had returned.

  “My cousin’s boards. He’s on the semipro circuit. But these are yellow-flag waves. You’d be crazy to go out in them on a surfboard. There must be a storm offshore.”

  “You mean I have to stick to baseball? I thought maybe I’d develop a career to fall back on.”

  “We could bodysurf.”

  His eyes widened, and then he grinned. “You’re on.”

  She showed him how to close the curtains to the sleeping alcove so he could change. She shimmied into her bikini in the tiny bathroom and then grabbed a batik pareo wrap and a towel from the cabinet next to the shower stall.

  When the curtains parted and he stepped out from behind them, she sucked in a breath. She’d seen him at the beach without his shirt, but the board shorts didn’t hide the roping muscles in his legs. He looked like a god who had stepped down from Olympus to grace the earth. And the devouring look roving over her body had her feeling very much like a mortal in the face of a power she just might not know how to handle.

  “I think I’ll like bodysurfing. At least the uniform is pretty darn appealing,” he said with a wink that felt like a touch.

  A nervous laugh escaped her. And a quick flick of her wrist had her wrapped in the pareo and leading the way down to the cove.

  “You know about using your arm to steer?” she asked as they descended the last of the stone steps to the beach. She dropped the towel and her pareo to the sand, aware of his eyes on her, exciting her as much as any touch ever had.