Not many redheads could wear that color, but Monica didn’t just wear it.
She owned it.
The dress covered her from the swells of her breasts down to just below the curve of her ass, and he thought one tug would have her bare.
And then he found himself thinking about Marin, in her simple tank top and her jeans, curled up in her chair as she went over her lines.
Don’t take this personally . . .
Dragging his thoughts away from Marin—the woman who’d told him no today—he focused on the woman who’d told him no years ago. “Would you like to sit down?”
He gestured toward the empty seat.
She did sit, but in the seat next to his, not the one across from him.
And the flush on her cheeks deepened.
“So, how’ve you been?” he asked softly as he sat back down. Although the martini hadn’t really been hitting the spot, he reached for it again. He needed something to wet his throat.
She was still so beautiful, her fiery red hair cut to chin length and layered in tousled waves. Her eyes were burnished gold and when she glanced at him, he could see the nerves and shyness there. She’d always seemed so out of place: both ingenue and siren. It was why he’d loved her.
It was probably why she’d caught the eye of Hanson Smith, too. The producer had been nearly fifty and in a position to do amazing things for her career—and he had. Monica had recently won an Academy Award and she was all of twenty-four years old.
“I’m doing okay.” She shrugged nervously and looked away. “I’m . . . Uh, well, Hanson and I are over. I left him a few months ago.”
Sebastien lowered his glass without taking a drink.
“Oh?” he said. The calm note in his voice surprised the hell out of him. “I hadn’t heard. You must have kept it quiet.”
“He’s kept it quiet. I’d shout it to the world, but . . . Well, it’s not the wisest thing to piss off one of the biggest men in the business, is it?” She managed a weak smile. “It’s been over for a while, really. It just took me a while to realize it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Now her gold eyes flew to his and the innocent girl seemed to disappear, replaced by a woman who was ageless. Head cocked, she asked, “Are you? Why?”
“You were happy with him.” He shrugged. “I wanted you to be happy.”
She laughed and the sound was so bitter, it hurt him to hear it. “Then it’s good I left, because I was never happy with him.”
Before he could respond, the server approached.
***
“It was good seeing you again.”
Covering her hand with his, Sebastien looked down at Monica and smiled. “It was,” he agreed.
He’d thought about seeing her again a hundred times.
A thousand.
Each time, he’d imagined what he’d do, what he’d say. He’d tell her that she’d made the wrong choice—and she had—that she’d given up the guy who’d loved her—and she had.
But now, all of that seemed empty. Petty.
Pointless.
As they stood under the awning of the restaurant, she leaned against him.
He saw the yearning on her face. Something tugged in his heart, but again, his mind drifted back to Marin.
Reaching up, he brushed Monica’s hair back from her face. “It took me a long time to get over you,” he murmured.
Something flitted across Monica’s features. A smile wobbled on her lips. “And did you? Get over me, I mean?”
A commotion rose behind them, but he ignored it, trying to find the right words to tell her what he needed to tell her—without hurting her. “You were the first woman I’d ever loved, Monica. You know that—”
Somebody screamed.
Sebastien turned and saw him coming with something glinting in his hand.
Without thinking, Sebastien grabbed Monica.
Chapter Two
“Sebastien!”
He heard her calling him.
Her voice was desperate and demanding.
But it was too dark.
Pain clawed at him, all but ripped him open when he tried to twist away from it.
“Be still.”
Marin?
He tried to say her name, but couldn’t.
A hand touched his, and he went still.
Was that Marin?
“You need to be still, Seb,” she said.
It was . . .
Still.
That . . . That sounded good.
He stopped trying to escape whatever monster was eating at him and to his surprise, the pain eased.
He wanted to ask what had happened, what was wrong. But he couldn’t open his eyes and before he even realized it, he was sliding back down into unconsciousness.
***
Marin had been settling down with a book when the news had come on.
Somebody had caught the entire nightmare on his phone and uploaded it onto Youtube, so now the entire world knew—and had seen the entire bloody attack. Had seen Sebastien as he was roughly shoved away from the woman he’d been talking to, had seen as he fought to keep her behind him.
The woman was quickly identified as Monica Duprè.
Marin’s heart ached as she thought about what had happened after.
Sebastien was going to be devastated. Hell, she was devastated and she didn’t even . . .
“Stop,” she whispered to herself, even as those awful moments played out in her mind over and over.
The knife slashing out, blood blooming . . .
Sebastien fighting like a man possessed, first to get Monica away, then to disarm the man she’d chosen over him.
Hanson Smith had looked more like a monster than a man, splattered in blood, his lips peeled back from his teeth as he went for Sebastien. They had looked like two behemoths out there: Smith a little over six foot five, bigger than even Sebastien and armed with a knife. But Sebastien had trapped the weapon hand and started to drive a series of hard blows to the man’s ribs, looking even more powerful than some of the heroes he’d played.
The video feed had gotten shaky and out of focus then, and what she saw next was Sebastien on the ground, rolling away and leaping to his feet. His face was a mask of blood, but that hadn’t stopped him from ramming into Smith.
Smith might have been in his fifties, but he was in prime condition. People called him Mount Hanson behind his back, and not just because he was a formidable man to deal with. If Smith hadn’t been able to hold on to the blade, it would have ended much, much sooner. But he’d kept the weapon.
It seemed to go into Sebastien like butter.
Marin closed her eyes, the memories flickering through her mind in an endless reel, no matter what.
She hadn’t been able to watch anything else after that—just seeing Sebastien stabbed had almost made her pass out. But then she’d had to hear the media recount every last gory detail.
Smith had pulled away—laughing. People who had been standing around just staring reported that they heard him laughing. Then he pulled out a gun.
Sebastien, still bleeding, had ripped the knife from his side and rushed him.
When it was over, mere seconds—somebody had timed it at seventy seconds—Hanson Smith and Monica Dupré were both dead. Sebastien had collapsed next to his former girlfriend, his hand on her cheek.
“Marin?”
She looked up as Denise and Ron Barnes appeared in the doorway.
“Oh, thank God,” she whispered, rushing for them.
In a moment, she was enfolded in an embrace more familiar than that of her own parents.
***
Hours ticked by.
Another bag of blood drained into him. She’d donated earlier, although the staff had told her that
they wouldn’t have hers tested in time to use for him. There were always shortages, though. She’d gone through with it for one reason: Sebastien was alive because somebody else had donated blood. She could do the same thing.
She was still queasy about it. Marin hated needles.
Hated them with a passion. She had a horrible phobia, but because others had done it for him, she’d gone through it. Now she stared at him instead of watching as some stranger’s blood was slowly fed into his veins.
She couldn’t stand the sight of blood, either.
She’d slowly managed to conquer her problem with the stage blood used in some of the movies she’d starred in, but real blood? That was a different story.
“He’ll be okay,” Denise said quietly.
“Of course he will,” Marin said, her voice wobbling.
“He will.” The words were firm as Denise looked at him, her blue-green eyes solemn. “I know my boy. He’s too stubborn to go down like this, because some jealous son of a bitch came at him like that on the street. He’s not going to die.”
“Mom?”
Marin all but leaped from her seat at the sound of that voice. “Zach.”
She would have rushed for him, but he was already on his knees in front of his mother, so she went to Abby instead.
“Thanks for being here with him,” Abby whispered, her voice thick and choked. “We got here as quick as we could.”
“Of course I’m here. He’s . . .” Marin hesitated.
“He’s family,” Abby finished as she drew back.
“Yeah.” She smiled. The smile was exactly as it needed to be and her tone was perfect.
But it was a lie.
She didn’t think family when it came to Sebastien, and she hadn’t for a long time. She thought family when it came to Zach and Abby and Zane and the twins and their parents. But Sebastien?
No.
“Have they given you any grief about being here with him?” Abby asked.
Marin rolled her eyes. “No.” Lifting one shoulder in a shrug, she said, “The current rumor is that we’re getting married once we wrap up production . . .”
Her voice broke, and she clapped a hand over her mouth as the enormity of the night’s events hit her. “Oh . . . Oh, fuck . . .”
Her knees buckled and if Zach hadn’t moved to her side at that exact moment, she would have hit the ground.
A storm of emotion broke over her and she started to cry.
***
The low, monotonous beeping was annoying the fuck out of him.
It was almost as bad as the pain jabbing into his side.
It was even worse than whatever the hell that weird smell was.
It was almost like a . . .
His eyes flew open.
Brilliant white met him and he squinted.
“Hey, sunshine. Welcome back.”
The sound of his eldest brother’s voice had him groaning. Bright lights, Zane, headache. Had he gotten drunk? Was he hungover?
“Honey?”
“Mom?” he said. Or tried. His throat was so dry, he didn’t get a thing out. Clearing his throat, he tried again, but the pathetic whisper was so soft, he barely heard it.
“Yes, honey. I’m here.” A hand slid into his. “We’re all here.”
“Who’s we?” he said. “Where’s here?”
He tried to look around and realized he could see only with his right eye. Something covered the entire left side of his face. “What the . . .” he reached up, the movement uncoordinated and stiff. He’d barely touched the covering when Zane caught his hand. “Hold up, kid, okay? You gotta leave the bandage alone.”
Sebastien stilled. “Bandage?”
Zane’s face went taut.
Fear fluttered inside him. He looked around, understanding dawning. He was in the hospital.
“What’s going on?” he asked, forced to crane his head awkwardly so he could see everybody in the room. All of his brothers, his sister-in-law, Abby, along with Zane’s girlfriend, Keelie, and the woman Trey was dating, Ressa. He didn’t see his nephew, Clayton, or Neeci, Ressa’s niece and ward.
Instinctively, he looked away from Marin. Since she seemed to be doing the same, he didn’t see the problem there.
Nobody answered.
“What’s going on?” he demanded, his voice rising.
“Baby, it’s going to be okay,” his mother said gently.
He slammed his fist down. She stilled.
Immediately, he regretted it, and not just because it sent pain arcing through his side.
“Sebastien.”
At Zach’s voice, he looked away from his mother’s averted face.
“What?”
“You were out having dinner—you’d been with Monica,” his brother said in a low voice. Low, intense. “Do you remember?”
“Monica . . .” Closing his eyes, he struggled to do just that. Remember. “She was going to kiss me.”
Clouds half hid the memory, but as he focused, they started to lift. “I . . . I didn’t really much care if she did. Crazy . . . as much as I missed her. I thought I’d do almost anything to get her back.”
“Do you remember what happened next?” Zach asked tautly.
Sebastien swept his gaze to his brother. Pain sliced through him—his face, his side—as memory sharpened. Clarified.
“Hanson,” he rasped.
Clutching one hand in the sheets, he said, “Monica. Is she . . . Did he . . .”
“Seb . . .” Zach gripped his hand. “I’m sorry, man. She’s gone.”
Staring up at the white ceiling and the painfully bright light, Sebastien let that word roll through him. Gone.
He could see her in that pretty dress, her hair curling around her face as she smiled at him.
She was . . . “Fuck. She’s gone. He killed her.”
“You did everything you could.”
Turning his face away from his mother’s voice, he closed his one good eye. “No, I didn’t.”
After all, he hadn’t even known she was in trouble.
Staring at the wall in front of him, the silence behind him growing more and more weighted, he felt a numb cold spreading through him and he welcomed it. “What about that fuck, Smith?”
“Hanson Smith, he’s . . .”
His father didn’t finish, and Sebastien turned his head, staring hard at Ron. “He’s what?” he demanded.
“He’s dead.” His father looked like he’d aged a decade. “He’s dead. He had a gun . . . Do you— Well, that’s neither here nor there. He drew a gun on you and you had the knife he’d . . .”
“The one he’d rammed into me,” Sebastien said caustically. He barely recognized his own voice.
“Yes.” Ron just nodded. “He’s gone. Died almost instantly. Nobody else was hurt or anything.”
“Just Monica.”
Ron came closer and Sebastien flinched when his father squeezed his shoulder. “It’s okay to be upset.”
Upset. Am I upset? He didn’t know what he was. Slowly, he edged his legs over the side of the bed.
When his father moved to his side, he waved him away.
Something jabbed into his arm and he scowled, staring at the IV tubing. With deliberate thoroughness, he peeled back the tape and pulled out the needle, ignoring his parents and his brothers. He couldn’t see worth shit, thanks to the bandage, and he craned his head around, trying to see the room more clearly.
Travis was even there, silent, like always. His face was grimmer than usual.
Reaching up, Sebastien touched the bandage and pain flared under the light pressure.
Blood dripped from his arm as he rose and moved over to the mirror hanging over the sink.
The bandage was a thick, heavy pad and it covered the left side of his fa
ce from just under his hairline down to his jawbone, a bizarre Phantom of the Opera—just without an eyehole. He reached up and started to peel the tape away.
“Damn it, Sebastien, you’re bleeding all over the place and you’re going to rip the stitches out.” Zach came toward him, reaching up to try and catch his hands. “Wait for the nurse. I’ll go get her.”
But Zane interfered, blocking Zach and nudging him away. “He’s on his feet and steady.”
“The nurse—”
“Zach. Let him see,” Denise said softly.
It was Zane who joined him at the mirror.
Zane who came up and helped with the tape.
Zane who took the discarded bandages and who used them to make a temporary one for the bloody place on his arm where the IV had been.
And Zane was the one standing there when Sebastien forced himself to look at his face.
The scar ran in a jagged line from his forehead, just above the eyebrow, all the way down until it stopped about an inch away from the corner of his mouth. His eye was taped shut, and when he tried to open it instinctively, it hurt like a motherfucker.
The cold inside him spread even more.
“I look like Frankenstein’s monster.”
“Nonsense,” Denise said. “We’ve already gotten the names of some plastic surgeons—”
“No.”
He turned back to the bed, but Zane blocked him. “We need to get your arm looked at, Seb,” Zane said softly. “You’re still bleeding.”
Sebastien looked down at it almost absently. What the fuck did his arm matter? He pulled away the wadded-up bandage and immediately blood started to well up, forming a fat bead before it started rolling down his forearm once more.
A soft sound caught his attention, and he looked up, met Marin’s gaze.
She sucked in a soft breath and he looked away.
Yeah, he didn’t blame her for looking so appalled. His face was a scarred ruin. And the one time he’d actually needed to be the hero he was always pretending to be in movies? He hadn’t been able to do shit.
“Marin!”
He jerked his head around just in time to see Travis catch her.
She’d passed out.
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