The Gideon Affair

by Halliday, Suzanne

“… but e-qually as impressive …”

  Had that fucker just tried to imitate Snape when he said that? Nobody pronounced equally quite the way Alan Rickman did.

  “… are the numbers your sex tape has generated. Best I can figure, that particular starring role of yours has been a cash bonanza for Fierce Videos.”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. No way was this going anywhere good.

  “Care to comment on that?”

  Care to comment. Jesus. What an unbelievable dick.

  Two things flashed simultaneously in Edward’s mind. First … why the hell wasn’t Paige here? She’d have this nutsack on his knees in ten seconds. And second was the idea of answering the question by shoving his dick down the guy’s throat.

  Helluva comment that’d be.

  Instead, years of iron-willed self-control kept him motionless in his seat. No way was he giving this turd anything useable.

  Without missing a beat, Edward’s eyes bored into the interviewer. For a couple of seconds, the idiot actually tried to stare him down.

  Good luck with that.

  Didn’t take long for the smarmy shit to lower his eyes and clear his throat.

  Uh-huh. Spineless pussy.

  An incredibly long, tense silence followed. Edward never moved a muscle nor did he look away from the guy’s face.

  Dave, for his part, caved in immediately, after which he put off a classic conquered vibe.

  This guy was a lowercase s.

  More regret that Paige wasn’t around followed the caustic observation. She would have gotten the reference and laughed like hell. It was something that had become a regular joke because she insisted they had a twisted D/s relationship where each of them played both parts. Only in a business sense.

  He believed the point she was trying to make involved the term switches, but it wasn’t like he knew what the fuck any of that was about. If he hadn’t previously portrayed a character dabbling in the kink lifestyle, chances were he wouldn’t have much of a working knowledge of that whole scene.

  Eventually, the camera guy coughed and the moment passed as Dave realized Edward, or rather Gideon, was deliberately giving him nothing. That didn’t mean, however, that this guy was finished. No way.

  Picking up as if none of that had just happened, Dave gathered his wagons in a circle and went in for the money shot.

  “Earlier, Ms. Jones let, uh … slip …”

  Okay. Mentioning Joann’s name almost got a reaction. If she was stirring the pot, he was going to make her very, very sorry for messing with him.

  “… that she knows a bit more about your video romp than anyone suspected.”

  Ice water fed into his veins. He hated gossip. All the flame throwing, insult hurling, body shaming, and holier-than-thou judgment that the Internet fueled was anathema to a guy like him. He pretty much figured that if ya had time for shit like that, it spoke of an empty life. A life driven more by what others might or might not do as opposed to one’s own behavior.

  In a voice meant to sound menacing, he bit out, “Is there a question in that Dave or are you just spitballing for a reaction shot?”

  The interviewer smirked.

  Here it comes, he thought and waited for whatever grenade this asshole thought he had.

  Quickly holding up a picture taken a couple of nights earlier of he and his co-star out on a very public dinner, Dave started laying down what the guy apparently imagined was a kill shot.

  “You’ve been seen around town with your leading lady.”

  No use in denying it. They were actors, for Christ’s sake, and the occasional paparazzi dash into a see-and-be-seen restaurant was part of the job.

  Yeah, he’d taken Joann out. Assuming that she learned her lesson and wouldn’t try to be a bitch around him or Paige again, he’d made nice and given her a media circus worthy of the woman’s legendary status. The press had gone wild when they showed up at The Ivy—something she’d endlessly milked.

  So, what the fuck was she up to now?

  He could have shrugged as if it was no big deal, but he knew when he was being set up and simply waited him out.

  “According to my sources, one of the TV outlets will be running a story that quotes your co-star.”

  A stone wall couldn’t have been more immoveable—only instead of guarding against an awkward interview moment caught on film, Edward steeled himself from leaping up and rushing the little prick. He wouldn’t even have to get close enough to smack him before the dude shit himself.

  “She inferred to a colleague of mine …”

  He snorted derisively at the word. A colleague, my ass. The gotcha-paps would gleefully sell each other out for a buck.

  “… that she was crossing do it with a tattooed guy off her bucket list.”

  Edward began counting back from a hundred. Anything to control the surge of rage sparked by the mention of the damnable sex video.

  It wasn’t him, goddammit, and he could fucking prove it.

  Only, to do that, he’d have to reveal his birthday suit with the distinctive ink to the entire world. And that would never happen.

  Fuck.

  In the video that he’d studied along with his lawyer, it did appear the guy had a tattoo similar to Gideon’s. That alone was the extent of the evidence everyone was basing his participation in the tawdry tape on.

  But the wartime tattoo covered his hip and part of a thigh with ink extending to his groin that for lack of a better way of putting it framed one side of his junk. He’d been drunk as shit and on leave with a couple of buddies when they’d stumbled into a tattoo parlor and tried to outdo each other on who could be the most daring.

  Shit. He’d gotten damn close with that tribal bullshit, some of it now obscured by the hair surrounding his cock. In the end, he’d gone as far as some ink near his balls and then tapped out.

  And that, my friends, was why he knew it wasn’t him in the damn video. That guy’s privates were pornstar shaved, and though some ink was visible, probably Photoshopped in, there certainly wasn’t any ball action going on.

  He had no idea who the fuck was out there impersonating him, only sure that it wasn’t Marsh. And it wasn’t Tony Murtaugh because that crazy as fuck dude had inked his entire shaft while Edward and the rest of the guys on hand cracked jokes and covered their junk in horror. Sadly, the memory was burned in his mind along with the knowledge that he could pick out Tony’s dick ink in a faceless lineup. So of all the males on the planet around his age, those were the only two he was sure it wasn’t.

  Gideon Shaw…meet a brick wall. Defending, denying, or threatening a lawsuit was only going to extend the life of the salacious gossip and put untold millions in the coffers of Fierce.

  He needed Paige. Why did today have to be her day off?

  Ah, fuck it. He was done with this shit.

  Tearing off the microphone threaded through his shirt, he stood and glared down at the worthless excuse for a celebrity journalist.

  “Interview over,” he growled with his back to the camera.

  And it was.

  Her fingers tapping absently on the steering wheel, Paige gritted her teeth with mounting frustration as the clusterfuck people called driving in L.A. made her slowly mental. In fifteen minutes, she’d managed to go three miles. At this rate, she’d get onto PCH sometime next week.

  Living in Los Angeles and going to the beach shouldn’t require an itinerary. It was quite literally ridiculous. That it took ninety minutes on a good day to travel the twenty miles between WeHo and Malibu was insane.

  Hoping a drive along the Pacific Coast Highway would be just what she needed, it had been an easy decision to head out to the beach house and check up on Edward. He’d been on his own all day, which was sometimes a recipe for damage control on her end. The truth was, she played the Hollywood game much better than he did. By regarding it as the business it was, she knew how to get it done. But him? He was clueless, probably because Gideon Shaw was a creation. And the man pulling the str
ings, Edward? He wasn’t the sort to give half a shit about ego and protocol and schmoozing and a dozen other little things in which she excelled.

  Bottom line … sometimes the decent man inside didn’t play well with his swaggering and very public studly exterior. Checking up to see whether he’d wandered off the reservation seemed like an entirely reasonable thing to do. Even on her day off.

  Liar, liar … was that your panties on fire?

  Stupid librarian. Shut up!

  Stabbing at the radio controls, she looked for Ozzy’s station because nothing drowned out the noise of one’s conscience going up in flames like some thundering rock. First tune? “Gypsy Road.” She laughed. Cinderella. Why the hell not?

  Singing along with a vengeance, Paige rocked out as she crawled along aware with every passing second that she was getting closer to Edward.

  Beyond glad that his latest project was completed, she was looking forward to some downtime before they had to be on location again. And because downtime was code for spending all her time with Edward, well … what wasn’t there to look forward to?

  She glanced around at the other cars as if the drivers could hear her private thoughts. Not even the booming music could drown out the truth—that she was utterly and completely in love with Edward Banning.

  Slogging through the hellish traffic just so she could hang out with him might seem awfully forward, but Paige knew he’d be thrilled. When she was around, he could leave Gideon Shaw at the door and just be Edward.

  He needed that.

  So did she.

  A tremendous wave thundered ashore spreading along the stretch of beach where Edward had planted. The sucktacular day had destroyed his mood to the point that after pulling the plug on the interview from hell, he’d headed home. Once there, the displeasure over the day’s events had driven him down to the water’s edge. There was practically a chemical reaction inside him when he was near the ocean. Or a lake. Or a stream … or fuck, anything that contained water. But today—today he needed the expanse of an endless ocean to blunt the angry firestorm raging inside.

  It was times like these that made him rethink his career plan. Maybe six years was enough. Well, actually seven, he admitted wryly. Seven—because he already had work obligations next year, and he wasn’t the type to walk away from his commitments.

  Digging into the sand, he gathered big handfuls that sifted through his fingers. Watching the stream of loose grains cascade into a pile reminded him of other times when his hands had been covered in sand. Maybe the thought wouldn’t have been such a burn if those other times had involved a beach instead of an unforgiving landscape.

  At least here, the air had a soft, ocean-misty quality while that other? Even after all this time, he remembered the smell of fear, rage, and danger that marked those violent days—something he had tried hard to forget. Dragging that shit into his life after the Army was a big, fat NO. Not if he wanted to keep his sanity.

  He’d been a sophomore at the university when, in a moment of extreme patriotism, he’d quite boldly put his comfortable life on hold and had enlisted. At the time, plenty of people had thought he was out of his mind, but his motivations had been rock solid. It might seem like an overused expression these days, but for him it really had been … For God and Country.

  Something about putting yourself in harm’s way that forces some clarity on life, which never leaves you. Not even years afterward. There was the stuff that mattered and then … everything else.

  Did being a big-time movie star matter? No.

  But using this extraordinary and fortuitous situation to secure the future? Well, yeah … that mattered. The amount of fucking crap that came with this whole celebrity deal just pissed him off. Shaking his head in disgust, Edward leaned back on his hands and studied the churning ocean. A gull dive-bombed its dinner in the surf then flew off, disappearing into the summer sky.

  What the hell was he going to do about this mess? A fucking sex tape. And an off-the-rails co-star. Goddammit.

  Gideon Shaw might be one of the sexiest men alive, but Edward Banning wasn’t. Sex tapes and public displays of fuckery weren’t his style.

  The embarrassment this had already caused his parents almost gutted him. Explaining to his mom that there was no way he was in the video had been the single most uncomfortable conversation of his life. Made worse once he’d understood that she’d actually seen it.

  Edward groaned aloud at the memory. What could he possibly say?

  Mom … seriously. I swear it wasn’t your son’s dick destroying the completely bare pussy playing second fiddle on screen to what even he had to admit was some serious grandstanding cock.

  Now, his dad on the other hand … oh, god. That had been a dreadful conversation. Before he’d gotten to say a word, his father had launched into a thirty-minute lecture about respecting women that ended with the man questioning if Edward’s conscience would survive Hollywood.

  Until that moment, he’d never thought of it like that … but he sure did now.

  Paige was worried. After keeping an eye on Edward from the bank of windows across from the kitchen for the last half an hour, she was puttering, trying to decide when or even if she should go to him and find out what was up.

  Familiar with his body language, she knew not all was right the second she saw him down by the shoreline.

  He was a lot like her—the water called to his psyche. If he were prowling the edge of the blue ocean instead of lounging on the deck, that could only mean he was in clenched-fist mode.

  She called it the Edward-Gideon paradox—the inner battle he sometimes fought that had everything to do with who he really was coming up against what he did in Hollywood.

  With a mocking grunt, she considered what a great daytime TV this situation would make. Not that he’d ever allow such an intrusion into his personal life and not like she was serious anyway. Nobody was more protective of Edward-slash-Gideon than she was except for his family, and he’d done everything possible to keep them off the radar and far from this part of his life.

  Going to him by making her way across the massive deck and down onto the sand to take him by surprise finally won out. Time for action.

  Grabbing his water bottle off the counter, she filled it with some chilled to almost icy fluid—just the way he liked it—and made a mental plan.

  Heading for the stairway that led to the beach, Paige stumbled over her own feet and nearly face-planted at the bottom of the stairs when her so-called plan smacked headfirst into one of her Edward fantasies.

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no!

  Those thoughts were strictly forbidden, but that didn’t stop the veritable tsunami of need and want that body slammed her.

  Shit. Why’d it have to be this way?

  Reining in the traitorous thoughts, she stepped onto the warm sand and willed her body to behave. Something wasn’t right, which made now the wrong time to go easy on her carnal side.

  Edward first. Hormones second. Or a distant third, or not at all.

  It was low tide, so she had a bit of a trek out to where he sat. Overhead, puffs of white clouds softened the blue sky as birds scoured the waterline, occasionally swooping low in search of small marine life to gobble up.

  Though summer was in full swing and other areas of the Malibu coastline would be teeming with beach-goers and surfers, the fabulous house that was part of Gideon Shaw’s world was situated in the middle of a stretch of exclusive properties that made beach access difficult if not damn near impossible for the public. As a result, there was barely anyone around.

  Each step she took across the sand became a silent meditation.

  He’s not for you, Paige. He’s not for you.

  Twin reactions—a soulful anguish that came from knowing she could never cross that line and a ravenous desire—were taking a toll on her.

  He knew she was approaching—she could tell when his posture changed. Even from behind, she could read him. Another thought that although satisfyi
ng left her feeling cheated on some level.

  In the perfect world of her mind, instead of plopping down next to him and passing off a water bottle, she would sink to her knees at his back and wrap her arms around him. Let the man for which she had such intense feelings know she was there, always—no matter what.

  When she was maybe fifty feet away, he turned his head and immediately zeroed in on her face. His relief when he saw her was palpable. She’d been correct in guessing that something wasn’t right.

  Oh, Edward. Tell me what’s wrong.

  And then something happened that rocked her. When the relief cleared his expression, she was shocked to find something else. Something fierce, demanding, and covetous.

  Eyebrows rising toward her hairline, she was glad sunglasses kept her response from view. And then … snap … just like that, he shuttered the look, and what had seemed like hunger was replaced with a friendly smile.

  Stopping alongside where he’d planted in the sand, Paige looked out at the vast ocean stretching to the horizon. She said nothing, just quietly handed off the water bottle.

  After taking a sip, he snapped the cap shut with a dramatic, “Ahhh,” as the cold fluid hit his system.

  “Took you long enough,” he grumbled.

  She just stood there, in silence, looking back and forth between the waves and the man she couldn’t have. It took every ounce of strength she possessed not to reach down and run her fingers through his mane of thick, black hair.

  She squealed with surprise when he suddenly reached up, grabbed her wrist, and yanked her down till she was left in an unladylike sprawl on the sand next to him.

  “Hey!” The thundering surf swallowed her yelp. “Was that necessary? Shit, Edward!” she playfully groaned. “Now I’ll have sand in my shorts.”

  She was trying to make a funny, and any other time, he would have laughed and probably attempted to shovel handfuls of sand into her pants just for the hell of it. But not today. Today, he didn’t play along or laugh at her innocent comment.

  Awkwardly repositioning on the shifting sands, Paige studied him as she thoroughly chewed the inside of her cheek. “How long have you known I was here?”