Starstruck: Hollywood Heat, Book 3

by Ashleigh Raine

  “I’m an asshole.”

  “No.” It came out harsher than she meant it, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, her hand clamping onto his forearm, keeping him from leaving her completely.

  Micah’s gaze shot back to hers, eyes full of questions she was going to answer, whether or not it damned her.

  “I’m on the pill, and I don’t mess around. I never have. Never wanted to. Not until…” She took a shaky breath. “Earlier tonight, in my kitchen, I didn’t want you to stop. I don’t want you to stop now. And I know that makes me sound like ten thousand times the fool—”

  “Shh…” Kissing her, he pushed back inside her in a stroke that had her arching and gasping into his mouth. “Fuuuck, you feel so good, Jenna.” He backed away, thrust again. “I don’t fuck without condoms. I’ve never been with someone I trust enough. Never made love…” It was his turn for a shaky, ragged breath. “I can get a condom and be back here in less than a minute. Say the word and I—”

  “Stay.”

  He shuddered, his cock jerking inside her. He groaned out a rough laugh. “I’m not going to last much longer like this.”

  “Neither will I.” She thrust up to meet his advance, bare flesh sliding so tight and good together. “But we have all night, remember?”

  “Not near enough time to love you,” he mumbled against her lips.

  “Guess I’ll have to stay tomorrow…and the next day…”

  His mouth swallowed the rest of her reply, the unspoken promise of their devotion implicit in their need for each other.

  Chapter Eleven

  Micah’s alarm sounded, a loud, blaring ring that wouldn’t stop, ripping him from the contented sleep of the sexually sated. It was Sunday. He didn’t have to be on set until tomorrow morning. So why was his alarm going off?

  Pissed at the interruption, he dragged himself away from Jenna’s sweet, naked, beautiful, stirring and sleep-murmuring body, and fumbled for the side table to beat the noise into submission. The cookie-crumb-covered plate fell to the floor with a crash—shit—when he smacked at the alarm, but the fucker kept ringing. What the hell?

  Dammit. Not his alarm. His phone. His house phone.

  Who would call on the house line? Few people had that number, and it was for emergencies only.

  Micah picked up the phone, wary now. “Yeah?”

  “Who the hell is this Jenna Byers chick?” Jack, his agent, blunt as always. Except Micah couldn’t understand the question. Not the words, but the why behind it. Clearly this was about last night, but why was Jack going down this path? And how did he know Jenna’s name?

  Micah scrubbed a hand over his face, wiping the sleep from his eyes, wishing he could do the same with his brain. Awake one minute and things were already going wrong. He looked at Jenna, who was rumpled and adorable and smiling up at him through sleep-mussed hair. If only they’d stayed on the balcony last night. He wouldn’t have heard the phone, wouldn’t be talking to his pissed-off, control freak of an agent on a rampage, because Jack sure as shit wasn’t asking about Jenna in a when do I get to meet her way.

  But Micah couldn’t hide from the world—or his agent—forever.

  Jack barreled on, apparently tired of waiting for Micah to get a clue. “Shall I refresh your memory? That chick you were out with last night. The one you punched a paparazzo over. The one who’s playing havoc with your career. Did you forget you might be out of a job next week? Do you really think the studio won’t use this as an excuse to get rid of you? They don’t even need one, yet you’re giving them the excuse of the century wrapped up in a little red dress. Good press keeps you employed, Micah. Loose women in red dresses don’t give good press.”

  Anger had Micah vaulting out of the bed, leaving Jenna behind. She didn’t need to hear this. He crossed into the next room and closed the door, the sleep wiped from his brain and outrage taking over. “Jack, one more word about her, this call is over, and you’ll be my former agent.”

  “You need to tell me when you’re going out with girls like that so I can manage it. ‘No comment’ makes it look like you’re hiding something.”

  Bracing the phone between shoulder and ear, Micah shoved his legs into the sweatpants that had been draped over the weight bench. “Girls like that? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Except Micah knew exactly what Jack meant. The girls Micah had spent his entire career avoiding. The users and fakes that Jenna most decisively wasn’t.

  She couldn’t be.

  “Don’t be a dumbfuck, Micah.”

  “You manage my career, not my personal life.”

  “Your career and your personal life are one and the same right now. You know that as well as I do. Give me some credit here. We’ve been working together for over a decade. I’ve taken care of you all this time, and I’ve done a damn good job of making sure you don’t fuck up your career. So start talking so I can fix this for you.”

  “Fix what? That I have a girlfriend?” He paced the room, weight bench to treadmill to elliptical, wishing he had a punching bag to abuse. “And how the hell do you know her name?”

  “Everyone knows her name now, man. Everyone. Your little paparazzi escapade went viral, and bam, someone, somewhere, recognized her and now her name is everywhere. She’s a wannabe actress at some bullshit Hollywood dinner theater who, aside from pretending to be real actresses like Marilyn Monroe, starred as Maria in The Sound of Music in some no-budget community theater production. A resume to nowhere, unless she could find a big-ticket ride. TMZ.com has the full story, front-page news, with the grainy YouTube video of your girlfriend…” the word couldn’t have sounded more virulent, “…being interviewed about her starring role in Sound of Music. The best part was when she said she’d do anything to make it big in Hollywood. I hope she at least made it good for you.”

  “She’s not like that.” The words should’ve come out stronger, but the knot in his stomach made it difficult to speak.

  “Bullshit, she’s not like that. She’s no one, trying to be someone. Who do you think benefitted the most from yesterday’s debacle? Who’s the new household name? Dr. Dale Jameson? No. He went out with some floozy, and now he’s gonna be demoted to hawking Botox and drugs with anal-leakage side effects. I thought you knew better than this.”

  He did know better than this, except his Jenna wasn’t the one Jack was talking about. His Jenna, who’d told him just last night that she’d succeed, no matter what it took. His Jenna, who’d wrapped him around her little finger until he’d offered her the stars…

  No. Not his Jenna.

  “Let me talk to her. I can—”

  “Is she there? Now? Un-fucking-believable. If you needed to get laid, you could’ve made a better choice than an ambitious prop that eats.”

  Micah squeezed the phone so hard he was surprised it didn’t crack under the pressure. Fucking metaphor for his life right now. “Hanging up now, Jack. Call me back when you stop being an asshole. We’ll figure this out then.”

  “You need to get rid of her. Now. Like, in the next five minutes. Before she completely wrecks everything you’ve worked for and you end up kissing that Emmy goodbye. I’m calling Jerry and Lance and am going to kiss their asses on your behalf so that maybe, just maybe, you get to keep your job next week. You better damn well pick up the phone when I call back. We’re going to have some serious work on our hands today to keep you employable.”

  Micah hung up. It wasn’t like he wanted to hear anything more Jack had to say. He needed to talk to Jenna before this got further out of hand. She could make this make sense. Jack was a cynical bastard who could make Mother Teresa sound greedy. Just because a few of the things Jack said made Jenna look bad…

  Micah opened the door to his bedroom. His empty bedroom where Jenna should’ve still been waiting for him so they could clear the air, laugh about Jack’s misconceptions, then take the phone off the hook and go back to bed.

  He checked the bathroom and the closet—why the fuck would she be h
iding in the closet, this wasn’t a game of hide-and-seek, for God’s sake. The cookie plate he’d knocked to the floor was gone. Maybe she’d taken it to the kitchen. That sounded like something Jenna would do. There was nothing suspicious about her absence.

  He believed that too, up until he found her at the nook, cell phone glued to her ear, the dress he’d stripped off her last night draped over the crook of one arm. Not completely damning, but it sure didn’t feel right either.

  At his approach, she looked at him, eyes wide…with surprise, or a damn good facsimile?

  “My agent left me a message,” she said, her voice full of happy wonder.

  Jack’s condemning words pin-balled through his head. Who do you think benefitted the most from yesterday’s debacle?

  “You have an agent?” He tried to make it a question, but the bite in his words turned it into an accusation. If only she’d say the right thing, talk about him and her, and not the career she wanted so badly she’d do anything, use anyone, to get it.

  Concern crinkled her brow. “Yeah. I met her at Stars a couple weeks ago. She’s brand new. Got me a few auditions, but nothing’s panned out. She swears I’m ready, but now she says something’s come up and we have to talk. What does that mean? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  It was a bad thing. A huge fucking bad thing. For him. He’d fallen in love, and she’d stepped right in and taken the express paparazzi train to her fifteen minutes of fame, leaving him behind to deal with the fallout.

  Jack was right. Jenna was benefiting, and Micah was going to pay for it.

  “I guess last night really worked out for you, didn’t it?” He didn’t bother hiding his bitterness this time.

  “Micah?” That sweet voice, the hurt in her eyes… God, she did it so well, because a part of him still wanted to wrap his arms around her and promise her the world. “What’d I miss?” She stepped toward him and put a hand on his arm. She was wearing one of his shirts and nothing else, from the looks of it. The classic morning-after look. Kittenish. Vixenish. Fake.

  “Everyone’s talking about you today. My agent, your agent, TMZ. Is that what you had in mind?” He didn’t push her away, but she jerked back all the same.

  “Micah? What the hell’s going on?”

  “Who were you on the phone with last night at dinner?”

  Jenna shook her head slowly. “I didn’t talk to anybody.”

  “The phone was in your hand when I came out of the bathroom.”

  A blush stained her cheeks, her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. Guilt. Pure and simple. She couldn’t put that toothpaste back in the tube.

  “It’s not what you’re thinking.”

  “No? So was it your agent who called the paparazzi? I bet she was thrilled to hear you were out with me. Makes her job a lot easier. Bet she’s having fun today, probably submitting your headshot all around town while you’re still the shit. Hey, if you’re lucky you might get cast as hot-tub girl number three in some straight-to-DVD shlockfest. Maybe even get a line or two before the thrill wears off.”

  Jenna pivoted and stalked into the kitchen. “You’ve got me figured out already, huh? A gold-digging opportunist taking advantage of you, right?” Bending down, she scooped her shoes off the floor before pinning him with a hurt, resentful glare. “Yeah, that’s me. And I must be damn good, because the way I remember it, you’re the one who came to me. You followed me to holding after our on-set incident. You hunted me down at Stars. You asked me out. You followed me home. You asked me to move in with you. This is not my script, it’s yours. I never asked for this.”

  Her hand jerked out, snatching something small and red from the countertop and hiding it in her clenched fist. Jenna’s panties, the ones he’d peeled off when he’d had to take her, right then and there, no waiting. When cookies and milk and house keys and a future with Jenna were the only things that mattered.

  Whoa, this had gone way off course, wrong on every level. He needed to backtrack, pull back the words. “Jenna, wait.”

  “No. No waiting. Let’s get it all on the table, shall we? How about all that trust we established last night, hmm? Maybe you should’ve decided you didn’t trust me before you fucked me bare. And maybe I shouldn’t have believed an actor’s words about real feelings and emotions, because Lord knows you can’t trust an actor. Right, Micah? But I’m sure all that’s my fault too.”

  “Shit.” This was wrong. He needed to clear his head, calm down, start over—

  Except his phone was ringing again. Fucking Jack, couldn’t even give him three damn minutes to talk to Jenna.

  Not that he’d needed more than two to completely fuck everything up.

  Maybe this was a blessing in disguise. They could take a breather, calm down and think more clearly. He’d get Jack off his case and then spend the day focused on Jenna.

  “Let me take this,” he said, one hand already lifting the phone to his ear, the other held up in a conciliatory gesture. “Just…give me a few minutes, okay?”

  Her quiet words followed him as he left the room. “I’ve got nothing left to give.”

  After fifteen minutes of yelling at Jack and being yelled at, Micah hung up the phone, sick to his stomach and minus one agent in his life. Fucking Jack had called the paparazzi on him last night. His own damn agent, who thought Micah needed to be trending on Twitter and the news story of the day, had decided to get him some buzzworthy press in case he was written off Sexy M.D. and they had to find him another job. When Micah had called his agent on his actions, Jack had beat Micah to the punch and fired him, refusing to work with an actor who wouldn’t jump through his hoops. Now Micah got to find a new agent and deal with the ugly press backlash caused by his former one.

  But first he had to deal with the backlash in his personal life. He had to apologize to Jenna, somehow make up for all the awful shit that had flown out of his mouth. She wasn’t guilty of a single thing he’d accused her of, and he was nothing but a selfish, bitter asshole.

  The kitchen was empty. Not that he’d expected her to be waiting there for him. He stalked through the house, checking the living room, dining room, breakfast nook, balcony. She wasn’t waiting for him anywhere.

  His bedroom was empty too, though she’d been there. The shirt she’d been wearing lay sprawled on top of the tangled sheets.

  Micah jogged through the house, checking every room again. The more his search came up empty, the worse he felt. Where was she?

  He returned to the kitchen, the last place he’d seen her, as though it could spill the secret of where she was. No such luck.

  The little office nook held the answer. Jenna’s purse was missing, but she’d left something behind. The familiar set of keys he’d given her lay in the middle of the desk, a clear answer to the question he hadn’t wanted to ask.

  Jenna was gone, and she wasn’t coming back.

  In the last twenty-four hours, Micah’s world had gone from shit to worse.

  His head throbbed to the beat of the music blaring from the laptop as a video played on the homepage of TMZ under the headline “Micah Said Knock You Out”. Clips of every time Dr. Dale Jameson had pushed, shoved or punched someone were accentuated with comic-book-style kapows and bams. And not just Dr. Dale moments. Oh no. Apparently his entire career was full of violence, from his role as a high-school thug on Dawson’s Creek, all the way back to the bully he played in one of his earliest gigs on General Hospital.

  But the highlighted portion of the reel, the one the creator had interspersed most liberally, was the outtake from Sexy M.D. of him knocking Jenna to the floor followed by him shoving the paparazzo in front of the restaurant. All of this was set to L.L. Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out”, creating an unfortunate montage of aggression and rage.

  As the video started over again automatically—because once just wasn’t enough—Micah shut the laptop and looked to Steve. “Wow, they dug pretty deep for that GH clip from when I was eight. Guess they needed to prove I was
an asshole from day one, huh?” His fingers tapped on the closed computer, beating out L.L. Cool J’s rhythm. Dammit, he used to like that song. He curled his restless hand into a fist before asking the question that actually mattered. “Who the hell leaked the Sexy M.D. footage?”

  “We don’t know, but we’re trying to find out.” Steve picked up his laptop. “We will find out. I just wanted to make sure you knew about thi—”

  “Yeah, thanks.” Micah didn’t want to think about it anymore, let alone discuss it. “See you on set.”

  Bounding down the stairs outside the production office, Micah wondered what the rest of the day had in store for him if this was how it was starting. Every violent moment of every show he’d done immortalized in one three-minute mashup that would probably have three million views before lunchtime.

  He was beyond caring what this did to him or his career, but whoever had leaked the Sexy M.D. outtake had dragged Jenna into it too. That he couldn’t stomach.

  Pulling his cell phone from the pocket of his doctor coat, he pressed the speed dial for Jenna. What was the definition of insanity? Trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome? Yet he kept hoping. And he kept talking to her voicemail.

  All the sincerity in the world hadn’t gotten her to call him, not after the first message he’d left, or the hundred or more since then, but still he tried.

  “I’m sorry, Jenna. So damn sorry. Please call me back. Call me an asshole. Call me on every shitheaded thing I’ve done. Just…please…call me.”

  He texted too, a truncated version of his plea, in case she deleted all his voicemails without listening.

  There’d been no interviews with her. Jenna’s fifteen minutes of fame were almost up, and she hadn’t used a single nanosecond of it. Why was it that TMZ could find him anywhere, but they couldn’t find her? She’d fallen off the planet when she’d disappeared from his house. He needed to talk to her, not just to apologize, but so he’d know that she was okay, that nothing had happened to her because of him.