Coming Attractions

by Rosie Vanyon

  You don’t think you’re getting all possessive and protective of the treasure as a substitute for some other thing you suddenly felt threatened about? Oddly, it was Mia’s voice in her mind, the voice of rationality and reason. Cara blocked Mia out. What the hell did she know?

  Cara plastered an answering smile on her dial, climbed the steps, and hugged the traitorous snake good morning. She had to hug him, she told herself, to make her show of normalcy convincing. It had nothing to do with her instinctive need to feel his big, capable hands resting on her tush, nothing to do with sinking into the familiar musky scent of him, and nothing at all to do with brushing her hungry mouth over his delectable lips.

  “You’ve just missed Selena,” he said, still holding Cara close, his face against her hair, his firm hand possessively stroking her derriere. He must have felt her stiffen at the actress’ name, but seemed utterly distracted by his gentle exploration of the curve of her bottom. “I thought we might lunch with her and Otto. You know, chat about the film.”

  It was her cue to step away and tell him about Alessandra’s lover, she realized. The perfect opportunity was shining like a neon beacon. If she told him Alessandra had not been chaste, he could have his wretched love scenes and get his filthy mind off her wealth.

  If there really was any.

  Sure, Alessandra had promised her daughters a fortune, but a vow was just words. There was no evidence to suggest there really was any money. After all, how well did either of the girls really know their mother? All her life, Cara had believed her mother to be celibate and she had been wrong about that. What was to say she wasn’t wrong about the money, too?

  Then Cara had an even more horrible thought. What if Levi had picked up her film, not because he thought it would be a commercial success, but because he was intrigued by the missing fortune? He had bought Flinders’ Keep by the time he read the script, so he would have realized two things when he read it—that there were mythical millions missing, and that, if they were on the property, he would have a claim to them.

  Cara shuddered as she followed her thoughts through to their logical conclusion. Perhaps he had seduced her, pretended to grow close to her purely for the sake of pumping her for clues about the fortune, shedding extra light on the mystery, hoping that between the house, the script, and the woman, he could fit the puzzle pieces together. Her mind clicked back over their conversations. “What was it like growing up here? Do you think there really ever was any fortune? Your mother had a lot of secrets…?”

  Was this whole romantic interlude a sham?

  What had he called himself? “A bit of a business buccaneer and a financial daredevil, all about risk and return.”

  The thought made bile rise in her throat and she sincerely wished she had skipped breakfast. How could she have such grave doubts about his character and motives on one hand, but light up like a Christmas tree at his every touch? Like his fingers currently trawling down the seam between her butt cheeks and dipping dangerously toward the hot hollow between her thighs. Making her pant. She couldn’t think clearly while he was torturing her body so subtly, so exquisitely.

  Ruthlessly, Cara extricated herself from Levi’s embrace, taking a step away to really look at him. Oh yes, he had the guileless good looks—the dreamy eyes and sensual mouth, the strong jaw and stunning physique and an all-round sex appeal that just didn’t quit. But Levi was just a run-of-the-mill gold digger, she reminded herself, fueled by greed to uncover her inheritance.

  Sure, he spoke scathingly of Alessandra and her hard-hearted matter-of-factness, but he was no better than she was. Before anything else, anything decent and honorable and true, the pair of them were thrill seekers and fortune hunters, destined to fuel their needs for adventure and affluence above all else. Though it hurt to admit it, money and mystery were irresistible to people like Alessandra—and, it seemed, Levi.

  Unfortunately, it also seemed that people like them were irresistible to Cara. She had loved her mother with the complete and uninhibited totality of a trusting child, and she had been badly burned. Now, fool that she was, she had fallen for Levi, hard, fast, and irrevocably. His duplicity was all the more scalding because it was laced with her own humiliation. She should have known better. Treasure hunters were clearly Cara’s kryptonite.

  The crushing sadness, boiling resentment, and bitter disenchantment roiled through her like vinegar through milk. She needed to buy some time to get her head straight before she said or did something foolish, and not so much tipped her hand as fisted it and let it fly at his fast-talking, sensual, delectable kisser.

  “Look, I can’t manage lunch today,” she improvised, trying and failing to meet his eyes. “I really need to go into town to buy a birthday gift for my niece.” That was true enough, she thought. “Perhaps we could make it another time?” Like next time Halley’s Comet rolls around.

  “Oh, okay. I thought…”

  He ran a hand through his streaky blond hair and shook his head. The corners of his mouth tilted downward and his strong brows knitted. He looked genuinely forlorn, as though someone had kicked his puppy or taken away his best game controller.

  His sensitive gray-green eyes met hers and, for a moment, it felt as though he could read everything—her mind, her heart, her soul. For a split second, it seemed as if there was no space between them—not a breath, not a heartbeat, not a secret. Standing there, face-to-face on the veranda of her childhood home in the glow of the morning sun, it was as though they were two…but not two—separate but deeply and innately joined at some primordial level. The wash of feeling left her mouth dry and her eyes damp. Where the hell had all the air gone?

  His jaw tensed, his nostrils flared, and he swallowed. He felt it, just as surely as she had.

  “Cara…” he breathed, taking a step toward her, reaching for her hand with his own, eyes imploring, beckoning, seducing.

  God help her, if she took his hand now, if she accepted whatever pittance of affection he was offering, she would be lost. There would be no going back. He would own her completely and she would be a slave to his whims forever. And, damn him, the idea of being lazily adrift under his spell for the rest of her life didn’t seem like such a raw deal. Her fingers prickled with sensation, her fingertips twitched, itching to meet his, like five mini Levi-seeking missiles.

  Her hand quivered, her eyes acquiesced, her heart surrendered.

  Then a cloud crossed the sun, Selena Simms laughed somewhere nearby, and Cara caught a waft of moss and roses and childhood.

  Levelheadedness kicked in and she blinked, sucked in air, shook her head, and stepped away. She felt suddenly weak and woozy.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked, concern creasing his brow.

  “Fine. Fine,” she lied, trying not to let her voice squeak. I have to get out of here!

  “It’s just you look a little pale and you’re acting kind of, I don’t know, unusual.”

  Wheels. I need wheels. Damn the bastard who had nicked her bike.

  “I’m great. Peachy. Couldn’t be better. Hey, any chance I could borrow your truck for a quick trip into town?”

  He paused for a moment, thinking.

  Just say yes, just say yes, just say…

  “I have a few things to do in town myself. Not the least of which is to buy more bacon. These people eat more than a tank of sharks. Why don’t you let me tidy up a couple of things, grab my jacket and keys, and we’ll head off together in, say, half an hour?”

  I’d rather eat glass than ride with you, she thought, but she forced a smile that probably came out more like a grimace and nodded her compliance.

  The moment he turned his back, she fumbled for the back of the nearest seat and collapsed into it, cradling her head in her hands and forcing herself to breathe deeply and evenly in the hopes that she could slow her heartbeat and stop her mind from spinning. If she could just get the rhythm section steady, hopefully the rest would follow, most especially her common sense.

  Chapter T
welve

  Cara spent the half hour sitting on the front veranda out of everyone’s way, chewing her manicure to bits and wondering how to play the situation with Levi.

  Why had she slept with him? If she didn’t have a personal interest in this jumble, it would be a lot simpler to sort out. And why-oh-why had she let herself develop feelings for the man? He was a bigshot movie producer, used to having women fall at his feet. Why had she thought she was something special? Clearly, for him, any port in a storm would do, so to speak. Hadn’t he just demonstrated that with Selena?

  Just the thought of Selena prickled her skin like poison ivy. She hadn’t so much as met the woman, but just her name made Cara’s scalp crawl. Cara wasn’t usually the judgmental type and she was surprised and a bit bewildered by her sudden and baseless dislike for the woman. Sure, Selena clearly had a history and a continuing affection for Levi. But that was no crime. Levi was a grown man and a free agent. He could be affectionate or even get reacquainted with whomever he wanted to. In truth, Cara told herself, Selena barely made it onto her list of concerns. Her main worry was Levi.

  In a nutshell, she had managed to embroil herself in a terrible tangle with him. Every time she picked up a thread of the state of affairs, she unwittingly unravelled a whole other twist of issues. Why had she let her feelings become involved?

  Something in her line of thinking snagged her attention. She replayed her thought process and latched on to an idea. If she took her feelings for Levi out of the equation, pretended they didn’t exist, what would she do?

  In her mind, she summed up the circumstances as impartially as she could. That was her knack, after all. She had excised her feelings about her mother to complete her film script, she would eliminate them from the equation with Levi now.

  Levi needed money. He wanted to find the missing fortune at all costs, even going so far as buying her screenplay and offering to make her film, plus pumping her for information using any methods at his disposal.

  God. Even in her confusion and fury, memories of his “methods” suffused her cheeks with heat and made her mouth water. Everything about Levi was red-hot, racy, and riveting. The guy was a sexy ass lust demon and she wanted him beyond reason.

  She tried to force her mind back on track, but quelling her desire was like wrestling an alligator. Everything inside her resisted her efforts to be objective. Whenever he crossed her thoughts, her heart flipped and switched like an Olympic trampoline ace. Her mind threw up random electrifying snapshots of the pair of them in flagrante—her head thrown back, his mouth suckling her breast, his hands in her hair and his sex buried in her mouth, her riding him ,hard and reckless and exhilarated, him gripping her buttocks and plunging into her from behind…

  And her soul? Her soul hummed along to its own annoyingly smug tune as though it knew that there was nothing she could do to escape her fate, a fate intricately intertwined with the destiny of one devilishly sexy, dangerously addictive movie producer.

  However, Cara’s next thought short-circuited her crazy-making hunger and her prescience.

  Maybe the situation was worse than she had thought. Perhaps Levi had never given a rat’s ass about her screenplay in the first place. Perhaps he never really intended to make the movie. Could it be that he just wanted to get Cara here alone and uncover any information she might have about Alessandra’s cash? Maybe her screenplay was just worthless self-indulgent crap about her mother. Maybe he was just flattering her with talk about fame and success. Although, if that were the case, all the people at work, the scaffolding, the equipment sure suggested Levi was willing to jump through hoops to make the charade look convincing. But if there was a fortune wrapped up in looking convincing, wouldn’t he make that effort, financial daredevil that he was?

  On the other hand, how was he to have known that she would be at Flinders’ Keep a day early? He had no way of guessing he would find her there alone. And what about the storm? Did her orchestrate that, too, so they were marooned together? Clearly chance played a large part in their coming together.

  Well, okay, maybe he wasn’t trying to get her alone. Her early arrival and the storm were a bonus for him. But he wanted her at Flinders’ Keep where he could push her for information and hunt for the fortune. Why else would he have invited her? He said it was to work on the script, but was that the truth? Was the script ever going to make it off the study floor?

  She was more confused by her new thoughts than when she had started down this trail of supposedly emotionless ponderings. Levi would be back any minute to take her to Ocean Ridge. She really needed a game plan if she was going to survive riding with him in the close confines of the truck’s cab. Maybe she should skip the in depth analytics, she thought, and get to the bottom line.

  Without all the extraneous issues, it was a simple task for her to sum up their positions impartially.

  In her favor, she had the secret letter that he didn’t know about. Plus, she had firsthand knowledge of Alessandra. Also, it was widely known that the fortune Alessandra had reputedly left behind was intended for her daughters. He would have a hard time claiming it.

  In Levi’s favor, he owned the Flinders’ Keep property and all its contents. She mentally kicked herself for not following their lawyer’s advice and keeping the old house until the treasure turned up. At that point, she had just wanted to be rid of the estate, angry at her mother and convinced there was no fortune to be found.

  Once she summarized the situation without tainting it with messy feelings, she could see a clear course of action. She needed to give in to his demands for more sex in the film. She would show him the letter and he could roll up his sleeves and get lost in his work, assuming he really wanted to make the film. If it was all a charade, that would become abundantly clear once she pressed the green light on the sex scenes.

  While he was occupied with getting the set built and the shooting underway, she could hunt for the fortune and… And what? Steal it away from the property? Wasn’t that underhanded? Illegal, even? Some might call it “theft.” She brushed the negative thoughts away. As soon as she realized his surreptitious agenda, any and all ways and wiles became fair. Didn’t they?

  A little voice piped up, reminding her that she had no need of a fortune, that, in fact, a fortune was exactly the kind of burden she had spent her life avoiding. But her stubborn mind, tinged with prickling pride, insisted that she had to have it, if only to keep Levi’s hands off it.

  It would serve him right, she thought, for manipulating her and for two-timing with Selena. Not that she and Levi had made any declarations of exclusivity, of course. But…

  Speaking of Selena, it crossed her mind that fast-tracking the film might push Levi and Selena closer together. What did they say about romance in a pressure cooker environment? Cara told herself she didn’t care. She would find the fortune and get the hell out of there. If she had learned anything over the years, it was that when the going got tough, getting the hell out of Dodge was her best bet. It was a theory that had never let her down.

  The thought of walking away from Levi and leaving him for Selena made her heart clench.

  She ignored it.

  Keeping emotion out of the equation is highly artificial given that you’ve handed Levi your heart.

  “Shut up, Mia,” she muttered, and returned Levi’s wave as he came out through the front door.

  ****

  The drive was spent quietly, the radio playing Springsteen and U2. The tension was unmissable, but as long as her body language stayed closed, he kept his mouth that way too. He had learned a thing or two about life over the years and keeping quiet when next to a live grenade was one of them. He’d wait until she was ready to open up and then take it slow and easy. Hopefully, they could both get out of the ride alive.

  At one point, he thought he saw a flash of red at a crossroad, three or four streets away that might have been her bike, but he didn’t raise it with her. Things were too volatile. She was too volatile. And this time
, not in a good way.

  He smirked, thinking of all the other times she had been explosive in all the right ways—against him, beneath him, astride him…man, but she was a spicy sex witch.

  But Cara had been acting strangely that morning. He didn’t know what might be up with her. Hormones acting up? The thought crossed his mind—hey, he was a guy—but, in his memory, his kid sister gave him a mental slap. “Just because a woman’s upset, don’t assume she’s PMS-ing or tonight, while you’re in bed, I’ll assume you’re dead and bury you!” He smiled, imagining Erin’s flushed face and eyes spitting sparks. She was a pocket rocket all right.

  “Happy thought?” Cara asked, breaking the silence.

  His hand went to his scar.

  At least Erin had been a pocket rocket until…

  He couldn’t answer Cara. The grimness was clawing at his chest by then and he could do nothing but shake his head and keep driving, not looking at her, thinking of nothing but the road and waiting for the unbearable clutches to let go of his innards, let some air into his lungs and let his heart beat in time again.

  ****

  Levi pulled up outside Sails where they had shared a conversation only a few short days ago. Since then, nothing had really changed, except they’d slept together. A lot.

  The film didn’t have more sex, the fortune was still missing, and he had no clue where to take their relationship. Hell, he didn’t even know where the relationship stood at that moment. Hard to know where you’re going when you don’t know where you’re starting from.

  But he didn’t begrudge Cara her pensive mood. She’d had a heavy week. Not only had her motorcycle been stolen, she had also come face to face with her past in terms of staying at the family home and copping a serve from her sister about the film. Both of which had probably compounded her complex feelings about her mother.

  Then, there was the sleeping together thing. Guys seemed to take it in their stride, or at least pretend to. He’d noticed that sometimes sex messed with women’s heads. They got mixed up between feeling and feeling—that is, feeling great with their skin on fire and their brain exploding mid-orgasm, and feeling messy emotions like caring and love and stuff.