by Rosie Vanyon
“So, Cara, Jeans here tells me you’ve decided to go with the subplot he’s concocted.”
“Jeans?”
“Levi’s,” Levi explained drolly.
“Gotcha,” she told Otto with a giggle.
Levi rolled his eyes.
“I’ve found evidence that a love interest would be in keeping with the facts,” Cara said.
“I see,” said Otto. “Any idea who the mystery lover might have been?”
“He signed his name ‘Styck,’ which doesn’t apply to any of the people I can think of from my childhood.”
“So, what do you propose?”
“I’ll ask my sister tomorrow if she has any insight, but I’m not holding my breath. We should probably just come up with something minor, tasteful, and plausible.”
“So you don’t want her naked jelly wrestling with hermaphrodite albino dwarves or anything?”
“No,” she chuckled. “Otto, you’re crazy.”
“Maybe we’ll pitch that idea to the Aphrodite producers and see where they go with it,” laughed Levi.
“Well, seriously then, are we thinking more a short, scratch-an-itch, who-can-blame-her fling or a long-friendship-inevitably-blossoms-into-something-more type scenario?”
“Short,” said Levi, just as Cara said, “Long.”
Otto just chortled and raised his black eyebrows. “Gee, it’s going to be fun working with you two. You’re clearly on the same wavelength.”
They talked around all kinds of story possibilities, some of them hilariously far-fetched, some heart-warming, some mysterious, and others that were more prosaic. No one seemed intent on reaching any kind of agreement and there didn’t seem to be any pressure even to commit their thoughts to paper right away. It was more of a brainstorming session that could be fine-tuned and fleshed out at a later time.
She didn’t like to admit it, but she could already see how adding a lover to the story gave Alessandra more depth and more complexity, rounding her out as a person. It added a perspective that Cara, as her child, would never have been able to bring to the screenplay.
Otto was just beginning to slur when Selena breezed into the room with a tap on the door as an afterthought.
“Hello, darlings! I’m so sorry to intrude, but I’ve been terribly lonely and longing for some decent company. Those builders are easy on the eyes, but conversation can be a bit limited.” Her laughter trilled as the two men scrambled to fetch her a drink while she sank down into the chair Levi vacated.
Otto handed Selena a scotch, Levi wheeled the ergonomic leather desk chair over to the coffee table, and seated himself in it between Selena and Cara.
It was the first time Cara had seen Selena in the flesh. It was weird, almost creepy to see this goddess of the silver screen at Flinders’ Keep in clinging gym gear with her bare feet tucked beneath her and a scotch in her hand. Despite Cara’s imaginings, while Selena’s nails were quite long, they were unpolished, her hair was tied in a messy topknot, and she wasn’t wearing a lick of makeup. Her charisma, though, was category five.
“Otto, Levi, you have no manners.” Selena leaned across Levi and extended her hand to Cara. “You must be Cara, our inimitable script writer. I’m Selena Simms. It is an absolute honor to have been chosen to play your mother. Such a complex character—so three-dimensional, so real, she fairly leaps off the page. I can’t thank you enough for the opportunity.”
Selena’s deep brown eyes brimmed with sincerity as she took Cara’s right hand warmly between her own and Cara found herself smiling back and replying genially, “I’m looking forward to working with you.”
She’s an actress, Cara tried to remind herself. Of course she knows how to seem sincere. But she couldn’t shake her first impression that Selena was a genuine person who really was keen to appear as her mother in Lost Treasure.
“So what were you talking with the builders about, Selena?” Otto asked with a wickedly raised eyebrow.
“Oh, this and that—tools, studs, erections, you know…”
Even Cara couldn’t help smirking.
“When we ran out of double entendres, we played a game,” Selena continued. “Hey, we should give it a go. It was fun! What do you say, Otto?”
“Happy to play a game with you, City…” Otto turned to Cara.
“Simm City?” Cara guessed.
He made a gun from his fingers and pretended to shoot her. “You got it. Let’s play!”
Cara didn’t know whether it was Selena’s disarming nature, Otto’s generous humor, the three glasses of red wine, or just the fun vibe of the evening—all she knew was that she forgot her normally reserved nature and let herself be carried along by the others.
“So, what’s the game, Selena?” Levi asked.
“Truth or dare. I’ll ask you first, Otto. Truth or dare?”
“Oh, no question. I’ll take a dare. You’d never believe the truth if I told you.” He chuckled.
“Okay… Let me think… Do a rap about…” Selena’s eyes darted around the room for inspiration. “Jelly donuts. Aaaand go!”
“Are you kidding?” Levi protested. “What rhymes with ‘donuts?’”
“Not our problem,” laughed Selena.
Otto took a long time to clamber to his feet. Cara wasn’t sure whether he struggled because of the scotch or his bulk or both. Perhaps he was just buying time to gather his thoughts. It suddenly occurred to her that she would have to take her turn at the game eventually. Her cheeks flushed at the prospect and she wished she had gone to bed earlier. Not that she and Levi had discussed the evening’s sleeping arrangements… Her blush deepened.
Before she could pursue that line of thinking any further, Otto began to rap with gusto, making like a beat box and then launching into impromptu lyrics while he grooved around the room, jowls wobbling and swathes of fat rolling like waves.
“For dinner we ate chicken vermicelli. It rocked my buds and sated my belly. But I’m not skinny like you girls on the tellie. For dessert I’m eating donuts with jelly!”
They all laughed, shrieked, and applauded. What Otto lacked in finesse and breath-control he made up for in clever rhyme and exuberance.
“Not bad, even if dinner was pellizzoni,” laughed Levi.
“Pellizzoni doesn’t rhyme.” Otto mock pouted.
“Poetic license!” declared Cara
Cara couldn’t imagine ever being able to perform like that, so unselfconsciously and effortlessly. Just imagining having to make an exhibition of herself made her feel sick. She was much more comfortable behind the scenes, preferably behind the word processor.
Thankfully, Selena was keen to take her turn. It paid to be in a room full of egocentrics, Cara thought, but not unkindly. She was enjoying herself, and the light-hearted spontaneity of the evening was an excellent antidote to all the heavy stuff—good and bad—that had unfolded over the last few days.
“Levi! Do me! Do me!”
Cara’s eyes narrowed, but Otto chimed in, “Would you care to rephrase that?” making everyone laugh and sending a wash of pink over Selena’s cheeks. She covered her face self-consciously and Levi rescued her with the big question.
“Truth or dare?”
“Oh, I might do a dare if it was Cara dishing it out. She looks like a kind person. But I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw you, Callister. You’d have me skulling prune juice or swinging from the chandelier. So, truth.”
Cara waited with bated breath, figuring the question Levi chose might give her a clue as to his feelings toward Selena. Up until Selena had roped him in to challenging her in the game, he had all but ignored the movie star. In fact, he had made such a point of keeping his eyes glued to Cara that she was more than a little suspicious. Was he making a show of overlooking Selena and focusing on Cara to lull her into believing he cared for her? That there was something more to his interest than money?
If that was the case, Cara wasn’t buying it. But she wasn’t totally writing it off either. After
all, he was undeniably one hot, sexy hunk of man and she’d be crazy to turn him away if he cared anything at all for her. If nothing else, her wine-fuzzed brain decided, Levi’s profound proficiency in the horizontal hustle could buy him some short term ethical latitude.
“Hmmm. Okay…” Levi began, addressing Selena, “what’s the most embarrassing moment of your life?”
“Oh, really? That’s the best you can do? There are plenty of them. Plenty! Tripping on a catwalk, congratulating my cousin when she wasn’t pregnant, realizing I’ve been walking round all afternoon with spinach in my teeth, forgetting where I parked… But the most embarrassing? This doesn’t go beyond these walls, you hear?”
Levi leaned in toward Selena, Otto made a “bring it on” gesture, and Cara scooted forward in her seat. Everyone nodded solemnly.
“I was five or six years old and my parents took me and my two big brothers on our first ever holiday, at a high-rise resort. We were on the third floor and I couldn’t see the swimming pool over the balcony fence. My brothers kept making fun of how I was too short to see over it, so I stuck my head through the bars to get a gander at the pool and, yeah, you guessed it…my fat head got stuck in the gate. My parents had to call the hotel maintenance guys to cut through the iron and get my head out. They still tease me about that.”
It was an embarrassing and endearing story that made them all laugh until Otto’s guffaws dwindled and ebbed to snores, and that made them laugh again.
“Hey, Otto. Wake up, you big feet seat,” said Selena, shaking Otto’s shoulder.
Otto woke up with a snort.
“Get it—ottoman?” whispered Levi at Cara’s puzzled look.
“Come on, big guy, I’ll walk you to your trailer,” Selena said, reaching for Otto’s hand and pulling on his arm.
Otto did her bidding and, with a couple of false starts, struggled out of his seat.
“I know you’re falling down drunk, but don’t be literally falling down drunk ‘cause I’m not going to pick you up,” Selena admonished.
“I am not falling down drunk,” Otto mumbled sloppily as Selena took his hand and led him gently out of the room, pausing in the doorway to waggle her fingers in a wave. “Goodnight, Jeans. Goodnight, Painter,” Otto added sleepily.
“Goodnight, Selena,” they chorused. “Goodnight, Otto.”
“Goodnight, John-Boy, goodnight, Ma, goodnight Elizabeth!” Otto wisecracked as he lumbered after Selena and out of sight, leaving Levi and Cara alone.
“Painter?” Cara asked him.
“Who knows? Drink?” he offered, picking up the red wine bottle.
“No thanks,” she said. “I’m a little tiddly.”
“In a good way or a bad way?” he asked in a tone that made her unsure whether he was being provocative.
She wanted him to be provocative, she realized. She wanted him to tease her and torment her. She wanted him to play with her. She’d gladly be the mouse to his cat tonight. Gladly submit to any tantalizing games he might have in mind.
When she answered him, her voice was husky with desire. “In a good way…” She smiled slow and sexy. “A very, very good way.” She arched an eyebrow playfully and licked her lips, leaving him no doubt as to what she was thinking.
He kept his cool, but she knew him now, knew the tell-tale swallow, the rub of his thumb under his chin, the darkening of his eyes. Her baiting had landed just where she had intended.
He took a step toward her and she took his measure, reminded of how large and solid he was. How gorgeous. How damned erotic.
He met her eyes—gray challenged blue. The air between them effervesced.
“Truth or dare?” he asked softly, almost menacing. She suddenly wondered if in luring him, she’d bitten off more than she could chew.
“Truth or…?” she whispered.
“Dare. You didn’t have a turn,” Levi pointed out, raising a sardonic eyebrow.
Her inner imp deserted her. Playing the temptress didn’t come naturally and he was calling her bluff.
“I…I’d be too embarrassed to do a dare the way Otto did,” she confessed with barely concealed panic.
He closed the space between them and sat on the arm of her chair. Close enough that she could smell the bare scent of his desire, close enough to touch. He watched her eyes. She swallowed.
He stroked her hair, half incitement, half reassurance. “Even between just the two of us? A nice dare? A sexy dare?” His words were more promise than question and she felt the hot quiver of her primal response deep between her legs.
“Well…” She cleared her throat. Her mouth was parched, her breath erratic. “Maybe a sexy dare.”
He grinned wolfishly. “Okay, you have to pick someone in this room and—”
“Hang on! You’re the only other person here!” she protested.
Levi gasped in pretend shock. “Oh, so I am. I guess you’ll have to pick me.”
“And?”
“And take dictation.”
“Take?”
“Here’s a pen and paper.” He handed her the empty notebook from the glass-topped coffee table. “You can write fast? And your spelling’s okay?”
She frowned, perplexed. “I thought you said—”
“Your spelling’s okay?” he reiterated.
“I am a writer by profession, so, um, duh.”
“Okay, perfect. So I need you to write down everything I say.”
“Everything?”
“Everything.”
“Starting now?”
“Yes.”
She wrote the word “Yes” at the top of the page and frowned at him, wondering what sort of dare he had cooked up for her.
“Very good.”
She wrote, “Very good.”
“Tonight,” he said, “I want to peel your clothes off. I want to unwrap you. And every place that I lay bare, I want to kiss….”
Cara’s hand wobbled a little as she copied down his words. Her breath had gone from irregular to sketchy. Her heartbeat kicked up a notch and she had to moisten her lips. He watched the small movements of her mouth.
“I will kiss and nibble and lick your sexy body from your tangerine toenails to your earlobes and your fingertips. Last of all, I will move my mouth to your navel and trail kisses down your belly to your pussy. Getting hot, good little secretary mine?”
“Yes,” she rasped as she dragged her pen over the page. There was something incredibly titillating about listening to him tell her what he had in store for her. The frissons of anticipation zinged through her veins. And then to write down his lusty words? That was sheer torture. She didn’t want to concentrate on comma placement and hyphenation. She wanted to think about the content of what he was saying. She wanted to fixate on his darkly delicious intentions.
“Good. Because my mouth is going to loiter between your legs. My tongue is going to explore every fold and hollow…”
“Wait, slow down. Loiter…legs…pretty sure I spelled ‘unwrap’ wrong.” She was gasping, shaking, befuddled, and completely under his wicked spell.
“I am going to fill my mouth with the taste of your sex and then I am going to suck your clit until you come. Understand?”
She had stopped writing. She wasn’t even pretending to. Her hand was quaking. Her brain wouldn’t work properly. She wanted everything he was spelling out. That and more. She wanted him inside her. Now.
“Come here,” she commanded, and she didn’t need to ask him twice.
Chapter Thirteen
They had not discussed sleeping arrangements, Cara realized as they curled up together on the rug in the study. The crew were largely camped in tents outside in the field out the back and Selena, Levi, and Otto had trailers closer to the house. Cara wondered whether she and Levi would be spending the night together now that they had an audience and now that he had got what he wanted—the changes to the movie and the biggest clue to the treasure she could provide. Not to mention the pleasures of her body on the hearth rug.
Oh, he controlled her body all right, as though he were a marionette master and she was a doll, completely under his influence. But he held her heart, and her soul, too. And that particular path would lead her nowhere except to despair. Indeed, she could feel the squeeze of misery lurking already, just waiting to pounce.
If only she had her motorcycle, she thought. She would sneak out, climb aboard, and ride away from here. She’d just let them all get on with the film and throw herself into some other project. Try and forget about Levi and Alessandra and the Midnight Star and the rest of the mess.
But she had no wheels and no real will to leave Levi when there was even the slightest chance he might want her in his bed tonight, for despite everything, she wanted him. Hell, despite everything, she loved him. How pathetic was that?
Something deep inside her had changed irrevocably. She wasn’t sure how or when it had happened, but the signs were unmistakable. Only once before in her adult life had Cara made any kind of investment in another person. As a child, she had keenly felt the absence of her father, and then as a teen, she had learned the pain of losing her mother. She should have learned from those formative experiences, but when she had found herself pregnant, she had been overcome with love for the new little being inside her and all rational thought had gone out the window. Her heart had filled to the brim and overflowed with warmth and devotion to the tiny life growing within her. And look how all three of her loves had turned out.
She had decided after she lost the baby that the only safe investment, the only benign passions were for non-humans and inanimate objects—like a motorcycle. She’d kept Mia and her family at arm’s length. She’d traveled so she couldn’t even get attached to her studio flat.
But then Levi came along and suddenly, she cared. She cared about him—loved him and wanted him, but also found herself open and vulnerable to being hurt by him. The fact that he was using her to reach his own financial ends was like a chain, dragging her down, cutting into her skin, maiming her. His voice, his touch, his sexy gray stare, all combined to make him doubly dangerous, because as well as being a duplicitous fiend, he was also wholly irresistible.