“And now you feel all this? Explosive passion and soul-deep fulfillment? With Liev Reynolds?”
A wave of tormented happiness ebbed over Chris. He smiled, picturing the Australian who’d forever changed him. “For the first time in my life, I feel alive, sis. Truly alive. If I can borrow from Tom Cruise for a moment, I feel complete when I’m with him. Not just when we’re having sex, but just being with him. Being in his company. I feel happy and content and safe and me. One hundred percent me. I haven’t felt any of those things since Mom and Dad were killed, Rowie. None of them.”
“Why do you sound so sad then, Chris? Are you worried about your career?”
He let out a ragged breath. His career. Television’s highest-paid sitcom star, a movie star in the making, a sex symbol. “I’m not. As far as I’m concerned Hollywood is just going to have to deal with the fact the tough guy on the screen kicking ass and taking names is sleeping with his male lover when the credits roll. Fuck it. Hollywood loves to talk about how liberal it is. I’m going to make them put their money where their collective mouths are. If Neil Patrick Harris can be openly gay, so can I. It’s about time Hollywood embraced a homosexual leading man, not just a secondary character in a television show. If the studio suits don’t like that, they’re going to have a fight on their hands.” He smiled, picturing Rowan chewing on her lip in L.A. “I’m good at fighting when I need to. My sister taught me how to do it.”
Rowan’s answering laugh was warm. “I’m glad I’ve had a positive influence on your life, squirt. Now tell me why I’m still hearing pain in your voice.”
Chris swallowed. “Because Reynolds is being a stubborn pain in the ass and won’t even be in the same room with me.”
“Why not?”
The steely edge in Rowan’s voice made him smile. She’d protected him for over ten years, and now it seemed she was prepared to protect his heart. “Because as far as I can tell, he thinks I’m better off without him in my life.”
“What are you going to do about that?”
Chris laughed. “Show him he’s wrong. There’s another thing you taught me over the years, sis. Just as important as picking my fights.”
“And what’s that, squirt?”
“You taught me never ever to give…”
The rest of the statement died in Chris’s throat when Bethany walked into the room. With Liev walking beside her.
“Chris?” Rowan said.
Chris stared at the man, unable to breathe. Unable to move.
“Chris?” his sister repeated.
Without a word, he held out his cell phone to Bethany.
“Hi, Mrs. Hemsworth-Rhodes. It’s Bethany.” He heard her say the words, but her voice was soft. Distant. Fading.
He pushed himself to his feet, his focus locked on Liev.
The Australian walked deeper into the living room, his hands in his hip pockets, his jaw bunched.
Chris’s pulse beat in his neck, a wild tattoo of nervous excitement. He swallowed, his throat rougher than sandpaper. “Thanks for the police escort.”
The man didn’t say a word.
Chris licked his lips. He watched Liev draw closer. Christ, he was gorgeous. And here. Right here in the room with him. “It came in handy when Jeff received a text the Audi’s brakes had been cut and we couldn’t drive less than eighty miles an hour.”
Liev didn’t react.
“Yeah, that was lame,” Chris said, his gut knotting. “Sorry. I’m still recovering from the attempted alien invasion. Good thing the cops were there to stop it. And I think I saw Will Smith as well.”
A foot away, Liev stopped. His gaze held Chris prisoner.
“Okay.” A scratchy laugh hiccupped its way past Chris’s lips. “Will didn’t actually make an appearance, but there was this suspicious looking BMW that kept following us. And Jeff has no clue what the speed limit actually is in the country and I think the cops were just trying to keep up with him.”
Fuck, he was babbling.
Liev’s nostrils flared. His chest rose and fell with slow, steady breaths.
The urge to close the distance between them welled through Chris. He shifted his feet, aching to smooth his hands over Liev’s chest, snare a fistful of the man’s hair and tug his face down so he could kiss him senseless. Instead, Chris pulled a deep breath, squared his shoulders and said, “I want you to come back with me to L.A. tomorrow.”
Liev lifted his eyebrows.
“I know it’s insane,” Chris went on before the man could say anything, “but I’m not fucking about. I don’t know if it’s love, it fucking feels like love, who knows? I’ve never been in love, but I’m goddamn sure I’m in love with you and I know you’ve changed everything in my world. Everything. And I don’t want to leave Australia without you. I want you to come back to L.A. with me and see if what this is…” he waved a finger back and forth between them, his stare locked on Liev’s face, “…really is what I think it is. I want you with me, not as my bodyguard, but as my lover, my partner. I can give you whatever you want, Reynolds, whatever you want. You won’t want for anything. You won’t even need to work. Geez, that sounds like I want to make you a kept man. I don’t, I just…fuck, I’m doing a fucking piss-poor job of this.” His chest constricted and he scraped his fingers over his scalp, his heart slamming in his throat. “I fucking… Man, why won’t you say anything? How can you be standing here so fucking calm when I’m…when I’m…fuck, I just…I just…”
“Take a breath, Huntley.”
Liev’s deep voice flayed Chris’s senses. He scrunched up his face, tugged at his hair and pulled in one long, slow breath.
Holding it for a count of ten, he let it out just as slowly and then opened his eyes. “I want you, Reynolds. Not just for sex, but for everything. Come back to L.A. with me. Please?”
The muscles in Liev’s jaw knotted. His Adam’s apple jerked up and down the smooth column of his throat. Without a word, he took the final step separating them, cupped Chris’s face in his strong hands and lowered his head.
His lips brushed Chris’s. It couldn’t be called a kiss. It was too reverent, too tender. It filled Chris’s soul with contentment and joy.
And then it was over.
Liev stepped away from him, one step, just one, and shook his head. “You don’t want to destroy your career over someone who doesn’t do commitment, Huntley.”
An invisible fist punched into Chris’s gut. His blood roared in his ears. He stared into Liev’s eyes, refusing to believe what he was hearing.
Liev raised his hand and traced his thumb over Chris’s bottom lip. “I will always remember this.” His jaw bunched again. His breath left him in a hitching groan and then he turned and walked away. He stopped at the top of the stairs to turn back to Chris. “I checked your schedule. You don’t need me for your remaining time in Australia. I’ve arranged a police escort to the airport for you tomorrow morning and the airline will meet you at the arrival gates with a security team to keep the crowds at bay before you board your flight.” He bent sideways at the waist and collected his overnight bag from the floor. “Goodbye, Mr. Huntley. Good luck with your future movies.”
He turned and descended the stairs to the foyer without looking back, the sound of the door closing telling Chris he was gone.
Gone.
And it didn’t matter how long Chris stood there waiting for him to come back, to say he’d changed his mind. He didn’t.
He didn’t, goddamn it.
He didn’t.
Chapter Sixteen
Two weeks of self-exile didn’t help Liev at all.
He worked out in his home gym, jogged the streets in the early hours of the morning before the sun broke the eastern horizon, punched the shit out of the punching bag hanging in his garage, and spent every damn hour of the day punishing himself for his lack of self-control.
It didn’t work. Every bloody time he closed his eyes he saw Chris bloody Huntley.
He refused to answer the phone
or door. He’d rung his captain at the station house the day Chris flew out of Australia and told the man he was taking a month off. He had time accrued and needed to take it. The man didn’t ask why. The whole bloody world probably knew why. Any body-guarding work lined up he cancelled. Politicians didn’t need a celebrity guarding them, and that’s what he currently was—a celebrity, famous for being caught deflowering Chris Huntley.
It was that headline that sent him into hiding. The morning Chris left the country, Liev had opened his morning newspaper to read the headline Bi-sexual Australian Bodyguard Deflowers American Actor.
He’d folded the paper, placed it on the table, collected his iPod from the cupboard, stuck the earbuds in his ears and hit play. AC/DC had blasted his ear canal louder than was medically sound.
He’d walked down into the garage, hung the heavy punching bag on its hook and begun punishing himself.
Self-disgust churned in his gut every bloody minute. Disgust at hiding from the world, disgust at destroying Chris Huntley’s life. Every minute of every day, he berated himself for what he’d done, for what he was doing. Every minute of every day, he wished he could take it all back. Go back in time to the moment Aslin Rhodes had called him from the States and asked him if he’d act as Chris’s bodyguard while the actor was in Australia promoting his film.
And every time he wished he could change history, acrid self-contempt flooded him because he knew he wouldn’t even if he could. The seven days he’d existed in Chris’s world were the most incredible, wonderful, amazing days of his life. Nothing could ever come close to the night he spent in Chris’s arms, in his bed. He’d never felt so whole.
If it was possible, he hated the man for ruining him for any future sexual partners even as he knew there would never be a second when he didn’t love Chris for giving him those few seconds and minutes and days of sheer paradise.
Of course, just to add to the fun of his existence now, whenever he thought of future sexual partners, his gut rolled as if his body rejected the notion of someone else apart from Chris penetrating him.
He wasn’t surprised. He knew for a fact his heart and his soul would reject anyone else entering his body for the rest of his life.
Fuck a bloody duck, he was a waste of space.
A pathetic, gutless waste of space.
Slamming his fist into the punching bag, he focused on the burning pain radiating through his overworked muscles, the searing heat in his raw knuckles.
Inside his ears, Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam growled and sang, pummeling at the constant thought of Chris. At this rate, Liev reckoned he’d be insane by Friday. Two and a half weeks after experiencing absolute happiness in Chris’s arms and he would be ready to be admitted to the nuthouse. It was kind of fitting, really. A bloke like him would have to be insane to do what he’d done—destroy another man’s life because he was horny.
It was always more than sex, Reynolds. And you know it.
The wretched thought tore at what was left of his control and, a roar ripping at his throat, he smashed his bleeding fist into the bag one last time before stumbling away from it.
This was no good. None of this was working.
He needed…
Chris.
Grinding his teeth on the tormenting name, he snatched his towel from where it hung on the bench-press weights and stormed from the garage, slamming the door shut behind him.
He’d go for a run. Maybe a few hundred miles of pounding the pavement would—
Movement to his right snapped him around, his fists raised.
“Jesus, Caitlin,” he burst out, yanking the buds out of his ears at the sight of his niece climbing through his living room window. “What the hell are you doing? You’re lucky I didn’t hurt you before I realized it was you.”
Caitlin glared up at him, struggling to disengage herself from the curtains and the venetian blinds as she planted the foot inside his house on the floor. “If you’d answer your fucking phone I wouldn’t be needing to put my life at risk, would I?”
Stunned disbelief shot through Liev. He scowled, hurrying over to his niece to help her escape the soft furnishing. “Since when do you use language like that?”
Brushing her hands on her thighs, she shot him a look he could only describe as scathing. “Since you became a fucking moron.”
He narrowed his eyes and jabbed a finger at her. “Okay, that’s enough, girlie girl. What are you doing here?”
With a grunt and a huff at her fringe hanging over her eyes, Caitlin shoved her right hand into the back pocket of her shorts and withdrew an iPhone cased in a candy-pink shell. “There’s someone who wants to talk to you. Someone who gave up trying to get you on your phone and decided to do it via my phone.”
She thrust the smartphone out toward him, glare firmly in place. Liev had never seen her so angry. Or so like her father. If it weren’t for the fact her anger was directed at him, he’d give her a hard time about it.
“Hurry up,” she snapped. “I didn’t just break my bloody thumb wriggling open your window for you to just stare at my phone, did I?”
Biting back his chuckle, Liev took her phone from her fingers and raised it to his ear. “Hello?” He had no idea who would be calling him on Caitlin’s phone, but if it was someone from the media he was tearing them a new one for coming at him through his teenage niece. And then he’d track them down and tear them a new one in person. No one put Caitlin in this kind of situation without paying the—
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Reynolds?”
Liev’s gut dropped into his balls at the sound of Aslin Rhodes’s thunderstorm voice.
“How many sodding years have we been mates, and this is what you do?”
Liev squeezed his eyes shut, his grip on Caitlin’s phone growing tighter. In the fortnight since he’d withdrawn from the world, there were two people he wanted to talk to more than anything, even as he hoped neither would ever want to talk to him again. Chris and Rhodes. Now it seemed one of them had done the unforgivable and got at him through Caitlin. Trouble was, not only was Rhodes in the States, Liev knew he couldn’t tear the Brit anything, let alone a new arsehole. He deserved Rhodes’s rage just as much as he deserved the man’s contempt. He’d not only destroyed Rhodes’s trust in him, he’d made him look like a bloody fool.
Hot guilt lashed at him, churning his sickened gut. Caitlin was correct. He was a fucking moron.
Scrubbing his free hand at the back of his neck, he stared at his feet. “I’m sorry, Rhodes,” he muttered. “Jesus, mate, you have no idea how much I’m—”
“Going to regret what you’ve done?” Rhodes cut him off. “Sodding oath you are. I’ve got a brand new baby in my house and instead of spending my waking moments enjoying every precious second with her, all I’m seeing is my sodding brother-in-law moping around the place grumbling about being empty and incomplete and having his heart ripped out of his chest.”
Liev shook his head, the lump in his throat choking him. “I’m sorry, mate. I really am. I know I fucked up and I…wait, what did you say?”
“Chris is grumping about our home,” Aslin growled through the phone, “our home, Reynolds, not his, constantly sulking about being rejected by the love of his life. If you don’t get your arse to L.A. ASAP and deal with the situation I’m going to have to deal with it myself, and trust me, Liev, you don’t want that. It’s not that I don’t like having my brother-in-law in my house, it’s just all the moping is beginning to sodding grate. I’m a tired, angry, fed-up Pom at this point in time, Reynolds. You know me well enough to know what that means.”
Liev frowned, unsure he’d heard what his friend had said correctly. “Back up for a sec, Rhodes. Are you telling me you’re not pissed I slept with Chris, you’re pissed he’s in your home—”
“Why the hell would I be pissed you slept with my brother-in-law? You’re both grown men and I like you enough to know family get-togethers wouldn’t be a living hell to experience. I’m pissed b
ecause you’re too gutless to accept what seems to me to be something pretty special, and I’m the one dealing with the fall-out because Rowan has her hands full looking after our baby girl. By the way, Rowan says if you don’t stop breaking her brother’s heart she’s going to kick your balls so far up into your ass, you’ll need a mining team to find them again. Her words, Reynolds, not mine.”
Liev blinked.
“And Liev?” Aslin’s voice was calm and laced with an emotion that might be mirth. Or menace. “I know you don’t do commitment, but I also know you’re not stupid or a coward. Or am I wrong?”
Before Liev could answer, Bethany’s voice sounded over the connection. “I’ve sent you an email,” she said, her American accent jarring so soon after Aslin’s British one. It seemed to Liev the whole world was furious with him at the moment. “Your niece has it opened already.”
The phone clicked in his ear, the connection terminated. Liev jerked the thing from his ear and swung around, his gaze falling on Caitlin standing behind him.
She grinned at him, holding out his open laptop. “See? I’m not the only one who thinks you’re being a moron.”
A scowl fell over Liev’s face. He ground his teeth, his glare sliding to the white screen of his laptop.
“Read the damn thing, Uncle L.” Caitlin shoved the computer at him. “Or I’m going to call you a wuss for the rest of your life.”
His head thrumming, his lips tingling, Liev lifted his laptop from his niece’s hands, lowered himself into the closest armchair and balanced his computer on his sweat-slicked knees. He stared at the screen, the subject heading of Bethany’s email simple. Watch this.
He placed his fingers on the track pad and, feeling like he was engulfed in cotton wool, double clicked on the only content of Bethany’s message—a hyper link to a YouTube clip.
It was one of those late-night talk shows the Americans loved so much. The host had a shock of orange-red hair and an infectious smirk. He sat behind a wooden desk, grinning at the man sitting on a sofa beside him.
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