Sparked (city2city: Hollywood)

by Edie Harris

  Her lips parted, and she gripped the front of his shirt, anchoring herself with the solidity of him as he kissed her like a starving man. As though he’d truly gone ten years without sustenance, without her, instead of having tasted her lips a mere forty-eight hours earlier. He licked at her, the slick slide of tongue against tongue making her writhe on the countertop.

  His hands clenched on her hips. “Where’s the bedroom?” he demanded as he nipped at her, soothing the sting caused by his teeth with a sweep of his tongue.

  “We can do it here—”

  “I want you in a bed. Right now. So where is it?”

  The fierceness in his voice set her blood on fire. “Upstairs, top level.”

  “Hold on.” A moment later he was carrying her through the kitchen, into the front hall, and up the stairs, all while she clung to him with arms at his neck and her legs around his waist. Unable to hold back, dying to drown in him, she nuzzled his throat, dropping little kisses as she worked her way toward his scruffy jaw.

  Her fingers slipped into the soft weight of his hair when they arrived in the bedroom. Immediately, he had her on her back, covering her with his body as their kisses turned frantic, their need for one another a living thing. Her sweater was the first to go, followed by his shirt. “Don’t worry. I remembered the condom this time.” He fumbled in his back pocket for a minute, then pressed the packet into her palm before returning to the task of peeling her pants down her legs.

  “I w-wasn’t worried,” she stuttered as his tongue traced a hot path from the waistband of her panties to the bottom of her bra. His hands raced over her, shaping and stroking her thighs, hips, waist, and then, thank God, her breasts. She moaned as his thumbs toyed with her nipples through the sheer lace, writhing when his mouth replaced his thumbs, sucking first one, then the other. “Ryan.”

  “Take it off, all of it.” He leaned back to unbuckle his belt and kick off his shoes before stripping his jeans and underwear.

  She flushed as she hurried to get rid of her final articles of clothing, her eyes never leaving his naked body. He’d filled into those long limbs of his, his lanky build less evident than it had been as a young man. He looked firm, solid, and heavily aroused. Reaching out, she gripped him in one hand, thrilled when he shuddered under her touch. Ripping open the condom packet with her teeth, she smoothed the latex over him in a slow, steady tease. Only when he was fully sheathed did he pounce, pushing her onto the pillows as he fitted himself between her thighs.

  She panted as his erection nudged her, moaned when his hand slipped between them to find her, wet and ready. “Take me in,” he groaned between gritted teeth, fisting the base of his cock, fitting its head to her entrance. “Take me.”

  And she did. Her back arched off the mattress as he slid into her on a smooth glide. “Ryan.” She clenched around him. So full, she was so full for the first time in ten years, except it was better now, because he was here. Here and loving her, so deep.

  “Oh, God, babe.” Chest heaving, he gazed down at her, expression hovering somewhere between exquisite pain and unstoppable pleasure. “It’s so much better,” he whispered, eyes bright, unknowingly echoing her thoughts as he started to move. Bracing his arms on either side of her head, he captured her lips in a scorching kiss, working his body over hers, into hers, in a rhythm that stole not only her breath but also her heart. She clung to him as they writhed, locking her ankles behind his back and gripping his hair so that his mouth had no hope of leaving hers.

  It didn’t take long to find her edge, the winding line she’d been walking en route to him for months, years. She was close, so close, and she told him so with hot, dangerous words in his ear, and, to her lust-hazed delight, he actually growled as he slipped a hand to where their bodies joined and applied quick, precise pressure to her clitoris.

  She cried out as she came. She cried out his name, and he tumbled over that edge with her, his sharp groan muffled against the side of her neck. Sweaty, loud, and bloody perfect, she thought dazedly as he left to dispose of the condom. Merry Christmas to her.

  She settled her head on his shoulder when he climbed back into the bed. Her legs tangled with his as they both fought to slow their racing heartbeats, and she sifted the hair on his chest through gentle, petting fingertips. “You showed up on my doorstep demanding I tell you something tonight. Aren’t you interested in what I wanted to say?”

  “I think I can guess.”

  She grinned to hear the smugness in his voice. “Oh, can you?”

  “Yes.” His hand covered hers atop his chest, and he shifted to meet her gaze, his expression solemn. “But you need to tell me if my guess is right.”

  Catching her bottom lip between her teeth, she stared at the man she’d known was hers from the moment she had glanced up to see him standing in the aisle of the train, tall and lean, exhaustion leaving shadows beneath eyes of clear, deep green. That Christmas, she had given him her heart and never asked nor wanted him to return it. Now she finally knew it was safe in his keeping, forever, and she couldn’t hold back her smile. “I love you.”

  His smile blinded her, brilliant with the sunlight he’d confessed she had gifted to him. “Well, what do you know. My guess was right.” Then he rolled toward her, skimming one warm hand down her naked body, and proceeded to show her exactly how right they always had been, and always would be, together.

  EPILOGUE

  London, Ten Years Later

  Christmas Eve

  The knit cap was tugged from his head by determined little hands. Hands that immediately tossed the cap to the snowy ground and, with a squeal of delight, started yanking at his hair. Aggressively. “Ow.”

  Giggling from above him, a bit of wiggling perpetrated by the weight on his shoulders. “Daddy?”

  Ryan adjusted his grip on the two small ankles dangling around either side of his neck, and shook his head in a failed attempt to loosen her hold on his hair. “Be gentle, Ella.”

  His four-year-old daughter was decidedly not interested in being gentle, and Ryan sighed. Oh, well. It was only hair.

  Ella seemingly occupied with doing whatever she was going to do with his hair, he glanced down the path, wondering what was keeping his wife. They had been nearly to the Peter Pan statue in Hyde Park, where Ryan and Ella now waited, when a group of tourists had recognized Sadie and asked to take a couple of photos with her. She had acquiesced with a happy smile, waving Ryan and their daughter on, murmuring that she would catch up with them in a minute.

  Tiny snowflakes fell as dusk began to descend on the city. In a couple of hours, they would head to his in-laws’ house, the same one he’d visited on Christmas Day twenty years earlier, where they would be joined for holiday celebrations by Sadie’s brother Kai and his wife Marie, as well as Jon and his wife and two children. They had flown in to London two days earlier and, in the interest of giving Ella and her cousins more playtime together, were staying with Ryan and Sadie in their neatly kept Notting Hill townhouse. Jon and company would fly back to the States the day after tomorrow, just in time to hit the ground for the presidential caucuses in Iowa the first week in January. For some reason, Jon had decided he ought to be president of the United States. Go figure.

  Ryan was grinning at the thought when Sadie jogged into sight, the leash of their shaggy black Newfoundland wrapped firmly around one palm. He bounced Ella on his shoulders. “Look who’s here, sweetie.”

  “Mama!” Ella cried, as though she hadn’t seen her mother all of seven minutes ago. “I stole Daddy’s hat!”

  Sadie laughed as she drew to a halt in front of them. Her cheeks were flushed, and her sleek dark hair glistened where snowflakes stopped and melted, like diamond droplets in fading light.

  His heart ached when she reached up to give their daughter a high-five for her antics, then turned over when she placed her gloved hand on his cheek and rose on tiptoe to brush a quick kiss over his chilled lips. “Hullo again,” she whispered, and he smiled, wondering if she knew t
he ruckus going on in his chest.

  “Would you mind collecting my hat? My range of motion is limited at present.”

  Sadie turned, then paused. “I believe Bear here has already taken care of it.” Sure enough, the dog had Ryan’s knit cap clamped between his teeth. He could see the drool coating it from here. Sadie fought for ownership of the hat—and, when victorious, offered the disgusting thing to him with an impish grin. “Ahem.”

  No way was he putting that on, and she knew it, but the decision was taken from both of them when Ella snatched the hat from her mother’s hands and unceremoniously yanked it onto his head. “There, Daddy. I gave you back your hat.”

  “Thanks, sweetie.” He winced when a particularly drool-covered patch rubbed over his cold ear and had to glare at his wife when she laughed at his expression. But his halfhearted glare faded when, once again, she rose to press her mouth to his. Her hands curled around his where he held Ella’s ankles, and she smiled against his lips before murmuring, “Wow.”

  He understood exactly what she meant. “Yeah.” He leaned into the kiss. “Wow.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Having never been inside the Regency Village Theatre in Westwood, any and all references to the projection booth and its adjoining, Christmas-filled closet are entirely fictional. Regardless, I’m certain there must be a few nooks and crannies at the theater that would be excellent for an illicit tryst between reunited lovers, don’t you think?

  Happy holidays!

  Want a peek at the first book in the city2city: Hollywood series?

  It’s Declan and Fiona, with their meet-cute in the makeup chair. Turn the page for an excerpt from Stripped, out now in digital, and coming soon in print!

  For a movie star, he looked an awful lot like a hungover lumberjack.

  If he even was a movie star to begin with. For all Fiona O’Brien knew, she might be staring at a bonafide lumberjack…who had somehow snuck past the security guards at the entrance to the film studio and found his way over to her quiet little corner of the lot to make himself at home.

  Which seemed highly improbable, all things considered. Lumberjacks weren’t exactly thick on the ground here in Los Angeles.

  Six lanky feet of plaid-shirted male collapsed into the makeup chair, eyes squinty and smudged with shadows of exhaustion. “Mornin’,” he rumbled, then squeezed his eyes shut, head falling back with a sigh.

  Fiona didn’t move from where she leaned against the white counter stretching the length of the makeup trailer. “Good morning.” Her arms crossed over her chest, hands tucked beneath her breasts to keep her twitching fingers at bay. “Are you lost?”

  Without opening his eyes, the lumberjack asked, “Hair and Makeup?” An accent she couldn’t immediately identify shaped the rasping words.

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’m in the right place.”

  Fiona wasn’t so sure. Not only was the man in her chair a little more…bushy than anticipated, but he wasn’t even the man who was meant to be sitting there. Hollywood heartthrob and infamous bad boy Christopher Lunsford was a typical California golden god.

  This dude? Not so much. “What time is your call?”

  “Five? Six? I dunno.” He shifted, slipping lower in the chair and wincing when his shoulders, clad in red-and-navy flannel, hiked up toward his ears. He didn’t quite fit in the chair, elbows bent awkwardly at the armrests and the lean length of his torso just a titch too long for the padded seat and back, all stretched out as he was. “Am I late, darlin’?”

  Irish. An Irish accent. “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On who the heck you are.”

  The stranger in her chair blinked open one bleary eye, head lolling into something resembling an upright position. “Declan Murphy.” That eye narrowed on her. “Who are you?”

  “Fiona. Key makeup artist for the leading man.” A two-time Oscar-nominated leading man, she might add. A leading man whose face was often prominently featured on the gossip sites for some dangerous stunt or romantic entanglement. A leading man who, upon meeting Fiona a couple weeks ago during screen testing, had hugged her and announced they were going to be “pals.”

  Pals. With Christopher Lunsford.

  Even though growing up in show business had given her some immunity to celebrity mania, Fiona had briefly delighted in the fact that every woman in America had reason to be jealous of her. She got to have her hands all over this year’s Sexiest Man Alive for the next few months.

  A quick glance at the printed list taped to the mirror confirmed that the name Declan Murphy was nowhere to be found. “Are you an extra?” The first of the extras weren’t due for another week, and she had no memory of seeing this man—or any other lumberjack—in the group that had come in for costume and makeup screen tests several days ago.

  “No. I’m Count Vargas.”

  The title role in Vendetta? “No, you’re not.” He couldn’t be. Christopher Lunsford was playing Vargas. The table reads and rehearsals had already happened. The costumes were already made.

  “What’s your last name, Fiona?”

  She stiffened, arms dropping to her sides. “O’Brien.”

  “Fiona O’Brien.” Both eyes blinked open now, irises the color of bitter black coffee and fringed by thick, dark lashes. “That’s an Irish name. Are you an Irish lass, Fiona O’Brien?”

  Really, his flirtation was not helping his case here—the case wherein he proved he wasn’t some delusional drunk who’d decided, five whiskeys in, that gate-crashing a film studio sounded like a brilliant pre-sunrise activity. She gestured to the list on the mirror. “I don’t see your name here, and Christopher Lunsford is supposed to be in that seat. Not you.”

  Those shoulders shifted again, and Declan Murphy sat a bit straighter, shoveling a hand through shoulder-length black hair. She noticed the curls were still damp from what she assumed was a recent shower. “So you haven’t heard.”

  Ominous words that had never boded well for anyone in the history of, well, ever. Dread curled low in her stomach. “Haven’t heard what?”

  “Lunsford was arrested.”

  “Arrested?”

  “Yeah. Drugs or somethin’.” One ebony eyebrow arched as he studied her. “It was all over the news yesterday.”

  Yesterday, the final day before filming officially began, during which Fiona had been running all over town. First to the bank, then to Pasadena, then to a yoga class, then to the grocery store, and then, finally, back to her crummy apartment in Culver City. Her cell may have rung once or twice around noon, but the caller ID told her it was just “Home.”

  Sometimes, when she wasn’t vigilant, Fiona’s chest still ached when “Home” called her, so she would ignore her phone and wait for the ache to fade away. Yesterday had been one of those days, and so, in a fit of anger—at herself, at “Home”—she’d turned it off. She’d thrown her phone into her purse this morning without sparing it a glance, far more concerned about getting to the studio early to prep.

  Managing not to lunge madly for the purse she’d stashed in an overhead cabinet, Fiona breathed deep, opened the cabinet door, and fumbled for her phone. It took half a minute to locate the thing, another fifteen seconds to power it on, all the while feeling the panic rising to clog her throat. She turned her back on the gravel-voiced Irishman in her chair as the damn thing began to chirp.

  Loudly. Insistently. Without stopping.

  Alert after alert for e-mails, voice mails, and texts lit up the phone’s screen, and Fiona’s cheeks burned. Her glasses slid down her nose as she tapped through the tidal wave of communication informing her that, yes, Lunsford had indeed been arrested in a very public manner for— “Cocaine? Seriously?” An inarticulate noise of frustration caught in her throat.

  She ignored the low chuckle from the man behind her.

  Then came the e-mail from the head of production, Joanne, stating that the first block of filming for Vendetta would be delayed two days while a rep
lacement Count Vargas was found. Followed by an email saying that a replacement—“Dublin native and rising European film star Declan Murphy”—had been cast and would be flying into Los Angeles as soon as possible. Followed by yet another e-mail informing the necessary parties, of which Fiona was one, that screen tests for Mr. Murphy’s costume, hair, and makeup would take place on Tuesday morning before the new official start of filming began on Friday.

  Here it was, Tuesday morning, and his curiosity pummeled her like a dodgeball in gym class as he waited for her to look at him. To apologize.

  Crap. She had to apologize.

  Slowly, carefully, Fiona slid her phone into the pocket of her jeans and turned to face him, professional smile firmly affixed. “Mr. Murphy.”

  “Miss O’Brien.”

  Smug laughter lurked in his tone, and it set her bristling. “I’m sorry for not being up to speed on the situation.” She was politeness personified, even as she swore at herself for not noticing the very pointed absence of the other key artists, Amy and Beth. Not to mention Paulie, the head of design for Vendetta’s hair and makeup team.

  “Perhaps we should start again.” He unfolded from the chair and stood before her, hand extended. “Declan Murphy.”

  Tall. He was tall. And broad, in all the right places. Lean in other also-right places. Fashion designers probably adored him, but he didn’t look as though he adored them back. The simple cut of his rumpled clothing spoke of sales racks and mall stores. Light-wash jeans hugged his long thighs, hinting at lean muscle hiding beneath, and the shirt buttons running down his torso were open at the collar to reveal a spray of dark hair, sleeves rolled up to show off strong forearms dusted with that same hair.

  Perfect white teeth worthy of a toothpaste commercial gleamed at her through the forest of his black beard as he smiled, drawing her gaze upward until her eyes met his, taking in the appealing laugh lines at the corners. Faint color warmed his high cheekbones, fair skin scrubbed clean and glowing with health.