by Karen Foley
She took a deep, calming breath, willing her pulse to slow down. What would Graeme think if he could see her now? In no way did she resemble the shy teenager she’d been when they’d first met. Lara hardly recognized herself.
She could do this; she could become the woman that Val had described; strong and sure of herself and of her own future. She told herself again that she’d moved on with her life; she had a job and a great guy who did care about her, and she couldn’t—wouldn’t—let herself believe there was anything left between her and Graeme.
They were strangers in every sense of the word.
And while millions of women would no doubt kill to marry Graeme, she knew that divorcing him would be the first smart thing she’d done in five years.
2
THE COSTUME BALL was already in full swing by the time Lara arrived at the ballroom. Under any other circumstances, she might have felt self-conscious about entering by herself, but then she caught a barely veiled expression of lust on the face of a passing waiter. That covert look told her that she looked good. Better than good—she looked delicious. With a smile, she accepted a pink-tinted pomegranate martini from a waiter who stood just inside the entrance, and took a hearty swallow, gasping as the alcohol burned its way down her throat. With her eyes watering, she stepped into the ballroom.
The lights had been dimmed and a large stage had been set up at one end, where a tuxedoed band played dinner music. Artificial trees, sparkling with minilights, lent a magical quality to the event. Three enormous movie screens had been placed at even intervals on the far wall, and clips from the show Galaxy’s End played endlessly so that no matter where you looked, there was Graeme Hamilton in the role of deep-space convict Kip Corrigan.For a moment, Lara stood in the doorway and just stared, transfixed by the Technicolor images. Would she ever get used to seeing his face? Would the day ever come when her heart didn’t stop at the sight? Her life would be so much simpler if seeing him didn’t affect her so much.
But it did.
With a soft groan, she gulped down the rest of the martini. She just had to keep remembering that the pictures she saw on the big screens weren’t really Graeme. They were illusions, figments of somebody’s imagination, the same way the stories she wrote were the embodiment of her own unfulfilled fantasies.
She was so done with fantasies.
Across the sea of linen-covered tables adorned with flowers and flickering candlelight, Lara could see a long buffet table where white-tuxedoed waitstaff served food to the masked and costumed ballgoers. On the parquet dance floor in front of the stage, couples dressed as various Galaxy’s End characters danced together. The costumes were so impressive and so much like the ones from the actual show that Lara had a brief moment of unease. How badly did she stick out with her Star Wars getup? She shivered, aware that her scantily-clad body drew more than several appreciative glances from the men in the room.
Lara forced herself to move through the buffet line and then, plate in hand, searched for an empty seat among the crowded tables. She finally found one right next to the dance floor. The six women already seated there were dressed in identical costumes as Kip’s onscreen love interest, a prison guard named Lily, despite the fact they were easily in their midfifties. They each gave her welcoming smiles, although Lara didn’t miss how their eyes absorbed every detail of her own skimpy outfit.
Needing a little more false courage, she stopped a waiter as he passed near their table and snagged a second martini from his tray, although the first one seemed to be doing the trick. Even now, her limbs were feeling looser and the second drink didn’t taste nearly as overpowering as the first had.
The woman closest to Lara turned to her and winked. “Now that’s what I call a costume,” she said.
Lara flushed behind the concealing mask, not sure if the woman was being sincere or sarcastic. Maybe she should have chosen a table of men. Maintaining an aura of sensuality was so much more difficult when surrounded by six matronly women, several of whom clearly disapproved of her revealing outfit, judging by their expressions.
“Thanks,” she responded. “This isn’t the costume I ordered, but by the time I received it, it was too late to get something else.”
The woman on Lara’s other side patted her arm reassuringly. “Don’t think twice about it, hon. If I had a body like yours, I’d wear that costume, too. And that mask is absolutely fabulous.”
Lara smiled gratefully at her. “So is this your first Galaxy’s End convention?”
“Goodness, no,” the woman laughed. “We were here last year, too. We’ve been Graeme Hamilton fans since day one.” She indicated the other women at the table. “We call ourselves Hamilton’s Hussies. Maybe you’ve heard of us? We practically started Graeme’s fan club!”
Lara had heard of them. In fact, she was a frequent visitor to their Web site, dedicated to Graeme and to his career. She’d posted countless erotic stories about Kip Corrigan and the other Galaxy’s End characters to the fan fiction page of the site, and had even exchanged e-mail correspondence with the Hussies under her screen name, Secret Lover.
But she didn’t share any of this with the women at the table. Her stories were too personal to talk about with strangers, especially since they were based completely on Graeme Hamilton himself. She shivered to think how he would react if he could read her lusty tales. There was no doubt in her mind that he would recognize the main character as himself. Most of her stories were drawn directly from her own experiences with Graeme, right down to the dialogue.
Then there were her other stories…the ones based solely on her own imagination. With her writing, she was free to explore all her forbidden fantasies about Graeme, disguised as fan fiction about the Galaxy’s End characters. In her stories, she could do anything, and she could have Graeme respond in any way she desired. She could relive every moment of that summer when she had first fallen in love with him. She could replay every heated second of their time at the Scottish inn when he’d aroused her to the point that she thought she might die from sheer pleasure, and then he’d shown her there was even more.
In her fan fiction, she enjoyed dominating him, forcing him to submit to her desires. But in the end, he would always wrest control back from her and then subject her to the most delicious torture.
“So you’re a big Graeme Hamilton fan, huh?” she asked, picking at the cheese manicotti on her plate, and then mentally rolled her eyes at her own inane question.
“Aren’t we all?” asked the second woman. Her short brown hair was liberally sprinkled with gray, and there were lines around her eyes and mouth, but the excitement and anticipation in her eyes made her look like a schoolgirl. “I fell in love with him the first time I saw him in the pilot episode. I mean, how could any woman not fall head over heels for him, right?”
Lara avoided answering the question by taking a gulp of her martini. This was exactly why she’d been reluctant to attend the convention. Any minute now, they’d start gushing about Graeme’s physical attributes and speculating about his love life. Was this what he had to endure every time he made a public appearance?
The woman on Lara’s other side smiled knowingly as she speared a small roasted potato with her fork and popped it into her mouth. “So, when did you lose your virginity to His Royal Hotness?” she asked, her eyes gleaming with mischief.
“Excuse me?” Lara knew her mouth was open, but she couldn’t seem to close it, any more than she could prevent the sudden, hard slamming of her heart within her chest. They couldn’t possibly know! Nobody, aside from her parents and Val—and Graeme, of course—knew that she had relinquished her virginity to him five years earlier. In the years since, she’d been so careful not to let anyone find out….
The woman grinned as she observed the hot color that turned Lara’s neck pink. “I mean, when did you first discover Graeme Hamilton? When did you first realize you were smitten?”
Just over five years ago, when I was almost eighteen years old and nobody
in the entertainment industry even knew Graeme Hamilton existed.
She looked at the expectant faces of the women. How would they react if she told them the truth? If she told them that she had known Graeme before he became Hollywood’s hottest heartthrob? That she knew him intimately? That she’d fallen in love with him the first time she’d met him and had lied to him about her age, telling him that she was actually twenty-one and not seventeen? He’d been twenty-three and she’d known instinctively that he wouldn’t want anything to do with her if he realized just how young she was. Then, when their relationship had turned serious, she hadn’t dared tell him the truth for fear of losing him. She’d continued the pretense of being a college student from California right up until after they’d eloped, when her father had tracked them down at the small Scottish inn where’d they’d spent their wedding night and dragged her from Graeme’s bed, telling him in explicit terms just what he’d done with a minor.
What would these women think if she told them that particular story? That she’d spent two days and nights locked in a bedroom with Graeme? That she’d kissed, licked and nibbled every delicious part of his body?
They’d never believe her. They’d think she was making it up, and she wouldn’t blame them. There were times when it didn’t seem real to her. Sometimes, that long-ago summer seemed no more than a dream.
“I’ve been a fan of Graeme Hamilton’s since before he made Galaxy’s End,” she finally said. That, at least, was the truth.
“Well, welcome to the club,” the first woman said. “My name is Sandra.”
“And I’m Claire,” the second woman added, indicating the registration badge she wore on a lanyard around her neck. “We’re both from Wisconsin.”
“I’m Lara. From Chicago.”
At that moment the band stopped playing, and a spotlight was turned onto the stage next to where Lara and her companions were sitting. As they watched, a round woman dressed in a figure-hugging prison-guard costume stepped forward and took the microphone.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” she said, in a Southern accent. “Welcome to the second annual Galaxy’s End convention, where we joyfully celebrate everything related to that fabulous series, now in its third season.” She waggled her eyebrows meaningfully. “And we especially want to celebrate the gorgeous actor who made us women long to be marooned on that uncharted planet.”
There was scattered applause, and somebody from the back of the ballroom shouted, “We want Graeme!” followed by a ripple of laughter and more applause.
“I want to draw your attention to a slight change in our scheduled events,” the woman continued. “In your brochure, you’ll notice we have Finn McDougall, the director, scheduled to make a few remarks tonight. Unfortunately—”
She was interrupted by a collective groan of disappointment from the crowd, and she held her hands up, smiling.
“Now, let me finish, people. Unfortunately, Mr. McDougall’s flight has been delayed and we’ve rescheduled his chat for tomorrow morning instead. However…” She smiled secretively at the crowd. “We didn’t want you to be too disappointed, so we’ve brought in another guest. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome…Mr. Graeme Hamilton!”
There was an instant of stunned silence before the ballroom erupted in thunderous applause and earsplitting shrieks of approval. Then, from the wings of the stage, a lean figure emerged, wearing Kip Corrigan’s signature black pants and shirt. The band struck up a resounding rendition of the theme song from Galaxy’s End, and amidst the swell of music, the man did a quick two-step dance move for the crowd, unleashing another, louder round of applause and screaming, before he strode across the stage toward the microphone.
Graeme saluted the band, kissed the emcee on both cheeks and then turned to the crowd with a wave. The spotlight turned his cropped hair into a gleaming halo of brown and bronze highlights, and from where Lara sat, a mere twenty feet from the stage, she could see his easy grin and the way his blue-green eyes scanned the crowd.
She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
For an instant, her heart stopped beating, and then it exploded back into frenzied action. Lara had known that when she finally saw Graeme again she’d have a strong physical reaction, but never in her wildest imaginings had she thought she might actually expire on the spot.
Graeme was speaking into the microphone, but Lara couldn’t hear anything beyond the roaring of her own blood in her ears. From where she sat, she could see the changes that five years had wrought, sculpting his face, tracing it with experience, and turning it from attractive to unforgettable. Lara felt something in her chest tear free with a painful wrench. She was only dimly aware of women rising from the nearby tables and moving forward, jostling each other in their urgency to get closer to the stage.
Closer to him.
Her mask was suffocating her.
She couldn’t breathe, and fluttering wings of blackness appeared at the outer edges of her vision. She felt overheated and flushed. Suddenly, the small bottle of wine and two martinis she’d consumed threatened to make a reappearance.
She surged to her feet with a muttered apology, intent only on escaping the ballroom, unaware that the trailing edge of the tablecloth had become snagged on her metal bikini bottom. Lara turned to leave, dragging the tablecloth with her. As if in slow motion, plates of food and glassware crashed to the floor and the six costumed women who had been sitting with her scrambled to get out of the way, knocking over chairs and crying out in surprise.
For a moment, the band stopped playing and it seemed every face in the ballroom turned in her direction. Horrified, Lara looked toward the stage.
Graeme stared back at her.
For one, brief instant, their gazes collided. A renewed surge of heat swept through Lara, fierce and swift, and then receded, leaving her bathed in a cold, clammy sweat.
With a small sound of despair, she jerked the tablecloth free of her costume and fled toward the nearest exit, which opened into a service corridor. She was only dimly aware of the hotel staff passing on either side of her as she dashed toward an elevator at the end of the hallway. A startled waiter scooted out of her way as she flung herself at the doors, frantically pressing the button for them to open.
“Whoa, Princess Leia, that’s a private service elevator,” the waiter gasped, staring at her in dismay. “Jesus, what the hell is going on?”
Following his gaze, Lara glanced back in the direction she’d come from, and nearly fainted with panic. Graeme Hamilton himself was sprinting toward her, and hot on his heels was a horde of lust-crazed women, arms outstretched as they screamed his name.
Behind her, the elevator doors swished open and Lara flung herself inside. With her breath coming in painful hitches, she desperately punched at the buttons and watched with growing dread as Graeme and the pursuing crowd of women rapidly closed the distance between them.
“Please, please, please,” she whispered, but whether her chant was for Graeme to reach the elevator in time, or not, she couldn’t say.
Closer. Closer.
The doors started to swish shut, but even as Lara sagged against the wall in utter relief, a hand thrust itself between them, forcing them open. Lara watched in dismay as Graeme squeezed through, his breathing harsh. He pressed the button to close the doors and held his finger there, even as he took a protective stance in the opening. At the last instant, when it seemed the women would simply stampede him, the elevator doors closed.
“Christ,” he muttered, and his voice washed over her, stirring her senses and catapulting her back five years.
Lara drank in the sight of him. He was larger than she remembered. He completely dominated the small space, and she fisted her hands behind her back to keep from reaching out and touching him. She pressed herself into the corner of the compartment and hardly dared to breathe.
Maybe he wouldn’t notice her.
Maybe, if she was very lucky, the elevator’s dim lighting and the mask would be en
ough to keep him from recognizing her, although she knew the likelihood of that happening was about nil. How humiliating to be caught attending a fan festival for your ex-husband…current husband. Whatever.
With any luck, he wouldn’t realize who she was, and he’d think she was merely playing out her role of submissive slave by keeping her head down. Her heart still thudded hard against her ribs and her palms were slick with moisture.
She’d wanted to see Graeme, but not like this, and especially not in a state of near undress! Everything about this first encounter was wrong. She’d wanted to be on solid footing, suitably garbed in her best business suit so that he’d have no doubts that she’d both grown up and moved on. She’d wanted to be self-assured and emotionally distant, not a pile of quivering nerve endings and heightened awareness.
He eased himself away from the doors and leaned negligently against the opposite wall. “That was a close one. Especially since the weight capacity on this lift canna exceed two thousand pounds.”
His voice sank into her bones, heating her from the inside out. Slowly, Lara raised her gaze to his and felt the shock of it all the way to her toes. And just like the first time she’d seen him, everything else seemed to vanish.
She was no longer aware of being in a tiny elevator.
She didn’t care that she wore next to nothing.
She was only aware of Graeme, and the sight of him, so incredibly sexy and masculine, caused her brain to misfire so that instead of saying something smart and sophisticated, the only thing that came out of her mouth was a stuttered, “Huh?”
He didn’t smile, just continued to watch her intently. “I hate to be the one to break this to ye, princess,” he murmured, his Scottish burr turning her insides to mush, “but the Star Wars convention isn’t for another two months.”
Distressed, Lara felt her stomach do a sick flip. Was it her imagination, or had he placed a subtle emphasis on the word princess? He’d always called her his princess; it had been his pet name for her back when they’d first met. Did he recognize her, or was it just her overactive imagination playing tricks on her?