Blackmailed by the Hero

by Julie Particka

  Clearly her boss hadn’t expected her to be smart enough to get that in writing, because he paled slightly as he signed the paper. “No. Mr. Palladino’s signature”—oh, it’s Mr. Palladino again now?—“on the contract will be fine. I’ll email it to you with the max estimate of your fees included. You have everything else you need?”

  “Yep. Your secretary has been really helpful. We’ll have the contract signed and back by the end of the day.” Vicky opened the door, holding it wide. “After you, Mr. Palladino.”

  Vicky practically danced out of Mathew’s office. Her earlier ambivalence about the party was obviously gone. She must not have been irritated that Dante had set it up—not after she’d seen how much more she could make in the few weeks she’d act as his party planner.

  “You’re looking pretty chipper.” Dante eased past her into what appeared to be a temporary office: bookshelves with nothing but a few binders, a desk with no personal items, and mismatched chairs that had probably been shoved in here this morning. He swiped a finger along one of the shelves. “Wow. Could he have given you a worse office?”

  “Until about an hour ago, I didn’t have an office. I’m not going to bitch.” She sat on the far side of the desk and flipped open a laptop. “Ready to get to work?”

  He contemplated the chair across from her, but he didn’t have high hopes that it was any sturdier than it looked. “Ready for you to print out whatever you absolutely must have on hand for us to talk. That way we can get some lunch.”

  “Lunch?”

  Smiling, Dante leaned forward, hands on her desk, and caught her gaze. “Yeah. Lunch. I’m hungry. Aren’t you hungry, Vicks?”

  Her breathing changed, slightly quicker and deeper, making her breasts heave beneath the fitted button-down. She ran a tongue over her lips and swallowed. “Sure.”

  “Fantastic.” He shoved away from the desk, putting distance between them before he took her body’s unintentional cues as an invitation to do something he shouldn’t. “I know a great place just down the road.”

  Vicky blinked at him rapidly as if snapping out of a daydream. “It’ll just take a second to print this stuff.”

  Minutes later, they were seated across from each other at a little diner. It was like they’d stepped right into a fifties teen movie set, from the black-and-white tiled floor and red vinyl benches right down to the waitresses’ fitted pinup-style uniforms. Neon lights overhead made everything seem more surreal.

  Glancing around as she opened her menu, Vicky said, “This is a bit of a change from last night.”

  “This is more me than last night.” Dante nodded to the waitress. He’d been coming here since he first moved to L.A., the only difference between then and now were some of the staff and the size tips he could afford to leave. “Try the Diner Fries, they’re amazing.”

  “Diner Fries? Like…French fries?”

  “The owners met in Montreal and lived there for years. Diner Fries are their version of poutine—fries with gravy and cheese.”

  “Fantastic. I can feel my arteries hardening already.” Vicky put down the menu. “So, about the party…”

  Before he could answer, a waitress stepped up to them. “Dante, I haven’t seen you in a while. Want me to put the fries in now?”

  “Hey, Dolores, this is Vicky, and she’s afraid the fries will kill her.” He winked at the woman.

  She flipped a long, white ponytail over her shoulder and said, “Young lady, I am seventy-two years old, and I’ve been splurging on those fries at least once a week since I was a teenager. I can’t guarantee you’ll be active at my age, but I can promise you trying the fries won’t be the thing that keeps it from happening.”

  Vicky’s face was crinkled in a mask of mortification. “I guess we need fries, then. And water. May I please have a glass of water?”

  “Water and Diner Fries coming up. You want anything else right now?”

  “No, just water for me, too. We’ll be here awhile if you don’t mind, though.” Dante waved toward the binder next to Vicky.

  Dolores winked at him and bounced away, saying, “You’re one of my favorite customers. You can stay as long as you like.”

  The instant she was behind the counter, Vicky whispered, “She’s seventy-two?”

  “Still acts like a teenager with her husband, too.” Dante laughed. “He was an American attending college in Canada. She was the daughter of some local bigwig. Their relationship caused a huge uproar in her family. Turned into a total forbidden love thing, complete with the sneaking out and the threats against his life. When he graduated, they ran away together, got married, and settled here. Very Romeo and Juliet, but with a much happier ending.”

  She craned her neck to the side, as if trying to watch Dolores. A faraway look haunted her eyes. “And her family?”

  “Let’s just say grandchildren can have an incredible effect at bridging a divide. Her mother came around first, eventually forcing everyone else to see just how happy Dolores and Mark were together. After that, her parents came to visit every year for the holidays until they passed away.”

  Vicky shook her head, as if scattering thoughts. “How do you know all this? Why do you know all this about them?”

  “Because I asked? I like to know about people.” He stopped talking as Dolores delivered their water and fries. They spent a minute giving the rest of their order, then he returned to the question. As true as his answer was, it hadn’t been the whole truth, and maybe it was time he shared that with someone. “Thing is, when I left wrestling, I came out here with nothing but a name and a prayer. No acting lessons, no skills, really. Sure, I had some money, but I didn’t know what to do with myself. Then I found this place.”

  “And there happened to be a big director sitting at this very table who took one look at you and had to cast you in something?” Vicky picked up a fry, twisting it in the cheese and gravy in a way designed to wipe it all off but only managing to get more stuck.

  “Hardly. The waitress who took my order went into labor and—”

  “And you jumped to the rescue and delivered the baby with the aid of a kitchen knife and a bendy straw.”

  This time Dante laughed, loud and long. He’d been so far from a hero then; he’d been a mess. “I panicked. Dolores jumped in like she’d been on hand for a hundred babies being born, and all I could do was sit and watch. When the ambulance got here to take the waitress to the hospital, Dolores muttered something about being shorthanded and wondering who was going to do the damn dishes. My very first job in Hollywood was washing dishes in that kitchen.” He pointed toward the food window behind the counter.

  “I never knew you did grunt work after you came here.”

  “Because I never saw it that way. On the day I started, I saw it as stepping up where I’d failed to with the waitress. After that…” He thought back to long days with Dolores and her family, finding his place in this crazy new world. “Let’s just say working here made it possible for me to not lose myself in the Hollywood machine. This diner made me humble. It made me human. It made me the guy you know.”

  …

  Vicky popped the fry in her mouth, chewing on both the potato and his words. Before she realized what she was doing, she reached for another. Okay, maybe they were as good as he’d said, but the rest of it? She didn’t know him, not really. Once upon a time, she’d thought she had, but Evan had told her she was wrong. And with him blackmailing her and then helping her get a shot at work, she was even more confused. Who was Dante really? Hero or heartbreaker? And with the promise to herself not to get involved with a man until she had her own shit together—did she really want to know? She didn’t have the strength to keep herself whole and be with him, not yet.

  “I think…” When she looked at him, she saw the same thing in his eyes she’d seen years ago—a fire that made her yearn for warmth. She saw a guy who had an indefinable something she’d never seen in her life before or since. But no matter how much she wanted to find out w
hat it was, she couldn’t help remembering Evan’s warning: When you play with fire, sometimes you get burned. Her body, which had gone on some sort of sexually charged alert while Dante was talking, deflated. “I think you were right about the fries. Totally worth the artery damage.”

  When he looked at her now, the blaze dimmed, not to a sexy smolder, but to little more than an ember. It didn’t matter that he still smiled at her. She’d doused whatever had been flaring between them. “Glad you like them. Now, about the party, I’m guessing probably between fifty and a hundred people.”

  It took her a full thirty seconds to register that he’d taken her let’s-change-the-subject and run with it. “Um. Yeah. We might need to narrow it down a bit, but we can start there. Were you thinking of renting a place?”

  “I was hoping to have it at my house.”

  She hadn’t really considered it, but between the wrestling money and the movie money, Dante’s house was probably more than big enough. “What kind of square footage are we talking?”

  He shrugged, like it didn’t matter. “The house is about seven thousand square feet, but the yard is huge, too. I was thinking we could do tents outside, have it be a little more casual.”

  Seven thousand square feet. Did he even know what that sounded like compared to her little one-bedroom apartment? On the other hand, it really wasn’t fair to bitch. Evan would have set her up somewhere nice if she’d let him, but she hadn’t. She needed to do this on her own, and that meant starting from the ground up. And no one started with seven thousand square feet of ground. “Casual works. Did you give any thought to theme? Regardless of what you told Mathew, I haven’t exactly spent much time with you and Evan the last few years.”

  “You’re telling me you don’t know your brother?”

  No. Of course she knew him. She could plan a party for him in a heartbeat. Vicky bit her lip, abandoned the fries, and cast a glance out the window. “I don’t know you.”

  Slowly, like he was afraid she’d bolt if he moved too fast, he reached across the table and took her hand in his. “How about we change that?”

  Vicky couldn’t look away from their fingers twined together. The touch was so innocent, so sweet… Could he really be the guy Evan had warned her about? And damn it, should she be judging him based on a warning five years old? Much less her own fears about men? “What did you have in mind?”

  “I was thinking some time together that isn’t all business.” His thumb rubbed circles on the top of her hand.

  No pressure, just enough contact to remind her he was there. Maybe hint that he wasn’t going anywhere if she wanted him to stay. As an offer, it was terrifying. She couldn’t trust that he’d stick around—that any guy would stick around. But part of her—the part that hadn’t died with her marriage—wanted to let herself believe. It wasn’t like he was promising her happily ever after. This wasn’t love—it was friendship. Sexually charged friendship, but friendship nonetheless. She could handle things as long as she kept that in mind. “Not all business could be nice.”

  Chapter Six

  Dante lowered the bar onto the cradle before he hurt himself. He was going to drive himself nuts if he couldn’t stop thinking about Vicky. At the moment, he seemed incapable of even making it through a damn workout without her invading his mind.

  “You okay, man?” Tony, his spotter, frowned down at him.

  “Yeah. Just a lot on my mind.”

  “Good thing I’m here or you would have had about three fifteen on your chest.” Tony laughed.

  Dante had a hard time sharing his humor, though. “And I appreciate it. I think I’m done for today. I need to go to a meeting anyway.” He sat up and slapped Tony on the shoulder before standing and heading to the shower.

  He didn’t want to think about the damage he could have done if he’d dropped that kind of weight on himself. The shower pounded against tile as he stripped. When he’d pictured spending all this time with Vicky, he hadn’t really taken into account how much he’d want to touch her. Even at the diner yesterday, it had been all he could do to keep the contact innocent. And now? She was filling every fucking moment, whether she was present or not.

  What had he been thinking? He knew damn well how often he’d fantasized about having Vicky in his bed. And his car. And his…everywhere. He’d spent five years feeling guilty over even thinking about his best friend’s sister like that, and now he was going to have her practically at his beck and call. It would be great, if not for the constant reminder that the moment she’d found herself in bed with him, she’d freaked.

  He could almost hear Lee’s voice in his head, admonishing him for his stupidity. If the answer’s no, the answer’s no. You’re never going to change it. Better to look for a different question.

  The more he thought about it, the more he wondered why she’d freaked so much. Sure, being in the wrong guy’s bed was embarrassing, but it wasn’t like they were strangers. If anything, Dante was probably her best wrong-bed scenario. He wasn’t the guy to trap her in his room and demand she finish what she started. Or report her to anyone—regardless of what he’d threatened.

  He was the one who’d helped sneak her out of the house, for fuck’s sake.

  No. It wasn’t a simple thing. There was something deeper going on with her than embarrassment over having her hand on his cock. Now he just had to figure out how to ask the question without pushing her away.

  His phone was ringing when he twisted off the water, and he snatched it from the bench before the call went to voicemail. “Dante.”

  “Hey, I’m going to have to postpone our meeting.”

  Vicky, and she was blowing him off already. So much for getting answers. “For how long?”

  “Uh…I don’t know? I have a massive leak under my sink, and the super isn’t answering his phone. I’d just let it go, but I’m not sure who’s responsible if it damages anything in here or the apartment below mine.”

  “Let me guess, the plumber gave you something like a four-hour window for when he’s going to show.” Even if it wasn’t just a line, which it very well might’ve been, that put them at sharing dinner…again, rather than spending the day together.

  Vicky barked a laugh. “Are you kidding? It’d be at least a hundred dollars just to have someone come out and look. If I can’t fix it myself, I’ll throw a bucket under there and hope my super gets here before things get out of control.”

  Which meant she wasn’t really canceling, only delaying like she’d said. “How much experience do you have with plumbing?”

  “Aside from my own?” She paused, but not long enough for him to actually respond to the joke. “It’ll be fine. I mean, how much damage can I really do? It’s already leaking.”

  She was going to flood the entire building. He could see it now. “I’ll be over as quickly as I can.”

  “That’s not necessary. I’ll give you a call as soon as I know when I can meet up with you.” And then she hung up on him.

  Shit. Still wet from the shower, he yanked his clothes on, grabbed his stuff, and was out the door. Ideally, he would have had time to run back to his place and grab tools, but he only hoped Vicky had whatever was needed to get the job done.

  Plus, if he managed to swoop in and save the day, maybe it would be a window toward getting some of those answers he was hoping for. He was just glad he’d made a point of sharing addresses at the diner, since odds were they’d need them during party planning anyway, otherwise he would have had to waste precious minutes tracking her down. All things considered, he made good time getting to Vicky’s place. Even so, when he got to her apartment door, he was met with a high-pitched screech followed by a stream of cursing that would have made a sailor proud.

  Dante pounded on the door. “Vicky?”

  She yelled from inside, “It’s about damn time! The door’s unlocked.”

  And here he’d wondered if she was going to be upset about him showing up after she’d said not to. He opened the door to find Vicky
in shorts and a tank top, rushing into her galley kitchen. From all appearances, she seemed to be trying to catch a massive spray of water with a bath towel. She was soaked to the bone, and the towel—like the ones already on the floor—wasn’t doing a damn bit of good.

  “Move.”

  Vicky spun toward his voice, shock on her features, but dived out of the way, giving him access to the sink. The spray drenched him before he’d even knelt down in the narrow space, but at least this part he could fix without a problem. He groped blindly under the sink, feeling for the shutoff valves and twisting them off.

  “What are you doing here?”

  That so didn’t sound like a thank-you. Dante pushed to his feet, no longer caring about the water that was dripping from his clothes. “I said I was coming to help.”

  “And I told you not to.”

  “So you would have preferred I hadn’t stopped by and let you flood your apartment and the one downstairs?”

  “No.” She was holding the soaked towel to herself as if it was a shield. Her eyes shifted toward the sink, where a puddle of water sat in the cabinet.

  He’d seen the water, the surface tension held it in a bubble right at the lip of the wood. For the moment it was stable, but one more drop, one wrong move, and it would burst and spill onto the floor. “Then what’s the problem?”

  Drip.

  Splash.

  “I don’t want a hero, Dante. I didn’t ask for one, and I don’t need one.”

  Everyone needed a hero sometimes, even him, but he wasn’t going to argue with her. “How about a handyman, then? Could you use one of those?”

  Vicky bit her lip and gave a resigned nod.

  “Good.” Dante smiled and held out his hand. “Where are your tools?”

  …

  She’d debated telling him the biggest tool was the one standing right in front of him. After all, what kind of jerk did she have to be to almost refuse the help of a guy who’d driven over from Brentwood just because of her sink? Instead, she simply acquiesced and gave him access to the few tools she had on hand. Brandon had kept most of them, but until now, she’d been sure she had enough—knew enough—to get by.