She’d taken it too far today, no doubt about that. Decker had been angry, too. But oh, God, every news program in the country had carried a clip of her press conference, most of them in a “lighter side” type segment, with a headline that played with the words body and guard. She’d even seen a brief story on CNN, and they hadn’t even had a camera there.
That kind of national publicity was worth just about anything.
So what if Cosmo Richter hated her now and was here tonight to tell her that to her face. Big deal. He’d disliked her from the moment he’d first walked into her house, smug, superior bastard that he was.
Of course, cool dislike was a little different from the hot anger she’d picked up from him back in the studio, after the press conference. She’d felt his eyes burning into her back as she’d taken a call from one of the suits at HeartBeat Studios.
By the time she’d gotten off the phone, Cosmo was gone.
He was here now, though, no doubt to share the exact dimensions of his hatred for her.
But, God, just wait until tabloid photojournalists caught up with him. And they would. Even when the interest of the so-called respectable news venues waned, the tabloids would work to keep this story alive.
Sooner or later, Cosmo would have microphones thrust into his face and be asked everything from his opinion about Mercedes’ legendary bad relationship with her mother—frequent fodder for the rags—to his favorite sexual position.
He was really going to hate her then.
Jane heard PJ’s truck start out in the driveway, heard him pull away.
As the soft knock sounded on her office door—the knock she’d been both dreading and expecting—Jane had to face the fact that she was completely alone in this house with Cosmo Richter.
Okay, Robin, time to come home. It was nearly midnight and tomorrow was going to be another long day.
But Robin didn’t come home. And wherever he was, he wasn’t answering his cell phone.
Cosmo knocked on her door again.
No doubt he’d seen the light on in her room as he’d pulled up.
Of course, she could pretend to be asleep. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d fallen asleep with the light on.
Except she wasn’t asleep, and sooner or later she was going to have to have this conversation with this man.
She was heading for the door when her cell phone rang.
She rushed back to her bed to get it. “Robbie?”
“No.” The voice on the other end of her phone was Cosmo’s. He sounded the same as always. Quiet. Unemotional. “You going to open this door, or you going to wimp out and pretend to be sleeping?”
“I considered it,” she admitted, as she turned on the overhead light in her office and opened the door. She found herself face-to-face with the man’s broad chest. God, her bare feet were a mistake. She had to get him sitting down as quickly as possible to get them on even ground. “But I figured we may as well get this over with.”
“ ‘Get this over with’?” he repeated, closing his phone and slipping it into one of the many pockets of his cargo pants. He smiled at her and it almost made him look pleasant and friendly—except for the fact that his eyes were flat and cold. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same thing?”
“Come in. Sit down.” She motioned toward one of the chairs in front of her desk. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Sure, why not? Got beer?”
Jane opened the little refrigerator in her office. It was filled with Dr Pepper, guava juice, bottled water, and . . . yes. Way in the back. “Is Fosters all right?”
She turned, bottle in her hand, to find that Cosmo had disappeared.
“Great,” he called. From her bedroom?
“What are you doing?” she asked, going over to the door and . . .
Dear God. He’d taken off his shirt, revealing a chiseled upper body that gleamed in the dim light from both her TV and her laptop screen. He’d actually taken off his shirt, and was over by her bed, as if . . .
“What are you doing?” she asked again.
He was in the process of unfastening the fly of his pants, button by button. He stopped halfway, looking over at her, his lean face seeming to have as many angles and sharp edges as his body. With his short haircut, he was all cheekbones and those strange, pale eyes. “What? You said you wanted to repay me.” He came toward her, making no effort to refasten himself—was it possible he wasn’t wearing any underwear?—and took the bottle of beer from her hand. “Thanks.”
He twisted off the top, took a swig as he went back to the bed, and made himself comfortable upon it, ankles crossed and one arm up and back behind his head. Lordy, lordy, he was outrageously well toned.
“So, come on,” he said. “Get changed. Don’t get me wrong—the sweat shorts are cute, but the T-shirt leaves a little too much to the imagination, if you know what I mean. Got anything in red? I really, really like red.”
For a man who in the past had kept his conversation to sentence fragments, Cosmo Richter wasn’t having any trouble at all finding words tonight.
“Okay,” Jane interrupted him. “I deserve this. I know it, but thank you, that’s quite enough.”
“Enough? What? You don’t want to . . .” He gestured between the two of them. “You’re not gonna . . . Oh . . .” he said as if it were only just dawning on him. “You only want several million people to think that you’re in here with a highly skilled, well-educated professional, having gymnastic sex all night long. I see. How disappointing.”
Jane sighed. “Okay, when you’re done being sarcastic, could you please put your shirt back on and, you know, button up, so we can finish the lecture out in my office?”
“What, is my being in your bed like this a problem for you?” he asked. God, he was furious. She could see his pulse drumming in his neck.
She cleared her throat. “It makes me uncomfortable, yes.”
“It makes you uncomfortable,” he said. “And it never occurred to you that using me for show-and-tell this afternoon might’ve made me uncomfortable? Or am I not supposed to care? I’m just supposed to . . . to . . . what? Swagger around, getting high-fived and”—he made a thumbs-up gesture—“because the entire Los Angeles area—including my mother—thinks I’m screwing some famous, sexually adventurous movie producer, like it’s some kind of extra special notch on my belt?”
He was serious. He was also on his feet, pulling his T-shirt back on, thank God, his movements jerky with anger.
“Do me a favor,” Cosmo continued. “Give my mother a call. Tell her there’s a difference between screwing and getting screwed. And that my role in your little game here is definitely only in the getting-screwed category. Maybe if she hears it from you, she won’t go rushing out to buy a mother-of-the-groom dress.”
Jane laughed. She couldn’t help it. “You’re upset because of what your mother might think?” The laughing was definitely a mistake. At least she didn’t call him Rambo, too.
“What does your mother think of you, Mercedes?”
Okay, they were so not going to go there. Her voice came out a little too sharp as she said, “Look, I really am sorry if—”
He sat back down on her bed. He’d set his beer bottle down on her bedside table. He’d barely had any of it, but he didn’t bother to reach for it now. “Yeah. I really believe you.”
Her control slipped. She may have misjudged him on some levels, but she sure got smug and superior dead-on.
“Okay, yes, you’re right,” she told him. “I’m not sorry. Not even close. In fact, I’m celebrating. A whole hell of a lot more people know about my movie tonight than they did this morning.”
“Because of your reckless defamation of a company whose entire future rides on its professional reputation.”
What? Was he kidding? Defamation? Forget about the fact that he’d actually used a string of four-syllable words, defamation didn’t even come close. She’d given Troubleshooters Incorporated an incredible boost in v
isibility today.
“Because of the positive spin I put on this entire god-awful situation!” she shouted. “I hate this, in case you haven’t noticed! I hate having you here—you and your extremely noninvisible friends!”
He got loud, too. Who knew Mr. Silent was capable of such volume? “You think we really want to be here, protecting your selfish, worthless ass?”
What? “Oh, don’t stop there,” Jane shot back at him, glaring down at him. “Why don’t you make the insult complete? Strike at the heart of every woman’s insecurities and call it a giant ass, too, you smug son of a bitch!”
“Very good,” he said. He even managed to applaud mockingly. “Make it be about your body. That’s always worked for you in the past, hasn’t it? A major distraction . . . I hate to break it to you, J. Mercedes Chadwick—Jesus God, can you be any more pompous with the name thing, Jane?—but you could be standing here naked right now. I wouldn’t give a good goddamn.”
“Oh, oh, oh,” she said. “You’re mocking my name? Cosmo? I know you commando types have nicknames, but like, what? Was Dickhead already taken or something? What’s your real name—no, no, let me guess. Stanley. Or, wait . . . I know—Percy. That’s it, isn’t it? Percy Richter.”
“You done?” he asked flatly.
“Are you done?” she countered. “I have an important casting session tomorrow for the twenty-million-dollar movie that I’m producing and my worthless, giant ass needs to get some sleep.”
“Great,” he said. “Focus on the thing I didn’t say. That is so goddamn typical of women like you—”
“Women like me?” Jane sputtered. She came as close as she’d ever come in her entire life to crossing the room and slapping another human being. “Women like me? You know me well enough to toss me into a subset? When did you get to know me, Percy? We’ve had, what? Exactly zero conversations? When did you ever say, ‘Hmmm, Jane, what do you think about that?’ or ‘Hey, Jane, why does this movie you’re making matter so much to you?’ But maybe you didn’t need to. Maybe when you sat outside my room last night, you managed to read my mind while I pretended to sleep—is that how you got to know me?”
Finally, she’d managed to shut Cosmo up. He was still glowering at her, but he was glowering silently now.
“As far as subsets go, you’re the worst kind,” she said. “I have met people like you before. You waltz into my world, and you think you’ve got it all figured out—that the entire Hollywood scene is so base and beneath you. You think you’ve got me figured out, too—you’re so fucking judgmental. You don’t bother to look beneath the surface. You think you know me? Honey, you don’t have a clue.”
Cosmo was definitely back to doing his silent thing.
“ ‘Gee, Jane, what is it about this movie you’re making?’ ” she spoke for him, her voice dropped a register, mocking him. “ ‘I mean, it’s only a movie. You really willing to die to get it made?’ Why, yes, Percy, yes, I am—not that I think this threat is real. But you know what? If it were real, I wouldn’t be doing anything different. I would still be working my worthless ass off to make sure that not only does this movie get made, but that this movie gets seen, because I believe it’s a story people should see. I spent years—years—pushing to get the money to make this movie, and I am not going to quit now. I’m sorry if what I did and said today offended you. But I’d do it again, in a heartbeat, because we got so many hits on the American Hero movie website. Do you have even the slightest idea what that means? Tonight hundreds of thousands of people were introduced to Jack Shelton and Hal Lord, two wonderful and brave American men who fought in World War Two, two undeniable heroes who were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country, who helped make the world safe for freedom and democracy—who just so happened to be gay. There are people in this world who think that makes them less than, and . . .” She shook her head. “Of course, you wouldn’t care about that.”
He finally spoke. “How would you know?” he asked.
She laughed. “Yeah, right. How would I know? I forgot to ask you if you were a gay rights activist. Jeez, what was I thinking—I’m so sure a lot of you SEALs are. Get out of my room. Now. This conversation is over. Oh, and by the way, you are so fired.”
Cosmo opened his mouth to speak, but he never got the chance.
A gunshot rang out—it had to be a gunshot; it was an unbelievably loud explosion-like sound coming from outside of the house—and he launched himself up and off the bed, tackling her.
Jane didn’t even have time to let out a full scream as her back hit the rug, but somehow Cosmo managed to put his hand behind her head, keeping her from cracking it against the floor.
“Stay down!” he ordered even as he pulled out both a deadly looking handgun—where on earth had he been hiding that?—and the radio he used to touch base with Murphy, who was outside.
It was unbelievable. It was absurd. This man who had been so furiously angry with her mere moments ago was now shielding her with his body. If someone wanted to kill her, they were going to have to kill him first.
It was crazy. It was stupid.
It was humbling as hell.
It was also hard to breathe—Cosmo’s full weight was atop her. Not that she particularly cared right now—she was clinging to him, squeaking, “Oh, my God, oh, my God . . .”
Was someone really shooting at her?
“Report!” he ordered Murphy. “Hush, it’s okay,” he said to her. “I got you covered. I’m right here. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.”
“I think it was just a car backfiring,” the former Marine’s voice came back.
Of course. A car. A car. Jane started to laugh, pressing her face against Cosmo’s very solid shoulder. God, having bodyguards could really make a person paranoid.
But Cosmo wasn’t laughing. “No fucking way,” he said. He looked directly at her, spoke directly to her. “Excuse me.”
It took her a moment to realize he was apologizing to her for his language. As if she hadn’t used that very word herself just moments ago. At this proximity, his eyes were really quite a remarkable color, with specks and threads of different shades of gray and even white woven in among the pale blue.
He spoke again into the radio to Murphy. “That was a rifle shot.”
“I don’t think so, Chief. I was out front—I saw the car,” Murph’s voice came back, as cheerful as always.
“I know a rifle shot when I hear one,” Cosmo insisted, and some of the relief Jane had felt at Murphy’s pronouncement began to waver. Unless maybe . . .
“Yeah, my man, I do, too. But I’m telling you, I watched this car drive past. It was moving slowly, so I checked it out with field glasses. I got a clear look at it. A mid-seventies Pontiac Catalina, dirty white with a peeling black soft top—one of those old ocean liners, a real piece of shit. No windows were open—not on this side, anyway. If someone was firing a rifle, I would’ve seen a muzzle flash.”
“Make a perimeter circuit,” Cosmo ordered.
Maybe he was deliberately trying to frighten her. “I think you can probably get off of me now,” Jane said.
“Sorry.” He shifted his weight. “Keep your head down,” he said, helping her into a sitting position but dragging her over next to the bed. “Stay back from the windows.”
“Come on,” she said, “you don’t honestly think—”
“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” His concern seemed to be sincere as he crouched beside her. He swore under his breath as he discovered the rug burn on her elbow.
It was bleeding a little and it stung, but she shook her head, pulled her arm away from him. “I’m okay. Look, you know, it was funny. Ha-ha, I was really scared, so . . . You win.”
Was he even listening? Still crouching low, out of range of the windows, he crossed the room, shut the door to her office, locking them in her bedroom. He spoke into the radio on his way back to her. “Murph?”
“There’s nothing out here, Chief.”
“You sure
got the best of me,” Jane said, starting to stand up. “But now—”
Cosmo grabbed a handful of her T-shirt and pulled her back down. “I said stay down,” he ordered. “Call PJ back in,” he said into his radio. “I want to walk through the house while he sits in here with Jane.”
“Jane?” Murphy asked.
“Mercedes,” Cosmo corrected himself, meeting her eyes only very briefly. “Ms. Chadwick.”
“I’m on it,” Murphy said.
Cosmo was looking at her arm again. “We need to wash that out.”
Again, she pulled away. “What we need to do is end this pathetic game. Didn’t you hear me? You win. I don’t know why I believed you, but I did.” She laughed at her own gullibility. As if this man, who didn’t bother to hide his intense dislike of her, would really be ready and willing to risk his own life to keep her alive . . .
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