They both spoke the words together and immediately burst out laughing, grateful for something, anything, to break the unbearable tension.
“Jinx!” said Siena. It was what they used to say as little kids when they said the same thing at once. “I said it first, so you’re jinxed!”
“Fine, okay, I’m jinxed.” He beamed at her.
They sat for a while in happy silence, grinning inanely like a couple of teenagers. What Pete had done was unforgivable and would probably take a while to sink in fully. But the main thing was that they were here now, together. No amount of regrets or recriminations or what-ifs could extinguish the delight of that one simple fact.
“I have a girlfriend,” Hunter announced, changing the subject abruptly.
“Really?” said Siena, frowning. For some reason she found she didn’t want him to elaborate about his love life.
“Yeah, her name is Tiffany. She plays Sarah on the show, if you’ve seen it. She’s the gorgeous blond one.”
Siena noticed the way his eyes shone and his face lit up when he said her name. He’d obviously got it bad.
“She’s wonderful,” he went on excitedly. “I can’t wait for you to meet her. I know you’re gonna love her just as much as I do. You two are so alike.”
Hmmm, thought Siena. We’ll see about that.
“What about you?” he asked, once it became clear that she wasn’t going to question him further about Tiffany. “Are you seeing anybody?”
“No,” she said with a shrug, “no one serious.”
He looked at her quizzically.
“And don’t you go getting any ideas!” She grinned and prodded him in the chest with an accusatory finger. “No matchmaking with any of your Days of Our Lives friends.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Hunter. “I don’t know anyone on that show.”
“I’m not interested. Period,” said Siena. “My career is the only love of my life right now, and I want it to stay that way.”
“Hey, fine by me,” he said, holding up both hands innocently. “As far as I’m concerned, no man could ever be good enough for you anyway.”
For a few minutes neither of them said anything. They just sat together under the stars, drinking in the miracle of each other’s presence. Siena shifted position on his lap and hugged him tightly around the middle. God, she’d missed him so much.
“So,” said Hunter after a while. “What happens now? How long will you be in L.A.?”
She sighed and sat up. She wished she could stay in his arms forever.
“Not long, unfortunately. Maybe a week. I have to be back in New York for a shoot by the twenty-sixth, latest.”
Hunter’s face fell.
“I’m coming back, though, next month.” She smiled at him. “We’ll be shooting the movie here for four months, maybe longer if there are problems. So we’ll be able to see a lot of each other. Catch up, you know? Man.” She looked at him in wonder as though seeing his face for the first time. “I have so much I need to tell you.”
“Me too,” he sighed. “You have no idea.”
It was starting to get uncomfortably chilly out on the balcony. The Pacific Coast breezes could take on a bitter bite late in the evenings, and Hunter got up to move indoors, standing back to allow Siena into the warmth before him. It was late, and he knew both Tiffany and Max would be waiting up for him at home, anxious to know how the reunion had gone. Still, he could hardly bear to tear himself away.
He turned around and looked at her: Siena McMahon, the world-famous model, so tiny and vulnerable and sweet in her oversize hotel bathrobe. He loved her so much in that moment, he could have burst. And that’s when it came to him.
“Move in with me!” he blurted out suddenly, catching her off guard.
Siena looked surprised. “Really?” she said. “Do you mean it? I mean, do you think that would be a good idea?”
“Of course,” he said, sounding almost offended. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
She thought about it for a moment. “What about your girlfriend?” She tried her best not to sound as hostile as she felt about that particular subject. She knew her hostility made no sense—she hadn’t even met the girl—but a feeling of resentment at having to share Hunter with anyone was already starting to build to the point where she could feel her chest tightening. “Wouldn’t she mind a complete stranger moving in?”
“You’re hardly a stranger,” he said. “Besides, Tiffany doesn’t live with me.”
If Siena hadn’t known better, she might almost have thought he sounded resentful. Perhaps things with the perfect Tiffany were not quite so wonderful after all?
“Oh,” was all she said. “But Max does, right?”
This time she was unable to conceal her dislike. Looking at her frown, Hunter couldn’t stop himself from laughing. “Oh, Siena!” he teased her. “Don’t tell me you’re still hung up about Max?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said indignantly, tossing back her hair for emphasis. “And for your information, I have never been ‘hung up’ about him, as you put it. I just don’t understand what you see in him. He’s hung around you like a bad smell for as long as I can remember, and now he seems to be sponging off you permanently. How can you stand it?”
“It’s not like that,” said Hunter gently. “Max has been a wonderful friend to me.”
She gave a brief snort of derision.
“You weren’t here, honey,” he said reasonably. “You don’t know the whole story. I’m telling you, I don’t think I could have made it through all this stuff without him.”
“Well, fine,” she said grudgingly. “But won’t he have something to say about it if I move in?”
“Noooo,” said Hunter, shaking his head and suppressing a tiny doubt that perhaps he should have run the idea by both Max and Tiffany before making the offer. “Anyway, it’s my house. So stop making excuses and just say yes, dammit.”
Siena jumped up and flung herself against him like a puppy greeting its long-lost master. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so deeply and truly happy.
“Yes!” She grinned from ear to ear. “I will move in with you. Yes, yes yes!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Tiffany pulled her battered old truck into the driveway at the beach house and reached into the passenger seat for the bag of fresh fruit and bagels that she’d just picked up at the farmer’s market. She and her best buddy Lennox both took surfing lessons early on Sunday mornings, and afterward she would cross the street from ZJ’s surf shop to the weekly market and pick up something fresh and delicious for Hunter’s breakfast.
It had become one of their favorite little rituals. Hunter loved the way her normally poker-straight hair frizzed up when she’d been in the ocean, and her skin looked tanned and glowing from the early-morning workout against the waves. He would brew the coffee while she played house, laying out the bread and fruit in different bowls and filling vases with fresh flowers. Max, if he was up, would walk down to the promenade and buy the papers. The three of them had shared some of their happiest times on those long, lazy Sunday mornings.
Of course, all that was before Siena arrived.
This Sunday morning, Tiffany struggled, laden, up to the house with an anxious and heavy heart. Siena had moved in with Hunter just over four weeks ago now. Some days it felt like four years. For the hundredth time, Tiffany thanked her lucky stars that she herself had never agreed to move into the beach house permanently. Poor Max had to put up with the she-devil 24/7. She doubted she would have lasted a week in his shoes.
Tiffany’s dislike of Siena had developed gradually.
It wasn’t so much that Siena was selfish, per se, although there were some teething problems when she first moved in, mainly centered around the late hours she kept. When he was filming, Hunter liked to be in bed by eleven, whereas Siena, accustomed to late Manhattan nights and missing Ines dreadfully, rarely turned in before two, spending hours on the phone to New York every night. Then there was the distin
ct frostiness between Siena and Max that had sent a chill through the house from the day Little Miss Supermodel first arrived. Not that either of them would admit it, let alone explain what lay behind their hostility. Hunter had told Tiffany that there was some rivalry between the two of them when they were children, but that hardly seemed to explain the almost constant sniping now.
But the biggest problem for Tiffany was how possessive Siena could be about Hunter. It was clear from day one that she resented their relationship, and on the rare occasions when the two women were left alone together, Siena had been far from friendly, always shutting down Tiffany’s attempts to start conversations, particularly if they involved any questioning about her and Hunter’s past.
“It must have been so difficult for both of you,” Tiffany had commented one afternoon, after Hunter had told her yet another horrific story about the factionalism and resentment between their respective parents. “I can imagine how isolated and frightened you must have felt as children.”
“Believe me,” Siena had snapped back frostily, “you can’t imagine. Only Hunter and I will ever know what it was like, growing up in that nightmare. That’s what’s made us as close as we are. Nobody can break that bond between us. Nobody.”
When Hunter was around, though, abracadabra, Siena was suddenly all sweetness and light, sucking up to Tiffany with a saccharine humility that made her want to scream.
After a few weeks, she had tentatively brought up the subject of Siena’s split personality to Hunter, complaining that she was often barely civil unless he happened to be around. But to her horror, Hunter came rushing to Siena’s defense.
“She’s been through such a lot, honey,” he insisted. “I’m sure you’re misreading the situation. She’s really very sweet and loving when you get to know her.”
“To you she is,” Tiffany replied bitterly. “Not to me. Or Max, for that matter.”
But no matter what she said, or how badly Siena behaved, Hunter seemed to take his niece’s side every time. Every fucking time. Even when Max was around to back her up, Tiffany found it increasingly difficult to get him to take any of her concerns or criticisms seriously.
Sticking up for your family was fine. She of all people understood that, what with all the problems they’d been through with her parents, and their disapproval of the relationship. But even so, the situation with Hunter and Siena was really starting to get her down.
Opening the porch door with her key, Tiffany was relieved to find that only Max appeared to be up. He was sitting at the kitchen table in just a pair of pajama bottoms, dividing his attention equally between his laptop and a huge slice of chocolate cake that he had already half demolished. When he saw Tiffany, he looked up guiltily and wiped the icing from around his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Ha! Caught in the act, my friend,” she said as she dropped her bags on the counter and swooped down on him, kissing the top of his head and deftly removing the plate in one fluid motion.
“Oy!” said Max, aggrieved. “I was enjoying that.”
“For breakfast?” She pointedly flipped up the lid of the trash can and jettisoned what was left of the cake before burrowing into her bag to produce some fresh walnuts and watermelon slices. “I thought you were trying to get into shape?”
“Ah,” said Max, flipping shut his laptop and wandering over to help her. “But I didn’t say what shape, did I? Much as I’d love to have a washboard stomach like your boyfriend’s, a life of tofu and miso fucking soup just isn’t worth it, I’m afraid. Speak of the devil.”
Right on cue, a disheveled-looking Hunter emerged from his bedroom in his boxers and shuffled over toward Tiffany. Christ, he was handsome. Even first thing in the morning, with his black hair standing on end and his mesmerizing blue eyes still cloudy with sleep, it was all she could do not to gasp when she caught sight of him. After all these years, she knew every inch of his body, from the sinewy smoothness of his back to the taut power of his thighs and butt and the round broad expanse of his shoulders. But she still found his beauty quite incredible. He was like a Michelangelo sculpture—her very own personal David.
“Hey,” he whispered languidly, enveloping her in his arms and his warmth and his smell till she felt quite dizzy with longing. “Check out those surfer-girl curls!”
She pulled away from him, embarrassed, and started getting down more plates from the cupboard. She hated her hair being all corkscrewed out from the ocean, and hated it even more when Hunter ruffled it like she was a pet poodle.
“Yeah, well, I’ll blow-dry it after breakfast,” she mumbled awkwardly.
“No! Don’t!” said Max and Hunter in unison.
“It looks great like that,” Max assured her.
“Very sexy,” said Hunter, reaching out and cupping a hand over her left breast as she reached up for the glasses. She could feel the beginnings of his erection pressing into the small of her back.
“Hun-ter!” She blushed, grinning from ear to ear.
“Oh, get a room, would you?” said Max good-naturedly. He was pleased to see the two of them fooling around and looking so relaxed. Things had been pretty tense around here these last few weeks, since Siena’s arrival.
“You wanna go for a drive after breakfast?” asked Hunter, still refusing to release a wriggling Tiffany from his embrace.
She beamed at him. “Sure.”
She couldn’t remember the last time the two of them had taken off together on a Sunday. Not since their New Year’s trip to Big Bear, and that seemed like a lifetime ago already.
“Why don’t you head up to Santa Barbara?” suggested Max.
“Oh, yes,” said Tiffany. “We could have dinner at that little place in Montecito, the one with all the honeysuckle. You remember, Hunter?”
He did remember. In their first few months of dating, some of the Counselor fans had been getting out of hand, to the point where going out in L.A. had become a nightmare. Girls would shout insults at Tiffany when they went out as a couple—one silicone-enhanced lovely had even run naked into Ivy at the Shore and sat down in Hunter’s lap as the two of them were having dinner. Admittedly, Tiffany had thought that was hilarious, but Hunter felt desperately embarrassed and began looking for places out of town to take her on dates. They had discovered the Montecito restaurant together, and the place would forever remind him of those early days of their relationship.
He bent down and kissed her gently on the lips. “Sounds like a plan.”
Glowing with happiness, she extricated herself from his arms and took an armful of goodies over to the table. She couldn’t believe how anxious she’d been, driving over this morning. What a fuss she’d been making over nothing. They were going to have a lovely, relaxing, romantic day together. She needn’t have worried at all.
“Who’s going to Montecito?” A sleepy female voice shattered her reverie. “Can I come?”
Siena had emerged from her bedroom and sidled straight over to the refrigerator, beaming at Hunter as she went by. The two of them could almost have been twins, Tiffany thought with a pang of annoyance, radiating sexiness with their black bed-hair and blue eyes.
Max glared at Siena and tried not to notice the fact that she was wearing only a pair of semi-sheer nude panties and a child’s-size Lakers T-shirt that was doing a very inadequate job of containing her braless breasts.
“No,” said Max.
“Yes,” said Hunter simultaneously.
“Hunter and Tiffany want some time on their own,” said Max firmly, before Hunter had a chance to speak again.
“Well, what am I going to do?” Siena whined petulantly, pleading with Hunter for support.
Christ, she could be obnoxious when she wanted to, thought Max. “If you’re at a loose end you could always have a crack at that pigsty of a room you live in,” he said, giving her his best patronizing smile.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” snapped Siena. “That’s what we pay Karen for. Of course, when I say ‘we,’ I mean Hunter and I.
Heaven forbid that the great director should ever make a contribution.”
She knew how easy it was to get Max’s hackles up by baiting him about not paying his way. What she didn’t know was that he kept a meticulous record of the back rent he owed, plus interest, and that every cent of his meager income was spent on contributing as much as he could to the household expenses. She also didn’t know that he had tried, on numerous occasions, to insist on moving somewhere cheaper. But each time, Hunter had begged him to stay, pleading with him until Max felt there was no way out without hurting and insulting his closest friend, and reluctantly capitulated.
And Max, of course, was far too proud ever to tell her.
“Cut it out, you two,” said Hunter. He was getting sick and tired of the endless bickering between Siena and Max. It had been bad enough when they were kids, but surely they could both let bygones be bygones now?
Sensing his frustration, Siena changed tack. “Anyway, I’m sure Tiffany wouldn’t mind if I tagged along, would you? All girls together? It’d be fun.” She fluttered her eyelashes at a furious Tiffany for Hunter’s benefit, and started ostentatiously helping to set the table, picking up a stack of bowls and putting one by each place. “I haven’t been to Montecito since I was a child. I’d really love to see it again.”
There was a moment’s silence as Tiffany looked to Hunter, willing him just once to stand up to Siena and tell her to take a running jump. But one glance at his pained, torn expression told her it wasn’t going to happen.
Tiffany would have loved to tell Siena to stick Montecito up her perfectly rounded ass, but she was getting better at this game by the day, and she knew that outright hostility would play right into the little minx’s hands. Instead she took a deep breath and gave Siena a false smile so broad it made her jaw ache, wrapping her arms around Hunter and tossing back her ocean-curled mane of blond hair in an unmistakable gesture of possession.
“Sure, why not?” she said. “The more the merrier.”
That’d show the evil midget. Two could play at this game.
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