She didn’t gasp or act shocked. Jessica merely clenched his hand tighter. “Oh, Reece.”
“We didn’t know when we were kids. She was moody but kept it under control with therapy and medication.”
Jessica whispered, “And then Rachel died.”
“And then Rachel died.”
She didn’t ask any questions, falling back into a shared silence as he drove up the 101, maneuvering through some late evening traffic. He pulled his hand back, focusing on the road, not even looking at her. She was digesting his words. For all he knew, she wouldn’t want to be with someone with so much fucked-upedness in his life. He had more baggage than any man, other than his brothers. Why would she want to hoist it, too?
Finally, she asked, “Was that the real reason you left Hollywood?”
It made perfect sense. He could leave it there. But he wasn’t a liar, and he wasn’t a coward. Although he had never told anyone, given what Jess was facing, with a mentally disturbed woman on her tail, he thought she deserved to know.
“Rowan and I were afraid she had killed someone.” A chill went through him after he said the words, and for a split second, he remembered being that scared, confused kid who’d lost his sister, and then, in a different way, his mother.
“But…holy shit. Are you serious?”
“Yes. It was bad after Rachel died; my mom had a psychotic break. She was determined to find out who was responsible for my sister’s death.”
He glanced over and saw Jessica nibble on her bottom lip. Of course she was thinking nobody except Rachel had been responsible. She didn’t know the truth. Moreover, she couldn’t know the truth. Some secrets led to more questions, and more questions led to darker tales.
“Did she find them? I mean, find the person she thought was responsible?”
He turned onto Laurel Canyon Boulevard. They were almost back to the house, and he could focus on getting Jessica in bed and taking care of her. But he had opened this can of worms, and knew he had to shake it out completely. “She fell apart on our birthday. Mine and Rowan’s. It was a few months after…”
Rachel’s death. After Rachel died. After Rachel fell. After Rachel dove.
After Rachel was pushed?
“It was your thirteenth birthday, I would guess?”
“Yes. We blew out our candles, and she started screaming that Rachel would never have another birthday cake, that her sweet sixteen had been her last.”
As he could have guessed, she immediately expressed pity. “I can’t imagine the grief of losing a child.”
“I know. My mother’s illness made her reaction more…extreme than most.”
“So what happened?”
“She threw the cake at us and took off.” He didn’t exaggerate, didn’t emote, and didn’t even have any feelings about what he was saying. That part was nothing, just another rough bump in the road you traveled with a parent who was seriously ill.
The rest of the night was where things got tough.
“Leaving you alone?”
“We grew up in Hollywood. Believe me, we were very mature thirteen-year-olds.”
“School of hard knocks.”
She again understood without an explanation. Knowing she had also been a pupil at such a school, he imagined she’d been just as mature at that age.
“We were used to taking care of Raine, so we put him to bed and stayed up late, playing video games.” Here was where memory became cloudy. He’d tried so hard to forget that night, it wasn’t easy to pull the thoughts back to the surface. “When she got home, we heard her screaming from the driveway. We went out and found she’d been in an accident. The front end of the car was banged up, and there was dirt and blood on the bumper.”
“Oh, my God,” she said, a hitch in her words.
He knew if he looked at her, he would see tears on her cheeks. He just wanted to finish so she could stop crying and he could go back to forgetting.
“What did you do?”
“We covered it up.” He spoke matter-of-factly. There wasn’t even a tremor, not the least bit of hesitation in his voice. He had come to peace with what they’d done that night, even if he still haunted old news sites just in case something showed up.
“You were just boys…”
“Yes. Thirteen-year-old boys who’d lost their sister and were watching their mother go insane. So we got her into bed. Rowan pulled the car into the garage—he was always better at Mario Kart than I was.”
She didn’t laugh.
“Sorry. Bad joke.” He cleared his throat. “We washed the blood off the fender, and, being stupid and thirteen, took hammers to try to pound out the dents. Not our best idea.”
Jessica reached for his hand again and squeezed tightly. “What happened the next day?”
“She didn’t remember a thing,” he said with a shrug. “She accused us of taking the car for a joyride and wrecking it.”
He didn’t tell Jess what she’d done to punish them. She’d been ill, not the mother he’d once known. He didn’t need to darken her memory further.
“That was the last straw for me and Rowan. We were too terrified to keep going the way we had been. We called our dad and let him know Mom was in a really bad way. He and Aunt Sharon had been out for Rachel’s funeral, of course. They came back and took care of everything from there on out.”
“Thank God for them.” She lifted his hand in the darkness, pressing her soft lips to his knuckles. “You need to stop blaming yourself.”
“What makes you think I do?”
“I know you.”
Yes, he believed she did. He had blamed himself, for years, wondering if he’d allowed someone to get away with a hit-and-run murder. He knew he’d been a fucked-up kid in a fucked-up family in a fucked-up situation. That didn’t mean he’d ever entirely forgiven himself.
“Did you tell your father about…everything?”
He shook his head. “We still had some loyalty to Mom. Bad enough she was going into a mental hospital; we didn’t want her charged with killing someone.”
“You can’t be sure that’s what happened, Reece.”
“Maybe not. We watched the news for months. When Rowan became a cop, he dug deep into old records, looking for anything that happened in the region on our thirteenth birthday. He came up empty. He thinks it was a dog or a deer.”
“He’s smarter than he looks.”
He jerked his head to look at her, seeing a tiny smile on her face. She was trying to lighten the mood, to bring him out of the darkness. Fiery, brilliant Jessica. How could she bring anything but light?
Arriving at the tall, metal exterior gate that blocked the long driveway up to the house, he stopped and punched in the security code, sharing it with her in case she needed it. He didn’t imagine she would be driving anytime soon. Definitely not before she’d gone back for regular checkups to rule out bronchitis. But he did not want her to feel like she was being imprisoned here, not when all he wanted to do was keep her out of harm’s—and deadly women’s—way.
The driveway rose a hundred feet in elevation, in a very short time, with a sheer cutoff to the cliff on the passenger side. He’d gotten used to it, but he saw Jess grab her armrest, and she squeezed his hand so hard it felt like she was trying to crush it.
“Hold on, we’re almost there.”
They reached the final curve that swooped out onto the cliff, and then corkscrew-turned back toward the garage that was attached to the house. When they got out to the point, Jess threw both hands over her eyes and kept them there.
“You can look now, we’re in,” he said as he parked the car inside and cut the engine. She dropped her hands, revealing pale cheeks. Reece reached over and ran the back of his hand on her face. Her skin was cold, as if the blood had dropped out of it from fear. “Maybe I should have warned you about that.”
“You think?”
“I didn’t know you’re afraid of heights.”
“I’m not!”
He twe
aked her chin, that cute, adorable, sexy-as-hell cleft. “You might want to rethink that.”
“I’m not afraid of heights. I’m only afraid of falling from them.”
“Huh, strong and mighty Jessica actually has a human weakness.”
“You mean other than bleach?”
“Christ, don’t even remind me,” he said, his throat almost closing up. “If it matters, I did have the same reaction when I checked this place out. The remoteness is what I like best about it, though. Nobody can get to you here.”
“As long as the woman who’s after us is afraid of heights, too.”
She was definitely getting back to her real self. “Nobody can come through the gate without the code or being buzzed in from the house. And there’s no way anyone can climb up that cliff into the backyard. I can’t think of a more secure location.”
It was the perfect recuperation spot. She would be safe. She could sleep, swim in the enormous pool with the beautiful views of the valley, eat healthy food, and heal. Maybe while she was doing that, he would heal, too. Having shared one of the darkest memories of his life with her, he had begun to feel a little lighter. As if he’d finally put down one of piece of that baggage he’d been carrying.
“Just don’t ever ask me if I’d like to go outside for a walk. I got vertigo inside the car.”
“You can walk from the couch to the bed to the pool, but not another step.”
She ducked her head to hide a grin, saying innocently, “You might want to add a stop in the bathroom to that list. Or else you might not want to swim in that pool after me.”
“Gross, woman,” he said, though he was inwardly laughing.
Jessica was fast becoming herself again, and he couldn’t be happier. He wanted her nightmares to end and would do whatever it took to make sure they did.
He exited the car, then he went to her side to help her out. Knowing she hadn’t eaten much in the hospital, and was still weak, he kept a hand on the small of her back as he led her to the door. She might have quaked just a bit. He still had yet to taste that spot on her body, but he intended to, just as soon as she was well again. “Let me help you in and then I’ll get your bags.”
Leading her through the kitchen to the living room, he flipped on some lights, including ones that brightened the back patio and the massive pool, with the lawn and cliff just beyond it.
“Oh, wow,” she said, stopping to look out into the night. He knew she wasn’t talking about the deck, but about the sharp drop-off behind it. The cliff fell away to reveal the beautiful valley, filled with the twinkling lights of the city, spread like a cloth of stars below them.
“Okay, maybe this location isn’t so bad.” Looking as if she’d just realized something, she said, “Wait, where’s CB?”
Considering he’d told her about his dog, he wasn’t surprised she’d asked. “My dad came and picked him up when I was staying at the hospital.”
Her face fell. “I was looking forward to meeting him.”
“I’ll pick him up in a couple of days.”
“Why not now?”
“Because Cecil B. is a big slobber machine.”
“That’s okay, I like dogs.”
“Yeah, but this one will knock you on your ass. Let’s wait until you’re a little stronger.”
She frowned but didn’t argue any further. He slid an arm around her waist and led her to the couch. “Now, stay here and let me make us a late dinner.”
She was hungry, he knew, but she’d also been on a lot of medication and was suffering from a sore throat. Fortunately, he had some basics in stock. More fortunately, eggs were soft.
“Omelet okay? They’re my specialty.”
“Perfect.”
Keeping watch through an opening over the counter, he heard her call, “No fungus!”
“Check,” he said, putting aside the mushrooms he’d been about to wash.
Jess continued to spy on him. She was on her knees, looking over the back of the couch, watching every move he made.
“Don’t you trust me?”
She shook her head.
“I know what I’m doing.” He lifted an avocado.
Her whole face crinkled. “Eww. In eggs? Are you kidding?”
“Haven’t you ever had a California breakfast?”
Lifting a hand, she ticked off her fingers. “Eggs. Ham. Cheese. The end.”
“Boring.”
“But…it’s really all I think I can handle,” she said, batting those eyelashes so blatantly he knew she was yanking his chain. “The doctor said I should really be careful for a few days.”
“I thought you weren’t an actress.”
She flashed him a little grin, that dimple making his heart stop. “Okay. But you do know I’m not up to anything too…spicy.” She licked her lips. “No matter how good it might taste.”
Shit. She was not just teasing, she was flirting with him. As always, he reacted, but he didn’t show it. Pale face, dark circles under her beautiful eyes, and lank hair reminded him he needed to be strong and not let it get to him.
But damn, that dimple.
“Give me ten minutes and it’ll be ready,” he said, stiffening his spine. And his will. Because, teasing or not, she was right. Simple food would be best for her as she recuperated. No excitement, nothing stressful, nothing too energetic.
That meant no sex. Absolutely no sex. Definitely no sex like they’d had Tuesday night at the hotel. God help me.
This was not going to be easy. Knowing she was injured and needed quiet and calm to recover, he’d told himself all day that he’d be fine. He’d expected his worry for her to outweigh the sheer hunger he felt every time he was around her. Yet here he was, a half hour after they’d arrived, holding an egg, watching as she batted those eyelashes. And his dick was hard.
He stopped looking toward the couch and tried to pretend she wasn’t there. Getting a pan, he made a plain, nonspicy omelet that was exactly what she needed. Just like she needed a safe, plain, nonspicy night’s sleep. Plus several more just like it.
He was a grown-ass man, and he had always been famed for his control. So no matter how much she smiled, or flirted, or batted her eyes, or flashed that dimple, he was going to make sure sleep and no excitement were exactly what she got.
* * *
It was amazing what good food, restful sleep, fresh air, cool breezes, warm sun, and a hot-as-sin man swimming laps in a crystal-blue pool could do for a woman’s libido. Er, for a woman. Yeah, no. She meant libido.
Watching Reece’s muscular body cut through the water, strong, even, and powerful, was so hot. Like, fry-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk hot. She couldn’t take her eyes off him, though she hoped he didn’t know it.
Lying on a lounge chair Sunday morning, wearing dark sunglasses, with a magazine in front of her face, she tried to keep her staring discreet. Fortunately, the way she was facing, and the glasses, enabled her to shift her gaze toward the pool without him even knowing he was being ogled by his houseguest.
A houseguest. She now hated that word. He’d treated her like one since they’d arrived at his home Thursday night. After assigning her a guest room—a damn guest room—he’d focused only on her health and well-being. He’d been the consummate host, refusing to let her lift a finger. He’d cooked for her, waited on her, steadied her when she walked, let her pick what music they listened to and what shows they watched on TV. He’d taken care of her every need.
It was really getting on her nerves.
Despite her insistence that she was fine, and that all the pampering had brought her back to full health, he ignored her protests. Mr. Ultimate Control had been so bossy, and so careful to treat her like a fragile doll, she was ready to deck him.
Which was why she had started to retaliate. Subtly.
The man was going to treat her like an invalid—a sexless one? Well, she would just have to remind him she was all healthy woman. While he might have forgotten the wonderful, wild things they’d done together in
the hotel closet Tuesday night, she most definitely had not.
Especially because she wanted to do all those things again.
They’d missed out on limo sex, but she thought deck sex might be just as nice, especially at night. They could fly over the city below like they were on a magic carpet. Only a magic carpet whose magic included wild sexual positions and lots of orgasms.
Aware her carefully voiced interest wasn’t getting the result she wanted, she’d begun a plan of seduction. Friday afternoon, she complained it was too hot and began wearing as little as possible. First it was a T-shirt and short shorts. Reece had checked her temperature, wondering if she was having a delayed reaction to the exposure, saying the house was cold. It was cold. But she’d persevered.
Reece, she’d noticed, had spent a lot of the day drinking big glasses of iced water.
Yesterday morning, she’d replaced the shorts with the bottoms of her bikini. His water glass got even bigger.
When she picked the music for dinner last night, she’d made sure it suited her mood. She’d created a playlist on Pandora, leading it off with “I Want Your Sex.” A little George Michael never hurt anyone. Reece hadn’t said a word while they ate spaghetti, but he had definitely frowned. And drunk more cold water.
After dinner, she’d found a steamy old movie on demand. He’d sat there beside her as she watched it, pretending he had to work, reading scripts. Then, when he started paying attention to the TV, he began to pick apart the writing, the shooting, and the acting. So that part of her plan had been a bust. Directors were no fun to watch movies with.
She’d gone to bed last night so in need of sex, she’d considered taking a bath that included a hot date with her own hand. But she knew that wouldn’t satisfy her. She wanted him. Only him. So before she fell asleep—after tossing and turning for at least two hours—she made up her mind that on Sunday she would have him.
“How’s the temperature?” she asked when he stopped after fifty laps and stood in the shallow end of the pool. Water dripped off the tips of his golden-brown hair—more gold than brown under the brilliant sun—but it slid and glided from everywhere else. Glistening rivulets traveled down the lightly haired chest. Others made their way down the powerful six-pack of abdominals, rolling over each ridge. After taking a trip past the lean waist, each long stream fell straight into a happy trail that was making her so very sad by remaining out of reach.
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