Seduced

by Angel Payne

  Fortunately, her self-esteem had learned to laugh this shit off as the usual.

  Unfortunately, there was nothing usual about today. And not in any of the best ways.

  “Bella,” she mumbled. “Ay. Lo siento. Let me fix it.”

  One of the world’s most famous faces, a perfect Sicilian oval centered by a newly sculpted nose, aimed one glaring brown eye at her in the vanity mirror’s reflection. The other eye was covered by the chunk of hair Ava had just teased, prepping it for the woman’s normal style, an updated version of Sophia Loren froth. Trouble was, even Bella’s hair wasn’t the standard order today, and forgetting it was on the same par with unleashing locusts over LA. It never escaped Ava’s mind that though her paycheck was direct deposited from Victory Cat Productions, the real ruler of her professional world was the petite woman who sat in the styling chair with posture that suggested a curling iron had just gotten jammed up her backside.

  “Yes. You will fix it.” The woman had carefully picked the burrs from her tone, leaving only the poison-dipped velvet beneath. “Must I remind you that Raven is in grief today? She’s likely not even showered for forty-eight hours. The hair must match.”

  The woman shuddered. Ava waited, knowing she’d do it again. Bella often spoke about her character on the show as if Raven Ryder sat in the room with them or even like she was Raven herself. Ava actually liked the acting exercise. It was a hell of a lot easier to talk to Raven than Bella.

  She was pretty sure that’d be the only time “easy” entered her vocabulary today.

  She stole a glance at the clock. Whew. It was barely eight a.m. Rayna, Zeke, and the guys weren’t due for their visit to the set for another hour. She had to shave an additional fifteen minutes off that because they would be early. And though she already had Charlie, work bestie extraordinaire, on standby for the set tour and introductions duties, she wanted to make sure her alibi of having to pick up something from Bella’s house at least looked authentic. That gave her thirty minutes to make Bella’s lustrous hair look like it hadn’t been washed in two days.

  She turned and started yanking every tube of product from the hair cabinet. To make sure she wasn’t in the same room again with Ethan Archer, she’d dump a whole salon on the woman’s head.

  Because if she was in the same room with him again, she’d want to be in his bed tonight. Correction. She’d want to be tied up in his bed tonight. Yielding to him. Giving herself to him. All of herself. The On switch the man always tripped in her would be on, and this time, she wouldn’t have the option of hopping on a plane before turning it off…if she’d even want to.

  You’ve come too far, Ava. Worked too hard to get here. You’re not going to let another cruise dog in camouflage turn your head inside out and your heart upside down just for three hours of passion, a couple of orgasms, and another dead-end hunt for a connection that isn’t possible with a man. Don’t let him in. You can’t let him in.

  To water down the panic that threatened a mutiny on her bloodstream, she decided to try to calm Bella at the same time. “So tell me what Raven has to deal with today.”

  Bella’s eyes had already fallen heavy. She blinked up at Ava with matching torpidity, a signal that she’d clicked into her method by cloaking herself inside her character. “The CO has come to tell her that the insurgents have taken Jace hostage.”

  Jace, Raven’s fiancé, was played by hunky Trent Lake, who’d just been named on a half dozen Hot Young Hollywood lists. He was also in two studio tentpole movies this summer and was “considering” his renewal offer for the show’s next season, which translated into give me more money or I walk. Which was why Jace was currently in a Middle Eastern prison, fate undecided.

  “So they don’t know if he’s alive or dead?” Ava asked as she combed in a conditioner with an olive-oil base. When Bella washed her hair tonight, the strands would be soft as a baby’s butt. Or fall completely out. Sometimes a girl had to gamble.

  Bella’s brow furrowed. “No, they don’t. Because of this, Raven is unbearably lost. Rudderless. What will she do without him? She…she wanders through their house. She unzips the wedding dress she still hasn’t worn for him, and she thinks about all their plans for their big day, perhaps never to become real now. She thinks about the babies they wanted to have, the family they wanted to raise, the life they dreamed of sharing…”

  Ava stilled her hand. Swallowed hard. “Shit. That’s…um…really good, Bella.” It was the perfect thing for her to hear this morning too. Nothing like a little make-believe grief to remind her of what real life would be by falling for another military man. A Special Forces warrior, at that.

  “You think so?” Bella’s smile trembled a little.

  Was the woman actually nervous about this?

  “Oh, yeah.” She gently squeezed the actress’s shoulders. “It’s going to be really good.”

  “Yessss.” Bella pumped her fist. “Emmy nomination, here I come.”

  So much for nervous. Ava was saved from trying to figure out the proper reaction to that by a brisk knock at the trailer’s door.

  “Enter,” Bella called.

  Of all the faces Ava expected to appear, Charlie Jenkow’s was not on the list. Though the man dutifully nodded toward their star first, his gorgeous aquamarines locked fast on Ava. Her stomach reacted with a backflip of dread.

  “Chaaarrrlie.”

  Bella extended a hand, wiggling the ends of her fingers as she finished what Chaz called the “Bella Lanza Broken Vibrator Remix” of his name. But he got no pity from Ava about it. He’d been the one to turn up the wattage of delight on his handsome perfection when she’d first used it. Reap the oats you sow, my friend.

  Another look at her friend’s face made her mentally take the words back. Charlie’s gritted grin conveyed that her own “oats” were tumbling hard down life’s payback chute. The casual offer she’d made to Rayna last October, inviting her and Zeke Hayes, her new boyfriend, to come visit and tour the set, had ballooned into today: the PR bonanza the network smelled once they realized Zeke was the same Special Forces soldier who’d become Seattle’s famous street vigilante hero from last fall. When Z asked if he could bring along some members of his battalion, the execs were as giddy as ducks around a kid with a loaf of bread.

  By the look on Charlie’s handsome face, the ducks were now circling tighter.

  “Good morning, Behhhlllaaa.” He tossed the broken vibe song back at Bella like it was the cutest thing in the world. Ava lasered a glare over the head of their giggling star at him. He simply smirked in a wordless version of chill out, wench—method to my madness here.

  “What do you want, you shameless tease?” Bella demanded.

  Charlie stepped all the way inside and leaned against one of the leather couches. “Well…now that you mention it…the boys from the big office are here for the promo op with the Special Ops team. They got here early, and you know how Cameron hates it when they hang and gawk over his shoulder.” He pulled out his best Rico Suave stare, complete with pouting lips and tropic lagoon eyes. “If I bribe you with a skinny caramel latte, perhaps with a daub of whip and chocolate sprinkles, will you come out and dazzle them with your resplendence until the soldier hunks get here?”

  Bella psshhed at him. “Resplendence, my ass. I’m supposed to look like I haven’t bathed in two days.”

  “You’re resplendently filthy.”

  “Porca Vacca.” The starlet threw up her hands. “You could talk the Pope into bed, couldn’t you?”

  “Sweetie, Matt Reave is in my bed. The angels sing every night without the Pontiff’s help.”

  Ava joined Bella in groans of retaliation. Matt was a smoldering model and witty entertainment show host, making him and Chaz one of the industry’s hottest couples in every sense. That didn’t mean every straight woman for ten miles couldn’t grieve the permanent loss for the team.

  But as soon as Bella grabbed her green tea and left the trailer, Ava dropped the humor. She spun on Ch
arlie and grabbed his shoulder. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Your soldier boy friends are here already, that’s what,” he countered. “I had to think fast.”

  “Huh?” A look at the clock showed that Z and the guys were nearly thirty minutes early. “Mierda,” she muttered. “That’s just rude.”

  “No, hon, that’s Special Ops—yummy, overprepared studs that they are.” The Rico Suave face made an encore. “You really sure you want to dash out? I got a nice peek at your Ethan before dashing here. Baby Jesus wept, Chestain. He’s perfect.”

  “He’s not my Ethan.” She grabbed her car keys off the vanity. She hadn’t taken anything else in with her. “He can’t be anything except a really good memory from a really weird day, okay?”

  “He looks like a spectacular kisser.” Chaz’s mouth curled with sensual intent. “His upper lip’s got more curves than Mulholland Drive. Then there’s that quiet-but-deadly thing in his walk. You know what that turns into under the sheets. And those eyes. And those lashes. Don’t get me started on shaming the angels for wasting that beauty on a straight boy.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t.” Why had the trailer heated up by ten degrees? Ava shoved past her friend and bounded down the trailer’s steps. “Where are they now?”

  “They’re waiting for me on main set. I’m supposed to give them the fly-over there first.”

  “The tour and PR bullshit?”

  “Roger Dodger.”

  “And after that? Still out to the grassy knoll for the photo op with brass?”

  “Yep.”

  The studio had “grown” a rolling lawn in the middle of the lot for the show, with backdrops that could be changed out to transform it into everything from the hills of Afghanistan to a military base picnic lawn. But the show’s crew had spent so many exhausting hours there that the area got permanently nicknamed after the hill made famous by the Kennedy assassination.

  Ava mentally mapped out the lawn’s location in relation to theirs before putting together a fast plan. “Bueno,” she finally said. “I have to make a run over to Wardrobe to check the colors of Bella’s outfit for tomorrow. That means I can cut through the hallway in back of main set and bust out the side door. I’ll take the alley behind the New York street mock-up when I’m done.”

  “Sounds perf.” Chaz did some tapping of his own. With one finger patting his chin, he drawled, “Especially in light of the massive favor you owe me right now.”

  Despite the hammer that’d gone to work on her heart for the last five minutes, she chuckled. “Let me guess. You want that Prada tux as a loaner for the gala with Matt on Saturday?”

  “Have I told you lately how smart and gorgeous you are?”

  She shook her head. “Save it for Bellllaaaa, you dork.” As they reached the spot where they needed to part ways, she added, “I’ll see what I can do. Wardrobe owes me a few after they left pins in Bella’s gown last week.”

  “You’re a gem.”

  “And you’re still a dork.”

  She nudged Charlie toward the entrance of the soundstage while she made her way toward the back door. As soon as she entered the building, she became part of a beehive. It took a lot of people to make a show like this into a success before the camera lights flashed green. Audio and video engineers. Set decorators and prop handlers. Technical directors and floor managers. For every one of those departments, there was a full crew too.

  The bustle, translated into controlled chaos, always invigorated her. Today it accomplished more. It made her feel anonymous and safe in that concealment. From the second she heard Charlie approaching on the other side of the set walls, guiding their visitors in his most charming tour guide lilt, the plywood and foam core barriers might as well have turned into woven scrims for the protection they gave against her awareness of the group on the other side.

  The group containing Ethan Archer.

  Stay on task. Just get to the hallway and get out of here. Don’t think about him. Don’t think about how wonderful your heart feels against your ribs simply because he’s in the same building. Don’t think about how perfect it would be to see him again, to bask in the intensity of his eyes and the magic of his smile. Soldiers are bad for you, Ava—and he’s a super soldier. Special Forces. Not going to happen. Can’t happen.

  “What the hell is that?”

  She froze. Shit. Why did it have to be Ethan who tossed out the query, his tone so melodic yet so electric? His baritone zapped her nervous system like a spark on charged air, wrapping around her…pulling her feet the wrong damn direction. Toward the set.

  What could the harm be in indulging one fast, secret peek?

  “Oh, dear fuck.”

  She recognized the sneer before even getting visual confirmation of its source. Sure enough, Zeke Hayes was the one who stood there rolling his eyes at Ethan. Ava smiled to see him tug her cousin, Rayna, into the crook of his shoulder. Ray giggled and circled her arms around her man’s muscled waist. Next to them stood Z’s best friend, Garrett, and his wife, Sage. Their hands were twined on top of Sage’s prominent baby bump, and Ava wouldn’t be surprised if the pair glowed in the dark with happiness. On the other side of the couple were Tait Bommer and Kellan Rush, often referred to as the battalion’s “Bullet Ninjas” because of their sniper abilities. Tait looked like a surfing idol from the Rincon shore, while Kellan represented a dark-eyed god of the Sunset Boulevard club crowd. Grinning along with them were Rhett Lange and Rebel Stafford, respectively the brains and brawn of the team. Rhett liked to blow out computer systems; Rebel liked to blow in doors. Like everyone else, they chuckled at Zeke’s rejoinder.

  Actually, everyone seemed to be having a great time…except Ethan.

  The electrical storm whipped harder through Ava as she stepped closer to the window in the set and looked at him. With his brows tightened and his lips twisted, he looked supremely miffed at Zeke, though she could tell his tension hadn’t started there. It had been a part of him for a while now. It stiffened the planes of his shoulders, banded the breadth of his torso, hardened every muscle down his impossibly long legs. Throw a set of BDUs and a battle vest on him and the man would be ready to march into the thick of a battle to the death. The deadly warrior image certainly wasn’t hurt by what he had on now, either. Skintight black T-shirt, dark jeans, and biker boots were topped by a scuffed leather jacket, officially turning her quickie peek into a transfixed stare.

  “What?” he barked at Zeke. One side of his beautiful mouth curled up. “It’s a legitimate question.”

  Tait sauntered forward, gold eyes glittering with mirth. “It’s…uh…called a microphone, Runway. I know growing up in Silicon Valley must’ve been hard; you probably weren’t exposed to many of these newfangled technical gadgets, but—follow me, now—they use it to record the actors’ voices. That’s how you can hear them talking when you watch them on TV.”

  The group snickered. Ethan glared harder. “Shut your hole, assmunch. I know what it is.”

  Tait chuffed. “Need those knickers twisted a little tighter, Runway? With your panties gone, the whole world can watch your cute ass a little better while you moon over—”

  “Shut. Up.”

  Tait looked ready to smack Ethan from pure frustration, and Ava backed up the desire. He was “mooning” over someone? That was practically a rhetorical question. The man was wound up about something—or in this case, someone. But who? And if it wasn’t her, did she want to know?

  You have no right to know.

  She’d ignored every one of his calls, messages, and attempts at contact since getting back from Seattle seven months ago. She’d made the right choice for her life. Whether Ethan believed it or not, for his too. So if he’d moved on to getting his “knickers twisted” for someone else, she needed to be happy for him. She could do that, couldn’t she?

  The answer got stuck in her throat as she watched him cock his head, spearing Charlie with a curiosity that edged on innocence. It made his adjoining
question all the more adorable.

  “Dude, why is the microphone wearing a condom?”

  Sage spit out her gulp of water. Rayna giggled again. Garrett and Zeke let out matching groans of the F-word. But Tait’s expression actually changed to a glance of respect. “Huh,” he said. “You’re right.” He looked at Charlie. “Why does it have that thing on it?”

  Chaz’s stance changed, too. He straightened from polite to commanding. As he launched into the advantages of foam microphone covers, reveling in the attention he got from a bunch of hunks who also relied on high-performance equipment to accomplish their jobs, Ava recognized her chance to slip away. You’ve had your peek. And your stare. Now back off from the window, Chestain, before—

  “Hey, Ava! Do me a favor and move that tree about a foot to your right, would ya? The light’s hitting it wrong.”

  Before someone like Blake, the set-decorating lead, called to her just like that.

  “Shit.”

  She spat it as she tugged the prop over, not pausing to acknowledge Blake’s thanks. Or maybe she did. It was very possible, since every muscle in her body turned to ice as soon as she watched Ethan’s head whip around at the mention of her name. Time didn’t help matters, congealing to sludge that dragged every step she attempted—and made it possible for his gaze to stab into hers before she launched into motion.

  Keep moving. Keep moving. Don’t look back. Keep moving.

  The order vibrated through every shaky gasp she made while whirling and hurrying through the maze of flats, cords, ladders, wires, toolboxes, and chairs. So many chairs. Damn it. Nobody ever sat around here. Why did they need so many chairs? And why had she worn three-inch boots today? And why did everyone pick this exact second to tromp in her way?

  “Ava.”

  His call severed the air, shattering the ice beneath her skin into freezing shards through her bloodstream. She didn’t alter her pace. She couldn’t. The door was just a few feet away. Past it was a restricted-access zone. His visitor’s pass would get him stopped faster than a gatecrasher at the Oscars. She’d be safe again.