High-Stakes Playboy

by Cindy Dees

  “Archer’s not bothering me,” she said nervously.

  “Yeah, well, he’s bothering me,” Gordon declared. He shoved Archer’s shoulder roughly. “Go back to them skinny actresses who’re too snooty to talk to the rest of the crew.”

  Crap, crap, crap. Marley held her breath in panic. She so didn’t need to end up in the middle of a bar fight. She hated violence. She hated confrontation in all forms, for that matter. This was all her fault. Her damned jinx was going to get Archer killed in a bar fight. She said frantically, “Really, it’s okay, Gordon. We were just talking about work stuff.”

  For his part, Archer had gone silent. And deadly. He’d turned into a panther, waiting, ready to strike, right there beside her. Dark eyes narrowed, he followed every move the bigger man was making with lethal intensity. How on earth was Gordon missing the threat?

  “I don’t want a scene, Trap,” Archer said low and even. “You don’t want to upset the lady, do you?”

  It wasn’t a stretch for her to look completely freaked out as the big man stared hard at her as though multiple images of her were swimming in his bleary gaze. A shout went up as one of the teams on the big screens scored a touchdown, and it seemed to momentarily distract him.

  She looked around in panic for help. Gordon was going to break Archer in half. The motel didn’t employ a bouncer that she could see, and the bartender was not much taller than she was and probably didn’t top a hundred and forty pounds soaking wet. Crap.

  But then she spied Steve Prescott across the bar. He looked like the kind of guy who could handle himself in a fight. And he was the boss. If anyone could diffuse a brewing brawl, it would be him.

  Gordon stepped up to Archer and literally chest-bumped him. Archer took a casual step back, smiling slightly. “That all you got, Trap?”

  She hopped off her stool and headed for Prescott as fast as the crowded space would let her. Visions of Archer’s head cracked in half and him lying unconscious on the floor in a pool of blood spurred her to shove rudely past a half dozen crew members.

  Finally, Steve Prescott loomed in front of her. Thank God. “Mr. Prescott,” she gasped. “Gordon Trapowski’s trying to pick a fight with Archer. You have to stop him. He’ll kill Archer.”

  “Trap and Archer, you say?” the big Marine asked casually. “You’ve got that backward. Archer will kill Trapowski.”

  “You have to stop them!” She laid a beseeching hand on his arm.

  “I’ll mosey on over and have a word with them if it’s this upsetting to you. But, Miss Stringer—that’s right, isn’t it? And you look nice, by the way—Archer knows how to avoid a fight, and he can sure as hell handle himself if he ends up in one.”

  Prescott started across the bar, sauntering far too casually for her, and she followed nervously in his broad-shouldered wake to where Gordon was snarling, and Archer looked as unperturbed as before. But that air of cold menace clung to him even more strongly.

  “How we doing, fellas?” Steve asked lightly as he bellied up to the bar between them.

  “Fine,” Archer answered casually. “You?”

  “Good, thanks.”

  “Buy you a beer?” Archer offered.

  “Sure,” Prescott replied.

  “Want one, Gordon?” Archer added.

  “I’m gonna break your head in two, you arrogant sonofabitch,” Gordon snarled.

  “Power down, Trap,” Prescott said mildly.

  “Damned Prescotts,” the big man muttered under his breath. “You think you own the whole damned world.” He might be drunk, but he seemed to have enough sense left not to slug his boss. Trapowski shoved away from the bar and stomped off into the crowd, still muttering.

  “He’s not done, Arch.”

  “I’ll watch my six.”

  “I’ve got your back.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Anytime.” Prescott picked up his beer and strolled away.

  Marley had no idea what had just transpired, but as quickly as the ugly confrontation had blown up, it had settled down. For now.

  “What was that all about?” she asked Archer.

  “Just Gordon being Gordon.”

  “That’s some temper he’s got.”

  “Trap and whiskey don’t mix,” Archer commented. “Didn’t want to get into a fight over you before I had a chance to buy you that beer I promised you.”

  Was that what the two men had been snarling over? Two dogs fighting over a bone? Or, more accurately, her? The notion wouldn’t compute. Men did not fight over her. Especially not hot ones. Not that Gordon was her type at all. He was too burly. Too gruff. Too rough around the edges.

  “Bartender, a beer for me and another one of what the lady’s having for her.”

  “A beer and a soda coming up,” the guy replied.

  “A soda?” Archer looked amused. “Let me guess. You’ve never had a real drink.”

  “I have so,” she replied defensively. “I just don’t want to get drunk in front of my coworkers.”

  “Fair enough. Let’s go.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “C’mon. Let’s get out of here. I’ll take you somewhere you can have a drink in peace without these jokers crawling all over you.” He looped a protective arm around her waist and drew her close to his side. His muscular, hard, totally sexy side. He guided her toward the exit and she happened to catch Tyrone grinning like he’d just won the lottery. Okay, she owed the guy one. But then the makeup artist pointed at her and mouthed, Screaming-hot sex.

  If only. But in the tight gossip mill of a movie set, and with the demigod of sexiness that was Archer? And her? So not happening.

  Archer led her outside to a big, brand-new-looking, extended-cab pickup truck. He opened the passenger door and helped her up into the seat as he had with Minerva, only this time he let her fasten her own seat belt.

  A rush of excitement took her by surprise as he closed the truck door behind her. Omigod, she was in a truck with a cute guy, driving off somewhere private to drink beer and do who knew what. In high school, she’d imagined a date like this almost every Friday night she could remember. But she’d been the shy girl the boys never looked at and the cool kids didn’t even bother to scoff at.

  Her rotten luck with boys had squelched the few attempts she’d made at socializing—she’d literally fallen on her face the first time she tried to talk to a cute boy. She’d broken her nose and given herself two massive black eyes in the process. But who in the hell put a foot-high brick wall right next to a sidewalk like that, anyway?

  The only reason she hadn’t been laughed entirely out of high school was because she’d been the yearbook photographer, camera always plastered to her face, at every school event, but never participating. In some ways, her camera had been her shield against being a social outcast. It had made her merely invisible instead of embarrassingly boring.

  Film school had been better. All the students there were artists, creatives who’d never fit in elsewhere. She’d figured out fast, though, that the television and film industries were fiercely competitive, and if she wanted to get work upon graduation, she needed to spend every waking minute perfecting her craft.

  The jinx had asserted itself more strongly there, though. At first, she’d put it down to bad luck or just bad taste in guys. But after a while, mishap after dating mishap started to mess with her head. She’d researched jinxes on the internet...and read way too many articles about fathers who never gave their daughters approval—Lord knew hers had barely noticed her existence, let alone taken time to tell her she was beautiful or a princess. Whatever.

  Ultimately, she’d stopped trying to date in film school. It had been easier and safer to cast herself as the sister-confessor type. Not datable material, but a great sympathy and advice giver. Professional jealousy had k
icked in among her classmates as graduation neared, though, and even her little-sister shtick had worn thin. She’d given up on having any social life at all and just concentrated on her classes.

  Her focus on learning had paid off, too. She’d gotten work filming at a local news station when most of her classmates went into the exciting world of fast-food preparation and sales. And hey, her life wasn’t all bad. She had a really cool career in a field she loved. There was more to life than sex. Right? So what if she’d never made out with a guy and steamed up the windows of his car.

  “Why so quiet over there?” Archer asked, startling her. He turned on the ignition and a snazzy electronic dashboard lit up.

  She smiled mentally. His truck looked at least as high-tech as Minerva, and obviously had all the very latest bells and whistles. “I was just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “Making out and steaming up the windows.”

  He glanced over at her, looking distinctly startled. And disappointed, if she was reading him correctly. “Direct, much?” he murmured. “I pegged you for the type who would let the guy make the first move. Silly me.”

  Her cheeks heated up. Good thing the dashboard was already casting hellish red light up at her face. “Sorry. That came out wrong.”

  “I thought it came out just fine.”

  She gulped. Yeah, but she wasn’t necessarily prepared to follow up on her inadvertent proposition. It was one thing to wish to get rid of her incredibly inconvenient virginity. It was another thing altogether to do the deed.

  “I probably ought to warn you that I don’t have very good luck with guys.”

  He glanced over at her sharply. “Why not?”

  “They tend to, um, have accidents.” She added in an embarrassed rush, “I think I may be jinxed.”

  “Good thing for you I don’t believe in magic, then.”

  “I’m serious, Archer.”

  “So am I.” He turned the truck off at a scenic overlook, and she was surprised to see the film set sprawling under huge banks of work lights in the valley below. “What are they building?” she asked curiously.

  “Fake city. Adrian’s going to blow it up day after tomorrow.”

  She looked over at him sharply. “Are we going to have to fly over it and film the explosion?”

  “That’s the plan.” His voice was clipped, but otherwise emotionless. Still, she thought she felt tension emanating from him.

  “Tell me about your job.”

  “You’ve seen my job. I fly camerawomen over movie sets.”

  “The way I hear it, you were a military pilot in a former life.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  She’d heard it from Tyrone, who’d been a veritable fountain of information and gossip earlier while he’d been doing her makeup. She shrugged at Archer. “You know how movie sets are. Everybody knows everything about everyone.”

  “Lord, I hope not,” he muttered fervently.

  She chuckled in commiseration.

  He reached behind the seat and emerged with a six-pack of brown longnecks in a cardboard carrier. He opened one and held it out to her. “I did promise you a beer.”

  She reached out to take it and her fingers wrapped over his. Strength. Heat. All man. An image of her body entwined with his the way their fingers were right now blazed across her brain. Skin on skin. Naked bodies tightly pressed together. Lust and sweat and—holy cow. She let go abruptly. He lifted the beer higher and she grasped the bottle below his hand. God, she was such a klutz. A freaking horny one.

  “I’m a search-and-rescue guy.”

  “Which means what?” She was a total civilian. She knew zilch about the military. Sure, she got that he searched for people and rescued them, but she had no idea what that entailed.

  “SR pilots insert troops into hot zones and extract them when they’re done. Sometimes they deliver urgent supplies, or fly generals to their golf games. It’s a little of this and that.”

  “Do people usually let you get away with baloney answers like that?”

  He grinned around the mouth of his bottle and finished taking a pull on his beer. “Yeah, actually. They do.”

  “Maybe they haven’t flown with you recently. I’ve never seen anyone come that close to dying and be so completely unaffected by it afterward. Did you come that close to dying all the time in your military work?”

  His face went tight. Closed. Even so, he was beautiful to look at, but the stress around his eyes was palpable.

  He spoke tightly. “I wasn’t unaffected by today. That was a hell of a serious mechanical malfunction we had. You and I both came damned close to dying. And no, I don’t usually flirt with death quite that intimately. Sure, missions go bad from time to time. It’s the nature of flying in war zones. But I’ve always done my damnedest not to endanger myself, my crew, my passengers or my bird, if I can possibly help it.”

  “Tell me about the scariest mission you’ve ever had.”

  If possible, his face went even more tightly closed against her. “I’d rather not.”

  “Fair enough. How about this? Rate today’s flight on a scale of one to ten in how scary it was to you.”

  “Pilots don’t think in terms of being scared. We are trained to believe we can fix any problem, survive an emergency, save any plane. I’m too busy doing my job when something like today’s mishap occurs to be afraid.”

  “Not even after it’s all over?”

  He grinned. “Ahh, well, that’s different. Then we go out with the prettiest girl we can find, get a little drunk and celebrate still being alive.”

  “There were a whole bunch of girls in that bar prettier than me, Archer Archer,” she declared.

  He grinned broadly. “Yeah, but I figured that after your scare today, you needed to get a little drunk and celebrate being alive, too.”

  No kidding. “Thanks. It was kind of you to think of me.”

  He shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”

  Hah. It might be no big deal to him, but it was a huge deal to her. “Do pilots ever talk to people after they have a really close call? I’ve seen a lot of stuff in the news about post-traumatic stress disorders. Do pilots get that?”

  He snorted. “Hell, yeah, pilots get PTSD.”

  “After a near-miss like today, is that the sort of thing you should talk to someone about before you fly again?” Oh, Lord. She was already back to doing the shoulder-to-cry-on thing. Would she never learn to shut the hell up?

  “I’m talking to you.” And he looked none too happy about it, either.

  She rolled her eyes. “I mean a counselor or someone professional.”

  “A shrink?” He sounded genuinely horrified. “Not if I want to keep my pilot’s license.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Any pilot who goes to see a shrink is automatically grounded. And it’s a bitch to get your ticket back from the FAA once it’s been pulled. You have to jump through all sorts of hoops. Pain in the ass.”

  “What’s the FAA?”

  “Federal Aviation Administration. Regulates all flying in America and by American pilots.”

  “It doesn’t make sense that they would prevent you from talking out your fears. Wouldn’t the FAA want pilots talking to counselors if they need to? Why wouldn’t they make it easy for you to do it?”

  He shrugged. “Government bureaucracy. Just the way it is.”

  “Well, it’s dumb.”

  “Amen.” He reached over to clink his beer bottle against hers.

  This was nice. Just sitting and talking with him. Maybe Tyrone had the right idea, after all. Maybe she should go for the mother of all flings with this guy. God knew, she was more than ready to be rid of her stupid virginity. He seemed pretty coordinated and not inclined
to eating tainted shellfish.

  He leaned across her to adjust an air vent to blow warm air at her side window, and she gasped as his sleeve whisked across her thighs. Her hips wanted to rise to meet his forearm against her jeggings, and her pulse leaped as his palm skimmed across her knees on its way back to his side of the car. “There. Now your window won’t steam up no matter what we do in here.”

  No matter what—omigosh. Excitement and panic wrestled for supremacy in her tummy. “Do you like flying?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Love it. I thought for a long time that I wanted to go fixed-wing and fly fighters—Mach two with my hair on fire shooting stuff down. But then I got a ride in a helicopter and was hooked. I loved being down in the weeds where the action was. And all the fighter jets are going to end up being drones flown by remote control before too much longer, anyway. Me, I get to work directly with the guys I support. I can change and adapt what I’m doing in the blink of an eye depending on conditions on the ground. I never know what’s going to happen next. It’s a hell of a rush...”

  He broke off as if he was a little embarrassed by his burst of enthusiasm. Personally, she thought his passion was sexy as hell.

  “So you’re an adrenaline junkie?” Maybe that explained the wild way he’d flown.

  He gestured at her with his beer. “Like you aren’t? Job like yours has to have some pretty crazy moments.”

  Yeah. Like when frozen-up flight controls nearly got her smashed into the side of a mountain. “This is my first movie shoot. I’ll let you know how wild it gets.”

  “What did you do before this?”

  “I was the overnight camera operator at a local news station. If breaking news came in, the on-call anchor and I would come in and do a special report. And I filmed the early-morning news. You know, the stuff at 5:00 a.m. that nobody watches.”

  “Except for the occasional blooper that goes viral?”

  She grinned. “Exactly. And 5:00 a.m. weather girls in Podunksville aren’t exactly the cream of the meteorological crop.”