by Cindy Dees
One thing he knew for sure. He wasn’t going to let his brother or anyone else railroad her out of this job without proof positive that she was the culprit behind all the accidents.
“Uh, how are you today?” she asked awkwardly. She peeked up at him shyly, caught him studying her and looked down hastily. She was adorable when she was all jumpy and unsure of herself like this.
“Turned on. You?”
“Same.”
“How’d you sleep last night?”
She pushed her green-pea salad in fast little circles around her grilled chicken breast. Yesss.
He leaned close to murmur, “I dreamed about you, too. Woke up so hard I had to take a shower in the middle of night to relieve my discomfort.”
What the hell are you doing, buddy? She’s not your type.
“Really?” she blurted. Her cheeks turned bright pink. Bonified all-American-girl material. You don’t do pure and sweet. You don’t break innocent hearts. Stop flirting with this girl...
He answered, “You and I were in an outdoor hot tub. And it was snowing. The stars were out and we were naked. And then we...”
Her soft fingers pressed frantically against his lips, halting the tale. “Someone will hear you!” she whispered in panic.
Damn, she was beautiful. Mesmerizing. Irre-freaking-sistible.
“Tell me about your dream,” he murmured against her fingertips, “or I’ll keep telling you about mine.” He touched her fingers with the tip of his tongue. She jerked her hand away like he’d burned her with a hot iron. He was being a jerk. He should get up from this table and walk away right now, and instead he was flirting in the most openly sexual way with her. He wasn’t her type any more than she was his. They really, really shouldn’t do this. And yet, he wasn’t standing up. Wasn’t walking away. Correction: he was an idiot and she was...not.
“Um, I dreamed we were camping,” she stammered. “In the woods. And there was a tent.”
“Were we in it together?” She was too innocent for him. Deserved a real relationship to go with her first sex.
She nodded.
“Inside one of those double sleeping bags?” Shut. The hell. Up.
“No. On top of one.”
“Naked?” Stop leading her on.
She looked around the dining room guiltily. Hah. She’d so dreamed about the two of them together. His mouth curved up into a knowing smile. “We were making love, weren’t we? Was it hot? Wild? What did we do? I’ve got a few things I’d like to try with you...”
“Hush!” she whispered urgently.
She was breathing fast and her tongue kept darting out to moisten her lips. She was rocking her hips forward and wiggling in tiny little pulses she probably wasn’t even aware of. Triumph roared through him at how bad she wanted him. Nearly as bad as he wanted her. Double jerk.
Gritting his teeth against the lust pounding through him, he changed subjects. “Are you shooting this afternoon?”
“Yes. We’re finishing the close-ups and then we’re shooting stills of the fake city that’s getting blown up tomorrow.”
“What time will you be done?”
“Around dark, if I had to guess.”
“I’ll pick you up at eight, and we’ll go somewhere private so you can tell me the details of your dream.” You did not just ask her out again.
“Are you for real?” she asked earnestly. She sounded like she couldn’t believe he was actually attracted to her.
Smart girl. Run away, Marley. Far, far away as fast as you can go. Jesus, he felt like a tennis ball bouncing back and forth between lust and sanity. And unfortunately, lust was a much better tennis player.
“Why are you the slightest bit interested in me? You barely know me, and Lord knows, I barely know you.”
Good thing. If she did know him, she’d leave him, just like every other woman he’d ever given a damn about. Ouch. Sanity had just served an ace. The thought was a bucket of ice water on his raging libido.
“How do you suggest I remedy that, other than spending time with you?” he asked reasonably.
“I just don’t get what you see in me.”
A thousand deeply sexual images flashed through his mind, but what came out of his mouth was, “Let’s find out together, shall we?”
She shook her head and finished her meal in frustrated silence. He could relate. Honestly, he didn’t have the faintest idea why he was so attracted to her. For years, he’d honed his expertise at spotting the kind of woman who just wanted empty sex. The kind who would treat him with as much indifference as he treated them. Marley Stringer was emphatically not one of them. No matter how hot she was, she would want the whole ball of wax. Sex. Romance. Intimacy. Hell, a real relationship.
Granny Minerva used to talk about kismet, and he’d always thought it was a load of crap. But maybe she’d known what she was talking about, after all. Fascinated, frustrated and thoroughly appalled with himself, he watched Marley bolt from the dining room.
Gordon bit out from beside him, “She ain’t your type.”
Archer looked up at Trap. She might not be his type, but no way was he turning her over to this brute. Women talked, and Gordon had a reputation in the sack for being a bull in rut. “I already called dibs on her, Gordon.”
“The hell you did. She’s hot, and I’m goin’ after her.” Trap poked him in the chest. Under other circumstances, Archer might have taken grave exception to such an act. But he had the girl’s attention and Gordon didn’t. He could afford to cut the guy a break and not rip his finger off.
“I’m turning the Gordon-ator charm on her whether you like it or not, jerkwad.”
Archer pushed past the larger man nonchalantly, but a frisson of worry tickled the back of his neck. Gordon was right: he wasn’t Marley’s type any more than she was his. Would she actually fall for a guy like Gordon? Was she that naive?
He had no choice but to save her from Trapowski. And of course, he’d promised Steve that he would try to find out if Marley was behind the sabotage, but that was as far as it went. After he did those two things, he was walking away from her.
Period.
* * *
Marley paced her room in panic. She’d left an SOS on Tyrone’s cell phone, but the makeup artist had yet to respond to her urgent call for help. Tonight wasn’t a gratitude beer with Archer. It was a continuation of that volcanic kiss last night and, good Lord willing, The Night. Her first time.
A knock sounded on her door and she leaped for it, threw it open and all but cried in relief to see Tyrone standing there, makeup suitcase in tow.
“Hey, girl,” Tyrone said breezily. “A real, live date with Flyboy, huh? You gonna have that screaming-hot sex you promised me tonight?”
“God, I hope so. I’m so ready to finally...” She broke off. The last rumor she needed getting around the set was that the new camera girl was a virgin. At her age, leprosy was a lesser curse than the big V.
“Drink this.” Tyrone shoved a glass of wine into her hand. “You need it more than me. Sit, girlfriend. And pay attention. I’m not always gonna be around to turn you into Marilyn the Second.”
She did watch what he did closely, and Tyrone was generous with explaining the tricks of the trade. But then the makeup artist surprised her by saying, “What’s this I hear about your guy going commando on you yesterday?”
She frowned. Huh? “What are you talking about?”
“A few of the stunt men were talking about Archer nearly taking their heads off with his helicopter during the shoot. I guess he got way too low and scared the bejeebers out of them.”
Oh. That. “I asked him to go lower so I could get a better shot. I was trying to impress Adrian Turnow with my first action scene.”
“Did you?”
“I’ve still got a j
ob.”
Tyrone seemed to accept the explanation but still frowned a little. “The way I heard it, Archer might have a screw loose. He’s fresh out of some heavy combat apparently. They thought it looked like he confused movie combat with the real thing.”
Was that what it had been? The movie had gotten a little too close to reality and he’d busted into real combat maneuvers? Why, then, had the flight controls frozen up? Nah. Archer wasn’t crazy. They’d had a mechanical malfunction. She didn’t think he would be held responsible for that, but she wasn’t sure. She didn’t know a blessed thing about flying, after all.
Worse, rumors could get Archer fired. Maybe she could redirect the gossip mill a little. She said as casually as she could, “Well, of course I wanted him to fly like it was the real thing. How else was I going to get realistic footage? Everyone knows Adrian’s a stickler for authenticity.”
“True.” Tyrone brushed her entire face lightly with setting powder. Based on the name, Marley guessed it would keep her makeup from smudging. The makeup artist commented, “As long as that boy don’t kill you, I guess it’s okay if he flies a little crazy. Promise me you won’t make him do anything really dangerous, though. A good camera shot’s a nice thing, but not worth dying over. ’Kay?”
“’Kay,” she answered meekly. As if she had any control over how Archer flew.
“I’m gonna skedaddle before Romeo shows up. Don’t do anything with your man that I wouldn’t do.” Tyrone went off into gales of laughter at that one, finally gasping, “God, I crack myself up.”
Her motel room felt silent and empty after the ebullient makeup artist left. There was nothing to distract her from recalling every detail of last night’s near-sex in the hallway. But before she could freak herself out too badly over how she was going to maneuver Archer into her bed without looking like a total newb, a firm knock sounded on her door.
She flung it open and gasped to see him standing there so tall and gorgeous and smiling back at her. “Wow, you’re handsome. I forget just how much so when you’re not here.”
“Guess I’ll just have to stick around all the time, then,” he replied, smiling like he was genuinely pleased at the compliment. He leaned down to kiss her cheek and murmured, “Every time I see you, I swear you’re more beautiful. Hungry?”
For him? Hell, yes! “Mmm-hmm,” she managed.
He installed her in his truck and pulled out of the motel parking lot. In a few minutes, only the silent silhouettes of mountains and the starry sky were visible in the dark night. Dammit. She was going to have to endure eating before she ravaged him.
She tried to enjoy the grandeur of the Sierras, but it was hard to do, given the way her nerves were jumping all over the place. She was alone with the hottest guy she’d ever met, and she was disguised as a woman who knew what to do about it. Sure, she’d read her fair share of romance novels. But translating a general idea of how this whole seduction thing worked into reality was turning out to be more daunting than she’d imagined. If only she could be sure he wouldn’t die laughing at her clumsy efforts.
“Where are we going?” she asked over the purr of the engine.
“Rancho Colombo,” he answered. “I hear they’ve got a rib restaurant that’s crazy good. I’ve been craving barbecue for months.”
“Not a lot of barbecue in central Asia, huh?” she asked sympathetically.
“Not so much.”
She laughed. “What else do you miss when you’re over there?”
He shrugged. “Pillowcases that aren’t full of grit. More than one football game on a Sunday afternoon. Good deli pizza. And women, of course.”
“I thought lots of women are deployed overseas these days.”
“They are. And they’re soldiers. The military has strict rules about fraternization, and everyone works long hours and lives in a state of constant exhaustion. Not to mention, I don’t particularly find combat boots attractive.”
“Chauvinist!”
“Don’t let my grandmother hear you accuse me of that. She’d tan my hide if she thought I or any of my brothers were ever the least bit sexist.”
“How many siblings do you have?”
“Two older brothers and two younger sisters.”
“Ugh. You’re the middle child, huh?”
He shrugged. “I don’t pay much attention to all that psychology stuff.”
Silence fell as they drove farther up into the mountains, and her thoughts turned back to the rumors Tyrone had shared earlier. “So, tell me, Archer. How close did yesterday’s film shoot come to real combat?”
Archer’s body went tense and his knuckles whitened around the steering wheel. He looked like he was waging some terrible internal fight with himself. Cripes! What had she said? “Are you all right?” she asked in quick concern.
His jaw rippled like he was clenching it, but he managed a terse nod.
“What did I say?”
He shook his head and stared fiercely at the road ahead. She subsided, alarmed. He drove for a good fifteen minutes in harsh silence before his hands began to relax and the terrible tension across his shoulders began to subside.
Without looking at her, he muttered, “Are you always so observant?”
What the hell had she observed that had made him so tight? She frowned across the cab of the truck at him. “Um, I guess so.”
Thankfully, the road came down out of the mountains and into a small western town with a traditional main street lined with restored storefronts. Archer pulled the truck into a parking space and escorted her into a mom-and-pop joint that looked like the kind of place that would serve killer ribs. The smell of a mesquite smoker filled the space as they stepped inside.
The entire menu consisted of beef ribs, pork ribs, chicken or all of the above. They opted for all of the above and platters of barbecued meat, biscuits, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn on the cob and baked beans were set before them.
Archer smiled beatifically at the spread, and she couldn’t help but laugh at him. “Getting your carnivore on, are you?”
“Talk to me in a half hour. I’ll be busy until then.”
“Just don’t choke on a bone, okay?”
“I’m not going to keel over dead just because I took you out on a date. I promise.”
Lord, she hoped not. She grabbed a rib and dug in with him. The meal seemed to break whatever tension she’d inadvertently provoked, and in a few minutes, he was chatting companionably with her once more.
He lifted a cold beer to her and announced, “Here’s to beautiful camerawomen who save their pilots’ butts.”
“Steve Prescott seems like a reasonable guy.”
“He is. And a reasonable man would have fired me.”
“I’m glad he didn’t.”
“Me, too,” Archer replied candidly.
“Tell me about yourself, Archer Archer.” She worded the comment in general enough terms that he could take the conversation wherever he was comfortable having it go.
He grinned and picked up another rib off the pile. “I grew up not too far from here actually. Serendipity, California. Same place the movie studio is named after. I hurt my throwing elbow and lost a baseball scholarship partway through college, but I picked up a chopper slot in the Army. Moved around a lot in the job. Flew in Afghanistan for a while. Given my skill set, I hopped from war zone to war zone. But then I got a call from Steve Prescott asking me if I’d like to fly for him. And here I am.”
Funny how a person could say so much and yet say so little. Like why he got that regretful look in his eyes earlier today when he’d mentioned his mother. Like how bad giving up his dream of playing baseball must have hurt—or not. Like what it was like to fly in combat. And after his earlier reaction to her question about how realistic the filming of combat had been, she had a feeling that on
e was key to understanding this man.
“Okay, Marley. Your turn to tell your life story.”
“Born and raised outside Chicago. One sister. My twin.”
“Identical or fraternal?” he interrupted.
“Identical. At least in looks. Other than that, we’re about as different as two people can be.”
She resumed her abbreviated life history. “I’ve been interested in photography for as long as I can remember. Came west to go to film school. Got a job filming early morning news in a small town. Out of the blue, I got a call inviting me to work on this film. One of the camera operators was in a car accident just as shooting was getting ready to start, and the studio asked me to fill in. And here I am.”
“What’s Chicago like?”
“Cold. And yes, it really is windy. Great museums. Great restaurants. Nice people. Hardy.”
“Is that how you’d describe yourself? Hardy?”
She frowned. “I’ve never thought about how I’d describe myself.”
“How about I try?” He studied her closely enough that she had to restrain an urge to squirm. “You’re prettier than you know. Smart. Observant. Uncomfortable in crowds. You prefer to see and not be seen. How am I doing so far?”
“Not bad.”
“And you’re trying like hell to figure out what a guy like me sees in a girl like you.”
Her gaze snapped to his over her rib. His gaze was hooded. Inscrutable. “And?” she asked cautiously.
“I won’t pretend that I’m not decent looking. It’s a fortunate accident of genetics that I had no control over. And yes, I’ve used it shamelessly over the years to pick up women. People always expected me to pick up the hot chicks, and I suppose I expected to bed the hot ones, too. But I’ve learned recently that there is more to a woman than how she looks.” He waved a naked rib bone at her. “But even if I still rolled that way, you’d be at the top of my list of TBF women.”