A Scandal So Sweet

by Ann Major

  “You didn’t.” No way would she admit she’d been worrying about him. “Thirsty.” She waved her glass of water. “Thanks for getting all my favorite stuff. For the fridge, I mean.”

  “All I did was have Rhonda make a phone call to your grandmother. Rhonda’s my secretary.” When he smiled crookedly, he was incredibly handsome despite the dark circles of fatigue shadowing his eyes.

  “Long day?” she whispered, feeling slightly breathless, already having fallen under the spell of his lean, sculpted beauty.

  He nodded. “Even before the drive. Long week, too. When it rains…it pours. Literally.”

  “Oh, and the storm. Was it bad?”

  “It slowed me down.”

  From the late hour and his tight features, she was almost sure that was an understatement.

  “Do you have any more bags? Could I help you carry something inside?”

  “You’re being awfully nice. Too nice,” he accused, his dark eyes flashing dangerously. “Why?”

  “Yes—and I don’t know why. I don’t trust myself, either.”

  When he smiled and seemed to relax, she felt her own tension ease a little. But just a little. After all, their shared weekend loomed in her imagination. She wasn’t sure what he expected of her tonight.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t need help. This is all I brought.” He paused. “If you hadn’t spent your night here waiting on me, what glamorous place would you have been?”

  “In L.A., at Hugh’s premiere.”

  At the mention of Hugh, Zach’s eyes darkened.

  “I was going out there this weekend because we start shooting together next week.”

  “Are you two doing a love scene?” His voice was hard now.

  More than one.

  Annoyed because he’d nailed her and because, like most people, he so obviously attached undue significance to anything of a sexual nature on film, she ignored his question.

  “I don’t want to talk about Hugh with you.”

  “Good. Because neither the hell do I.”

  She hesitated, wondering why he sounded jealous and not knowing where to go from here. “Are you hungry?”

  “Look, there’s no need for you to worry about me. It’s late…. And I’ve screwed up your schedule enough today as it is.”

  Of course he was right, but he looked so bone weary, as if it had taken everything out of him to get here while she’d rested on his plane and had been pampered at Gram’s.

  “I’ll just put some cheese and ham out,” she said. “You bought it, after all.”

  “Not so that you would stay up and wait on me. I can take care of myself.”

  “It won’t take a minute,” she insisted, stubbornly refusing to let him boss her around.

  “Okay. I’ll be back down after I freshen up.” He left her and carried his bag and briefcase upstairs.

  By the time he strode into the kitchen, she’d opened a bottle of wine and set a single place for him at the kitchen table.

  When he sat down, she noted that his black hair was still gleaming wet.

  “You’re not eating?” he said, sipping wine, when she hovered but didn’t sit.

  “I ate at Gram’s earlier.”

  “Not those chocolate-chip cookies she baked just for me, I hope?” he teased.

  “She bakes them for me, too—even though I tell her not to.” Summer grinned back at him. As she pulled out a chair, she couldn’t stop staring into his utterly gorgeous eyes. Was there a man alive with longer lashes? A tiny pulse had begun to throb much too fast at the base of her throat, causing her breath to catch.

  What was going on? How could she actually be so thrilled he was here, safe and sound, when he’d forced her to come to him, when he intended to deliberately humiliate her? When Thurman and the rest of the town were judging and accusing her? When Hugh was sulking in L.A. and her agent and director were apoplectic? When she’d disappointed poor, darling Gram, who was hoping for a happy ending to this farce?

  “I had a few cookies after a chicken sandwich,” she replied, striving to sound nonchalant. “Dessert is allowed sometimes, you know.”

  “Even for an actress who has to keep her perfect figure…so she’ll look mouth-wateringly sexy in those love scenes…with Hugh?”

  His angry black gaze flicked over her breasts in her thin T-shirt. His male assessment accused her even as it made her blood heat.

  “Love scenes in movies aren’t the least bit sexy. They’re all about creating an illusion for the viewer.”

  “Is that so? You always were good at creating illusions.”

  He glanced away abruptly, trying to hide his obvious interest in her body and his fury at the thought of her with Hugh, but it was too late. Suddenly the walls of his kitchen felt as if they were closing in on her, and she couldn’t breathe. How could he charge the air between them with a mere question and a hot, proprietary glance?

  “You have no right to attack me or to look at me like that. No right at all.”

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t dress the way you do,” he muttered in a tone so savage she knew he was as provoked as she.

  “I’m wearing an ordinary T-shirt.”

  His hard eyes burned her breasts again. “Right. I guess it’s the fact the material’s so thin and you’re braless underneath that’s getting to me.”

  “Sorry!”

  When she felt her nipples tighten and poke at the cotton fabric, she clenched her hands. He was impossible. Since he’d come back to Bonne Terre, he’d been turning everything into some sort of sex game.

  “Why you’re determined to put us both through a weekend like this, I can’t imagine.”

  He stared at her for a long time. “You know why. Just as you know you have it coming.” He stabbed a piece of cheese.

  “I think I’d better go back to bed,” she said abruptly, not trusting herself, or him, or the intimacy of their cozy little situation. “We’re obviously not a couple who can cohabitate easily and naturally.”

  At her rejection, his dark face was suddenly blank and cold. “Good idea. Go ahead. I’ll clean up—alone.”

  “You’re supposed to be a billionaire. Why don’t you have staff to do all that?”

  “Because they’re people, and I’d have to deal with them and their problems. Because I want to live informally here and not be bothered by too many prying eyes. Because I couldn’t be here…like this…with you, if I had a staff. Not that I don’t have a cleaning lady. And my secretary just hired a gardener. So, do you have more questions about how I live my life before you leave me in peace?”

  He wanted her gone! She was getting on his nerves! His attitude infuriated her. He’d blackmailed her into coming here, hadn’t he? He’d launched the blatant sexual attack.

  What had she expected—wine and roses?

  Her heart pounding, she turned stiffly. Marching to her bedroom, she locked herself in and threw herself on the bed where she lay wide-awake, tossing and turning and staring up at the ceiling for what felt like an endless time.

  Her mood was ridiculous. She should be thrilled he didn’t want her tonight.

  She heard the savage clink of dishes and silver in the kitchen, of a garbage lid being slammed, of the disposal grinding violently. His heavy tread resounded in the hall outside her door and on the stairs. Then he stomped about in the room above hers. Something crashed to his floor so hard she sprang to a sitting position. Fisting her sheets, she stared at the ceiling listening, but after that bit of violence, he quieted.

  When he turned on the water, the sound of it hummed in her blood. She imagined him naked in his shower with hot suds washing over his warm, sleek muscles. And despite what he’d said to anger her, she wanted to go up and join him.

  Slowly, she got out of bed and went to her bathroom. Stripping, she turned on her own shower. When the water was warm, she stepped into the steam, threw her head back and let the pulsing flow drench her. She cupped her breasts and imagined him seizing her, thrusting inside h
er. She imagined her hands circling his hard waist. She imagined pressing herself against him even tighter as she begged for more.

  The water ran down her limbs and circled in the drain. Sighing in frustration, she fell back against the tile wall while the spray streamed over her. A strange sensation of loss and a fierce longing to move beyond their past and their present darkness possessed her.

  She clenched her fists, beat the tiles, but it did no good.

  He disliked her, yet he would force her to stay with him.

  Did he intend to hook her on his lovemaking and then laugh at her and leave her? Would he flaunt their relationship to everybody in Bonne Terre and beyond to prove she and her stepfather had wronged him?

  She closed her eyes and pushed her wet hair out of her face. Because of her own shameless desire, she was on emotionally unsafe ground.

  How would she make it through the weekend without falling more deeply under his spell?

  Five

  When Summer awoke the next day, she sat up slowly, her heart racing, as she thought about Zach upstairs in his own bed. Except for the birds, the house seemed too quiet and dark. But that was only because she was used to pedestrians on the sidewalks and tenants on the stairs, to sirens and traffic, to garbage trucks making their early rounds as the Upper West Side woke up.

  Fearing Zach might not have slept any better than she had, she crept noiselessly from her bed to the bathroom where she brushed her teeth, washed her face and combed her hair.

  Rummaging through her suitcase, she put on a T-shirt and a pair of tight-fitting jeans. Okay, so he’d probably comment on how tight they were, but she didn’t own any other kind.

  Grabbing her script, she headed for the kitchen where she found a bag of coffee. She closed all the doors before she ground the coffee and started a pot. Listening to the birds, she decided it might be more fun to work on the porch.

  She went to the door and was taking great pains to open it without making the slightest sound, when the security alarm began to blare.

  With a little scream, she clamped her hands over her ears and fought without success to remember the code.

  “Blast it!” she muttered as Zach slammed down the stairs.

  Wearing nothing but a pair of jeans, and dragging a golf club, he hurled himself into the kitchen.

  “My fault. I forgot about the alarm,” she said, staring at his chest and finding him heart-throbbingly magnificent. “I was trying so hard not to wake you.”

  He punched in the code and set the golf club down. “It’s okay. Usually I get up way before now. Coffee smells good.” He raked his hands through his hair.

  “It does, doesn’t it?” She broke off, tongue-tied as usual around him, maybe because his gaze left her breathless.

  “Did you sleep okay?” he asked in a rough tone.

  “I guess.”

  “I had a tough night, too,” he murmured, grinning sheepishly.

  His super-hot gaze made her tummy flip. Suddenly, sharing the kitchen with him when he was sexily shirtless, when he kept his eyes welded to hers, seemed too intimate. She felt as awkward as she would have on a first date when she knew something might happen but didn’t know what. Quickly, she turned away and poured herself a coffee. Then she scurried outside. Behind her she heard his knowing chuckle.

  Not that she could work out here, she mused, not when he was bustling about in the kitchen.

  Concentrate on something else! Anything else but him!

  The morning air was fresh and cool, and the sky a vivid pink. As her frantic gaze wandered to the fringe of trees that edged the far corner of his property, three doe and a tiny fawn picked their way out of the woods in a swirl of ground fog to nibble a clump of damp grass.

  Summer tiptoed back to the kitchen door and pushed it open. Holding a fingertip against her lips, she waved to Zach to come out.

  When he joined her, he smiled, as charmed by the scene as she.

  “I’ll bet you never see anything like that in Manhattan.”

  “There are all sorts of amazing sights in Manhattan,” she murmured in a futile attempt to discount the awe that sharing the dawn with him inspired.

  “I’ll bet somebody as famous as you could never live anywhere as boring as Louisiana or Texas again. Or be serious about anybody who wasn’t a movie star like Jones.”

  “I didn’t say that!”

  His hard eyes darkened as they clashed with hers.

  An awkward minute passed as she tried to imagine herself living with Zach, here, in Houston, anywhere. Impossible—she was an actress, who lived in Manhattan.

  “To change the subject—what do you want to do today?” he asked casually.

  “I need to study those scenes I have to shoot next week.”

  “That’s fine. I did make tentative plans for us to meet Tuck and Gram at the new Cajun café on the bayou. Over lunch I thought we could encourage Tuck to enroll in one of the tech programs at the junior college.”

  “Tuck’s not interested in school.”

  “Really? When I informed him I might press charges if he didn’t take some responsible action about his future, he told me he’d like to take some courses that could lead to a career as a utility lineman.”

  “I can’t believe this! You’re threatening Tuck, too, now.”

  “It’s way past time he stepped up to the plate. I took him over to the junior college Wednesday and introduced him to Travis Cooper, who’s the young, enthusiastic head of that particular program. He was a late bloomer, like your Tuck, which may be why the two of them hit it off immediately.”

  “Okay—I can do lunch,” she replied. “I like your results, even if I don’t approve of your tactics. Then I’ll need to study my scenes this afternoon…since I procrastinated last night.”

  “Okay. While you do that, I’ll inspect one of my building projects.”

  He took a long breath, his black eyes assessing her with such frank male boldness her tummy went hollow. “But, I’ll want to spend the evening with you. Alone. Here.”

  “Of course,” she whispered, her skin heating even as she fought to look indifferent.

  Without warning, he stepped closer and grinned down at her. “I’m glad you agreed so easily. I want you to be eager.”

  He bent his handsome black head toward hers, and she was so sure he would kiss her, she actually pursed her lips and stood on her tiptoes as if in feverish anticipation.

  But he only laughed, as if he was pleased he had her wanting him. “Save it for tonight, sweetheart.”

  A very colorful curse word popped into her mind, but she bit her lips and made do with a frown.

  * * *

  Lunch with Tuck and Gram was amazing. First, the succulent fried shrimp, which were crunchy and light, were so addictive Summer had to sit on fisted hands to keep from stealing the one Zach left on his plate just to tempt her. As she was staring at that shrimp, Tuck finished his gumbo and astonished her by informing Zach that, yes, he’d decided he was fine with giving Cooper and his dumb program a chance. She was further amazed when she listened to him converse easily and intelligently with Zach, as Tuck rarely did with her. She could tell that Zach really had been devoting a great deal of time to Tuck, and that Tuck was lapping up the attention.

  Despite all that was enjoyable about lunch, she didn’t like the attention from surrounding diners, who stared and snapped pictures with their phones.

  “Did you have an ulterior motive for lunching with all of us so publicly?” Summer asked after they dropped off Tuck and Gram and were driving home.

  Zach’s mouth was tight as he stared grimly at the road. “Being railroaded on felony charges and then being tried in the court of public opinion wasn’t any picnic, either.”

  “That still doesn’t make it right for you to use Tuck and Gram to get even with me.”

  “Maybe I just want people to see that I have a normal relationship with all of you,” Zach said.

  “But you don’t. You’re blackmailing me
.”

  “Right.” His dark eyes glittering, he turned toward her. The sudden intimacy between them stunned her. “Well, I want people to know that you’re not afraid of me. That you never were. That you liked me, loved me even. That I was not someone who’d take a young, unwilling girl off to the woods to molest her. Is that so wrong?”

  His face blurred as she forced herself to focus on the trees streaming past his window instead of him. The realization of how profoundly she’d hurt him hit her anew.

  Yes, he’d hurt her, too, and yes, he’d gone on to achieve phenomenal success. But he’d never gotten over the deep injury her betrayal had inflicted—any more than she’d gotten over losing him and the baby.

  Because of her, Zach had been accused of kidnapping and worse. All he’d ever tried to do was help her.

  When a talent scout had been wowed by her high-school performance in Grease, her stepfather had forbidden her to go back to her theater-arts class. He’d sworn he wouldn’t pay for her to study theater arts in college, either.

  So she’d run away to Zach, who’d forced her to go back and try to reason with Thurman. Only after her stepfather struck her and threatened her with more physical violence if she didn’t bend to his will had Zach driven her to Nick’s fishing cabin on the bayou in Texas. There they’d hidden out and made love. There they’d been found in each other’s arms by Thurman and his men.

  She did owe Zach. More than a few weekends. And not just because of Tuck. If Zach wanted to be seen with her and gossiped about—so be it.

  “You don’t have to drive me home before you go to your site,” she said softly. “I’ll go with you.”

  “I thought you needed to work on your love scenes with Hugh.”

  His voice hardened when he said the other man’s name, and she felt vaguely guilty. Which was ridiculous, since she wasn’t in a relationship with either man.

  “I do, but I’ll study on the plane, or later, when I get to L.A.”

  “Well, if you’re coming with me, I’ve got to take you home anyway. Those sandals won’t work at the construction site and neither will that tight, sexy skirt.”