Ryan pressed me back into my pillow. “Let’s make that a priority.” His glorious smile suddenly faded, turning from light and playful to serious. “You are the most important thing to me, Taryn. I hope you know that.” His thumb stroked my cheek repeatedly. His eyes grew tender, then repentant. “I know the last few weeks have been rough.”
Rough? That was putting it mildly. Testing my will to survive massive heartache would be more accurate. I moved my left arm out from between us, rotating my wrist. It was starting to ache from being bent awkwardly underneath him. Sometimes it still felt like I was wearing a cast, even though it had been off for almost two weeks.
Ryan grimaced. “Does it still hurt?”
I shrugged. “It gets sore. Stiff, sometimes.”
His eyes narrowed as he worked on some other thought. His hand softly stroked down my stomach.
“Have you . . . have you seen the OB doctor since . . . ?”
I nodded. “Last week. Marie went with me.”
Ryan’s jaw tightened and flexed. He appeared upset about it.
“What?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
I couldn’t believe he was asking me this—with a clipped tone to boot. Last week he was wrapping filming on Thousand Miles and apparently still contemplating his feelings for me because we sure as hell weren’t having heartfelt conversations.
He nudged me for a response.
I met his eyes. “What kind of answer are you looking for?” I asked softly. “We were barely speaking to each other last week, Ryan. I didn’t think you cared anymore. I was waiting for you to tell me we were over.”
He grasped my left hand, kissing my fingers around my sparkly new engagement ring. “Oh, sweetheart . . . I’m sorry. I know I really fucked up. Things were just . . . and I was mad. Shit.”
I brushed my hand on his cheek. “We both did.”
Ryan frowned, leaning his face into my hand. “Please tell me now. What did the doctor have to say?”
“She said everything is back to normal. She renewed my birth control. I go back in a year unless I have issues.”
Apparently he was holding his breath because it all came out of him at once. “Okay. Good.” He scrubbed his forehead with his hand, pushing his bangs up. “Man, I don’t even know how to go about making this up to you. I know I hurt you. Believe me, I know. But I’m going to spend the rest of my life making it up to you. I promise.”
I swallowed hard, knowing my actions and knee-jerk reactions were what caused us to almost break up. “It’s my fault. I’m sorry for losing faith in you.”
His shoulder rose and fell as he gazed at me. “I think we both learned a hard lesson—one that we can hopefully move on from and be stronger from.”
I nodded, done with the heaviness. “I like the idea of going away somewhere. Just the two of us.”
That perked him up and with that, his tense face softened. “Let’s take a look at my calendar and schedule some vacations. We can go anywhere you want, baby. Anywhere.”
With a tilt of his head, his lips found mine. So tender, so loving. We lay there for a long time, naked bodies entwined, eyes gazing into one another, sharing whispered “I love yous.”
God he was beautiful, all naked with his broad shoulders and muscular arms wrapped around me. His hair messed from peaceful sleep.
As much as I try to never think about it, I couldn’t help but feel a bit smug, knowing most of his fans would willingly give up a limb, a family member, and a kidney to see him this exposed. Sorry, ladies. Hate to break it to ya, but he’s all mine.
Hungry for him, I trailed open-mouth kisses down his hard body, barraging him with a mixture of sensations; scoring fingernails over his pecs, soft bites over the muscular swells of his stomach, the soothing wetness of my roaming tongue.
Ryan’s eyes scrunched together and he melted back into the pillows when I slipped my wet lips and tongue around the length of him. Our time together was limited so I was going to make every second count.
“Oh, Tar,” he whispered out, tensing from the onslaught. His fingers coiled in my hair, tugging, pressing, guiding me up and down as I pleasured him. Damn, that was such a turn-on for me. I raked my hand up his chest and swallowed him deeper, drawing out surrendering moans from his throat, watching him watch me.
I had just begun to get creative with my hand and mouth when the shrill of his cell phone rudely interrupted our moment.
“Grrr . . . what?” he growled, refocusing his attention to the nightstand. “Who the hell is bothering me now?”
I laughed to myself, immediately thinking of the one person who has a knack for calling at the worst possible times. She must have a sixth sense for knowing the exact moment when her son is about to get laid.
“Ignore it,” I murmured, taking him as deep as I could go without choking. I wanted him to relax and forget about his constantly ringing cell phone, his hellacious schedule, and gauging by his purrs and the fact that he just moaned “oh God” again, hopefully in a few more minutes he’d forget how to spell his own name. I hoped that the caller would give up soon; the continuous ringing was annoying.
Two minutes later, his phone chimed again. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ryan groaned. He twisted to grab his phone but it was several inches out of his reach.
“Mmm-mmm.” I held him firm, pinning his hips back down.
“Just let me turn it off.”
“No. You’ll check messages. Leave it.”
“No, I woh—oh, fuh . . . ,” he hissed, sucking in a breath between his teeth. “Damn that feels good.
Mmm . . .”
Yeah, I knew you’d like that.
His hands immediately returned to touching me, finger-combing my long hair out of the way while I tried not to mentally count the number of times his phone rang.
Ryan tugged my chin, huskily growling, “Stop, baby. Stop. I don’t want to come yet.” The moment I looked up at him, his hand swept my neck and he pulled me up to his mouth. “Come here.”
I wanted to drink him into every cell in my body. Take him to new places where pleasure and love were as necessary as oxygen. I sucked his top lip into my mouth, wanting, needing.
He moaned in my mouth and wrapped an arm around me. With one fast swoop, he effortlessly flipped me over, hovering on top of me.
Long fingers brushed fire up my thigh and slipped deep into me while he feasted like a starving babe on my breast. Desire to feel more than his slick fingers inside me had me tingling, but all those wonderful, erotic thoughts flew from my mind the moment his freaking cell phone rang again.
“Son of a . . .” He rolled away from me and slapped his hand down on the intrusion. In all honesty, at this point I was curious to know who the hell was being so damn persistent.
He looked at the display and scoffed, answering my questioning stare. “It was Marla. All four times.
I’m turning it off now.”
No sooner did he say those words than the landline telephone on the table in our suite shrilled loudly.
That got one very angry, rock-hard, and unsated man out of his bed. Someone was about to get holy hell unleashed on them.
“What?” he said with a venomous bite, letting whoever was calling know his exact feelings about being disturbed. “I was trying to sleep. Now? Why?” His jaw clenched. “This can’t wait an hour? No. I just woke up. Fine. Give me ten minutes,” he muttered. “I said ten minutes.”
Ryan grabbed his clothing off the floor and cursed. I hadn’t seen him this pissed in a long time. “Tar, you need to get up and get dressed.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
Ryan looked at me warily as he pulled his jeans up over his naked body.
I started to worry. “Hey. What’s going on?”
His lips puckered with disgust. “Marla and David are on their way up.”
I groaned to myself. Wouldn’t be the first time his publicist and manager disrupted his life at an inopportune time. To say they were
overbearing was an understatement. He jostled the clothing around in his open suitcase with frustration, sparking my next question.
“Why?”
He rubbed his forehead. “Photos were leaked,” he mumbled.
A wave of fright pricked at my nerves. “What photos?”
I watched the back of his head sway. “People in the bar took shots of me proposing to you on Saturday,” he muttered over his shoulder. “Pictures and videos are all over the Internet now.”
I drew in a deep breath as his sudden anger about this blindsided me. Ryan was so riled he had trouble picking two T-shirts apart. You proposed publicly. I figured a few bar patrons would capture pictures on their cells. What did you expect?
“So? How bad is it?”
Ryan signed heavily before looking back at me with apologetic eyes. “Tar, you know how it is. Pictures were on some fan sites and Twitter that night already.”
I stared at my feet, trying to understand. This was not bad news, or was it?
“Taryn.” Ryan interrupted my thoughts, tossing my jeans over to me.
I let out another sigh as I shoved my right foot into the pants leg. “Why didn’t you tell me about this being a problem sooner?”
“Tar—you know why,” Ryan muttered as he slipped a T-shirt over his head. “Let’s not go there, okay, babe? Please?”
“But . . .”
He appeared resigned but tense. “But what? This is not stuff I want you worrying about, that’s why.”
I shook my head. “That’s not . . . I’m just a bit confused. Yesterday when Mike collected us at the airport, he warned me that the paparazzi were going to swarm and I asked him if I should hide my ring.
When he called you to ask, you said to tell me ‘never fucking ever take your ring off.’ So if it didn’t matter for me to be seen with this ring and to have people know we’re engaged, why does it matter today?”
Ryan narrowed his eyes. “And did you?”
I was momentarily stunned, knowing that that brusque tone wasn’t really meant for me. “Did I what?
Keep your ring on or get photographed wearing it?”
He shrugged. “Either. Both.”
I supposed this was information he needed before being bombarded. “Yes, I kept your ring on, as it will never leave my finger, but no, I did not allow the repugnant thieves to make their living off of our happiness. I kept my hand tucked in my pocket.”
He nodded once. “Yeah, well, keep that in mind,” he said on his way to answer the door.
Marla Sullivan, Ryan’s icy publicist, greeted me with a half smile, half snarl as she charged into the living room of our suite. Even though it was early in the morning, she was already dressed in a crisp designer business suit. Her short black hair was equally as tailored. An oversized black bag dangled from her red, pointy fingernails.
“Sit,” she ordered.
Ryan glared at her for a moment and then pulled out a chair at the large dining table.
“Weekly Reporter, CV Magazine . . .” she announced in a scathing tone, dropping printed sheets of paper on the table in front of him. “You’re on all of them. I suppose this is why you’ve been avoiding my phone calls for the last four days.”
Ryan barely glanced at them. He slumped back in his chair and started to rub his forehead, pushing the paper away with his other hand. “I’ve seen them already. So what.”
I edged my body closer. That’s when I saw for the very first time the grainy, dark pictures of Ryan standing on top of a very familiar round oak table and another dark picture of him kneeling in front of me.
Candid shots from Saturday night when he proposed to me publicly in my pub were now plastered all over the tabloids. My heart sank in my chest from their blatant exploitation.
“‘So what’? Ryan, you were standing on a table in the middle of a bar! What were you thinking?” She scolded him like he was a child.
Ryan rested his elbows on his knees while he bowed his head, refraining from giving her an answer.
“Well, this certainly counters the shots they got of her standing in the middle of the street in Miami two weeks ago,” she said callously, nodding her pointy chin in my direction.
Leave it to Marla to remind me of the huge idiot I made of myself when I stood in the downpour staring at what I thought was Ryan cheating on me with his co-star, Lauren Delaney, when in fact they were still on location filming.
Ryan straightened and scoffed harshly at her comment. “Don’t even go there,” he warned through his teeth, giving her an angry glare.
It didn’t matter that Kyle Trent, my former bodyguard, and Lauren Delaney, Ryan’s co-star and former girlfriend, conspired together, forming an awkward alliance to insidiously destroy our relationship. The only thing that the press was concerned about was the photographic evidence of my mental breakdown from Ryan’s supposed infidelity. CAUGHT CHEATING! all of the headlines announced.
And now, all of the headlines flashed ENGAGED!
Two weeks of ups and downs and aggravating media scrutiny—Ryan and Lauren are together, Taryn catches Ryan cheating, Ryan and Taryn call it quits, Ryan’s secret flight to Seaport, Rhode Island—were now topped off with new photographic evidence that he actually climbed on top of a table.
“Ryan, we’ve had these discussions. Do you want to destroy your career?” She waved her hand in my direction. It was apparent that she meant I was the one destroying his career.
“No! Of course not!” he bellowed.
Marla huffed and poked her finger on one of the papers. “Well, I told you to keep this inane decision of yours private. So much for that.”
I gasped in shock. Inane? Is she really standing there lecturing my fiancé and implying with the tact of a wrecking ball that his decision to propose to me was stupid and asinine?
“Do you think you could have at least warned me first that you actually went through with it?” She slapped one of the sheets down on the table in front of him. “I come back from Monterey to be completely blindsided by this, too?”
I rolled my eyes at her comment and her overdramatic little meltdown. Her shiny, black patent leather high heels captured my attention. I surmised that her shoes must match the color of her heart today.
“I got caught up in the moment. It’s my business,” Ryan grumbled, taking the submissive position to this domineering bitch. It was the first time I saw him bow down to anyone. This was not the “fuck you, no bullshit” posture he took with the rest of the world. This woman was making him fold like a house of cards in the wind. I pressed my lips into a hard line, holding my tongue.
“Caught up in the moment?” Marla questioned incredulously. “Is that your excuse?”
Ryan shot her a dirty look and sprang up from his chair when there was another knock at the door.
“David,” he said flatly, his eyes refusing to look up when his manager came into our suite. David slowly shook his head at Ryan, showing his displeasure at being summoned.
My heart rate picked up as I processed David’s overall demeanor. Now both of Ryan’s “handlers” were here to gang up on him. The Witch and the little Slime Ball, here to tag-team him and beat him further into submission.
I’ll be damned before I let them make him feel like crap for proposing to me. I felt my hands curl into tight fists, bracing for what appeared to be a pending battle.
“David,” Marla greeted Ryan’s manager. “Well,” she huffed, annoyed, “let’s talk about damage control.” She uncrossed her bony arms and picked up a few of the printouts, tossing them in David’s direction. “There are two videos of him singing on YouTube as well.”
“I know,” David admitted. “You really know how to stir up a media shitstorm, my friend,” he chuckled out lightly as he feigned looking at the photos. I’m sure by this point he was intimately familiar with them.
Ryan was too busy stewing and staring at the floor to respond. It took a split second after that for David to redirect his glare at me. This was not the first
time Ryan’s manager had issues with me and it was starting to become apparent that we all might never get along. This was so not good.
“I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal about this,” Ryan bit out before casting his glance my way.
“I don’t, either,” I added, giving him my support. If this was how they handled happy news, I’d hate to see how they handled a majorly bad shitstorm.
David sort of shrugged it off. “It’s not really, Taryn. What you have to understand is that Ryan’s career is potentially riding on how well Reparation premieres. This is his first major motion picture lead role outside of the Seaside franchise, and the critics, the major studios—everyone is waiting to see if he can carry a film on his own. This premiere is big, and it’s all about image control, that’s all. This is nothing new, Ryan.”
Image control?
I glanced back at one of the printouts. “I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand. What does our engagement have to do with any of that?”
Marla’s head jerked in my direction. “Well I’m sure you’ll start to care when he’s offered subpar roles and the money isn’t there anymore.”
I could have done without her “isn’t it obvious or are you too stupid to realize it” glare.
Ryan’s fist hit the table. “Do not talk to her like that,” he warned, pointing his finger at her.
“Marla—” David said, attempting to quell her temper.
“I couldn’t care less how much money he has. Despite what you think, my feelings for him aren’t tied to his fame or his fortune. Are you trying to say he won’t get offers and people will stop coming to see his movies because we’re engaged?”
I noticed Ryan’s lips twitch with that.
“No, no.” David tried to dismiss my assumption, halting me with his hand. “Aaron and I have been—”
Marla interrupted. “Ryan’s career is only beginning to blossom. His future prospects all stem from the decisions he makes now. Do you want to see him fail?”
My spine stiffened further. “Of course not!”
“Jesus Christ,” Ryan groaned, but she ignored him.