“I can’t change who I am. You can’t change who you are, and I wouldn’t want you to,” she said quietly, her breath tickling my ear. There was a pause, and then she spoke again, her voice strangely vulnerable. “Do you want me to change?”
I answered immediately, “Not for anything.”
She laced her hands together behind my neck. “Then we make it work. Okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed.
She shivered a little and I could see her skin roughening as goosebumps broke out. She ran her fingers through my hair, tugging on it as whatever blood I’d had left in my head rushed south.
“I like your hair like this,” she murmured. “It’s longer than it was...before.”
“I was just thinking of getting it cut.”
“Oh.”
I met her eyes. “I’ll grow it out longer than Samson’s if that’s what you want.”
A smile bowed her lips. “Maybe not that long. So...we talked. Now what...?”
“We leave this room.”
“Why?”
I looked up at her as I slid my hands under the shirt she wore. My shirt. Mine. The possessiveness I felt took me by surprise. My fingers flexed against the small of her back. The depth of emotion I felt for this woman unnerved me, but I was through fighting it. The alternative was too bleak to even consider.
I leaned forward and kissed her chin. If I’d gone for her mouth, I wouldn’t have cared what Ryan said about having sex in his office. “I want you naked and I don’t really want to have to clean the office after.”
A laugh bubbled out of her. “Let’s go.”
She climbed off my lap and held out a hand. I took it and let her pull me after her. I didn’t know where we were going and I didn’t care. As long as she was with me, it didn’t matter.
After a minute, I recognized where I was. The one time I’d been in the section of the house that was hers and hers alone, I’d almost staggered in shock. Right then, I was too busy dealing with the ache in my balls to care.
I hadn’t seen the entire wing and I doubted I’d remember much of the route we took to get there, but the one thing I knew I would remember was her personal pool.
It wasn’t big by any standard. Probably ten by ten feet and square, inlaid with some sort of tile that made it look a surreal shade of blue. The lights danced off her body as she stripped and I vaguely wondered how they made me look.
Then she was in the water, her skin glistening, and I followed her in. I would go slow with her later, take the time to explore every inch of her, let her know that she was mine. Right now, I just needed to be inside her.
I caught her around the waist and pressed her back against the wall, my eyes locking with hers. Neither of us spoke as she wrapped her legs around my waist. I slid my hand between us, stroking her clit until she began to writhe, sweet little mewling sounds falling from her lips. Once I felt her start to come, I slid into her.
We both moaned as our bodies came together. I hadn’t stretched her and she was tight, even tighter still as the friction gave her that last little nudge she needed to fall over the edge. I didn’t wait for her to come down, instead taking deep, hard strokes that took me to the end of her. She clung to me, crying out my name even as her nails dug into my back and shoulders. I pressed my face against her neck as her body convulsed around me, drawing out her orgasm so that when I came only moments later, she was still with me.
We stayed together for several minutes, our bodies still joined. And when I finally slid from her, I knew I’d never walk away. I’d give my life for hers if that’s what I had to do to keep her safe, but I’d never leave her.
A few minutes later, we were wedged on the fat, padded lounge chair, wrapped in thick cotton robes. Although the chair was oversized, it hadn’t been designed for two, but that was fine. It meant we were snug up against each other. There was no other place I’d rather be.
Her fingers stroked over my lips. That light stroke made my spent dick twitch and I caught her wrist. “Stop it,” I said.
“Why?”
“It tickles.” It was the truth. Also, I was exhausted. If she kept touching me, I might try to work up the energy to do something about it, but I had a feeling if I tried, I’d collapse, like I was made of nothing but noodles and jelly.
I felt her smile against my arm and tightened my hold on her. We might not have talked about it yet, but there was no doubt in my mind I loved this woman.
“Do you ever wonder about...?” Her voice faded away.
I lifted my head to study her, or what I could see of her at least. That was the crown of her head, nothing else. “Wonder about what?”
She sat up, squirming. She shot me a look as she pushed her wet hair back from her face. “I was...” She sighed as she folded her hands in her lap.
I didn’t think I’d ever seen her look so uncomfortable, or so at a loss for words.
“What is it?” I asked her, shifting around until I could pull her in closer. She draped her thighs over mine and rested her head on my shoulder.
“You have a child.”
Those words knocked the breath right out of me and I closed my eyes. After a few seconds, I was able to squeeze an answer out of my tight throat.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do. Leah was seven months along when I went in. They, um, they did an ultrasound, but it wasn’t clear. They thought it might be a girl though. No one bothered to tell me for sure, and I didn’t ask when they had me sign the papers for her adoption.”
Carly lifted her head and stared at me. She was so close, I could see the dark striations of blue in her eyes.
“Do you think about her?”
“About the baby...or, well, she isn’t a baby any more, is she?” I almost lied, but I knew Carly deserved the truth. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. I think about her. Hope she’s happy. That she’s got parents who love her.”
“Don’t you...” She hesitated and then asked, “Don’t you want more, though? I mean, you’re out now. You could take care of her and–”
“No.” Carefully, I eased Carly off my lap and stood up. I paced to the edge of the small pool and stared down into the water. “It wouldn’t be right. Before I got arrested, I would’ve made it work, but after...Leah told me she couldn’t do it by herself, and I think she wanted a new start after everything that happened. I don’t blame her. In fact, I’m glad. Our kid deserved to be raised by good people, not me and Leah.”
“You’re good people–”
“No, I’m not!” I snapped, spinning around to glare at her. “I’m trying to be better, but I’ve got no business taking a little girl away from the people who’ve raised her all her life.”
Carly looked away. Her eyes closed. After a silence that seemed to last forever, she spoke, her voice soft, “Sometimes the people who raise you aren’t the good people they should be, though.”
I’d thought about that more than once. Hollister – he’d been a detective then, but he was a lieutenant now – he’d been the one who’d gone to bat for me and helped make the deal after I’d killed Dale. Part of it hadn’t had anything to do with my prison time. Hollister had made me a promise. A father himself, he’d understood. I’d seen it in his eyes. He’d promised. He’d made sure both the baby and Leah had been taken care of. That had been the day I told myself to start putting faith in something. I couldn’t go back on that now, and I had to believe my little girl was being raised by somebody more – somebody better – than an ex-con, a convicted killer.
“No, Carly,” I said, shaking my head. “It wouldn’t be right.”
Seconds ticked by into minutes, and then I heard her feet padding across the tile floor moments before she wrapped her arms around me. “Are you mad at me?”
I covered her hands with mine. “No.” Slowly, I turned back to her and stared down at her, watching as the light flickering off the water danced along her face. We didn’t kiss or do anything else. We just held each other, and bit by bit, I felt the sadness easing from her, and as hers fade
d, the tension fell away from me.
She smoothed her finger up along my jaw, down my cheekbone, up my nose. I felt like she was trying to learn my face, line by line.
I liked it. Of course, I’d spent the past six months memorizing everything I could about her, from the lines of her face to the freckles scattered across her nose – there were three right across the tip with two more higher up – to the blow-my-mind sexy fullness of her mouth, all the way down the powerhouse curves of her body. But it wasn’t just physical. I’d learned the kind of music she liked, even though it’d have been easier to list what she didn’t like, and so far, the only thing I’d figured out was bluegrass. She was hit or miss on a lot of alternative stuff and pop, but her phone was crammed full of everything from Christian rap to hard rock to heavy metal to Beethoven. I knew she liked to cook, but hated to bake. She could get lost in a parking lot, but put her in a mall, and it was like she had a GPS hard-wired inside her skull, even if she’d never been there before.
She drove me crazy in the best kind of way, and even if she didn’t know it, she had to power to break me.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked, her voice oddly hushed.
“You.” I twisted my hands in her hair. “It’s always you.”
She curled her arms around my neck and sniffled. “You talk like that and you’re going to make me cry, Bobby.”
“Can’t have that.” I tugged on her hair until she was looking up at me, and then I made her forget all about her tears.
Chapter Eighteen
The ‘leak’ about the change in the relationship between us happened right outside Carly’s front gates.
It was carefully orchestrated, I had to give Ryan credit for how much thought he put into it. But it did make me wonder about how many ‘relationships’ in the gossip rags between big-time Hollywood couples were real. And I wondered how many people would think that Carly and I were staging everything, not just the reveal.
Except, what Carly and I had going was real. I’d never had anything more real in my life, and I knew it with every fiber of my being. I knew Carly felt it too. I could see it shining in her eyes every time she looked at me, feel it in her touch.
But I knew that, no matter how real it was, revealing it to people had to be orchestrated, controlled.
As he went over everything for the hundredth time that day, I tuned him out. When he jabbed me hard in the shoulder and told me to pay attention, I just rolled my eyes at him.
“Ry, if you tell me one more time to kiss her, I’m going to pop you in the mouth, I shit you not.”
He studied me for a minute, and then cracked a grin. “I guess you’ve gotten the kissing her thing down, considering how often you two have been ‘practicing’ the past two weeks, huh?”
“Practicing,” Carly echoed, her eyes wide. She gave me an innocent look. “Exactly what we’ve been doing, right, Bobby?”
“You were practicing?” I lifted a brow. “I thought you were trying to memorize the feel of my tonsils.”
She blushed, her cheeks going a shade of pink that almost matched her top. It was strapless and snug, tucked into a skirt that showcased her butt to perfection. I would have a hard time keeping my hands off that butt when the car door opened, but Ryan had been specific. A solid but passionate kiss. No groping.
Carly started to respond, but Ryan cut her off. “Okay, you two need to get moving. Remember, Dave will stop the car at the gates, get out, look under the hood, then tell you two to get out while he calls up to the house. Cameo will bring the Range Rover down and, while you’re waiting, you two start getting...familiar with each other...”
“They’ve already done that.”
The hostile voice came from across the hall and one by one, we all looked at Ridley.
I’d suspected it before, but these last two weeks had just solidified my suspicion that Ridley’s problem with me was that he had a crush on Carly. Maybe it was just physical, or maybe his emotions were involved, but whatever he felt for her, he didn’t like that she’d chosen me.
I made the wise decision to keep my mouth shut. One of these days, that boy and I were going to come to blows. It was fast approaching too. Personally, I would have very much preferred to just get it over with, but Ryan had put a lot of work behind staging whatever this was. This ‘expose’ of our relationship. Why it mattered so much how the public found out about it, I didn’t know, but I hadn’t lived and breathed Hollywood for more than half my life. Both Carly and Ryan said it mattered, that they needed to stay in control.
Since it wasn’t going to speed the time table along to get into it with Ridley, I focused on running my knuckles up and down Carly’s half-naked back. That served several purposes – I enjoyed it and so did she. If it pissed Ridley off, then so much the better. I could sympathize with Ridley’s unrequited feelings, but that didn’t mean I had to like him being an asshole.
“Ridley, do you have a problem?” Ryan asked, moving between us.
The other man took a moment to answer. “I just don’t see why we’re playing this fucking game.”
“Several reasons and none of them concern you,” Ryan said easily.
“Since I’m a part of this security team, I’d feel better about it if I understood those reasons,” Ridley snapped.
“Ridley, lighten up,” Carly said. She was getting aggravated. She caught my hand and tugged me along toward the door. “Come on. I’m getting hungry.” As she strode toward the door, she shot an annoyed look at Ridley. “The VMAs are coming up and everybody is already talking about how I’m supposed to be mending things with that jerk-off, Mendoza. We all know that’s so not happening. This kills two birds with one stone. The news about Bobby and I will come out sooner or later, and I don’t want to hide it. Plus, we can plan on him being with me at the VMAs now.”
I shot Ryan a questioning look, and he gave a slight shrug.
I didn’t know who Mendoza was. I barely knew what the VMAs were – music awards of some kind, I thought. Then I processed what she’d said and gaped at her. “You plan on taking me?”
“Who else would I take?” She kissed my cheek. “Come on. We’re supposed to meet Max in ninety minutes.”
The drive from her front door to the elegant wrought-iron gates seemed to take ten times longer than normal. My stomach churned. The thought of putting myself in harm’s way for her didn’t even make me blink. This, however, was freaking me out.
Even though I knew the media had been tipped off, it was still something of a surprise to realize there were photographers hiding. Some of them poorly, some of them fairly well. I’d already counted four of them when the car came to a stop and Dave made a very good impression of a frustrated driver. Even though it was just us in the car, I got the impression he wasn’t acting solely for us.
“Sorry, guys. Something’s not running right.” He opened the door and climbed out.
“That’s fine,” Carly said, leaning against me. She grinned up at me. The look on her face was adorable. She was clearly having fun.
I felt half-sick.
She smoothed a hand up my arm in a soothing gesture. “Relax,” she whispered, her breath soft against my neck.
Ridley leaned against the seat across from us, although leaned wasn’t really the right word. His body was rigid. He looked about as uncomfortable as I felt, really. For a moment, I almost felt sorry for him. I knew what it felt like to want her and not have her.
Knuckles rapped on the window and that was our cue to open the door. Except Ridley didn’t move.
Knuckles rapped again.
I looked away from Carly’s smiling face to look at Ridley. He was staring at me with pure loathing on his face.
We had a stare-down that lasted maybe ten seconds, and then he opened the window, had a terse conversation with Dave before looking at us.
“Go do your thing.” The words were sharp, brittle. “Put on your show.”
Carly frowned, but by the time we got out of the car,
she was smiling. I tugged her up against me, determined I wasn’t going to be the reason behind her next frown. I’d do whatever it took to make her smile.
She came to me and curled her arms around my waist. “Smile pretty, handsome,” she said, her voice almost inaudible.
I knew I couldn’t, but in my head, I heard the clicks of a hundred, a thousand cameras as the shutters clicked. I brushed a kiss across her lips instead and she pressed her hand to my cheek. It felt like a lover’s caress, but I followed the gentle pressure she applied.
Angling my head for the cameras, I assumed. Then she pulled back slightly to smile up at me, I returned her smile, mechanically at first, but it didn’t take long for the warmth she always filled me with to spread through me. Without thinking about it, I reached up and brushed a flyaway curl from her face. I forgot about everyone watching us and thought only of her. I cupped her cheek, wondering again what I’d done to deserve her.
She covered my hand with hers and said quietly, “Nobody has ever looked at me like you do.”
“Yeah?” I rubbed my thumb across her skin. She was so soft. “And how’s that?”
“Like all you see is me. Like I’m all that matters to you.”
I frowned. Didn’t she understand? She was all that mattered. But I didn’t ask her that. “What else am I supposed to see?”
She sank against my chest. “Maybe that’s why it’s so special, Bobby. Because that’s the only way you’ve ever thought to look at me.”
Dave’s voice cut into our personal moment. “Head’s up, folks. Cameo’s almost here with the Range Rover.”
I’d almost forgotten that we were doing this on purpose. As one, Carly and I looked up, watching the big SUV eating up the distance left between us. When the car came to a stop, Carly glanced over at Dave.
“Give the keys to Ridley. He can take the car back and make sure it gets fixed.”
Ridley opened his mouth, an expression of shock on his face. Carly gave him a cool look.