“Like I always say, you’re a couple of classy broads.” Sam picks up the pint glass and drains the beer in two long gulps, feeling edgy and out of sorts. He’s worried his conversation with Russ is sticking to him in a way Fiona is going to notice, that she’ll be able to smell it on him like cheap drugstore cologne. “What did you guys talk about?” he asks.
“Same stuff girls always talk about,” Fiona says immediately.
“Gel douches,” Erin deadpans, and Fiona grins.
“You know what?” Sam says. “I deserved that.” He looks down with some surprise at his empty glass. “Another round?”
By the time they say goodbye to Erin an hour later, Sam has that slightly woozy feeling of being buzzed in the afternoon—confused by the sun, by the fact that it’s still daylight. “I was nervous,” he explains when Fiona looks at him with raised eyebrows, “so I drank a lot.”
Fiona nods like, No shit. “What were you nervous about?”
Sam opens his mouth, shuts it again. He could just say it, he thinks, a little sluggishly. He could just tell her the truth. “A lot of things,” he says.
Fiona thinks about that for a moment. “Yeah,” she says finally. “Me too.”
Sam pushes her up against the driver’s side door instead of answering, cupping his hand around the back of her neck and putting his mouth on hers. Fiona makes a quiet sound of surprise. He’s expecting her to tell him to keep it in his pants—she doesn’t strike him as a person who encourages PDA, particularly in broad fucking daylight—but instead she lets him do it for a minute or two, fitting her hips against his and widening her stance so he can slip his thigh between hers. Sam groans against her mouth.
“Okay,” she gasps finally, pushing him gently away. “Enough.”
Sam nods, backing off and tucking his hands into his pockets. It isn’t enough, though. It isn’t enough by a long shot.
“Come on,” she says, “I’ll drive you back to my house so you can pick your car up. Maybe I’ll even let you feel me up for a couple of minutes when we get there.”
But Sam shakes his head. “Wait,” he says, lacing his fingers through hers and squeezing. “There’s actually one more place I think we should go.”
“I will tell you, Samuel,” Fiona says twenty minutes later, slowing her car in front of a wall of dense green shrubs high in the lush quiet of the Hollywood Hills, “I’m confused about what I could possibly have said or done in the time we’ve known each other that would have made you think I’m the kind of person who likes surprises.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Sam points. “It’s this one right up here.” He unbuckles his seat belt and leans over her, breathing in the smell of her hair as he reaches an arm out the driver’s side window and enters the code into the keypad. A moment later the sleek, minimalist metal gate swings open.
Fiona peers out the windshield as they creep up the driveway, eyes narrowed like she’s trying to squint through a blizzard. She hangs back as he gets out of the car and unlocks the front door, like possibly she’s getting ready to do a runner. “Whose house is this?”
“My agent’s,” he admits.
“Who else does he represent besides you?”
“Rude,” Sam says, but he’s smiling as he shoos her inside.
Fiona looks around in wonder. Russ’s place is like something out of an HBO show: all wood and stone and metal, soaring ceilings and sharp modern lines. The floor is polished concrete, the furniture severe and architectural and frankly uncomfortable-looking. The back wall of the house is made entirely of glass. “He just . . . lets you hang out here?”
“I know this is probably hard for you to understand,” Sam tells her, “but most people like me.”
Fiona shrugs, not quite looking at him. “It’s not that hard for me to understand.”
Sam laughs, nudging her forward through the cavernous house. “Was that a compliment?”
“Enjoy it,” she shoots back. “It’s the only one you’re going to get from me today.”
“I’ll be sure to write about it in my diary.”
He leads her through the sliding door out to the pool deck, where the air is fragrant with hibiscus and citrus and enormous succulents spill from terra-cotta pots. The water is still in the rosy afternoon sunlight, a view of the hills down below. It looks like the kind of place no one should actually live in. It looks like a place where you could hide for a long time.
Fiona slips her shoes off and dips a toe in the pool, then looks at him with naked suspicion. “You’re sure the cops aren’t about to come?” she presses.
Sam smiles. “I am sure the cops are not about to come.”
“Because that’s all I fucking need, you realize. Fiona St. James arrested for trespassing at luxurious mansion in the Hollywood Hills.”
“Darcy Sinclair would love that.”
“I already sent Darcy’s kids to private school six times over,” she reminds him. “I’m not inclined to do her any more favors.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m just saying, it seems like at the very least I should be getting residuals checks.”
“Get in the water, duchess.”
Fiona scowls at him for another moment, the skepticism written all over her face like possibly she thinks Ashton Kutcher is about to pop his head out of an upstairs window and announce a punking. Finally she pulls off her tank top, then shimmies out of her denim shorts and slips into the water, barely making a splash. She surfaces a moment later, her hair wet, water sticking to her eyelashes and beading on the smooth skin of her breasts above her bra.
Sam stares at her openmouthed for a second, then almost trips over his own feet in his hurry to get his pants off.
Fiona lifts an eyebrow. “Oh,” she teases, “now you’re wearing underwear, I see.”
“Is this just going to be hilarious to you forever, no matter what I do?”
“I’m sorry!” Fiona laughs. “I’m not trying to shame you out of walking around in your natural state like God made you—”
“Uh-huh,” Sam says, and cannonballs into the deep end.
They float on their backs for a while, a warm wind rustling the palm trees and a dragonfly buzzing idly on the patio. “I love being in the water,” Fiona admits quietly. “I used to be on the swim team at my middle school, before I quit.”
Sam glances over at her. “The swim team?”
“Middle school.”
“You ever think about going back?”
“To middle school? I’m probably a little bit too tall.”
“Wokka wokka wokka.” He rights himself. “You got your GED, didn’t you? You could go to college.”
Fiona snorts. “Do I look like Elle Woods to you?”
“You’re smart,” he says with a shrug.
He’s expecting some snotty reply in response but instead Fiona tilts her head to the side. “Thank you,” she says.
“You’re welcome. It’s true.”
“I’d want to do it right,” she confesses, “if I did it. Like, a real campus, going to the library, taking boring required classes. The whole thing.”
From the way she says it he can tell that she’s pictured it before. “Drama major?”
“English,” she says immediately, then smiles. “Minor in drama.”
“You could,” he says again.
“Maybe.”
“No maybe.” He wants to tell her that he thinks she could do anything she wanted to, star in an Emmy-winning TV show or found a company or run for president. He wants to tell her she makes him feel like he could do anything, too. Instead he closes the distance between them and curls his hand around her waist under the water, pulling her close. “I just want to kiss you,” he promises softly, which is a lie; every time he looks at her he wants too many things to name. “I’m not going to do anything else.”
Fiona smiles. “Well, that’s too bad,” she says, then pushes him up against the side of the pool and shoves his boxer briefs down over his hips.
Sam breathes in, all the blood in his body immediately rushing to his dick. “What are you doing?” he asks.
“Not putting a move on you,” she deadpans, wrapping her fingers around him and stroking. Sam bucks up into her hand. He lets out a quiet groan as she touches him, his eyes slipping closed at the rush of pleasure.
“Nice try,” Fiona says immediately, letting go and stepping back. “Look at me.”
Sam’s eyes fly open again, his gaze locking on hers.
“Good,” she says softly, and goes back to what she was doing.
She takes her time about it, experimenting—learning what he likes, Sam realizes belatedly, like maybe this is a thing she intends to do again in the future. The thought of it has him fisting his hands in her hair. “Please,” he mutters. “Fiona. Please.”
Fiona smiles, teasing. “Please what?”
“Please don’t stop.”
Fiona doesn’t stop. It’s technically not even sex and still it’s one of the most intimate moments of Sam’s entire life: her touch warm and steady, her eyes flecked with hazel and gold. He feels like she can see the tissue underneath his skin. “Fee,” he murmurs finally, wanting to warn her. “I’m gonna—”