I didn’t know if she was implying I was deficient. Would she? And what did I think of my buddy marrying a lady-pap and adopting six kids?
“Figured it would happen at some point. The normal way. Girl, then wife, then baby. And I think he’s crazy. Fucking nuts. He can’t go out without asking his wife. Can’t take a dump without having a kid banging on the door. He had a career . . . a real career. Now he’s doing one movie a year and spending the rest of the time in legit theater so he can be home. What the hell is that? Is that me? Is that Brad Sinclair? Mike didn’t work his way out of a lumberyard in Arkansas, all right? He was born royalty. That’s not even an option for me, so this little girl? She’s gonna have to roll with it.”
Cara tapped her finger against her bicep and watched me as I had a mini meltdown. Didn’t move. Jesus Christ, she was so in control. How did she do that?
I should have been ashamed of having a tirade. Mom had a way of making me so embarrassed of my tantrums that I stopped. How do you like that now? Everyone seeing your insides? Pretty as a wild boar, I’d say.
Somehow, Cara didn’t make me feel like that. I felt safe. Weirdly safe. Uncomfortably safe.
“What?” I asked.
“I was an afterthought. My parents love me, but they didn’t know what to do with us. We were an inconvenience. That was how I felt. And when I see other kids having to bend their lives around their parents’ careers? It makes me sad, and I want to solve it for them. But there’s no solving it. And here I am again.”
“Wow.” That was more information than I ever thought she’d give about herself, and I wanted to answer every word. I wanted to tell her that she wasn’t anyone’s inconvenience. Her parents loved her. They had to. Who wouldn’t?
“Do all the nannies talk like that?”
“Only the ones with thirty-day contracts.”
She was leaving. I kept forgetting that. Figured it would work itself out so she’d stay. Obviously, that hope was one-sided.
I wasn’t used to chasing women. They chased me or appeared right and ready where I needed them. But this one was different in every way. One, not a woman in the strict sense because she was staff. I was paying her to do a job. She wasn’t a hanger-on or a costar. She wasn’t available. I wasn’t supposed to go near her. Not in that way.
But, man. Shoot me in the face. The way she ran her fingers through her hair to get it out of her face, and the way it just flopped over it again? And the crickets? And the smell of bluegrass like home. It just looked right.
For the first time, it made sense.
And fuck sense.
“You’re a time bomb,” I said. Filter-free Brad in full effect.
Her jaw set, and for the second time we stood still long enough for the path to flick into darkness. Her lips parted, and before another word left her mouth I was in motion.
I kissed her. I didn’t know why. To smash the barrier of her hardened jaw. To sweep away the bullshit talk of consulting. Whatever. It was wrong. But at the time it seemed like the only thing to do.
She pushed me so hard I fell back a step. Disappointing, but not unprecedented. She stood back, panting. Took a gulp. I had to work hard not to smile.
I still had it.
CHAPTER 31
CARA
His lips were heaven. His hands on my face were Planet Dream and Planet Real crashing, fusing, pulling both out of orbit. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t even groan how good he felt touching me. Better than the dreams, better than the morning orgasms he inspired.
Oh God, I was falling for this. In half a hot second, my defenses dropped with a clang and I let myself get hurled into deep space by that kiss, spinning and twisting, reality and fantasy joined into a single burning body.
Cara.
You’re not supposed to do this.
A single, small voice threaded through my consciousness.
Then regret.
Then anger.
At him. At myself. At my body. I had to push him away violently or the push was going to turn into a caress. He took a step back and I caught my breath.
“Jesus Christ, Sinclair, what do you think you’re doing?” I didn’t feel bad about pushing him because the anger was still in my veins. I had to stop myself from pushing him again. I didn’t think I’d be able to walk away. “Do you think I want to end up on the cover of some magazine? You think I want to get dirty looks up and down Sunset?”
This guy could ruin me. He had all the tools to do it. He was gorgeous and laid-back. He listened when I spoke and had a daughter who was just about perfect.
But I’d be on the cover of tabloids. I’d become an ugly stereotype. I’d get ditched with nothing but a bad reputation to show for it. I’d cry. I hated crying. Children cried and I soothed them by not getting all weepy myself.
There he stood, with the pool party behind him. A movie star. The most eligible bachelor in Hollywood and to me, he was an overwhelmed father with no clue how to manage his daily tasks, but formidably lit by stars. An awe-inspiring display of power and presence with a magnetism that led right to him.
Hollywood stars weren’t stars just because of their light. They had a gravity generating mass and unbearable heat. Something coded in their genes, like hair color or height. I’d seen it before from the diplomats I met when I was a kid to the moms and dads I worked for in Los Angeles, and having identified it, I resisted it. Easy.
He was different. His heat seemed made for me.
It wasn’t.
It was a trick. That kiss, as short and inappropriate as it was, had vibrated every cell. His taste, his scent, the feel of his lips.
I had to pack. Just pack and go. This job was tainted. Everything was tainted now. Head down, I walked to the pool house, my sexless shoes pumping in and out of my vision.
I had to go.
Never see him again.
Maybe once.
Stopping dead in my tracks with my hand on the doorknob, I laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Brad asked from ten feet behind me. He held his shirttail to his lip, exposing a flat, tight washboard stomach and that god damn muscled V-thing at the waist of his low-hanging shorts.
“I’ve lost my mind, that’s all.”
“We have something in common.”
“No. Let’s not do this. Look—”
“Look, I—”
He stopped himself when we said the same thing at the same time . . .
“I’m sorry.”
What was I apologizing for? Being kissed? Being watched in the shower? What the hell was wrong with me?
“You keep having to apologize for inappropriate behavior,” I said, then I opened the door and walked in. He stood just outside, backlit by the front light. It came to me that we were alone. It was dark. He’d just kissed me in a moment of weakness. I could claim weakness too, because I was weak. My knees barely held me, and my body gushed with desire.
“Don’t be done,” he said, his voice stroking under my clothes. Which was all in my mind. The result of a year without a date. But I couldn’t breathe right, and my nipples got hard under my cotton bra.