Hot Target (27 page)

Not a chance.

“It’s when you’re not talking that you’re most dangerous,” he said, glancing over at her. “I know what you’re thinking—”

“Then you know that all language has left me except for
please, please, please. . . .
” She started for him.

He moved out of range and growled at her. He actually made a sound that was half growl, half laughter. “Stop or I’ll leave.”

“Yeah, you look like you really want to leave.” She took another step toward him—just a little one, testing him.

He took a step back. “I didn’t say a word about
want.
I’m serious, Jane. We do this my way, or I’m out of here.”

She lifted her foot.

He picked up his pants.

She backed down. There were other ways to win this game. She wriggled out of her yoga pants and climbed onto the bed, arranging herself artfully. “Oh, wait,” she said.

She slid off the bed and rummaged through her bedside cabinet, searching for a condom, making sure he continued to get an eyeful.

He was laughing. “You’re making this so much harder than it—”

“Good, the harder the better.” She turned to face him, triumphant, condom in hand. “Since you can read my mind, you also know that I love it hard.” She put the condom between her thumb and first finger, flicking it toward him like the paper footballs she used to make in seventh grade.

He caught it. Good reflexes. “Jane.”

“Love it,” she emphasized.

“I have an idea.”

“Love. It. Love-it.”

Cosmo had the world’s best poker face. He was pretending that he was unmoved by everything she was doing and saying. His body, however, was not as good at bluffing. “Get back on the bed,” he said evenly.

She gave up seductive and tried reasonable. “Cos. You’re not going to hurt me. Look, my arm is
very
far from my—”

“Get on the bed.”

“Okay,” she said. “Okay, I have an idea, too. We could tie my wrist to the headboard, so that we both know where my arm is at all times, and then we could go ape-shit wild and—”

He reached for his pants.

She got on the bed. “You suck,” she told him. “You weren’t even listening. It was a good idea.”

He laughed. “I promise, after your arm heals a little, to tie you up. Or swing from the chandelier with you. Or do it doggy-style up on the roof. Whatever you want. Right now, though I’m going to make you relax if it’s the last thing I do. On your stomach.”

“I love a masterful man,” she said, complying. “The ordering me around thing is driving me mad with desire, Chief. Which is about as far from relaxed as possible, by the way.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Cosmo said. “Desire works really nicely with relaxed.” He put his pants up on her other pillow, where he knew she could see them as he climbed onto the bed.

As he climbed onto her.

He straddled her, half sitting on her thighs, his knees on either side of her hips, his hands holding down her shoulders so she couldn’t wriggle and turn to face him.

Which, of course, she tried to do.

“Don’t move,” he said quietly, leaning forward to speak into her ear. “First thing you need to do to relax is be still.”

His breath was warm against her cheek, his chest warm against her shoulder blades. She could feel his arousal, too, heavy against the small of her back, and she moaned. She couldn’t help it.

“Trust me,” he said. “Do you trust me? We’ll get there, I promise. I swear. I give you my word.”

“Unless ‘my word’ is your nickname for your—”

“Shhhh,” he said, laughing. “Try not to talk.”

God, it felt so good, what he was doing to her. His hands were so warm and strong as he massaged her back, her neck, her shoulders. He kissed her, too—beneath her ear, at the nape of her neck, on her shoulder blade—places she never realized would feel so good to be kissed.

Cosmo had given her his word.

So Jane surrendered.

And somehow he could tell that she was finally done fighting him, because he no longer held her down.

He moved off of her, but it wasn’t so she could turn over—it was so he could work his way slowly down her lower back. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, his hands on the very part of her he’d once called worthless.

This was not a coincidence. She’d added
giant,
and he hadn’t forgotten that.

“I think you’re perfect, Janey,” he told her now, his quiet voice thick with emotion—this man some people thought of as a robot. “You’re unbelievably sexy.”

For a man who so often used silence to his advantage, he sure knew how to make words count.

He kissed and stroked his way down and then back up her legs, careful of her skinned knee and . . .

Jane didn’t move much—she knew better than that—but she did open herself to him, just a little. An invitation. Don’t forget to work your magic here . . .

Cosmo laughed. And turned her over. But he still didn’t touch her where she wanted most to be touched.

Instead he started all over again. From the top. Straddling her hips. He smiled down at her, as he did his wonderful relaxation thing on her face, her neck, her throat, her shoulders.

Her breasts.

He leaned forward to kiss her, and as she lost herself in the softness of his mouth, she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t not touch him. His hair, his arms, his back—ah, God, he felt so good, so solid beneath her hands. He didn’t seem to mind—until she reached between them and . . .

Cosmo lifted his head. “Hey.”

“I’m moving very slowly and carefully,” she told him.

He laughed. “Yeah,” he said, his eyes half-closed as she stroked him. “I noticed.”

“This is very relaxing for me,” she said, loving the fascinating mix of soft and hard, loving that look in his eyes.

“Ah, Jane,” he breathed, “if you keep that up . . .”

“I have an idea,” she said. “This one’s good, so listen: We skip to the part that you promised we’d get to—”

He laughed as he kissed her mouth, no doubt thinking that would distract her while he gently moved her hands up over her head. He was right, it did, and by the time he released her wrists, he’d once again shifted off of her, which moved him out of her reach.

By then she was floating.

Drifting . . .

His kisses trailed lower and lower until . . .

Yesssssss . . .

He touched, kissed, stroked, without ever increasing that maddeningly slow, deliberately lazy pace.

He tasted and looked, too—God, it was a turn-on the way he took his time to really look at her, as if she were the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

It was—all of it—like something from a dream.

A really good dream.

She floated, she sighed, she drifted, she flowed.

Her eyes were closed as he shifted on top of her, as he . . .

Jane opened her eyes to find him watching her as he finally filled her, as he . . .

“Cosmo,” she breathed.

He smiled, watching her face as he moved inside her so slowly—God it felt so good—as he pushed himself even farther. . . .

She tried to tell him more, she wanted even more, but all that came out was a sound of pure pleasure. It made him laugh as he still watched her, heat in his eyes, as he still moved so slowly, so deeply.

Deeper.

She moved with him, content with his pace, and time seemed to stretch even more. Stretch and bend and curve in on itself until all that existed was now, this wonderful, amazing
now
that was Cosmo’s eyes and Cosmo’s smile and Cosmo’s so obvious desire for her—such a powerful emotion transformed into the physical. His mouth on her mouth was a wonder as he kissed her again. His body against hers, inside her, that slow slide out and then home again, a miracle. And a miracle. And a miracle and . . .

She could have gone on like this forever. As it was, she had no idea how long they’d been . . .

Except when she opened her eyes, she did know.

Cos’s arms were shaking slightly, his muscles standing out sharply as he held himself above her, as he kept himself from crushing her.

And he wasn’t smiling anymore. His eyes were closed and the expression on his face had changed to one of complete concentration. Crushing her wasn’t the only thing he was keeping himself from doing.

“Cos,” she managed to say, and he looked at her. “I’m not sure . . . I’m quite relaxed yet. Can we . . . start back . . . at the beginning?”

It took several seconds for the fact that she was kidding to penetrate. But when it did, he laughed, and she could see that he was completely undone.

“God, Janey!” he said, still laughing.

He threw all his weight onto one arm and reached between them to touch her—somehow he’d already learned exactly, exactly where—and if his laughter hadn’t already pushed her over the edge, she would have had no choice. As it was, he took her higher. She came with him, in glorious, beautiful, joyous slow motion, pulling him down so she could cling to him, so she could kiss him and kiss him and kiss him.

It took her forever to catch her breath, to drift back to a place where she could once again speak.

She opened her eyes to find Cosmo watching her.

“Hi,” she said, still giddy. “Wow.”

He smiled, and her heart expanded even more. She actually felt it growing, right there in her chest.

I love you
seemed so mundane, so overused, so terrifying to admit, but she wanted to say something to him. To tell him . . .

“That orgasm you just gave me was defective,” she said.

He laughed, but he didn’t say anything. He just waited for her to continue.

“Orgasms are . . . well, you know how when you’re in the middle of one, you always think, this one is it? This one is so special? The gleaming, golden, perfect O? Only afterward, it fades away like all the others. Which actually turns out to be a relief. Like, ooh, thank God, I don’t have to spend the rest of my life following
that
loser around begging for another of those really good ones.” She touched his face, tracing the lines that appeared next to his eyes and mouth when he smiled. “But this time it really was special. So don’t freak out when I start following you around, okay?”

He kissed her, and it was so tender, she thought for a moment that she’d gone and slipped and said too much.

Like,
And don’t be a loser and go and break my heart.

No, she hadn’t said it—and she wouldn’t say it.

But just to make sure, she changed the subject. Which wasn’t hard to do with a man who didn’t spend much time senselessly chattering away.

“I’ve been thinking,” Jane said. “And I haven’t been able to figure out . . . Where exactly is it that the cows go all night?”

Cosmo blinked at her, and then laughed as he made the connection. Cows. ‘Til the cows come home.

“And what kind of irresponsible dairy farmer,” she asked, “would let his cows just wander around—”

Cosmo kissed her again. And flipped her—carefully, of course—onto her stomach.

“Obviously,” he said, “we need to do a little more relaxation work.”

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

Murphy was in the kitchen when Cosmo came in for breakfast.

“Whoa,” Cos said. What was he still doing here?

“I’m double-shifting,” Murphy told him before he could ask. He looked up from the piles of paper—computer printouts and reports, from the looks of them—that he had stacked in front of him on the table. “Sleep well?”

Um. “Yeah,” Cosmo said, opening the cabinet in search of a coffee mug.

“PJ and Beth had a thing—not a fight, a thing. That’s a direct quote,” Murphy explained. “So I stuck around.”

“You should have called me,” Cosmo said.

“Hmmm,” Murph said. “Yeah, I guess. It just seemed silly to use the phone when you were sleeping right down the hall. Except, you
weren’t
there. Very mysterious. At first I thought you were out in the yard, still looking for that bullet, but then I realized that I would have heard the alarm go off and then back on as you went through the door.”

Damn. He knew he should have gone back to his own room a whole hell of a lot sooner than he had. Cosmo poured himself a cup of coffee, keeping his back to the former Marine.

“It’s really not my business,” Murphy said. “Except now it sort of is my business, because I’m wondering how much of this is my fault. I believe what I said was ‘go and give her a howdy,’ but maybe I’m not up on the latest Caucasian slang, so—”

Cosmo turned to face him. “It’s not your fault.”

Murphy gazed at him. “Again, it’s not my business, but if I were in your shoes—”

“I’ve already called Commander Paoletti, left a message that I need to talk to him sometime today,” Cosmo told him. He had to figure out the right thing to do—morally, ethically, professionally. Continuing on as things were wasn’t an option. Certainly not without bringing Tommy Paoletti up to speed. To some extent, anyway.

Cos had called his mother this morning, too, asked her to stay in San Francisco a little longer.

“Then before I tactfully change the subject and never speak of this matter again,” Murphy said, “I want to say,
Dude
! You are
so
the man. Not only is she a walking wet dream, she’s unbelievably
nice.
I just have to know, though—”

“Is it possible to tactfully change the subject after you’re dead?” Cosmo mused as he took a sip of his coffee.

“Right. So. Guess I’ll never know.” Murph cleared his throat. “Angelina and I are having pizza tonight with Tom and his wife up in Malibu. You know Kelly Paoletti, right? She claims she wants to see the photos from our honeymoon. Is she serious or just being polite? I need to know whether to conveniently ‘forget’ to bring them.”

“She means what she says,” Cos told him. “Bring ’em.”

Murphy nodded. “Maybe we’ll leave ’em in the car at first.”

The walkie-talkie squawked. “We’ve got a limo pulling up,” Nash said from his post out in the yard. “We expecting anyone?”

Murphy looked at Cosmo, who shook his head. Not that he knew of. Of course, he and Jane hadn’t done all that much talking last night. They certainly hadn’t discussed the morning’s schedule.

“Let me check with Jane.” Murph got to his feet, and Cos followed him out toward the entry hall.

Where Jane was coming down the stairs, on her phone. “. . . your level of concern is . . . I hear what you’re saying, but . . .”

She was dressed in one of her J. Mercedes Chadwick suits—the jacket with the deep V-neckline that she’d worn to that first press conference. With her hair artfully arranged up and off her neck, with makeup on and wide-legged pants covering her scraped knee, she looked very different from the wild-haired woman he’d made love to last night. So self-assured. Coolly in charge. Distant. Unattainable. Too perfect to be human.

“I hear you,” she said again. “Yes . . . Yes, but . . .” Whoever she was talking to wasn’t giving her a chance to speak, and she put steel into her voice. “Well, then they don’t have to come and see the movie, do they?”

Something was up.

“It’s Jack Shelton’s limo,” Nash’s voice came over the walkie-talkie.

“He’s here now,” Mercedes told whomever it was she was talking to. “He stopped at the studio and picked up Patty. She’s got a tape of the interview.”

She caught sight of Cosmo leaning against the wall, just watching her, and for a second—just for a second—she looked vulnerable. Like a part of her hadn’t expected to see him again. Certainly not this morning, and maybe not ever. It was followed quickly by a flash of pure relief, and then a very warm smile that made memories of last night come rushing back with a vengeance.

“I have to go,” she said into her phone. She rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue. “Yes, I’m well aware that we’ll be talking more about this later.”
Shit,
she mouthed silently. She listened, shaking her head for several more seconds. “Khhhhh,” she finally said, making bad cell phone connection sounds. “I can’t khhhhhhhh oo say-khh-ng. Khhhhhhhhh.” She cut the connection, but kept talking, as if she were still addressing the person on the other end of that phone call. “You’re welcome to talk until your ass turns blue, but I’m not making the changes you quote unquote
require
because this is my movie, not yours, you brain-dead maggot.” She smiled at Cos again. “Good morning.”

“Problem?” he asked.

“Oh, just a little one. HeartBeat’s on the verge of pulling their funding.” She gestured to her clothes. “That’s why I’m dressed for battle.” She came closer. “You know, you could’ve left a note.” She was far more upset than she was pretending to be, and she pulled up short and laughed. “Whoa, where did that come from? Sorry. Stress levels are already way too high today and it’s not even nine o’clock.”

“I’ll, uh, go outside and see what’s holding up Jack,” Murphy said, punching the code for the front door bypass into the alarm control box.

“I didn’t have anything to write with,” Cosmo told Jane after Murph shut the door behind him. “Or on. I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”

“It’s really okay,” she said. “It’s not like I have any right to—” She laughed again. “I just wish you’d stayed. If you had, I wouldn’t’ve answered the phone. We could be up there still, gloriously ignorant of the impending shitstorm.”

“What shitstorm?”

She stepped close enough to slip her arms around his neck, pulling his head down for a kiss. “Want to go upstairs?” she asked. “I bet we could make each other come in sixty seconds. We’d be back in the kitchen before Jack even put sugar in his coffee.”

It was such a J. Mercedes Chadwick thing to do—use sex to distract. Cosmo was a little thrown. And a little intrigued, he had to admit. Was J. Mercedes just Jane with fancy clothes and makeup? Or was there more to the masquerade?

She kissed him even more deeply and—whoa—reached down to wrap her fingers around him, right through his pants.

Mission accomplished. Cosmo was completely and utterly distracted.

He found himself glancing over at the stairs, and Jane laughed because she knew he was actually considering that sixty-second thing.

“How’s your arm?” he managed to ask.

“Completely, miraculously healed.” She wiggled her eyebrows at him. “There’s a chandelier in one of the upstairs rooms just perfect for swinging on—”

But the doorknob rattled—thank God for Murphy—and Cosmo let her go. He stepped back. Adjusted his pants, or at least tried to, while she smoothed her jacket and fixed her hair.

He knew there was something he wanted to ask her. Something that didn’t have to do with getting it on. Oh. Yeah. “What shitstorm?”

“What are we going to do?” Robin asked, swatting the video camera away. Whose brilliant idea was it to tape this meeting for the “Making Of” video? And who the hell had invited Adam here? The actor playing Jack was the last person Robin had expected to see in Janey’s conference room when he’d staggered out of bed this morning.

But because of a recently unearthed interview Jack Shelton had given several years ago in which he’d been scathingly critical of the U.S. President, HeartBeat Studios had been inundated by people e-mailing, phoning, and faxing to protest the production of
American Hero.
Even though it was clearly an organized campaign led by the Freedom Network, there was no denying it—HeartBeat was now officially spooked.

They had called and asked that Jane edit out the gay romance between Jack and Hal. In fact, they’d prefer it if she took Jack out of the movie altogether.

“ ‘Please consider making our recommended changes,’ ” Jane repeated now. “It was a request, not an order.”

“You’re not considering it, are you?” Adam asked, trying hard not to look worried.

“Maybe we
should
think about it,” Robin said. He wasn’t serious. He just wanted to see Adam’s reaction.

The other actor didn’t say a word—after all, that video camera was running—but the look he shot Robin was a resounding
Fuck you.

The phone rang again, as it had been ringing every three minutes since this meeting had started. “Excuse me,” Janey said, and took the call.

Adam moved several seats closer to Robin. “Have fun last night? Chasing Jules around the city in the rain?”

“Yeah.” He had, actually. The quiet restaurant had been a nice change of pace from the relentlessly loud music in the dance club. “We found this place that had really awesome sangria.”

Score. Adam was extremely unhappy at the news that Robin had successfully talked Jules out of flagging down a taxi. But the cameras were rolling and even though the lens was aimed at Jane, Adam was visible in the background. So he smiled. “Great.”

And then Janey got off the phone. “No more phone calls,” she told Patty, who was making a point to avoid all eye contact with Robin.

Which was fine with him.

“Decker’s outside,” Patty announced. “He’s looking for Cosmo. Have you seen him?”

“He left a while ago. He said he had some errands to do at his mother’s apartment up in Laguna Beach,” Jane said, then smiled. It was a strange smile, dreamy and distant, as if she were suddenly somewhere else, somewhere a lot more pleasant than this controversy-filled conference room with the curtains drawn. She’d been smiling like that a lot this morning, even while she was talking to some numbnuts on the phone.

Adam stopped Patty before she went back out of the room. “I’ve been meaning to ask—tomorrow’s shooting schedule hasn’t changed, has it?”

“The damage to the studio should be cleaned up by later this afternoon,” Patty reported.

Oh, crap. Really? He’d thought he had a reprieve. Robin cleared his throat. “I’m not sure I’m going to be ready for those scenes.” He turned to his sister. “Can we push things off a day?”

“I’m ready,” Adam said.

Jane sighed, frowning, pulled back to harsh reality. “Robbie, God, you’ve had way more time than Adam to prepare—”

“These are not easy scenes,” Robin defended himself.

“You’re just freaked out by the kiss,” Adam said. “Come on. Come here, right now. Let’s just do it.” He popped a breath mint. “Once you get rid of the mystery, you’ll be—”

“Excuse me,” Jane said. “I’m sorry, this isn’t helping. You need to rehearse? Rehearse. But later, please.”

Adam smiled at Robin. “I’d love to rehearse later. What do you say? Six o’clock, my place?”

Robin resisted the urge to hold his fingers up in the shape of a cross. Not in this lifetime. “Sorry, I’m booked,” he lied. He checked his calendar. “How’s . . . never? Is never good for you?”

“Aren’t you just
so
funny,” Adam said.

“Look, I don’t know why you’re here, but I’m here to help Jane,” Robin said.

“Yeah, you’re a big help,” Patty muttered as she left the room.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Jane said. “We’re going to record our own interview with Jack, run it on our website. I was going to ask both of you guys to give the interview, you know, ask the questions, but I’ve changed my mind. It’s just going to be Adam.”

“Why?” Robin said, which was stupid. He didn’t really want the extra work.

Jane ignored him. “I’ll give you a list of questions,” she told Adam. “We’re going to focus on Jack’s years in the service, on the fact that he’s a World War Two veteran, that he risked his life fighting for freedom and democracy—that no one has the right to accuse him of being unpatriotic.”

“That’s a great idea,” Adam said.

Jane turned back to Robin. “We’re already several days behind, what with the accident and the weather. You need to go and do whatever it is you need to do to prepare for tomorrow’s scenes.”

Robin stood up. “But—”

“Go.” Jane pointed to the door.

Fine. He went. He’d do what he needed to do—which meant that there was a very large gin and tonic in his immediate future.

Jane had just hung up the phone and put her head down on the desk when someone knocked softly on her office door.

“Got a minute?” It was Decker.

She sat up. “Oh, my God. How
are
you? I didn’t expect you back today.”

“I’m fine. I was fine yesterday,” he told her, actually managing to look embarrassed. Or maybe it was sheepish. “I’m sorry about scaring you—I really didn’t need to go to the hospital at all.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” she said, gesturing for him to sit. “You’re a former SEAL, right? I’ve been reading up about you guys. You like to cauterize your own wounds, pull out bullets with your teeth, stitch yourself up—that sort of thing, right? Although stitching up the back of your own head might be a challenge even for you, the mighty Decker.”

He laughed as he sat down across from her. “I didn’t need stitches. It was a surface wound—a scrape. Heads bleed a lot.”

“Gee, if I’d known that, I would have demanded you help sweep up the studio last night. And then paint my house. Wash my car, mow the lawn—”

“How are you?” he asked. “Besides sarcastic, that is.” He zeroed in his steady gaze on her. “Is there something going on that I should know about?”

Other than the fact that she’d had the most incredible sex last night with a man who scared the mother-loving daylights out of her?

How could Cosmo be so perfect?