Just Another Pretty Face (HT 459) (8 page)

Nikki shrugged. "Not particularly," she said, and chugged back half a glass of milk in three long gulps. She felt her earrings brush against her bare collarbone with the movement.

"Not even with Pierce?" Lisbeth persisted, as if the thought of any female being so wrongheaded was completely inconceivable to her.

"Not particularly," Nikki said again, casually, as though it were the exact, unvarnished truth. "Pierce is just another job to me," she said. "I have absolutely no interest in him as a man."

"You don't?"

"He's not my type at all." The lie slipped out easily, considering its gargantuan proportions; Nikki wondered why she didn't choke on it. "As far as I'm concerned, he's fair game for any woman who wants him. Except, of course," she added, watching Lisbeth for a reaction, "for whoever's writing those creepy fan letters."

"Hey, anybody there seen my bodyguard?" Pierce's disembodied voice floated down the back stairs.

And Nikki lost Lisbeth's attention between one breath and the next.

"I went up to her room to see what was keeping her and—ah, there you are," he said, his blue eyes zeroing in on Nikki as he came into the kitchen. He smiled with a very masculine sort of pleasure, satisfaction radiating through him at the sight of her standing in front of the refrigerator in the little black dress he'd bought for her. He didn't pause to wonder why the sight of her, wearing a dress he'd provided, pleased him so much. He only knew that it did. "I knew that dress would suit you," he said.

He didn't seem to notice Lisbeth sitting there, staring at him with a look of worshipful adoration on her face, but Nikki did. And so, if she wasn't mistaken, did Lisbeth's aunt. And Lisbeth's aunt didn't like it one little bit. Nikki wondered why.

Was it simple distaste for her niece's very obvious infatuation that irked the uptight housekeeper? Was it Pierce's seeming insensitivity to her niece's feelings? Or was it something more sinister? Something like... jealousy, perhaps? Nikki pondered the possibility for a moment, clearly recalling the disapproving, tight-lipped expression the housekeeper had had on her face when she'd caught her employer and his new bodyguard rolling around on the floor of the garden room yesterday.

But Marjorie Gilmore is old enough to be Pierce's grandmother,
Nikki reminded herself, scowling at the glass in her hand as she tried to sort things out in her mind.
Or his mother, at least. And, anyway, she's been with him for years. Hasn't she?
It was ridiculous to think she'd suddenly taken to writing weird love letters to her boss. Wasn't it?

"Short skirts were definitely the way to go," Pierce said, smiling wolfishly when Nikki looked up at him. "You look terrific," he told her, ogling her legs. He made a twirling motion with his hand. "Turn around so I can see the back," he ordered, anticipating the sight of the stretchy black fabric molded to her heart-shaped little bottom.

Nikki steeled herself against the warm fuzzy feelings his compliments caused and gave him a look that would freeze lava.

Pierce grinned. "No?" he said, unaffected by her refusal to cooperate. "Well, finish your milk then, so we can go. We don't want to keep Arsenio waiting."

5

I
KNEW
THIS WOULD HAPPEN when I sat down,
Nikki
thought, surreptitiously tugging at the hem of her dress as she tried to find the best position for her legs in the small amount of space available in the passenger seat of the Lamborghini. It had been a feat of grace and dexterity just getting into the car without exposing her all. She didn't even want to
think
about how she was going to hoist herself out of the low-slung automobile without sacrificing what was left of her modesty to the night air and Pierce Kingston's avid eyes. She pressed her knees together, angling them to give herself more room, and refused to worry about it until she had to.

"I thought that Lisbeth didn't live here with you and her aunt," she said, to give herself something else to think about.

"She doesn't." Pierce downshifted, slowing the car to check for traffic as they came through the open iron gates at the end of the driveway, then shifted again as he accelerated onto the street. The engine gave a satisfying rumble of power. "She lives in a dorm room at U.C.L.A."

"Really? She seems to spend an awful lot of time in your kitchen."

Pierce slanted a glance at her. "So?"

"So, you'd think a girl that age would want to hang out with her friends."

"You'd think," Pierce agreed absently.

"Do you know why she doesn't?"

"Doesn't what?" Pierce said, more interested in the way Nikki's skirt was inching up her thighs again than in what she was saying.
Luscious thighs,
he thought, silently giving thanks for spandex and memory yarn.

"Doesn't hang out with her friends," Nikki persisted.

"Whose friends?"
World-class thighs,
he thought. They were smooth and firm, with a hint of definition running down the sides between the front and back quadriceps muscles.
Strong thighs.
He felt his blood heat a few degrees more as both he and the car shifted into second.

"Lisbeth's friends," Nikki said in exasperation. "Pierce—" she angled herself a bit more in the seat "—are you listening to me?"

Pierce's hands tightened on the steering wheel as the hem of her dress rose another inch higher on her thighs. "Every word," he said, although he would have been hard-pressed to repeat those words back to her.

"Well, don't you think it's odd that she spends so much time with her aunt?"

"Who?"

"Lisbeth!" she said, the annoyance clear in her voice. She turned to face him more fully, completely forgetting about the hem of her dress. "Don't you think—" She broke off as she caught the direction of his gaze. "Oh, for heaven's sake." She shifted in her seat, pointing her knees toward the dashboard and yanking her dress down as far as it would go. "Don't you ever think of anything else?" she asked, holding the material in place with the flat of her hands.

"Not when I'm around you, it seems."

It took Nikki a second or two to fight down the spurt of pleasure his words gave her, but she did it. "Does that line actually work?" she asked, managing to inject a credible amount of acrimony into her voice.

"It isn't a line."

"Yeah, right." She made a small sound of disgust. "And I'm the tooth fairy."

"I don't use lines," Pierce said, unaccountably stung by her disbelief. He'd been completely sincere in all his dealings with her. "I don't ha—" He broke off, as if suddenly realizing how conceited it would sound.

"Because you don't have to," Nikki finished for him, her tone as tart as straight lemon juice.

Pierce couldn't help but smile at her acerbity."All right, yes," he said, because it was true—and because he wanted to hear what she'd have to say to that. "I don't have to."

"Women just fall into your lap like ripe plums, is that it?" she said, thinking of Lisbeth and Janice and the salesclerk at the boutique. And herself, if she was crazy enough to let it happen.

"That's it," Pierce agreed. He waited a beat. "You feeling ripe yet?"

She shot him a killing glance out of the corner of her eye. "I'll rot on the vine before I stand in line for some man again."

"Again?" he asked, picking up on the one word she wished she hadn't uttered.

"It's none of your business," she said flatly, in a tone that brooked no argument.

Pierce backed off immediately, sensing the bitterness and hurt beneath her words. Here was an interesting bit of information, he thought. A love affair gone bad.
I'll rot on the vine before I stand in line for some man again.
That meant whoever it was had cheated on her. The idiot. Pierce couldn't understand that kind of behavior. He'd been with a lot of women in his life— not nearly as many as he'd been credited with, but a lot. And there had never been more than one woman at a time. They'd sometimes followed pretty closely on each other's heels—especially in his younger, wilder years— but they'd never overlapped.

Simply by watching his father he'd learned, firsthand, what kind of destruction and pain lay down that path and he'd vowed, years ago, never to travel it himself. Despite his colorful reputation as a love-'em-and-leave-'em playboy, it was a vow he took very seriously. Yesterday, after the reporter from
People
left, he'd called Alanna Fairchild to say his goodbyes. The ending was a little more abrupt than he would have liked—in the timing, if nothing else—but he and Alanna had both known the relationship would never be more than physical and she professed to have no hard feelings.

It wouldn't have made any difference if she had, he realized a little uneasily, glancing over at the silent woman beside him. He'd set his sights on Nikki Mar-tinelli the minute she walked into his garden room in her high-heeled cowboy boots and tight leather pants. It wasn't just her body—although, Lord knows, he thought, glancing at her again, she made his mouth water with anticipation. It was something else. Something
more.
Something in the tilt of her chin and the gleam in her remarkable green eyes. Something in the way she planted her feet and stood her ground, challenging him, even though any fool could see he scared her spitless, way down deep at some basic man-woman level.

Which was another thing that intrigued him. All his life, women had desired him, fawned over him, flattered him and flirted with him. They threw themselves at his head or, as she had so aptly stated, fell into his lap like ripe plums, but none in his memory had ever been afraid of him.

He wondered if that hint of vulnerability, that fawn-like wariness, peeking out from beneath her tough cookie facade was another thing that could be laid at the door of the man who'd taught her the futility of waiting in line.

He reached over and touched her hand lightly. "I'm sorry," he said softly, meaning it.

She turned her head slowly and looked at him, obviously surprised by his admission. "For what?" she asked suspiciously.

"You were trying to talk to me like a rational human being," he said, "and I was acting like a jackass."

"Yes," Nikki said, a trace of asperity still in her voice. "You were."

"Do you forgive me?"

I shouldn't,
Nikki thought.
If I knew what was good for me, I wouldn't.
"Are you ready to talk seriously?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Without jokes?" she insisted. "Or... or leering innuendo?"

"On my honor as a Kingston," he said solemnly, vowing to keep his eyes strictly on the road and off her legs. At least for now.

* * *

"TE LLUS ABOUT
The Devil's Game,"
Arsenio Hall suggested, leaning forward in his chair as if he were encouraging the telling of scandalous secrets. "The buzz around town says it's going to be
the
blockbuster movie of the summer."

Sitting in front of the monitor in the greenroom— which wasn't green at all—Nikki watched Pierce flash a modest grin and proceed to tell Arsenio and his audience just what made his new action-adventure epic different from every other action-adventure movie ever made. She was amazed at how relaxed and natural he appeared under the merciless scrutiny of the lights and cameras, how easily he made blatant promotional plugs sound like normal conversation.

Sitting on set with the late-night talk-show host, he exuded warmth and charm and an effortless, straightforward, unapologetic sex appeal that had the women in the audience squirming in their seats, and the men thinking he was the kind of guy they wouldn't mind sharing a few beers with. Nikki smiled to herself, wondering what those men would think if they knew the man on the stage was wearing nearly as much makeup as the female jazz singer who'd preceded him.
That
would blow his superstud image all to hell.

And then again, maybe it wouldn't.

She, after all, had stood guard by his swivel chair while the show's makeup artist had applied foundation and mascara and—because "the lights wash all the color out of your face"—even a faint dusting of blusher, and it hadn't affected
her
opinion of his masculinity one iota. If anything, it had reenforced it. Any man who could look macho while wearing mascara was too rampantly male for anything short of a sex-change operation to threaten his virility.

"Are we ready for the clip now?" Arsenio asked someone off camera when Pierce had finished setting up the bare bones of the preview scene for the audience.

Apparently they were, because the image on the monitor suddenly switched from the stage in the Bur-bank studio to the steamy interior of some unspecified Central American country. Dressed in faded fatigues, with an automatic Mauser tucked into his waistband, a twelve-inch hunting knife strapped to his thigh, and an all-too-realistic gash on his temple slowly oozing blood down the side of his face, Pierce appeared to be slogging his way through a guerrilla-infested jungle with an Uzi slung over one shoulder and an unconscious woman over the other. She began to struggle weakly.

"Hold still, goddamn it," he hissed, clamping his arm tighter over her thrashing legs.

She continued to struggle until he stopped and let her slide down his body. Her face filled the screen as she looked up at him. Her eyes went wide.

"Luc," she breathed.

"Did you think I wouldn't find you?" he demanded fiercely, fisting a hand in her long dark hair as he pulled her head back. "Did you really think I'd let you get away?"

"Luc, I..." Her fingers curled in the fabric of his dirty fatigue shirt. "Please," she said.

Their lips met in a searing, openmouthed kiss.

In the studio audience, women squealed and hooted, hollering for more. In the green room, Nikki curled her fingers against the urge to yank every strand of hair from the actress's head. On the screen, the scene faded briefly to black and then faded back in on the face of the host. He grinned and fanned himself. "I'd
heard
you and your leading lady were hot together." His smile turned coaxing, inviting confidences. "Is it true you were just as hot off the screen?"