Only for You (12 page)

“What do you suppose the weather will be like in—
what
did you say the name of the place where we’re going was?” she interrupted her own thought abruptly.

“Vulture’s Canyon.”

“Weird name for a town.”

“It’s a weird town, so it’s fitting,” he assured her. “And we probably won’t go into the town itself much. We’ll be pretty isolated at John and Jennifer’s house. It’ll probably still be warm. October stays warm there, although there might be some cool fall days.”

“You sound like you’ve been there a lot.”

“I have. Remember—”

He halted abruptly.

“What?” Gia asked, sitting forward. She’d caught his mistake. He’d been about to mention something they’d talked about during their first meeting. That, in turn, had reminded him of something else that annoyed him. He felt her gaze on his cheek. “Seth? Were you going to say something about that night?”

“Yeah,” he admitted gruffly after a tense pause, requiring no further clarification as to which night she meant.

“Do we really have to tiptoe around it?” she asked, sounding a little exacerbated. “We slept together. It’s not the end of the world.”

“Yeah. You’re right. Just forget it.”

“No,” she said. He exhaled irritably, tightening his hand on the wheel.

“I thought you just said it wasn’t the end of the world, and we should just forget it,” he said.

“
You
said we should forget it. I just asked if we had to walk on eggshells about it. What were you going to say?”

He frowned at the road. The sun was starting to dip behind them, giving the pavement and the surrounding desert a rosy tinge.

“Fine. I was going to say, ‘Do you remember when you asked me if I’d ever worked with the director Rill Pierce?’ I hadn’t then, but I have now. That’s who I visit a lot in Vulture’s Canyon. He’s married to Katie Hughes, who is the sister of Everett Hughes, who married—”

“Joy. Your niece,” Gia finished for him, her voice sounding thoughtful all of a sudden . . . tentative. “I knew you did
Razor Pass
and
Keeping It Light
with Pierce since we met a couple years ago,” she said, mentioning two of Rill’s recent films.

“And I know now that the person whom you mentioned
knowing
that had won the Pierce scholarship to UCLA was
you
,” he said.

Her hands moved on her thighs as if she was trying to dry them.

“You were a theater major at UCLA, not a history major. Why’d you have to lie about
that
, in addition to everything else?” He gave her a hard glance. She was watching him, but he couldn’t read her expression with her makeup and sunglasses. “Never mind,” he said when she didn’t respond immediately. “It doesn’t matter.”

She made a sound of disgust.

“What?”
he asked sharply. What right did she have to be annoyed?
He
was the one lied to, not her.

“I was a double major in history and theater, for your information. I wasn’t lying about loving history. At the time I met you, I was doing an adaptation of
Nine Days a Queen
and was playing Lady Jane Grey.”

His annoyance swelled at her uptilted chin and regal manner. She was such a damn riddle box. Only Gia could suddenly make him bizarrely imagine Lady Jane Grey being portrayed by the beach-bum teenage boy sitting in the passenger seat.

“I often choose historical roles,” she continued. “As for Rill Pierce, his scholarships are for theater and film students. I didn’t want you to find out I was an actress back then. If I’d told you
I
was the one who had won a Pierce scholarship, you would’ve asked me
which
scholarship I’d won. And in case you’ve forgotten, we’ve already established that I knew at the time you possessed this unreasonable prejudice against actresses,” she finished with force.

“Unreasonable to you, maybe.”

“Tell me why it’s reasonable to
you
.”

“You’ve worked in this business a while now. You must realize that it’s common for makeup artists to avoid actors and actresses. There’s often a clash between us.”

“That’s a lame reason to judge people without knowing them.”

“But why did you have to mislead me when it came to the scholarship? I felt like an idiot when Rill happened to mention that the blazing comet of the film business—Gia Harris—was a recipient of his scholarship.”

“Is
that
what this is really all about? You don’t like having the wool pulled over your eyes? Ex-intelligence operative and Hollywood special effects–artist bigwig doesn’t like being out of the loop.”

“Nobody likes being misled. Why should it have mattered if I took a dislike to you that night?”

She made a sound of bitter disgust and crossed her arms above her waist. “You are such
an idiot,” she breathed out as she turned away from him, mutely staring out at the stark desert landscape.

He simmered in the silence for the next several minutes, undoubtedly grinding some enamel off his back teeth. Curse him for having the idea of driving to Illinois. True, he thought it was a better idea for security, but the memory of Gia lighting up as she’d told him about the cross-country trip when she’d been sixteen might have nudged his decision a little, as well.

Nothing good ever came from being sentimental.

Gia lowered her seat to a full reclining position. When she squirmed to get comfortable, while still keeping her back stubbornly to him, his attention was caught. She’d scooted up the chair and pulled her knees up onto the seat. The seat belt lowered over her hips, the seat strap pressing against her loose, low riding jeans and cupping her ass.

As if
a guy would ever have an ass like that. Arousal tickled the root of his cock. She wiggled impatiently, still struggling for a comfortable position. This time, lust roared instead of whimpered. He hardened with vigor.

With effort, he jerked his gaze off the appealing sight of her ass.

This trip with Gia was going to be a trial all right. In more ways than one.

*   *   *

Maybe she slept. He thought she did, not only because of her stillness but also because the anger and tension that had seemed to pulse in the air between them seemed to slowly dissipate. Seth started to feel guilty for taking his irritation out on her. He didn’t want to reveal his frustration; it just seemed to pop out of him at times.

Best to face the fact. His sexual attraction to Gia Harris had been—and still was—uncommonly strong. He’d been more disappointed than he’d cared to admit when he discovered she was something different than he’d been led to expect that night years ago. He’d thought her a fresh, sexy surprise, one of those moments in life when you think,
Jesus, what did I do to deserve something like this?
Realizing she was a twenty-two-year-old ingénue with the flame of fame burning bright within her had made him more bitter than he already was.

And he’d been pretty damned cynical on the topic even then.

But Gia wasn’t the one responsible for his original jadedness when it came to actresses. She didn’t deserve the weight of his experience and history.

Admitting that made him feel steadier. Almost as if the landscape were mimicking his calming mood, they entered the environs of Flagstaff. He turned the heat on to low as the temperature plummeted in the refreshing mountain oasis. Gia squirmed a little in the seat next to him and turned over on her other hip, facing him. Her lip paint had nearly faded away. She yawned widely, the glimpse of her pink, full lips and red mouth making him want to stare at her instead of the road. For a full moment, he sensed her studying his profile, but neither of them spoke. He felt it for the first time since that night two years ago, that ephemeral, magical spell settling on his tingling skin.

“Where are we?” she murmured sleepily, her low, smooth voice causing his forearms and neck to roughen.

“The outskirts of Flagstaff. Do you need a break?” he glanced at her as he came to a stop at a light. It had grown overcast as he wound up the mountains to Flagstaff. He’d taken off his sunglasses, and so had she. Her eyes were like a clear spring day.

“Yes, please. I’m sorry I called you an idiot,” she added quietly.

He nodded. “I’m sorry for getting irritated at you for something that happened a long time ago.”

Her gaze flickered over his face. She started to speak but then hesitated.

“What?” he prodded.

“It doesn’t really seem like a long time ago,” she murmured.

“No. It doesn’t,” he agreed, studying the sublime curve of her jaw and the sweet target of her mouth.

A horn honked loudly. He cursed and drove through the green light. Neither of them spoke for the time it took him to pull into the parking lot of a roadside log-cabin restaurant and gas station that had Route 66 memorabilia and signs plastered all over it. The charged atmosphere didn’t dissipate though. He whipped the SUV into an empty spot at the side of the building. Slowly, he twisted the keys in the ignition.

“Do you need to retouch me before I go inside?” she asked.

Her words struck him as potently sexual. Naturally. Everything was striking him as sexual, ever since he’d seen Gia sitting in that conference room yesterday. He wanted to touch her all right, and retouch her, and squeeze her . . . and consume her. He looked over at her. Her lips parted beneath his stare. Prodded by instinct and simple, unmitigated lust, he gave up the fight for the moment. He leaned toward her.

“I need to do something first,” he rasped before he covered her mouth with his own.

He knew the moment her warm breath rushed against his lips and her mouth softened beneath his kiss it wasn’t
just for a moment
though. She was under his skin, and good. He’d wondered if he had fooled himself into thinking that being with her was much, much better in memory than in reality.

No. He’d had it right from the first.

He heard her soft whimper as he slicked his tongue along her lower lip and felt her inner heat. Right here, right now, only the naked truth existed. He dipped his tongue between her lips, the act of piercing into her sweetness striking him as intensely erotic.

He knew he should stop. But he couldn’t. Especially when she slid her tongue against his, and her flavor fully penetrated his brain. He framed her face with his hands and delved his tongue between her lips hungrily. When she gripped his hair and her short nails scraped against his neck, his cock jerked viciously.

He wanted inside her again, and his craving was sharp and cutting.

He tore his mouth from hers, grimacing at the harsh depravity. Sitting up, he inhaled, straining to clear the fog of lust from his brain.

“Sorry. I don’t know why I did that,” he said, scraping his hair out of his face in a frustrated gesture.

“Yes, you do,” she replied softly.

For a few seconds, he just stared at her.

“Things are different now than they were then,” he said.

“Because you know the ugly, horrible truth about me?”

“Because of the circumstances. We shouldn’t make this situation any more complicated than it already is,” he growled softly, pulling the keys out of the ignition and avoiding her stare. He twisted around and found his makeup kit.

“Maybe it would be best if I showed you how to do your mouth,” he said quietly as Gia started to raise her seat.

“Yeah, maybe it would be.”

Damn.
He knew by her cool tone he’d offended her.

*   *   *

Gia applied her lip makeup as Seth had instructed her, trying to ignore the potent combination of anger and lust simmering inside of her.

So what if what Seth said was true? The reasonable thing to do would be to rein in this teeth-grinding attraction they had for each other. She
knew
that. But that didn’t make it any easier to hear him say it. Instead, it just brought back all the reminders of why he’d never called her to begin with.

You had my number as well.

The memory of his saying that this morning popped into her brain, unwelcome. She irritably shoved the thought aside. He’d been changing the subject to derail her.

She knew she shouldn’t care what he thought of her. But no one liked being stereotyped, being seen as something they weren’t. Being seen incorrectly by Seth Hightower especially grated on her already raw nerves.

“Go on inside. I’ll follow you in a minute,” she told him coolly as she painted the neutral shade on her lips.

“Gia, I only meant—”

“I know what you meant,” she said crisply, studying her reflection in the mirror. “It wouldn’t be smart for us to give in to it.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t want you like hell.”

She blinked in surprise at his harsh statement and turned to him. His face looked rigid, his eyes glittering.

“But not enough. Isn’t that right?” she asked quietly.

His mouth tightened. For a second, she thought he was going to curse. She wished he would, for some reason. It would be nice to see him lose control for once. Instead, he turned suddenly and whipped open his door, got out and slammed it behind him hard. She watched his long-legged saunter across the parking lot in the makeup mirror, her anger amplifying to a low burn.

When she followed him a minute later—perfecting her slouchy boy walk—she noticed him standing in the checkout line, holding two cups of coffee and several bottles of water tucked beneath his forearm. She hesitated outside the bathrooms, inhaling for courage before she plunged into the men’s. Thankfully, there was no one inside, and it was reasonably clean.

When she reached the parking lot after leaving the bathroom, she didn’t see him in the SUV. He must still be inside. As she approached the vehicle, however, she spotted him in the distance. There was a small playground in the back of the establishment, built to give car-confined kids an opportunity to expend some youthful energy. Seth was the only one using it today. She leaned her hip against the car and watched, openmouthed. He hung off an iron horizontal ladder, knees bent to keep him suspended, doing pull-up after pull-up, his precise, rapid strength and obvious pent-up power stunning to observe.

When he straightened, feet on the ground again, Gia turned away abruptly and got in the car. She felt rattled by the vision. It took her a few seconds to realize why. In her mind a moment ago, she’d accused him of not wanting her, of possessing annoying amounts of sexual restraint.

But the truth had just been right there in front of her. Seth Hightower wasn’t impervious. Far from it.

He was burning just as much as she was.

*   *   *

They didn’t talk much as Seth drove for the next several hours, and dusk slowly began to settle. What had happened in that Flagstaff parking lot seemed to hover like a dense cloud inside the SUV, making the atmosphere crackle with tension. Seth showed no sign of tiring, even when full night fell. Curiosity pierced her ruffled emotional state after they paused for gas and a quick break on the outskirts of Albuquerque.

“Do you miss it? Living here?” she asked him, once they were on the road again.

“Yeah. The wide-open spaces. The quiet.” He lifted two long fingers off the wheel, gesturing to the midnight dome of millions of bright stars above them. “The night sky.”

She loved the sound of his deep, rough voice in the darkness.

“I recall you mentioning college once when . . .” She cleared her throat remembering too late the circumstances where he’d mentioned it. She’d been in his arms, following a particularly fulfilling round of lovemaking, their breaths and hearts slowing. Blinking away the potent flash of memory, she rallied. “Did you go to school around here?”

“Yeah. University of New Mexico. Jake and I both went there on football scholarships.”

“Is Jake big like you?”

He nodded. “Jake’s the one who played four years though. Made Defensive Player of the Year two years in a row. I quit late in my freshman year.”

“College?”

“No, football.”

“Didn’t like it?” she asked, turning slightly in her seat, her interest caught. She could perfectly imagine Seth as a football player, given his size and athletic grace. She could imagine one big problem with the scenario, though, given what she knew about him.

“I like football okay, but it’s a game.”

“It got in the way of your art, didn’t it?”

He looked over at her swiftly. She gave him a small smile.

“Yeah. That’s the reason I jumped at the scholarship,” he agreed quietly, his eyes back on the road. “I couldn’t have studied art any other way. We didn’t have the money for school. But being an art student isn’t like being in your typical liberal arts program. It’s very demanding. I started to resent all the practice hours and travel time required for the team. So I joined ROTC and got my free ride that way.”

“I was wondering how being an artist and the whole Army intelligence thing went together,” she mused. “But I suppose military intelligence could use a master of disguise.”

“The military taught me almost as much about makeup as a special effects internship I did for a couple years in college. Maybe more.”

She wanted to ask him about some of his assignments but figured perhaps they were confidential, so she refrained. The mood in the vehicle had segued from tension-filled to mellow, and she didn’t want to ruin it.

“It’s certainly a beautiful place to call home,” she said, gazing out her window onto the dome of stars.

“Yeah. But ever since my mom passed, it doesn’t feel as much like home to me.”

“She was the artist.”

Gia blinked. Somehow, her words sounded more significant than she had meant them to be. She had meant it generally, but also specifically. Seth’s mother was
the
artist of Gia’s sculpture. Seth didn’t respond immediately. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

“Do you still have it?” he asked after a moment, his casualness sounding a little forced.

Her heart leapt at his quiet question. She didn’t need to ask him what he meant. Somehow, they both had been thinking about her favorite sculpture that had bizarrely been modeled after Seth himself.

“Yes,” she replied in a hushed tone. She felt too vulnerable to tell him it still sat in a prime space on her mantel. “I thought about getting rid of it after that night.”

“Why didn’t you?” he asked, his profile rigid, his gaze never wavering off the road.

“Your mother’s sculpture didn’t do anything to me.”

She’d said it matter-of-factly, but realized he might have thought she was being petulant. She shifted in her seat again restlessly, scratching under the wig.

“Is it starting to bug you?” he asked her, noticing her scratching.

She nodded.

He swiftly checked behind them, but the empty road disappeared into the blackness of a desert night. He pulled over to the side of the road and put on the hazards.

“We can take it off for now. Do you want me to take off the cap too?” he asked, leaning toward her and peeling off the wig. She heaved a sigh of relief. He placed the wig carefully in the backseat.

“No,” she said, touching the brown skullcap that closely bound her hair to her head. “It’s not bothering me. It’s the hair that was hot and scratchy. The binder
is
uncomfortable though. Can I take it off?” she asked, waving at her torso.

“You don’t want to go inside somewhere and eat soon?”

“I’m not that hungry,” she said honestly. “But maybe you are? You only had a salad at lunch.”

He shook his head. “We’ll stop somewhere in a couple hours and get a snack for the road. I’d just as soon get there as quickly as possible.”

She nodded in agreement. He didn’t move.

“Do you want help?” he asked, nodding at her bound torso.

“No, I can do it,” she said, glad the dim dashboard lights were the only source of light in the vehicle. Heat had rushed into her cheeks when she recalled that, while she might be able to get the zipper down on the stiff garment, getting it back up would require Seth’s help. She probably shouldn’t loosen the binder in order to prevent that agitating scenario again, but it was so
uncomfortable.

“Do you want me to drive?” she asked as he shifted the SUV out of park and glanced into the mirrors in preparation to return to the road.

“No. I’m fine. You can rest if you want to.”

“All I’ve done is rest,” she said ruefully. “I haven’t slept this much during the day since . . .
forever
.”

“You must have needed it. Sometimes, you’ve just got to let your body tell you what’s right.”

His words seemed to hang in the air and vibrate in her ears. She thought maybe he noticed the charged, potential double meaning of his statement because he inhaled sharply and shifted in his seat as he got the SUV up to speed on the highway.

Sometimes, you’ve just got to let your body tell you what’s right.

The image of his long body stretching and flexing as he’d pumped off those pull-ups jumped into her head. His body was telling
him
something. So was hers. Seth didn’t want to hear the message. She wasn’t sure she was comfortable giving in to that primal mandate either. Indulging in desire with Seth Hightower might set her off-track. It might make her waver from what had once been a well-planned life and career. She longed to have her orderly life back, not to send it into further chaos.

Despite her cautionary thoughts, she reclined the seat and reached beneath the T-shirt. Seth glanced sideways at her, then quickly returned his gaze to the road. Her breasts felt achy, her nipples chafed and sensitive from the stiff restraint. She found the tab on the zipper and exhaled. They hadn’t turned the radio on when they returned after their short stop. The metallic sound of the zipper lowering sounded far too loud and illicit in her ears.

She finally got it all the way down to her belly and inhaled a full breath of air. Seth opened his mouth as if he were going to say something, but then pressed his lips together, his jaw rigid. She turned on her side toward him, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. He didn’t fully look at her, but she sensed he was very aware of her watching his profile.

For a moment, the silence seemed to pulse with unsaid words. Gia longed to voice some of them, but dread mingled with the urge. Still . . . maybe loosening the binder had released more than the constriction on her lungs.

“I didn’t keep the truth from you that night because I’m a liar by nature,” she finally dared softly. “I wanted you to like me because I thought you were the most attractive man I’d ever met.”

He looked over at her.

“If that was wrong of me, I’m sorry,” she continued in a hushed tone. She waited for a moment for the hot, thick feeling in her chest and throat to recede. “You said on that night that the only rationale for us getting together so impulsively was that we wanted each other. Period.” His hand tightened on the wheel. “I understand that the circumstances have changed. I understand that there are things that make me objectionable to you.”

“I find you far from objectionable, Gia,” he grated out, still staring fiercely at the road.

“Let me finish. I was only going to say that I don’t think all those things make the original reason why we got together invalid. In fact, that reason seems as valid to me as it ever did. More so.”

His hands tightened on the wheel. “You want to give in to it?” he asked tensely through gritted teeth. “All in the name of a few fucks?”

Her heartbeat started to throb in her ears at his crudeness. She understood he was purposefully trying to put her off. It wasn’t going to work. She thought Seth knew that too.

“I don’t know. Maybe. We did that first night. Do
you
want to? Maybe you think it’ll mean more than just a few fucks, and that’s why you’re balking? It would be horrible, wouldn’t it?” she needled with quiet sarcasm. “Finding yourself wanting to be around an actress? Around
me
?”

A muscle jumped in his lean cheek. She almost felt the curse he restrained blistering his throat. The silence pounded in her ears. She sighed. Sensing his guard all too perfectly at that moment, she turned away from him and closed her eyes.