Stripped (4 page)

A bag of Werther’s Original hardy-candy caramels. Her favorite. She looped her arm around his neck and squeezed him tight for a moment. Wes might suck at dating, but the man was a pro when it came to love. “You’re the best.”

“Yeah, yeah.” But the hand on her hip tightened affectionately. “So, what do you think of the new guy?” He tipped his head to indicate Declan, who was disappearing into a curtained changing cubicle, arms laden with the pile of neatly folded clothing Marta had handed him. “He okay?”

“He’s okay,” she agreed, fingers clenched around bag of caramels. Declan made her uncomfortable, but he was definitely okay, especially now that he no longer resembled a woozy mountain man. A shave and haircut had taken care of that, and the physical signature of his fatigue had been covered by makeup.

Wes shifted, his arm against her lower back a comforting weight. “You all right?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You always answer your phone when I call you. Even when you’re not in a talking mood.”

Her face flamed. She knew what he meant. In the two reckless years she’d spent in Vegas, she’d more often than not ignored the calls from “Home,” as she had yesterday afternoon. But she never, ever ignored Wes. As a result, he knew all about the trouble she’d gotten into in those days, as well as her reasons for running to Vegas in the first place. He held the privileged position of family without all the strings she sometimes still felt were attached to her relationship with her parents. “I promise I’m all right.”

“Just wanted to make sure nothing was wrong.”

She paused, trying to read past the words into his tone. “Should there be?’

He shook his head, the too-long strands of his light-brown hair—now shot through with threads of gray here and there—falling haphazardly across his forehead as he looked up at her. Eyes the color of broken-in denim met hers, the lines fanning out from the corners deeper than those she’d noted on Declan, but she supposed that happened when a man reached the latter half of his thirties. “Your dad mentioned a house. You didn’t tell me you were thinking about that.”

A house. Yes, Fiona was indeed thinking about a house. What had once been her well-known itch to travel the world carried on the toes of her pointe shoes had recently settled into a simmering need for roots of the permanent kind. She understood why Wes had asked if she was doing all right, now: He’d unearthed something she
hadn’t
shared with him. “I was clicking around online and found a listing for a bank foreclosure north of here.”

“And it’s in good shape?”

“I’ll e-mail you the link later.”

“Do that. Don’t want you sinking your savings into a piece of shit.” He glanced over at the mirror once again in time to see Declan step out of the dressing room in Victorian-era dress shirt and trousers. “Murphy was my first pick to play Count Vargas, back in auditions.”

That surprised her. “So why didn’t you cast him originally?”

“I…let myself be talked into Lunsford.” Wes seemed uneasy admitting to it. He was famous in the industry for never doing anything he didn’t want to. “He and Sadie Bower had good chemistry,” he said, naming
Vendetta
’s lead actress, “and then his agent got involved. When the time came to choose, Murphy’s TV show back in Britain had just been picked up for a fourth series. Didn’t know until after we announced Lunsford as our Count Vargas that they’d killed off Declan’s character at the end of the third.”

“Well, now you have your guy.”

“Looks that way, yeah.”

She saw Declan smile at something Marta said as he held still for her pins, noting where the Count’s costuming was too tight or too loose. Christopher Lunsford stood a couple of inches shorter than Declan, with a stockier frame, but their shoulders must have been equally broad, because the seams at the top of the sleeves hit him just right. “He’s…nice,” she offered, voice soft.

“Oh?”

Her fingers tightened on Wes’s muscled shoulder, hidden beneath the gray cotton thermal he’d probably found on the floor of his closet this morning. “You should know that I wasn’t exactly, um, polite when he first arrived. I didn’t know what was going on yet, but I should’ve. I’m sorry.”

“I know what you’re like when you get cranky. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky he didn’t just turn around and fly home to Ireland.”

She punched him.

Wes just chuckled, and they watched Rick wander over to where Marta was adjusting Declan’s suspenders, footwear tucked under his arm, chapeau in hand and a silk necktie tossed over one shoulder. After helping Declan into a patterned waistcoat, Marta began tucking and pinning, altering the garments to fit Declan’s lean frame. Fiona leaned more of her weight into Wes’s shoulder as she watched her father bend down to help Declan don the boots while Marta slid the coat onto Declan’s shoulders. Then came the hat and tie, the latter of which required both costumers’ attentions, their back-and-forth mumbling too low for Fiona to understand.

After a few minutes, Rick turned, gesturing to Wes. “Come take a look?”

After Wes pushed up from the chair, Fiona sank down into it, curling her legs under her as the director studied the startling effect of Declan in full costume. From the toes of his purposefully scuffed boots to the battered top hat perched jauntily on his head, Declan Murphy looked every inch the Count—and much better than Christopher Lunsford could’ve ever hoped to, in her opinion. Declan wore his character like a skin, and he wasn’t even in front of the camera yet.

His eyes locked on her yet again while Wes and her dad debated some costuming detail, their voices fading as she stared right back at the Irishman she’d thought a lost drunk only a few hours before. She felt bolder in this chair, safe to meet his gaze with the barrier of Rick and Wes between them, not to mention Marta, who was inserting straight pins along the inner seam of his coat sleeves.
 

Attraction. That’s all it was, spurred by that momentary insanity they’d nearly shared, when she thought he was going to kiss her senseless right there in her makeup chair—when she’d realized it wasn’t Actors Being Actors. She was out of her depth and out of practice with her reaction to this tall, dark, and far-too-handsome stranger, one with whom she’d be working nearly every day for the next two months here in Los Angeles before they flew to Italy for the second block of shooting, where he would again be her subject for another three weeks.
 

She might be safe in this chair, but she wasn’t safe from him. Not if she didn’t shut down this thing zinging inside her. Right now.

Breaking eye contact as heat climbed her neck, making the tips of her ears burn, she pushed her glasses up her nose and lifted the bag of caramels from her lap, yet no matter how she tugged, she couldn’t force the plastic open.

A second before she resorted to using her teeth, a male hand thrust into her field of vision, snagging the bag. “Allow me.” She glanced up in time to see Declan, expression serious beneath the imposing scar, neatly rip the bag’s corner as easily as if he’d torn a piece of paper.

He stood close. Too close, she knew, because his yummy scent had just delivered a one-two punch to her nostrils, leaving her dizzy. Settling the bag back into the upturned palm she lowered, the corners of his mouth relaxed into a hint of a smile, a far quieter smile than any he’d yet given her. “Better?”

“Better,” she found herself agreeing, mind flashing to the remembered feel of his hand on her hip, so different from Wes’s familial touch. From any touch, come to think of it. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure, Miss O’Brien.”

Judging from the gleam in his eyes, he stated the truth.

THREE

Nine days later, Declan was still thinking about that kiss.

Or, more accurately, he was thinking about that almost-kiss with Fiona, right before Wes and company had barged into the trailer. The shape of her hip had been burned into his palm, itching whenever he thought of her.

Which was quite often, unfortunately. His body and brain had joined forces in order to saddle him with a crush that would put a hormonal teenage boy’s to shame. He wanted his makeup artist to be in the mood to like him.
 

Like,
like him
like him.

The very thought made him feel like a twat.

Taking a deep breath, Declan increased his pace on the treadmill, punching up the volume on the music that blasted through his earbuds. He’d developed a routine, barely more than a week into his L.A. stay. As soon as shooting wrapped for the day, usually well after sunset, the car service would take him back to the luxury hotel the studio had put him up in for the duration. Ten minutes later, he would be sweating in the hotel’s gym facilities, pushing himself through a grueling distance routine, followed by an hour on the weights.

Europe was far more accepting of slender men on the silver screen than the States, he’d discovered. If he wanted to make it in American cinema—and he sure as hell did—Declan needed to keep his muscles pumped and primed.
Work after work
, he mused wryly, and pushed himself into mile eight.

It didn’t leave much time for sightseeing, but what he
had
seen, he’d loved. Los Angeles was sunny and warm, busy and bright, and a far cry from his perpetually overcast hometown of Dublin. But he’d only experienced sunlight on his face during brief breaks in filming during the day, when he would step the outside the gigantic, airport-apropos warehouse hangar that was
Vendetta
’s soundstage and turn his face to the sky. The late-April air always felt like paradise against his made-up skin.

When he wasn’t on set, he pored over the script for
Vendetta
in his hotel room, memorizing and practicing until it felt as though his eyelids were made of sandpaper. He could barely appreciate the accommodations, which, in addition to a large bed, offered living area near the windows. His head was too lost in learning the nuances—and lines—of his character, Count Vargas, to truly take in the lushness that surrounded him.
 

That said, the richness of it all was undeniable. Hollywood was a different beast than any entertainment environment he’d known, and Declan knew his fair share. His first gig had been a toothpaste advert at age seventeen, and in the twelve years that followed, he had seen most of what Europe had to offer an actor. A couple of indie flicks, a long-running television drama, and, most recently, a BBC miniseries entitled
Arthur’s War
had placed Declan in film festivals, press tours, and fan conferences. He’d even done a stage play in New York once.

None of it had prepared him for L.A.
 

Everywhere he looked, he saw shiny and sparkly and metallic and new, not to mention bleached and plastic and couture and caffeinated. L.A. swirled around him, leaving him spinning in place as he tried to find a foothold in this bright, exuberant, desperate city—a foothold he needed if he wanted his career trajectory to be onward and upward.

Oddly enough, Fiona O’Brien felt like that foothold.
 

His alarm was set to wake him at five-thirty each morning, a brutal adjustment to the difference in time zones but necessary if he wanted not to be tardy to his hair-and-makeup calls on the studio lot. Declan did not want to be late. God only knew what sort of mood his tardiness would put her in, now that she seemed to have decided they couldn’t be friends.

And their stupid, fantastic almost-kiss was why she had decided that, but he wouldn’t take it back. Absolutely not. Glaring at the flat-screen television mounted in front of him on the gym wall, the images nothing but colorful, flighty blurs, he increased the treadmill’s speed again.
 

That almost-kiss had been eye-opening for Declan. Here was this woman who was not beautiful, but
compelling
, with honey-kissed skin and wide gray eyes she insisted on hiding under men’s button shirts and behind Ray-Ban glasses with navy plastic frames. This woman with her angular face and unsmiling mouth…except for when she laughed. That once, he had magically figured out the combination to unlock her lips and make her laugh.

He barely knew her, nine days in, and he suspected she wanted it that way. The almost-kiss had shaken her, regardless of the heat he’d seen blazing in her eyes.

Except it hadn’t been heat, not exactly. More like…a craving.

The warmth that no longer extended to him, not since their time alone in the hair-and-makeup trailer that first day, reached out and enveloped the other members of
Vendetta
’s cast and crew. There were those whom she’d obviously known for years—like Marta, the dresser—and those whom she was just meeting for the first time—such as the female lead, Sadie Bower.

Though only a year older than Declan, Sadie had nearly a decade more experience and an intimidating-as-hell résumé that included no less than three nominations for Best Actress in a Motion Picture. She was One of Those Women, the kind that stole all the light from a room the minute she walked in and blasted it back ten times brighter when she smiled. It was easy to forget that she was a formidable talent and not just a pretty face, stunningly beautiful, with a full pink mouth, tilted eyes the color of black licorice, and fair skin carrying the undertones of the Asian half of her heritage. Her loud, infectious laugh, when coupled with the enthusiastic manner in which she gestured when she spoke, instantly drew panting masses of people to her. On top of that, she had a reputation in the business for being genuine in all that she did—and that was a rare thing for film actors.
 

Earlier that day, they had been shooting scenes in the northwest corner of the soundstage set meant to be the interior of a Venetian palazzo. A cobweb-laden crypt with a shallow moat, the slums of Whitechapel, and an underground Victorian-era boxing-and-gambling club completed the remaining quarters of the stage. Cameras, sound, and lighting equipment were attached to fixed tracks running the directions of the compass, replicated at different angles on the ceiling to allow equipment to drop in from overhead.

Sadie had turned that smile on him as they sat on a bench during an afternoon shooting break. “Woken up from the dream yet, Declan?” she had teased gently, her natural British accent so pure and upper-crust it almost hurt his ears. In contrast, wearing her Victorian knickerbockers and floppy pageboy cap, which trapped the pinned mass of her straight midnight hair, she was the very picture of the street-urchin-in-drag that her character, Bit, was meant to be. “Or is this still Christmas in July for you?”