Sweet Talk Boxed Set (Ten NEW Contemporary Romances by Bestselling Authors to Benefit Diabetes Research plus BONUS Novel) (95 page)

“All right there?” he asked her when they first got into position in the black leather chair. “You get the blood rushing to your head, you need a break, you just say the word, and I’ll help you up.”

“Not your job,” Calvin growled. “I say when she gets a break.”

“No,” Will said, his expression hard for once. “You don’t. She does. And if you’ll get on with it, she won’t have to be down there so long. Let’s go.”

Calvin looked like he wanted to explode, but the pictures were gold, and he knew it, and for once, he held himself back. “I’m not the one sitting around here yapping. All right. Arm in the air. Other hand on her back.”

Will raised his arm, elbow high, and looked straight at Faith as Charlotte got in there, pinning his jacket back so it fell perfectly, then tweaking his tie.

“How am I doing?” he asked Faith softly. “This what you want?”

She stared back at him in shock. At what he’d said, at the fact that he’d said it here, in front of everyone. And he didn’t smile.

“Hold that expression,” Calvin said. “But look at Gretchen. You’re mad, bad, and dangerous to know, and she’s just about to find that out. More shadow on that arm,” he snapped at Faith. “Quick.”

Faith adjusted the light, calming her racing heart, until Calvin said, “Good. There.”

She watched the shoot, moved, followed orders, but her mind wasn’t on it. Nowhere close to on it.

Hope started at the knock on the flimsy door of her Brooklyn apartment. “One second,” she whispered. She got off the bed and went out, shutting the door to the bedroom behind her.

She unfastened the chain, slid the deadbolt back, and opened the front door, then stood gaping at Hemi. The last person she’d expected, and the last person she needed right now.

“How…how did you get in?” she managed.

“How d’you think?” There was not one bit of tenderness in the eyes that bored into hers. “Your security is rubbish. I walked in behind a bloke who didn’t even ask me what I was doing here. I could have been anybody.”

She couldn’t handle his anger, not now. She couldn’t handle him being here. “I said I couldn’t see you tonight,” she said, keeping her voice low. “I said…”

His face had become closed, set, and hard as iron. “I know what you said.” The skin prickled on her arms at the danger she heard in his voice. “That something had come up, and you couldn’t make it. And when you didn’t answer my text, I decided to check and make sure you were all right. But why are you whispering? And why did you just look back into your flat?”

“I turned the ringer off on my phone.” She was getting flustered in spite of herself, even though this was
her
apartment,
her
space. “Because I couldn’t talk. Because I’m busy. I’m sorry, Hemi, but please call me tomorrow.”

He had pushed past her, though, was striding through her apartment, throwing open the door at the back. A cry met him, and Hope was rushing through behind him.

“It’s OK, baby,” she said as Karen moaned and rolled over, her arm going up to shield her eyes. “It’s OK.”

“Ohhh…uhhh…” Karen was fumbling for the plastic bowl, heaving herself to her elbows, and Hope held her head as she was sick. Nothing to come up, because Karen hadn’t been able to keep anything down all day.

She helped her sister get comfortable again when the sickness had passed, picked up the bowl, and handed her a water bottle. “Try to sip, sweetie,” she coaxed. “Tiny sips. You need to stay hydrated.”

“Make him go away,” Karen moaned.

“I will,” Hope promised. “Right now. You rest. I’ll be right back.”

She went to the door, carrying the bowl, and Hemi stepped back and followed her out, didn’t say anything as she shut the door with infinite care, because sound and light made the headache and nausea worse.

“What—” Hemi began.

“Give me a minute.” She wanted to tell him to leave, that she didn’t need this, not tonight, but instead, she forced her feet to move to the curtained-off alcove that was the bathroom to wash out the bowl. She didn’t speak to him until she had returned it to Karen’s side, had seen her sister resting again, her eyes closed. She would sleep now, Faith hoped.

When she came out, Hemi was standing in the tiny, shabby living room, staring out the window. At nothing, because there was nothing but an air shaft to see, and the brick wall of the building opposite, and not even that now, not in the dark.

He turned at her approach. “Sorry,” he said, and she could see the effort the word cost him. “I thought—”

“Yes.” She tried to harden her heart against him, because how dared he suspect her, when she’d never given him one single reason to be jealous? “I know what you thought.”

“You could have told me your sister was ill.”

“I didn’t even think about it,” she admitted with a sigh, because he was right. She could have. “I barely remembered to text you.”

“Does she need a doctor?”

She sank onto the couch. “Probably. It’s migraines, they think, and she has medication. But it’s so…” She passed a hand across her forehead. “She’s sick again and again, ten times an hour, sometimes, for days. She can’t even keep water down. We had to go to the ER last month, and wait for hours, and…” She trailed off, the fear rising again, trying to overtake her. The fear of losing Karen. Her baby sister. Her family. Thinking about the pain on Karen’s face when Hope had got home tonight, the white, staring blankness of it, and her own helplessness at her sister’s misery.

“She needs a specialist,” Hemi said. “Why isn’t she seeing one?”

“I took her to the neurologist last month.” Hope wished she didn’t sound so defensive, but she couldn’t help it. Did he really understand so little of what life was like for regular people, for people like her? “Of course I did, as soon as her doctor told me to. But they need to do an MRI, they said, an EEG, all kinds of things, and I have to wait until my new insurance kicks in, because I can’t…” She had to stop for a minute to get hold of herself. “I’m so worried about her,” she said, her voice low. “I can’t…I can’t sleep.”

She blinked the tears back.
Be strong,
she told herself, as she did twenty times a day.
You can be strong.
She took a deep breath and continued. “They won’t do it until I get the preauthorization from the insurance. But as soon as I can, I will. Next month.”

“Why didn’t you ask me for help?” he demanded. “Why didn’t you even tell me?”

“Because I…I couldn’t. It’s your company. It’s your insurance. How can I tell you it’s not enough? How can I risk what you would say, or what you would do? I need my job. I need it more than ever now.”

“You think I’m that kind of bastard?” There was more than hardness in his eyes now. There was anger. “That I’d sack you because you told me your sister had a medical problem? You have to know I wouldn’t do that. The truth is, this doesn’t have a bloody thing to do with my company, or your job. This has to do with you and me. With why you won’t let me get you and Karen into a better neighborhood. With why you didn’t tell me she was ill. With why you won’t ever let me help you.”

“But I couldn’t, can’t you see?” She was trembling, but she forced herself not to drop her gaze, to meet that hard stare, because this mattered. She’d tried again and again to explain, and still he couldn’t seem to understand it, or he couldn’t bear to understand it.

“You want to take me over,” she told him. “I work for you already. If I let you pay my rent, what does that make us? I can’t let you own me, like you own everybody and everything else. I have to come to you as…as myself, free and clear, or I’ll lose myself. I can’t do that. I can’t let myself be lost.”

“That’s rubbish.” Nothing but the pulse that beat in one temple betrayed his temper, but she could feel it emanating from every muscle all the same. “All I want is to give you everything, and you’re too stubborn to take it.”

She saw the anger, and it didn’t scare her. All it did was affirm her own resolve. “I’ll tell you one more time. And then I have to ask you to leave my apartment and think about what I said.” This wasn’t the time or the place, but she was too battered by exhaustion, too worn down by all the demands on her to be anything but honest with him.

She forced herself to speak quietly, to be calm. “I can’t be your mistress, Hemi. You want my body. You want my obedience, and I want to give it to you. In bed, or out of bed. Anywhere. I want to give it to you.” She was blushing, and he was looking at her, his gaze heating, and he was moving closer. She couldn’t succumb to him again, though, couldn’t let them get off track. She had to say this.

“But you don’t want to give me yourself,” she told him, “and that makes us a one-way street. I can’t go up a one-way street, with no way of getting back again. I need money, of course I do, but I can earn money, for myself, and for Karen, too, and I will. What I need most from you isn’t money. It isn’t even the pleasure you give me with all the…all the things you do. What I need most from you is just…you. I need you. That’s what I need. And it’s the one thing you won’t give me.”

***

Whoops. That one had gotten away from her. It seemed she just couldn’t stay with sex. Hope and Hemi’s story kept veering away into romance, try as Faith might to keep it on target. When was poor Hemi going to get to spank Hope? He was dying to do it, Faith knew it, and Hope wasn’t going to be saying no, but it seemed Faith had to torture them both a little longer first.

It was going to have to be the next chapter, that was all, or more likely the one after that. After Hemi had sent the car and driver to pick up Hope at the office, then Karen at school, and take them both to the specialist he’d conjured up. The best one in New York, of course.

She’d been writing more of the story down every night, just for herself, just for fun. And just because she couldn’t help it. This last week, though, as she’d been working with the designer on the website, had been going through the images with Calvin, choosing the best ones, she’d been toying with the idea of submitting her own story to the site. The same way the images were going up, one episode at a time, starting with Hope and Hemi’s meeting.

If none of the viewers knew it was her, it might be all right. And having an example chapter up there could set the tone for the entire site, couldn’t it? That and the title, because she’d already convinced Calvin that
His Every Desire
had the erotic romance ring to it that would bring women to the site, that and the marketing campaign she had already kicked off. Women would come to look at Will, and they’d come back for more of him. Gretchen was good. She was pretty, and she looked sweet. She worked, but Will
killed.

It wouldn’t be wrong, surely, to put her own submissions up there with the others. She wouldn’t be manipulating their rank, after all. Even if she’d known how to add votes for her chapters behind the scenes, the web developer would know she’d done it. Anyway, she wouldn’t, because that wasn’t the point. She just wanted to see if anybody wanted to read her story. She wanted to know what happened, how Hope and Hemi could ever find happiness, and what was wrong with Karen. And she wanted to know if anybody else would want to know, too.

***

Will had apparently decided to forgive her for the pregnancy thing, because he approached her again while she was cleaning up after the shoot. Gretchen had already left, getting a hug and a kiss on the cheek from Will that were nothing but brotherly, Charlotte had taken herself off as well, and their three weeks of shooting were over.

“Bit of a celebration tonight?” he asked her.

She looked up from the fridge, where she was dumping leftovers into the trash. “Finished with this?” he asked, and at her nod, began to pull the bag out and knot it as he had done every week since the first one. This was the last time Will would take out her trash.

“Sorry?” She realized he’d spoken to her.

“I was thinking that you might want to go for dinner.” He hefted the bag out of the can, and she couldn’t help watching the bulge of triceps as he did it.

He glanced down at himself. “You’re right, I’m not dressed for it. How about if we both glammed up, pretended we were Hope and Hemi?” He grinned. “So to speak. Minus any scenes you didn’t care to reenact.”

“Oh.” She was blushing again, she could tell, because for one horrible, heart-stopping moment, she had thought he knew. But he couldn’t know. “Sorry. No, I can’t. I have plans.”

“Dinner with your mum again? You’re right, she probably doesn’t want me. Maybe a drink first?”

Did he really think her only possible evening entertainment was with her
mother?
“No.” She didn’t try to disguise the edge to her voice, “I actually have a date.”

She hadn’t been wrong, because he looked startled. She was steaming up a little now, and not from his tattoo. “With a fella, you mean.”

“Yes, this would be with an actual man.”

He looked like he wanted to say something else, but he stopped himself. “I’ll dump this and let you get to it, then.”

“I’ll come talk to you tomorrow, about keys and all.”

“Course,” he said. “Text me.”

She wondered all the same, while she was dressing to go out, what it would have been like if she’d said yes.

A mistake, that was what. She was getting on with her life, pursuing a relationship that might actually have a chance, because Will was leaving in two days. He was leaving forever, and New Zealand was six thousand miles across the Pacific. She had done the research.

The Moon Upside Down

Will set his duffel and suitcase by the front door for the morning. For when he would leave the apartment, and leave Vegas.