Wild at Heart (Walk on the Wild Side #1) (20 page)

And Nick was the one who apologized afterwards, over and over, to
Amber
. When a bouquet the size of a Mini Cooper arrived in Nick’s hotel room the next morning—no doubt charged to the TV producer’s tab—he didn’t bother reading the card, he just put the flowers out in the hall for the housekeeping ladies.

As for Nick’s dad, Amber never even met him. The one time she’d suggested setting up a lunch, Nick glared at her like she’d suggested swimming in a sewage treatment pool.

Okay, so his parents were a mess.

But did Nick really think his roots doomed him to be as stunted as his parents were? Couldn’t he see how different he was from the typical Hollywood type?

Aside from cutting a swath through crowds of gorgeous women, of course.

Lord, even then, if the way he treated her in bed was any indication, Nick was anything but a selfish bastard when it came to sex. When she thought of the tenderness with which he’d pleasured her last night, the sensitivity to her needs, the selfless refusal to rush to his own satisfaction, she melted inside.

Nick
did
care. He
did
know how to give. And he had a good heart, even if he wouldn’t let himself believe he did.

It fit, really, with everything she’d always known about him. She saw so much, making films with him over the years. The thoughtful way he saw the world, the care he took when he filmed their actors, finding just the right angle, just the right light to capture the most subtle emotions in their faces and their bodies—all that was as much a part of him as breathing.

He had far more depth and sensitivity than most men she knew.

Why couldn’t he trust himself?

She gave him a sidelong glance now, mentally urging him to look at her. “I don’t want to shock you or anything, Nicky,” she said, “but I think the tabloid press might not be the best reflection of...you know,
actual reality
.”

He shrugged. “It’s real enough. L.A. real. We get the media we deserve.”

“You think Ruby deserves what Donny Lempert’s doing to her?”

He shot her a sour look. “Of course not.”

“Because she’s a decent person now, right? Even if maybe she screwed up in the past?”

“Yes. Obviously.” The words were clipped and curt.

Amber pressed on earnestly. “Because she’s not stuck as whatever she was when she was a teenager, right? She gets to grow and change?”

“
Obviously
.” For a man wearing a ridiculous DayGlo yellow rubber poncho, he was hitting the sarcastic tone pretty hard.

“So Ruby Torres gets a pass? She’s not doomed by association with Hollywood?”

“Yeah. She’s from Northern California, though, remember? They’re born with souls up there.”

“Oh,” said Amber. “So when you talk about L.A. being a complete moral post-apocalyptic wasteland where the people are born soulless, you actually mean...
you
.”

He hesitated for just a second, but then he nodded. “Yes, I mean me.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Nick—look at yourself. Look at you out here, in the middle of a storm, walking out on a cliff where you’re lucky you didn’t get hit by lightning, trying to save a woman you barely even know. For someone who claims not to have a functioning human heart, you’re the most loyal person I know.”

“
Me
?” he protested. “There are stray dogs living under freeway bypasses who are more loyal than me. You know my history with wom—”

“When it
counts
, Nick,” she insisted. “You’re loyal when it counts.”

“When it
counts
? Jesus, Amber, either you’re loyal, or you’re not. It’s one of those black and white things, no shades of gray.”

She jerked him to a stop and clapped her free palm to his chest, just over his heart. “You keep talking about being wired wrong, about being broken in here. But I know you’re not broken. I
know
.”

Nick gave her an ugly look, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “Well—you’re wrong.”

“I’m not—”

“Stop, Amber!” he said, sharply, dropping her hand. “Just
stop
. Okay? You can’t fix me. Just give it up already. I know what I am.”

He stormed ahead of her down the trail, the pack bouncing violently against his spine.

“Nick!” she yelled. “Oh, for pity’s sake, come back!” She quickened her pace to try to catch up with him, her soles sliding on the layer of hail still glistening on the trail.

And that was a mistake.

The next thing she knew, her feet went out from under her.

She felt herself go sideways, flailing, and then she fell hard. Her elbow smacked against a fallen pine branch, and her hip struck a knob of rock jutting up through the ice. Gobs of half-melted hail and pine needles and brown leaves flew up in a puff around her.

At the sound of her sudden squeal, and then her groan of pain, Nick whirled.

“Shit!” he said, hurrying back and kneeling down beside her, dropping the pack. He stretched his hands out over her legs, as if deciding whether or not to touch her. “Are you hurt?”

She did a quick internal inventory—pants legs soaked and muddy, hip and elbow and left wrist aching badly, brain a little rattled, knees and shoulders tangled awkwardly in the rubber of her poncho, which seemed to have twisted around her boa-constrictor style.

No stabbing pains, though. She tried a tentative wriggle, and nothing seemed to collapse or pop or throb any worse. No breaks or sprains, then, just bruises. Including a big one to her pride.

“Did you hurt anything?” Nick asked again, gingerly pressing his fingers to her shoulder, and pulling back the hood of her poncho so he could see her face. “Is your head okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. She managed to bend the elbow she’d landed on, and use that hand to push up to something close to a half-sitting position. “My head’s fine. I just banged myself up a little along the side.”

She fought against the tangle of the poncho, trying to get her weight off her hip.

Nick slid his hand under her arm, supporting her ribcage, but not lifting her further. “Maybe you shouldn’t try to get up yet. Just wait a minute—make sure your spine’s really okay before you move. Sometimes you can’t tell right away.”

“My spine is spectacular,” she said. “But the ground’s soaking wet.” She tried wriggling again, but more of the poncho was trapped beneath her than she’d first realized, pinning the rest of her down. With her legs and her right arm wrapped up tight, she felt like a big, wet, rubbery, slightly bruised caterpillar. “
Please
, Nicky, just help me get up.”

“We’ll compromise,” he said, and lifted her just slightly, then sat on the ground himself and slid her gently into his lap. “Sit there for a minute. You’ll stay dry, and I can be sure you’re not hurt worse than you think.”

She wasn’t hurt, but the temptation to curl up with Nick was too powerful to resist. She laid her head against his chest—though instead of his delicious skin, her cheek touched rain-slicked rubber, cold and slippery as a fish. But Nick’s hand slipped under her poncho, rubbing her back, strong and warm.

“Oh, cowboy,” she sighed. “Why are we such a mess?”

Nick’s mouth brushed against her hair. “You’re not a mess,” he said, his voice gentle again, rumbling against her ear. “I’m the mess.” The hand on her back kept stroking, stroking.

She tried to nuzzle closer to his throat, where she could catch the warm, comforting scent coming off of him, from the heat trapped beneath his poncho.

Even wet and sore and cold and tired, it felt so good to be held by him. Damn it, he could be so sweet. It was so easy to be with him like this. And the sex between them was certainly fabulous. Lord, it still made her catch her breath to think of how he’d made her come last night, with his tongue and his fingers, taking all the time in the world to build her up and take her over that spectacular edge. And at the end, she was going down on him, and he’d been so close to coming in her mouth—an opportunity any other man she’d heard her friends talk about would have taken gladly—he’d wanted her to come back up so he could kiss her, and hold her, and look her in the eye, so he could be inside her and they could come together.

The way he’d spoken her name, then—it was like he was speaking a sacred liturgy, a holy word. She didn’t think she’d misread the powerful emotion in his voice. But she hadn’t misread his fear, either. Both the passion and the fear were real.

As he held her now, his breathing was deepening—she could hear it against her ear, and feel it in the greater rise and fall of his chest beneath hers. His stroking hand had moved to her waist, lifting the hem of her skirt, brushing along the curve of her skin there, the touch growing firmer, more possessive.

Did he feel his blood heat like hers was heating? She felt sure he did. She pressed her forehead into the curve of his throat, and it almost seemed as if the pulse of his blood, the beat of his heart, quickening along with hers.

And, yes, where her thigh pressed into his lap, she could feel him hardening. He wanted her, even if he didn’t want to want her.

Should she turn her head up just a little further, brush her lips against his jaw, bring them to his mouth? He’d kiss her back if she did, she knew. It wouldn’t matter about the rain, or the hail on the ground around them, or the need to find Jake and Ruby, or anything either of them had said about last night being the last time.

It would happen,
everything
would happen, because neither one of them seemed to know how to stop it once it started.

But Nick let out a sigh, then—the sort of sigh a person made when they were trying desperately to deny themselves something they wanted. A determined sigh. And he shifted her in his lap subtly to make the contact between them a bit less intimate.

And so she let out a sigh of her own. A sigh of resignation.

“Hey,” Nick murmured suddenly. “Can I tell you something?”

“Of course,” she said.

“It doesn’t change anything, okay? But I just—I want you to know the truth. It’s important to me, for you to know.” He drew in a deep, steadying breath, and for a moment the hand on her waist stilled. “About me and Ruby.”

Her heartbeat stuttered. “What about you and Ruby?”

“That, um, it wasn’t what you thought. Or what I said....”

Oh,
that
truth. Dear Lord—was he really going to tell her? Warmth flowed through her, driving out the chill of the rain. “What wasn’t what I thought?”

“What you saw,” he said, uneasily, “when you walked into the cabin....that was....that was as far as it went, okay? She literally just walked in, right before you did, and took off her clothes. That was not my idea at all. All I wanted was for her to put them back on again.” He broke off and groaned. “Okay, that sounds completely preposterous. Never mind. You don’t have to believe me.”

Laughter burbled out of her. “I do believe you. I knew already. Ruby told me.”

“Ruby
told
you?” He slapped her thigh through her poncho. “And you didn’t say anything? Christ, Amber, my gut’s been in knots for days! It’s amazing the stomach acid didn’t eat all the way through to the surface.”

She laughed again. “I would have figured it out anyway, even if she didn’t tell me. Once I got over the initial fury.” She sat up straighter so she could look at his face. “I keep telling you, Nick—I
know
you. And you wouldn’t do that to me.”

He looked almost offended. “
What
? Yes, I would. That’s totally the sort of thing I would do. I’m surprised I
didn’t
do it.”

“Will you listen to yourself?” she said, punching him in the chest. “You idiot! You didn’t do it because it’s not the sort of thing you would do. Not the Nick you are now. Maybe twenty-two-year old Nick would have done it,
maybe
, but twenty-eight-year-old Nick wouldn’t.”

“What? No. It was a
fluke
, that’s all. I was tired, or something. Not enough caffeine. Or I don’t have the stamina I used to have.”

She gave him a level stare. “I was in bed with you last night, remember? Stamina is clearly not an issue for you.” She sighed, gentling her expression. “You didn’t sleep with Ruby right after you slept with me because you have a
heart
, cowboy. A good heart. Because you do actually care about me, and you wouldn’t do anything to break mine.”

He groaned again. “Amber, you’re making way too much of one decent decision. Probably the only decent decision I’ve made about a woman in my life.”

“One decent decision? Really, just one? How long have we known each other? Twelve years? Doing practically everything together.” She laid her hands on either side of his face, making him look her in the eye. “Traveling all over the country. Making movies on a shoestring, stressed out and exhausted and hungry and filthy half the time, doing impossible things, under circumstances that would have Mother Theresa biting people’s heads off. And in all that time, you have never, ever once let me down.”