When he smiled and seemed to relax, she felt her own tension ease a little. But just a little. After all, their shared weekend loomed in her imagination. She wasn’t sure what he expected of her tonight.
“No,” he said. “I don’t need help. This is all I brought.” He paused. “If you hadn’t spent your night here waiting on me, what glamorous place would you have been?”
“In L.A., at Hugh’s premiere.”
At the mention of Hugh, Zach’s eyes darkened.
“I was going out there this weekend because we start shooting together next week.”
“Are you two doing a love scene?” His voice was hard now.
More than one.
Annoyed because he’d nailed her and because, like most people, he so obviously attached undue significance to anything of a sexual nature on film, she ignored his question.
“I don’t want to talk about Hugh with you.”
“Good. Because neither the hell do I.”
She hesitated, wondering why he sounded jealous and not knowing where to go from here. “Are you hungry?”
“Look, there’s no need for you to worry about me. It’s late… And I’ve screwed up your schedule enough today as it is.”
Of course he was right, but he looked so bone weary, as if it had taken everything out of him to get here while she’d rested on his plane and had been pampered at Gram’s.
“I’ll just put some cheese and ham out,” she said. “You bought it, after all.”
“Not so that you would stay up and wait on me. I can take care of myself.”
“It won’t take a minute,” she insisted, stubbornly refusing to let him boss her around.
“Okay. I’ll be back down after I freshen up.” He left her and carried his bag and briefcase upstairs.
By the time he strode into the kitchen, she’d opened a bottle of wine and set a single place for him at the kitchen table.
When he sat down, she noted that his black hair was still gleaming wet.
“You’re not eating?” he said, sipping wine, when she hovered but didn’t sit.
“I ate at Gram’s earlier.”
“Not those chocolate-chip cookies she baked just for me, I hope?” he teased.
“She bakes them for me, too-even though I tell her not to.” Summer grinned back at him. As she pulled out a chair, she couldn’t stop staring into his utterly gorgeous eyes. Was there a man alive with longer lashes? A tiny pulse had begun to throb much too fast at the base of her throat, causing her breath to catch.
What was going on? How could she actually be so thrilled he was here, safe and sound, when he’d forced her to come to him, when he intended to deliberately humiliate her? When Thurman and the rest of the town were judging and accusing her? When Hugh was sulking in L.A. and her agent and director were apoplectic? When she’d disappointed poor, darling Gram, who was hoping for a happy ending to this farce?
“I had a few cookies after a chicken sandwich,” she replied, striving to sound nonchalant. “Dessert is allowed sometimes, you know.”
“Even for an actress who has to keep her perfect figure…so she’ll look mouth-wateringly sexy in those love scenes…with Hugh?”
His angry black gaze flicked over her breasts in her thin T-shirt. His male assessment accused her even as it made her blood heat.
“Love scenes in movies aren’t the least bit sexy. They’re all about creating an illusion for the viewer.”
“Is that so? You always were good at creating illusions.”
He glanced away abruptly, trying to hide his obvious interest in her body and his fury at the thought of her with Hugh, but it was too late. Suddenly the walls of his kitchen felt as if they were closing in on her, and she couldn’t breathe. How could he charge the air between them with a mere question and a hot, proprietary glance?
“You have no right to attack me or to look at me like that. No right at all.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t dress the way you do,” he muttered in a tone so savage she knew he was as provoked as she.
“I’m wearing an ordinary T-shirt.”
His hard eyes burned her breasts again. “Right. I guess it’s the fact the material’s so thin and you’re braless underneath that’s getting to me.”
“Sorry!”
When she felt her nipples tighten and poke at the cotton fabric, she clenched her hands. He was impossible. Since he’d come back to Bonne Terre, he’d been turning everything into some sort of sex game.
“Why you’re determined to put us both through a weekend like this, I can’t imagine.”
He stared at her for a long time. “You know why. Just as you know you have it coming.” He stabbed a piece of cheese.
“I think I’d better go back to bed,” she said abruptly, not trusting herself, or him, or the intimacy of their cozy little situation. “We’re obviously not a couple who can cohabitate easily and naturally.”
At her rejection, his dark face was suddenly blank and cold. “Good idea. Go ahead. I’ll clean up-alone.”
“You’re supposed to be a billionaire. Why don’t you have staff to do all that?”
“Because they’re people, and I’d have to deal with them and their problems. Because I want to live informally here and not be bothered by too many prying eyes. Because I couldn’t be here…like this…with you, if I had a staff. Not that I don’t have a cleaning lady. And my secretary just hired a gardener. So, do you have more questions about how I live my life before you leave me in peace?”
He wanted her gone! She was getting on his nerves! His attitude infuriated her. He’d blackmailed her into coming here, hadn’t he? He’d launched the blatant sexual attack.
What had she expected-wine and roses?
Her heart pounding, she turned stiffly. Marching to her bedroom, she locked herself in and threw herself on the bed where she lay wide-awake, tossing and turning and staring up at the ceiling for what felt like an endless time.
Her mood was ridiculous. She should be thrilled he didn’t want her tonight.
She heard the savage clink of dishes and silver in the kitchen, of a garbage lid being slammed, of the disposal grinding violently. His heavy tread resounded in the hall outside her door and on the stairs. Then he stomped about in the room above hers. Something crashed to his floor so hard she sprang to a sitting position. Fisting her sheets, she stared at the ceiling listening, but after that bit of violence, he quieted.
When he turned on the water, the sound of it hummed in her blood. She imagined him naked in his shower with hot suds washing over his warm, sleek muscles. And despite what he’d said to anger her, she wanted to go up and join him.
Slowly, she got out of bed and went to her bathroom. Stripping, she turned on her own shower. When the water was warm, she stepped into the steam, threw her head back and let the pulsing flow drench her. She cupped her breasts and imagined him seizing her, thrusting inside her. She imagined her hands circling his hard waist. She imagined pressing herself against him even tighter as she begged for more.
The water ran down her limbs and circled in the drain. Sighing in frustration, she fell back against the tile wall while the spray streamed over her. A strange sensation of loss and a fierce longing to move beyond their past and their present darkness possessed her.
She clenched her fists, beat the tiles, but it did no good.
He disliked her, yet he would force her to stay with him.
Did he intend to hook her on his lovemaking and then laugh at her and leave her? Would he flaunt their relationship to everybody in Bonne Terre and beyond to prove she and her stepfather had wronged him?
She closed her eyes and pushed her wet hair out of her face. Because of her own shameless desire, she was on emotionally unsafe ground.
How would she make it through the weekend without falling more deeply under his spell?
Five
