WHEN CHRIS WALKED into the sunny kitchen, she found Kota on a stool, working his way through a crossword and a big mug of coffee.
“Mornin’, gorgeous,” he said, and the smile that broke over his face made her heart skip three beats. He got up and poured her a mug. “Feeling better?”
“Much.” Ten hours without brooding, fretting, or lusting—thanks to a seldom-used sleeping pill—and she felt almost normal.
But it wouldn’t last, not unless she stayed well away from that smile. “I’ll be working today”—sequestered in her room—“so you don’t mind if I take my breakfast in there, do you? Maybe some cereal?”
His smile fell, and she felt a pang in her chest. In a perfect world, the whole week would be a sun-soaked sex romp with Poseidon, cavorting in the sea, riding horses, riding him. She’d almost gone there yesterday, a mistake she blamed on too much wine and not enough sleep.
She could only be grateful that Tana and Sasha had appeared before she’d damned herself for all eternity. Bad enough she was a two-faced liar. She drew the line at being a two-faced liar who slept with the person she was lying to.
And after yesterday, there was more than just her ethics at stake. Now that she realized Kota wasn’t just a pretty celebrity face but a truly extraordinary man, it was personal. She respected him. She couldn’t stomach the thought that if he someday learned she’d authored the forthcoming wedding exposé, he’d believe she’d whored herself out for a story.
“Suit yourself,” he said, “but I’m making French toast.” He set a bottle on the counter. Pure Vermont maple syrup.
That was dirty pool. She bit her lip.
“With strawberries,” he said.
Mmm, strawberries. Harmless little berries, so plump and so sweet. Piled on harmless French toast. Drizzled with harmless syrup.
He pulled out a stool invitingly.
Her good intentions crouched on the windowsill, one foot in, one foot out. Then Tri tapped her ankle and—poof—out the window they went.
Telling herself that it was, after all, only polite to share breakfast with her host, she scooped up the little dog and parked her butt on the stool.
She’d sequester herself after breakfast. For the rest of the day. And night.
Meanwhile, the view. Shirtless again, Kota moved around the kitchen, pulling out flour and eggs, a loaf of French bread. When he glanced her way, she had to ask, “You used blue tile on purpose, didn’t you, to bring out your eyes?”
He grinned. “Did it work?”
Like a charm.
She dropped her gaze to the mixing bowl. It looked like a toy in his hands, but he handled it like a pro. “Who taught you to cook?”
“Ma. She wanted her boys to be self-sufficient when we went out in the world. I can press a shirt, scrub a tub till it shines, and cook damn near anything that walks, swims, or grows in the dirt.”
He smiled, a crooked curve of his lips more beguiling to her than his movie-star smile. “I’m rusty on the pressing and scrubbing, but I keep my kitchen skills sharp.” He pointed his wooden spoon at her. “The ladies worship a man who can cook. Don’t try to deny it.”
She realized she was smiling too, a little dreamy, a lot bedazzled. “I can’t deny it.” What was the point, when she kept falling at his feet every time he picked up that spoon? “Does Verna know you use your cooking skills for seduction?”
He looked offended. “I’ve never cooked for sex. Well, not until yesterday, and look where that got me. It put you right to sleep.” He drizzled milk into the bowl. “What I cook for is better sex. A well-fed woman is a happy woman, and a happy woman is more fun in bed.”
Amused, she lifted a brow. “Is that a scientific conclusion based on thousands of case studies?”
“Hundreds, not thousands. I can’t cook for all of them. Who has the time?”
She laughed. His humor seldom came out in his movies, and never in the interviews he visibly suffered through when promoting a new film. But his timing was spot on.
“You should make a comedy,” she said.
“It would flop. People don’t want to see me crack jokes. They want to see me crack heads.”
“I don’t know about that.” She cupped her mug in both hands. “You’re pretty hot when you laugh. Trust me, the ladies would pay money to see it.”
“But their boyfriends would stay home in droves. I’d lose my tough-guy cred. Damage my badass brand. Or so my agent tells me.”
“Your agent should get a load of you now,” she said as he poured coffee with one hand and stirred batter with the other. “He’d be on the phone to the Food Network. Cooking with Kota.”
“Think it would catch on?” He hardened his jaw, narrowed his eyes to a squint. He did look like a badass. A superhot, mostly naked badass. With flour on his cheek.
She swallowed. “Yeah, I kinda do.”
Oh, she had it bad.
Tucking Tri under her arm, she went to cool off by sticking her head in the fridge, where she found a pitcher of fresh-squeezed orange juice.
“Pour me some, will you, sweetheart?”
She did, wondering why sweetheart didn’t piss her off like it should.
She poured herself one too, then loitered at the stove, pretending to watch his process instead of his biceps as he soaked the bread.
No harm in looking, she told herself. What could it hurt?
Nothing . . . until the first slice hit the griddle with a sizzle and pop, setting off a chain reaction. Hot butter spattered his abs. He skipped back with an “Ow.”
And then, oh God, then he curled his chin down to look at his stomach, a move that carved his three rows into six perfect bricks.
Dazzled, she watched him dab the butter with a finger, then lick it off with his tongue.
God help her, she wanted to be the butter.
Whirling away, she started opening random cabinets, searching for plates. Anything to stop staring. No one could really be built like him. He must be Photoshopped.
“Plates are warming in the oven,” he said, a sea of calm to her tempest. “But you can pop the champagne and pour it into the OJ. You like mimosas, don’t you?”
KOTA SMILED TO himself as he walked the plates to the porch. He couldn’t have planned that better if he’d tried.
Day two of “muscling” Christy into bed—har har—was underway. She could fight it, but it was a losing battle for sure, when a few drops of butter could take her down at the knees.
And that hadn’t even been intentional. Wait till he put his back into it, so to speak.
Setting the plates on the table, he gave her a minute to get settled before he bent over for Cy’s ball, twisting—just a little—so her eyes locked onto his abs. Then he straightened up—a little slow motion there—and hurled the ball all the way to the water, twisting the other way to give her a shot of his back.
He heard her breath catch. Satisfied, he took his own seat and quit posing long enough to let the French toast do its thing.
She drowned it with syrup and took a bite. Her head went back. Her eyes closed like she was coming. “Good. So good.” She drew it out in a moan.
He smiled. The next time she moaned like that, she’d be in his bed. Or his shower. Or under the hammock.
He refilled her mimosa. In a replay of yesterday, he slipped his knee between hers. Everything was working according to plan.
Until she moved her knees away.
What the—
He played it cool. “I’ll throw a couple more on the griddle.”
In the kitchen, he studied her through the window. Today’s sundress was grape, sprinkled with tiny white flowers and their tiny green stems. Her bare arms looped loosely around Tri on her lap, and her hair, thick and glossy as mink, was caught up in another of those messy buns.
An artist could make her face a life’s work, but it was the newly etched crease between her brows that caught his attention. Because it meant she was worried. About him.
As she should be. He was scaling her fortress. He’d be over the walls before dark.
Back at the table, he slid another slice onto her plate. “Thanks,” she said. “For feeding me. And for this.” She swept an arm toward the sea.
“I’m glad you’re here.” He leaned back and sipped his mimosa. He enjoyed watching her eat. He liked hearing her voice, her husky laugh.
“So you live in the canyon?” he said. “Whereabouts?”
“Oh, it’s hard to describe. The roads are . . .” She did a windy path with her hand.
“I know my way around. My agent’s on Willow Glen. And my best friend lived in the canyon for years.”
“He moved?”
“He died.”
“I’m sorry.” She lowered her fork, sympathy in her eyes. “Was he ill?”
“Overdose.” How did they get on this topic? He didn’t want to talk about Charlie.
Before he could change the subject, she said, “I lost a friend that way too. Kind of a boyfriend, or I thought he was. He was in the band—the sax player—back when I was barely legal.” Her finger stroked absently at the condensation on her glass. “I didn’t know the signs back then. I’m smarter about it now.”
“My buddy was clean when I met him, back when I first came to L.A. But he had secrets. They got out. And instead of coming to me, he found a dealer.” Kota tipped the last drops from his glass down his dry throat. That was more than he’d meant to say about Charlie.
He refilled their glasses. “So you don’t want to tell me where you live, is that it?”
She shrugged. “It’s a habit.”
“I promise I won’t follow you home and howl under your window.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“Bad experience?”
“More than one.”
“Online dating?”
“Crazy fans. I’m sure you know what I mean, times ten.”
Did he ever. Which meant that the more he pestered her, the less likely she’d tell him. Not that he couldn’t find out by other means. But now he understood that if she told him herself, it would mean something.
He wanted it to mean something.
Soft fur brushed their legs, and they both peered under the table. “Oh no.” Christy’s voice broke with pity. “What happened to him?”
“That’s Scar. Some fucked-up individual dunked his tail in lighter fluid and set it on fire.” The cat’s back end looked like it had been peeled and boiled.
“My God.” Christy swallowed down revulsion with a visible gulp, then reached down to stroke his orange head. “I can’t fathom the mind of someone who’d do that.”
Kota couldn’t either. But he knew how hard it was for most people—even extremely compassionate people—to accept the animals that looked so hideous.
That Christy could—that she went further and embraced them—made her more beautiful to him than any of the gifts lavished upon her at birth.
Emotion, raw and deep, tightened his chest. “I gotta tell you, sweetheart. I think I’m in love.”
CHRIS’S HAND FROZE on the orange cat’s head. “You’re kidding, right?”
That was a dumb question. Of course he was kidding. Nobody fell in love in forty-eight hours.
He only smiled a crooked smile. “Another slice?”
She laid a hand on her stomach. “If I grow out of this dress, I’ll have nothing to wear.”
His smile widened. “Coming right up.”
She smirked and stacked their plates. He shrugged like she didn’t know what she was missing. Which was completely wrong, because she actually had a pretty good idea what she was missing.
Scooping up their glasses, he followed her inside, then waved her out of the way while he got busy cleaning up.
From her perch on the stool, she ogled his butt as he loaded the dishwasher, a drawn-out process that involved a lot of bending and stretching and twisting, and more bending. She didn’t mind a bit. “Cooking with Kota is my new must-see TV.”
His quick grin told her lust must be written on her face.
She wiped it off and groped for casual conversation. “Speaking of Kota,” she said, “is Dakota your real name?”
“Yep.” He dried his hands on a towel, folded it neatly. “Our parents—our birth parents—got around. Mostly skipping out on the rent. I was born somewhere in South Dakota. Tana was born in Butte.”
She sensed some embarrassment there, best defused with humor. Holding Tri up in front of her face, she said to the dog, very seriously, “This explains his knack for original names. It’s genetic.”
Kota looked startled. “Well, hell.”
She smiled. “Some things are coded in. Like this.” She raced up the major scale from C to C and back down.
His eyes glazed. “Do that again.”
She did it again.
He let the towel fall to the counter. “Will you sing for me?”
Men had asked her before; it wasn’t unusual. The difference was that Kota’s request didn’t make her self-conscious. It felt like part of the conversation.
He spread his hands. “Anything. The theme from Cheers.”
She sang a verse.
He grinned like a kid. “How about Adele? Or wait, do you have originals? Do you write songs—”
She held up a hand. “No, I don’t write songs. Dad’s written some for me, but let’s wait on that.” Singing was intimate. A funny thing to say about something she did before thousands. But one-on-one it was intimate.
The last thing this situation needed was more intimacy.
She set Tri down on all threes. “Thanks for breakfast, but I’ve got . . . stuff.”
His hands fell to his sides. “Okay. All right. I’ve got stuff too. Scripts and shit.”
She turned to go, dragging her feet, secretly wishing—
“The thing is,” he said, and she turned back, all ears. “I could use some help with Blackie’s leg. You might’ve seen the bandage.”
“I didn’t notice. What happened?”
“Just a scratch, but in this climate . . .” He shrugged one shoulder. One awesome shoulder. “Anyway, if you’re busy—”
“No, I’ll get my sandals.”
In her room, sanity grabbed her by her shoulders and gave her a hard shake. “It’s bullshit, and you know it,” she told herself in the mirror. “Blackie would walk on his hind legs for Kota. He’ll certainly stand still for a bandage.”
She paced. “I should stay away. He’s too hot. I mean, come on, those abs.” She shivered. “And I like him. Why do I like him?”
Van Gogh strolled into the room. Chris pointed at him. “You. The earless cat. That’s why I like him.” He did a silent meow. She clutched her head. “What’s happening to me? How can I do this?”
She even wasn’t sure what “this” was. Visit the horses with Kota? Make it through the next week? Write a story exploiting his brother? Throw in some juicy stuff about their deadbeat parents?
“Take your pick,” she told Van Gogh. “They’re just points on the continuum of fraud and deception.”
“Hey, babe?” Kota called down the hallway. “Wear something you can ride in and we’ll take Sugar for a run.”
Her conscience scraped pointy claws across her brain. Pull out, it said. Tell him you changed your mind. You’ve got to buckle down to work. No time for racing through the meadow bareback with his arms wrapped around you.
She opened her mouth with the best of intentions. And out came “Sounds good. I’ll be right there.”
Conscience reared up again, but Denial kicked it in the balls.
Get over yourself. It’s just a ride through the meadow.
What can it hurt?