Chapter Six

Switching off the desk lamp beside his computer made no difference to the level of light. Thomas blinked, casting his office a puzzled look. Sunlight streamed through the windows, casting long shadows across the floor and turning the dust motes floating on the air to tiny points of golden light. Jesus, he’d written the night away? When was the last time he’d done that?

Balling his hands, he pressed them to the small of his back. Stiff joints cracked and popped. He glanced at his watch.

7:04 a.m.

Rubbing at the knots in his back, he smiled. Good. This was good. More than good. This was awesome. If he kept this up, he’d come close to hitting his deadline after all. That was also awesome.

He rolled his neck, a familiar buzz he hadn’t experienced for a long while thrumming through him. The rush of losing himself to the words, the world, he’d created. Hell, he’d missed this.

Scraping his fingers over the thickening stubble on his jaw, he straightened from his chair and crossed to the small bar fridge in the far corner of his office. “Want a water, Reaper?”

Reaper cocked an eyebrow at him and snuggled deeper into the bed he’d made on the floor out of Thomas’s discarded tuxedo jacket.

“Okay, okay, I get the message.” Withdrawing a bottle of mineral water from the fridge, he twisted off the cap. “I should have made her stay. What did you want me to do, tie her up?”

Bad choice of words. An image of Mila filled his head, her wrists bound in black silk rope, her tongue tracing her bottom lip as she gazed at him.

“Shit. I need a cold shower.”

Downing the water in a few mouthfuls, he strode from his office and headed for his bathroom.

He hadn’t thought of Mila since he’d left her in his foyer and turned his desktop on. Hadn’t thought of her, but she’d been there in the back of his head, his subconscious, the whole time he was writing.

It wasn’t until he’d typed the end to the latest chapter and decided to call it a night—ha, a morning, as it turned out—that the bewitching woman flooded his thoughts again. With a vengeance. His body tightened at the thought of her. Would she like what he’d written? Would she understand the nuance in his protagonist’s actions? Would she get the symbolism of Gabe’s agreement to save the Child That Never Was even after spilling the Child’s blood?

Would she actually come back today?

Would he ever see her again?

His gut churned. Was it too caveman of him to go to her place if she didn’t turn up today? Fuck, he had no clue where she lived. As soon as he finished his shower, he’d call Shelby and get her details—number, address, last name.

Thinking of her as he prepared for his shower wasn’t a good idea. Running the water cold didn’t ease his situation at all. He stood under the icy blast, palms and forehead pressed to the tiled wall, eyes closed, and forced himself to think of anything else but her.

Tricky. Hard.

Damn, he should have stayed away from the word hard.

Opening his eyes, he glared at what he refused to touch. “Down, boy.”

Something felt wrong about dealing with it in the normal way while thinking of Mila, disrespectful in some way. And yet the notion of thinking of someone else made his gut roll.

He scrunched his eyes shut and tried to focus on the chilly water punishment. Or maybe he could ponder his next chapter? See if she could stir him in other ways more conducive to his work?

Reaper’s frenzied yapping suddenly filled the bathroom, louder every time he ran close to the shower.

Thomas opened his eyes and pulled his head from under the water. “What is it?”

Reaper yapped some more, tail a blur, and bolted out of the room, just as the faint chime of the doorbell sounded.

He froze, stare locked on the open bathroom door. Someone was at his house. Everyone he knew well knew never to come to his place unannounced when he was on a deadline. Not even Shelby or Sebastian Hart broke that rule, and the Australian director was notorious for thinking rules didn’t apply to him.

Her. It’s her. She’s here.

Reaper scampered into the bathroom again, yapping loudly, skidding and sliding about on the tiles, before running out just as quickly.

“Fuck.”

Killing the shower, Thomas snatched a towel from the rack, wrapped it tightly around his hips and hurried from the bathroom, through his bedroom, and down the two flights of stairs to the foyer.

Reaper barked at the door, damn near vibrating with excitement.

The doorbell chimed again, just as—heart fast, gut a knotted mess—Thomas yanked open the door.

“Took you bloody long enough.” Sebastian slapped a folded newspaper against Thomas’s chest and strode across the threshold, his grin wide. “You look like hell, mate. Not sleeping? Anything to do with what’s on page twenty-six?”

Thomas grabbed at the paper stuck to his wet chest and, swinging the door shut, followed his friend into the living room. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Sebastian headed for the bar. “Flew in last night. Still operating on Sydney time, so I’m a bit wired. Thought I’d come have a chin-wag about your latest manuscript. Maybe take a look at what you’ve got written.”

He withdrew a beer from the mini fridge and cracked it open, leaning against the bar as he took a long pull from the can.

“Dude.” Thomas raised an eyebrow as he opened the damp newspaper to page twenty-six. “It’s freaking seven a.m.”

“Not in my neck of the woods, mate.” Sebastian lifted the can and grinned. “Cheers.”

With a chuckled snort, Thomas turned his attention to the newspaper. And forgot how to breathe.

There, on the celebrity gossip page, was a photo of him and Mila standing beside her Hyundai, kissing.

“So? Who’s the girl?”

“My muse.”

“Your what?”

Thomas blinked. Shit. Had he said that aloud?

“I mean, don’t get me wrong.” Sebastian pushed himself away from the bar and crossed to one of the living room’s armchairs, dropping his lean form into it with fluid grace. “I have no problems with a little nookie on the footpath, but don’t you have a deadline? One that’s not going well?”

Letting out a sigh, Thomas folded the paper and deposited it on a nearby lamp table. “Let me get out of this towel and then you can grill me on my relationships, okay?”

Sebastian raised his beer can. “No worries.”

Heading back up to his bathroom, Thomas tried not to think of the image in the paper. It wasn’t the first time he’d been the subject of a paparazzi shot, nor was it the first one of him kissing a beautiful woman. But none of those other images had ripped the breath right out of his lungs when he saw them. None of them left him feeling…feeling…happy.

Happy. Contented. Eager to kiss her again.

He growled, throwing his towel into the bathroom. He dressed in the first set of clothes he grabbed, a pair of faded Levi’s and his retro Westworld T-shirt.

As soon as Sebastian left, he would call Shelby and get Mila’s details. Then call her, ask her to lunch, maybe dinner as well. Maybe, if he was persuasive, he could also swing breakfast out of her.

“So?” Sebastian arched an eyebrow at him as he returned to the living room. “Who is she?”

“Mila.”

“Mila who?”

Thomas threw him a grin as he dropped into the chair opposite. “Mila none of your business.”

Sebastian laughed. “Well, well, well. Who’s been bitten by the love bug? An artist falling in love with their muse is a tad cliché, don’t you think, mate? Although I’m not sure artist is the correct word for the collection of words you put together and call books.”

Thomas snorted. “Hey, those collections of words have made you quite a nice sum of money, dude. And bite me.”

Sebastian grinned. “True. True. Speaking of which, how goes the new manuscript? What’s it called? Angel something? The last I read of it, you’d just introduced a cat into the narrative. I’ve found the perfect cat to cast in the roll, so I want to see how long the pussy lives for.”

“Blood Angel. And who says I’m letting you have the film rights to this one?”

“Me. ’Cause I’m your mate.”

Thomas chuckled. “James Dyson is also my mate, and he told me not to let you get your hands on the rights. Said something about a bet you lost to him that allows him to get first dibs for his new film studio.”

Sebastian scowled with melodramatic anger. “Bloody bastard. I knew I should have called you first before getting on the plane.”

“What was the bet?”

“Who could get the Australian Prime Minister to say the words penile and dysfunction in one sentence during a live interview. The three of us were on a talk show back home and I reckoned Dyson couldn’t get the PM to say them without the PM knowing what was going on. Dyson bet he could. And he did.”

“And the film rights to my next book was the prize?”

Sebastian waved a there-you-go hand at him. “I’ll get him back. Thinking of making a movie about his father. Now there’s a horror story about greed and manipulation at its most brutal and callous. You can write the screenplay, if you want.”

Thomas laughed. “You’ve been threatening to make a movie about the Dysons for as long as I’ve known you. Usually when you lose a bet to the dude.”

Sebastian flashed another grin at him. “True. One of these days I will.”

One of these days would never come. Thomas knew that. Sebastian Hart and James Dyson were close friends, what the Australians called mates. The one thing Thomas had learned very quickly after forming a friendship with the two was that Aussies loved to insult each other. The more they loved each other, the bigger the insult. It had taken Thomas a while to navigate their unusual form of friendship, but he liked it.

“Seriously, though”—he cast Sebastian a curious look—“why are you here? You know my rule about no interruptions when I’m writing.”

Sebastian leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “We’ve got to start organizing Dyson’s bachelor party. Thought I’d see if you had any ideas.”

Thomas raised his eyebrows. “He’s asked Sienna to marry him?”

“He’s bought the ring. So I figure any day now. So? Thoughts?”

Frowning, Thomas shook his head. “Dude, you’re between films at the moment, aren’t you?”

Sebastian nodded. “Yep.”

“Then, as you Aussies say, bugger off. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m in deadline hell. As soon as I type ‘the end,’ I’ll call you and we can pretend we’re frat boys, okay?”

“Okay.” Sebastian threaded his fingers behind his head and settled back deep in the armchair, smile slow and wide and cocky. “I’ll go with that. But first, tell me all about this muse of yours, Mila. And I’m not taking ‘fuck off’ for an answer.”

…

Mila glared at Josie. “No, I’m not telling you.”

“There’s a photo of you kissing Thomas St. Clair in the paper and you’re not going to tell me how it happened?” Josie crossed her arms, lips twisting with what was clearly a suppressed smirk.

“No.”

“You’re not going to tell—”

“No.”

“Your sister—”

“No.”

“How you came to be kissing—”

“No.”

“The world’s most successful author?”

Mila let out a sigh. “No.”

Josie pouted. When she’d been eight, the expression had been adorable. Now, at twenty-four, it was stunning. There was a reason Josie was the actor-slash-model in the family. She’d received their father’s height, coloring, and Icelandic features, while Mila got the lion’s share of their mother’s mixed-bag heritage. That mixed bag seemed to consist of a mysterious family lineage involving short-ass, curvy people with short sightedness. If there was one thing about herself Mila loved, it was her hair. Irish-red, according to their mother. Apparently, she had a great-great-great Irish relative. Or two.

Dragging her fingers through her hair now, she rolled her eyes. “Don’t give me that look. All you need to know is I met him and he thought I was someone else. Hence the kiss.”

“So he doesn’t know who you are?” Josie frowned. “Is he one of those sexy-but-dumb guys? I mean, our last name isn’t exactly common.”

A prickling heat crept up Mila’s throat and over her cheeks. Wow, look at how chipped her toenail polish was. “I didn’t tell him my last name.”

“So, he has no clue you’re the M. E. Elderkin who savaged him in the Times all those years ago?”

She shook her head.

Josie narrowed her eyes. “Okay. So who did he think you were? It’s not like you just knocked on his door and said hi. Look how hot I am. Take me to dinner.”

“I rescued his dog.”

Josie burst out laughing, throwing her hands up as she slumped back in her chair. “Of course you did. So you got lost in the Upper West Side, found a dog who happens to belong to your nemesis, and then said nemesis took you to dinner and kissed you on the sidewalk where all the paparazzi could see, all the while thinking you’re someone else?” She laughed again, eyes dancing. “Sis, if I suggested this should happen in a play, I’d lose my Actors’ Equity card.”

“Look, it’s very simple.” Mila shoved herself from her seat and stomped over to Josie’s kitchen to snag a bottle of water from the fridge. “St. Clair thinks I’m some kind of…of…paid date—”

“Escort?”

“Arranged by his agent. He’s got some crazy idea in his head that I’ve somehow ended his writer’s block, and he wants to pay me to be around him until he finishes writing his current book.” She opened her water and took a sip. Not to hide how shaky her voice was. No. Not at all. Her mouth was dry. Damn dry. “And I figured you’d rather I take his money to fund the kids’ laptops than cut into your box-office takings.”

“So you’re thinking of me?” Why didn’t Josie sound convinced? “And only doing it for your students? It has nothing to do with the way your eyes are all closed in that photo, and your hands are all resting on his chest—it’s a very impressive chest, by the way; he fills that tux out nicely—and your lips are parted, like you’re about to melt in sexual—”

“I will hurt you.”

Josie sniggered. “No you won’t.”

Mila sighed. She wouldn’t. But hell, Josie’s description of the image in the paper was making her unsettled.

Horny, more like it.

Horny, however, was a bad idea. Horny was insane. Horny was kamikaze.

“So you really are going back to see him?” Josie studied her. “Pretend you’re someone else? What happens if he finds out who you really are? To the best of my recollection, he’s not your greatest fan. Well, he’s not M.E. Elderkins’s greatest fan. I mean, I read that letter his agent sent to the Times. It was pretty damn specific. Under no circumstances was M.E. Elderkin—you, in case it’s slipped your mind—to write about Thomas St. Clair, try to contact him, approach him, or in any other way be engaged in some form of interaction with him. You lost your damn job because of him. And I know you’re going to say you love teaching, and I know you’re damn good at it—those kids are lucky St. Clair pulled the I’m-famous-do-what-I-demand card and had you fired from the Times—but, sis…he’s Thomas St. Clair. And you are M.E. Elderkin, even if you haven’t been a journalist for years. And the two of you were kissing. Kissing. How does that in any way help him write a book?” Her frown deepened. “He still just writes horror, doesn’t he? I mean, he’s not writing that erotic stuff now, is he?”

Heat flooded Mila’s cheeks. Damn it, why did Josie have to go and put ideas like that into her head?

She took another drink of water, her pulse way too fast.

Kamikaze insanity.

“I’m really going back.” There. It was out. She’d spent the entire night pacing her bedroom, telling herself she wasn’t going anywhere near Thomas St. Clair again. The man unnerved her on every level. But even as she’d told herself that, even as the declaration left her frustrated, on a deeper level she knew she was. Because for some insane, kamikaze reason she still couldn’t fathom, she’d enjoyed her time with him last night.

Which meant it wasn’t just for her students and their laptop fund. And that unnerved her even more.

“Are you going to tell him who you are?”

Josie’s question knotted Mila’s stomach. If she did, the laptops were gone. And more than anything, more than the disquieting rush she experienced being in St. Clair’s company, more than the wholly unsettling response her body had to him, she wanted to see the smiles on her students’ faces when they walked into the classroom and saw the laptops waiting for them on their desks.

Laptops they’d never get the chance to use, to learn with, to enjoy, during the year if she told Thomas who she was.

“No.” She shook her head at Josie.

Josie closed her eyes. “Oh boy, this is not going to end well.”

“Hey, weren’t you the one who insisted I have wild monkey sex with him last night?”

Josie rolled her eyes. “You know, sis, of the two of us, I always thought I would be the one who had her photo splashed all over the media due to a celebrity scandal.” She let out a wobbly laugh. “But it looks like you’re going to beat me to it. Way to go. I think.”

“I don’t know whether to smack you, or hug you.”

Josie held out her arms and wriggled her fingers.

Mila walked over to her and hugged her.

“I like this choice,” Josie murmured, squeezing her tight for a second before letting her go. “Now, hurry the hell up and get to St. Clair’s place. Go be the muse you were born to be. But first, maybe you should go home and change.”

Mila looked down at what she was wearing then grinned. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing now?”