Читать книгу Still So Hot! - Serena Bell - Страница 8

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CELINE LOOKED LIKE she’d been punched. She had a sweet heart-shaped face that made her appear younger than her twenty-two years, and her bottom lip trembled. Elisa turned on Brett, years of self-righteous anger reasserting themselves. “Do you have to act like such a jerk?”

In the seat behind Brett an older woman hid a smile, but Elisa felt no sense of triumph.

“Apparently,” he said easily. He leaned back against the nearest seat, clearly enjoying himself. “I always was good at it.” The occupant of the seat gave Brett a dirty look, but Brett couldn’t have seemed more relaxed if he’d put both hands behind his head and kicked off his shoes. It pissed her off, not only because she was sweaty and stressed out, and he was the coolest customer on earth, but also because he looked so freaking good. Why were cocky asshole men so hot? It was just. Not. Fair.

She had to rein it in. Her attraction, her irritation, her temper. This was a disaster on so many levels, she didn’t know where to start figuring it out. And their audience was turning against them, passengers starting to gripe audibly to each other. Drama was one thing, open conflict another.

She’d wanted attention. That was the whole point of this outing. But now things were totally out of her control. There was this—this swerve. She didn’t want eyes on her as she untangled these knots. “We’ll talk about this after the flight lands,” she said, with as much authority as she could summon.

Brett shrugged. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

Celine watched them, her gaze moving from one to the other, as if the volley of words was visible.

“I’d like to know what’s going on.” Elisa crossed her arms.

Brett raised his eyebrows. “Ask your client.”

“I thought there might be two sides to the story.”

“There’s no story.” His expression dared her to push him. “Tell you what. I just got up to stretch my legs, but I’m perfectly happy to hang out here in coach. I’ll take your seat, Elisa.”

Celine opened her mouth once, closed it again, then managed to speak one word. “Brett?” She looked up at him, borderline pleading. Even through the haze of her own anxiety, Elisa’s dating coach radar shot to high alert. Desperate! Take it down a notch! She tried to broadcast this with her gaze, but Celine wasn’t looking at her. “I’m sorry,” Celine whispered to Brett. Actually it was closer to a whimper. “I was going to tell you.”

Brett shrugged. “Okay. That’s great. I appreciate that. But you’ll pardon me if this is just a little too effed up for me. I’m a tagalong on a dating boot camp weekend. What role did you have in mind for me?” He addressed the question to both women. “Fluffer?” He chuckled.

Elisa closed her eyes. It was either that or laugh hysterically.

“Br—”

The red-haired flight attendant stepped out of first class and glared at them. “You can’t congregate here.”

Elisa squeezed Celine’s shoulder hard. “Hon, let’s go sit, okay?”

The flight attendant’s male counterpart—tall, dark and chiseled—appeared behind the redhead and put a hand on her arm. “Everything okay here?” he asked her.

He’d leaned close to ask it, closer than the situation required. Alert! Chemistry! Were the two flight attendants a couple? Or did he just wish they were?

“Please return to your seats.”

The sharp command from the redhead snapped Elisa out of her romantic reverie. “We’ll just—” Elisa began to say, tugging on Celine.

The passenger behind Elisa touched her sleeve. “Is that Celine Carr?”

“No.”

“It is! It’s Celine Carr. Guys, you were right!”

There was a flurry of activity as the passengers within earshot dug through their carry-ons, pulled out pens and notebooks, and shoved them toward Celine. Cell phones popped up above the seat tops and into the aisle, clicking with artificial shutter noises.

“Please,” said the redhead. “I can’t have you gathering in the front of the plane. You need to return to your seats.”

The passenger who’d touched Elisa’s arm turned to the flight attendant. “Can she sign autographs in the back?”

The female flight attendant cast an uncertain look at her colleague. He shrugged.

“It’s Celine Carr! From Broken.”

“What’s that?”

“You don’t watch Broken?” That was another passenger.

“Ohmigod, it’s so good!”

Haven had warned Elisa that this would happen. Celine was a new star, not yet a household name, but she had a show that was rising in the ratings and people would recognize her, wherever she went. “As much of a pain as it is,” Haven had said, “you have to let her do it. They’re her fan base.”

“If we stay out of the way?” Elisa asked the uniformed woman.

The flight attendant sighed. “Okay. Until we get the beverage service going, she can sign in the back. But make sure people can get to the restrooms.”

A small shy smile had crept over Celine’s face as she surveyed the outstretched hands clutching paper and notebooks and business cards.

“Give me a minute. We need to talk about this weekend,” Elisa told Brett.

“I don’t see what there is to talk about.”

“You can’t just—”

“Folks,” the male flight attendant said in a stern voice.

“Come here a sec,” Elisa said, starting toward the back of the plane. It wouldn’t help her cause if she got them arrested for creating a disturbance on an airplane.

The fans followed, crowding into the back of the plane. Some startled bathroomgoers looked at them strangely, but others joined in, digging in pockets or squeezing through the throng to grab pens from their bags. Brett leaned against a galley wall, right behind Celine, frowning.

Elisa, heart still pounding, waited next to the red-haired flight attendant while Celine happily held court. Her loyal subjects produced napkins or their own arms for her to sign.

“Can you sign this for my daughter?”

“Can you write ‘Love to Suze’?”

“Do you watch Broken?” the flight attendant asked Elisa.

Elisa nodded. “Do you?”

“I record it on TiVo.” She was a pretty woman, with a smattering of freckles and a nice smile. “But we’re never home, so we don’t get to watch much TV.”

We. “You and—?” Elisa gestured to the male flight attendant who was chatting jovially with a passenger just out of their earshot.

“What? No!” She laughed. “He’s gay. ‘We’ is me and my roommate.”

“He’s not gay,” said Elisa. “Trust me.” Elisa pulled her business card from her pants pocket and handed it over. “It’s my job to notice these things.”

“Dating coach?”

“Yep. You want my suggestion?”

The flight attendant nodded, eyes eager.

God, Elisa loved her job. “Ask him if he wants to buy you a drink when you land. You’ll see. He’s not gay.”

The redhead looked doubtful.

“My cell number is on the card. Text me and tell me what happens.”

The flight attendant hesitated. “You sure?”

“Positive.” Elisa would be willing to bet a thousand dollars they’d be lovers within a week. If the woman took her advice.

That was a big if. People were shockingly bad at doing what was best for them.

Like Celine, who had apparently acquired a traveling companion somewhere between yesterday afternoon—when Elisa had helped Celine pack her suitcase—and this morning when she’d boarded a plane for the boot camp weekend. What had she been thinking?

Papers and pens still shuffled across the galley, voices ringing out with questions for the actress.

“Is it true they’re going to kill off Jonah?”

“Celine, will you have dinner with me?”

A voice rose from among the others. “Celine, who’s the new guy? Hey, new guy—can you move in a little closer to Celine for me?”

All motion stopped, and there was an instant of total silence. Everyone turned to look at the person who’d asked that, a man whose face was mostly veiled by a black hoodie. And then they turned to look at Brett, leaning against the wall behind Celine.

Elisa opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, Brett pushed off the wall, took a threatening step forward and said, “Put that thing away.”

Hoodie guy’s mouth slowly tipped up into a smile, and he raised his hand. He had something clutched there, and for a brief, heart-stopping second, Elisa actually thought it might be a gun. Then she saw what it was and wished she’d been right in the first place.

Camera. Big camera. Real camera.

Paparazzo.

His smile got bigger as he began shooting, the shutter whirring as it squeezed off shot after shot of Brett and Celine.

* * *

THE LOOK ON Elisa’s face, pure panic, spurred Brett to action. He slid past her, jostling other passengers out of the way, and lunged at the photographer, yanking the camera out of the guy’s hands.

“That’s personal property!” The guy grabbed for it, but Brett turned his back and ran his hands over the camera’s casing, probing for the slot where the memory card lived. He found its catch, withdrew the card, dropped it to the floor and ground it into the carpet. The cheap plastic splintered. He closed the slot and handed the camera back to the photographer.

“Here’s your personal property.”

“What’s going on?”

It was the male flight attendant, followed by a well-built guy in a business suit. Sky marshal, Brett would wager. Most of the other passengers had dispersed at the sight of this new authority. The flight attendant glared at both Brett and the hooded paparazzo.

“Nothing’s going on.” Brett looked around at the remaining passengers, daring them to disagree.

No one spoke up. His good luck—paparazzi were so loathsome that fear of the crazy man in the aisle paled in comparison.

The guy in the hoodie hadn’t spoken.

“I’m going to need all of you to return to your seats, please,” the flight attendant said sternly.

Brett shot a glance Elisa’s way as she edged back toward her seat. The panic was gone, but she wasn’t making grateful Bambi eyes at him, either. She looked pissed. He guessed he shouldn’t be surprised. She was probably as bewildered by his intrusion into her boot camp weekend as he was to find that his old friend was a third wheel on his Caribbean getaway.

“Hey.” He touched her arm, trying to soften her. “I meant what I said. Why don’t you and Celine take the two seats in first class? I’ll take yours. I’m sure you guys have some talking to do.”

“There weren’t two in first class when I tried to book.”

“Last-minute cancellation. Or Celine’s persuasive power.” He shrugged. “Take the seats, okay?”

Elisa gave a tight nod. Man, she was pretty. He’d forgotten. Or made himself forget. She had hair the exact color of gingerbread and hazel eyes and the smoothest skin, like a porcelain doll. He still remembered the feel of that skin pressed against his cheek, under his lips. He craved it, nights when he was tired and weak. That and the weight of her breast in his hand, her nipple hard against his fingertips, her needy noises tracing a straight line to his cock.

He was getting hard thinking about it, and that meant less blood to the brain, which couldn’t be good in a screwed-up situation like this one. Concentrate, man, he commanded himself.

“Let me get my stuff,” Elisa said. “Celine, you head up front. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Celine went obediently, and Elisa practically shoved the guy in the hoodie out of her way. She bent down to retrieve something from her seat. Yeah, that was a good view of her, too.

“What the hell, man?”

For the briefest of instants, he thought it was the voice inside his head chiding him for ogling her ass, but then he realized it was the paparazzo snarling at him. Brett shrugged. “I’m sure you’ve got extras.”

“I’m trying to do my job! You might not like it, but it’s what I do, and those were my photos you smashed.”

Brett could see the guy was one heartbeat from planting a hand in the middle of Brett’s chest and shoving. Let him try. Brett had enough aimless anger at the moment to flatten him into next week.

“Gentlemen, I need you to return to your seats,” repeated the male flight attendant. “Unless you need a personal escort?” He nodded toward the sky marshal.

The paparazzo harrumphed like an angsty teenager and slunk away. The flight attendant and sky marshal eased against the seats to let him pass.

Brett headed toward the back of the plane. He met Elisa in the aisle, where she’d just finished hoisting out her carry-on. The top few buttons of her ruffled white blouse were undone revealing the delicate thrust of her collarbone and, below that, the swell of her phenomenal breasts. A wicked taunt—the ones that got away. Over the past two years, he’d managed to mostly block the memories of kissing her and touching her. Mostly, that is, except in his dreams. He dreamed about Elisa confoundingly often—languid, dirty, wet dreams. But this was real, because she wasn’t slowly peeling off her clothes and looking at him with heat in her eyes, and she wasn’t taking slow steps toward him, which was what always happened in the dreams.

“Sit for a minute.” Elisa’s words penetrated through his fog. He was lucky she couldn’t read minds.

Her seat and the one beside it were empty—the other occupant must have been in the restroom. She slid in, and he sat beside her, hyperaware of the thinness of her blouse. He could see the hint of her skin beneath the translucent fabric.

“So, what?” she demanded. “You picked her up somewhere? And—”

“The drugstore,” he admitted, before he could stop himself.

“You picked her up at a drugstore?”

She said it like he was dirt. She’d always been like this, judgmental about his conquests.

“She had one of those red baskets, and it was full of sample bottles. I said, ‘Going on a trip?’ and she looked up at me, smiled and said, ‘Yeah. Wanna come?’”

And all right, he’d panicked. He’d looked at her pretty round face and her soft blond hair and her big breasts and he’d thought, In two weeks, it’s all over for me. No more women, no more conquests. He’d promised the network where he’d just been hired on to be a news anchor that he’d be squeaky clean. Network anchors didn’t chase tail. He’d barely beaten out his competition for this job, and his new boss had informed him that the other guy’s advantage had lain squarely in the fact that he was older, more distinguished and well established as a husband, father and grandfather. The kind of guy you wanted to believe when he told you the news.

Brett, on the other hand—

Well, Elisa’s unspoken assessment of him had probably been accurate. Women were his drug of choice and his downfall.

The truth was, standing in the drugstore, contemplating the vaguely familiar goddess in front of him, he wasn’t sure he could do it. He wasn’t sure he could be Mr. Squeaky-Clean Guy. Mr. Face of the News. Mr. Trust Me.

Pretty boy. Big man. Handsome, groomed, in control. That was who he’d been among his brothers—Zach had been the smart one, Pete the athletic one, and Brett was the good-looking one. It was what he’d traded on, with women, in his work, his whole life. Now he was here, on the brink of the anchor job, and if he couldn’t do it...

Where did that leave him? If he couldn’t be “the face of NYCN News”...

Screw that. Failure wasn’t an option. He’d been prepping for an opportunity like this one his whole life, and he wasn’t going to let anything get in his way.

Standing there in the drugstore, he had told himself that he’d accept this one invitation. Have a last hurrah, a crazy weekend with this very willing blonde bombshell. Then, he knew—he knew—he could do what the network needed him to do. He’d be ready to take on the world.

Elisa hadn’t expected to hear that Celine had been the pickup artist. She shook her head. “And you said yes?”

“I said, ‘I know you, don’t I?’”

“Smooth.”

He couldn’t tell if she was admiring or mocking, but good sense dictated the latter. “It wasn’t a pickup line. I didn’t need a pickup line. She’d already invited me to the Caribbean. Although I didn’t know yet that it was the Caribbean.”

“God!” she burst out. “You’re—”

But whatever she’d been about to say about him, she stopped.

He swallowed the urge to defend himself. He owed her nothing. He’d accepted a pretty woman’s invitation to fly on the spur of the moment to the Caribbean for a good time. It wasn’t his fault that the woman had neglected to mention she was in the middle of a dating workshop.

He’d had it all backward in the drugstore, of course. The window for a last fling, for getting women out of his system, had long since passed. He was already in the hot seat, already under scrutiny. Celine hadn’t been an opportunity; she’d been a test. He’d had the chance to start his new life as Mr. Trust Me, and he’d screwed it up.

But maybe it wasn’t too late. He’d made a mistake, but he could still right the ship and chart a new course. “Look. I’m outta here. I’ll take the next flight back.”

Elisa scowled. “You can’t do that.”

God, she was as bossy as ever. “I sure can.”

She glanced around, lowered her voice. “Who saw you together?”

“What?”

“Who saw you guys together? In the airport. I’ve had a videographer following her around, but were there also paparazzi there? Are there photos?”

He shrugged. “Yeah.”

“So you know what that means, right? Every entertainment magazine and show in the city’ll have a piece on Celine and her new man—”

He couldn’t help himself. He winced.

“Yes, that’s you.” She quirked her fingertips into quotation marks. “Celine Carr’s ‘New Man.’ That’s what you get for messing around with a celebrity. Finally found a woman you couldn’t just slip into and out of unnoticed, huh?”

“Hey.”

“Truth hurts?”

She was vicious. And he liked it. He liked her, eyes flashing, his old friend. He’d rather have her bitching at him than not talking to him any day. He’d missed her.

A thought came to him, unbidden. She’d be amazing in bed. The type who’d bite his shoulder and rake his back and yell when she came.

Not that it was an option. With that look on her face, it would be a cold day in hell before she’d have a civil conversation with him, let alone tangle with him in the naughty, uncensored way he envisioned.

And, really, could he blame her? He’d screwed things up royally back when he’d had his chance at her. He’d signed away his rights for all eternity.

Not to mention that, less than five minutes ago, he’d sworn off serial seduction. Hell, he’d sworn off women.

“If you leave now, they’ll have a field day. They’ll make mincemeat out of you, and Celine will come across as pathetic. You don’t want that.”

“So what’s your point? I should stick around?”

“I’m saying that, if I were you, I wouldn’t be in such a hurry to run off. There are more decorous ways to do it.”

Decorous. Such an Elisa word.

“Let us get there, take some footage and photos of Celine doing her thing, make it clear that she’s shopping around, not committed to you—then you split. Much less humiliating for both of you.”

He could detect the hope and desperation behind her attempt at convincing him. She meant, Much less humiliating for me.

Her seatmate had returned from the bathroom and hovered expectantly over them. Time to go.

Well, okay, then. He could make this less humiliating for her. It would be a kind of penance, a chance to get back in her good graces. Not, he chastised his cock and all the other body parts clamoring for a piece of the situation, those good graces. But—

There was a chance, a small chance, he could make this better for her. Or at least less worse. And if he did, maybe they could be friends again. Because seeing her had reminded him of how much fun it had been to be friends with her in college and for the three years afterwards when they’d buddied around New York. How sometimes it had felt like the two of them against the world. Blowing off studying to eat pizza on the roof of the library, verbally dismembering their common enemies behind closed doors, stealing the Buddha statue from the religion department and installing it as guardian over the condom jar in the health center. She’d been funny, sharp, energetic, but kind, too, jollying him out of bad moods and dragging him on hikes in the New England mountains as an antidote to sophomore slumps and senior stress.

She was not the kind of friend who came along every day. There were eight million other people living in New York City, but no one played Scrabble with the focus or intensity that Elisa applied to the game. And of the other 7,999,999 New Yorkers, he had yet to find one who liked to deliberately pick bad DVDs and do her own Mystery Science Theater 3000, dissecting and mocking the films with glee. And no one had ever laughed at him with the utter abandon that Elisa had employed the day she’d taught him to Rollerblade, hoisting him up off the ground and then falling down beside him, breathless with hysteria.

You didn’t get second chances too many times in life.

“Okay,” he said. “Fine. We’ll do it your way.”