Addicted to You (6 page)

In Everett, Rill had found that rare combination in an actor; he was respected by other men and adored by women.

A sickly worm of suspicion wriggled around in Rill’s gut when he considered Everett. He quickly tried to dismiss the sensation.

Of course
Eden had never lusted after Everett Hughes.
Everett was his best friend
, for fuck’s sake. Or had been, before Rill took a sabbatical in these woods, a sabbatical that may end up lasting for the rest of his life.

His head swam. Nausea swept through him.

He needed to focus on the moment. Katie Hughes was on the phone, and she needed help. That was all there was to consider.

He struggled to bring Katie’s image back into his mind’s eye.

Katie and Everett may have represented polar opposites on the spectrum of male and female beauty, but Katie’s delicate features were often cast in an expression of pure stubbornness, just like Everett’s. Katie didn’t sound too sassy through his phone receiver, though. No, she sounded beat.

He resisted an urge to blurt out that she was a little fool. No one in her right mind would
choose
to be in his company. But now wasn’t the time to chastise her for barging in on his misery. Whether he wanted her there or not, he would never leave Katie hanging in a pinch.

“Are you okay, Katie?”

“I’m fine. I wasn’t hurt.”

“All right. Give me forty minutes.”

“Thanks, Rill,” she said before the line went dead.

Rill stood there in the bathroom staring at his cell phone for several seconds. A shiver of unease had coursed down his spine when he’d heard his name on Katie’s tongue.

“What in the hell did you do to your hair?” Rill accused by way
of greeting.

Katie spun around from where she’d been reading about the rules of sanitary hand-washing on the hospital waiting room bulletin board. She stared at Rill for two heartbeats . . . three.

His hair looked strange and yet right at once. Several years back he’d shocked them all—his wife, Eden, most notably—by shaving his head. But Rill had just laughed at their surprise. What was hair to a man like Rill Pierce?
Better off without the crap. Pain in my ass,
Katie recalled him saying with a wicked grin.

He had a mess of dark hair, but the strands were finer than she’d remembered. It’d felt dense yet silky when she ran her fingers through it last night. That thick crop of lustrous hair contrasted markedly with his bold male features and insouciance in regard to his appearance.

No wonder he’d shaved it off. He probably resented any suggestion from the magazines and tabloids that he even remotely resembled a Hollywood pretty boy.

He’d cut himself while shaving and stuck a tiny square of tissue on his right cheek to staunch the blood. For some stupid reason, the sight made tears well up in her eyes. She ducked her head and picked up a curl that hung to her waist, flicking at it impatiently. “It’s just a temporary color rinse. I wanted something different, so I darkened it. It’s already fading.”

“I don’t like it at all.”

“Don’t hold back, Rill.”

He returned her scowl. His brows drew together slowly, and she wondered if the emotional upwelling she experienced showed on her face. He beckoned with his hands.

Katie flew into his arms.

“Hey, Shine. It’s not so bad, is it?” he crooned from above her, his voice gruff and lyrical. Katie was five foot four on the days where she could hold her head up high, which hadn’t been very often, in recent history, anyway. Her cheek pressed just below Rill’s nipple line. He felt good—hard and male. He smelled even better, like soap and clean male skin. Hearing him call her “Shine” had caused a fresh wave of misery to surge through her. It’d been his pet name for her since she was a teenager, a shortened version of “sunshine.” When she’d reached her senior year in high school, he’d shortened it to “Shine,” explaining soberly that she’d outstripped the light of a single sun.

He’d teased her a few times since, saying he could never put her in one of his films because his lighting director would never let him rest for ruining everything he’d ever learned about his profession.

Full of it
, that was what Rill Pierce was. But in the sweetest kind of way.

“Hey,” he murmured.

She leaned back when he placed his hand at the side of her head. When she looked up at him, Katie abruptly became aware of how blue his eyes were, how thick his lashes were . . . how her belly pressed against the fullness between his thighs. Everett, Eden, Rill and Katie had been friends for years now. She’d hugged Rill countless times. She’d never had cause to feel ashamed hugging him before.

She stepped back now.

“You said Errol’s knee was injured. Is that all?” he asked.

Katie nodded and furtively wiped at an errant tear. “Yeah. They did outpatient surgery on it this morning to fix a torn ACL. The doctor said he would be fine, but he has to take some anti-inflammatory medicine and use a passive motion machine every day. He’ll start outpatient rehabilitation in a week or so.”

“It could have been a lot worse.” He seemed uncertain when another tear spilled down her cheek. “What
is
it, Katie?”

She bristled at the sound of him saying her name.
Ka-tie
.

“Have you ever hit a man with your car before?”

“Can’t say I have. Hit a bull when I was filming
Pamplona
, though. Ruddy thing did more damage to the truck than we did to it.”

Katie laughed, even though she was feeling far from mirthful. “Well, it’s awful. I might have killed him. And Errol’s so . . . He’s so . . . like a . . .”

“Like a child.”

“Yeah,” Katie whispered. She met Rill’s eyes. “He’d run back to his house to get more model planes. He wanted to show me. It was so dark on that street after I left the diner. I never saw him until I’d hit him.”

“It could have happened to anyone. Vulture’s Canyon becomes a dead man’s land at night. And Errol acts on impulse. He should have known better than to run in front of a moving car.”

Katie sighed. “Well, it’s done. I’ll have to pay for his hospital stay and his rehab. He doesn’t have any insurance. He doesn’t have a car, either. I’ll have to drive him to all his appointments,” she added, not realizing the truth of her words until that moment.

“I’ll be driving him.”

Katie glanced up in surprise at Rill’s resolute tone. “Don’t be ridiculous.
You
didn’t hit him.”

“That may be, but Errol will likely require rehab for weeks on end. There’s no way you’re staying in Vulture’s Canyon that whole time.”

Katie straightened to her full height. “Who says?”

“I do.” He seemed to reconsider his bluntness. “I can imagine Morgan and Watkins might have a say in the matter as well.”

“I’ve taken a vacation from Morgan and Watkins,” Katie said, referring to her former employer, a large law firm that did taxes for the rich and famous.

“You took a vacation and came to
Vulture’s Canyon
?” Rill asked incredulously.

“I told you I did.”

“That’s just stupid.”

Anger rose from her belly to her brain like mercury in a thermometer stuck in boiling water. “Don’t you call
me
stupid. I’d say what you’re doing these days is way off the idiocy scale, so I guess you can put up with
me
for what’s left of your miserable life.”

Katie paused when she saw how the color left his face, but she didn’t relent. Suddenly, the idea of this beautiful, talented man wasting his life felt like a personal affront, like a slap to the face. It surprised her a little to realize she shook with emotion. Or perhaps it was some culmination of the bizarre events of the past fifteen hours and a sleep-deprived brain that was finally getting to her.

“You’re not going to chase me off like you did Everett, Rill,” she said in a quiet, vibrating voice.

His lips flattened in irritation. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that, Katie. You haven’t seen how I live.”

She swallowed convulsively. There it was: proof positive that he definitely had been too drunk to recall her being at his house last night, let alone remember what they’d done. A feeling of mixed relief and sadness swooped through her.

She stepped toward him and tilted her chin up, meeting his glare. “You call what you’ve been doing the past eighteen months
living
? We both know you’re flirting with the opposite, Rill. It’s gonna stop here and now, too.”

“Oh, yeah?” he asked belligerently. “How do you know that?”

“Because Eden would be ashamed of you. I figure you just need someone to remind you of that.”

His eyes flashed in fury at the mention of Eden’s name; his jaw clamped tight. Katie recoiled slightly in her own skin, the evidence of his hurt paining her, as well. She stepped back.

“Did you bring your checkbook or not? I’ll pay you the cash I have and drive into Carbondale tomorrow to get the rest. Errol’s itching to get back to his house, and I sure could use some sleep.”

His right eyelid flickered, indicating that while Katie might be willing to dust off her hands and move on from her little outburst, Rill was still angry.

“You can come up to my place and get rested up for your drive back to California. You’re not welcome here, though. I want you gone as soon as you’re rested,” he said stiffly.

She stalked past him toward the nurses’ station, wondering why having Rill say out loud what she already knew with perfect clarity could hurt so damn much.

Rill made a phone call before they left the hospital. Katie heard him telling the person on the other end about Errol’s injury. Fifteen minutes later, they dropped a tired, pale-faced Errol off at his house and left him in the care of a woman in her sixties who was dressed like she was on her way to a Grateful Dead concert. Her name was Olive Fanatoon, and once Katie got past her hippie apparel, she realized she was a sweet, soft-spoken lady.

“Is Mrs. Fanatoon a relative?” Katie asked Rill as they walked out to their cars. Katie and Errol had followed Rill to Errol’s. The tiny house itself was in disrepair, but it was ideally situated on the serene, thickly wooded banks of the Ohio River.

Rill shook his head. Katie could tell by the way he didn’t make eye contact that he was still irritated at her. “No, but she’s taken care of Errol on and off since he was a baby. Every adult in Vulture’s Canyon, and most of the teenagers as well, takes turns watching out for Errol, but Olive pitches in more frequently than most.”

“Do you take a turn?” she asked as she reached her car.

Blue eyes flashed at her. “No. I don’t belong to this town.”

“Right. Silly of me to ask. You’ve got much more pressing matters to see to, like drinking yourself into oblivion, for example,” she said as she flung open her car door.

She pulled out of the dusty dirt road that led to Errol’s and onto the rural route, her wheels squealing on the blacktop. She imagined hauling ass up to the Mitchell place and finding a shower and a place to sleep before Rill even had a chance to make his way through her dust.

It galled her to have to pull over and wait before she hit the main road, because she’d recalled why it was so critically important for Rill to believe this was her first time visiting his house. She couldn’t traipse up the hill like she owned the place.

Tears burned in her eyes when he barreled past her in his sedan without a sideways glance. She couldn’t help but contrast his cold aloofness with the scorching memory of him pressed to her backside, his mouth hungry and hot on her neck, his gruff whisper in her ear . . .

Open up, baby. I’ve waited for this for so damn long.

She shivered despite the heat of the early autumn day.
Holy shit. Can’t you even console an old friend without ruining everything?

For a few seconds, she felt like something volatile was going to burst right out of her chest, but then she sniffed and determinedly pulled her car onto the road. So what if on an impulse she’d quit her job, driven across the country, run over a town resident whom she’d now have to provide for medically with a quickly dwindling bank account, fucked the man she was supposed to be consoling and then offended him by speaking his dead wife’s name out loud?

“At least you’ve got your health,” she muttered grimly before she turned onto the main road and started up the hill where Rill lived.

Four

By four o’clock that afternoon, Rill was ready for a drink. He’d
been confused and worried by Katie’s initial phone call, infuriated when she threw her sauce in his face at the hospital and on low boil since she’d hauled an enormous Louis Vuitton suitcase up the front porch stairs and burst through the screen door.

“Don’t bother to help.
Really
. I’ve got it,” she snarled as she rolled the monstrosity of a suitcase down the wood-floored hallway. The noise she made was loud enough to wake the dead. Rill leaned against the counter, silently fuming as she opened door after door in the downstairs hallway, knowing full well the only other bed in the house was upstairs. When she’d opened up the last door, and he heard the suitcase clacking down the length of the hallway, he cursed under his breath and charged after her.