American Diva (4 page)

Jack considered the slender taper of her back into her hips. “If I give you a beer, will you go away?”

She nodded.

God, he was a pathetic sucker for a beautiful woman. He reached down, pulled out another longneck, and opened it for her. “Here,” he said brusquely.

When Audrey turned around, he expected her to take it and walk on—but she surprised him by vaulting herself at the beer and at him at the same moment in a half-crawl, half-lunge. She grabbed the beer and landed, wedging herself in the narrow space between him and the arm of the chaise. He could feel the smooth skin of her leg against his hairy one, could smell the lotion on her skin, the scent of magnolias in bloom.

“Thanks!” she chirped, and took a long drink.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Having a beer!” She grinned at him, her eyes shining victoriously. “Share the chaise with me for one beer, and then I will leave you to your private little party. I just want a moment of peace, okay? I can’t get it on the other side of the island because those guys are just . . . too much,” she said with a funny wave of her hand. She smiled again and took another swig of beer.

Jack thought to protest. She really needed to be put in her place. But then she moved her leg, and he felt a warmth spread through him as the smell of magnolias filled his nostrils. The end of her hair brushed his shoulder, and he thought, what the hell . . .

Audrey
intended to drink only one beer, unwind a little, then get on her ATV and drive back to her side of the island. But the night was so mild and the beer so good, and Jack Price, well . . . Seriously, now—Jack Price was a hottie, there was no getting around it. Come on, who could blame her for wanting to hang out with a hunk after all she’d endured in the last couple of days?

It all seemed unreal to her still, because Audrey was new to the big-time celebrity scene. After years of playing clubs and opening for B-list bands, she’d hit it big with her second album. Two of the singles skyrocketed up the charts, and she suddenly became the “it” girl, one of the most sought-after celebrities in the United States. On top of that, she was exhausted from a grueling schedule of recording her third album, film-ing music videos, attending media events, and traveling back and forth between New York and L.A. every other day. She never had the luxury of time to just kick back and drink a beer without the fear of being stalked by some old guys from Chicago or paparazzi or rabid fans.

That she could have a fan as rabid as Marty astounded her. So it was nice to chill with someone who didn’t know who she was. Jack was the first person—definitely the first man—she’d met in a very long time who didn’t seem even remotely in awe or intimidated by her.

He was
definitely
the first person in months and months who didn’t want her around. Usually, people couldn’t get close enough to her, couldn’t laugh loud enough at her lame jokes, couldn’t offer quick enough to do something for her. But Jack Price couldn’t get rid of her fast enough. He’d allowed her to stay on his chaise only because she had forced him and he didn’t seem the sort of guy to bodily pick her up and toss her off, in spite of his threats to the contrary.

And now that she was sitting beside him, her leg next to his, her arm warm and damp from where it pressed against his, she had another tiny thrill in how damn sexy this guy was.
Incredibly
sexy—he was tall and muscular, had thick black hair and pool blue eyes, and a
very
nice mouth.

As he seemed to have gotten over his aversion to her, she stayed. She stared out at the moon-drenched ocean, squinting at the blinking lights on the horizon and trying to guess what sort of ships bobbed out there. They said nothing at first, until Audrey, in an attempt to sort through the weekend events, asked, “By the way . . . who
is
Marty Weiss?”

Jack chuckled low in his chest. “Got me.” He looked at her, his eyes as blue as a cloudless summer sky. “Not a personal friend of yours, I take it.”

Audrey snorted. “Never met or heard of him. He knows my business manager somehow, and my business manager spoke to my personal manager and convinced him this was a good thing. And he, in turn, convinced me I should perform at a private gig for a bunch of men important to my recording label.”

She’d agreed—but then again, she usually agreed with almost everything Lucas said because she had discovered he was the only person in this world she could trust. She’d been through a lot of changes in the last two years, had discovered people would pretend to be her friend when they were really only using her. She’d already been through two accountants and was seeking damages from a former talent manager.

But she didn’t want to think of all that right now, and glanced at Jack from the corner of her eye. “How did
you
end up on this island?”

His grin was snowy white and made the corners of his eyes crinkle. “I’ve been asking myself that same thing every hour.” He gave her a sketchy account of his involvement in Thrillseekers Anonymous, and extreme sports in general. Audrey could imagine him doing extreme sports—he certainly had the body for it. When Jack cracked a second round of beers for them—without protest of her presence, she couldn’t help noticing—he asked her about her music.

Audrey skipped over the part about how she had been around the music scene for a while, a Texas native who gained critical acclaim for some alternative rock and folk songs she wrote that other people performed. She started with the stupid pop album Lucas had urged her to write and record. “It’s the only way to the top of the charts, kid,” he’d said. His instincts had proven accurate—a friend at a radio station started playing the tracks, and the next thing she knew, she was getting calls from around the country.

She told Jack how a dumb little pop song, “Breakdown,” had sky-rocketed up the charts a little more than two years ago, dragging her up into a different stratosphere along with it. She didn’t tell him that, seemingly overnight, she was being followed by the paparazzi and her face was on every magazine cover on every newsstand. Every day was suddenly spent in the midst of hair and makeup specialists, different handlers, and record label people who wanted to protect their investment. She was left without a spare moment to even think about her fame because she was suddenly playing to sold-out venues, appearing on television, and singing at the Grammys in front of some of the greatest recording stars of the decade. She flew so fast and so high that now she had to struggle just to keep a part of herself in the music everyone wanted her to produce and in the kind of star they wanted her to be.

“So you burst onto the scene, huh?” Jack asked.

Audrey smiled a little and shrugged. “I guess. Honestly, everything happened so fast, I never really got to decide if this is what I wanted,” she said, surprising herself with the admission.

She obviously surprised Jack, too; his beer bottle paused midway to his mouth. “What are you saying—you don’t want to be a star?”

Was she saying that?
Her heart skipped a little—she could just see that splashed across the tabloids: AUDREY LARUE DOESN’T WANT TO BE A STAR! She felt safe with Jack at the moment, but for all she knew, he could be just as ruthless and hungry for notoriety as some of her old friends. She shifted uneasily in her seat. “I didn’t mean that,” she said. “I love my life. Who wouldn’t love it?” She flashed a smile at Jack and clinked the top of her beer bottle against his. “I was just talking. Don’t listen to me. It’s just that I never get to do this.”

“Do what?” he asked curiously.

“This,” she said, gesturing to him and the beach. “Talk to people.”

He still looked confused.

Audrey sighed. “I don’t have many opportunities to meet people and just hang out.”

Jack snorted and shifted his gaze to the ocean again. “Must be rough—big star, no friends.”

“I didn’t say I had no
friends
,” Audrey said. “I said it’s hard to
meet
people. It’s not like I can walk into a coffee shop like you and strike up a conversation with the girl sitting next to me. And if I did, forget it—the tabloids would go nuts.”

“Well,” he said with a chuckle, “the last conversation I had in a coffee shop was with the girl behind the counter, who asked if I had exact change.” He glanced at Audrey from the corner of his eye. “I don’t think you’re missing much.”

But he was missing the point. He didn’t understand—but no one ever did. Not her family or her old friends. They wondered what she had to complain about. And she
wasn’t
complaining, God no. She knew what a gift she’d been handed. It was just that she hadn’t been prepared for fame. “I can’t do what normal people do,” she tried to explain.

“Yes you can,” he said.

“No, I can’t,” she insisted, twisting in the chaise to face him. She was so close that in the moonlight, she could see the shadow of a beard that covered a square jaw. “You can walk down a street in L.A. and not worry about being accosted by photographers or fans. I can’t do that.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding a little. “You can’t walk down a street. What else? Are you saying you can’t dine out? Go to movies? Drive your car?”

“
No
,” she said, exasperated with her inability to get her point across. “But . . . but I can’t go into a burger joint without being constantly interrupted.” Her gaze inadvertently fell to his lips. “I can’t meet a guy and just dance if I want—”

Oh Jesus, had she really just said that? She reluctantly lifted her gaze.

She’d said it, all right—she could tell by the expression on his face. His gaze slipped to her mouth. “No boyfriend?” he asked, his voice warmer.

“
Sort of
boyfriend,” she said, feeling a vague and not entirely new regret.

One corner of his mouth tipped up in a lopsided smile. He shifted closer, his gaze still on her lips. “What’s a
sort of
boyfriend?”

Audrey had no idea what she was saying. She was only feeling, and at that moment, with the sound of the ocean luring her, the spicy scent of man filling her nostrils, and the aid of a buzz brought on by three beers, she felt like touching Jack Price. She wanted to put her hand on the dark skin in the
vee
of his shirt, to run her fingers over his nipples, to slip her arm around his waist. “You wanna dance, Jack?”

He laughed. “There’s no music.”

She picked up his iPod from his lap and showed it to him, then turned it on.

“Hey, wait—”

She smiled, yanked it out of his reach, scrolled to SHUFFLE SONGS, and selected that as she dislodged herself from the chaise. She put out her hand to Jack. “Come on, stranger. Dance with me.”

His gaze traveled her body—she could almost feel it leave a mark—and he finally hoisted himself from the chaise . . . all six foot three, maybe four inches of him . . . and took her hand. When Audrey tried to lead him to the beach, he pulled back, forcing her to look at him. “I’ll take it from here,” he said, and put his hand out, palm up, for the iPod.

Audrey deposited the iPod in his hand. He untangled the earbuds and winked at her as he stuffed one bud into her ear, the other into his. He hit the play button, tucked the iPod in the pocket of his shorts, and slipped his hand around Audrey’s bare back.

Oh
hell
that was nice. His hand was big and warm on her back, and the other, closed tightly around her hand, felt like a soft baseball mitt. She felt small and breakable in his arms, but strangely safe. It was odd, she thought, how perceptions cropped up like lilies after a rain. Perhaps it was nothing more than the fact that she felt completely mellow—the heavy and warm moist air, the salty scent in the air . . . was there a sexier setting or a more perfect end to a harrowing weekend?

Audrey closed her eyes as Michael Bublé sang “You Don’t Know Me” in her ear, and she leaned into Jack so that her lips were only a moment from his shoulder. He moved smooth and slow, turning her around in a tight little circle, the sand cool and wet beneath her feet.

As they turned lazily on that beach, he brought her hand that he held into his shoulder, tucking it in beneath his chin as he pulled her closer to his body, holding her tighter.

Audrey did not open her eyes, just allowed herself to submerge in the sensations of his body surrounding hers, the heat of his skin over hers. But when his hand began to move on the bare skin of her back, up her spine, to the base of her neck, she began to feel something entirely different. Heat spread through her, spreading through each arm and leg, spreading through each finger and toe, spreading out to the sand around them.

He touched the hair at her temple and pushed it back; she turned her face into the crook of his neck. When he dropped her hand and cupped her chin, lifting her face, Audrey opened her eyes, saw clear blue eyes lined with dark lashes glimmering in the moonlight as Sting took over and sang “Field of Gold.” Jack’s lips, wet and shining, gave her a shudder of desire. She slid her hand up his shoulder, to his neck. Somewhere, a vague thought in the back of her head told her to stop, to go back to her lodging, but she just lifted her face so that her lips were only a breath from his. She was aware of his body, long and hard against her. She could feel his powerful thighs, could imagine his hips moving rhythmically, his body moving in and out of her.