Feast of Saints (21 page)

Letting out an exasperated puff of breath, she pulled her chin out of his fingers and looked away back out the window.

“You’re not the boss of me,” she said to the clouds, echoing her niece Anna’s belligerent bedtime refrain. She said nothing more until they landed.

When they deplaned, Jake pulled her backpack out of the closet in the front of the plane but made no move to hand it to her. They walked through the terminal. Before they reached the exit, Jake turned toward an area where several drivers stood with signs to collect their privileged clients. Jake started toward a woman holding a “Thornhill” sign – one of several aliases he used while travelling. Wil, having taken Lilly’s flight, wouldn’t be arriving for another hour.

Lilly grasped the shoulder strap of her pack and gave a gentle yank.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, giving another meaningful pull on the backpack.

“Come on, Lilly, at least let me take you home.” People—fans—were starting to gather, some holding up cell phones to snap pictures.

“I’m not going home, Jake. Please let go,” she said, pulling the pack. Jake let go, and she saw the shutter come down on his face.

“Tomorrow, then,” he said, by way of goodbye, and turned toward his driver. Lilly headed out to the taxi stand.

Chapter 16

Lilly went straight to the Lab to check that all of her equipment had been unloaded from the Wyoming bus. It took her four hours to sort through everything and remix the compound for the next few days’ studio shoots.

When she got home, she had just drawn a bath when her cell phone rang. It was Phillip.

“Good evening, Lilly,” he said, “How are you feeling?

Lilly started to answer with the usual platitudes, until Phillip said, “I understand there was a mishap in the mountains.” Of course, he had talked to Jake.

Not exactly sure which “mishap” he was referring to, she said, vaguely, “You could say that.”

“Is there anything I should know? Jake seemed to have his knickers in a bit of twist.” Jake with his knickers in a twist must not have told Phillip much about the trip. That at least was a relief.

“I take it that it wasn’t the relaxing break you planned?” said Phillip, fishing for details.

Going for light-hearted, she said, “Oh, I don’t know. If you call almost being eaten by a bear relaxing, I think it was just fine.”

“WHAT?!”

Recounting the story for Phillip, she didn’t need to embellish for Jake to come off as a mountain man hero. By the end of the story, Phillip was threatening to write a press release.

“Please don’t. It’d have the rangers out shooting bears,” she said.

“Okay, no press release, but I won’t promise to keep silent about it. That’s epic material. Carl will be happy to know there’s more to the story than a sprained ankle to justify the studio’s jet. I knew something serious must have happened when Jake called for it. I did not realize it would be quite so dramatic.”

Jake had called the jet for her? For a sprained ankle? She’d assumed that had already been arranged for him. She thought about all the leg room in the private jet. How Jake had put her ankle up on the seat next to him.

In her cramped coach seat on the long commercial flight, she would not have been able to stretch her ankle, much less elevate it. It probably would have swelled horribly. She thought miserably of how ungrateful and rude she’d been.

Swallowing a lump in her throat, she registered that Phillip was still speaking.

“… she’s top notch. She just came off James’ project, where she was extremely well regarded for her visual effects work. I’ll tell her to start this week. Unless you would like to meet her first?”

“I’m sorry, Phillip, who are we talking about?” she asked, trying to catch up.

“Clara Gentry. Your new assistant.”

“Phillip, I trust your judgment, and I could use any help I can get, good or bad. If she’s good, that will just be icing on the cake.”

“That’s settled, then. I don’t think she can start tomorrow, but maybe the day after tomorrow. What time and where?”

“Tell her to come to studio G at four-thirty a.m. I’ll have her sit through the first few days so she gets the concepts. Has she signed the confidentiality agreement?”

When Phillip said yes, she told him to send her Clara Gentry’s contact information, including her email, so that she could send her the story outline.

She’d barely hung up from Phillip when Mike called.

“You make it back okay, Tiny?” he asked.

Shoot, she should have at least texted. “Yes,” she assured him. “Sorry about the drama.”

“Yeah, well, it’s what you do.”

She wasn’t sure if that was supposed to refer to her work or her personal life. She had to admit that around Mike, things did seem to get weird. In college, one of his female friends, who’d had a long unrequited crush on Mike, took Lilly and Mike’s close relationship as a threat, and after a night of drinking, showed up at Mike and Lionel’s apartment half singing, half screaming invectives about her. Her tirade had given rise to Mike’s pet name for her, Tiny Hiney.

After signing off with Mike, Lilly reran her bath, which had gone cold, and sighed as she sank in, careful not to knock her ankle. She thought about how to approach Jake in the morning.

She would not be able to dictate his behavior, which would largely influence her own, but she decided to try to adopt a casual attitude and see if she couldn’t start their relationship in a different direction. Right after she thanked him and apologized for being so rude about the jet, that is.

She wished Kyle was home. He’d taken to spending most nights with Marco, his new boyfriend. Lilly turned on the news to try to distract her thoughts from Jake, then switched to a new ebook and finally gave up when the steamy scenes between the protagonist and heroine only brought to mind how it had felt to press herself against Jake in the tent, how his mouth tasted, how smooth and hard he was as she stroked his now all too familiar body.

Tucking herself into bed and closing her eyes, she was immediately assaulted with images of Jake in the moonlit tent. She felt the same burning desire. She flipped over and pounded her pillow. Madcap, who’d hopped up preparing to settle in for the night, jumped with a hiss and abandoned her, heading for the studio chair.

Counting her breaths, in and out, she finally drifted into sleep at number five hundred and twenty-two.

She awoke feeling blissful, warm and comfortable in a huge bed. The comforter was so downy soft, she felt like she had been sleeping on a cloud. A soft white light filled the room, filtered by filmy white sheers that hung everywhere. Everything was soft and white, but not bright. Warm. She stretched and an exquisite white silk nightgown slipped and slid around her waist, assisted by warm gentle hands under the comforter that pushed the silk higher, over her waist, over her stomach, over her breasts. Pushing down the comforter, she smiled down at his dark head as he moved over her, brushing his lips against her skin. He moved so slowly. Dreamy slow. Not scary, but oh, so wicked. His lips lingered on her breasts, taking in first one, then the other nipple in an open-mouthed kiss, swirling his tongue and sucking each rosy bud. Lilly arched into him, and wrapped her legs around his back. When he slid higher, she opened her mouth for a slow burning, swirling kiss. As he slid his tongue into her mouth, she pushed her hips up to meet his hot, rigid erection.
Please, yes, oh, please
, she whimpered, as he slid ever so slowly inside her.

Panting with pleasure, on the verge of an orgasm, Lilly woke.
No, no, no, no
. That is so unfair! She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to will herself back into the dream, but it was gone.

When the alarm went off at three, Lilly had barely slept. Every time she’d closed her eyes, her thoughts had gone in wildly suggestive directions, imagining every possible ending to the sexy white dream.

Looking at her exhausted face in the bathroom mirror, she dug out some concealer and tried to cover up the dark circles under her eyes. She rarely wore more than a few swashes of mascara, blush and pink lip-gloss. The concealer washed her out, so she decided to add eyeliner. The effect made her already too large eyes stand out like an anime character. Oh well, too late to change it.

Binding her ankle tightly in the Ace, she opted to bike to the set. She had to get over the residual effects of the sex dream, or her day with Jake was going to be extremely uncomfortable. At just the thought of touching him, her heart would race and her hands would start shaking. She hoped the exercise would calm her nerves and get her mind to stop reeling with all the possible permutations of naked Jake. Taking deep breaths helped, but also made her lightheaded and dangerous on the bike.
Get a grip, Rose!
She chanted in time to the pedals all the way to Warner.

By the time she reached the Lab, she was calmer and focused. The applications she’d set the afternoon before looked perfect, and she was pleased that she had gone straight to work, particularly since she had been useless and distracted once at home. Lilly was just laying out the palette when she heard the door open behind her, and she felt the shadow of Jake’s imposing form fall over her.

Before turning around, she banished the last of the white frothy dream and chastised her speeding heart. She plastered on a smile and started a cheery, “Good morning,” even before she looked at him. When she did, she could see there was little that was going to be good about the morning.

She thought that she had looked bad this morning, but Jake looked worse. Gone was his subtly polished look. Dressed in a plain navy T-shirt and faded jeans, he sat in the chair without looking at her. Although his face was set in its usual bland lines, his eyes were sunken and rimmed with deep, dark circles.

No sense pretending. “Bad night?” she ventured, pulling up a stool to sit in front of him.

Jake looked at her for the first time, but he could have been looking at a stranger. “Spare me the chatter, Pixie.” Without another word, he pulled the T-shirt over his head, uncovering his gorgeous torso, and handed it to her.

Lilly sat still for a moment, folding the shirt, and resisted the urge to match his nasty tone. Setting the shirt aside, she turned back to Jake, considering what adjustments needed to be made. The circles weren’t so bad given his character and the day’s script. For the next week or so, they’d be shooting the extreme close ups of the slaughter of Sofia’s Italian ancestors, led by Allegrezza and a band of bloodthirsty Victorian vamps. If he’d been playing the leading man in a romantic comedy, the rings under Jake’s eyes would have been a near disaster, but she could work with solemn.

She pulled out the protective lotion and picked up Jake’s left hand. He made no move to help her, staring straight ahead.
So, it was going to be like this?

Lilly spread the lotion over the back of his hand, circled and squeezed every phalanx, always in the direction of his heart, as Lia Sundquist had instructed. When moving away from the heart, she used light strokes. She took her time massaging in the lotion, occasionally adding some grape seed oil to ensure her touch was continuously smooth. In a gentle effleurage, a soothing, stroking movement, she placed his hand back on the armrest and reached for the other one.

As she worked, she struggled to find the right words to voice her regret for her behavior yesterday, hoping that an apology from her might get them back to a more comfortable working relationship.

“I’m sorry I was so crabby about the arrangements you made to get us home yesterday,” she said rather lamely as she warmed a generous amount of the lotion and oil mixture. She felt when he turned his eyes on her, but refused to look up.

Finishing his hands, she slid her palms over his arms and shoulders, then down his chest and stomach. Jake shifted in the chair, his rigid abdominal muscles rippling under her hands. A picture of Jake pressed between her legs in the dream last night, in the tent on Saturday, clouded her vision.

She squelched the whirling of desire that would have kept her lingering over his torso. This man is one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, she reminded herself. And he already had too much power over her. Her time, her attention. Her job, her future. Her sleep. Her dreams. She would not, could not, turn herself, body and soul, over to him. Oh, but she wanted to.

Kneeling, she picked up one foot after the other, placing them on her lap to rub in the lotion and knead out his arches. When she moved to stand behind him to complete his back, she was caught by his gaze in the mirror.

Gone was the bland see-through look. Jake was staring hard at her, dark and compelling, not bothering to hide his desire, or his anger.

She flushed, her own barely held composure threatening to dissolve. She was swamped by her own feelings of desire, mixed with an equal dose of resentment that she couldn’t just come in here and work like every other normal person.

He could at least pretend to ignore the attraction between them. Isn’t that what a gentleman would do? The thought that she should just quit nearly overcame her.

“Something wrong, Lilly?” Jake asked, with sickly sweet concern, and a mean smile.

His mocking tone caused her simmering fury to flare, but she could hear the rest of the crew milling about in the soundstage. By five-thirty a.m., there would be over one hundred people working, waiting on the cast, waiting on Jake.

Instead of throwing the tray of lotions and makeup at him like she wanted to do, she covered her fury with her own insincere smile.

“No, nothing wrong,” she purred.

Jake narrowed his eyes at her. “Then, by all means, continue.”

She smiled wider as she roughly shoved him forward to start on his back, pushing her knuckles into the sensitive muscles under his shoulder blades, none too gently.

“Hey! Ow!” Jake protested, hunching away from her.

When he would have gotten out of the chair, she pushed him back down by his shoulders and came to stand in front of him.

“Sit still,” she commanded as if he were ten years old. And he looked it. His mean smile had been replaced by a mulish pout.

In her flat converse sneakers she had no choice but to lean in, and occasionally position herself between his knees as she applied his makeup. It was not her imagination that each time she leaned over to her tray to pick up an application, tube or brush, Jake would tighten his thighs and rub his muscled leg over her hips and stomach.

She tried desperately to ignore him, but faltered when smudging his lips with blackish-red lip powder. As his lips parted for her to touch the soft inner flesh, a craving for his tongue thrusting into her mouth shot through her. She ran her index finger over his bottom lip twice. Jake didn’t hesitate to take advantage of her momentary distraction. Closing his lips around her finger, he gently sucked it into his mouth. She could feel his tongue swirling around the tip of her finger. He’d circled her breasts in just the same way in her sexy white dream last night. Lilly bit down cruelly on her own lip, her nipples so hard that the thin padding of her bra could not hide them.

“Stop it,” she said, pulling her finger out of his mouth. She stood back, resisting an overwhelming urge to touch her lips with the finger that had been in Jake’s mouth. She crossed her arms over her chest and motioned him to stand up so that she could take in the effects as a whole and make any final adjustments.