The Inheritance Test, page 7
Her smile deepened. “How about a rumba?”
“Charlotte.” The woman standing opposite him laughed. “Revenge is beneath you. Be the bigger person.”
“Just follow my lead, Hollywood.”
She set her left hand on his shoulder and grabbed his right with hers. So far, so good. He hated not being able to just dive in. Hanging back was not how he’d lived his life. The music started, a Latin sound, upbeat and fast with lots of string. He slid his free arm around her back as every eye in the ballroom turned their way.
And just when he was starting to think she’d leave him standing there clueless, she whispered instructions to him. “Make a box. Two steps to the side and then one step forward. Slow, quick, quick. And, Hollywood?”
“Yeah?”
“Wiggle your hips. A lot.”
Right. He scanned her face, far too aware of the tiny shifts and tensions in her body that announced her next steps. Dammit. But he loved the amusement lighting up her eyes, the smile on her face. And the bold curve of her mouth was downright beautiful, so stare-worthy that he would have missed a step if he hadn’t had excellent reflexes, honed by years of performing dangerous stunts.
“Are you sure you’ve never done this before?”
“You’re my first.” He winked and what the hell... He spun her in a circle. And then another. He had no idea what he was doing. Oh, wait, he did. He was taking her up on her dare and he was winning this game.
This earned him a raised eyebrow and then she upped her game, adding spins and a sensual wiggle to her own hips that drove him wild. Desire tightened his body and had him fantasizing about stripping that dress off her and worshipping each delicious curve of her body, because it turned out that his wallflower partner who hated the spotlight could really, really dance. And when she danced with him, she forgot all about their audience. He mirrored her gestures, adding a few embellishments of his own as they danced on.
“We fit together,” she said, laughing up at him.
We fit together...
She was right, he realized. Her eyes were heated, happy, as she enjoyed the moment, caught up in this thing between them. She wasn’t thinking about their audience or the race. He’d have bet on that. She simply danced with him and it worked.
And losing that rightness scared him more than anything.
The music swelled and other couples joined them, turning the ballroom floor into a sea of twirling bodies. He only had eyes for Charlotte.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, his grip tightening on her hand as he twirled her. “But you’ve got to be the hardest worker I know.”
Her lips parted. “Wow.”
“All true.”
And then the steps had them moving apart again and any more conversation wasn’t happening. She beamed at him as the music ended, flushed and happy.
She grinned at him. “See? You can dance.”
He pulled her up against him and grinned back. “I had an excellent teacher.”
And then he lowered his head to hers and kissed her. They’d never discussed kissing, but this felt right, too. She raised up on her toes, fitting herself into his embrace, and kissed him back. She kissed like they’d danced, a slow, slow, quick that took them from an easy awareness to burning passion. A slow tease of his tongue against her closed lips was followed by the slow, teasing way she opened up for him and let him in. The quickening of their breath, the instant heat, the seductive, possessive need that raged through him... He didn’t care who was watching them, not when all of him was focused on the sexy woman he held in his arms.
The applause called him back. The event host approached to congratulate them, trailing a photographer.
“That was just for our audience, right?” she asked, stepping back and putting some space between them.
He recognized the wariness in her voice and, dammit, he shouldn’t have kissed her in public. She’d made it clear she wasn’t dating anyone, let alone a movie star.
“It was a hell of a show,” he agreed.
Except that kiss hadn’t been fake.
Not completely.
Eight
Declan had stopped being impressed by wealth long ago. The Palsgrave compound overlooking the ocean barely registered. The night sky, a velvety swirl of stars and clouds, would have been worth a second look, but they weren’t alone. Dammit. A photographer waited for their car in the shadows lining the driveway, camera up and ready. Good quality shots earned hundreds of dollars, but a unique picture would net thousands. Word must have got out in the hours since their “kiss.”
“We have a photographer doorstepping.” He kept his voice low, grateful that the windows of his luxury Mercedes were tinted. “He’s waiting for you to come home, hoping to snap us together.”
The possibility of a romance between him and Charlotte would have paparazzi bombarding the house. He pulled out his phone and fired off a text to his security service. Charlotte would need protection.
She shrugged. “I’m not that interesting.”
He hated her easy dismissal of her own worth. “You are to me.”
She pulled her evening wrap around her and picked up her clutch, not waiting for him to charge to the rescue. “Is that the new movie star math? If I’m interesting to you, then I’m interesting to your fan club out there?”
“Something like that,” he said. “We need to get inside, Charlotte.”
She rolled her eyes. “Since I’m not happy about the prospect of living in your car forever, yes. I do.”
Before he could point out that they were partners and it was therefore a question of we do, she opened the door. Cameras went off in a blinding flash of light. Charlotte froze, but he was already on it, striding around the car to slam her door shut even as he put himself between her and the paparazzi.
“Come on.” He squeezed her fingers gently. Work with me. “Let me walk you inside.”
The photographers were calling her name now, demanding she look their way. There were two others he hadn’t spotted, in the shadows where the security lights didn’t reach. They must have parked on the main road and then walked in.
“Charlotte, are you dating Declan?”
“Is there an engagement between you?”
“Are you moving to Los Angeles?”
“Does your former fiancé know you’re having an affair with a movie star? Is that why he broke it off?”
“Will you resign from Martha’s Kids?”
“When’s the baby due?”
“Are you kidding me?” She whirled, clearly intending to set their unwanted company straight, but the first rule he’d learned in Hollywood was never engage.
Pulling her into his side, he brushed her ear with his mouth. “Front door or back? What’s the fastest way in?”
She gaped and he bit back a curse. She wouldn’t like these pictures. The crunch of gravel behind them announced new arrivals. They needed to move.
“You got your shot, man,” he said to the nearest photographer, then tugged Charlotte up the front steps, taking her bag from her and fishing out a key. He held it up for her to see. “Yeah?”
She nodded, he got the key in the door, and then they were in. Frankly he’d expected Bryant Palsgrave to have a butler. The man seemed like the type, an impression borne out by the ostentatious entryway. A mahogany staircase with an elaborate wrought iron balustrade swept upward to the second floor. There was marble tile and more marble on the walls. An antique console held a lavish arrangement of white roses and expensively furnished rooms were visible through an archway.
Beside him, Charlotte muttered a curse of her own. Which, for the record, he hadn’t heard her do, even after his showboating at the charity event. “How could they say those things?”
“It’s their job. They’re fishing for a reaction because reactions sell. You in a pretty dress?” He shrugged. “They snapped that at the charity event. Now they’re looking for me stripping you out of the dress or a kiss. Something that will make people look.”
“So they make up a baby? And a ring?”
“Yeah,” he said. Did it make sense? No.
It didn’t have to.
He stood there longer than he should have, trying to not think about those things. With Charlotte of all people.
She wasn’t for him.
He wasn’t the kind of man who did forever and he certainly hadn’t seen any examples of what a good marriage might look like. J.J. had already been divorced when he’d adopted Declan and Nash and he’d never remarried.
Declan’s own parents had split up before Declan’s birth and Nash had a different father. He’d grown up poor and then he’d worked like hell for his place with the Mastersons. A fancy house like this one?
He didn’t belong.
Which didn’t stop him from remembering how that angry, resentful eight-year-old boy had felt when he’d been swept away from the latest in a long series of foster homes and dropped into J.J. Masterson’s Malibu mansion. He’d worked hard to earn a place there and he’d succeeded. Almost.
Good times. Even now, years later, he still had plenty of resentment, resentment that made him restless and eager to get the hell out of Bryant Palsgrave’s stifling mansion and back to his own home in the Santa Monica Mountains. He breathed better outdoors and Hollywood was a short drive away by California standards.
Charlotte shifted and he looked at her. Right. It wasn’t her fault that her father was a pretentious ass and it was definitely Declan’s fault that she was now trapped in her own home by paparazzi.
“Away from the windows.” He nudged her gently.
She snorted but started walking. “This isn’t one of your movies. Girls like me don’t go out with guys like you.”
“What’s wrong with me?” He’d bet she had a list.
A long, rank-ordered list.
He followed her into a palatial living room with massive wood beam ceilings and a sea of white furniture. A sheepskin rug had been layered over a vintage Persian rug in front of a brick fireplace and French doors looked out onto a pool, a manicured expanse of lawn and the Atlantic Ocean. It was hard to imagine anyone actually sitting in here. It looked like a movie set, something he was an expert on.
Charlotte sank down onto the closest sofa and tugged off her heels with a groan. “You’re so Hollywood. And I’m not.”
That wasn’t a bad thing. Sinking down onto his haunches before her, he rocked back onto his heels and caught her foot in his hand, then rubbed the arch. “You’ve got a chip on your shoulder about the whole movie star thing, don’t you? There’s no reason why we couldn’t be together.” So what if they came from different backgrounds? And so what if he had a high-profile job while she stuck firmly to behind-the-scenes work?
“If we’re talking about sex,” he continued. “Because that’s just fun and not a fairy tale or a country song. I wouldn’t fit into your pretty life here either, not for long.”
She sighed and collapsed backward on the sofa. “Is that what you think? That sex is just fun?”
He tugged gently on her big toe. “If you haven’t been having fun in bed, there’s your problem.”
This earned him a glare. “I can have fun.”
Not exactly what he’d said, but okay.
He switched to her other foot. “We should talk more about how fun sex is because right now, all those photographers outside think we’re having sex.”
She groaned. “We’re going to have to disappoint your fan club. No baby, no engagement, no public sex.”
He grinned. “So just sex in private? Because I feel the need to point out that we seem to be totally alone right now.”
She tugged her foot free and stood up. “Opportunist much?”
He wasn’t much of a gentleman, but he got to his feet, because she was in a dress and...she deserved all of his respect. “They’ll keep trying to find a romance between us. It’s a good story. They’ll run with it.”
“It’s both ridiculous and untrue.”
“It’s good press,” he countered. “We’ll get plenty of positive coverage. Donors like happy love stories.”
J.J. would like it, too, as long as Declan kept things G-rated and stuck to the fairy-tale script. A Hollywood movie star who raised money for children and fell in love with an unassuming local girl? That was story gold, and he hated that he recognized that truth even if he had no intention of acting on it. He wasn’t that much of a bastard.
“We’re not pretending to be in love to hoodwink people into supporting us.”
“Let them take their photos and speculate that we’re a real couple,” he argued. “We don’t confirm or deny. Eventually, they’ll lose interest.”
“When I’m dumped for the second time,” she pointed out. “Still not seeing how this is a win for me.”
“Just for a little while.”
“Nope,” she said. “No, not a chance. Been there, done that, didn’t even get a lousy T-shirt.”
“Well if all it takes is a T-shirt,” he said, “that can be arranged.”
* * *
She had to kill him. Bury his big, beautiful body somewhere no one would ever find him. The movie star? Nope. Got no idea where he went. Ugh.
She strode over to the French doors trying not to think about what he’d suggested—either the sex or the fake relationship.
“Right,” he said, following her. “We can try to find some other way to sort this out, but they’ll run the kiss from tonight’s event, plus what they snapped outside your place. I took you home and they’ll fill in the blanks after that.”
The entire Vineyard would be convinced that she’d fallen in love with another handsome guy. Half the locals would plan her fairy-tale wedding, while the other half would predict she’d crash and burn.
Again.
Just months ago she’d been sure George was her person and he’d taught her a very public lesson about trusting too fast. Ever since, she’d tried to fix the destruction he’d left behind him because she was the only one who deserved to get hurt. She wasn’t proud of keeping silent about all the ways he’d betrayed her, but the district attorney had asked her to keep silent while they investigated. Plus, it didn’t make her a person she was proud to be and that was the truth.
She wanted to tell Declan to leave now—to walk away from her and Martha’s Vineyard. But that would mean abandoning the charity boat race. Losing her chance to make Martha’s Kids whole. Being dumped publicly a second time because of course she and Declan couldn’t possibly be a real couple. They’d list the ways she’d been lacking. Even now she couldn’t think about George without a deep, sickening feeling of humiliation. She did not want to do that again, but—
The bastard sensed her weakening because he said, “We can’t go back in time, sweetheart, but this can work to our advantage. It won’t be all bad. We’ll race and then we’ll go our separate ways. Things will calm down.”
“Have you really thought this through? Because while you’ll get to put an entire country between yourself and the breakup, I’m the one who has to stay here and explain to people I see every day. It will be very, very bad.”
“We don’t have to break up publicly. We can just—drift.”
She snorted. Was he delirious?
“Think about it,” he suggested. “For now, let me walk you back to your place. You’re in the guesthouse, right?”
“What do you think is going to happen to me?”
He met her eyes with a level gaze. “The paparazzi could scale the wall. They could find some way in before my team gets here.”
“I don’t need a babysitter or a bodyguard.”
“I know you think that,” he said calmly. “But I have more experience with this lifestyle and I want your life to change as little as possible. My team is discreet. They’ll stay out of sight unless someone gets in your face.”
Lovely. Now she felt ungrateful. And yet... “This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t decided I needed a makeover. And then kissed me. In public.”
“It would have happened. Because I’ve never met anyone like you and the degree of attraction between us isn’t something I know how to manage. You’re gorgeous. I want to put my hands all over you, and sooner or later, someone would have caught me doing exactly that.”
Charlotte stared at him, speechless as he opened the door for her. That wasn’t her usual end-of-date conversation. She replayed it in her head as she stepped through the door and headed for the guesthouse tucked between the main house and the ocean. Surrounded by boxwoods in antiqued urns, billowing pampas grass and lavender, the dark rectangle of the pool reflected back the lights of the house.
She made a shooing motion with her fingers. “You can go. White knight rescue duty done for tonight.”
He grinned. “You don’t want to kiss me good night? Or tell me that was a great speech?”
She sighed. “I thought the whole point was to make the stories go away?”
“This is a photographer-free zone,” he said. “It could be our last chance.”
The man had a point, but she didn’t want to kiss him. Much. Plus didn’t photographers have long-range lenses and sniper-worthy covert hiding skills? Years ago she’d toured Althorp House in England. An excited guide had recounted the grand romance between nineteen-year-old Lady Di and the Prince of Wales, noting that the room with the piano had been the only one the photographers couldn’t see into. Lady Diana Spencer had spent a lot of time there. It had seemed unbearably sad to know that an entire estate was outside the door but she was trapped in a single room.
Declan put a finger beneath her chin, nudging it up. “So are we good?”
“Absolutely,” she lied.
He frowned. “We’re not.”
