Addicted to You (28 page)

“Morning, He-Men.”

“Where did you go so early in the morning?” Everett asked as he tossed a log on the neatly stacked pile. Rill’s gaze raked over her before he met her stare. She tried to ignore the little prickles of excitement his glance evoked, but it was difficult.

“Oh, I was just down at the diner,” she replied evasively. She’d tackle telling her family and Rill about her new job if and when everything was certain and settled. It wasn’t cowardice. Not really. She just wanted to make sure about things first. It wasn’t as if she officially had the job yet, after all.

“So did you bring us something to eat from the diner?” Everett asked single-mindedly.

“No.”

Rill cocked his head. “You were down at the diner? On a Sunday morning?”

“Yeah,” Katie replied, uncertain about his narrowed gaze. He glanced over her again, and this time she sensed more than heat in his assessment.

“Why are you dressed like that?” Rill asked.

Katie looked down at herself. She hadn’t wanted to show up for her meeting with Monty dressed inappropriately, but since she hadn’t known why he wanted to meet with her, she hadn’t really known what “appropriate” was. She’d chosen a brown skirt, brown leather high-heeled boots, a crisp white shirt with a wide collar and a tailored Burberry jacket.

“You look like you were on a job interview,” Rill continued, his dark brows knitted together in puzzlement. His piercing glance seemed to slice right through her discomfort at his astute observation. “You haven’t let Olive Fanatoon and her co-op crowd recruit you to their cause, have you?”

“No, I haven’t,” she bristled. How could he be so attractive and so insufferable at once? “How did you know Olive and those people would be down at the diner?”

He gave a negligible shrug and bent to pick up the ax. “Because Olive has asked me to attend their Sunday meeting practically every weekend since I came to Vulture’s Canyon.”

Katie forgot her embarrassment. “She does? Why?”

“She seems to think that if I were a spokesperson for their cause—Food for Body and Soul—they might get a lot more publicity.”

“Oh, she wants a celebrity spokesperson,” Katie murmured. It shouldn’t have surprised her, of course. She was used to every charitable organization under the sun vying for celebrity attention, both from her work experience and her private life. As a popular film director, Rill got his share of pleas for endorsements, time and money, although Everett was the one who was besieged constantly. Katie did Everett’s taxes, so she knew for a fact how much he gave back to the community and various charitable organizations. Rill gave just as generously, even sponsoring a valuable scholarship program at UCLA in the film department. The scholarships were all done through a trust, so the program had continued since Rill had holed up in Vulture’s Canyon. Still, Katie found herself wondering about Olive’s pleas for help.

“And you don’t want to do it, obviously . . . help out Olive and Food for Body and Soul, I mean?” Katie persisted.

“Obviously,” Rill replied.

“Because it might do you some good, to get involved with something,” Katie observed, unaffected by his blue-eyed glare.

Everett placed a log upright on the chopping block and stepped back. Rill let the ax fly. The log split like it’d been struck by lightning.

“
Okay
,” Katie said, rolling her eyes. “I get the message.”

“You’ve already got him whiskey-free and eating fresh fruits and vegetables, Katie,” Everett said, his mouth quirked in a little grin. “Best give yourself another week to turn him into Mother Teresa.”

Katie gave her brother a sarcastic glance and turned to go. “I’ll be a good little woman, then, and go make you He-Men omelets . . . keeping my mouth shut the whole time, of course.”

Rill spoke with her back turned. “Everett’s leaving in a little while.”

“What?” Katie asked, spinning around. “You just got here.”

Her brother shrugged. “Lawson called,” he said, referring to his agent. “I need to get back. Besides, I saw what I came here to see.”

“You did?” Katie blurted out before she could stop herself.

Everett shrugged and gave first her, then Rill, a dubious glance. “Rill doesn’t seem determined to do himself in anymore, and that was my main worry. As for the rest of what’s happening in Vulture’s Canyon, I haven’t got any control over it, so I’d rather not hang around and see anything that’ll make me nuts.”

Rill gave her a sideways glance.
God
, she wished she knew what was going on inside that brain of his. She blushed for some stupid reason, mumbled under her breath about the omelets and hurried into the house.

After they’d eaten a brunch of omelets and whole-wheat toast, Everett went to pack. Rill helped her clean up in the kitchen. The whole time, Katie sensed he wanted to ask her more questions about what she’d been doing in town this morning. She’d prepared herself for it, but she had no safe response for what he did end up saying.

“Katie.” She turned from the sink and looked at him. He was leaning against the counter, his arms crossed beneath his chest, looking rugged and handsome in jeans, hiking boots and a cobaltblue long-sleeved cotton shirt that set off the color of his eyes. She had to admit, these woods agreed with him. As long as he wasn’t drinking himself to death in them, anyway.

“I think you should go with Everett.”

She turned around and started putting the plates away in the cupboard, rattling them together loudly to stop the ringing of Rill’s words in her ears. She paused and turned around in surprise when she felt Rill’s hand on her arm. He stood close. She could take a lot of crap from Rill, but she couldn’t stand the expression of compassion in his eyes at that moment.

She jerked her arm out of his hold.

“Are you kicking me out?”

“No,” he said. “But Everett reminded me of something yesterday. I care about you, Katie. I’ve told you what I’m capable of right now.” His blue eyes flickered down over her. “I’ve showed you. I
want
to be able to offer you more. I just don’t think I can right now.”

Katie glanced down so he wouldn’t see her hurt. “I’m a grown woman. There are no guarantees when it comes to relationships,” she whispered. She swallowed thickly when she felt one hand on her shoulder and the other cupped her cheek, urging her to look at him. She tilted her chin up in desperate determination. “And don’t even
think
about telling me that we don’t have a relationship, Rill Pierce, or I swear, I’ll clobber you.”

He closed his eyes and inhaled through his nose, as though trying to gather his patience. Everett came into the kitchen carrying his suitcase, and Katie broke away from Rill’s touch.

They escorted Everett onto the front porch to bid him good-bye. Despite her frazzled state, after what Rill had just said, she smiled when the two men shook hands and then hugged.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Everett mumbled before he clapped Rill on the back and withdrew.

“Little late for that advice.” Rill attempted a smile, but Katie saw the tension in his whiskered jaw.

“Tell Mom and Dad that I’m fine,” Katie instructed when Everett squeezed her in a bear hug. “Tell them I’ve been eating fantastic and breathing smog-free air and that you’ve never seen me so healthy.”

“I’ll tell them you’re where you want to be,” Everett said as he leaned back and studied her face. “That’s the truth, right?”

“Yes,” Katie whispered.

Everett nodded. “Well, that’ll have to satisfy us, then.”

“Call me when you get home,” Katie said.

Everett tipped his newsboy hat and grinned as he went down the stairs. “Don’t be a stranger,” he told Rill.

“Yeah. I’ll try,” Rill replied, and Katie had the impression he really meant it. After Everett had gotten in his rental car and driven down the hill, Katie gave him a sideways glance.

“So . . . what happened between you two yesterday?”

“What do you mean?” Rill asked as he touched her shoulder, urging her into the house in front of him.

“You and Everett must have had it out over something. You don’t look like you want to tackle him anymore.”

“Yeah . . . well, we had a talk.”

“Did you tell him why you were mad at him?”

“Yeah, I did. And he told me why he was pissed at me. And then we got over it.”

His swift smile caused a swooping sensation in her belly. Katie examined him in the sunlit kitchen. Clearly, he wasn’t going to tell her the details of what’d happened between Everett and him.

“Hmmm, funny how men can do that,” she murmured. It struck her that they were all alone in the old, silent house. She thought Rill would try to resume the conversation they were having before Everett left, but the way he was staring at her mouth didn’t seem to fit with that topic. In fact, it called vividly to mind what had happened in the woods yesterday.

“Yeah. Funny,” Rill said, but Katie couldn’t recall to what he was agreeing.

“Rill . . .” she began, taking a step toward him, but he stepped back, his trance seemingly broken.

“I found some tools out in the shed. I’m going to fix some of those busted posts on the porch railing.”

“Okay,” Katie said dubiously, watching him walk away. She closed her eyes at the sound of the front porch door slamming shut.

“We are
not
going back to playing that old game, Rill Pierce,” she muttered under her breath.

But if she wanted that to be true, she was going to have to be a lot more active about seducing Rill to the obvious.

Nineteen

Rill felt good and tired by the time he reentered the house
later that afternoon. After he’d fixed the posts on the porch, he’d found half a dozen things to do around the property. He must have been in a deep depression, never to have felt the urge to pick up a hammer or a pair of pliers. Rill had always liked doing manual labor, sometimes even pitching in on carpentry on movie sets when an extra pair of hands was needed and they were on a tight filming schedule. His uncles had taught him how to be handy with tools. Ray and William Pierce—Rill was named after a combination of his uncles’ names—had learned how to be fine carpenters in prison. Too bad learning a decent trade had never dissuaded his uncles from gambling, womanizing, stealing and scamming.

Never kept them out of jail, either.

Rill set his newfound toolbox on the front porch and hesitated before entering the house. He knew what was going to happen when he went in there . . . what he’d been avoiding ever since Everett had accused him of possibly having twisted reasons for having sex with Katie.

After twenty-four hours of thinking about the matter, Rill came to the definite conclusion he didn’t possess any twisted reasons for lusting after Katie. Not unless one considered feral horniness as a twisted motivation, which it may very well be, to the degree he was taking it.

Everett’s accusation may have made him think twice about what he was doing, but his spurt of morality was already wearing thin as he worked around the house and thought of Katie in there, alone.

In the distance, he heard music and the sound of bells tinkling. Katie walked into the kitchen wearing some kind of flowy magenta skirt that rode low on her hips and fell to her calves. She was barefoot and Rill could see ten perfect toes tipped in pink polish. Around her right ankle, she wore a gold anklet adorned with what looked like tiny bells. She wore a top—of sorts—that tied between her breasts and fell in loose sleeves around her wrists. Her belly and curving hips were left bare. She’d pulled her long, waving hair back in the front, but the back of it fell around her shoulders. There was a slight sheen of perspiration on her face and in the valley of her breasts.

His already translucent moral conscience vanished into a puff of vapor. She looked like something that ought to be illegal.

His cock agreed wholeheartedly.

He glanced up from where he’d been gawking at the luscious curves of her breasts in the little bra-like top she wore when he heard a clear, precise ringing sound. Katie stared at him with a friendly smile and one arched eyebrow. He realized dazedly that the sound he’d heard had been Katie attempting to draw his attention off her breasts by tapping the little metal cymbals she wore on two of her fingers.

“Hi,” she greeted him. “I was just working out.”

“In
that
?” Rill asked in a choked voice, nodding at the sexy little gypsy costume she was almost wearing.

“Yeah. I have lots of belly-dancing costumes. It makes the workouts more fun.”

“Don’t tell me you go out in public like that,” Rill muttered. Yeah, he was a guy, and yeah, he definitely had his uncles’ genes, because his gaze had returned to her body. He realized that the eight-inch-wide panel of her skirt that encircled her hips and crotch was made of magenta see-through mesh. He could see a minuscule pair of black panties beneath it.

“Sure, I wear this one at dance class. I do have one number that I’ve never worn to class, though. Never worn period.” She walked toward him. More like sashayed. Why hadn’t he ever noticed before what a sexy walk Katie possessed? Her hips moved in a fluid, tight roll. Rill blinked when he heard the ring of the bells on her ankle and glanced up curving hips gloved in pale gold skin. When he finally got to her face, he saw her light green eyes shining with merriment and mischief.