American Diva (18 page)

He stroked her inner thigh, making her skin tingle where he touched her and her body fire deep in her groin. “You make me crazy, Audrey,” he said. “I don’t know what it is about you, but you make me crazy.”

She smiled with great satisfaction and lifted her hand to touch his face. He lowered his head to her again, kissing her gently now, letting his hand slip higher under her skirt. It occurred somewhere on the fringe of her brain that they were in a park, in a public place. Anyone could walk up on them now, and while she supposed a part of her thrilled to the idea of being caught, a larger part of her knew it could be disastrous. But she could not bring herself to stop him any more than she could stop herself. As his fingers brushed against her crotch, she moaned, urging him on.

He began to stroke her over the fabric of her panties as he kissed her, making her wetter. She could feel his cock thickening against her. She was not conscious of anything but him and his touch, both alarmed and titillated by the response he evoked within her. When his fingers slipped inside her panties, into the slick folds of her skin, she gasped into his mouth.

It had been a lifetime since she had wanted a man’s touch as badly as she wanted his. She wanted it with a ferocity that was unknown to her—her blood pounded in her veins, her heart beat like a drum against her chest. He stroked her, his finger swirling around her, then sliding down and sliding deep inside her. Then another finger. Then three.

Audrey was lost. She rode his hand as he began the seductive rhythm of lovemaking. It was not supposed to be like this, she was not supposed to want the seduction, but she pressed against his hand nonetheless, as a furious, anxious heat began to build in her.

When his thumb touched the core of her while his fingers performed their dance, she gasped again, turning her head away, lifting against him.

“Easy,” he whispered as he continued to stroke her, inside and out. Audrey felt herself falling away all too quickly, shuddering against his hand as a massive wave of release moved through her. The life bled out of her; she could feel her body melting onto the blanket and closed her eyes.

Jack slowed his hand until she lay motionless, completely spent. Only then did he remove his hand and straighten her skirt.

Slowly, Audrey opened her eyes. He was gazing at her, an unfathomable look in his blue eyes. He kissed her tenderly, stroking her cheek with the back of his knuckles, smoothing her hair with his hand.

“What are we doing?” Audrey whispered.

He shook his head and kissed her once more. “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

They lay on that blanket, not talking, just being, until Bruno began to paw at Audrey’s hair, reminding them that it was time to go.

 

 

There were photographers waiting when they arrived back at the Ritz.

“Great,” Jack muttered. Audrey was startled by the number of them—she had forgotten about their constant presence in the few hours she had spent with Jack, and she didn’t like the jarring return to reality.

She and Jack said good night, careful not to touch one another, the only hint of their feelings in their eyes. When Audrey entered her suite, Lucas was waiting for her. “What happened?” he asked instantly. “I thought you were at the Brasa. I came looking for you, but you weren’t there.”

“Oh,” she said, fumbling with Bruno to avoid his direct gaze. “We ended up at some diner. The Brasa was so crowded and it looked like there would be a wait.”

“A
diner
?” Lucas said disbelievingly, peering at her. “What diner?”

Audrey blinked. Then laughed. “Hell if I know. Do they have names? It was just some diner. Hey, look what I got!” she exclaimed, pulling out her boots.

She showed him everything, chattering about the sale she’d found and how good Bruno had been. When she was certain he wasn’t going to ask more, she excused herself to clean up and get ready for bed. In the privacy of the bathroom, as she changed clothes, the bottle of sleeping pills rolled out of her bag.

Audrey picked up the bottle and looked at the little blue pills. Jack was right about that, she thought, smiling softly to herself. She didn’t need pills. She needed a man to make love to her.

She poured the contents of the bottle into the toilet and flushed it.

 

 

Rich happened to arrive at the Ritz at the same time as Audrey LaRue, having just flown in from L.A. From down the drive where his cab had let him out—“Looks like some celebrity,” the cabbie said—Rich saw Audrey run inside, the security guy on her heels, carrying her bags. “
Whore
,” he whispered as he watched her from the sidewalk with a handful of other curious onlookers.

In his room, Rich took out his folder of press clippings he kept about Audrey, and shook his head as he leafed through them. “Such a damn
whore
,” he said again, and got up, scratching his bare ass as he walked to his computer to pull up the letter on which he’d been working.

Rich
delivered the paper to Audrey across the hall later that morning. “Thought you’d like to see this,” he said cheerfully, and dropped it on the table next to a room-service tray that held two covered dishes and a coffeepot.

“Thanks, Rich,” she said with a smile she could not seem to wipe from her face. “When did you get in?”

He blinked, then sighed irritably. “Ah . . . last night? Didn’t you get my message?”

“What message?”

Now Rich’s brows dipped into a definite frown. “The message that I was coming in last night,” he said, a little too angrily to suit Audrey. “I called
three
times,” he said, lifting three fingers. “The first time from my office yesterday morning. I got Courtney and left a message,” he said, bending one finger over. “The second time on my way to the airport. Funny, I got Courtney again and left another message. And then the
third
time I called,” he said, folding over fingers two and three, “was from the airport when my flight was delayed.
That
time, I got voice mail. Didn’t you get
any
of those messages?”

“Ah, well . . . I was kind of busy, Rich,” Audrey said. What was with this guy? She rarely spoke to him on the phone—she had people for that sort of thing.

“
Busy
,” he spat, his frown etching deeper into his face as Lucas emerged from the bathroom, dressed in a robe. “I’ll just bet you were.”

“Hey!” Lucas exclaimed. “Careful! Audrey doesn’t owe you an explanation!”

Rich checked himself. “I didn’t say she did,” he said haughtily. “It’s just very frustrating to ask that a message be relayed and find out that no one has bothered to relay it.”

“Okay, well . . . was there something you needed to talk to me about?” Audrey asked.

“I
assumed
you would want to know how the expenses for this tour were going—and here’s a preview: you’re spending too much money.”

“Okay, that’s the last thing I want to hear about this morning,” Audrey said with a sigh of resignation. “So tell Lucas,” she said, turning back to her breakfast.

“Uh-uh, don’t tell me. At least not right now,” Lucas said, waving a hand at Rich.

“Well,” Rich said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’m not exactly certain what my utility is here if no one wants to talk about the money aspects of this tour.”

“
Dude
,” Lucas said with a bit of a laugh, “calm down. I’ll catch up with you later.”

Rich looked from Lucas to Audrey and the frown returned. “Fine,” he snapped. “Later. In the meantime, do you think you could instruct Courtney to relay a message now and again?”

“
Yes
,” Lucas said, and looked meaningfully at the door.

Rich glared at Audrey and stalked out of the room.

“Jesus,” Audrey said. “What’s his problem?”

“Who knows,” Lucas said with a shrug as he helped himself to a triangle of toast.

“Remind me why we hired him again?”

Lucas shoved the triangle into his mouth. “Highly recommended,” he said, and picked up the paper. “Did we get any press?” he asked, looking at the page Rich had left on top. “Excellent,” he said, nodding.

Audrey got up and looked over his shoulder—there she was, climbing out of a cab.

“Good,” he said. “The more press the better.”

“Why?” she asked, feeling vaguely angry. She didn’t like every aspect of her life being on constant display and could not understand why Lucas thought it was so great that it was.

“
Why?
” he echoed, as if it was a ridiculous question. “Because we need it. And because we told them where you would be. Of course you were supposed to be at the Brasa and weren’t,” he said with a pointed look. “Fortunately, they followed the trail here.”

Audrey’s breath caught in her throat. “You
told
them where I’d be? Told
who
?”

“It was a local Internet thing. You know—they keep track of what’s going on around town. So we logged on and reported that Audrey LaRue was at Brasa Grill.”

“Why did you do that?” she cried. “Why would you intentionally send photographers after me? You know I hate that!”

“Don’t be naïve, baby.”

“I’m not naïve, Lucas,” she exclaimed angrily, slapping her palm on the table. “It’s not like I don’t have to live my life under a microscope as it is! Why would you do that to me?”

“Baby,” he said soothingly as he tried to gather her in his arms. “Come on, you know the score.”

“There is no score, you asshole,” she said, wrenching free of him.

“A little preconcert press never hurt anyone. In fact, it helps.”

“It doesn’t help me have any semblance of a life. Did you think about that?”

“Hey,” he said, holding up his hands. “I do what I do for us. One day you will look back on this and appreciate how hard I have worked for us.”

Audrey rolled her eyes.

“Ooh-kay,” he said, frowning. “Looks like we’re going to have another day of violent mood swings, so if you don’t mind, I am going somewhere else.”

“You make it sound as if I am being childish for insisting on my privacy,” she said, seething with anger.

“Why do you have to get so bent out of shape?” he shot back. “Why do you need so much privacy all of a sudden?”

Audrey immediately clammed up, but she was furious with herself now for saying anything. Furious with herself for having these warm feelings for Jack; strong, undeniably warm feelings. She shouldn’t be feeling anything for him at all. She had a boyfriend. Granted, something had shifted between her and Lucas a long time ago, but nevertheless, she’d been with him for eight years and she was
still
with him. To have allowed herself to develop such intense feelings for another man made her question her character.

It was wrong.

She was no better than her father, whom she despised for having screwed around on Mom for as many years as he did.

But God help her, she couldn’t seem to
stop
feeling this way.

“I’ve got to get ready for work,” she said to Lucas, and walked into the bathroom. She turned on the shower, then sat on the toilet, her head between her hands. Okay, this could never work—no matter how much she liked Jack’s attention, it just couldn’t work. It was better to nip it in the bud than to let it go any further—it had already slid into treacherous territory.

That was easier said than done, of course—she’d thought of little else but Jack in the last couple of days. So to take her mind off him, when Audrey got out of the shower, she called Trystan and told him she wanted to review some dance steps.

“
Again?
” he asked reluctantly.

“Again. Come over.”

When Trystan arrived, she tried to clear her mind by striking up a conversation. How was the tour, what did the dancers think of it? What did they think of the dance routines? How did they like the accommodations?

She was trying so hard to clear her mind that she scarcely noticed the number of people who came in and out of her room—Courtney, Rich again, dropping off reports for Lucas, a hotel maid, a bellhop bringing flowers, and a maid who removed the breakfast trays. She had walked by the paper Rich had brought in twice before she saw the envelope beneath it with the distinctive lettering: Audrey LaRue.