Courting Trouble (Reality Romance Book 5) (14 page)

Elena swung a leg over the bike and petted the leather seat. “Just a little ride? I’ll even let you come along.”

“Do you even know how to drive one?”

“I dated a guy who had one once. He never let me drive it—just liked having me hang onto the back of it like a trophy—but he was also a deep sleeper and had a tendency to leave his keys out.” She waved the hand holding Pretty Boy’s keychain, making it jingle. “Come on. I thought you wanted to get into trouble.”

“I wasn’t expecting to start with grand theft auto.”

“Nonsense. What’s a little joyride between friends? I bet he won’t even press charges. But if he did, wouldn’t it be worth it?” She popped open the back compartment. “Oh look, there’s even a helmet for you.” She fished out the spare, waving it tantalizingly at him. “You know you’re going to say yes. The sooner you do, the sooner we can have your friend’s bike back where it belongs.”

“Fifteen minutes.” He tried to sound stern, but he had a feeling the impact was lessened by the grin he couldn’t help as he reached for the helmet.

“You’ve ridden one of these before, right?” She asked him as he clipped the helmet on, climbed on behind her and tried to adjust his long limbs on the high pinion seat so he wouldn’t hinder her movement—he’d driven a bike, but he’d never ridden on the back.

“It’s just like sex. Don’t fight the movement. Lean into it when you want to go faster and don’t let go.” She strapped on the sleek black helmet that had been left hooked over the handlebars and flipped down the visor. “You ready, Stud Muffin?” She didn’t wait for an answer, firing the engine to life. She grabbed his hands and placed them around her waist. “Hold on tight.”

The crotch rocket leapt forward, jumping off the kickstand, and his hands tightened spasmodically around her waist to keep himself from falling off the back. She spun the bike, gunned it and leaned into the turn out of the parking lot. He thought he heard a shout of laughter over the engine noise, bright and wild, but then they were flying and it was all he could do to hang on for the ride.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“I
need
to get one of these.”

Elena pulled off the motorcycle helmet and tipped her face up to the sun, feeling exhilarated and free and horny as hell.

She didn’t know where they were—and she didn’t care. She’d pointed the bike east and left the city behind, driving into the hills on increasingly winding roads until she didn’t recognize anything. They’d stopped seeing other vehicles a few minutes ago and then she’d seen the turn-off for a scenic overlook and here they were. Middle of nowhere. An abandoned viewpoint on some random hill, looking out over a bunch of other unnamed hills covered in the brown scrub that covered everything since the drought had gotten bad.

God, she felt good.

She felt like
her
. Impulsive. Daring. Leaping into life with both feet.

Adam had braced his feet on either side of the bike, holding them upright, so she lifted hers up, spinning around on the seat so she was facing him, sitting backwards. He’d taken off his helmet as well, resting it against one knee. She grabbed the waistband of his jeans and yanked, jerking his hips toward her so they slid off the high rear seat and down into the saddle.

He grunted at the movement, the bike wobbling before he found his balance again. “We should head back,” he said, as she draped her legs over his, scooting forward so she was straddling him as well as the bike, the two of them tucked tight together hip to hip.

“Should we?” She unzipped her hoodie, letting it drop behind her. “You sure about that?” Her tank top came off over her head next, and Adam’s gaze dropped down to her breasts as if he couldn’t help it.

“Don’t you want to know why I want to get one of these?” she purred, reaching down to grab the hem of his t-shirt and lifting it slowly, her mouth going dry at the tightly clenched abs she revealed.

“Why’s that?” he asked, hypnotized by her body.

She leaned in until her breasts brushed his chest and her smile brushed his lips. “Straddling this big hunk of machinery… the vibrations are like foreplay.”

Adam groaned and took her mouth with savage enthusiasm.

* * * * *

Two hours later, when Adam had dropped Elena back at his house and returned to EP to get ready for his evening detail, he ran into Pretty Boy in the employee lounge.

The model-slash-bodyguard looked up from the X-Box with a single black brow arched. “You have any idea why I got back from my detail with Tank and my bike was missing?”

Adam tossed him the keys, unable to keep a grin from his face. “Elena wanted a ride. Figured you wouldn’t mind.”

“Sure, no problem. Of course you realize if you put so much as a scratch on her, I’ll murder you and stash your corpse somewhere no one will ever find you.”

“And it would have been worth it.”

“Ah crap.” Pretty Boy straightened from his slouch, his expression darkening. “You had sex on it, didn’t you? Dude. Not cool. No one is allowed to get off on my bike but me.”

“And I’m sure your dates appreciate that.” Candy swanned into the room, grabbing a soda from the fridge and turning to Adam before Pretty Boy could come up with a suitably stinging reply. “So you and Elena, huh?”

Adam felt heat spreading across his cheekbones and down his neck. “She’s a client.”

“Not really.” Candy cocked her head, eyeing him speculatively as she popped the top on her Mountain Dew. “Good luck, champ. I have a feeling you’re going to need it.” She made her exit before he could protest again.

“What the hell was that?” Adam muttered.

Pretty Boy’s narrowed gaze was fixed on the doorway she’d vacated. “That woman is a menace.”

“I thought you two were…”

“Candy?” Pretty Boy looked insulted by the implication. “No. No.
No
. Definitely not. She’s insane.”

“Right,” Adam agreed. “A hot tech genius who can kick your ass. Who would want that?”

“Exactly.” Pretty Boy rocked back, returning his attention to the X-Box. He snorted. “Me and Candy.”

Adam moved to the door to make his escape. He’d thought he’d gotten away clean when Pretty Boy yelled after him. “You owe me, Dylan! And you better have disinfected the hell out of that seat!”

He knew it was wrong, but as he jogged down to grab his gear for the night, Adam couldn’t keep a grin off his face.

* * * * *

Elena stood in the center of Adam’s sunken living room in a Wonder Woman pose and decided it was time to take back her life.

Step one had been “borrowing” a Yamaha V-Max for a few hours. Step two should probably be something slightly more legal.

Like getting a new agent.

Someone she could trust. Someone who would share her vision for her career. Someone who would be turned-on by the challenge of plotting a course from the Slutty Suitorette to Meryl Streep accepting her gajillionth Academy Award.

Now all she had to do was figure out who that was.

She fished her phone out of her pocket—not even sure who she would call for a referral but certain there was someone in there who could help—and noticed the voicemail notification blinking. It must have rung while they were on the bike. Elena grinned at the memory, hitting the button to play the message.

“
Elena, hi. My name is Ashley Kenner and I’m a reality television producer. I hope you don’t mind me calling you out of the blue like this. I got your number from Dale Reese, who said he wasn’t representing you anymore, but didn’t know who your new representation was. If you or your new agent could call me back, I’d love to talk to you about working on a new project with us. It’s reality television, but not the way you’ve done it before. No competition angle. More of a Kardashians type thing. We’re thinking of calling it My So-Called Slutty Life or something like that. Just you being you. Think of it as a chance to really tell your side of the story. My number is—”

Elena tuned the numbers out, her thoughts racing.

A chance to tell her side of the story. That was what she wanted, wasn’t it? It sounded too good to be true—but then devil’s bargains always did. And she knew better than anyone that getting involved with reality TV was always a devil’s bargain.

But was it one she should take? God knew she needed the money.

Yes, she wanted to be a real actress, but even before the sex tape those offers hadn’t exactly been thick on the ground. Maybe this could open more doors for her.

It wasn’t her dream—but she’d been fighting for her dream for three years now and she wasn’t any closer to it. She’d been failing as an aspiring actress. Sure, they said the only people who failed were the ones who gave up on their dreams, but they also said insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

She couldn’t live with Adam forever. Someday she would have to go back to the real world. And maybe that meant reality TV.

Her stomach turned at the thought. A few weeks ago she’d been so sure getting back on TV would be her redemption, but now everything felt different.

There was still the whore-on-the-door to consider. And the sex tape.

Maybe all she was good for was reality TV. But when she thought about giving up acting, really thought about it, it felt like something inside her screamed. A Munch painting in her soul at the idea of walking away from her dream.

She couldn’t do it.

She might have to go back to reality TV. She might have to become a “personality” before anyone would look at her as an actress. But not yet. Not today.

Today she was a woman on a mission and she was going to get a new agent.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“So ‘Tank’ is short for James Tancredo and he was a five time Pro-Bowl offensive lineman who left the NFL when he met his wife because she was worried about concussions, but now she has no problem with him jumping in front of bullets to protect celebrities?”

Elena sat on the kitchen counter, eating a yogurt and swinging her bare legs as she watched Adam cook dinner. Her skirt was bunched up around her thighs and by the glances he kept throwing her direction he appreciated the view.

“The odds of a bodyguard getting shot at even once in his career are far lower than the odds of a lineman taking a blow to the head at least once in every game. Shareen plays the odds. And it helps that Tank tends to refer to his job as ‘overpaid bouncer’ rather than ‘bodyguard.’”

“You like him,” she observed.

He shrugged, attention on the mushrooms he was dicing. “He’s a good guy.”

“And Max?”

“Also a good guy.”

She rolled her eyes at his typically cryptic answer.

They’d spent at least part of each of the last three days at the Elite Protection offices, so she figured it was about time she knew a little more about it. Life had calmed down in the last few days. The worst of the paparazzi frenzy had moved on, thanks to a bigger celebrity creating an even bigger scandal. Part of her felt guilty that her reprieve was at someone else’s expense, but mostly she was just relieved not to be on every broadcast of the day.

There hadn’t been any more news on the whore-on-the-door front, but Adam assured her it wasn’t unusual for a busy crime lab to take weeks to process DNA or run a set of fingerprints.

Whenever he worked, she would do research on agents online, occasionally calling them and pretending to be her own manager in an attempt to set up a meeting—but the agents she wanted wouldn’t take her calls and the ones who would weren’t the kind of representation she needed. So far her search had been an exercise in frustration.

She hadn’t called the reality show people back—she still didn’t know what she would say to them if she did. It felt like the only choice she had—for the money and a chance to tell her side of things—but she wasn’t ready to make it. She hadn’t even told anyone about the offer, not even Adam, as if talking about it made it a fait accompli.

But other than that and the twin guillotines of the sex tape and death threat hanging over her head, things were… good.

Really good.

The good was making her nervous, but she was making a concerted effort not to question it. So she was questioning him instead.

“If everyone is so great, why don’t you like working there?”

His hands stilled on the cutting board. “What makes you think I don’t?”

“The way you talk about it. Like it’s a necessary evil. Like you’re biding your time.”

His brow furrowed into a frown, but his hands resumed their familiar movements, chopping and slicing.

“Why do you work there?”

“I needed something and it came around at the right moment.”

“What would you rather be doing? Besides guarding the President.”

He shrugged. So forthcoming, her lover.

“What about your coworkers? You like Tank and Max is ‘a good guy’—”

“You know Max. You’re friends with his sister.”

“Sidney and I aren’t really that close—or we weren’t. I don’t know. We might be now. But that isn’t the point. I want to know what
you
think of him.”

Adam shrugged again—and she thought that might be all the answer she was going to get out of him but then he added, “He’s a Dewitt—which means he was born with a silver spoon and everything he touches turns to gold—but in spite of that he’s actually, I don’t know. Real. Down to earth. Treats you like an equal. Has your back.”

“So he’s a badass bodyguard in addition to owning the business?”

“He doesn’t do a lot of field work. He takes care of the business side. And the networking and marketing crap. But I’ve seen him train. He’s not someone I would fuck with.”

“Good to know.” She tossed her empty yogurt container in the trash for a three-pointer and snagged an olive off the cutting board. “And the others?”

“Cross was in the NFL too. Defensive back. He and Tank have been friends since they played together in college. When he blew out his knee, he was looking for something else to do and Tank vouched for him so Max brought him in even though he’s still training on the security side.”

“Helps that he’s pretty.”

Adam scowled. “He is not pretty.”

Elena snorted. “Trust me, Stud Muffin. Every man in that building is a certifiable hunk because Max knows image matters in Hollywood and he can charge more for you if you’re gorgeous. Take it as a compliment. Whose bike did we borrow?”

He hesitated before finally admitting, “Pretty Boy’s.”

She laughed, almost slipping off the counter before she caught herself. “I rest my case. What’s his real name?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never heard anyone call him anything else.”

“Is he the one who looks mixed race—dark hair, insanely gorgeous eyes?”

“That’s him.”

“I swear I’ve seen him in a magazine somewhere.”

“He models on the side. As a hobby.”

“And the female magazine-readers of America thank him.”

He scowled again. “He’s not that attractive.”

“Honey. You don’t know his name because everyone calls him Pretty Boy. He is that attractive.”

“Candy doesn’t seem to think so.”

It was her turn to frown, jealousy spiking. “Who’s Candy?”

“Our tech wizard. She doesn’t do any field work that I know of, but she designs security systems, that sort of thing, and I’ve seen her take a man twice her size to the cleaners on the training mat.”

“I didn’t realize you worked with any women.”

Adam shrugged. “I don’t work with her much.”

“Anyone else I should know about?”

“Nope. That’s it. It’s a small crew. Max has this whole philosophy about exclusivity and selectivity. Only invites people with very specific credentials to join.”

“There goes my dream of being Elite Protection’s next hot shot bodyguard.”

“I don’t know.” Adam grinned at her. “You’re a pretty good shot. And god knows you’re hot enough. He might consider you.”

She smiled, ridiculously pleased—more by the good shot comment than the nod to her hotness.

He’d taken her to the EP range and taught her how to fire a gun today. It was satisfying to know how to use a weapon, but she hadn’t gotten anywhere near the rush she got from the motorcycle—mostly it was just loud. She had no idea why so many people found it empowering to fire projectiles at paper targets.

Now if they’d been firing at bottles and could watch them explode that might have been different. Sadly, this wasn’t the Wild West. Though if it had been, Adam would undoubtedly have been the sheriff in the white hat. And she probably would have been the saloon girl with a sordid secret who turned out to be his downfall.

He knew she was trouble.

She just couldn’t figure out why he was still with her.

The sex was good—okay, better than good—but he seemed to really like
her
not just what he could do to her body when they got naked.

She was used to guys liking her body and liking the adventure of being with her as long as it meant they were getting laid, but the rest of it confused her.

“Why do you like me?”

The question popped out without her permission. She felt her face heating and tried to think of a smooth way to backpedal, but Adam was already answering—utterly unflustered, as if it were the sort of question that always came up in pre-dinner conversation.

“You’re free. And fierce. And strong. Like a lioness.” He looked up from the cutting board then and the look in his eyes was enough to melt her panties.

Her breath went out in a whoosh and didn’t come back in again.

“And I never know what you’re going to do, but I have never felt as alive as I do when I’m with you.”

And just when she started to think he had nothing to say…

Elena reached out and hooked a finger in the waistband of his pants. “Come here.”

He set down the knife, sliding over to notch his hips between her knees, his palms braced flat on the counter on either side of her. “If you distract me, you won’t get dinner,” he warned, bending to take her mouth in a quick kiss—or a kiss he doubtless intended to be quick.

“Dinner can wait,” she murmured when they came up for air. Hooking her ankles behind his back, she wound her arms around his neck. “Ever had sex on a kitchen counter?”

“I’m all for new experiences.” He smiled against her mouth, his clever hands already sneaking beneath her skirt to hook onto her panties and drag them down. She lifted her hips to help him, forced to unlock her legs from behind his back to kick them off. When he swooped to kiss her again, her hands fell to the fastening of his trousers, impatient to feel him.

She wasn’t used to this—it wasn’t just lust. There was something else driving her need to drag him inside her and never let go.

Connection.

It was another of those idiotic
Marrying Mister Perfect
catch-phrases that got thrown around every season. Everyone competing to see who had the best connection with Mister Perfect. But that was what this was.

Adam knew her. He understood her. He
saw
her. And he liked her anyway. When she was with him, she never felt that alone-in-a-crowded-room feeling that had defined her life for years. Whatever came at them, they were in it together. Connected.

She could barely breathe for wanting him so badly in this moment. “Hurry,” she whispered against his lips.

He sank his fingers into the flesh of her hips and yanked her forward on the counter until she would’ve fallen off the edge without him there to stop her. He shoved her skirt out of the way, fumbling with the condom as she thanked the gods of spontaneous sex that he’d started carrying them in his pockets—

“Adam?” A light voice called from the front hall.

“
Shit
.” Adam leapt away and Elena slipped from the edge of counter, catching herself with one hand when her knees threatened to buckle.

“Who—?”

He shook his head, frantically fastening his pants, shoving the unused condom into his pocket as the answer to her question came around the corner to the kitchen. A young girl with long, ironing-board-straight sandy brown hair and unusual bone-structure—distinctive, but just a shade less attractive than her famous mother’s. Layers of make-up accented her giant doe eyes and made her broad mouth glisten with shiny peach gloss. She looked dressed for a date—everything about her shiny and glowing with youth—but the light in her eyes dimmed as she looked between Adam and Elena.

“Cassie, what are you doing here?”

Thanks to Adam’s leap they were several feet apart and Elena’s skirt had fallen back down around her thighs when she fell off the counter—thank God—but they both looked disheveled and guilty. The truth of what Cassie had interrupted was obvious.

She might be seventeen, but she wasn’t naïve. She looked back and forth between them, and Elena could see the effort in her face as she fought not to show her hurt.

Shit. She really is in love with him
. Elena had teased him about it, had seen the hero worship on the girl’s face when he saved her, but she hadn’t realized how true the words were until this moment.

Cassie’s gaze fell to the floor and she went white, looking queasy. Elena followed her gaze—and flushed guiltily.
If it hadn’t been obvious before
…

On the floor several feet away, half-hidden beneath the edge of the cabinet, lay Elena’s blue lace panties.