Exposing Alix (14 page)

Alix tapped her mouth with one finger and considered her
options. She was a size four, so the fitted pants probably wouldn’t work. The
skirt, on the other hand, had an elastic waist, and even if it was too big to
stay at her waist, it would at least fall somewhere around her hips. A tank top
with a scooped neck matched the swirling blues and greens of the skirt, though
it too was at least a size too big. She pulled the pieces from the closet and
laid them carefully on the bed, then moved to the window to close the blind so
she could try them on.

Naturally, Ryker chose that moment to emerge from the
house in a pair of low-slung navy bathing trunks.

She sucked in her breath. It was like watching a scene
from
Garden of Eden
, except that now she’d touched that body and felt
those lips on hers. She studied his lean hips and the ridge of muscle
separating stomach from groin. Warmth bloomed from her stomach to her breasts,
and she shuddered at the flood of erotic images that followed.

Ryker, naked, next to her in bed.

Ryker, naked, in the pool.

Ryker, naked, his head buried between her legs.

He approached the edge of the pool and looked up, catching
her eye as she gazed at him through the window. A hot blush swamped her cheeks
as he grinned and dove neatly into the water.

She jumped away from the window and fumbled with the cord
until the blind dropped. Lord, he had a way of eating her alive with those dark
eyes.

Alix jerked on the clothes and then sat on the edge of the
bed. Steady, methodical splashes came from the pool. He’d said it would be half
an hour or so before they were to leave, and she would drive herself insane if
she sat here the entire time, imagining him in the pool, the water sliding
across his skin and bubbling around his…

Clearly, she needed some distraction.

As she padded back down the carpeted steps, she felt again
that odd feeling of comfort that she’d experienced from the first moment she
entered the living room. Her glass of club soda sat on an end table, water
beading up on the sides, and she sank into the chair beside it.

Idly, she flipped through a basket filled with magazines
and books. An oversized, soft-cover volume caught her eye. It was a collection
of modern photography that she knew well. Laboznikov had been editing it when
she was in school, and it included one of her own photographs. Bemused, she set
the book on her lap and let the pages fall open to a thin leather strap that
served as a bookmark.

It marked her picture.

It was one she had taken during Elias’s class on
photographic techniques. She had focused on the puckered skin of a woman’s
areola, barely including the edge of her nipple. A man’s thumb lay on the side
of the nipple, curled possessively around it. Her skin was pink, the areola
brown.

Ryker had been checking up on her.

She turned back to the basket and found an old copy of
Film
Quarterly
, also familiar because in it, an NYU film student had written an
article analyzing her erotic movies. This too was marked with a sticky note.
Alix placed it on top of the book and flipped through the pages, feeling an
unexpected surge of pride. Perhaps Ryker understood better, now that he’d read
the article. Her movies were about more than getting off lonely women. They
were about vulnerability, real emotion, and pure, honest pleasure.

With a hopeful sigh, she leaned back into the buttery-soft
leather chair and began to read.

Ryker focused on the feeling of
the cool water against his skin and tried not to think about the nightmare that
was only a few hours away. Naturally, he had forgotten about Rosalia’s dinner
party. Perhaps forgotten was not the right word. Blocked, maybe. That would be
more accurate.

Rosalia had a family dinner at her house in Boyle Heights
once a month. She was the oldest daughter, the matriarch now that Mama was
gone, and she took her duties seriously. One had to be brave—or perhaps a
little stupid—to reject her invitations. So Ryker attended her dinners,
along with his father and four siblings, and hated every minute.

The jokes about his work, his house in Malibu, and his
“movie-star” lifestyle never seemed to cease. Never mind that they’d all
accepted, at various times, his offers of money, jobs, and connections. Each
still had his or her own source of criticism.

His stepfather, Emilio, believed no good could come from
the loose morals of the movie industry.

His half brothers couldn’t understand why he didn’t party
more and why he didn’t bring them along when he did.

Rosalia nagged him incessantly to stop dating actresses
and models, who she assumed were the equivalent of life-size Barbie dolls. Even
worse, to Rosalia, was the fact that none of the women he’d dated had any trace
of Latino blood. Rosalia took her Mexican heritage almost as seriously as her
matriarchal responsibilities.

Ryker had tried attending dinner alone, but that
backfired. The last two times he’d shown up without a date, a young, unmarried
girl with dusky skin and huge brown eyes had mysteriously appeared at the table
next to him. It didn’t seem to matter to Rosalia that the women were all ten
years his junior and painfully shy. She just kept throwing them his way.

What would she think of Alix?

He did a neat flip turn and pushed off on the side of the
pool.
He
still didn’t know quite what to think of Alix, except that when
faced with the prospect of suffering through another endless, painful dinner
with his family, having her by his side made it sound almost bearable.

She was good with the actors. Alix could fade into the
background when they were shooting in a way he never could, getting out of the
way of the actors when they needed their space and then filling them up when
they were ready for direction. She never got angry or frustrated, never yelled
like he did or stamped around when things didn’t go her way. She just smiled a
Mona Lisa smile and kept on working.

He had to admit, watching the couple in the park had been
a unique experience. Though he had little faith that they had seen true love or
any similar nonsense, he had gotten insight into the look Alix was trying to
create. There had been something intense in that moment, something palpable and
significant. He chalked it up to honest sexual desire, though admittedly, there
was something unfamiliar about it. Something he didn’t see in the eyes of his
actors.

Seeing through her eyes had been a powerful experience. A
powerful
and
arousing experience. He could no more have walked away from
her at that second as he could have jumped off the narrow path into the canyon
below. He covered it with humor and focused on seduction, but the truth was
that he’d wanted her badly.

Still did, actually. He understood that she wasn’t
inclined to fall into bed with him. Or rather, her mind wasn’t so inclined. Her
body clearly was. So he was taking it slowly. There was no need to rush. He
wanted her more every day, but next time, he wanted her to come to him. And she
would. He had no doubt that she would.

Meanwhile, Alix’s presence on the set was proving
surprisingly valuable. Ryker found himself arguing with her just to see how her
mind worked. She thought out every move in advance like a savvy professional,
every piece fitting into the big picture she had developed in her mind. He’d
never worked so closely with someone before, and it was surprisingly
comfortable—even enjoyable. Though he didn’t always agree with her, she
always made him think.

He stopped for a moment to adjust his goggles and looked
up at the window of the spare bedroom. He pictured Alix standing there, gazing
down on him as she had when he first entered the water. Even the memory of her
eyes on his body sent the blood rushing to his groin.

Thank goodness the pool was cold.

He did five more laps and glanced at his watch, realizing
he’d have to get ready soon, or they’d be late. If only he could stay here
tonight and focus his attention on Alix. If only… Ryker forced himself to work
out his frustration with another lap. His stepfather would pick up on his
temper right away. Emilio had been harping on Ryker to control his temper from
the day he moved in with Ryker’s mother. Which, naturally, had only pissed
Ryker off more. As an adult, he was glad for the discipline he’d learned from
Emilio, but it had done nothing to foster a relationship between them. Instead,
he’d learned to develop a hard shell to slip behind whenever Emilio began to
nag or Mama looked at him with those big sad eyes.

Ryker found himself in that shell more and more these
days, every time he went to dinner with the family. It was a comfortable place,
that shell, a place where he didn’t have to feel anything, where he could watch
from a distance and nothing they did could affect him.

Sometimes he found himself wondering what it would be like
to just be himself around them. But when they were around, he didn’t even know
what that meant. Was he Ryker or Ricardo? The boy he used to be or the man he
had become?

He held his breath, swimming the length of the pool as
fast as he could, slamming into the tiled wall on the other side and jerking up
his head, gasping with effort. Flipping onto his back, he stared up at the
clear blue sky. It was one night. A few hours. Maria and Rosalia both had young
kids. The night always ended early. He would survive.

Ryker pulled himself out of the water and grabbed his towel.
He looked back up at the window, but she wasn’t there. He imagined her
showering, emerging from the bathroom naked, breasts swaying as she walked.
Tonight was the night. She’d wanted to come here. She wanted him.

By the time the sun went down, his family would be a
distant memory. Alix Z would finally be his.

#

Alix lost track of time as she became absorbed in the
article about her movies. A feeling of nostalgia overcame her as she studied
the still shots and remembered the process of shooting those films. Some days,
filming an intense sexually explicit scene was the last thing her actors wanted
to do. It had fallen to her to think up tricks to get them back in the mood.
Soft lights, music, the right foods… She’d done anything she could think of to
foster the romance. It didn’t always work, and that was okay too. She’d learned
that being the director didn’t mean she was God. Some days you stumbled onto
the magic, and some days you worked for it.

“Basking in your glory days?” A deep voice startled her back
to awareness.

She jumped, spilling a trickle of club soda down the front
of her blouse. “Damn it, Ryker! You shouldn’t sneak up…” Her words trailed off
as she took in his appearance. He must have come right from the pool, because
his dark hair curled in sleek waves around his ears, and a few drops of water
slid down his forehead. A white towel had been wrapped around his narrow waist,
accentuating the soft brown of his skin and the hair that ran in a line from
his chest to his groin.

She cleared her throat. “…on a person like that.”

“You know, we do have a few minutes before we have to go.”
He raised a suggestive brow.

Her skin felt as if it might spontaneously burst into
flame at the suggestion. She backed against the chair and tucked her feet under
the soft fabric of her skirt, forcing her mouth to repeat the words she’d
practiced. “Ryker, I apologize if I’ve misled you, but I’m serious about
keeping things between us purely professional. We’re clearly not compatible,
anyway, and—”

He cut her off with a raised hand. “Not compatible? That
whole ‘coworker’ thing was crazy enough, and now you’re going to tell me we
aren’t compatible?”

She had the feeling she’d just waved a red cape in front
of a bull.

A hot, mad, Latin bull, with narrow hips and a rigid
six-pack of muscles running down his stomach.

Alix shook her hands in front of her. “Look, we disagree
about everything. I’m a hopeless romantic, and you’re as pragmatic as they
come.”

“Our bodies,” he said softly, “are compatible. You can’t
argue with that.”

Alix gulped. “We need to focus on business.
Salva’s
Revenge
. Lena. Jake. Figuring out how to get them to the next level. That’s
where our energy needs to lie.”

Ryker’s hand rested casually on the towel that was tucked
around his waist. He ignored her agitation, continuing to examine her face with
a slow, measured gaze. The buzz of the telephone interrupted the adrenaline
rush that had her heart beating like a rabbit. He did not move to answer it. After
a few rings, an answering machine picked up.

“Ryker? This is Rosalia. I hope you’re not picking up
because you already left. You know Papa hates when you’re late. Look, I need a
couple of bottles of wine. If you get this, can you pick them up on your way
over? Thanks.”

Alix stared at Ryker. The moment between them passed as
quickly as it had come.

“I guess we don’t have time after all. I’ll be downstairs
in a few minutes.”

The Mercedes purred smoothly as
they pulled slowly down the circular drive toward the highway. Ryker’s eyes
remained bleak and cold. She thought back to the conversation she’d had with
Gunther and the speculation about Ryker’s relationship with his family.
Apparently things weren’t bad enough to keep him from a family dinner, but,
judging from the muscle jerking in his jaw and the hard set to his shoulders,
they weren’t good either.

The silence stretched out between them.

“Family dinner, huh?” she finally said. “How often do you
all get together?”

He twisted his mouth in a semblance of a smile. “Whenever
Rosalia tells us to.”

Alix smiled back, though he didn’t sound amused. “Is she
the eldest?”