Hitman's Hookup: A Bad Boy Romance (34 page)

"Shit," I muttered, reaching into my pocket for my phone to call Harrison. Then I remembered that I'd sent him ahead in the car. And he had my phone in his pocket. I doubled back down an alleyway near the hotel, hoping no one had seen me.

After a few moments and no sound of cameras clicking, I knew that I was safe. I hesitated only for a few moments before deciding to hit up a restaurant outside of the hotel. That would give time for the paparazzi would clear and I could avoid Hailey for a few more hours, since she was shacked up in my room.

I took a right and saw a tiny cafe tucked inside of a bookstore. I considered stopping there but then my stomach rumbled so loudly I felt like it was going to explode out of me. Even though I'd only done one of my workouts instead of my traditional routine of two, my body was still burning through calories like paper on a bonfire.

I wandered a bit further when I saw a restaurant that looked promising. Hell, it was Italy. Anywhere would be incredible. The restaurant was dark and quiet. It was still early. I wasn't sure the time exactly but it seemed like it must be around five o'clock.

The script rewrites were threatening to set us back an entire day, so Fox had called it early to keep the relevant people around to go over new production schedules. I had offered to stay but Fox had practically shoved me off the set, telling me to get some sleep.

I knew that really, he just wanted me to get out of his face. He couldn't stand to see me hanging around and threatening to get in his way at all. As I stepped inside the restaurant, a bored-looking waiter at the back waved me over to a table in the far corner.

Maybe he did recognize me after all. This table was a wrap-around booth that was far from the windows. The only way that someone could see me would be if they were already in here.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

Olivia was sitting in the corner with a script and a basket filled with bread that she was shoving into her face absentmindedly. She looked adorable. I'd never seen her when she thought nobody was bothering to look at her. She was focused intently on the script.

I saw that she had a glass of red wine at hand. I wondered if that was all she'd been planning to eat for dinner, since she was on a budget. I weighed my options and ended up sitting in my booth. Then the server came over to see me.

"For you, sir?" he asked. "Wine?"

I nodded. "I'll have whatever the lady over there is having. And also - is there any way at all you could make it so she can't sit there anymore? Maybe wave her over here and tell her there's nowhere else in the restaurant for her to be?"

The server looked at Olivia and nodded appraisingly. "Certainly, sir," he replied, clapping his hands together. "I can make that happen."

I scooted over inside the booth, out of Olivia's sight line. After a moment I couldn't take the suspense and ducked my head as far over as I dared to so I could watch as he interrupted Olivia, lifting her wine glass up and motioning over to the corner booth. I had no idea what he was saying to her, but she looked concerned.

I ducked my head back when she glanced over. I was pretty sure she hadn't seen me. I felt a rush of excitement go through my body as I heard the wooden legs of her chair scraping against the floor.

I leaned back, feeling like a little kid. I tugged at the grey t-shirt I'd changed into before I'd left the set. I looked at my arms and realized I'd been in such a hurry that Bev hadn't wiped off the makeup that covered my tattoos.

So that's why nobody recognizes me
, I thought.
Could it really be that simple? They can't see my tattoos?

My thought process was interrupted a moment later by a loud sigh.

"You've got to be kidding me," said Olivia's voice. I looked over. There she was, looking just as stunning as she had earlier in the day. "So you're stalking me now?" she asked.

She seemed genuinely annoyed. Then she surprised me by actually sitting down in the booth, placing the dog-eared copy of the script onto the table. 

Giorgio the server set her wine glass down on the table with a flourish. Olivia asked him something in Italian. The only word I caught was "bread." Giorgio nodded and left.

"What?" she asked me haughtily. Her bottom lip stuck out slightly when she was angry.

I loved that I didn't know that about her. I'd spent seven years dreaming of this woman, but she had been frozen in time for me, an amalgam of dreams and reality. And the last time I'd seen her face close to mine was when she looked crushed. That had been my fault, too.

"What did you ask him?"

Olivia paused as if she were considering not giving me the satisfaction of an answer. "I asked him to bring my bread basket over here." She glanced around me back at the table she'd just vacated. "But he's disappeared with it, so there goes my dinner."

I laughed. "You really think I'm not going to feed you, Olivia?" I asked her.
Fuck.
I wanted to rip off her clothes and fuck her on the tabletop in this restaurant. Her tits were perfectly round underneath her thin, slightly sheer jersey top.

She caught me looking at them and crossed her arms. That didn't help. Her cleavage line was pushed up higher, becoming even more visible under her v-shaped neckline.

I reached for a glass of wine that hadn't appeared yet, settling my hand down onto the table in what I hoped wasn't an obvious display of my nervousness.

"Are you such an alcoholic that you automatically assume there's a glass of wine waiting within arm's reach?" Olivia asked, smirking.

Shit.
She
had
noticed. "Just a little distracted today, I guess," I replied. "So how have you been, Olivia?”

She cleared her throat and picked up her own wine glass, taking an enormous gulp from it. "Fine," she replied. "And I'd ask how you've been but I already know."

For a moment I thought I should be flattered. Then I realized that you'd have to be living under a rock not to know what the press was reporting on me. It wasn't necessarily that she was
actively
seeking out information about my life.

"Well, don't believe-"

“Everything I read?" she asked with more than a hint of vitriolic pleasure at those words. "Ah, interesting thought. But it seems like everything I've read about you falls right in line with what I already know."

"And what's that?" I asked her.

"That you're still arrogant and entitled, but now you're also rich," she snapped.  She was enjoying this.

Why was I surrounding myself with people who liked to make me uncomfortable? Okay,
two
people who liked to make me uncomfortable. Olivia and Fox. But after over a half decade of being surrounded by nothing but people whose job was literally to make me comfortable, I probably didn’t have any right to be complaining about that.

"You forgot the song," I added.

She looked confused. "Song?"

"The one Hailey wrote about me. God, if you've managed to avoid that one, then I need to learn your secrets." Giorgio returned with a fresh basket of steaming bread and a glass of red wine for me.

"Are you ready to order?" he asked me.

"House special, whatever that is. As long as it's not octopus or some weird fucking shit," I replied without looking up at him.

"I want nothing," Olivia said. "And these are separate checks."

"No they aren't," I replied. "She'll have what I'm having."

Giorgio looked torn for only a moment, but nodded at me and left as diplomatically as he could, clearly sensing the angry tension between the two of us.

"I'm not familiar with any song about you, you'd have to be more specific,” she said loftily.

"I’m talking about that
Fuck You
song that Hailey's been wailing across every awards show and television performance. I think they even used it on last year's
Grey's Anatomy
finale. Or so I was told. I don’t actually watch
Grey’s,
" I added, taking a sip of the red wine.

Fuck, it was delicious. I had to stop myself from downing the entire glass in one gulp.

Olivia shrugged. "Can't say that I have, actually," she replied. "There are a lot of break up songs on the radio and Hailey's music isn't exactly my type. Although I do watch
Grey’s
religiously.”

I laughed. "Well, it doesn't have to be your type for you to have heard it."

Olivia took a deep breath like she was bracing herself.

"My radio's broken in my car, I don't go out shopping or to restaurants, and I still live with my aunt just outside of Burbank in a tiny little room that's nearly the size of the twin mattress that I sleep on. I've script supervised on five dozen films and I still can't afford my own apartment. I have a handful of loyal friends, including Lydia, and I can't afford to go anywhere fun on the weekends so I stay at home and watch movies on my aunt's Netflix subscription because I can't afford that either."

She finished this monologue and with it, her glass of wine. "And now, I need to get back to set. Jennifer told me to take some time for myself to brainstorm. And I think I've had enough of that."

I reached across the table and grabbed her wrist firmly. There were thin waves of electricity that seemed to rocket between the two of us. I was beyond happy that she didn't pull away from my grip.

"Don't leave. Please," I said. "Just stay long enough to eat. Then you can go."

She stared down at my hand.

"If you manhandled Hailey like that I'm starting to understand why she hates you enough to immortalize your doomed relationship in a song. And also, aren't you still dating her?"

I let go of her hand. "No," I replied. "Who the hell told you that?"

She shrugged, and her neckline fell a little bit lower as she did it. I had to reach down and adjust my pants at the sight of it. "The guy who picked me up from the airport."

I saw that she still wasn't leaving. I took the natural pause in the conversation as an opportunity to ask her the question I'd been wondering this entire time. "Did you know when you took this job that you'd be working with me?"

Olivia slumped into the booth.
Good. She's staying
, I thought to myself.

Then she spoke again. "No, not when I took it. But I did know before I came to set that you were the main actor. The driver who picked me up at the airport told me that, too."

I tapped my fingers on the wine glass. So she hadn't taken the job because of me. That was disappointing.

"Did you think I took this job just because of you?" she asked, laughing and finally digging into the bread basket. "Good Lord, you're even more arrogant than I suspected. Some of us plebes have bills to pay."

I thought hard about this. "When I saw you today, it was like it was seven years ago that night at the coffee shop," I said to her in a low voice. "You look amazing."

Olivia laughed. "Ah, fresh meat to fuck. Your co-star is old news, I guess, so time to move onto the new girl on the set? Just fresh pickings for Mr. Roman Wilder. Why Roman, by the way? You know that's bothered me for a while now. What was wrong with Nicholas?"

I was surprised at the swift change of subject, but I gladly took it over the alternative of discussing whether or not she was just my next conquest.

"My agent told me Nicholas was boring. So I chose Roman because...I like Italy." I felt a swoop of nerves go through my stomach. That wasn't the entire truth, but it was close enough. “I missed you, Liv. I’m trying to tell you that.”

Her face softened slightly, and she leaned forward toward me. She was maybe a foot away, close enough for me to reach out and bite those luscious lips of hers.

"You're pathetic. You're not having me, Wilder. No matter how badly you want it, you're not getting this." She motioned to her body, taking her middle finger and tracing it across her own collarbone and then down the line of her cleavage. Then she pulled her hand away and held up her middle finger straight to my face.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

WILDER

The walk back from the restaurant, while short, was made substantially more difficult by the raging case of blue balls that I was carrying with me. Olivia had left shortly after finishing her plate of eggplant parmesan in record time.

The server asked me with a smile if Olivia was on fire, she'd fled so fast. I’d stayed behind to drink another three glasses of wine on my own. I paid my bill with a handsome tip and was relieved to see that the exiting sun had also encouraged the paparazzi to go home.

Unfortunately, as I walked into my suite upstairs, I could hear shrill giggling through the door. I turned around abruptly and rode the private elevator back downstairs to the lobby. I walked to the desk with the most winning smile I could muster plastered on my face.

Unfortunately, I was greeted not by the young, hot woman who had been at the receiving end of Hailey's machinations earlier, but instead by a man who looked intensely disgruntled at the prospect of manning the counter at all.

“May I help you?" he asked, his voice thick with his Italian accent.

"Yeah, I'm looking to book a completely different room for the night, actually. I'm Nick- sorry, Roman Wilder."

The man blinked but didn't type or attempt to look at the computer screen in front of him. I tapped the counter and tilted my head to the side.

"Oh, sorry, I think it's under James Brando," I said with a smile. "My pseudonym."

The man was still looking at me, unmoved by my request. "I know who you are," he replied simply.

"It's just a mash up James Dean and Marlon-"

"Yes, sir, I understand the reference. I also know who you are. But I'm afraid we are completely booked for the next few weeks. There is a movie filming in town and it is housing most of the cast and crew."

As he said these words, I knew that
he knew
exactly what he was doing. I nodded.

"Right. Of course. Well, if anything comes up-"

"I will ring your assistant, Harrison," he said. "I know where he is."