Hollywood Hit (17 page)

He’d trudged long slogs to get to this pinnacle in his career. Desire and attraction were merely pheromonal responses that he could quash with rationale and discipline. Rush need not worry. He need only discipline his body and his mind.

Ted thwacked the ball.

“Yes, sir,” Rush said. “I’ll do whatever I need to do to keep your niece safe.”

The town car pulled to a stop in front of Jackson Nichols’s home.

“And I thought your aunt’s house was huge,” Christina said as their driver opened the door.

In the liquid black of the night with LA sparkling in the distance Jackson’s home looked as if it floated on a cloud in the sky.

“Amazing, right?”

“I guess when you’re a legend in your own time,” Christina said. They both climbed the front steps and entered the house. Sharp-edged nerves jangled through Nikki. Her fingertips tingled and her skin prickled along her arms. She’d not lived in LA so long as to fail to grow excited when walking into a screen legend’s party. She forced herself to fake a nonchalance that, before her arrival to LA, had been outside her repertoire. Nikki and Christina walked through the atrium filled with hundreds of pillar candles. They walked through the formal living room and toward the back sliders. Outside on the lanai and beside the infinity pool party guests mingled and scoped out the A-list scene.

“My darling Nikki.” Jackson’s voice boomed from across the patio. The screen legend ambled toward them. He wore a linen suit and blue silk shirt. On his arm was a bombshell of a blonde, all legs and sultry looks. She wore a white, barely there halter dress with lines of bright blue and gold threaded through the skirt. Her skin was dark and her eyes a deep chocolate brown.

Christina leaned toward Nikki. “Wasn’t she on the cover of
Vogue
last month?”

The woman had to be a model with those forever legs, sculpted cheekbones, and sultry pout of a mouth.

“So happy you came!” Jackson grasped Nikki’s bare shoulders into the palms of his hands, pulled her forward, and kissed each of her cheeks. He released her and turned his charisma toward Christina. “Who is this ravishing creature?”

“Christina Darmides.” She extended her hand, but instead, Jackson grasped Christina and pulled her forward to kiss each cheek.

“You’re Zymar’s little girl!”

Christina nodded.

“You won’t remember this," Jackson said and grinned, "but I spent an entire summer on your mother’s beach with her and your father. We were all three high and very naked or perhaps we were naked and very high. You were naked too.” His eyes raked down the front of Christina. “But you were only two.”

Christina’s fingertips covered her mouth and tiny smile curled about her lips. When Nikki was two, she’d been shipped to a foster family because her mother had disappeared for three days and left her with the neighbors at the trailer next door.

“And this…” Jackson half-turned his body toward the woman by his side. He ran his hands up and down her front as if showing off a new piece of exceedingly expensive art. “
This
is Wilhomena.”

The woman's gaze slid toward them. Her eyelids were lazy and her face made no hint of movement aside from the twitch of one perfectly plucked brow. She neither smiled nor spoke. Nikki guessed when you were that beautiful, your looks communicated for you.

“So, ladies,” Jackson said, “grab a drink and whatever else you want.” He placed the backside of his hand to his mouth. “Wilhomena and I have some business to take care of upstairs.” Jackson wiggled his eyebrows. He was all but advertising that they were scurrying away to fuck. “I shall return. With me as the jockey this little ride shouldn’t take more than ten or fifteen minutes—tops.”

Nikki watched Jackson steer Wilhomena through the crowd toward the staircase. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Christina said. “He is such a letch and yet”—her eyes watched Jackson and Wilohmena wander up the staircase—“and yet I’d change places with her in a minute.” Christina sighed.

“He’s already seen you naked,” Nikki said.

They walked toward the bar and Nikki ordered her usual V & T. Various faces she knew and executives she’d met through her aunt mingled around the pool. She sipped her drink. She couldn’t shake the feeling that eyes watched her. Nikki followed Christina toward the far side of the infinity pool where the DP who worked on Zymar and Lydia’s last films lounged beside an in-the-now hot actress.

Nikki was about to settle onto the chaise lounge beside Christina when she felt eyes upon her bare shoulders. They whispered across her back. Eyes like fingers traced along the curve of her neck. Nikki turned toward the blackness on the far side of the yard. There he stood, his hands clasped in front of him and his elbow on the bar. A drink in one hand. His eyes sultry and stuck on her.

Rush. 

Breath blasted from her lungs and a heat simmered low in Nikki’s belly. She hadn’t seen him since the day they’d lunched at the studio. He hadn’t called, but neither had she. She couldn’t rip her eyes from him. Delicious liquid heat seared through her.

Christina turned her head up from her seated position toward Nikki. “What is it?” She followed Nikki’s gaze through the dark. A little hiss escaped over Christina’s lips as her gaze landed upon the man at whom Nikki stared. “Oh, I see.”

Nikki took a breath and willed her eyes to look away from Rush. She commanded her body to sit beside Christina, but Nikki could make herself do none of those things. She could merely stand glued to this spot as Rush walked toward her.

“He’s coming over,” Christina said and upended her drink.

Nikki’s pulse increased with each step he made. His presence captured her, made her stand and stare at his graceful stride as he moved toward her.

“You’re here,” Rush said, his voice sultry and low, his breath hot against her ear as his words glided over her skin and caused a tremor to cascade down Nikki’s spine. His was a statement, not of surprise, but knowledge that her presence at this party tonight had been inevitable. He placed his palm on the small of her bare back.

“I’m Christina.” Nikki’s roommate held out her hand as her eyes ate up Rush. Nikki glanced at Christina and got a look of approval.

“Do you know Jackson well?” Rush asked. He tipped his drink to his lips and let the amber liquid glide from the glass. Nikki was mesmerized by his throat as he swallowed. The tilt of his head. The way his dark eyes caught hers over the rim.

“He’s a friend of my aunt’s,” Nikki said and then squared her shoulders a bit. She wasn’t falling so easily for this man simply because of his magnetism, simply because of his charm and good looks. Hadn’t she done that with every man with which she'd been involved? She found them irresistible and then they harmed her or hurt her or used her. She tossed her mane of curls over her shoulder in a futile attempt to seem immune to Rush’s charms. “Jackson is doing my movie.” Nikki let her lips curl up at the corners. She was finally taking ownership, stepping into her role as the producer.

“Ah,” Rush said and nodded. He quirked an eyebrow. “
Boundless Bound
.”

Nikki did not let surprise crease her face. Of course the title to the script would be tripping off the tongue of every producer and studio executive in town as they salivated over her luck. She’d scored a coup. She had the hottest director, the biggest box-office bombshell and—she glanced across the patio to where Jackson walked through the sliders, now wearing a red silk smoking jacket with Wilhomena still on his arm—she’d scored a screen legend… an icon to star opposite her aunt.

“The script is very good,” Rush said.

“You’ve read it?”

“I read everything,” Rush said. His eyes remained locked to hers.

“Rush!” Jackson called from the other side of the pool.

Rush dipped his head and nodded to their host. “Excuse me,” Rush said and quirked his mouth. “It seems I’m wanted.”

Nikki followed him with her eyes. She watched him in his black pants and cashmere sweater. The expensive cloth hinted at the well-kept, well-muscled, exquisitely male body beneath the expensive fabric.

“He is something,” Christina said. She, too, watched Rush walk toward Jackson.

Attraction palpitated through Nikki. Her heart raced and heat pulsed over her skin. Yet something else did too… something deeper, something darker, trailed through Nikki.  Perhaps a hint of fear.

*

Rush watched Nikki. Watching her was his job, but it was also a pleasure. She had little knowledge of her power, but she’d begun to step into it tonight when she’d called herself the producer for
Boundless Bound
. He liked it. He liked chutzpah—respected it.

She’d finished nearly three Stolis and tonic, and from the look of her, she didn’t eat much. Her slip of a dress was a V-neck silk thing that clung to her curves. Her back was completely bare and exposed. Her nipples pressed against the thin fabric when she moved and when she was excited. He’d noticed, when she’d first seen him on this night, how her lips had pouted, her eyes had widened, and her nipples—well, her nipples had grown tight beneath the flimsy fabric and pressed forward. He’d grown hard from the sight. Not part of the job. A hazard working so closely with the world’s most beautiful women, but few of them affected him quite this strongly.

He sipped on the watered-down soda that everyone confused for a drink. The night was late and while the crowd grew thicker with each passing hour, Rush managed to keep just within the orbit of Nikki. She remained just within his eyesight, just within reach, just in case. She didn’t need to know why he was here, and if he did his job right, she would never know. He would get close, not too close, but close enough to keep her safe and then, once the risk was extinguished, slip seamlessly from her life. He’d leave nothing but a trace of a memory, a slim shadow in her mind of someone she’d enjoyed, perhaps been attracted to, but never really got to know. Her long legs were framed by an indecent pair of high heels that capped her feet. Her roommate scooted close to her with a rather gorgeous young actor on her arm. They whispered, Christina smiled, and they all stood and Nikki waved.

Rush walked to her. She was now alone and his job, according to Ted Robinoff, was to make sure she was never alone.

“You’re back,” Nikki said, her limbs a little too loose and her vowels a little too thick.

“I never left,” Rush said. He placed his hand on her bare back. A thump of attraction burst when his fingers touched her skin. She wasn’t quite drunk, but she was flying high. Rush scanned the crowd. There were a few randoms, and the randoms would continue to increase as the night wore on. Jackson had security mingling throughout the crowd, but they weren’t concentrated on Nikki’s safety, the way she needed to be kept safe, the way Ted expected Rush to keep her safe.

“Where’s your roommate,” Rush asked. He slipped his hand around Nikki’s empty drink glass and set it on a table, then steered her toward a lounger near the fireplace.

“Took off with a hot guy,” Nikki said and plopped down with a giggle. “I get dumped and she gets the hot guy.”

Rush already knew about the pictures. He’d seen the photos of Nikki and Adam before  they sold. Rush leaned forward. “The rock star wasn’t worth your time.”

“How do you know?”

Rush grasped Nikki's upper arm and pulled her close. Close enough that he could feel the heat from the liquor on her breath, that he could smell the scent of her, soft and hot and clean. His voice was low and hard. “I know enough to know that if some asshole sells private pictures of a woman he’s sleeping with, he isn’t worth that woman’s time.”

She tightened at his words. Their gazes were locked on each other. She searched his eyes and he gave her what she needed, let a flash of his true nature, the true feelings he might feel but would never allow her to know, flow through his eyes. Her arm softened in his grasp, and the corners of her mouth turned down.

“You’re right,” she said.  She relaxed into the cushion behind her. “My aunt said the same thing.” A huge sigh escaped her lungs. “And my aunt is always right.” She crinkled her eyebrows as if mulling over a thought. She tilted her head to the side. “Do you know my aunt?”

“Celeste?” Rush asked.

Nikki nodded.

“I’ve met her,” Rush said. “And your uncle as well.”

“Of course you have,” Nikki said. “You’re the mega producer with a silver spoon in your mouth.”

To her comment Rush said not a word. Rush appraised her face. How incredibly wrong she was. His cover was good—it was strong. He’d worked on his cover for years and it had never been blown. His eyes slid away from her beautiful face and searched the party. The hour was growing late and he didn’t like the look of the changing crowd. He wouldn’t leave unless Nikki left with him.

“Let’s go for a drive.”

Her pretty pink tongue slipped from her mouth and over her bee-stung bottom lip. Her breath quivered in her chest. She was considering a no, but she wouldn’t say no. He could see the desire to say yes in her eyes.

Rush stood. He reached out his hand and let her fingertips glide into his. He pulled her gently to her feet, then steered her through the room and toward the door.

*

A bass beat pumped through the sound system and pounded into Christina’s ribs as though a twin to her heart. Too loud and too intense, the club music being slung by the DJ set her on edge. This scene, with twenty-something actors, models, and celebutants was a scene she’d inhabited when she’d first arrived in La-La Land but had exited after too many late nights and too many close calls. She’d party-hopped with Striker from Jackson Nichols’s older, upscale, low-key party to this home of unfettered hedonism in Malibu. An Academy-Award-nominated actress, cutting close to thirty, dirty danced on top of a Steinway beside a pair of long legs, bleached hair, and fake boobs so big they must belong to a porn star.

“Want a hit?” Striker held out a diamond-encrusted straw. He rubbed under his nose and hints of white dust coated his right nostril like powdered sugar on a doughnut. The pile of cocaine on the table was undiminishable, a mountain of snow that would continue to fall for as long as there was money, youth, and the bright lights of Hollywood.