License to Thrill (22 page)

Pam walked over. “I’m so sorry. It seems Blade can’t make the reception.”

“Probably three sheets to the wind in some hooker’s bed,” mumbled the photographer trailing after Pam.

“But we’re going to take a publicity photo anyway. I’ll just stand in for Mr. Bradford.” Forcing a smile, Pam sandwiched herself between Charlee and Mason and draped an arm over their shoulders for the photographer. Charlee smiled dopily for the camera and held up two fingers for bunny ears over Pam’s head.

“What’s going to happen,” Charlee whispered to Mason after Pam had moved away to ply her public relations skills with the reporters, “when they figure out we’re not Skeet and Violet?”

“We’ll deal with that problem when it arises.”

“Come, come, come.” Pam was back, grinning and snapping her fingers. “Now for the moment you’ve been waiting for. Let’s go see your honeymoon suite.”

She escorted them through the lobby and toward the elevators. Charlee wobbled precariously on Violet’s four-inch stilettos and at first she was grateful when Mason put a steadying hand to her elbow.

But his touch, combined with the dizzying effects of the champagne, made her feel all warm and fuzzy and receptive. And she hated soft, squooshy emotions like those.

Soft, squooshy, girlie emotions only got you into trouble.

Take a note. Remember that.

“Here we are.” Pam slid a card key through the electronic eye sensor and pushed open the door.

Charlee had been in luxury suites many times when she’d worked as a hotel maid, but that was in Vegas where everything was ornate, flashy, and gaudily overdone. This room was pure elegance.

From the cherry wood canopied bed to the eggshell satin duvet to the silver champagne bucket with a bottle of iced Dom Perignon nestled on an antique teacart the place whispered money, money, money.

On the classy bureau sat a gigantic fruit basket. Beside the basket rested an artfully arranged bouquet of colorful spring flowers and a half-dozen flickering candles giving off the scent of honeysuckle.

“Wooo, fancy-schmancy,” Charlee said.

“I’ll just leave you two alone to enjoy your prize. If you need anything, here’s my beeper number and your Oscar tickets.” Pam handed Mason an envelope.

“Thank you.” He stuffed the envelope in the back pocket of his shorts.

“The reporters will be back on Sunday afternoon to interview you before the Academy Awards. And tomorrow I’ll take you shopping on Rodeo Drive for your Oscar ceremony clothes. All courtesy of Twilight Studios.”

“No kidding,” Charlee murmured. “New clothes too. What a kick.”

Guilt needled her. This should be Violet Hammersmitz’s big adventure, not hers, but in spite of herself she was enjoying this Cinderella gig.

“Have fun,” Pam said, looking distracted, and left the room.

Once the door snapped closed behind her, Mason and Charlee turned to stare at each other.

“Wow, Gentry”—Charlee spun around the room, her head swirling—“do you live like this all the time?”

“What do you think of me? I don’t live in a hotel. I have a house, I go to work, I volunteer my time to charities. I have a normal life.”

“Yeah, but do you eat caviar and sleep on four-hundred-thread-count sheets and have people waiting on you hand and foot every day?”

“It’s not that big of a deal.”

“Oh, maybe not to you, but to me this whole thing seems surreal.”

“It is surreal. The fact that you and I are stuck here pretending to be husband and wife has little basis in reality.”

“Hmm, I don’t know about that. I’m real and you’re real and if I pinched you hard on the fanny I bet you would holler.”

“I think it’s time I made a few phone calls,” he said, ignoring her “pinching him on the fanny” remark and heading straight for the white and gold phone centered on the Queen Anne writing desk.

Giggling, Charlee fell backward onto the satin duvet and immediately slid whiz-bang onto the floor. She sprawled on her spine, her neck resting awkwardly against the footboard.

“There’s a trick to lying down on satin,” Mason said without even looking up from punching his calling card number into the phone.

“So I gather.” Charlee stared up at the ceiling and willed her head to stop whirling.

From this angle, she had a tantalizing view of the length of Mason’s leg.

Man-o-man-o-man.

Her eyes tracked a path from his thigh to his knee and down to his muscled calf. An irresistible urge took hold of her. She wanted to scoot across the carpet and sink her teeth into the fleshy part of that calf to see if it tasted as juicy as it looked.

She licked her lips.

A prickliness crawled across the nape of her neck, light and ticklish. She reached a hand around to push her hair away.

The creepy-crawly sensation transferred from her neck to the back of her hand. She pulled her hand down and stared in horror at the black widow spider inching across her skin.

She literally froze.

Her throat constricted. Her tongue turned to cement. Her brain locked.

Help!

The old spider-bite wound in her backside throbbed. Her hand blanched pale as bleached linen, highlighting the black spider’s dark journey across her wrist.

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t move. She was trapped in a terrifying nightmare.

Help! Help!

Mason was staring out the window, the telephone receiver cradled against his cheek. She had to get him to notice her before the deadly spider sank her vicious venom into her bloodstream.

Look at me, dammit!
she mentally willed.

No such luck.

Meanwhile Miss Arachnid strolled leisurely toward her elbow.

Help! Help! Help!

Charlee flashed back to that night in the Wisconsin woods. She recalled the painful sting as the black widow bit into her tender behind. She remembered, in vivid detail, the agonizing therapy at the hospital and the skin grafts that followed.

She could not, she would not go through that terrible ordeal again.

Act. Move. Do something.

Mason!

Galvanized by the same fear that a second before had frozen her, Charlee threw back her head and let loose with a bloodcurdling shriek.

Mason came up out of the chair as if he had been zapped in the butt with a blowtorch. He jumped to his feet, flinging the telephone away from him and jerking his head around to find Charlee lying on the floor, the hem of her miniskirt hiked up to her panties, a terror-stricken expression on her face.

“What is it? What’s happened?” He sprang to her side, his blood pumping through his veins like a fire hose in a five-alarm blaze.

“Aaa-aaa-aaa.”

“Charlee, speak to me.” Good God, what was wrong?

She stared him in the eyes, then shifted her gaze to the small black spider crawling up her shoulder.

“The spider? You’re scared of the spider?”

Vigorously, she nodded. Relief washed through him. Thank God. He couldn’t imagine what had caused her to scream like Marie Antoinette at the guillotine.

So the tough P.I. from Vegas was afraid of spiders. He tried not to smile at her fear as he leaned over to scoop the spider into his palm.

“Noooooo,” she wailed.

He blinked at her. “What?”

“It’s a black widow!”

“No, it’s not. See.”

He opened his palm and she reacted as if he held a live hand grenade, covering her head with her arms in the fatalistic manner of a soldier in a fox hole.

“Charlee,” he coaxed. “It’s okay to look.”

Tentatively she lowered her arms and peeked over the side of his palm.

“See, sweetheart,” he spoke softly. “No red hourglass.”

“Really?” Her eyes were wide and he spotted a tear glistening on her cheek.

He had never seen her like this, cowering defenselessly. Her unexpected weakness tugged at something inside him. He got up, walked to the window, opened it, and deposited the spider on the outside ledge.

When he looked up and glanced over the parking lot, he winced to see the Chevy Malibu parked across from the hotel. At some point he would have to deal with that threat.

But for now, Charlee needed comforting.

After closing the window, he came back, reached down, and tugged her gently up off the floor.

She cringed in his arms, trembling like a rabbit trapped in a coyote’s lair. “I was so scared, Mason.”

When she whispered his name, he realized it was the first time she had called him by his given name rather than Gentry.

What did it mean? More importantly, what did he wish that it meant? That she was drawing closer to him? Letting down her guard? Starting to trust him?

“I thought for sure it was a black widow. I admit I’m jumpy when it comes to spiders. I’ve been bitten and I know how bad it hurts.”

He rested his chin against the top of her head, rubbed his hands up and down her arms. “Shhh, shhh. It’s all right.”

The sound of the phone off the hook buzzed its obnoxious message, but Mason ignored it. He held her close, comforting her, easing her fears.

The sweet smell of her invaded his nostrils and he marveled at his body’s immediate response to their close contact. What was it about her that invariably brought out the horned, pitchfork-carrying devil in him?

If he kissed her, she would taste of expensive champagne, peanut butter, and ripe, delectable sin.

He wanted her.

Badly.

And it was all he could do to keep from carrying her to the bed and making love to her.

Before Charlee, he’d always been attracted to cool, detached petite blondes with an elegant style and impeccable breeding. But somehow, he found himself completely enchanted by this long-legged, black-haired dynamo with a tart tongue that covered up her tender heart.

She was the total opposite of everything he’d ever thought he wanted. She was bold when he’d thought he wanted demure. She was tall and muscular when he thought he wanted dainty and soft. She was sassy when he thought he wanted accommodating.

Charlee challenged him in ways he had never dreamed possible. She called to the wildness he’d buried along with Kip. She resurrected his lost sense of adventure and she had him questioning his blind insistence on following the straight and narrow path his parents had laid out for him.

For that gift he would be forever grateful.

He found her exciting and dramatic and totally captivating. He adored that she knew unequivocally who she was and what she wanted out of life. He admired the way she courageously stood up for what she believed in.

Most of all, he loved the fact that together they were an electric combination of will, drive, and determination. With her, he felt like more of a man.

And there was absolutely no way she would ever fit in with his world.

He struggled hard to imagine her entertaining his high-society friends or sipping tea with corporate wives, dishing idle chitchat or chairing charity auctions, and failed miserably.

He tried to envision her in designer outfits and diamonds instead of her neon blue cowboy boots and a battered straw Stetson. No. He couldn’t see it. Not that she couldn’t wear finery and jewels, those things just did not suit her.

In the soft cushion of his privileged world, safely cocooned from the realities of the rest of humanity, Charlee would either wilt like a hothouse flower or grow to hate herself for the compromises that life with him would force her to make.

Mason would rather die than risk ruining her zest for life.

No matter how much he wanted to have sex with her, to taste those delicious lips, to run his hands all over her naked body, to hear her whisper his name in the throes of ecstasy, he would not give in to his urges.

Charlee deserved far better than being a sexual conquest. She deserved someone who could love her for who she was and not expect her to compromise to meet some predetermined standard. She deserved the freedom to be herself.

And he simply could not offer her those things.

Reaching down deep inside him, he summoned the strength to ignore his driving biology. He could control himself. He would.

Tenderly, he brushed his lips across her forehead and then stepped back.

“I better finish making those phone calls,” he said and turned away without meeting her gaze because he knew one look into those compelling green eyes and he was a goner.

CHAPTER 14

S
till light-headed from champagne, the adrenaline rush of spider freak-out, and the disturbing effects of being held in Mason’s arms, Charlee had to take several long, slow, deep breaths before her pulse rate decelerated and her heart plunked back down into its regular place in her chest.

Easy. Steady. Calm.

Breathe deep from your diaphragm. Let it out through your mouth.

Her shoulders relaxed and she could hardly feel the lingering imprint of Mason’s fingers on her skin.

Okay, good. Shake it off. Things were getting back to normal.

While Mason went to complete his telephone calls, Charlee inched over to the window and gazed out to study the black spider who was already busily spinning a web.

She admired the creature’s capacity to adapt to her sudden change in environment and go about business as usual even though she had been rudely displaced. Bloom where you’re planted.

Maybelline’s insistence that they live in a travel trailer had taught Charlee the importance of that lesson. If you wanted to last in this world you had to be ready, willing, and able to square your shoulders, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and relocate whenever circumstances changed.

Her lifelong motto: Dust yourself off. Pick yourself up. Move on.

But she was tired of moving on. Tired of fighting her desire. Tired of being good. She was afraid of losing control of her feelings, not of sleeping with him. Actually, sex sounded really fabulous. It had been such a long time for her. Could she throw herself into physical pleasure while keeping her emotions at bay? Was she willing to roll the dice, take the chance for a night of exquisite pleasure?

Oh, yes, yes, yes.

You can do it, Charlee. You can keep your emotions out of the fray. Go for it. Have wild circus sex and then discard him like those rich, handsome men have always discarded you.