Luke: A West Bend Saints Romance (24 page)

RIVER

Shit.
 I rolled over and ran my hand over my face, then through my hair.  For a second when I pulled my hand back I wondered where the rest of my hair was.  Then I recalled taking the scissors to it last night.

Last night.

I touched my fingers to my lips where he kissed me - the guy from the hallway, the one with the red plastic cup in his hand.  The one who was so hot.

My heart raced just thinking about his lips pressed up against mine, his tongue on mine.  I wanted to feel his hands on my body, touching me.

God, he was sexy.  His hair was blonde, buzzed close to his scalp, giving him a military look, and his face was bronzed from the sun.  He looked like this delicious combination of a Marine and a surfer.  I closed my eyes, picturing him in my head- tall and lean, but his shoulders were broad, and when I pushed on his chest, I could feel his muscles, firm to the touch, under my fingers.

I wanted to slide my fingers up underneath his shirt, unbuckle his pants...

Heat flowed from my core and between my legs, just thinking about him.  I had been with Viper for the past few years- had been
faithful
to him for the past few years, even when the sex dried up last year, even when it dwindled to absolutely nothing three months ago- but I had never had the kind of automatic physical response to anyone like I had to the guy in the hallway. Even with Viper, my fucking fiancé.

I thought it was me, that I was some kind of freak, that my past had made me forever shut off from that kind of thing, from the kind of passion you see in the movies, that you read about in romance novels.

I don't even know his name.

I slid my hand down my stomach and between my legs, all the while reflecting on that kiss, the one that made my legs weak.  The throbbing between my legs, just thinking about him, threatened to eclipse everything else...especially the worries about what the hell was going to happen next with my life.  I moved my finger over my clit slowly, reveling in the heat that rushed through my body.  Sliding one hand up underneath my tank top, I ran my palm over my breast, my thumb lingering on my nipple, which hardened instantly to my touch.

My breath caught in my throat as I touched myself, my movements faster and faster until I was at the brink.  In my mind's eye, I pictured him, kissing down the side of my neck, to my collarbone, then to my breasts.  I imagined his mouth enveloping me, his tongue flicking over my nipple, sucking me until I was close to orgasm.  I pictured him pushing me up against the wall, thrusting his cock inside me, his movements as insistent as his tongue was in my mouth.

I was on the edge, and when I crashed over, it was his face I saw.

Not Viper's.

***

I walked through the hotel foyer, my bag slung over my shoulder, the few things I had with me stuffed inside the makeshift suitcase.  Between the new hair and the sunglasses, I was hoping to avoid being recognized.  I hadn't watched television.  For all I knew, my mother had called the cops, reported me kidnapped or something.

That would be something she'd do.  That would be something my manager would be more than happy to do, cover up the real story, the fact that everything wasn't actually a fairy tale between the poor-little-girl-turned-movie-star and the rocker who had it all.  That was the most important thing.  
Protecting my brand,
my manager called it.  
You must protect your brand.  Always.

Damage control,
my manager would be advising right about now.  I could hear her words, without even having to stretch my imagination.  
Are there any other girls?
 She'd ask.  Of course there were other girls.  There were always other girls.

Never my sister, though.

My manager would sigh.  
In that case, Viper will go to rehab for sex addiction.  You'll stand by him, deliver a teary-eyed speech about how much you've been hurt by his misbehavior.  You'll take a primo role - something classy, not trashy, right now, given the circumstances- I'm thinking something about a strong woman persevering despite her no-good man.  Too soon?  It doesn't matter.  You'll do something big, while he's away in rehab.  Something meaningful.  It's Oscar time for you.

The spin.  It was always about the spin.  Sometimes it was exhausting.

Poor little rich girl.

It’s how my mother referred to me now.  I was privileged, I knew it.  But inside, I was still River Gilstead, the girl from the trailer park.  I couldn’t quite shake the feeling.

I always felt lost.

I checked out at the front desk, watching the clerk from behind my sunglasses, stealing glances at the other people in the lobby from my peripheral vision.  My heart raced, even though there was nothing wrong.  I just wanted to slip out of here unnoticed.

I had no actual plan, though.

Get in the car and drive.
 I could get away, someplace private.  I could keep heading East... a small town or something, rent a condo, figure out what the hell I wanted to do now.

Maybe I'll go overseas.
 I could hang out in obscurity, sip a cocktail on the beach somewhere.

 Poor little rich girl.

I'll figure it out tonight,
I promised myself.  
Tonight, I'll get a plan together.

Outside the hotel, I handed the valet my tag.

And then I saw him, coming for me - a man with a camera.  "River!" he yelled.  "River Andrews!"

I held my bag up to cover the side of my face, but he was taking pictures.  He was the only one, but I knew there would be more.  I backed inside the hotel door.  
Didn’t this place have security?

People were staring, and I felt a flush of shame.

Everyone knows,
I realized.  
They have to.  It will be all over the TV.
 I swallowed the bile I felt in my throat.  

The photographer followed me inside, persistent, and I shielded my face from him.  Then I heard someone shriek, a female voice.  "That's River Andrews!"

Shit.

I turned around.  
I'll go back the way I came, back toward the elevators,
I told myself,
get one of the front desk staff to do something.

 But instead I ran into
him.

 My palms hit his chest, and I felt him grasp my elbows.  I knew the photographer was taking pictures of us, something that would wind up plastered all over the papers, something that women could point to and say,
See?  She was whoring around on Viper after all.  That stuck-up bitch deserved everything she got.

I knew all of this, in the back of my mind.  But right there, in the moment, with his hands on me, everything stopped.  All of the other things going on faded, instantaneously, into the background, this blur of white noise.  He looked at me, this wrinkle between his eyebrows
. 
I couldn't tell if it was a sign that he was worried or annoyed.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

I shook my head.  "No," I mumbled.  "I need to get out of here.  The camera...I just...can't."

He didn’t say anything.  He let go of me, stepped forward, and yanked the camera out of the photographer's hand.

"You're going to regret that!" the photographer yelled.  "I'll fucking sue your ass for assaulting me!  That's a thousand dollar camera!"

The photographer lunged toward us.  Before I could blink,
he
- my savior- punched the photographer in the face.  I just stood there staring, paralyzed.  I had to force my mouth closed.

His friends moved between us and the photographer, and I felt his hand on my arm, and heard him speak.  "My car should be out front," he said.

I didn’t know exactly why I did it, but I walked with him out the door of the hotel.  I could feel eyes on us as we left, and I saw someone with a cell phone, recording, a pretty brazen move, considering this guy just punched someone in the face for taking photos of me.  The valet wasn’t back with my car, and I felt my rescuer's hand on the middle of my back, guiding me forward.       He pointed.  "Right here," he said, opening the door and shielding me from the stares of onlookers as I slipped inside his car.

I shouldn't do this,
I thought.  
It's stupid.  I don't even know his name.  It's amazingly, mind-numbingly idiotic.  He could be anything, this man.  A fucking stalker.  A serial killer.

And yet, as I sat back against the passenger seat, a feeling of calmness washed over me.

***

CHAPTER FIVE

ELIAS

What the hell was I doing?

I was driving my 1969 Mustang GT convertible home to West Bend - that's what I was doing.  It was my fucking baby, the thing in life that mattered more than anything in the world to me.  And
she
was in it, this girl whose name I didn’t even fucking know.

I was driving out of Vegas, like this was a normal fucking road trip.  Except I just had just stolen a photographer's camera, punched him in the fucking face, and had a girl in the passenger seat who was the most breathtaking thing I'd ever seen in my life.

So, all in all, it was a normal day in the life.

Hell.

Obviously, she was someone important, some kind of star or politician's daughter or someone in the limelight.  I had no fucking clue who she was.

She had to think I was such a dumb shit.

I mentally began to index the movies I've seen, tried to remember the last thing I saw.  
Was she a movie star?  Maybe she was on TV.
 I couldn’t remember the last time I actually watched a movie.

I'd been focused on other shit.

Like my leg.  Running again, working out.  Getting my shit together.

I stole a glance in her direction.  Her face was forward, her hair messy, the strands blowing back in the wind, nearly vertical.  I wondered why she cut it all off.

 I couldn’t stop thinking about the kiss.  I was hung over as hell, my mind sluggish, weighed down by the booze from last night.  But I couldn’t think about anything except my skin against hers.

She turned, and I jerked my head away, my eyes on the road, casual like I did this every fucking day, whisked some chick away in my convertible when she was being assaulted by the paparazzi. Whoever she was, she was out of my league.

League, shit.  We weren’t on the same fucking planet, me and her.

I would drop her off somewhere, probably wherever her limo was going to pick her up, and be done with her.  Then I was going to go about my regular fucking business, go home to West Bend, and deal with all of my bullshit.

She didn’t belong in my car.

And she sure as hell didn't belong with me.

We were on a road, a smaller road on the way out of town where the wind wasn’t so bad, when she looked at me.  "What?" she yelled, over the white noise of the air blowing past our faces.

"What?" I repeated her question back.  The wind whipped by me, my words probably caught on it.

“You’re staring,” she said.

“Sorry.”  But I looked at her again anyway, then just as quickly, back at the road.  I didn’t say anything else until we were out of town.  I had been glancing in my rearview mirror, checking to see if we’d been followed, but it looked like the photographer was the only one interested in her, and I was sure my friends took care of him.

Not in the
sleeps with the fishes
kind of way, just in the
significantly detoured him
kind of way.

I pulled over in the parking lot of a diner outside of town, and I finally turned toward her.  “You want me to take you somewhere else?  You have a car back at the hotel?”

She was silent, looking straight ahead.  When she finally spoke, her voice was soft.  “I don’t have anything to go back to,” she said.  “Not right now, anyway.”

Why the hell was I so happy to hear that?  It practically warmed my fucking heart.  I nodded.  "Well, I don't know what your story is, but I guess you're running from something."

She grinned.  "You don't know who I am?  Like, really?"

Her eyes were this hazel color with flecks of gold or something in them, almost like a cat.  I felt like I should know who she was, this girl with eyes like that, this girl I kissed, who had me so turned on I couldn’t think straight.

"No idea," I said, and shrugged, the gesture more nonchalant than I actually felt.  She had me feeling self-conscious, and I didn’t get self-conscious.  Even with my fucking leg.  I just wasn’t that kind of guy.  But this girl was making me antsy.

She laughed.  "River," she said.  Like it was supposed to mean something to me.  What the hell kind of name was River, anyway?

“Sorry,” I said, giving her a blank look.  “Doesn’t really ring any bells.”

I couldn't tell if she was offended or pleased.  “I’m an actress.”

"Yeah?"  I said.  "I never would have guessed, what with the photographer chasing you."

"Hey, you're the one who doesn't know who I am."

"Full of yourself, much?"  I asked.  "What, are you, like a Kardashian or something?  Cause if you are, I'm going to have to kick your ass out of the car right now."

River shrugged.  "No," she said.  "But I know them."

I rolled my eyes.  "Close enough.  Get out of the car."

"They're actually pretty nice," she said, grinning.

"I'm not kidding at all," I said.  "You can get out and wait on the side of the road until some nice trucker named Bubba picks you up."

"I could," she said.  "It might be safer than being in here - how do I know you're not really a serial killer or something?"

"You don't," I said.  "Keep telling me about the Kardashians, though, and you might find out."

"No trunk filled with duct tape and rope and tarp?"  she asked.

"Sounds like a lot of kinky fun," I said.  "But sadly, no.  Sorry to disappoint.  I'm not looking to chop you up into pieces.  Of course, if I were, I probably wouldn't tell you."

"Well."  She paused for a long moment, giving me the once over.  "So you really don't know who I am, then?"

“Nope.”  She seemed surprised by the fact that I wasn’t that curious, but I guess I didn’t give a shit if she was somebody famous.  All right, I was kind of curious.  I mean, how often in my life had I been kissed by a movie star?

The answer would be zero.

I just wasn't going to let on to her that I was curious.  She didn't need to know that.  I mean, hell, for all she knew I could be getting kissed by actresses all the time.

“Okay,” she said.  “What’s your name, then?”

“Elias Saint.”  I paused for a beat.  "Just so you know, paparazzi follow me all the time too."

"Oh yeah?" she asked, her tone laced with sarcasm.  "You must be totally famous."

I angled my head down, looked at her over the edge of my sunglasses.  "Well, I didn't want to say anything, since you were being all braggy and shit, but I
am
kind of important."

"Oh, well, obviously," she said.  "I can tell."

I slid my glasses back up my nose.  "It's the devastating good looks, right?"

"Dead giveaway."  She grinned.

"Chicks dig me," I said, shrugging.  "What can I say?"

"I don't doubt it," she said.  The way she said it, I couldn't tell if it she was being serious or still joking.  The intensity in her gaze made me think of that kiss. 
Hell.  That kiss.
 I turned away, looked straight ahead, afraid she'd be able to read the desire for her that had to be etched on my face right now. 

“Elias,” she said.

"What?"

“Your name.  I like it.  It’s kind of old school.  Biblical."

"All right, River with nowhere to go," I said, abruptly changing the subject.  The last thing I wanted to do right now was tell a movie star about the convoluted origins of my name.  "Where do you want me to take you?"

"Anywhere you like."  I turned to look at her when she said it, her voice husky.  
Is she hitting on me?
 Her cheeks reddened, and I realized she was embarrassed.

I couldn’t help feeling like pushing that button more now that I knew what embarrassed her.

"I'll save that for later," I said.  "Unless you want me to take you right here, right now."  I watched as the red flush grew deeper, and she shifted uncomfortably in her seat.  I hid a smile, watching her squirm.  She didn’t say anything, and I cleared my throat.  "I'm heading home."

When she answered, her voice was hoarse, and the flush was still evident on her face.  "Where's home?"

"West Bend, Colorado," I told her.  The last place on earth some actress would be interested in going.  The fact that she was still sitting in my car made no fucking sense.

"Okay," she said.

"Okay, what?"

"Okay, I'll go with you."  She said it matter-of-fact.

"To my fucking house?" I asked.

"Sure."

"Did I ask you to come home with me?"  I said.  Was this girl crazy?  Bringing someone like her back to West Bend?  Bringing her back to my
house
?  There was no way short of hell freezing that I was letting her within a hundred yards of my family.

"Oh," she said.  She sounded disappointed, and I found myself caring.

Fuck.

"No, I mean, I just assumed you were offering me a ride or something."

Yeah,
I thought.  
Or something, definitely
.

My cock was doing all the thinking for me.  When I spoke, the words sounded foreign to my ears.  “You want to come with me to West Bend?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said, grinning wickedly.  “I mean, since you’re asking and everything.”

Shit.
 My cock was
definitely
doing the thinking here.

***