Muscle for Hire (6 page)

Aslin stood motionless, his blood roaring in his ears, and watched her pull a mobile phone from her pocket. Her gaze flicked to his, her cheeks red, and then she turned away, swiping her thumb across the screen of the phone before ramming it to her ear. “What’s up, Chris?”

Whatever her brother said next, Aslin didn’t hear. What he
did
hear was Rowan say, “Nothing, I’m not doing anything. Don’t leave until I get there, okay?”

And when she turned back to him, the woman that faced him was the same woman he’d met back on the film site. The same woman who had put him on his back and dismissed him like a gnat.

That
woman looked at him, tucked her shirt back into her snug leather pants and said, “Dinner was lovely, thank you. Mind zipping your fly now. I’ve somewhere else I have to be.”

Chapter Four

Rhodes insisted on taking her to the hospital, which really was damn annoying because her body still burned with the memory of his touch. Still craved for more.

Sitting behind him on his bike, she held onto the rear grab handles in a death grip, determined not to lean into his back. She couldn’t risk any more body contact with him. Not if she wanted to keep her sanity. And dignity.

All it would take was the feel of his strong muscled back pressing to her breasts and she would be gone.

So she clung to the Ducati’s rear handles, anchored her weight to the pillion-passenger seat with her inner thighs and prayed for a smooth, red-light-free journey.

What was only a twenty-five-minute trip felt more like a lifetime of exquisite torture, her body thrumming with sexual need, the powerful vibrations from the motorcycle between her spread legs sinking into her already stimulated clit. By the time they pulled into the hospital’s parking area, she was damn near on the cusp of an orgasm.

She practically threw herself from Aslin’s bike, her pussy throbbing, her pulse pounding, her nipples so hard they hurt.

Thank God Chris was waiting for her in the ER. If it weren’t for that simple fact, she’d probably do something completely stupid like beg Aslin to fuck her there and then.

Again.

She didn’t bother to slow down as she hurried toward the hospital’s access elevator. Nor did she check if Aslin was following her. He was. She not only heard his footfalls behind her on the concrete—long strides that echoed around the underground parking area like a slow tattoo—she felt his gaze on her back. Steady. Direct.

Intense.

It made her pussy squeeze. Damn it.

A childish part of her wanted to break into a sprint, dash to the elevator door and get inside before Aslin could join her. It would be easier than standing in the small, confined space with him.

She didn’t know what unsettled her more, the way her stupid body was behaving around him, or that he hadn’t tried to broach the subject of what had occurred in the alley between them before Chris called.

Either was bad enough.

For Christ’s sake, woman. Control yourself.

Easier thought than done, especially when his hard, tall body brushed against her back, his oh-so-perfectly muscled arm extended past her and his index finger depressed the elevator button just as she was about to jab at it.

She sucked in a sharp breath.

Control. She needed to find her control. And her focus. Her brother had called for help. That’s what she needed to concentrate on, not Rhodes and his sexy-assed muscles, sexy-assed accent and sexy-assed…everything else.

It wasn’t until the door closed, imprisoning them both in the small metal space, that she realized she was still holding her breath. Or maybe it was when Aslin moved with silent speed to stand directly in front of her, both hands pressing to the wall behind her head, his intense dark stare capturing her.

“This isn’t finished, Rowan.” His British accent sent shards of wet tension into her sex. “So don’t think it is.”

She swallowed, the pit of her belly a churning, twisting mess that had nothing to do with the elevator’s rapid ascent to the ER level. “W-what isn’t?”

His nostrils flared. “What started in the alley. It’s not finished.”

Before she could respond, the elevator bounced to a halt, a soft chime screamed through the heavy silence and the door slid open with a clunking jolt.

The smell hit Rowan first—the stinging odor of disinfectant. She stiffened, the memory of the night her parents were killed slamming into her like a fist. Five hours waiting in the ER after the break and enter that changed her and Chris’s lives, covered in her mother’s blood as the doctors tried to save the unsavable, Chris sitting beside her, shell-shocked, a cop doing his best to get answers from Rowan that weren’t coming—who did it, what they looked like, how it happened.

Aslin’s stare on her face narrowed. For a heartbeat. And then he turned and, with a gentle pressure she didn’t realize she wanted until it was there, smoothed his hand to the small of her back and walked them from the elevator into the ER’s waiting rooms.

“Hey, is that Nick Blackthorne’s bodyguard?”

Aslin’s hand grew firm on her back at the muttered question, a second before a blinding flash detonated to Rowan’s right. And another. Rowan flinched. Which was stupid given how many times she’s been photographed while out with Chris.

“
Enough
,” a female voice ripe with contempt rose over the sounds of the crowded floor. “I told you scavengers to bugger off already. Stay and I’ll order colonoscopies for the lot of you.”

Rowan jerked her attention toward the nurse storming toward her and Aslin, her mouth falling open. Now
there
was an intimidating woman. Five eight plus, one hundred and seventy pounds at least, and scowling like a grizzly with a sore tooth.

Rowan heard Nick Blackthorne’s name uttered again a second before another flash fired, and then the nurse wasn’t just storming towards the scurrying photographer, she was running. If Rowan hadn’t been so damn flustered with the whole situation, she would have been impressed.

But she was flustered.

On every level imaginable.

Worried. Turned on. Out of control. Haunted.

Why the hell had she come to Australia in the first—

“He’s here, Rowan.”

Rowan snapped her stare to her left, finding Nigel McQueen standing at an open door under a sign that clearly said
Medical Staff Only
.

“He’s fine—”
Dead Even’s
director held up his hands—palms out—as if to placate an expected tirade before it began, “—but word must have leaked to the public he was here, because by the time the doc was ready to discharge him the paps had arrived.” He flicked Aslin—towering over Rowan on her left—a quick look. “I’ve never seen so many supposedly injured paparazzi in one place. Thank God you came, Rhodes.”

The obvious relief in Nigel’s voice at the Brit’s presence pissed Rowan off. She ground her teeth and stepped away from the man. His fingers slipped from the base of her spine, a loss of contact that should have made her glad.

Should
have.

She drove her nails into her palms and glared at McQueen. “Where is he? Take me to him now.”

“This way.” The director turned and began to walk away.

Rowan nodded at Aslin. “Thanks for bringing me here. I’ll catch a taxi back to Chris’s trailer lat—”

“Chris wants to see Aslin too.” Nigel’s voice cut her dismissal short. “He said the two of you would be together.”

Hot tension squirmed through Rowan’s belly, but from Nigel’s words or the look Aslin gave her that echoed exactly what he’d told her in the elevator—that it wasn’t over—she didn’t know.

Of course you know. It’s both.

It
was
both. She was pissed Chris had made a connection with the bodyguard. And she was unnerved that she had as well.

Without a word, she walked through the door. A white flash popped behind her, telling her at least one paparazzo had risked being given a colonoscopy to get a photo of Nick Blackthorne’s bodyguard. On a detached level, she wondered if images of Aslin without the rock star sold, and then she saw her brother sitting propped against a pile of pillows on a hospital bed, a white butterfly bandage stuck to his eyebrow and all thoughts of the paparazzi vanished.

“Hey, sis.” A wide grin split Chris’s world-famous face. He cocked his head to the side a little, no doubt in an attempt to show her his wound. “Looks like I’m going to need to make a claim on my insurance. What do you think, Aslin? Will it make me more believable as a seasoned commando?”

“Definitely,” Aslin’s deep rumble behind her made Rowan’s belly knot. “All us commandos have scars.”

Before she could stop herself, she turned and cast a steady inspection over Aslin’s hawkishly handsome face. There was a ghost of a scar along his strong right jaw line, a thin straight line that—to her practiced eye—looked like the result of a blade or knife of some kind, and a smaller, thicker scar just above his left eyebrow near his temple. Neither detracted from the understated sensuality radiating from him. In fact, they only emphasized it. In a menacing, primitive way.

Oh boy. She was pathetic.

“Like what you see?”

A fiery blush flooded Rowan’s cheeks at Aslin’s murmured question. She started, jerking her attention back to her brother. Only to find Chris grinning at her.

Great. Just great.

“Rowan and Aslin sitting in a tree,” her brother sang off-key, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “Kay. Eye. Ess. Ess. Eye. En—”

She thumped him in the shoulder with a fist. “Shut the fuck up.”

He laughed.

Behind her, Aslin chuckled. Chuckled.

“Probably not a good idea to hit the patient.” An older man dressed in a white coat appeared at the foot Chris’s bed, a disapproving frown on his seamed face. He reached for the chart, the wrinkles in his forehead deepening. “Hmm. Your vitals are still a little erratic, Mr. Huntley. I’m thinking I’d like to keep you in overnight for observation.”

Rowan stiffened. “What’s going on, doctor?”

The elder gentleman lifted an eyebrow at her. “Apart from being punched in the shoulder, you mean?”

Chris snorted. “Gotcha there, sis.”

“Sister?” The doctor made a
tsk tsk
sound.

Rowan bit back a retort. No matter how much she wanted to tell the old coot to shut up, now wasn’t the time. “Is Chris okay?”

“He’s fine, Rowan,” Nigel answered. Apparently because the doctor decided he needed to check Chris’s eyesight. “A mild concussion. But the studio bosses will feel happier if Chris stays overnight.”

Rowan looked at the doctor currently studying her brother’s right eye. “Just a concussion?”

The doctor didn’t break off his inspection of Chris’s eyeball. “I believe so. But I want to be sure.”

“Awesome.” Rowan pulled a face at her brother. “First night in Australia and I’m sleeping in a hospital room. Way to go, squirt.”

The doctor straightened. “I don’t know how you do things in America, but unless the patient is possibly going to die, overnight visitors are not allowed in the hospital rooms.”

Rowan frowned. “But he’s my brother.”

Chris smirked at her. “And he’s alive. Yay. Now take off. I thought I was getting out tonight but it looks like I’m staying put.”

“So I came all this way for what?”

Her brother looked at her. “To go buy me a toothbrush?”

She crossed her arms. “Seriously?”

The clatter of the hospital chart dropping back into its holder prevented Chris from saying whatever he was going to say. It was probably for the best. By the gleam in his eye, it would have made Rowan want to punch his shoulder again.

“That’s enough for the evening, I think,” the doctor spoke up. He fixed her with a steady glower, obviously not impressed with any of them. “You can come collect Mr. Huntley tomorrow, but now he needs rest.”

Rowan studied her brother’s grinning face, her belly tight. She couldn’t help but notice the deep purple bruise smudging his cheek. He’d been very lucky, it seemed. The fall from the trailer could have really hurt him, and as much as the idea pained her, his good looks were part of his career. If his face had been damaged, his nose broken, it would have impacted the filming of
Dead Even
and may have had an adverse effect on his future roles.

Damn it. It was times like these she wished he were a normal brother, with a normal job. Like a dog walker or something. She wouldn’t need to be constantly worrying about stuff like this, superficial stuff, surreal stuff, if he was a dog walker.

“Don’t worry, miss,” the doctor continued, his glower replaced with calm sympathy. “We are well aware of who your brother is. The media and any unauthorized personnel will not be allowed access to him or the ward he stays in. There will be no need for his bodyguard to stay.”

The word bodyguard sent a hot lick of something delicious through Rowan’s agitation. She threw the silent Aslin a quick look over her shoulder, her pulse pounding faster at the sight of his towering strength and undeniable presence.

For a worrying moment, she longed to feel his warm, strong hand on the small of her back again. To lean against his hard body and surrender to the attraction she felt for him.