Proud Hearts (Wild Hearts Romance Book 2) (18 page)

Why was I consenting to any of this?

The short walk to Reena’s room in the other wing certainly didn’t offer time enough to do a lot of navel-gazing, but Chris could be and seemed determined to continue to be an immature jerk in public. How much of that could I tolerate weighed against the fire he sparked in me whenever he came near? Were private showers with him worth it?

And why was I even debating about this? He would be here a few more days only, and then he would be gone. Any other woman would happily use him for all the incredible sex he could get it up for, and then cry him out of her life when he left.

In the end, weren’t we all just using one another?

I sighed as we scanned the same blank door after blank door searching for Reena’s room number. My moral compass wasn’t something I could shake that easily, tempting though a situation might be. That was both a strength and a failing as I was coming to see, but in
my
end, no, I couldn’t simply use him if the feeling wasn’t there. Not if I wanted to respect myself in the morning.

My dilemma, then, was to figure out what the hell it was I did feel for him between the extremes of utter infatuation and utter disgust.

Number 13.
I hoped Reena wasn’t superstitious. Chris rapped on the door and Gary answered. Every room must be a suite, I thought, as we stepped into the living room with the bedroom and bath behind their own separate doors.

Reena sat on the sofa in a pair of strappy sandals, micro shorts and red blouse. Her leg was swathed in bandages covered with matching red Velcro wrap. She’d tweeted pictures of the harrowing damage to it from ankle to knee from the snake’s muscle-dissolving venom. She was lucky to still have that leg. Her face was puffed from either fluids that had been injected into her or the effect of the venom. Overall, there was a dark, battered look about her. She smiled a greeting, but it was clear we’d be lunching here, not in the dining room, today.

“I heard from Merle,” Chris said, and I recognized the name of the showrunner who had walked me through the contract. “Thanks to you, we actually
will
be doing a “Living With Cobras” episode. In India. You’d better be up for it next month. You’re the expert on all things snake now.”

By the glare she turned on him, it was a good thing Reena was still too weak to move very fast.

He winked at her. “You’re looking great. Sure you don’t want to go back with us? Dee’s practically tamed the lions. Won’t even have to leave camp to film them.”

“I’d think about it if the show’s insurance wasn’t covering all my expenses, and since the union’s calling this an on-the-job injury, I’m getting full pay for as long as I can convince the doctors I can’t go back to work. So I can either go home and sit out by the pool or stay here and listen to your wisecracks all day. Is there really a choice?”

I pressed my lips tight together to smother a laugh. I was almost sorry Reena wasn’t coming back with us. I liked her. She was pretty, smart, and someone to talk videography with. Then again, she was pretty, smart, and someone Chris was clearly attracted to. I wasn’t secure enough to want her around. “Will there be pool boys and umbrella drinks?”

She flashed a smile my way. “And massages in the cabana.”

“Pfft. I’m coming with you.”

“Hey!” Chris feigned a hurt expression.

Gary… Gary gave me a peculiar stare, darting his eyes away when I looked his way. I was sorry about his step-father, of course, but I was particularly glad he wasn’t going to return with us. He and I had never warmed to one another, his jealousy of me palpable. And I still couldn’t quite figure his and Chris’ relationship. It was altogether possible he deserved my jealousy more than Reena.

I was still trying to come to terms with whether I had a right to be jealous of anyone to begin with. Where did Chris and I actually stand with one another?

Gary passed the room service menu to Chris, who stepped in close by me to share it. The next couple of hours I spent listening to talk about people I didn’t know involved in scandals with other people I didn’t know mixed with a few tidbits about which director had picked up which pilot, movie or indie film, and which actor schmuck had just signed the type of supporting role that meant their falling star was about to crash and burn.

I smiled woodenly throughout, thinking I should feel privileged to have a front-row seat to the dishing of Hollywood gossip instead of being bored out of my mind. When the tenseness behind my eyes threatened to develop into a full-blown headache, I excused myself and wandered out into the courtyard by the pool where I knew the others could keep tabs on me through the picture window.

I’d only been sitting in one of the sling bounce chairs at the edge of the pool for five or ten minutes when a shadow fell over me and a male hand dropped on my shoulder.
Chris come to rescue me
, was my first thought, until I saw the hand on my shoulder that I almost reached up to cover with my own was black.

Gary.

“Let’s have a drink and talk…girlfriend,” he said quietly.

Chris and Reena would be watching us, I knew. Or else Chris and Reena would be… Well, they
wouldn’t
be. Would they? Reena wasn’t interested in Chris. Then again, hadn’t I professed the same thing to myself earlier? And Reena’s disinterest wouldn’t deter Chris from making the offer. What if bedrest had made her bored? Hands, kisses, getting to first or second base wouldn’t take much energy even if a home run was beyond Reena’s strength right now.

I didn’t realize I’d been staring at the tinted window of Room 13 over the same shoulder Gary’s hand only just left until the scrape of a chair being dragged over to join mine jarred me around. Gary signaled, and a waiter was over for our drink order before he even sat down.

He stared across the pool where a gray-haired man swam lazy laps. It was almost eerie how deserted the courtyard was until I recalled Africa was the attraction here and not the resort. Most of the guests weren’t coming off an eight-month stay on the savanna like I was. Night would likely bring them to the pool to cap off their day of hunting.

I had barely framed that thought when our drinks arrived, frozen, tall and strong.

“Something on your mind?” I prompted.

“What I’m going to tell you,” Gary said carefully, “you’re going to take wrong. I’m telling you that now so when you think about it later, you might just remember that I knew upfront just how you’d take it.”

“Yet you’re still going to tell me?”

He pursed his lips. “Now see, even the reason I’m telling you this you’re going to take wrong. You’re going to think it’s because I’m jealous of you, or that I don’t like you, that maybe I’m trying to get back at you. Hell, baby, in your shoes, I’d think the same, so I won’t be faulting you for any of that. But truth is, I’m telling you this because it’s just right. You’ll see that. Not today or tomorrow, but you’ll see it later on, after we’re gone.”

My senses were all on high alert on this point. “”Okay, just what am I going to see?”

“Chris is playing you, smooth as can be, like easy jazz.”

“You’re going to have to come up with something more than that.”

“You think you’re the first person on location he’s charmed? Did you even watch last season? Wolf Girl and Shark Woman?”

“What do you mean?

“You don’t think the showrunners look at the people who’ll be on camera with Chris? The men can’t be bigger or stronger or better than average-looking. That makes Chris look better. And the women have to be pretty, because surrounding him with pretty women, that plays into his playboy brand.”

“But I’m not—”

“Hush yourself. You’re pretty enough or you wouldn’t have made the cut. Now when Chris flirts, ratings start to simmer. And when there’s hanky-panky, those ratings sizzle.”

“Hanky-panky?”

“Chris got it on with the girl who claimed to have been raised by a wolf pack. She had this fake feral thing going on, wrestling around with Chris, biting him, playing rough. Of course, he did it with her doggy-style.”

“Not on camera!”

“Of course on camera. It’s a cable show. One you should have watched, I might add.”

“There’s not enough bandwidth on my sat line. I sampled some of the episodes—”

“I assure you that scene’s been clipped and posted everywhere. No lack of bandwidth here. Google it.”

I would. Of course I would. But I already knew Chris had been with other women. Lots of other women. Was it just some Cinderella dream that it was me he’d been waiting for all this time?

“Who’s Shark Woman?”

Gary’s expression softened seeing I was listening. “They did it underwater. Dived down nude in a shark cage with only their oxygen tanks strapped on and a bunch of bull sharks swimming around.”

“Oh god.”

“That’s what brings in the ratings—”

“No. I mean, of course it does. I was just remembering…” I took a deep breath. “Video. I have footage of…”

Gary’s eyes brightened with interest. “Of you and Chris?”

My camera in the corner of the cargo bay—I wasn’t sure what all it might have caught us doing, but I
was
sure of one clip. “We’re not”—I blushed—“doing it, but we are”—I blushed deeper—“naked, and Sheba is in the Rover with us.” I had no idea the producers would even think of airing something like that. Now that I knew, I went cold all over.

“That is ratings gold right there, sweetie. And you can only expect Chris to try something like that again and with the cameras rolling full out. Don’t be fooled that it’s
you
he’s after. All he wants is to show off his sexual prowess to the world. That’s how he makes his living. Don’t expect him to keep
anything
private.”

“But…there aren’t any cameras in our room here.”

“Girl, you’re pretty. Of course he wants to have some fun with you. And now I
am
jealous. Of that. But of what you two have got going on in front of the camera? Not of that, because I know it isn’t anything more than a ratings grab.”

No amount of alcohol was going to rid me of that sobering revelation. But the rum did prod me into asking a question I would never have had the courage, or indiscretion, to ask otherwise. “Have you and Chris ever…you know?”

Surprisingly, Gary took my hand between his two, leaning his elbows on the chair arm. “There was one night after some benefit party, the stars were out, we took a taxi back to our hotel, and I breathed into his ear and kissed those delicious lips of his. I followed him into his room, delirious that he was finally receptive and ready. And he tried. Oh, sweetie, he did try. He let me have my way with him, and I loved on every bit of that gorgeous body till I thought I would die if he didn’t love me back. Well, he touched me and whispered all the right words to me, but he couldn’t get the love on. Just couldn’t do it. And you know what? I didn’t die. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still madly in love with him, still fantasize about him. The pain hasn’t gone away. Not yet, but it will. Just like it will for you, too.”

We finished our drinks in silence, watching the lone swimmer go round and round.

There was one thing Gary had gotten wrong.

The pain for me would never go away, because betrayal was one thing I would never, ever forget.