Wild at Heart (Walk on the Wild Side #1) (12 page)

He’d always been perfectly clear, hadn’t he, about his boundaries and his limitations? He had every right to be the way he was. And he wasn’t the one who crossed the line.
She
was the one who’d messed with the formula. So she couldn’t blame Nick if he didn’t respond the way she was hoping.

But, God, it just sucked.

Apparently, she could only have smart, funny, wonderful Nick in her life if she kept her hands off of him. Forever. And she wasn’t sure she could manage to do that anymore, now that she knew what it felt like, now that she realized how much she wanted it. It was like that old story... Who was it, Aladdin? Who found a cave full of gold and jewels and tapestries, but if he touched even one bit of treasure, it would turn to dull sand and bury him alive.

Still clutching the piece of aspen branch, she pressed her forearms into her belly and doubled over, trying to make the sick feeling go away.

A second later, though, footsteps came crunching over the gravel towards her.
Damn
, apparently misery was about to get a little company.

“Oh, hey!” a female voice said.

Shit.
It was Ruby Torres, of all people. Looking stunningly gorgeous of course. Though she was wiping the corner of one eye with the heel of her hand and, now that Amber took a second look, Ruby’s eyes looked a little red, like she’d been hit with allergies—or like she might just have been crying.

Misery for her, too, I guess
.

Good Lord, what was up with everybody right now? Wasn’t life supposed to feel simpler and more serene out here in nature?

“Sorry,” said Ruby, stopping in her tracks. She must have gotten a good look at Amber’s expression, because she half-pivoted to go back the way she’d come. “Didn’t mean to disturb you. I was just trying to—”

“Find some privacy?”

“Yeah,” she said ruefully.

Damn
—under all the flash and glamor, the diva had an awfully vulnerable side.

And she may have slept with Nick, but she couldn’t have known Amber had any claim to him. Last they all met, Amber still had a fianc
é
—and Nick clearly didn’t take time to update her before inviting her to bed.

Amber waved her over. “Might as well join me.”

Ruby hesitated a moment, glancing at the shredded leaves on the branch in Amber’s hands. She raised one perfectly-groomed black eyebrow. “Whoa. What’d that tree ever do to you?”

Amber looked down at the tattered mess she was holding. What should she say?
Just taking out my frustrations about my best friend screwing both of us within 24 hours?

“It killed my father,” she said instead, in her best Inigo Montoya imitation. “It had to die.”

Ruby actually laughed at that, and ambled the last few feet closer. She propped her notorious derriere against the fence at Amber’s side, and they stayed there in silence while Ruby gazed around, taking in the picturesque sight of green garbage bins and storage sheds and the rack of black solar panels hidden back here.

“
Mierda
,” she said after a bit. “This feels like hanging behind the bleachers in high school. Like when everybody snuck off from History class, you know?”

Amber couldn’t help smiling at the idea of Ruby Torres ever doing something as mundane as cutting class. “It was Chemistry for me,” she admitted. “I always liked History.”

“Figures. You like stories,” said Ruby, glancing over. “You went to college and everything, right?”

“Yeah. Oberlin. With Nick, actually.” She hoped her voice didn’t hitch too obviously when she spoke his name.

“That’s awesome,” Ruby said softly. “I always wish I’d gotten to go.”

And
damn
. Ruby’s face looked so wistful, it was hard not to feel for her.

“Well,” said Amber, “you started making movies young.”

Ruby gave her hair a restless shake. “Yeah. Real young. And I wouldn’t have had the money to go anyway if I didn’t make the movies.” The set of her jaw was tight. “Geez, right now, I wish I’d never quit smoking. Situations like this are why cigarettes were invented.”

Somebody had been making life tough for Ruby, too, apparently.

Nick, probably
.

Not something Amber really wanted to discuss, but it seemed churlish not to ask. “What situation is that?”

Ruby shrugged. “It’s complicated.” She let her hair slide forward to curtain her face, apparently finding something fascinating to stare at in the row of garbage bins. “How ‘bout you? What’s got you hiding out back here in the boondocks?”

“Also complicated.” She let her mangled bit of branch fall to the ground.

“Yeah,” said Ruby. “Life’s like that, right?” She leaned back her head and stared up at the clouds. “I seriously do want a cigarette. Got one on you, by any chance?”

“Sorry. Non-smoker.”

“That figures.” Ruby’s red lips quirked. “You seem like the wholesome type.”

Wholesome
. Same word Nick had used for her. Who did everybody think she was, Anne of Green Gables? She was the director of
Junkyard Baby
, for pity’s sake—the New York Times called her work “gritty” and “unflinching.” And “darkly hilarious,” too. That had always been her favorite part.

Ruby shifted her weight against the fence. “Guess you don’t have a flask, either?” She didn’t sound too hopeful.

Hell
. “Not on me,” Amber said, feeling any claim to hipness draining rapidly away. “Trust me, booze is mother’s milk on indie shoots. But Wild Mountain National Park is really strict about prohibiting it.”

Ruby raised her eyebrows again. “What, you couldn’t smuggle in a case of beer?”

“I couldn’t risk losing my filming permit.”

“Gotcha,” said Ruby, and gave her tongue a click, and Amber could swear she could hear her thinking,
goody-goody
.

A little pang went through her chest. Oh, God, was that the real issue with Nick after all—did he think she was too
wholesome
, too much of a Good Girl for a Bad Boy like him? Did he think she’d bore him quickly? That she had what it took to be a friend, but not to be a lover?

She felt a little dizzy. The smell of her junior high gym during school dances came back in a rush—anxious sweat and strawberry lip gloss and Binaca—along with a very old and long-unfamiliar sense of insecurity.

Ruby Torres was definitely messing with her mojo.

Amber gave herself a shake.
No
. She wasn’t boring. Nick never seemed bored with her—not when they were working on a film, and not when they in bed either.

It wasn’t boredom that had freaked him out in the meadow that first day, and it wasn’t boredom that had made him leave the bed in the dead of night the other night. When they’d tried to talk about it, he’d talked about being
afraid
.

Of
breaking
her. Of
losing
her.

Though she had no idea how she was going to fix that either.

“Hey,” said Ruby. “You think one of the rangers has a private booze stash somewhere? They must. They couldn’t live out here without it, could they?”

Amber blinked. “Uh—I bet the Head Ranger could rustle us up a bottle of something. Morrissey would give you anything you asked for.” She smiled wryly. “Have you seen the screensaver on his laptop?”

Ruby looked wary. “No.”

“Picture of you,” she said, wincing a bit. “That
Rolling Stone
cover....”

“The macramé bikini?” Ruby struck the pose, hip cocked and back arched dramatically, breasts and chin thrust forward in a posture no chiropractor would ever recommend.

Amber couldn’t help herself; she laughed.

And then Ruby rolled her eyes back in her head and stuck out her tongue like a cartoon dead animal. “Gorgeous, right?” she said. “I was oiled up, too, like a frying pan—anybody who actually tried to touch me would have slid right off and cracked their skull on the floor.” She shook her head. “Men are so stupid.”

“Men are idiots,” Amber agreed.

And they both laughed. Apparently they had something in common at long last.

So that was progress, at least.

Ruby seemed to think so, too, because she turned back to Amber with a more serious look. “Listen. I just want you to know—I’m sorry about the rocky start when I got here. How lousy I was doing with that scene. It’s just...there’s stuff going on for me, something I found out about right before I left L.A.” She blew out a breath as though she really did have a cigarette. “Tabloid shit.”

“Tabloids?”
So not Nick, then
. “What? Something with Vin La Russa?”

“Nah,” Ruby said, waving her hand. “Something older. Ancient history. Never mind.” A muscle in her cheek twitched. “They probably won’t even try to find me out here. Just—you know—if you notice any low-life types with cameras sniffing around, give me a heads-up so I can go hide in a cave or something.”

“Understood,” said Amber. And she did understand. Paparazzi chased Nick sometimes, when he went clubbing with rock stars or A-list actors, or when he’d hook up with an actress who happened to be A Big Deal at the moment. The
L.A. Observer
ran pictures of him once in his boxer shorts on a hotel balcony making out with a topless Italian supermodel. And Amber was with him the day after he had a perfectly innocent drink with Kristen Stewart at a Golden Globes after-party, and he got ambushed by a photographer in the produce aisle at Vons. Ruby must have it a million times worse. “Sorry you have to deal with stuff like that.”

“Comes with the package deal.” Ruby kicked at Amber’s dropped branch with the tip of her boot.

“Sorry anyway.”

“Thanks.” Ruby watched her feet as she dragged the branch back and forth through a patch of gravel, apparently lost in thought. After a minute, though, her head came up again. “Hey, listen,” she said softly, “I need to tell you something, okay? About—you know—when you walked in on me and Nick.”

“Oh,” said Amber, shaking her head hard. “You don’t need to explain anything. Really. That’s—”

Ruby laid a hand on Amber’s wrist and looked her straight in the eye. “Nothing happened, okay? Seriously—
nothing.
I was in there, like, two minutes before you came in.” She actually blushed a little. “I pulled my clothes off, and all he did was tell me he wasn’t interested.”

“That’s—” Amber’s mouth fell open. “
What
?”

“I misread stuff he said at that lunch we all had, and I came on to him,” Ruby said. “And he turned me down. He wasn’t even....” She made a suggestive motion with her hand at the front of her jeans. “
Rising to the bait
, if you know what I mean.”

Amber felt herself blinking stupidly.

She could still hear Nick’s words echoing in her head:
We were together in the meadow, and the next morning I fucked Ruby Torres
. That’s what Nick had said.

Now Ruby was saying nothing happened?

Well, holy shit.

One of them was lying about what happened that afternoon—and the open, vulnerable look on Ruby’s face made it seem like it wasn’t Ruby.

Amber’s breath caught. A strange feeling rose up from her belly, a queasy mix of relief and joy and a different kind of panic.

Nick
hadn’t
slept with Ruby after all?

But if he hadn’t, then he’d
lied
to her—and she couldn’t remember a time when Nick had ever told her a lie.

Of course, Ruby could just be telling her what she wanted to hear. Lord knows, Nick Turner slept with pretty much anything that moved. And Ruby Torres, a woman half the men in the world would sell their spare kidneys to have, had been right there, naked on Nick’s bed, with her glorious legs spread. In what universe would Nick actually turn her down?

Ruby shrugged. “I just wanted you to know, okay? Both you guys have been walking around all
abatidos
. You know—like somebody died.”

“Okay,” was about as much of a response as Amber could manage.

“Trust me,” Ruby insisted. “I was checking out his relevant parts, and he just wasn’t interested.” She raised an eyebrow. “Unless maybe Little Nick is Very, Very Tiny Nick.”

Amber’s face heated. “He’s not—
it
’s not.”

Ruby pursed her lips and her eyes sparked with humor. “Oh, so you
do
know. I was wondering. But rest assured, me and Little Nick did not get acquainted at all. I don’t get turned down a whole lot, so, you know, it was—probably healthy for me, or something.”

Amber found it hard to manage a normal breath—her lungs seemed to have forgotten how to expand and contract the way they usually did. Yeah, one way or another, it might be healthier for everyone concerned to stay away from Nick Turner’s bed.

Ruby gave Amber a gentle pat on the shoulder. “You hang in there, okay?” she said, and winked, then walked off, her famous booty swaying.