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. 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. My head was back on the head rest, my eyes closed, and I listened to the hum of the car as we drove along the highway. I was in that space between asleep and awake, trying to ignore the thoughts swirling in my head.
Four hours ago, this seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea, driving off with some guy I just met, the same guy who had stuck his tongue down my throat in a hotel hallway.
His tongue.
I could still taste him on my lips. He tasted like whiskey and sex.
What the hell was I thinking, jumping in some guy’s car and going with him to his hometown? I only just learned his name. I knew nothing about him. We had nothing in common- I was sure of that. Two different worlds and all.
This is the dumbest idea ever, River.
And I had done some stupid shit, that was for damn sure.
Viper ran around on me, but it’s not like I’d always been an angel. I went to rehab once, after a bad spell of partying before I was even eighteen. I’d lucked out with a manager who was good with that kind of shit, hired one of those fixers who can manage anything. The fixer got me out of that jam. She was probably busy spinning this one already. I wondered what she was coming up with. Running away in the middle of a movie shoot? Hitching a ride to Colorado with some guy I'd just met?
This wasn't my best moment ever.
But it probably wouldn't be the last stupid, impulsive decision I ever made. In fact, I thought as I looked over at Elias, his gaze fixed straight ahead, I thought, he might be the next stupid impulsive thing I did.
The thought sent immediate warmth radiating to my core.
And just as quickly, I reminded myself that I only just left my fiancé. My boyfriend of three years. In Hollywood years, that was a fucking lifetime.
Of course, he was the one with his cock in my sister’s throat. And it had been months since we had sex, since he touched me in any way, shape, or form. That wasn’t by my choice. He blamed it on his “art,” this new album he was doing that he wanted to “channel his energy” into.
When the car came to a stop again, I was jerked out of my thoughts.
“Pit stop,” Elias said.
"Duct tape and rope?" I asked, grinning.
"How'd you know?" he asked. "It was going to be a secret surprise." He got out of the car, and as I opened the car door, caught the handle. He reached for my hand as I slid out of the seat.
"Come on, now," he said. "Don't tell me those Hollywood boys aren't into opening car doors for you."
"Not really."
"Damn shame," he said. He walked quickly, and I found myself a step behind him on the way toward the store, distracted by looking at his ass. Then I noticed his gait was slightly unsteady, but before I could think about what that meant, he turned his head.
“Looking at something?” he asked. His voice had the same light-hearted tone as before, but there was an edge to it this time.
Your ass, I wanted to say. It was on the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t open my mouth. I shook my head, suddenly mute.
A dark look crossed his face. “My leg?” he asked.
“What?” I was confused by what he was asking.
He pulled his pant leg up slightly. “There it is,” he said, and I felt embarrassed, but not because of his leg. I was embarrassed he caught me staring at his ass, and now he thought I was some kind of jerk, staring at his prosthetic. I knew my face was red. I could feel the heat streaked across my cheeks. I had been in the limelight for so long now, I wasn’t easily embarrassed. Yet this guy, whose name I only just learned, had this way of making me flush.
In more ways than one.
“That’s not what I -” I started to say, then stopped, because he was already walking away toward the store. I had to jog to catch up with him, and when I did, I put my hand on his arm. “Elias.”
“What?” He paused, looked at me, his eyes narrowed. They were this cobalt blue color, so bright it looked almost unnatural.