Cindy Dees: High-Stakes Bachelor

“Hey, Gran.” He paused beside her to drop a fond kiss on her cheek. Still tall and slim at sixtysomething, she was an elegant woman. Beautiful, even now.

“Hello, Jackie. Tea?” She glanced up at him and did a double take. “What happened to your face?”

“Ana—an actress auditioning for a part—clocked me across the face with a club.”

“Oh, dear. It looks like you’re going to have a hooked nose and a black eye. Won’t you make quite the dashing pirate? I assume she didn’t get the part?”

“Actually, we’re thinking about casting her.”

“Well, at least she can defend herself from your advances.”

He rolled his eyes. “The crap in the tabloids about me is not true, Gran. I swear.”

She waved a “whatever” hand at him and pulled the tea bags out of the pot.

“Can I have some of that tea on ice?” he asked.

“Ruins the flavor, dear.”

“Yes, but it’s a thousand degrees outside. And the idea of drinking something hot makes my nose hurt.”

“There’s a nice breeze coming off the ocean. Why don’t we take our tea on the veranda?”

He never failed to be amazed at how it could be twenty degrees cooler on the coast than in town. He picked up the tray and followed her outside onto the stone patio. Sure enough, a cool, fresh breeze dried his sweat in a matter of seconds. He sipped at the tall glass of iced tea Minerva poured for him in spite of her objection to chilling her imported Earl Grey.

“Have you thought about what we talked about on the phone?” she asked without preamble.

The memory of Ana’s declaration that she could fake out his grandmother flashed through his mind. If only.

He took a long pull at the tea before answering with long-suffering patience, “We’ve been over this before. I’m not averse to having a family...someday. But right now, I’m traveling and working too much to sustain a relationship, let alone raise kids.”

“But now that the production company is up and running, you’ll be home more. Have more control of your schedule.”

In theory. He had yet to see that play out in practice. He’d been working day and night with Adrian for the past year getting all the financing and business paperwork set up. He was convinced that it was a good business move to invest a large chunk of his accumulated wealth in a long-term venture like this. But it was a big risk. A big project.

“Tell me about this pugilist actress.”

“She’s a newcomer. Name’s Ana Izzolo.” He searched for words to describe her accurately. “She’s spunky. Fiery. Very un-Hollywood.”

Minerva’s eyes lit with interest. “How old is she?”

“I don’t know. Mid-twenties, maybe.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Of course she’s pretty. We wouldn’t be casting her as a leading lady if she wasn’t. Although she’s not traditional. She’d be a girl-next-door type if she didn’t have...” How to describe the cynical edge he sensed more than saw? He shrugged, and finished lamely, “She has a certain something. She’s compelling.”

Speaking of which, he only had about an hour until he had to leave for their date. And he needed a shower.

“Going out tonight?” Minerva queried.

“Yup.”

“On a date?”

“That’s none of your business,” he retorted.

“And why not?”

“Because I’m thirty-three years old and don’t tell you every detail of my life?”

Her nose went up. “Fine. I’ll find out where you went and who with down at the hair salon tomorrow.”

He stared at her in chagrin. The hell of it was she would be able to do just that. And that would be the downside of small-town life. “If you must know, it’s a working dinner. I’m meeting Ana to talk some more.”

His grandmother pursed her lips. “When do I get to meet her?”

“Uh, never.”

Minerva glared down her patrician nose at him. “Are you ashamed of me?”

He’d forgotten how effectively she could deliver a guilt trip. “No, Gran. I’m not ashamed. This is just work, not true love ever after.”

“Compelling, hmm?” she murmured as he stomped past her toward the house.

Meddling woman. This was getting out of hand. “You don’t have the right to run my life, Gran.”

“I wouldn’t dream of interfering, dear.”

Hah. And leopards didn’t have spots. Even if the leopard was his grandmother and her heart was in the right place. At least she hadn’t played the “I could die at any moment without ever seeing my great-grandchildren” card.

Looking forward to dinner with Ana more than he’d looked forward to a date in a while, he headed upstairs.

* * *

Ana couldn’t say if she was more excited or scared. Both about her dinner date tonight and the whole idea of landing a major movie role. Either way, she was a bundle of nerves as she primped. She did her best not to mess up Tyrone’s awesome makeup job. She wasn’t much into the girlie arts and could never duplicate Tyrone’s artistry.

She chose a pale pink angora sweater and white jeans to change into. They were basically her only decent clothes left after the vandalism of her other audition clothes at the studio earlier.

She tossed her purse over her shoulder and headed downstairs in the gathering dusk. Tonight, she would burn some of the remaining gasoline in her car to get to Romaletti’s and back. If she actually landed this job, money to fill up her car wouldn’t be a problem anymore.

She approached her vintage VW Beetle affectionately. The Bug Bomb and she had been through a lot together over the years. Hopefully, times were looking up for the two of them. And it started with this dinner tonight—

Maybe because she was distracted thinking about Jackson Prescott, or maybe because she simply forgot the first rule of self-defense, which was to be aware of her surroundings, but she didn’t see the attack coming. One second she was reaching for her car-door handle, and the next she was flat on the ground with a heavy body on top of her.

Ohgod, ohgod, ohgod. Not again. And maybe because this reminded her so much of the last time she was attacked, she panicked a little and forgot the second rule of self-defense, which was to make as much noise as possible and attract help, or at least the attention of passersby.

She pushed in silent panic against the gravelly asphalt, trying to turn over. To get her hands or feet free to defend herself. Something hard and heavy slammed into her right temple, and the world went black for a few seconds. She didn’t quite lose consciousness, but she was dazed and had to work to stay conscious, let alone fight back.

Her years of self-defense classes finally caught up with her and one more cardinal rule belatedly registered in her brain: never give up. She struggled weakly beneath her attacker.

“Bitch,” a male voice ground out in her ear, dripping with vitriol.

She fought harder. But trapped on her stomach like this, there wasn’t much she could do. All her martial arts training was negated by her inability to move. Her purse was gone, the mace container inside it useless. The motel’s parking lot had no light in it and was usually deserted, anyway. Fat lot of good noticing all that did her now.

She should have been more aware of her surroundings. But she’d been so caught up in fantasizing about Jackson Prescott that she’d failed to pay the slightest attention to anything around her. She almost deserved whatever happened next.

She didn’t want to die, dammit. And that was when the rest of her self-defense training finally, belatedly, came back to her. She opened her mouth and screamed as loudly and bloodcurdlingly as she could.

Her attacker swore as a door opened nearby. A hand reached for her mouth but she bit the salty palm as hard as she could and screamed again.