Serena Bell - Still So Hot!

Instead he asked, “How long do we perpetuate this pretend romance?”

She stood up. “I just got off the phone with Celine’s publicist. I needed another opinion.”

“And did you get one?”

“She’s good with the plan.”

“Which is?”

“A couple of hours lounging at the pool together and a few drinks in the bar afterward. And then Celine moves on, and you’re free to go.” She surveyed the landscape of human flesh. “If you can drag yourself away.” She chuckled.

He ignored that last line. “Will she cooperate?” He gestured at Celine. Awake, she’d been sullen and hostile, snapping at his attempts to make conversation and refusing his help to drag an empty chaise out of the shade.

“I’ll tell her she has to. And Haven will tell her she has to. And it’s just a few drinks. How much trouble can she cause?”

He shrugged. It made him uncomfortable to have Elisa towering over him, so he got to his feet. He’d forgotten how tall she was, only a couple of inches shorter than him. He liked tall women because he didn’t have to stoop to kiss them.

He had to stop fantasizing about kissing her, about stripping her out of her clothes, about laying her on a chaise and sliding his body up the length of hers. He’d made the decision on the plane that, if he wanted to be her friend, he couldn’t afford to remind her of what she hated about him. He couldn’t be the man she’d built her whole career around outwitting. He’d shut that part of himself down.

Shut it down. Just like that.

Except he was still thinking about kissing Elisa. With a slight incline of his head, he could have those soft lips against his. And coax her tongue—

He knew exactly how it would feel against his. Like that night, when he’d wanted it to extinguish the craving, and instead it had fed the fire.

What was wrong with him, that he couldn’t put sex out of his head for ten minutes?

She shifted from one foot to the other, hands on hips, which only made her waist look narrower. “So do you have a return flight?”

She’d lowered her voice, and, as if by agreement, they took a few steps away from where Celine lay.

“Haven’t booked one yet. Have you tried to do anything online? Someone said it was insanely expensive to call out if you don’t have an international plan, so I was trying to book through the website, but I couldn’t get my laptop to connect to the hotel wireless—”

Elisa frowned and scraped a toe over the glossy surface of the pool deck. “You should get on that. I can do it on my phone if you can’t get online.”

“First you tell me I can’t leave, and now you’re trying to boot me off the island.”

“I’m just—”

“You want me when you want me, and then you’re done, and you kick me to the curb like I’m garbage—”

“I’m—” But then she got that he was messing with her and smiled. It made him miss the good old days with a vengeance. When they’d smiled at each other all the time, joked and laughed and flirted and—

For a long moment her eyes stayed on his face, as if she were thinking it, too, but just when he wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold her gaze, it flickered to something behind him. He turned to look. All he saw was the spiky greenery at the side of the pool. Then his vision resolved a blur of floral color into a Hawaiian shirt on someone holding a long-lensed camera.

“Is that your guy?”

“No. Crap. It’s the guy from the plane.”

“Great. How long has he been standing there?”

“I don’t know. He might have just showed up.”

From where they were standing, they couldn’t hear the whir of the digital shutter, but Brett knew he had to be shooting. It was too good an opportunity. The two of them, conspiring over the prone body of the sleeping TV star. “Do you think he heard any of our conversation?”

She eyed the distance between them and the burst of color in the foliage. “Probably not.”

“So it’s all visual. Stick out your hand. Like you’re shaking mine. Look businesslike.”

“Isn’t it a little late for that?”

“Probably. But we can at least not give him any more raw material for scandal, right?”

She stuck her hand out, and he took it. Her hand was small, slim and surprisingly soft. She was angular and regal, but she still had that ultrafeminine, satiny feel to her skin. He wanted to rub his thumb over the back of her hand, over her wrist and up the inside of her arm. He wanted to see if the rest of her was as ridiculously soft and sweet. As her cheek. As her mouth.

Man, he was despicable. She was right about him. She’d always been right about him. And she’d been altogether right to get herself out of his life, because if she’d stuck around, he would have found a way to get in her pants. And there was no reason to think he’d have treated her any differently than the other women he’d discarded.

He’d proved it by running out on her that night and again two weeks later with her sister. God, he didn’t like to think about that.

He was still holding her hand. She took it back and said, all business, “Good luck with drinks.”

“Thanks.”

“If you’re lucky, you won’t see me again, except maybe the back of my royal blue bathing cap as I do lengths of the pool.” She waved, then turned.

“Okay.”

But it wasn’t okay. Not at all. She pivoted to walk away in earnest, and he checked out the bathing suit from the rear angle, that admirable contrast between the curve of her ass and the narrowest point of her waist, and hoped his bathing trunks weren’t obviously broadcasting his admiration.

He hadn’t actually said he’d leave after he ended his “relationship” with Celine. He hadn’t looked up earlier flights home, and he didn’t want to. It would be the gallant thing to do, of course. He should walk away and let Celine turn the weekend into a triumph. And it would be the prudent thing to do. The network was already going to be ticked at him for getting himself in the spotlight and not in a “family man” way.

But as he cursed that stupid, old-fashioned bathing suit, and its unexpected effect on his brain and cock, he knew one thing for sure. He wasn’t ready to have Elisa Henderson walk away from him for good, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to walk away from her.

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