Coming Attractions Read online

  Cara was stunning, no question. She was attractive in a classic European way with impossibly high cheekbones, flame blue eyes and a sultry mouth that he hadn’t stopped imagining suckling every inch of his body since he saw it. Oh, she was beautiful all right. But he had met beautiful women before—hell, he was a Hollywood movie producer. He could take his pick of a thousand gorgeous starlets, all more than willing to fall at his feet, do his bidding.

  So, what was it about Cara that had captured his immediate and unwavering interest?

  Maybe it was her mind, he thought. Maybe it was that objectivity, that ruthlessness, that turned him on. A hint of danger and challenge. Or maybe it was just seeing her gloriously, unexpectedly naked amidst all that extravagant, sensuous fabric that had ensnared him.

  He glanced toward the passenger seat where she silently tapped out the radio song on her thigh. Her head was tilted back against the headrest, but her sunglasses were darkly tinted, so he couldn’t tell whether her eyes were closed, until she smiled. Provocatively. And slid the glasses down her nose, winking saucily over the top of them.

  Her effect on him was instantaneous. His cock stirred. He felt as though she’d let a couple hundred pinballs fly in his chest and magnetized his eyes so they were permanently oscillating between the shadow of her cleavage and the light of her eyes.

  God help him, she was hot.

  It was all he could do to return his focus to navigating the treacherous curving coastal road. As he eased into another sweeper, he had a mental flash of Cara astride her Ducati, her tight ass cheeks perched on the seat, her legs straddling the throbbing machine as she rode the curves with grace and ease. He let out an audible groan.

  “Problem?” she asked, though her grin hinted that she knew damn well what the problem was.

  “Just wondering who the hell nicked your Duke,” he fibbed, keen to change the subject before he accidentally drove them off the cliff.

  Her playful expression sobered. “Yeah. Bastard. That bike is my own personal flying dragon. We’ve been all over together. Sometimes, I think a bike is the best friend a girl can have.”

  “I’d say that’s a sad reflection on humanity, but I get what you mean.”

  She smiled, sensing from his tone that he really did understand.

  They began speaking again in unison.

  “What made you stop ri—”

  “I thought I saw it.”

  “My bike?”

  “Yeah, in town. Just a flash of red. Then it disappeared.” Hope lit her face and he hated that he might be setting her up for disappointment. “Maybe it was just wishful thinking.”

  “I hope that thief shows his face on my watch,” Cara snarled. “He’ll be sorry.”

  Levi wanted to chuckle. She was what? Five-foot-ten and a hundred and fifty pounds? But the thread of iron in her tone told him she was serious and that an unwary bandit would do well to stay out of her way.

  He considered lecturing her about keeping out of trouble, but figured that line of conversation would simply cause her to dig her heels in and be more stubborn about her vigilante notions. He’d just have to hope the felon stayed out of Cara’s way, or that he got to the crook before she did.

  In the meantime, Levi decided to try once more to maneuver the subject to safer ground.

  “The director and the leading lady are flying in for a powwow, tomorrow. The set crew arrives, too. I’m pretty sure I’ve covered all of the dietary requirements.” He indicated the numerous grocery bags on the back seat.

  “Don’t bigwig movie producers have Girl Fridays to deal with grocery shopping and those kinds of things?”

  “Ah... Normally they do, but I’ve diverted my Friday to a personal project—nothing nefarious, just a geeky enterprise that may or may not go anywhere. Besides, I’m a dab hand in the errands department. We have a couple of vegetarians, a vegan, and a plethora of beer and pizza buffs arriving. I have organic tangelos, whole pitted dates, soy cheese, and Flintstones chewable vitamins for Selena, the leading lady. And single malt Scotch, cheese puffs, jelly donuts, and roasted cashew chocolate for Otto, the director.”

  The director he’d hired was a rising star in the industry. Otto Zampa was ripe to make the transition from low budget, high art successes to something with a more substantial profile and bankroll. And Selena Simms, the lead actress who would play Cara’s mother, was a veteran performer who had focused her career on romantic comedies with a touch of drama, but whom it was plain to see was perfectly suited to a gutsier dramatic role. Apollo planned to give her a role she could get her teeth into. The rest of the cast had been selected to set the world on fire. They’d scored a couple of A-listers for cameos and some edgy new talent for supporting roles.

  The same story could be told for everything from costume budgets to stunt doubles, special effects and promotion. In short, Apollo had not held back. Levi had so much faith in the project he was putting all his eggs in Cara’s basket. If it all went belly up... Levi squashed the thought like an empty milk carton.

  For on the flipside of his conviction was desperation. He was running out of time to hit the big time. The clock that was ticking was a very personal timepiece and the stakes were so high that whenever he thought of failing, his mouth dried out and his pulse spiked so fast he felt lightheaded. So, he stopped thinking of failing. Ever. He wrote the possibility off completely. Eradicated the “f” word from his vocabulary. Dismissed it from his mind. He refused to plot contingencies. There was no exit strategy, no emergency chute, no plan B. He just focused on winning. That was the only result he would permit himself to consider. Any other outcome simply didn’t exist for him. He would not allow it.

  “Scotch, cheese puffs, donuts, and chocolate, huh? Sounds like a stomach ache to me.” Cara laughed.

  “Or a coronary. It’s a good thing I got something much nicer for us then, huh?” Levi grinned.

  “Toast?” she suggested innocuously.

  “Vixen,” he teased as they hit the isthmus and drove west toward the peninsula and the imposing facade of Flinders’ Keep where storm clouds amassed.

  “What was it like growing up there?” he asked.

  “What? As a rich kid in a mansion? Or in my eccentric mother’s shadow?”

  “Can you separate them?”

  She slid off her Wayfarers as the cloudy darkness rolled in. “I guess not. My mother wasn’t an ogre, you know. The tabloids loved her because her monied background paired with her wacky career choice made good reading, and because she was beautiful. They liked to photograph her treasure hunting in her Wellington boots in Zaire or some equally remote location and run the picture alongside another of her at a gala ball in a tiara. It made a dramatic juxtaposition, I guess. And then when my father vanished, it was all conspiracy theories and intrigue and tragedy, which just added fuel to the fire. The public lapped it up.”

  “Your father, Dane, disappeared during an expedition. Is that right?” Levi asked her.

  “Yes. Mom never discussed any details. I only know what everyone else knows from the media—basically that he’d had a run-in with some shady characters. He was gone and was never coming back. After that, if Mom so much as shared coffee with someone who happened to be male, the paparazzi would leap to a sexual conclusion. If she had slept with even half the men the papers said she did, she would have died from exhaustion. In truth, while she was an outrageous flirt, I never recall a man staying at the house. As far as I could tell, she was about as sexually active as mashed potato. When I was older, I developed a sense that she flirted so shamelessly as a ploy to keep men at a distance. The coquetry was almost like a shield. She’d stroke their egos and play their games and send them on their way, happy but puzzled as to how she had deflected their advances so gently but so completely.

  “She was a nice, normal woman, Levi. She cared about other people’s feelings, she gave money to charity, and she dug in the garden. She baked the best brownies and watched dumb movies or played Monopoly with me and
Mia on Saturday nights. She never complained when Mia cheated or when I spilled popcorn all over the couch. She was just a regular mom.”

  Levi pulled up in front of the house and gestured for her to wait while he stepped around the truck and took her elbow to help her out. He didn’t release her arm as her feet touched the gravel. Instead, he took her other arm and gently guided her around to face him.

  Toe to toe, inches apart, he could see the different rays of blue in her irises, the pierced holes in her ears, the curl of her lashes, and the faintest smattering of freckles over her nose. He could taste the sweetness of her breath and feel the electric buzz that hummed between them.

  “Sounds like Alessandra was a great mom,” he said, meeting her eyes, somehow knowing it was important to her that he acknowledged this.

  “She was.” Cara’s voice was throaty with emotion, though whether it was thick with memories of her lost mother or whether the cause was more immediate and more primal, he wasn’t certain.

  He hesitated, unsure.

  She blinked.

  He waited.

  She exhaled and closed the space between them, lifting her arms and crossing them lightly behind his neck, coaxing his face toward her own and edging her pelvis forward to nestle against his crotch. She was bold without being vulgar, confident without being cheap. He thrilled in the way she judged the moment so perfectly. He responded immediately to her invitation and withheld nothing as he joined his mouth to her own and savored the taste and tang and touch of Cara Kelly in his embrace.

  Her rejoinder to his kiss was swift and thorough. Her lips were hot and honeyed as she claimed his mouth with her silken tongue. Her hands were sure but searching as they roamed the muscles of his shoulders, the plains and troughs of his back, the curve of his buttocks.

  He took her daring as a provocation to allow his own hands to slide from her elbows over her biceps and to skim her shoulders and descend her back. She was arched against him, so when he skated his hands down her spine, they came to a natural rest at her derriere and, instinctively, his palms cupped her rear and drew her even closer.

  She gasped. She could not miss his readiness, he realized. He was ramrod straight and hard as steel for her. His whole body was alive with need for the vibrant woman reacting so deliciously, so wantonly in his arms. At the very center of his hunger was his throbbing cock.

  And then the rain came. No stray drops, no warning sprinkle. A sudden sheet of cold water thundering without notice from the sky, drenching them at once.

  He would have kept kissing her, would have damned the weather and continued to feed on her luscious mouth, to fondle her delectable ass, to delight in the sublime feel of the length of her lush body pressed hard against his... But she shrieked and yanked away from his embrace, making a mad dash for the veranda. The sprint would have been comical except that she looked even better wet than she did dry, he thought, remaining where he was and unashamedly ogling her departing form. Her jeans were plastered to her thighs and hips, her t-shirt painted against her ribs. When she turned, laughing, a spray of water flicked from her hair and his eyes zeroed in on the mounds of her breasts and their sexy peaks poking against the thin, wet fabric. She looked like a TV ad for something fresh and feminine. He groaned.

  “Pervert,” she shouted over the roar of the rain, and laughed as she crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Spoil sport,” he replied, jogging over to join her on the veranda. “Here.” He pressed his house key into her palm. “Go inside. I’ll bring the supplies from the car. There’s no point waiting. By the looks of this storm, the milk will turn sour before we get a break in the weather.”

  “You don’t want a hand?”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “I’ll go dry off then.”

  “Don’t feel you have to,” he told her, waggling his eyebrows suggestively in the direction of her chest.

  “Later,” she laughed.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  Chapter Five

  “So, what was your childhood like?” Cara asked as she leaned against the counter in the back kitchen, sipping a merlot and watching Levi cook.

  “Pretty average. After-school milk and cookies. Minivan. Suburbia. I was one of four kids. My parents stayed married, still are. Dad was a vet, Mom worked part time as a florist. They’re retired. We ate meat and three veg every night. We went to all the local football team’s home games. We ruled the neighborhood on our BMXs, even my sister. And my siblings all got sensible jobs out of college. I’m the black sheep, but not very black. Maybe a chic charcoal or a pleasant ashy gray.” He laughed.

  “Because you’re a movie producer?”

  “Because I’m an entrepreneur, a bit of a business buccaneer and a financial daredevil. My family was all about certainty and security. I was about risk and return. I think I scared them.”

  He passed her an orange melamine tray. It had once resided under the toaster to catch crumbs, she recalled. Tonight, it was laden with dense bread and held twin dipping bowls of oil and pistachio dukkah.

  “When did you first know you were different from them?” she asked as she loaded up her bread, popping the tiny triangle into her mouth and smoothing her tongue over her slick lips.

  He seemed mesmerized by the motion, so she dawdled. It turned her on to see the effect she had on him, even from something as simple as licking oil from her mouth.

  “Earth to Levi...”

  “Ah. What? Oh...”

  She laughed naughtily.

  He cleared his throat.

  “My first venture into exploiting the capitalist regime? I was a senior. Kids were hooking up, couples springing up everywhere, you know? And getting serious. By the end of the school year, a lot of car windows were fogging up, if you get my drift.”

  She nodded, but her mind was suddenly in the back of his Tacoma. She envisioned herself and Levi frantic, entwined, passionate, their tongues laving, their fingers craving. She pictured the dark, the cramped space, imagined hot radio music, bare thighs against leather seats.

  He coughed slightly as though his mind was also wandering down illicit paths and she forced her mind back to the conversation.

  “We’d all done sex ed, so we all knew to use condoms.” Was he talking about sex to torture her? All she could think about was how he would feel all hard and thick and swollen, thrusting into her—and he was talking as though he was oblivious.

  It wasn’t that she lacked interest in his beginnings, but rather that she was completely distracted by the sensual way his body moved as he stirred the pot, the sexy moue of his lips as he tasted the sauce, the frank appreciation in his eyes every time he looked at her, and the unmistakeable bulge of his cock in his snug jeans. He was making her hungry, and not for pasta.

  “Wrightville was a small town. Old-fashioned, too. There was one drugstore. Walking into that store and buying prophylactics was like announcing your engagement. So, instead, kids were taking risks.”

  “You saw an opportunity.” She gave herself a mental point for not only following the conversation, but for making an appropriate comment. She gave herself another point for stopping by the Ocean Ridge drugstore that afternoon and making an anticipatory purchase of her own.

  “Sure, I saw an opportunity. I gathered my courage, shrugged off my pride, and walked into the drugstore one day to plough my meager savings into buying every box of condoms in stock. Then, I let it be known I was the ‘go-to’ guy for rubbers. I did a discreet business in the locker room and behind the gym. Teen pregnancy was down sixty percent that year...”

  “You’re trying to tell me you were providing a community service?”

  “Not at all, but it was definitely a win-win scenario. In any case, the profit from my condom sales paid for my first set of wheels.”

  And with that remark, her mind was back to the rear of his car and they were naked and desperate. Heat suffused her like a sudden fever and all at once the air was more l
ike puree and she just couldn’t suck enough into her lungs. Her head swam and she actually thought she might swoon.

  “Levi?”

  He looked up from the pot, flicked off the heat, dropped the spoon, and rushed to her, grasping her around the waist with one strong arm and tilting her chin up with the other.

  “Cara? What’s wrong? Are you ill? Being caught in the storm, maybe?”

  Her legs were trembling and her vision blurred. Her mouth turned so dry at his touch she had trouble getting the words out. The warmth of his skin, the brush of his breath, the intensity of his gaze sent her pulse from presto to allegro.

  “I’m not sick,” she rasped. “I just need—”

  She kissed him then, desperately, recklessly. Her kiss was an assault and a surrender all at once. Unhesitatingly, she claimed his lips. Unapologetically, she pulled his body hard against her own. Unflinchingly, she savored the unbridled response she incited in him.

  For the longest time there was nothing but the kiss. There was no kitchen, no storm, no movie. There was only Cara and Levi, and she would have struggled to identify where she ended and where he began.

  Two ravenous mouths devoured one another, hands greedily grasped and grabbed, hair tangled, clothing snagged, skin hungered for skin, eyes begged and promised and yielded. She was on fire, utterly alight, a human firestorm burning for Levi as she had burned for no man before.

  Her fingers yanked his shirt from his waistband as his hands slipped up under her t-shirt and moved unerringly to palm her aching breasts through the flimsy underwear she’d belatedly donned. Her hands ranged across his back, marveling at the play of muscle beneath her fingertips. She gasped as his fingers grazed the stiff points of her nipples through the lace and a shiver rippled through her as he applied a fraction more pressure to the sensitized tips. She responded in kind, skimming her hands over his ribs and sliding them over his broad chest, raking them through the smattering of hair there and scraping her fingernails feather-lightly over his flat male nubs. He sucked in a sharp breath and hauled her hard against him so her hands were trapped between them, immobile.