Читать книгу: «The Royal Romantics», страница 4

Chapter Four

Dom choked on his draft beer as he caught sight of Nina at last. She couldn’t have shouted ‘celebrity who doesn’t want to be recognized’ any louder. The oversized designer sunglasses and headscarf were enough to make anyone look twice, especially here in Tinseltown.

She hovered in the door of the restaurant, nervously scanning the room before she spotted him in one of the back booths and made a beeline for him.

She slid into the seat across from him, her back to the rest of the restaurant, and undid the headscarf. Her long, sleek dark hair tumbled loose.

“Hi.” The coquettish smile she sent him was enough to make up for the 15 minutes she’d kept him waiting.

The waitress who brought their menus was clearly well trained. She pretended not to recognize Nina.

“I’ll have the Number One burger with extra fries,” he said, handing her back the menu.

Nina’s face took on a pinched look for a moment, then she placed her order. “I’ll have a Pellegrino and the chopped vegetable salad.”

The waitress met Dom’s eye. He grinned. He agreed. He’d had such high hopes Nina wasn’t going to be just like every other image-obsessed actress. She’d even passed the cream test.

This was a test his sisters had devised years ago. They deliberately offered a woman a beverage she usually didn’t drink – in a town like LA where every woman was on a diet, cream and sugar were the obvious choices. If the woman caused a fuss, she was written off as high-maintenance. If she accepted the cup and was polite enough to sip, his sisters considered her a keeper.

It was a good test. He’d even used it a few times himself. No one even semi-famous had passed the test before Nina.

“Those aren’t exactly the kind of comfortable clothes I had in mind,” he commented, eyeing the pretty blouse and short skirt she wore.

She shrugged. “What if someone sees me here and takes pictures? Wendy has my bag in the car with a change of clothes.”

“You’ve left your PA waiting outside?” he asked.

“Of course not! She’s running an errand for me and she’ll be back soon.”

Their food arrived quickly. As he dug into the burger, Nina averted her gaze, but she couldn’t disguise the hungry look she cast his fries.

“Go on,” he said with a quick grin. “You know you want to. Besides, you’re going to need to start bulking up. I’m going to make you work off those calories very quickly.”

Her grin as she leaned forward to steal a single fry off his plate was less movie star and more the Nina he remembered. And her satisfied sigh as she savored the fry was the most sensual thing he’d seen in years.

“Aren’t you…?”

Nina smiled and nodded at the two young women who approached their table.

“Could we have our picture taken with you?” the bolder of the women asked.

Dom took the phone handed to him and snapped a few pictures of them posing with Nina, attempting to look as cozy as best friends. By the time the women finally removed themselves, his burger was cold. And Nina had stopped casting lustful glances at his fries. She turned back to him with a half smile. “And that is why I don’t leave home in sweatpants. So when do we start my training?”

“As soon as we’ve eaten and I’m sure you’re not going to pass out from lack of sustenance I’m going to put you through some paces to test your fitness and agility.”

“I have a personal trainer and I work out every day in the gym at my complex. And I used to be a cheerleader in school.” Her smile oozed confidence, but she sounded defensive.

“Sweetheart, that has to have been at least ten years ago. No offence, but I need to know what I’m working with now. And just because you push weights with some gym bunny in an expensive health club does not make you fit.”

He scanned her body, or at least what was visible above the tabletop. She was in good shape and clearly worked out, but she didn’t have the build of an athlete. For what he’d require from her, she needed core body strength, not legs that would look good blown up on a movie theatre screen.

“I won’t be as easy on you as your trainer,” Dom warned. “I’ll expect a hundred per cent commitment from you. I’m going to make you work and I don’t want to hear any complaints.”

She smiled, full of genuine confidence now. “I won’t complain.”

Several hours later she wished she hadn’t said she wouldn’t complain. Dominic had taken her on his motorbike to a training facility up in the hills, and he’d put her through a commando obstacle course. He’d made her run, crawl through dark tunnels, climb ropes and a series of increasingly steeper and higher barriers, swing across a ravine and jump from a height into a bed of mats.

Her legs and arms ached, she’d scratched her shins, and she wanted to cry from the way her breath tore through her throat. The sun baked down. She was over-hot and dripping with sweat. And there was still one more obstacle to go.

Dom kept pace beside her as she ran as hard as she could up the slope. She didn’t want to imagine how she looked: red-faced, panting, with her hair matted to her face and her t-shirt plastered to her skin. They crested the low hill and Nina baulked at the sight below her.

“You know how to swim?” Dom asked. He had no right to look so clean and able to breath. He hadn’t even broken a sweat.

She nodded. “Swimming pools, yes. But that…”

“That” was an oversized pond. No, it was too wide and too deep to be called a pond, too stagnant to be called a river. And the smell…

Memories she didn’t want hurled themselves at her. She swallowed the gag reflex.

“Showers and cold drinks are on the other side,” Dom said. “I’ll meet you at the clubhouse.” He pointed to the wooden building on the far side.

And then he was gone, jogging away from her with a backward wave and a grin she would have loved to wipe off his face.

She looked back at the water obstacle that lay before her. Fear gripped her stomach and again the gag reflex choked her. After several hours of torment, she no longer felt like sassy, confident Nina Alexander. She felt like the scared, plump kid she’d been in that other life so long ago.

Not just scared. Fear squeezed her chest. She sagged to the ground and eyed the water.

She didn’t need to shoot in water for the movie. Well, there was one scene in the third book… she swallowed. But that’s what stunt doubles were paid for.

She could call Dom back – tell him she couldn’t do this. And she could call this whole stupid thing off and go back to playing the rom-com princess.

She could, but she wouldn’t. She hauled herself up onto shaking legs. Then, drawing in a deep breath and closing her eyes, she jumped.

The water wasn’t as deep as she’d expected. It only reached to chest height. And at least it was cool, unlike that choking, merciless water she remembered. She began to wade. Water weeds caught at her, wrapping around her legs. Panic set in as she struggled against them. But they only gripped tighter.

She couldn’t breathe.

Survival rule #1: don’t panic. Her father had told her this years ago when she’d climbed too high up a tree and gotten stuck on a branch that had cracked beneath her weight. He’d talked her down, slowly, calmly.

She stopped fighting. Tears burned against her eyelids as the old memory choked her even more than the weeds. Survival rule, my ass. Fat lot of good it had done him.

She tried to move again, but the tangled weeds still held her tight. Trapped.

The tears threatened to spill over. Who was she kidding? She couldn’t do this.

She looked for Dom, but he was far away, circling the dam, not looking her way. She tried to shout for him, but the tears clogged her throat and all she managed was a whimper.

The black spots were back, dancing before her eyes.

I can do this. She breathed deeply to calm the surge of fear and panic. I won’t cry. He mustn’t see me cry.

When she no longer saw black spots before her eyes, she held her breath and dived down to yank the strangling weeds off her legs. It took three dives to finally free herself, then she pushed up to the surface and began to swim, slowly, careful to keep close to the surface to avoid the tangling weeds that still seemed to reach out to her with their greasy tentacles.

Her already aching muscles protested with every stroke, but she pushed forward, keeping her gaze locked on the distant building that slowly, slowly grew nearer.

Just another few feet, another stroke… on the far bank she dragged herself out and lay panting in the dry, prickly grass. The relief was so great she wanted to cry. She’d done it. She’d actually crossed it and it hadn’t killed her.

She wasn’t that weak, frightened little girl anymore.

Dom’s shadow fell over her. He held out an outstretched arm to pull her up and she took it gratefully. She didn’t know if she could have stood on her own. Her legs shook so much from the unaccustomed strain, and just a little bit of terror.

“How did I do?” she asked as they headed towards the clubhouse and she finally found her voice again.

“In six weeks I want to see you do it in half the time,” he said.

“Does that mean I’m trainable?”

He nodded, and this time she did cry, a few hot tears leaking down her dirt-stained face. Whether they were tears of joy or fear, she had no idea. She had to do this again in a few weeks? What had she signed up for?

She was so thirsty that she downed the tall glass of water Dom handed her in a minute flat. His eyes crinkled as he watched her. When she was done, she wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve. Though the movement probably added even more grime to her face.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked as he took out his cell phone and snapped a picture.

He grinned. “I want to remember this moment. This might well be the first time I’ve seen an A-list actress covered in dirt and mud she actually earned.”

“If that picture ever appears on the net, my people will hunt you down and kill you.” But she said it with a laugh. He was right. The only time she’d ever been this dirty, the dirt had been painted onto her by a make-up artiste. It had taken nearly as long to paint on as it had just taken her to do the obstacle course.

And the only time she’d felt this liberated, this powerful… actually, she couldn’t even remember ever feeling this high. She’d done it. She’d faced one of her oldest fears.

“Anything else to drink?” Dom asked, raising his hand to summon the grizzled older man behind the serving hatch.

Nina nodded. “I’m going to live dangerously. You can make my next one a beer. But I need that shower first.” Though she doubted one shower would be enough to get the mud out of her hair.

The shower only had cold water and no shampoo, but at least she was a little more presentable when she returned to the bar area. Dom’s eyes glinted as she slid onto the chair across from him. Was that admiration in his gaze?

Great! If only she’d known the way to attract his attention was to submit to torture, humiliation, and terror she wouldn’t have wasted all that effort trying to flirt with him during the filming of Pirate’s Revenge.

The beer not only slaked her thirst, it eased a little of the stiffness already setting into her muscles. “So what’s next?” she asked.

“Next I take you home.” His mouth curved upwards in that suggestive half-smile that made her stomach flip.

She straddled the bike behind Dom as he revved the engine. She had to shout her address into his ear over its roar. Then she hung on tight as he headed back toward town. It was already growing dark when they wove through the streets of West Hollywood and into the tree-lined avenue where she lived.

“This is where you live?” Dom helped her off the bike and looked up at the unassuming mid-century stucco building. “I’d have thought after four seasons on a successful TV show, you’d have gone for something fancier.”

“It’s not all about money,” she said, with a small smile. “I bought this place the first time the show was renewed and it still suits me fine. I don’t need anything bigger and it’s easy to lock the door and leave if I go away on a shoot.”

And the heavy security ensured at least a modicum of privacy.

Her muscles had already begun to seize up and she needed Dom’s help to remove the helmet, too. Her arms ached too much to hold up. “Besides, I won’t be on top forever, and when the day comes when I’m no longer relevant, I don’t want to have blown everything I ever earned on a lifestyle I don’t need.”

No matter how great the temptation, she’d never over-reach herself and risk being homeless again.

Dominic looked impressed. Wasn’t that just typical? She finally got the man’s attention and she was too tired to capitalize on it. She stood awkwardly beside the bike and glanced around. Looking the way she did right now, she didn’t want to hang around on a public sidewalk any longer than necessary. “Do you want to come inside?”

“Sure.”

He followed her inside, through the security gates with their keypad access, past the guard, and across the cool, quiet lobby to the elevator. They rode up in silence. She let him into her unit, a tight knot forming in her stomach as he looked around without a word.

“Stylish,” he said. But it didn’t sound like a compliment. “How long did you say you’ve lived here?”

“Six years.” Compared to his homely bungalow, her apartment looked unlived in, even clinical. But it was her safe place, her refuge from the constant bombardment that followed wherever she went these days. Very few people were ever admitted past the door.

“You take minimal to a whole new level.” Dom followed her into the open-plan kitchen and leaned against a granite-topped counter as she opened the fridge.

She shrugged. “I don’t like to get attached to material things.” Or to people.

She pulled a bottle of beer out the fridge; one she hadn’t even remembered was there. “I also don’t have much to offer you. Will this do?”

He nodded, took a bottle from her and popped the lid. She watched as he drank, swallowing hard against the tug of desire that shot through her. God! It was like watching beer porn.

Now that she had him here, she didn’t quite know what to do with him. She was too tired, too achy, and too dirty to make any attempt at seduction. Thank heavens there was no one else to see her and judge her in this sorry state. Dom seeing her like this was bad enough.

“So, when do I start my training?” she asked.

His eyes glittered. “You already have. But I’m wondering if you even need me at all. We just need a video of you doing what you did this afternoon and we can send it in as your audition tape.”

“Nice try, but I’m not letting you off the hook that easily.”

He smiled, moving closer, to stand right in front of her so she was forced to look up at him. “I won’t let you off the hook that easily, either. I’m going to make you work. First, we’re going to need to build your core strength and improve your endurance. I want to teach you some basic tumbling and martial arts, and I have friends who can teach you the other skills you need: firearms training and driving.”

“I drive,” she said defensively. Though not often since she’d become famous. The day after she’d stopped for gas and been mobbed at the gas station she’d offered the super- organized production assistant on her current movie a job. Wendy had driven her car ever since.

“A stick shift?” Dom asked.

Slowly she shook her head. She hoped he couldn’t read her thoughts because he did not want to know what image had just popped into her head at the thought of handling a stick shift. Sheesh! But she’d turned into a raging mess of hormones in his presence.

“You’re also going to meet some of the friends I work with. If you want to get inside the head of some badass people, that’s as good a place to start as any.”

“Will there be any more like you?” she looked up at him through her long eyelashes and smiled. It was hard to do coy when you felt like you needed a very long soak in a bath to decontaminate, but she hadn’t been nominated for an Academy Award for nothing. Even if it had only been for Best Supporting Actress, and even if she hadn’t won.

That naughty smile ticked up the corner of his mouth. “Any more like me in what way?”

She met his gaze head on. “Sexy, single…”

He held her gaze for a long moment, saying nothing. Then his gaze dipped to her lips. “Are you flirting with me, Ms. Alexander?”

“Is it working?”

His smile deepened, into the one he used to soften his brush-off. “I need a day to get a few things sorted and to speak to the rest of my crew. Meet me on the Venice Beach pier at six-thirty on Thursday morning.” He leaned in and brushed a kiss against her temple. Her lungs forgot to breathe. “Thanks for the beer.”

He let himself out the apartment and she was still standing in the kitchen, leaning against the counter to keep herself up. She was pretty sure the boneless feeling in her legs had nothing at all to do with the excruciating workout of the afternoon.

But her emotions weren’t nearly so boneless. She pushed herself away from the counter and headed for the bathroom.

Yet again, she’d practically thrown herself at him, and he’d walked away. What was it about her that a man with his reputation with women could keep walking away?

She was more than half an hour late. Dom paced the pier, drawing curious stares from the early-morning fishermen. He hadn’t brought his mobile. Should he head home to fetch it? Perhaps she’d decided to bail already and he was wasting his time here.

He was on the verge of giving up waiting when he spotted her, a curvaceous figure in leggings, a running jacket with the hood pulled up and big sunglasses jogging towards him down the pier, scanning the area as she ran.

He set his hands on his hips. “You’re late. I thought you’d already changed your mind.”

She shook her head. “I’m so sorry. There were reporters camped outside my building, so we had a hell of a time getting out, then the driver had to lose them before we could come here.”

He led her down to the beach and they headed north, jogging along the soft sand.

“I could go running with an ordinary trainer,” she pointed out.

“This is just the warm-up. You’ll be running every morning to build your stamina.”

She cast him a coy look. “Is that how you keep up your stamina?”

She wasn’t talking about his exercise regimen.

He ignored the question. Of course, she knew his reputation. He made no apologies for who he was and what he did. But he didn’t feel like discussing his sex drive with Nina, of all people.

The beach was not yet busy, though the sun was up over the horizon. In spite of the easy pace he set, Nina was panting for breath by the time they’d reached his usual halfway mark.

“This is so much easier on a treadmill,” she wheezed, bending over, her hands on her knees. “And my calves are still sore from yesterday.”

“It’ll get easier.”

“Please tell me I get coffee when this is over?”

“You get coffee when this is over.”

He let her have a rest before they turned back. She collapsed on the beach, her hoodie falling back and her ponytail swinging free. But not before she’d first checked their surrounds, that no one was watching her.

Dom resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Vain much?

She removed her sunglasses and he realized the fake eyelashes were gone. Why she needed them, he had no idea. She had the longest, glossiest natural lashes he’d seen.

“It’s really pretty here,” she said, looking out over the breakers toward the horizon.

“So maybe you can be converted to liking the sea?”

She shivered. “It’s still way too scary.”

He’d seen enough people caught in riptides, or surfers submerged by waves, to know the sea could scare the faint-hearted. But knowledge was the only way to combat fear. Staying calm and knowing how to reduce the risks were more important in any crisis than brute strength.

Every stunt he did was planned to within an inch of its life, and rehearsed and rehearsed to eliminate as much of the unknown as possible. There was still an element of danger – he wouldn’t do it otherwise – but Nina needed to learn that preparation eased the greatest fears.

“Did you have a bad experience with the sea?” he asked.

She rose and dusted the beach sand off the seat of her pants. “Let’s head back. I could really use that coffee now.”

He took pity on her and they ran back along the pedestrian paths rather than on the soft sand.

He took her back to his house and they ate breakfast on the deck, Sandy running mad circles around them and Hana, his housekeeper, serving them fresh coffee.

“You need some feeding up,” Hana observed, and Nina laughed.

“You and my Gran are the only people on the planet who tell me that. Everyone else wants me to live on a diet of celery sticks.”

Hana shook her head and piled more bacon on Nina’s plate before heading back inside.

Nina trimmed the fat off the bacon and snapped her fingers for Sandy. As the dog nuzzled against her hand, eating up the fatty bits, Nina laughed and scratched between her ears.

“You like animals?” he asked, surprised. Her pristine, white apartment was so clearly not home to any pets.

“I had a dog just like Sandy when I was a teenager.” She rubbed her face against the dog’s fur so he couldn’t see her face, but he heard the catch in her voice. “I still miss her.”

“You should get another,” he suggested.

“And who would look after it when I’m away on a shoot? I even managed to kill a cactus once.”

“You have a PA,” he reminded her.

She shook her head. “Wendy goes wherever I go.”

“She didn’t come with you to Westerwald.” He would have remembered.

“I gave her some time off. Her sister was having a baby.” That was definitely a catch in her voice. She downed the last of her coffee and stood up. “I’m ready. Where are we headed next?”

They walked the short distance to the dojo where he often worked out. On the soft matting he tested her basic tumbling skills, showing her how to fall and roll safely. She wasn’t half bad and she still had some of that flexibility she must have learned cheerleading. She managed the shoulder rolls from kneeling easily enough, but break falls and dive rolls from standing required more effort. And a great deal of touching and close proximity.

When he’d fantasized about having his hands all over her, he hadn’t imagined he’d be showing her how to hold her head or correcting her posture.

He held out a hand to help her up from the mat. She came up with too much impetus and had to grab hold of him to steady herself. He caught her arms.

They stood chest to chest, both breathing heavily, though it wasn’t from exertion.

He should step away. He should let her go. Instead, his arm snaked around her waist and Nina looked up at him, her pupils so large and dark that it was like looking into a deep well. She ran her tongue over her lips and every part of his body sprang to attention.

“You can let me go now.”

Slowly and reluctantly he let her go and stepped away. Barely half a day in her presence and he was already finding it difficult to remember all the very good reasons why he hadn’t taken her to bed long before now.

Number one being that he was only a step away from being a man whore and she was … Nina. Smart and sexy and spunky, and definitely in a class of her own.

He had nothing to offer a woman like her, and he had better remember that.

They had lunch at a tiny Italian bistro frequented by the trendy advertising set.

“I can’t go in there,” Nina whispered urgently. “I’m not dressed to be seen.”

“And you won’t be,” Dom assured her.

The owner himself took their orders. Nina was careful to keep her back to the room, hiding behind a leafy pot plant.

“Your usual?” Antonio asked.

Dom nodded.

“What’s that?” Nina asked.

Antonio lowered his voice. “Salmon pesto pasta. Special family recipe, but it’s not on the menu. My wife makes it only for Dominic.”

“Make that two,” Nina said, with a smile that won her another fan.

Antonio headed back to the kitchen and Nina cast a furtive glance around the restaurant. “What if someone recognizes us?” she whispered.

“Would that be so bad?”

“With the rumors Paul’s been spreading about me, someone might assume you and I are having an affair.”

Again, would that be so bad? Clearly it was, because her brow furrowed with anxiety.

He shrugged. “No one’s paying us the least attention. Look – a room full of people too busy texting to pay any attention to us.”

After lunch, which Nina devoured ravenously, he took her to the firing range at a police training facility. Two days of almost constant physical exertion and she was looking forward to the rest. Except that the target range wasn’t the walk in the park she’d expected it to be.

Though Dom let her sit while she learned the theory of firearm safety, actually learning to load and fire a gun was another matter. The intense concentration required to fire at the life-size paper targets was exhausting, her ear drums were left ringing in spite of the ear protection, and her wrist and arm ached from the revolver’s recoil.

“You have good hand/eye coordination,” the instructor said. He was an ex-SWAT officer and a hard taskmaster, not given to praise, so she glowed at the compliment. “But you still hold the gun like a girl. Next time we’ll work on improving your grip. I want you handling these weapons with confidence before we move you onto rapid fire and combat shooting.”

It was late afternoon when Dom rode her home on his bike. She wrapped her arms around him, pressed herself against the solid heat of him between her legs. Forget the adrenalin rush of the bike ride, it had nothing on the rush of hormones flooding her.

This time, when he turned into her street, he pulled up to the curb half a block from her condo.

“Oh hell,” she moaned. “I was sure they’d have left by now.”

The street had been overrun. There were more cars than she’d ever seen in the quiet street, and the huddle of reporters guarding the tall gates at the entrance to her building had swelled to double the size.