Adored (26 page)

In the past two years, Siena had become very well known as a model, and even fashion-phobes like Max couldn’t fail to have seen her picture on billboards and TV, advertising everything from Versace couture to shampoo. Out of the top-ten girls—those whose annual earnings were in seven figures and whose names appeared as frequently in the gossip columns as the fashion pages—Siena was known as the “man’s woman.” Sexier, curvier, and sassier than any of the other “supers,” men loved her for her raw sex appeal, and women loved her for the fact that she wore clothes that weren’t designed to fit a size zero giraffe.

“Oh, that’s right, I forgot. She was in your gang before you got sent to Ampleforth, wasn’t she?” said Henry. “I tell you what, I wouldn’t have minded playing a spot of doctors and nurses with her.”

“God,” said Max, shaking his head, “that was a long time ago.” Instantly, the memories of hanging out at Hancock Park, and particularly all their fights about that tree house, came flooding back. “She was an obnoxious little brat even then. Always had to be the center of attention. She was the polar opposite of Hunter. Christ knows what she’s like now, with half the world’s men drooling at her feet.” He rolled his eyes dramatically. “Spoiled as hell, I expect.”

They had reached the crest of the hill and emerged from the woodland back onto open fields. The light had almost gone now and it was very cold. Suddenly, Max longed to be back at the farm, warming himself with a nice malt whiskey in front of the fire.

Thinking back to the Hancock Park days made him feel uneasy, somehow, almost depressed. Siena and Hunter and the tree house reminded him of his childish self—of high hopes, excitement, and an unbounded optimism that was no longer a part of who he was. Back then he’d thought he could do anything, be anything. Now his dreams of making it as a director were already crumbling, before they’d even really begun.

“You’re shivering,” said Henry, breaking his reverie. “Not used to the good old British winter anymore, I suspect. Do you want my scarf?”

“No,” said Max. “No thanks, I’m fine. Let’s crack on and get home though. I could murder a drink.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Tiffany Wedan arched her back and pulled him deeper inside her, closing her eyes as she felt her second orgasm build.

“Hmmmm,” she moaned, “please.”

Hunter smiled down at the beautiful girl beneath him, her eyes closed, wet strands of long blond hair clinging to a face flushed with desire, and tried hard to stop himself from coming.

“Please what?” he teased her. “Please stop?”

“No!” she gasped out, her muscles instinctively gripping tighter around his cock as her fingers started stroking and probing for his asshole.

“Ah, no you don’t,” whispered Hunter, pulling her hand away. That really would finish him off. He bent lower so that his mouth was right by her ear. The tickling sensation of his breath there always heightened Tiffany’s pleasure. “You’re a very naughty little girl,” he whispered, jabbing himself still deeper into her.

“Aaah,” she cried out, climaxing suddenly with such intense force, muscles spasming and arms clenched around him as though her life depended on it, that Hunter felt like he was being sucked into a warm, wet black hole.

“Fuck! I love you!” he yelled, seconds later, as he finally let himself enjoy the orgasm he’d been trying to suppress for the last twenty minutes, rocking back and forth inside her with delight.

Afterward, the two of them lay in his bed, clasped together like exhausted limpets, tired and replete. It was incredible how, after almost three years together, she still made him feel like a fifteen-year-old with his first crush. Ever since he’d walked into that audition room at NBC and seen her looking so adorably shy and flustered, not to mention unbelievably sexy in her cheerleader’s outfit, he’d been mesmerized by her. With her slender, coltish legs (she was almost his height) and thick, dark lashes framing deep, green eyes, she reminded him of a baby racehorse—beautiful but still a little unsure of herself. Her wide, pale pink lips had trembled as she stumbled over her first few lines, and it had been all he could do to tear his eyes away and focus on his own lines, so loudly had his heart been pounding.

Tiffany had been auditioning for the part of Kimbo Watson, the darkly psychotic female lead in
UCLA,
the new series that Hugh Orchard had created especially for Hunter to leverage off of the massive success of
Counselor.
Hunter played Gabe Sanderson, hunky college football captain, and had sat in on all the read-throughs for the Kimbo hopefuls. Tiffany didn’t get the part, probably because everything about her radiated sunshine, not inner demons. But she had landed the smaller role of Sarah, the football team’s physical therapist, and had been working with Hunter on the show—which was now right up there with
Counselor
in the ratings—ever since.

Stretching her body upward to kiss him on the lips again, she wondered in awe for the umpteenth time how she had ever gotten so lucky. She remembered how paralyzed with nerves she’d been when she had first laid eyes on Hunter at that very first read-through. He was already an established star, thanks to
Counselor,
while she was still working as a waitress at Benny’s Beans and Burgers in West Hollywood. Before
UCLA,
she had barely worked in eighteen months, and was spending most of her days in a sweltering kitchen or serving overpriced heart attacks on a plate to revolting, lecherous customers, while wearing a badge that cheerily proclaimed
I MAKE IT HAPPEN—TIFFANY!
Jeez, how much had she hated that stinking place? It was all a far cry from the life she’d dreamed of when she first set out from Estes Park, Colorado, to follow her dreams of becoming an actress.

Her parents had been against the idea from the start.

“She graduated magna cum laude, Marcie,” she remembered her normally mild-mannered father yelling at her mom, pointing at Tiffany as though she were an exhibit in a freak show. “And you want her to throw that all away to become a waitress in Hollywood?”

“She wants to act, Jack,” said her mom reasonably. “She’s young, and she’s following her dream. What’s wrong with that?”

“What’s wrong with it? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it. She’ll end up like the rest of those poor suckers, all the small-town girls who grew up being told how pretty and talented they were by all the folks back home, and they head out to L.A. thinking they’re gonna make it. They’re gonna be
stars.
” He spoke with a bitterness born of his immense fear for his daughter; he loved her so much. But his words shocked Tiffany to the core. “And ten years later,” he raged on, “they’re still serving pancakes at IHOP.”

“Oh, Jack,” said her mother gently, seeing Tiffany’s horrified face.

“No, Marcie, I’m right about this and you know it. The waitresses are the lucky ones. Half of those girls end up working the streets. Or in”—he could barely bring himself to say it—“in one of those depraved pornographic films.”

“Jack Wedan!” her mother remonstrated, shocked. “Don’t be ridiculous. Tiffany would never get involved in anything like that.”

“And I won’t be working as a waitress for the rest of my life either, Daddy,” Tiffany jumped in, her face flushed with anger and disappointment. “Don’t you have any faith in me at all?”

How those words had come back to haunt her as she sweated away in Benny’s kitchen alongside her best friend and roommate, the gorgeously camp Lennox, another struggling actor. Tiffany had almost given up hope of ever making it in L.A. when Lennox had hauled her ass into that
UCLA
audition. And then suddenly, overnight, her life had changed. Just like in the movies.

The role of Sarah may have been only a small part, but it was network television and a regular income, two things she had hitherto barely allowed herself to dream of. Even more incredible, though, had been her blossoming relationship with Hunter. Of all the beautiful girls in the world, Hunter McMahon had chosen her. Her. Even now, three years later, she sometimes had to pinch herself when she woke up next to him, in case the whole thing were some sort of heavenly mirage.

For his part, Hunter knew that a lot of women wanted him, whether for his looks, his fame, or his money. But he’d never been able to do what Max did, charming his way from one bed to the next, reveling in the fun and excitement of transient, casual flings. Unlike his best friend, Hunter had always been looking for companionship with a lover, and he had nothing in common with 90 percent of the hot young L.A. actresses and models who pursued him.

But the way Tiffany wanted him, that was different. The way she clung to him and screamed his name when they made love, the way her eyes lit up like a little kid’s at Christmas the moment he walked through the door—that was something else. He had never imagined that a woman so intelligent and talented and good and kind could ever love him the way she did. She filled him with joy, and her love had given him a confidence he had never felt before.

Tiffany was the first woman, the first person in fact, he had ever opened up to about his childhood. She had made him feel safe, slowly but surely gaining his confidence and trust until he felt able to talk about the loneliness and misery of growing up in Hancock Park, his difficult relationship with his mother, and the terrible pain of his enforced separation from Siena.

Privately, Tiffany had always felt that if his supermodel niece was so perfect and had loved him so much, she could have made some sort of an effort to contact him after she became famous. She had never met Siena, of course, but the impression she got from magazine and TV interviews was of a pampered little prima donna, nothing like the angelic figure Hunter so lovingly described. But she knew better than to question or challenge him about his precious memories. She understood that apart from her, they were all he had.

Gently easing himself out of her, he rolled onto his side and pulled the covers up over her naked body proprietorially.

“You’ll catch cold,” he said, kissing her wet cheeks, which still tasted salty from her sweat.

“You’re so sweet,” she whispered, pulling him closer. “But I’m not staying, baby. I gotta take a shower and get going.”

Hunter pulled away from her. He was so fed up with this.

“For God’s sake, Tiffany, why?” he snapped, unable to keep the hurt out of his voice. “Why can’t you just sleep here tonight? I’ll set the alarm for six and drive you to the set myself in the morning. You won’t be late for anything.”

“Hunter, please,” she said, climbing out of bed and starting to pick up various scattered items of her discarded clothing. “I’ve told you before, I need my space.”

“What space?” he shot back at her. “That rat hole of an apartment you live in is barely big enough to swing a cat in, and Lennox and his buddies are always hanging around like a bad smell. You have more space here.”

Tiffany sighed. It had been such a great night, she hoped he wasn’t going to spoil it now. “Look, can we not make a big deal of this?” she said, scrabbling under the bed for one missing sneaker. “All my stuff is at home, okay, it’s just easier. Besides, I promised Lennox I’d clean the place up before tomorrow.”

She padded into the bathroom and turned on the shower, then came and stood naked in the doorway while she waited for the water to heat up. Looking at her flat, tanned stomach and neatly trimmed blond bush, Hunter felt himself starting to get hard again. If only he didn’t want her so fucking much.

She walked back over to the bed and sat down beside him. He could still smell the sex on her body, and her closeness made his senses reel. She took his hand in hers and kissed it. “Look,” she said gently, “I’m sorry I can’t stay tonight. But I’ll make it up to you, okay? I promise. If you like, I’ll come and spend the whole weekend here. I’ll even put up with Max’s singing in the mornings. How’s that for devotion?”

Hunter put his arms around her. Why did he always find it so hard to let her go?

“I’ll hold you to that,” he said, kissing her neck and the smooth naked skin of her shoulder. “I just want us to have more time together.”

“I know,” she said, moving back across toward the bathroom. “And we will, honey. I promise. We will. Just not tonight.”

Speeding back east on the 10 freeway twenty minutes later, with the roar of her Jeep’s battered old exhaust bombarding her eardrums, Tiffany punched the dashboard in frustration.

Why, why, why did she always do this? She loved him so much it killed her, so why did she keep on pushing him away?

With the rational part of her brain, she already knew the answer to that question. She was afraid to trust in Hunter, afraid to believe that their love could possibly last. With every woman in the world lusting after him, and stunning models making plays for him night after night, looking right through her as though she were nothing—how could she possibly expect to hold him?

Moving into the beach house, as he was constantly begging her to do, seemed too much like tempting fate. The moment she let him know how hopelessly, desperately in love she was, the spell would be broken and he would leave.

No, the only way to survive was to hold on for dear life to her independence. After three years together, she still lived well within her means, driving her shitty old truck, living with Lennox in their run-down Westwood apartment, never letting Hunter buy her anything beyond dinner and the occasional vacation. She was not about to get used to Hunter’s rich, glamorous lifestyle, only to have it all snatched away at a moment’s notice.

Back at the beach house, Hunter couldn’t sleep. He pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt and wandered into the kitchen, taking an iced tea out of the fridge and sipping it thoughtfully. He wished Max were here to talk to, but he was still in England with Henry. It must be great to have a family like Max’s.

For the first time in months, Hunter found himself thinking about Siena. It was funny: Although Pete’s Machiavellian scheming and attempted sabotage of his career had fixed him as a constant, looming presence in Hunter’s life, he never made the mental association between his brother and Siena, or the rest of the family. He had run into Claire once, about two years ago at Chaya Brasserie, but when he’d asked after Siena he’d been met with a blank wall of silence. If it weren’t for the ubiquitous billboard pictures of her face—itself only a distant echo of the childish features that Hunter had once known and loved so well—he could almost have believed that she no longer existed.

He knew about the estrangement from her parents, of course. Every supermarket tabloid in America had run versions of Siena’s
Vanity Fair
interview last year, in which she had tearfully recounted Pete and Claire’s abandonment. Many of them, in fact, had superimposed his own picture next to hers, drawing parallels between Pete’s vendetta against him and the disinheriting of his only daughter.

When he was a teenager, the pain of their separation had been huge for Hunter, almost unbearable. But now? Well, life had moved on, and it had been pretty damn good to him, to both of them in fact. He wasn’t in any hurry to risk opening up those old wounds all over again.

Still, on nights like tonight, he couldn’t help but wonder what Siena would have made of Tiffany. They were the only two people he had ever loved in his life—with the possible exception of Max, but that was different—and they were both so smart, so independent, so fucking difficult!

Tiffany wasn’t spoiled or selfish like Siena had been. Then again, she had grown up in a normal, happy home, not the dysfunctional madhouse of Hancock Park. But she had a similar strength about her, something that seemed to tell him “I don’t need you,” that reminded him painfully of Siena. He wished he could discover one ounce of that strength in himself. But the truth was, he needed Tiffany like air. He’d be lost without her.

He broke off his thoughts with a start when the phone rang. The clock on the microwave said it was two
A.M.
No one else would be calling him at that hour. It had to be Tiffany.

Heart thumping with happiness, he sprinted into the bedroom to pick it up. “Baby?”

“Hunter, I’ve told you before, I’m very flattered, but I just don’t think of you in that way.” Max’s deadpan voice was slightly faint on the long-distance line.