Guarded Desires (9 page)

Stomping into the bedroom, he saw Bethany had laid clothes out for him on the king-size bed while he’d been showering. Black Calvin Klein jeans, a black Ralph Lauren polo shirt, biker boots and red and black argyle socks.

No boxers or briefs to be seen.

He bit back a growl. His personal assistant was proving to be far more impish than he’d anticipated. If he allowed himself to ponder her behavior, he’d swear she had an agenda.

If that were the case, his sister and brother-in-law would have a meltdown. They’d been quite specific about her role as his P.A. and having an agenda beyond “seeing to Chris’s professional needs” wasn’t part of that job description. Hell, his sister had gone so far as to suggest to Bethany that she shouldn’t fix Chris’s meals while in Australia, hinting Chris should cook for himself. What would Rowie say of the super detached, aloof young woman now?

Nothing. Because it was all in his stupid, messed-up head. Bethany was just doing her job. She’d been prickly and efficient from the get-go. Just because every damn thing in the world was making Chris think of Liev Reynolds didn’t mean Bethany was a sex-crazed maniac as well.

He snorted, snatching his jeans from the bed and shoving his legs into them. Sex-crazed maniac. Was that what
he
was now?

No answer came. Chris was glad for it. He didn’t think he was ready to deal with what it would be.

But if Liev strode into this room and pinned you to the wall, you wouldn’t stop him doing whatever he wanted to do to you, would you?

He ignored the thought, yanked his shirt over his head, raked his fingers through his damp hair and then pulled on his socks and boots. He strode back into the bathroom, cleaned his teeth, smacked Jean Paul Gautier cologne on his cheeks and jaw with brutal slaps, scraped at his hair once more with ungentle fingers and then stormed out of the room.

He really needed to do something about his mood. At this rate,
he’d
be the thorny actor during the interview, not the actor playing the bad guy. All the reporters at the press conference expected his co-star to be reticent and gruff. He was famous for it. Chris Huntley, however, was the funny man who cracked them all up. Unless he did something about his state of mind, he’d snap the head off the first person who asked him what it was like to kiss his leading lady, a question he was asked at every damn interview so far.

Hurrying down the stairs, he grunted. “Kiss
FHM
Magazine’s Sexiest Woman Alive?” he muttered. “Fuck, what about what it was like to kiss a—”

He smacked into a solid, unmovable wall.

A warm one.

Strong hands grabbed his biceps, halting his backward stumble. He jerked up his head, his stare locking on Liev’s. The man stood on the rung below Chris, his impressive height drawing their eyes level.

Chris’s heart smashed its way into his throat. Oh fuck.

“Need to watch where you’re going, boss.” A fine sheen of perspiration from his workout covered the Australian’s body. The muscles of his bare arms and shoulders were so pronounced and powerful it was all Chris could do not to smooth his palms over them.

Chris didn’t say a word. Just stared at the man, his heart beating so hard in his throat he couldn’t breathe.

Liev’s fingers loosened on his arms. Loosened, but didn’t slip away.

Chris dropped his stare to Liev’s mouth. Bethany was right. His lips were exquisite. And Chris knew
exactly
what they felt like moving over his—like fucking sinful heaven. He wanted to experience that heaven again. All he would need to do was lean forward, a fraction, and he could do that very thing.

Just lean forward…

Liev released Chris’s arms and stepped backward onto the next rung down, his expression unreadable. “I’ll be ready in ten minutes,” he said, nothing in his voice telling Chris he was as charged and aroused as Chris. Nothing. “Sorry. I lost track of time in the gym.”

Before Chris could say anything, Liev brushed past him and up the stairs, taking each rise two at a time.

The contact of the man’s broad shoulder against Chris’s licked through him, a hot sensation that made his breath catch and his gut knot.

He ground his teeth, balled his fists and stomped down the stairs. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“Is there a problem, Mr. Huntley?”

He snapped his head up at Bethany’s question.

She stood at the bottom step, watching him with a worried frown. She’d changed clothes during his shower, replacing the casual jeans and shirt she’d been wearing with a prim and proper linen pantsuit. The emerald green of the material brought out the green in her eyes, highlighted the auburn copper in her strawberry-blonde hair. The tailored cut of the suit emphasized her tiny waist and petite form. In her arms, she held two iPads, a folder he knew contained the approved question list for the reporters along with other information the studio deemed appropriate to share, and the latest editions of the two main newspapers published in Sydney.

At breakfast, Bethany had read each one twice, circling articles of interest she told Chris he should familiarize himself with during the boat trip to the south side of the harbour. “It’s very good for the local journalists to see you are aware of what is happening in their city,” she’d pointed out, drawing a red line around a small article with the headline
Girl, 8, Saves Koala.
“It makes you less the Hollywood movie star and more human in their eyes.”

At the memory of her instruction, a stirring of respect for her insight twisted through his grumpy frustration. His last P.A. hadn’t thought to prep him for foreign reporters. All Tilly had tried to do when he was last in Australia was kill his sister.

Bethany studied him, poised and direct and utterly professional. If she
did
have an agenda, there was no sign of it now. “Is there anything I can help you with, Mr. Huntley?”

His cock, still heavy with tension from his stairway collision with Liev, throbbed.

Biting back a curse, he shook his head. “I’m fine, Bethany.” He walked past her to the kitchen. “Just on edge about the press conference.”

“Do you want me to add the situation at the restaurant to the off-limit questions?”

Chris snorted. There was only one off-limit question on Chris’s list—do not ask about his parents’ ten-year-old unsolved murder. A group of fans going wild when he arrived at a restaurant hardly counted as something as traumatic as that. Unless Bethany was referring to the
other
restaurant situation, and as far as Chris was aware, she didn’t know about that.

Maybe Liev told her? They do seem to have developed a close relationship in the short time they’ve known each other. Holy shit, maybe everyone knows? Maybe the restaurant owner had a security camera in his office and the kiss is now public knowledge? Holy shit, what—

“Mr. Huntley?” The alarm in Bethany’s voice yanked Chris away from the horrifying thought. “Are you okay? You look like you’re going to pass out.”

He pulled in a sharp breath. “Is there anything new on the gossip sites about me? Anything about what happened at the restaurant?”

Bethany studied him for a second, her eyebrows knitting before she lowered her attention to the top iPad and tapped her fingers against its screen. A few moments later, she returned her focus to Chris again. “No.”

He let out a ragged breath and then sucked it in again when Liev appeared behind Bethany, his broad shoulders and wide chest looking impossibly powerful in a crisp white business shirt, his long muscular legs wrapped in tailored ash-grey suit pants, his damp honey-brown hair slicked back from his face.

Chris’s chest constricted. His stomach clenched. His groin tightened.

Goddamn it, the guy was fucking hot. How the hell was Chris to concentrate on being funny and witty and entertaining with Liev around?

He stared at the man, the lump in his throat rivaling the one growing in his jeans.

“I think,” he said, the words a hoarse rasp, “it will be best if Mr. Reynolds isn’t present at the press conference.”

Liev’s nostrils flared. His spine straightened, an almost imperceptible tension claiming his muscles. His jaw bunched.

Bethany’s eyes narrowed. “Because?”

Chris swallowed. “Because I think…” He stopped, his mouth too dry to speak.

Because I wouldn’t be able to hide the way he turns me on, goddamn it.

“The focus would become the situation yesterday,” Liev said when Chris didn’t finish, his stare holding Chris’s over Bethany’s shoulder. “Not the film. Easier to brush off what happened yesterday as a freak moment if the bodyguard isn’t there as a constant reminder.”

The statement hit Chris like a swift slap. To Bethany,
what happened yesterday
and
a freak moment
would mean the crowd going mad. To Liev it meant so much more. Chris could see it in the man’s eyes. In the tension in his body. Could hear it in the dismissive tone of his voice, in his choice of words.
The bodyguard
. Liev had impersonalized himself to a position, a role. With those two words, he’d reminded Chris what he was. An employee. One who had already pointed out the kiss they’d shared was inappropriate and couldn’t happen again.

In one simple statement, Liev Reynolds had summarized it all—a freak moment. It was time for Chris to get a grip on his stupid, confused libido and get on with being what he was—an actor who made viewers around the world laugh with his sharp wit and mischievous grin. A man who made women everywhere swoon with his smoldering good looks.

People Magazine’s
Sexiest Man Alive twice running and the subject of constant speculation in celebrity magazines and websites as to which famous woman he was sleeping with now, and which one would be next.

In other words, a straight Hollywood sex symbol.

Not a man undone by another man.

He couldn’t be that. Ever. His career wouldn’t let him.

Even if he wanted to.

And Chris was beginning to fear that was
exactly
what he wanted.

Fuck it.

Chapter Seven

The press conference went on forever. The award-winning actress cast as his love interest flirted with him for the entire duration, even hinted that their sex scenes in the movie were “intensely real”. The tough-guy action star who played the antagonist professed to being jealous of Chris’s career, jesting Chris beat him up on set often. More than one reporter congratulated Chris on becoming an uncle.

Chris endured it all. He dropped jokes when needed, flirted right back with Scarlett, suggested the “intensely real” sex scenes were so
intense
the film’s director had to call cut over and over to get their attention, and challenged Vin to an arm-wrestle there and then.

The Australian press ate it all up.

They laughed in all the right places, smirked knowingly whenever he and Scarlett spoke to each other, complimented them all on how fantastic and action-packed and believable the film was, and generally made the morning one of the easiest press conferences Chris had attended.

Chris couldn’t wait until the damn thing was finished.

He sat in his chair next to his leading lady, all too aware there would be countless stories appearing in the media tomorrow. Articles that would speculate about his on-set affair with the sexy-as-sin actress. Gossip columns dedicated to their “smoldering chemistry” even off screen. He should be joyous, knowing how the talk would be good for his career. Instead, he wondered where Liev was the whole time.

Wondered and hated himself for it.

He had to do something about it. Soon.

Before he cracked.

When the studio’s Australian representative asked for one last question from the reporters, Chris couldn’t hold back his sigh of relief.

And then the reporter selected to ask that last question did the unthinkable.

“Mr. Huntley.” A woman who looked like she’d stepped straight out of a life-size Barbie box rose to her feet. “Do you still feel safe here in Australia after what happened yesterday at the Salted Olive restaurant?”

Chris’s breath stuck in his throat.

He stared at the reporter, for a frozen moment lost for words.

Silence hung in the room, the press expectant and hungry.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bethany move.

“Has it tainted your opinion of our country?” the female reporter asked, obviously deciding to ask more questions despite his failure to answer the first. “Have you fired your Australian bodyguard?”

He blinked. He heard the film’s heroine shift on her seat beside him. The actor on Chris’s other side cleared his throat.

The reporter waited. Everyone waited.

“No,” he finally said, leaning forward on his seat to give the woman a relaxed grin. “The last time I was in Australia I was sexually ravaged by an amorous kangaroo.” He dropped the reporter a wink. “Once you’ve been humped by a marsupial, hundreds of screaming fans are a cakewalk.”

The room burst out in raucous guffaws.

Chris let out a slow breath. His heart hammered away in his chest a mile a minute. Before he could stop himself, he turned to Bethany, wishing to hell he’d find Liev there with her. But of course, Liev wasn’t. He’d stayed outside, out of the reporters’ sights, just as he’d said he would.