HDU #2: Dirt (27 page)

“Break up with
him,” he said, shrugging with his hands still in his pockets.
 
“Like, actually break up.
 
Free the guy.
 
Go find some other actor to leech fame off of.
 
I’m sure you can do it.”

Amanda stared,
silent as she held the elevator door open.
 
She tried to read his expression, her eyes scanning his grey
ones for any hint of a joke or a test.
 
But they looked as genuine as she had ever seen them on her.

“Why can’t you
just believe me when I say that I love Liam?” she finally asked.

His answer came
quickly.
 
“Because you don’t feel
bad about the hell you’re putting him through.
 
You’ll do anything to survive here, to stretch out your time
in the spotlight.
 
You made a joke
out of the hardest role he’s had in his career.
 
You’ve got Terrence torturing him just to make up for the
embarrassment you caused everyone.”
 
He cocked his head curiously, a deep frown knitting his dark blonde
brows.
 
“How many stitches and
bruises and sprains and limps is he going to need to show you before you decide
you’re done fucking around with him? What, you need to put him through just one
more scandal so you can take away all his future jobs too? Go back to Dylan
Hardy at that point, maybe?”

Amanda felt her
jaw tighten as she slid her room key into the elevator slot to access the
penthouse floor.
 
“Forget it,” she
muttered, deciding against another attempt at arguing, at convincing Connor
that she actually felt an odd physical pain in her own body whenever she knew
Liam was hurting himself.
 
There
was no telling him anything.
 
“You
have no idea what you’re talking about, Connor.
 
But I’m not even surprised anymore,” she said as she held
down the ‘Door Close’ button.

“I know that
he’s a thousand times better off without you.”

“Whatever you
say,” Amanda muttered as her finger began jabbing impatiently at the elevator
button.
 
But Connor managed the
last word before the doors fully shut.

“And I know for
sure that you’re not done causing trouble yet but I’d love for you to prove me
wrong.”

~

The slick,
mirrored black elevator to the penthouse floor of Metropolis was eerily quiet
and just as dimly lit as the rest of the hotel.
 
As it slowed to a stop around the fiftieth floor, Amanda
felt a chill go down her spine.
 
She paused, trying to determine if she were just feeling the delayed
effects of Connor’s words.

“You’re not done
causing trouble yet.
 
Not even
close.”

He wasn’t
exactly wrong about that considering her intentions to get back at Casey in
whatever way possible.
 
But that
had nothing to do with Liam, so it didn’t count.
 
Right?

Staring at the
lit ‘P’ button that she had pressed, Amanda frowned as the elevator fully
stopped at the fifty-first floor.
 
She ran her hands up and down her arms as she waited for something to
happen next — hopefully, for the elevator to keep moving and take her to
the penthouse.
 
Instead, the doors
slowly opened.
 
And in stepped a
man in a black button-up shirt and black slacks.
 
Amanda’s lips for some reason refused to return the smile he
flashed her as he made his way into the corner of the elevator, where he stood
with his hands folded before him.

“Floor?” she
finally asked as the doors closed, peering at him through the reflection in the
mirrored doors.
 
The man lifted his
eyes from her shoes and dress before smiling and giving a shake of the head.
 
So…
no floor.
 
What the hell?

As the doors
closed, Amanda felt another odd tingle go up her spine.
 
Maybe
he’s waiting for the elevator to go down
, she reasoned with herself as she
hallucinated — hopefully — the man’s body inching closer to
hers.
 
But there are like, six elevators, why wouldn’t he just wait another
two seconds for one going down?

“I like your
dress.”

Promptly frozen
by his voice, Amanda felt only her eyes moving as they darted while staring
forward.
 
“Thank you.”
 
Her voice cracked.
 
She willed the red floor numbers to
climb faster already, realizing at this point that she wasn’t hallucinating a thing.

Because somehow,
the man had migrated enough to stand directly next to her, just a half foot behind.
 
She could hear him breathing and with
another darting glance into the reflective doors, saw the glint of his toothy
smile as his stare dropped down to her legs.
 
Her skin suddenly prickly and cold, Amanda stood more still
than a statue, her eyes wide and unblinking, her breath held in her tensed
throat.

Oh God, thank God.

The second the
elevator reached the penthouse floor, Amanda’s feet carried her as forward as
possible without forcing her to kiss the mirrored doors.
 
Knowing well that he was staring at
her, she tried not to look into the reflection at the strange man behind her.

But she couldn’t
help it.
 
He smiled at her while
stroking his short, sandy beard.
 
“I’m an even bigger fan of your shoes,” he said, reaching forward to
tickle her palm with his long fingernail, sending an immediate shudder of
revulsion through Amanda’s whole body.

“
Don’t
touch me,” she muttered, snatching
her hand up and giving a smack of the glass doors with it.
 
“God,
open
,” she muttered urgently, the back of her eyes tingling with
panic as she stared at her heeled feet in the mirror, willing the man’s
sneakered ones to stay exactly where they were.
 
They didn’t.

“You got anyone
with you in that penthouse tonight?”

She could feel
his breath on her neck now, raising all the hairs so they stood straight.
 
Jesus
.
 
Amanda ignored him though her open palm
gave another smack of the mirror before her.
 
Open, damn it, please
.

“I hope you do.”

Just as she felt
him touch hair, the doors parted.
 
With a gasp, Amanda fell out onto her knees, barely realizing how hard
she’d been pressed against them till she was on all fours.
 
It wasn’t until she scrambled to her
feet that she realized one of her nude leather pumps had come off.
 
Backing up and peering into through the
doors doors, her chest heaving with all the breath she’d been holding, Amanda
watched the strange man pick it up.

“Thank you,” he
said with a laugh, right before the doors fully shut.

“What the
fuck
,” Amanda breathed, her heart
pounding, her palms and her back pressed against the wall behind her.

Before she knew
it, she was pounding on the door to Liam’s room, all the while staring over her
shoulder to make sure the elevator didn’t stop at the floor once again.
 
Once again, the moment Liam opened the
door in his untucked, halfway unbuttoned shirt and pants, Amanda fell in.
 
He laughed as he easily caught her.

“What the
— what’s going on?” he asked.
 
His smile dropped the second his eyes processed the look on Amanda’s
face and the single shoe on her foot.
 
“Amanda, what the hell happened?”

“I’m sorry,”
Amanda breathed, trying to catch her breath as he helped her to her feet.

“Don’t
apologize, tell me what happened,” Liam urged sternly, his brows knitting as
his eyes traveled downward and caught the sight of her shaking legs.
 
“What the hell?” he whispered to
himself with a deep frown.
 
Picking
her up, he carried her into the bedroom, setting her body gently onto the
buttery sheets of the bed.
 
Holding
her chin in his hand, Liam tried to keep her darting eyes on him.
 
“Baby, tell me what happened.”
 
His voice was gentle now.
 
When she didn’t immediately answer, he
tried a different approach.
 
“Where’s your other shoe?” he asked, managing a little laugh as he
touched her bare foot.
 
Amanda’s
quivering lips did their best to form a sentence that wasn’t too inflammatory.

“It fell off
when I ran out and he took it.”
 
Yeah, good job with that phrasing
.
 
“
Liam
!”

He was out the
door before she could stop him.
 
Wobbly on her uneven legs, Amanda kicked off her remaining heel before
chasing him down, managing to catch him at the front door of the suite.
 
With every ounce of her strength, she
pulled him back, using her bare foot to kick the door shut.
 
Breathlessly pressing herself against
it, she shot him a look.

“What were you
going to do, Liam? Chase a random guy down and kick his ass? You don’t even
know what this guy
looked
like.”
 
Her chest heaving, Amanda took the next
few seconds to catch her breath.
 
“You can’t react like this.
 
This is against Terrence’s contract, too,” she finally said, her voice
small but at least steady again.
 
She looked up at Liam.

“Who was in the
elevator, Amanda? Tell me what happened,” he demanded.
 
“You can’t run in here like this and
say what you said and expect me not to worry.”

It was a fair
enough point.

“Who was in the
elevator, Amanda, tell me.”

Swallowing with
guilt, Amanda heaved a breath, her posture slumping against the door.
 
Liam held her up by the waist.
 
“I think it was someone who’s been
following me,” she exhaled.
 
Jesus, Amanda.
 
Again with the phrasing
.

“Following you?”
Liam’s eyebrows shot up, an immediate flicker of rage in his eye.
 
Amanda felt his hands tighten around
her, tense.
 
She put her palms over
his, easing him or at least trying to.

“Not…
following
me, just… he’s a paparazzo.”

“A paparazzo.”

“I think.”
 
She bit hard on her lower lip.
 
“He never has a camera.”

“Jesus Christ,
Amanda.”
 
Liam ran a hand over his
mouth as he turned away, bitter disbelief curving his lips.
 
“I understand keeping certain things to
yourself but
this
is something you
tell me about.”

“I wasn’t sure
if I was overreacting or recognizing him incorrectly,” Amanda lied.

“Assume you
never are.”

“Why? So I can
give you a bunch of false alarms to worry about?”

“I worry about
you anyway, Amanda! This is what keeps me up at night.
 
Thinking about you.
 
Wanting to know that you’re okay, that
you’re not so much as bored or lonely let alone
being followed
by some creep.”

“I didn’t want
to give you yet another thing to worry about.
 
You have enough on your plate — enough that
I
put there.”

“Amanda, if you
see him again, will you call me?”

“Probably not.”

Liam grabbed her
by the waist again, urgent.
 
“This
is about your
safety
, Amanda.
 
I’m never going to prioritize a job or
a movie before that.”

She pushed him
away from her.
 
“Well, you have to,
Liam.
 
You’re in a contract.”

 
“I need you to promise you’ll call me if
you spot that creep again.”

“So you can
break your contract and I can live in guilt forever?”

“I’ll send
Connor to save you.”

She tried not to
make a face.
 
“I can take care of
myself.”

“I know you
can.
 
I find it incredibly sexy
that you can.
 
But I need you to
let me do things for you sometimes that put my mind at ease.
 
Chalk it up to that.”

“I can’t.”
 
Amanda frowned.
 
“Not if I know it’s going to completely
screw something up for you or your career.
 
If you chased that guy down today and laid so much as a
finger on him, there would’ve been pictures and Terrence would’ve gotten to
instantly fire you from
The Legends
.”

“Can we have one
second where we don’t talk about Terrence or contracts?”

“
No
, because that’s what’s governing our
relationship right now — or our complete lack of one.
 
It’s why we sneak around to see each
other and it’s why I don’t
tell
you
things because I know they’ll only worry you and make you do something stupid,
something you shouldn’t.”

“It’s stupid for
me to protect you from someone who might be dangerous?”

“When we’re
under this contract? Yes.”

“Then fuck this
contract.”
 
Liam shook his head as
he backed away a few steps.
 
“I’m
done with it.”

Amanda pushed
herself off of the door as he started buttoning his shirt back up.
 
“What?” She watched him grab his tie
off of the foyer, draping it around his neck.
 
“What are you doing?”