Heart Breaker (Break on Through)

Love wasn’t in the script…

Break on Through
, Book 2

Former man-eater Samantha Lockhart has been an actress long enough to be able to spot a smooth-talking player a mile away. Dark-haired, bourbon-eyed, a wicked smile…Kyle Masterson is one of the best.

From his bad-boy motorcycle boots to his good-ole-boy Southern drawl, everything about Kyle screams sex appeal. But after a tragedy hits close to home, Sam tries to convince herself she’s done with players on and off the stage.

Kyle, a V-twin-riding divorce attorney, has witnessed enough horror stories of love gone wrong to know that while women are welcome in his bed, they’re definitely not in his future. But once the petite, mercurial redhead catches his eye, he can’t think of anything—or anyone—else.

Sam’s trust doesn’t come easy, but the more time they spend together, the deeper they both fall. Yet just as they’re breaking through each other’s barriers, someone who doesn’t like being upstaged makes a deadly play of his own. And if Sam refuses, she may not be able to breathe a word to anyone…ever.

Warning: Contains a small-town thespian who isn’t easily fooled and a lawyer with a weakness for V-twin engines and sassy redheads.

Heart Breaker

Harper Kincaid

Dedication

To the late Rhoda Radow:

You were my teacher, my debate coach, my mentor, and you introduced the world to me through the stage. You will never be forgotten.

Prologue

“Samantha, you have no idea how long I’ve waited to get you under me.”

I peered into his hooded eyes, which barely contained his excitement and, if I wasn’t mistaken, a hint of arrogance? Then his lips curled into a smirk. He was obviously pleased with his seemingly inevitable conquest.

Considering I had only known my leading man, the Hamlet to my Ophelia, for a couple of months, his statement surprised me. I had known he was interested from day one of rehearsals. Not to be rude, but he was
totally
transparent: the failed clandestine glances, the unnecessary brush-ups against me when he passed. And when I didn’t immediately reciprocate his rather prosaic attempts at grabbing my attention, he had resorted to flirting with other female cast members, but only when he was sure I was watching.

Usually such passive-aggressive behavior would’ve crossed him off my list of possibilities, but the night of the wrap party, he dropped the games long enough to pique my interest. Now, we were back at the Adams Morgan apartment I shared with my awesome younger sister, Jessica, in DC. We were in the midst of kissing and groping one another when he had to blow it and get that cocky expression on his face, looking as if he had already experienced the triumph of having had me.

What an idiot
, I thought. I was tempted to kick him out, but the truth was, I had gone without sex for several months and I really needed a release. For all of his strutting around like a peacock, I had hoped he had some erotic skills worth my time. So far, on a scale from one to ten, I gave him a six.

“You’ve just met me fairly recently. Couldn’t have been lusting after me for too long a time.”

“That’s true—” he trailed the tip of his tongue down the pulse point of my neck, “—but I saw a couple of your performances last season and have been mildly obsessed with fucking you ever since then. In fact—” he took off his shirt, “—I only auditioned because I heard you always perform in at least one of the Shakespeare Company’s productions every season. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have bothered.”

“Wait a second, what do you mean?” I pushed back on his incoming body. “Are you saying you didn’t
want
to play Hamlet?”

He obviously wasn’t an astute student of nonverbal communication, because he was totally missing my growing annoyance and started taking off his pants and socks. To make matters worse, he was wearing tighty-whiteys. Jesus, how
old
was this guy? Fourteen? At least they weren’t Batman or some other juvenile comic shit I’d seen other actors wear. Those were the ones who usually still lived with their mothers.

“Nah, I fucking
hate
that Shakespeare crap. Iambic pentameter can suck it!” He laughed and snorted at his own joke.

That’s
it
. It was one thing to be a typically clueless male, but it’s quite another to insult the Bard. He may as well have dissed a member of my family
.
I opened my mouth, but before anything came out, my cell phone rang and the screen flashed: Vienna Police Department.

Vienna, Virginia, was my hometown, where my sister and I grew up, only thirty minutes from Washington DC. We had always shared a room and had missed one another once we each went off to college and grad school. So we both came back and now shared a place together. While we adored living in the city, the town of Vienna was our home, our heart.

It was a place where kids could ride their bikes freely, walk down tree-lined streets to enjoy little shops selling homemade ice cream and old-fashioned wooden toys. We had the best local coffee house in walking distance. Plus, the church where our parents and grandparents were married at still had services every Sunday and offered one-of-a-kind treasures in its thrift shop.

Getting a call from the police department, at two a.m. on a Saturday night, was never a good thing. Immediately, an icy fear gripped my accelerating heart as I reached for my cell.

“Don’t answer it, baby,” he pleaded while nibbling on my earlobe. I pushed him away, tucked my long, auburn hair behind my ear and slid the bar on my phone to answer.

“Hel-hello?” I was already stammering because the ice forming in my gut was traveling through my veins and right to my lungs and vocal cords.

“Good evening, is this Samantha Lockhart, daughter of Stephen and Janet Lockhart of 644 Tazewell Road in Vienna?”

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit…this had to be bad. Please God, don’t let this be what I think it could be.

I took a deep breath. “Yes, this is she. Is everything okay?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” the police officer answered, her tone grave. She had probably dreaded making this call almost as much as I was receiving it.

Just then, my bedroom door flew open and Jessica rushed in. Her gorgeous mane of red hair was all over the place and she was wearing her favorite unicorn pajamas. She may have been a twenty-five-year-old special education teacher who’d earned her master’s from Harvard University, but she was still my kid sister who was as tuned in with me as a twin. Without a word exchanged, we looked at one another and I knew she immediately understood the potential severity of the situation being conveyed on the phone.

“I’m sorry but you need to
go
,” Jessica addressed the less-than-worthy Hamlet, struck dumb while still standing in his underwear.

“Um, is everything okay?” he asked.

“Shhh!” I called out in a loud whisper and turned my attention back to the phone. “Sorry ’bout that. Yes, I’m Samantha, and Stephen and Janet are my parents. What’s going on?”

“Ma’am, your parents were in a car accident, hit head-on by a drunk driver on the corner of Nutley and East Street, at approximately twelve thirty a.m.”

“An accident on East and Nutley?” I parroted back.

My sister’s eyes met mine and I knew we had the same thought exchanged, that they had been less than five minutes from the house when the collision occurred.

I must have been standing because, all of a sudden, my legs gave out and Jess sprinted forward to catch me, cushioned my fall. Then she turned toward “Hamlet” and gave him her best reprimanding schoolteacher voice, shooting daggers at him with her eyes.

“You need to put on your clothes and
go
. Right. Now.”

Immediately he got dressed, stumbling over his own feet. In a lowered voice, he murmured, “Hey, tell Sam I’ll call her another time. And that I’m, um, sorry, for uh, whatever’s going on.”

Jessica didn’t respond, just draped her arms around me. I was trying to quell the growing ringing in my ears and focus on what I was being told.

“Yes ma’am, the accident seems to have happened on their way home. We need you to meet us at Inova Fairfax Hospital…”

Jessica leaned her head against mine and I automatically repositioned the phone so that both of us could listen at the same time.

“…in the ICU.”

“Are they going to be okay?” Jess blurted out.

There was a pause. “Ma’am, they’re in critical condition and in surgery.”

We could hear the officer let out a breath into the phone piece.

“Get here as soon as you can.”

Jessica never even changed out of her ridiculous pajamas, and I was still in the halter dress and heels I’d worn to the wrap party earlier that evening, which already felt like another lifetime ago.

“They’re gonna be okay. They’ve
got
to be okay,” Jessica kept muttering to herself while I drove. “They’re our rock… Neither of them has ever gotten so much as a
parking
ticket in over thirty years. And dad drives like an old man. They barely leave the town of Vienna! How could this happen so close to home?”

I was barely paying attention to her ramblings, but the last comment struck a nerve. “Geez, Jess. It’s not like we live in Narnia or some magical village where nothing bad ever happens. Bad shit can happen to anyone at any time. You’re not a kid anymore. You should know that by now.”

“I know that,” she said barely above a whisper, in that voice she got when she felt like she had let someone down.

Shit, good job, asshole. Now I’ve made my sister, the sweetest person ever born, feel bad. Way to go.

“I’m sorry, Jess,” I soothed while reaching out and squeezing her hand, still keeping my eyes on the road. “I didn’t mean to be a bitch.”

“You’re
not
,” Jessica insisted. “We’re both out of sorts is all.”

Before too long, we arrived at the hospital, barely registering our feet running across the pavement and through the automatic double doors. People were talking to me, but I couldn’t really hear anyone anymore. I was trying to listen to the officer and doctor on call, but could only focus on snippets:

“I’m Officer… This is Dr.… Head-on collision… Surprised they arrived at hospital alive… Massive head trauma… Broken neck… Collapsed lungs… Both died during surgery, within minutes of the other… So. Very. Sorry.”

I was twenty-seven years old and I knew I had been sheltered. Not the kind of sheltered meaning I hadn’t traveled or hadn’t learned life isn’t always fair. I had my heart broken by my first love, cried when we had our dog put to sleep, and was beside myself when I lost acting parts I wanted more than anything.

But I also recalled how, in the middle of a scene in acting class, my mentors would ask me to dig deep, to excavate a moment in my life when the wave of grief had hit me hard and use that to convey a particularly important arc in a scene. I did what I had to do. I was an actor who did my work, so others rarely noticed that the raw grief I portrayed was mostly borrowed from others.

But I knew… I knew I had been sheltered by my loving home life and friends I’d known since birth. I knew I had been lucky, that the only funerals I ever attended were for grandparents who had died old, happy and peacefully in their sleep. I didn’t have classmates who had overdosed or former sorority sisters die fighting cancer.

At least I had known that. Because, sure enough, death came to me then, in that fluorescent white-lit hospital lobby. He came to me, placing one hand gently on my shoulder to comfort me while the other one swept my legs right out from under me.

Just like that, my life had irrevocably changed. I was free-floating in a weightless ether, where time and sound and feeling had ceased.

I was numb. I was breathing the air of Purgatory, without lungs.

Without oxygen.

And finally, I understood, in my blood, threaded through my skin, both the fullness and emptiness of grief. Within that space, that was where I now lived; a soundless scream.

Chapter One

Seven months later

“Okay, you were right. It’s a fun party. Happy now?”

It was a good thing I loved my sister so much because she was annoying the shit out of me with her toothy grin and barely contained I-told-you-so gleam in her eye. She couldn’t help herself. Jessica was a teacher, which meant she loved being right, and by actually showing up and having a good time, I was proving her correct. Again.

“I’m not here to gloat, for once. I’m just glad I got you out of the house. The sister
I
grew up with was always up for a party. I’m happy she’s finally making an appearance.” Jessica paused before giving me a warm-as-sunshine smile and a playful elbow jab to my side. “I’ve missed her, you know.”

I knew Jess had a point, that for months I’d been living like a recluse, only recently coming out of an all-consuming grief over our parents’ sudden and unexpected deaths in a car accident last Fourth of July.

“I’m sorry, Jess,” I exhaled. “I know it hasn’t been easy, holding it together for both of us. I really
am
trying to join the land of the living again.”

Jessica grasped my hands, her grip strong, in spite of still being a wisp of a woman. “I know you are, Sam. I’m proud of you.” Then she gave me a reassuring squeeze. “Baby steps, okay?”

Geez, since when did Jess become the caretaker? It was usually the other way around, with me being the one she leaned on. I guess she learned to step up when I practically lost myself in grief. Renovating our childhood home to the point of physical exhaustion every day helped. Cutting off contact with all my friends in DC. Even turning down acting jobs—something I would never do in my right mind.

Jessica begged me to get professional help, which I only did because she looked sick with worry and I couldn’t bear to put her through any more heartbreak. And sure enough, she was right: getting on an antidepressant helped. Attending a grief support group recently also seemed to be working. Now, I was at my neighbor’s Super Bowl party.

Like she said, baby steps.

Jess had been just as devastated by the loss of our parents, yet she was able to bounce back into the routine of living, instinctually knowing how to catch up with life marching on as it always does. Maybe it was because, right after we moved back home to Vienna, she earned a teaching job at one of the best elementary schools in the state—walking distance from our childhood home. And she had gotten the position just two months after the accident, so she had no choice but to pull it together, for the kids, for herself—and as it turned out, for me.

I am ashamed to admit it, but I completely fell apart, even backing out of a play for later that summer. In its stead, I insisted we move back to our parents’ house. Jess had thought it would be to fix it up enough to put it on the market, but once we gave up the apartment in DC and got resettled back home, we agreed to stay and just renovate it for ourselves. For the rest of the summer and into the fall, and now the winter, I had been consumed with one project after another. If it weren’t for the meds and the group therapy, Jess doubted if I would have ventured out for something as “frivolous” as a party at our neighbor Lauren Renwick’s house. But here I was, almost looking like my former effervescent, charismatic, force-of-nature self.

“I’m good.
Really
,” I reassured her. “You don’t need to babysit me. Be social too. Good to see your head out of those romance novels of yours.”

Jessica schooled her expression in mock annoyance. “Don’t be
disrespecting
my stories now,” she chided. “Maybe if you read one once in a while, you’d be more of a romantic yourself.”

“I think you’ve got enough of a starry-eyed, bleeding heart for the both of us. Everyone compared to you is a cynic in love.”

My sister was smiling big until something, or more accurately someone, caught her eye. She leaned in and lowered her voice.

“Speaking of love, there’s a god amongst men staring at you like you’re the last drink of water in the Sahara desert, positioned behind you, right at two o’clock.”

I looked over my shoulder to see that, yes indeed, a gorgeous man with straight chestnut brown hair and golden skin was trying hard not to stare in our direction, but was failing miserably at it. His grin was playful, and I couldn’t help but notice he had a beautiful full mouth and a dimple on his left cheek when he smiled. He wore a faded Southern rock T-shirt that exquisitely stretched over his broad shoulders and biceps, along with perfectly faded blue jeans.

“How do you know he’s staring at me? Maybe he’s staring at
you
, baby sister.”

Jess shook her head and leaned into me again. Jesus, we must have looked like a couple of high school girls gossiping during recess. Pathetic, I know.

“
Because
, dear older-but-not-necessarily-wiser sister,” she teased, “he can’t keep his eyes off your lovely posterior. Trust me, he’s interested.”

“Still can’t say
ass
, huh?” I drawled, unable to hide the hint of a smirk curling at the corner of my lip.

She rolled her eyes at me because it was a long-standing joke between us. I cursed like a sailor on leave at a titty bar, and she would blush and die a thousand deaths before allowing profanity to cross her lips. Jessica said it was because she worked with kids, but she’d always been like that.

“You curse enough for the both of us. Now take another look and tell me what you think.”

I swayed around, grabbing some food from the table in order to observe him more closely. Even though he was one of Jackson’s friends and was at ease hanging out with a bunch of bikers, I could tell he wasn’t fully one of them. Something about the way he held himself up spoke more country club than motorcycle club to me. He also didn’t seem to have any tattoos or piercings like the other guys he was drinking beers with, waiting for the game to start. I walked back over to Jess and shoved a mini slider in my mouth so I didn’t have to answer anything she was going to ask me.

Just then, Jackson Sullivan walked over to us, with his lush black hair falling in his eyes. In spite of that, I could tell his baby blues were zeroed in on me, as if he had a mission to accomplish. Unlike “Golden Boy” (my new nickname for the staring stranger), Jackson looked like he belonged with the other men in the room, with a visible tattoo sleeve covering his left arm and rough, calloused hands from working on the sites of his many house flips. He had only been with Lauren since New Year’s, but I could tell it was already serious. If they weren’t at work, they were together, and now they were cohosting this Super Bowl party.

I liked that. I adored Jackson for Lauren and we both loved her. She had moved into the neighborhood about a year before our parents had been killed, and when we moved back to the house, Lauren had been the first one over with tons of food. Added bonus was her lending out Jackson to help with the trickier renovation projects. Jessica was already planning their wedding cake in her head.

“Great party, Jackson.” Jessica took a sip of her favorite cocktail. “Thanks for the invite.”

“Glad we got both of you over here.” He looked straight at me. “With the way Lauren was talkin’, thought we’d only get Jess.” He glanced over at my sister, a shadow of concern briefly plaguing his features. “Didn’t mean it the way it came out, honey. You know we love havin’ you here.”

Jess shooed the air in front of her away. “No offense taken whatsoever. We’ve all been worried about Samantha.”

Then he turned his penetrating gaze back and offered me a smile that warmed me like Christmas hot cocoa. “Sam, good to see ya out. ’Bout time, woman.”

I really didn’t like being called
Sam
as a general rule and usually only allowed those closest to me to use it. But I didn’t mind with Jackson. Maybe because, in spite of it being a very short time, he and Lauren were already starting to feel like family.

I tossed my long hair over one of my shoulders, attempting to look relaxed and casual when I was anything but. I knew everyone thought it was a big deal I was out of the house for something other than Home Depot supplies.

“Feels good to dust off my social butterfly wings,” I teased Jackson. “And I hear you actually cooked most of this food. Impressive.”

He threw his head back and laughed with his whole body. “Damn, you’re the
third
person to make that comment. Do the men of Vienna
not
cook?”

Jess and I looked at one another and busted out laughing, “Oh please,” I interjected. “Unless the cooking happens on a grill, most don’t bother.”

Jessica nodded and kept talking with Jackson, and all the while I have to admit I was losing focus on the conversation because my attention kept veering over to the same guy watching me. He really was stunning, leaning against the arm of the couch, longneck in one hand with the other deep in his pocket.

Being an actor, I made a habit of studying people—their facial expressions, the way they moved their bodies. So I could tell this man was comfortable in his own skin and knew the effect he had on others, especially women. He was definitely a player, and I should know because I used to consider myself one as well, but I could also tell he wasn’t just a pretty boy. Nothing got past this guy; his attention was fixed on me in a way I knew he was assessing everything about me—the way I held myself, the kind of dress I had chosen to wear that day, even the way I was watching him.

As much as I enjoyed the exchanging-heated-gazes-across-a-crowded-room cliché, I decided it was time to throw down a challenge. The next time he caught my gaze, I raised the stakes by arching an eyebrow and offering a sly grin, essentially saying without saying, “Hey, I see you over there, staring at me. What are you going to do about it?”

Have I told you recently how much I love being a woman?

Just then, I noticed that Jackson and Jessica had stopped talking and followed the direction of my gaze back to Golden Boy. Jackson broke out in a shit-eating grin, with his eyes crinkling in the corners.

“Glad to see you’re not dead there, Sam,” he joked, giving me a playful nudge.

“Oh please. A little eye-fucking with your golden boy over there hardly means I’m ready for anything.” Then I cocked my head and gave an exaggerated eyelash flutter. “Besides, I’m just minding my own business. I can’t help it if he can’t stop staring at
me
. Maybe you need to leash him in.”

Jackson shook his head on a low chuckle. “Woman, that’s Kyle Masterson. No one’s
ever
gonna leash ’im in.”

I pressed my lips together, trying not to let out a cackle. “Ah, the classic commitment-phobe player. I know him well. Hell, that used to be me!”

Jessica and Jackson stole a glance at one another and then looked back at me with an emotion between surprise and shock written all over their faces. If I wasn’t mistaken, I may even have caught a whisper of a smile on the corner of Jess’s mouth.

“Used to be you? That’s a new one, Sam.”

“Yeah, what’s changed for you, darlin’?” Jackson asked.

I decided to play it naïve. “What do you mean?”

He narrowed his eyes some, which I took to mean
bullshit
in biker body language.

“From what I’ve heard from your sister and Lauren, there was a time when the idea of planting roots with a man would’ve made you break out in hives.”

I rolled my eyes at him again. “I wasn’t
that
bad, Jax.”

“Um, yes you were!” interjected my pesky sister. Geez, it was like she was ten years old all over again. “The longest you’ve ever been with a boyfriend was a year and that’s because you were on tour for eight months of it!”

“Hey, I didn’t
ask
for your input. Okay?”

Jackson’s hand reached out and cradled my shoulder, giving it a warm squeeze.

“Don’t get all riled there, girl,” he said in that low, gravelly voice which could make any woman cream her panties. “Just sayin’, sounds like you’ve made a one-eighty. Curious as to why.”

This was supposed to be a party, not a Catholic confessional. I was getting annoyed, but opted for charm over truth. I executed another classic girl hair flip, effectively removing Jax’s hand from my shoulder, which I also was now finding irritating. “
Darlin
’,” I mimicked, “it’s always a woman’s prerogative to change her mind, now, isn’t it?”

He stared for a couple of beats and then shook it off. “Not buyin’ it, but I’ll let it go for now.”

I breathed out a heavy sigh. “That would be good, Jax.”

His smile back was pained and sweet. Some movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention just then, and I saw my admirer trying to make his way across the room to me, only to be blocked by some of the other women at the party. I didn’t recognize them and figured they must’ve been some of Lauren’s fellow mural artist friends from her job.

“Like to meet my boy Kyle?” Jackson asked, redirecting my attention.

I held Jackson’s eyes, then softly replied, “Jackson, I just finally got my ass out of my house after practically being a shut-in, grieving mess for seven months. Don’t you think it’s too soon for, um, even
me
to be hooking up with one of your friends?”

Jackson’s face fell. “Not like me to push, Sam.” One of his hands came up to rub down his face and the back of his neck. “I don’t know what I was thinkin’.”

“You’re a good man, Jackson, one who’s fallen hard for one of the best women I know.”

Jackson looked across the room to find Lauren standing at the edge of it, and watched her watching everyone else at the party. His focused blue eyes immediately went soft and warm, with a hint of a smile growing.

“Falling in love’s one of the best rides out there,” I continued. “Makes sense you’d want to see a friend out of suffering and into some joy for a change. It’s beautiful you’d want that for me. But I’m, well, I’m not…”

“You’re not ready. I get it,” he interrupted. “Actually, if I wanted to give you a forever, Kyle’s the last man I’d pick.”

Jessica’s body gave a little jolt. “Well then, definitely do
not
introduce him to my sister. I’m finally getting her to think about more serious dating choices and you want to hook her star up with one of your man-whore friends? Uh—”she narrowed her eyes at him and got in his face, “—
no.
Not gonna happen.”