Hot in Hellcat Canyon (32 page)

They walked wordlessly a moment, tracing that path to the swimming hole, the last place he could remember being perfectly happy. Back in that brief interlude when he was delusional enough to think his life could be simple.
Nothing
was ever simple when it came to women.

Their feet crunched pebbles and old fallen leaves and pine needles. And he reached up and dragged his finger idly through the leaves of a low-hanging oak, as if it were a pet. Seeking comfort from anywhere.

She skidded a little down the dirt bank toward the river. He didn’t offer her his hand again.

And then he stopped.

“Okay, Britt. I tried to tell you about a dozen times that I wasn’t expecting her to just show up like that.”

“That was pretty clear from that very complicated expression on your face when you saw her.”

“Yeah. I just bet it was complicated. Let me ask you something. How complicated is my expression right now?”

They locked glares.

She was a stubborn woman. But he probably had as much right to anger as she did at the moment.

And she was smart enough to know it.

“What
is
she doing here then, J. T.?”

“She brought a script with her—”

“And about five years of shared history, right?”

“Britt—”

“Shared naked history.”

“Britt—”

“And Walmart
does
have cute clothes sometimes,” she said vehemently.

“Sure, sure,” he soothed, startled.

“I think she’s a mean person, J. T.”

“You’re not wrong,” he confessed grimly.

“And she
stayed
with you last night.”

“There was apparently no place else for her to go. I slept on the
couch.
Britt.”

“She wouldn’t
fit
on the couch. Her legs are about fourteen miles long. And there’s not much of a distance between the couch and your bed anyway, is there, J. T.? Just one or two strides on those long, long legs.”

“Should I have sent her to the Shady Eight?”

“Good God, no, she can’t stay there,” she said, startled. In all seriousness.

“I would have stayed with you, Britt. And left her alone. Except for one word. DON’T.”

He was aware of the sound of his breath and hers rushing, rushing. From anger, from fear.

“You just don’t seem to get it, J. T. Your ex-girlfriend is on bus benches and magazines and on a freaking billboard. She towers over Hellcat Canyon on that billboard like . . . like . . . that creepy sun baby in the Teletubbies. The whole town saw those pictures of us. And then she just appears, and yesterday I stood there like an ass and watched while everyone in the Misty Cat watched you get up out of your chair and drift on out of there after her, as if she was some kind of human tractor beam.”

The image was both unflattering and priceless.

“EX.” He growled that word and raked his fingers back through his hair in frustration. “Ex-girlfriend! Rebecca’s whole goal in life has always been to take over the world. Her
job
is to tower over highways on billboards. I don’t see what that has to do with you and me. And if I wanted to be with her I’d be
with
her, right now, instead of out here having a
great
time arguing with you.”

He thought, for a moment, she was almost tempted to smile.

He seized the moment. “I love that you said ‘tractor beam.’ ” He said swiftly, gruffly. He loved all those odd little things she said.

But she didn’t smile. “I think she wants
you
, though, J. T.”

“That doesn’t mean she can
have
me. Rebecca always wants what she thinks other people have. She hunts down happiness like an anthropologist. And I must have looked happy to her in those photos. And I was. I am. Was. Am.”

Hell.

Britt quirked the corner of her mouth. “Gosh. Smooth, J. T.”

He sighed. “Britt, my reflex was to just get her out of the Misty Cat. I
had
to get her out of there. It was a public service. All those jaws hanging open were bound to catch flies and Giorgio would have burned something and Glenn would have gotten the blame.”

He’d hoped for a smile. She was determined not to give him one.

“I’m sorry I went about it so awkwardly. It’s just . . . I didn’t want her anywhere near you, Britt,” he said. “Because I know all too well what she’s like. And now . . . so do you.”

“She said you were up all night.” Her voice was thick now. Her eyes were shining.

Dear God. If Britt cried, his heart would snap in half with a report like a fired 22.

He could just
hear
Rebecca’s insinuating voice saying that.

“That’s what she does. She messed with your head. We were up most of the night about the
script
. And catching up on people we know, industry news, things like that.”

“Sounds like a good time,” Britt said. Bitterly.

“Well, it wasn’t a
bad
time. It was shop talk with a colleague. The worst part of the night was realizing the woman I’ve made love to every day for the past three weeks couldn’t be bothered to call me back.”

Britt went still. He saw the guilt flicker over her features.

He pressed his advantage. “Twelve phone calls and three apologies for something I really had no control over is my limit, Britt. You either believe me or you don’t. I’m not going to grovel. And I haven’t heard you apologize to me yet.”

Her jaw dropped. “You want
me
to apologize to
you
?”

“Common decency and three weeks of hot sex dictates you could have at least answered one of my calls. Do you think I can’t possibly have any feelings of my own, because my job is to have pretend ones?”

Damn.

He’d just argued himself right into a corner. Because he knew what the next question would be.

They stared at each other in wary silence now.

“All right, J. T.,” she said quietly. “What
are
your real feelings?”

He crammed his hands into his pockets. Closing off, protecting himself.

And he looked at her. Into her shining eyes, with the mauve shadows beneath them. And his chest tightened and he couldn’t breathe. And suddenly he was in that car sailing up the ramp and he didn’t know how he was going to land or if there was even a ramp and he couldn’t do it.

“I like what we have going,” he said, finally. Quietly. “I don’t want it to end.”

He knew immediately it was wholly inadequate.

But then someone else had always written his words for him.

“But wasn’t it
always
going to end, J. T.?”

And suddenly his hands iced. “What do you mean?”

“L.A., people like Rebecca, red carpets, movies—
that’s
your real life. That’s where you belong. Not here Hellcat Canyon. This is . . . the
dream
you’re having during your downtime. Only I’m the hobby this time. We both got something out of it.”

And it was like she’d literally kicked the foundations out from under him. Inwardly he was flailing. He felt the blood rush from his face.

“My life is wherever the hell I want it to be,” he said hoarsely. “And I like it right here, right now.”

“I think once you get back among your own kind, you’ll probably forget all about that.”

But her expression was at odds with her tone. She was saying things, for whatever reason, that she didn’t mean.

And then he slowly straightened. And gave a short, bitter laugh.

He knew exactly what she was doing. And why.

“You know . . . it could just as easily be me out there on a billboard, advertising
The Rush
when it airs. Because that’s my job, too. And I get that my life can be kind of overwhelming, with the paparazzi and the gossip sites and all of that. The thing is, I don’t think that’s your issue here at all, Britt.”

And now she was nervous. Her own hands were knotting and unknotting in front of her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her breath was coming swiftly now.

He delivered the words with slow, deliberate ruthlessness. “Rebecca might be towering over Hellcat Canyon out on the highway. But if you run away now, that means your ex-husband is still towering over your whole damn life. And how can I compete with a dead man?”

Her mouth dropped open. She made an arid little sound. And then:

“How
dare . . .
”

She didn’t finish that sentence.

He couldn’t seem to stop the words. “If you love being afraid more than you like being with me, then fine. Be afraid. Just don’t
lie
about it. You might as well get it over with and just run, because I know that’s what you’re dying to do right now. Just go.”

Her face blanked in shock. “You
son
of a—”

She pivoted. She took two steps.

“Britt—
damn
it—I didn’t—just—wait—”

But she was running now.

Her hair was a bright flash through the trees and then she was gone.

He watched, feeling like his heart was a bomb about to go off in his chest.

And then he shoved his hands through his hair. “ARRRGH!”

He stood there, hearing his own pain and frustration multiplied as an echo through the trees.

CHAPTER 18

F
inally he stalked back to his house. He froze in front of it.

He’d almost forgotten Rebecca was inside.

And then he sighed resignedly and climbed his own steps as if he were headed for the gallows.

Rebecca was standing in front of his open refrigerator, critiquing the contents, no doubt performing her usual complicated calorie calculus in her head: if she ate three peanuts on the plane, she could maybe have one grape and a slice of turkey, but then she would have to spend thirty minutes on the treadmill or eat nothing for dinner. That kind of math was more exhausting than those thirty minutes on the treadmill.

She didn’t turn around. “You’re really drinking
beer
these days, John?”

She made it sound like,
You’ve really been drinking
anti-freeze
these days, John?

His long, black silence was such a presence it finally made her turn around. She slowly closed the refrigerator door carefully and pressed her back against it.

He could only imagine what she saw on his face, because her eyes went wary.

She studied him, clearly deciding on his approach.

“Oh, come on, Johnny,” she said softly, cajoling, teasing, placating. “She’s just a waitress. She can’t be the
first
waitress you’ve had.”

She made it sound like he’d gone on a trip and forgotten his toothbrush, so he went out and got another one, just for the duration. Everyone was temporary. Rebecca was absolutely certain
she
would always be the prize.

This was Rebecca’s way of being sophisticated.

He stared at her in amazement.

“Number One on John Tennessee McCord’s Top Ten Things He Doesn’t Miss about Rebecca Corday: hearing her use the word
just
to describe people.”

That
pissed her off. Her complexion swiftly went a blotchy pink.

“Where does Underhill think you are right now, Rebecca?”

She stared at him, probably wondering whether to equivocate.

But then her face crumpled in earnest.

“Oh, Johnny. He’s such a . . . Let’s just say he’d never punch a photographer, because it would mess up his manicure. I hardly ever laugh with him. He doesn’t
get
me. He’s not like . . .”

She caught herself.

He knew she was about to say,
He’s not like you.

He heard all this with increasing incredulity.

“So he got on your nerves and he wasn’t perfect and you just left because you can’t be bothered to work things out? That’s what you do? What the hell is
wrong
with everyone when they think they can just fucking
walk
away
so easily?”

His voice escalated and escalated and then he sat down hard on the sofa and before he could help himself wrapped his hands across the back of his head and leaned forward and gulped in deep breaths, as if he’d just experienced an abrupt change of altitude.

And then leaned back and closed his eyes. And tried to steady his temper and the beating of his heart.

From the stillness in the room, he figured he’d done what he was certain few men had ever succeeded in doing: he’d shocked Rebecca Corday into silence.

What the hell had just happened? One moment he was happier than he could remember being. The next he was blown sky high and spiraling through the air, falling and falling and falling, falling with the full consciousness of how sickeningly painful the landing would be.

He should have said it. He should have said it.

But Britt had her fears, and he had his. His started with “L.”

And the irony was that probably the very thing that allowed them to see each other clearly was the thing that doomed them. They could use each other’s wounds to administer killing blows.

His whole body almost rang with shock, as if he’d finally landed after being blown sky high.

“I’m sorry if I scared your friend off.”

He opened one eye and then the other and looked at Rebecca balefully. She was now sitting across from him.

Rebecca sounded gentle, even contrite. Somewhat. And she did look concerned, though shot through that concern was a peculiar anxiety. The words “your friend” were purely tactical and so very Rebecca. An attempt to diminish. She seemed incapable of being anything other than strategic.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Rebecca,” he said, and his voice sounded odd in his own ears. Frayed and dull. “She’s not my ‘friend,’ and you didn’t scare her. She scared herself off.”

Though he
had
chucked the metaphorical lit match right into that gasoline.

So he supposed he’d helped scare Britt off, too.

He closed his eyes briefly again. He wanted to be alone. But he couldn’t just tell her to scram.