Tough Enough (3 page)

Rogan

“Tori. I thought you were filming on location in Ireland for the next few weeks.”

I hide my irritation behind a smile.

I didn’t
think
she was filming on location; I was
assured
she was filming on location. That’s the only reason I agreed to do this little project my agent suggested. Said it would open all kinds of doors for me. I’m not too concerned about that right now, but I’m a smart enough guy to realize that I won’t be able to fight forever. At twenty-eight, my time as a viable champ in the MMA is getting shorter with every passing day. These acting gigs and paid appearances are just retirement for me. I’ve got more money than I should ever need now, but I’m not stupid enough to pass up good opportunities when they present themselves. So here I am.

And, damn it, so is Victoria.

She was fun for about a minute until I realized, like so many of the others, that she’s a clingy, demanding princess who will use any
weapon at her disposal to manipulate people. People being me, in this case.

She found out in a hurry that I’m not the type to be led around by some top-shelf pussy with nothing in her eyes but dollar signs and photo ops. Unfortunately, she doesn’t catch on to subtlety very quickly, nor does she give up very easily. And now here I am, stuck in a six-episode contract that will put me within claw distance of this beautiful yet vapid vixen.

I glance over Victoria’s shoulder to see Katie watching us, an odd expression on her face. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a mixture of disappointment and disgust. And, judging by the rebellious jut of her rounded chin, maybe a little determination, too.

No idea why the hell her disappointment or disgust would bother me, but it does. Something tells me she’s the kind that’s the opposite of Victoria in every way,
including
her looks.

It’s obvious from her comments to her friend Mona that she’s not the least bit impressed by me. But even so, I saw a little fire in her eyes when I got close. It was reluctant as hell, but it was there nonetheless. It’s that glimpse of heat, that tiny spark that makes me want to see her melt like butter in my hands. If she’s determined to resist any attraction she might feel, then I’m
even more
determined to make sure she can’t.

Katie

“Change of plans,” Victoria purrs, drawing Rogan’s attention back to her face, only inches from his. “I’ll be
very close
while you’re here.”

There’s a long, tense pause during which I work to suppress my gag reflex.

“Well, I need to get upstairs,” Mona blurts. She’s possibly even less fond of Victoria than I am. “But I need coffee first. I’ll bring you some on my way back by,” she directs at me.

I turn grateful eyes to my friend. “That’d be great. Thank you.”

“Any for you, Mr. Rogan?” she asks, raising her voice and purposely interrupting Victoria’s assault.

Rogan leans around his vicious ex-girlfriend and smiles pleasantly at Mona. “Just Rogan, remember?” He winks at Mona and I think I can actually
see
her knees buckle a little.

“Rogan, then. Coffee?”

“No, thanks. I try to stay away from . . .
artificial
stimulants.”

Rogan’s eyes slide back to mine, bringing with them that
undeniable heat. I don’t know what he means by that comment, but my belly tells me that it was deliciously wicked, that it was meant to stir, to incite. And, sadly, it does.

Victoria clears her throat and slithers off his lap, standing at his side and putting her body between us. In my mind, her taking steps to block me from his view confirms that his comment was meant for me. And she doesn’t like that one bit.

Mona’s smile is enormous and excited as she sashays past me, leaving me standing awkwardly near the doorway of my own makeup room. I’d like nothing more than to leave with my friend, but I can’t. This is where I work. I can’t very well walk out when I’ve got to get Rogan ready for the first shoot of the day.

Luckily, he takes care of part of the problem. “It was good seeing you, Tori, but Katie’s got to get to work on me. I’m sure I’ll see you around the set,” Rogan offers as he sits up straighter in the chair, suddenly a touch cool and very businesslike.

“Oh, we’ll be seeing lots of each other.” Victoria sounds smug as she bumps Rogan with a swing of her perfectly rounded butt before she turns to walk away. Her smirk is satisfied as she passes me. “See you later, Katie.”

Holy cow, I hope not!
I think this, but I don’t say it. Like so much of what goes through my head, it stays firmly locked away. There, it’s safe. There, it won’t get me in trouble. There, it won’t let anyone know what I’m feeling. See the real me. Or get too close to her.

Rogan is watching me in the mirror when I turn my eyes back to him. “Ready?”

I hope he only means am I ready to get started with his makeup. If he means anything else, the answer is NO! In no way am I ready for a guy like him.

No. Way.

“Yes, sir,
Mr.
Rogan,” I say, just to be obtuse. I’m disgruntled and
I have no idea why. Surely this man, this
cocky, shallow man,
can’t get under my skin.

Surely not.

“Just Rogan,” he repeats.

I nod and smile, but say nothing as I sling a drape around his shoulders.

Rogan

Katie is quiet as she evaluates me with narrowed eyes, her gaze roving my face, pausing on my eyes and my mouth, on my scars and my nose. She then looks through first one drawer, then another, followed by another and another, collecting things as she goes. She glances back at me repeatedly as she decides what colors to use to . . . I don’t know what. Camouflage? Highlight? Hide completely?

When she catches me watching her, she looks quickly away and tucks her chin a little. I have no idea why the hell a woman who looks like her might want to
hide
. But it looks like that’s exactly what she’s doing. Like she’d rather be invisible in front of me.

The more closely I watch, the more I discover. For instance, I think she has a couple of nervous ticks—the way she licks one corner of her mouth, the way she pulls that sweep of hair tighter around her neck, like it’s a security blanket. I’d say she’d much rather I not notice things like that, but for some reason they make her all the more fascinating.

And, damn it to hell, I’m already fascinated enough.

Since becoming whatever kind of freakish sensation that I’ve become, all the women I’ve come across have been nothing but media whores. They
want
the attention. All the attention. They crave it. Crave the eyes and the notice and the limelight. But not this girl. She craves obscurity.

She’s different. And I’m ready for different.

When she’s finally ready to get started, I watch her swirl a brush in a pod of makeup. The action is so competent and smooth it’s easy to see that she’s done it a million times. She feathers something all over my face¸ giving simple, succinct instructions as she comes to certain areas, like my eyes and my mouth, when she mutters a soft, “Close.”

When she’s done, she sets down that color and picks up another, lighter shade. Before she leans in to me again, she tugs at her hair. Nervous tick.

She swirls this brush, too—a smaller one this time—into the packed powder before bending closer to my face. I get a whiff of her perfume. Clean and floral with a little hint of musk or vanilla. The cocktail is sexy as hell, like innocence with a sin chaser.

Just enough sin to make a man beg.

Katie’s tongue sneaks out at the corner of her mouth, drawing my eye. Her lips are just about perfect. They’re shaped like a lush cupid’s bow, plump and moist. Ready to be kissed. I can easily picture what they’d look like afterward—red and swollen.

Just enough sin . . .

She concentrates on dabbing at the scar that runs through my left eyebrow. She makes no comments as she goes about her work, but for some reason I want her to. I want her to talk to me. Most of the women I’ve been with won’t shut up, but not this one. Again, she’s different.

“Bet you’ve never had to put makeup on this many scars before,” I wager, eager to hear her voice again. It’s got the same understated sex appeal that the woman herself does.

“You’d be surprised,” is all she says.

Is she really so shy, or does she seriously find me distasteful? Does she truly think I’m the selfish, arrogant asshole she described? Or was that just blustering? I shouldn’t care. But I do. I don’t want this girl to think I’m a dick. I want her to talk to me, smile at me, tell me what her favorite movie is, how she likes her coffee. Random shit. I don’t even care
what
she says. I just want her to say
something.

Inwardly, I cringe. I sound like a damn woman.
Talk to me! Open up! Why won’t you let me in? Whine, whine, whine.

Bloody hell! There must be estrogen in this damn makeup!

Yet, it doesn’t stop me from trying to draw her into conversation.

“I remember when I got that cut. It was during a fight for the middleweight championship two years ago. The guy pulled an illegal head butt that the referee didn’t catch. Split my eye wide open and just about put me on my ass. Luckily, I’ve been hit a lot harder, so it didn’t knock me out. I took a step back and planted an elbow strike to his face. Blew the guy’s cheekbone out. Won the fight forty-one seconds later.”

“And who says violence doesn’t pay?” she mutters sarcastically.

“You don’t approve?”

Finally, I get her full attention. Katie leans back and looks right at me. Her eyes are puzzled, but all I really notice is that there are pale gold flecks in the dark blue of the iris, like stars sparkling in a midnight sky.

She stares at me, her mouth opening for a second to issue one little noise before her lips snap shut. Whatever she was going to say, she thought better of it. Now I’m
even
more
curious and determined
to get her talking. Usually I don’t have this problem with women. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Her face straight and serious, Katie proceeds to ignore me, leaning in and continuing her work. She carefully covers all my various scars and scuffs, which are a helluva lot. She brushes something under my cheekbones and then gives my eyelashes a dusting of some kind of girly shit before rubbing something on my lips. For all I know, I could see a drag queen when I look in the mirror. I haven’t checked my reflection. I’ve been too wrapped up in watching the artist inflicting the damage, too busy wondering what that little pink tongue I keep seeing tastes like.

The longer I’m around her, the more I want to kiss her. Not that it’s such a surprise. I mean, I’m a guy. With an above-average sex drive. And I like kissing. And what comes after kissing. The thing is, I’m getting ready to go on set with some of the world’s most beautiful women, but something tells me not one of them will intrigue me as much as
this one
does.

I can tell she’s finishing up. She keeps leaning back to look at me and then coming back in to tweak stuff here and there. “You’re
really not
very impressed by me, are you?” I blurt, wanting to hear her answer before I leave her little bubble of cosmetics.

She goes perfectly still and her eyes dart over to mine. I smile when I see them widen guiltily, her reaction an answer in and of itself. She starts to straighten away from me, so I reach for one of the long, loose auburn curls that hang over her shoulder, tugging it to keep her close to me. “You should prepare yourself, then.”

“For what?” she asks in a whisper.

“For me to impress you.”

Her delicately arched brows draw together over her sapphire eyes. “I-I’m not like other women, Mr. Rogan,” she says, her voice more soft than stiff, like she regrets that she’s not.

“And that’s a bad thing?”

She licks the corner of her mouth again, drawing my eyes back to those lips. I wonder if they taste like pink cotton candy. I force my eyes up to hers and lean forward just a little bit, testing the waters. Her pupils swell and I hear her suck in her breath. She looks like she wants to run, but she doesn’t move. Not one inch.

I’m just about to do something very unprofessional when another voice intrudes.

“Coffee’s here! Extra hot, extra cream,” comes her friend Mona’s announcement.

Katie jerks back like she’s laid her hand down on a red-hot stove. Her curl slips right through my fingers. It escapes me.
She
escapes me. Just like this moment has.

Katie

Seconds after Mona’s timely interruption, one of the director’s assistants came to escort Rogan off to the set of his character, Diamond Drago’s, steamy underground club. As I clean my station and get ready for my next job, Mona stands beside me, gripping my cup of coffee and staring at Rogan as he goes. Her mouth is still hanging open long after he’s gone.

When I finish tidying, I ask, “Did you bring that for me? Or did you just need something to molest?” I tip my head toward the cup that she’s practically massaging.

She glances down at the steamy brew and then grins up at me, handing over the mug. “Sorry. I just . . . I mean, I can’t . . . He’s just . . . Wow!” Her eyes round even more. “And ohmigod, Katie? It looked like he was about to kiss you. Did you notice that?”

Did I notice that? How could I
not
notice? But surely that couldn’t have been what he was about to do. Surely not . . .

I frown. “Do you think?”

“God, yes! For sure!”

“I thought maybe he was just . . . I don’t know.”

“Well,
I
know. He was definitely about to kiss you.”

“But . . . but that makes no sense. I mean, why would a guy like
that
¸ surrounded by women like Victoria, have the slightest interest in me?”

“I told you this morning, silly. Most. Wanted. You just don’t see it.”

And I still don’t. Nothing Mona can say will change my mind. I’m scarred. Damaged. No man in his right mind would want me. And if Kiefer Rogan does, it’s only because he hasn’t seen the real me yet. The bad parts. The ugly parts.

Mona tilts her head to one side, her expression softening. “I wish you could see how beautiful you are.”

Reflexively, I smooth the wave of hair that falls over my left shoulder, concealing the source of my unease, the evidence of my past. “I know
exactly
how beautiful I am and exactly how beautiful I am
not.
We work in a forest of exotic creatures, Mona, but I’m not one of them. I’m no different than grass or moss or the leaves on the ground. Unimpressive, something most people walk by every day and pay no attention to. I’m invisible.”

“You’re so crazy, Katie! You don’t—” Mona argues, but I interrupt her, taking her hand and jiggling it to get her attention.

“Hey, I don’t need a pep talk. You forget that I
like it
this way, that I
want it
this way.”

“But why? Just because you aren’t . . . Just because you don’t look like every other bimbo around here, myself included, doesn’t mean that you don’t shine. Because you do, Katie. Maybe even brighter than the rest.”

I smile at my sweet, well-intentioned friend. “That can be our little secret.”

Mona sighs, her eyes a little sad. “One day someone will make you see how gorgeous you are. And that day might not be too far away.”

I shake my head at my friend’s unflappable optimism, irrational though it is. “You’re such a romantic, but Rogan isn’t interested in me, Mona. And even if he was, it wouldn’t last more than a few heartbeats. Maybe he thinks I’m a challenge because I didn’t fall at his feet. I don’t know, but whatever it is, it won’t take him long to realize that I’m not a challenge. I’m nothing. I’m not worth his interest. His time. His attention. I’m nothing special. When he sees that, he’ll move on.
If
he’s even interested at all, which I doubt.”

She cocks her head and considers me. “You ever gonna tell me what happened to make you this way?”

“What’s ‘this way’?”

“So . . . alone. And so content with it.”

“I’m not alone, Mona. I have you. And Dozer. And Janet, my nosey neighbor.”

Mona pushes her bright pink bottom lip out in a pout. “Dozer’s not even a person. He’s a cat. And cats don’t count. Besides, that doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“Well, it should.”

“I just want you to be happy, Kitty.”

Somewhere along the way, Mona started calling me “Kitty” as a term of endearment. She began with Kat, but I couldn’t let her continue with that. It made my chest feel tight and the room spin every time I heard it. Kat was another girl from another life. A life that ended in tragedy. Kat died a long time ago and I want no reminders. Mona took it well, though. That’s when she started calling me Kitty. I let her keep that one.

Kitty.

I shake my head.

Some days it makes me feel like a porn star. Some days it makes me feel like I should have a hip holster and a gun so I can go around shooting up saloons. But other days . . . days like today, it makes me feel loved, something that I haven’t felt very much in the last few years.

“I know. And I will be. I mean,
I am
.”

“I won’t be satisfied until you can say that a little more convincingly. And with a smile.”

I nod, desperate to change the subject. “I’ll come get you for lunch.”

She claps enthusiastically. “Lunch! Yay!” And then she turns and blows out of my space just as quickly as she blew in.

•   •   •

I twist the knob and gently push open my front door. I peek around the wooden panel to make sure my cat has moved before I swing it wide enough to get through.

Dozer likes to sleep on the rug right under the mail slot while I’m gone. On several occasions, I’ve seen curious scratches and puncture marks in the envelopes of a few bills here and there. It makes me wonder if Dozer attacks the mail when it comes through the flap. I can only imagine that it would scare the crap out of
me
if
I
were sleeping when it landed on me.

I smile as my black-and-gray striped cat snakes his way over to my leg, weaving in and out in a figure eight pattern, rubbing his sides against me and purring loud enough to wake the dead.

“Hey, buddy, were you sleeping?”

I bend to scoop him up and he immediately head butts me. That’s been his greeting since the day I rescued him from a cat-eating dog gang that terrorized my neighborhood two years ago. I think he realizes he’d have been dead meat if I hadn’t intervened. He’s been my loyal companion ever since.

“You’re the only man I need in my life, aren’t you, Dozer?” I croon to him, aggravated that I’m
still
thinking about Kiefer Rogan.

Dozer jumps out of my arms, walks four feet and flops down on the carpet where he proceeds to groom himself. I stand on the rug, watching him, letting the peace and quiet and familiar smells of my home, of my
life
relax me.

I love my little house. It’s nothing special—a cute cottage that has yellow siding, a white wrought-iron fence around the yard and cheerful window planters that are blooming with pansies this year. It’s not a mansion, but it’s mine. My hiding place. My sanctuary. The one place that I can be myself, whatever mixed-up blend of Kathryn, Kat and Katie Rydale that is.

I moved here right after I got the job with the studio. I needed to disappear and the small town of Enchantment seemed the perfect place to do so. And, so far, it has been. And that’s the way I like it. I don’t go looking for trouble and I can only hope that it doesn’t hunt me down. I’ve had enough of it to last a lifetime already, and I’m only twenty-four.

Before I can stop them, flashes of flames and fists, of writhing and wreckage, of tears and emptiness spew through my mind like a spray of acid, burning where it touches. Relentlessly, I push those turbulent thoughts to the deepest part of my consciousness. I learned long ago that the less contact I have with them, the less they can hurt me. I learned that if I give them an inch, if I give them even a few seconds of thought, they take over. They incapacitate. They paralyze. They eat away at the carefully constructed person I’ve become, destroying the peace and security that I’ve worked so hard to achieve. And I can’t let that happen. Not again.

I busy myself with the routine tasks I perform each day when I get home from work. I find comfort in structure, in the predictable. I thrive on being ordinary and living an ordinary life. The
spectacular can only end in devastation. The bigger the star, the brighter the shine, but the more epic the explosion and subsequent death. That’s something else I learned. The hard way. It’s better not to shine too bright. Or, sometimes, not to shine at all.

At a few minutes before ten, I’m already brushed and washed and lying in bed with one of Mona’s books. I refuse to consider why I picked up another of her silly romance stories tonight of all nights. I also refuse to consider why, when I hear a door slam outside, I think for just a fraction of a second that it might be Kiefer Rogan. And that a guy like him might actually be interested in a girl like me.

I ignore the niggle of disappointment and remind myself that I’m better off without men like that in my life—the kind who love beauty and glamour, the kind who gravitate toward the kind of girl that I used to be. That got me nothing but trouble and pain and regret, and I’ve got the scars to prove it. No, I’m better off by myself and I’ll do well to remember that.

Why, after all this time, I’d let a guy like Kiefer Rogan get under my skin is strange, yes, but I have to keep it in perspective. Not let him get inside my head with his killer smile and charming wink. Letting him in would be a disaster, plain and simple.

I snap the book shut with a definitive thud, glaring at the beautiful laughing couple on the cover. Life isn’t a romantic comedy. It’s more of a light Shakespearean tragedy. Or a cruel joke. At least that’s been my experience.