Lying in Your Arms

And the face. Oh, lord, that face.

That smiling face.

“You done?”

She took a deep, even breath.

“I’m a little confused,” she mumbled, lifting a shaking hand to her head.

“Yeah, right.”

Well, damn, so much for her thinking he was a gentleman. He could at least have pretended not to notice she’d been struck dumb by his looks.

Then she remembered the way he’d swooped down to catch her, how he’d put her on the bed and tenderly taken care of her. She conceded he was definitely a gentleman. Just one with a sense of humor. Considering she’d accused him of being a male prostitute, that was a good thing.

“Am I really in your room?”

“I think so,” he said. Then he frowned. “Although, to be honest, I could be in the wrong one. My key didn’t work, so the bellhop let me in. He didn’t speak English very well...maybe we got our wires crossed and he let me into the wrong one.”

“Well, if that’s the case, feel free to stay.”

One brow shot up.

She flushed. “I mean, they can put me in another room. You’ve already settled in.”

“I really don’t mind being the one to move. You look like you need to stay right in this bed until tomorrow.”

Yeah, and she couldn’t deny she wouldn’t mind if he stayed in it with her. Well, she couldn’t deny it to herself, anyway. She’d deny it to her last breath if he accused her of feeling that way.

“Long trip?”

“You have no idea. I’ve been traveling for what seems like days.”

“From where?”

“Hmm, kind of all over,” she said, thinking about the crazy whirlwind her life had become in the past few weeks, ever since she’d become the woman who’d betrayed the beloved Tommy Shane. Whore, slut, bitch, user, taker, Jezebel—some preacher had lobbed that one from a pulpit—those were some of the names that had been launched at her.

So much for thinking she would escape the breakup unscathed. Could she possibly have been more naive? She’d never in a million years imagined that by becoming the bad girl who’d broken the heart of Hollywood’s golden boy, she would be loathed, vilified and reviled all over the freaking country.

She’d had paparazzi follow her wherever she went. People who recognized her from her picture on the cover of every tabloid on the newsstand greeted her with catcalls and jeers. Her life had been ripped to shreds on blogs and Hollywood gossip shows. A woman had even spit on her while she was grocery shopping.

So she’d taken off to northern California. Unfortunately, everyone knew she had a twin sister who lived in Napa, and she hadn’t been hard to find. Poor Candace and Oliver, who liked to live quietly, had come into the limelight, too.

Then it was off to Florida to visit her parents. Same story. She hadn’t stayed there long. It had been way too much to ask for them to play along when they saw how horribly she was being treated. They knew better than anyone that she and Tommy hadn’t had a real engagement, and her father had been dying to defend her. Or at least to punch a few photographers. Heaven forbid she be the cause of his next heart attack!

So distraught over the whole thing that he’d decided to come out, Tommy had planned a press conference. Madison had told him to forget it. What he needed to do was buy her a ticket to somewhere warm. Before long, she was headed for the airport again.

Costa Rica. It should be far enough away for her to regain her sanity. Lord, did she hope so. If this scandal hadn’t blown over by the time she went home, she didn’t know what she would do.

“Hello?”

She realized her mind had drifted. She cleared her throat. “What?”

“Where’d you go?”

“Nowhere I want to return to,” she insisted vehemently.

“You’re on the run, huh?”

“You might say that.” Something prompted her to add, “You, too?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

“Not a bank robber, are you?” she asked, her tone light and teasing, even though the possibility that he was an ax murderer had flashed across her mind. Of course, if he’d wanted to chop her into kindling, he could easily have done it while she was unconscious. Besides, nobody with eyes as warm and kind as this man’s could ever be the violent sort. He looked and behaved like a real-life hero.

“No. I stick strictly to convenience and liquor stores for my life of crime.”

“Penny ante,” she said with an airy wave of her hand.

“What about you? Are you a secret double agent seducing your way into state secrets?”

She batted her lashes. “You think I could?”

“Honey, I know you could.”

The vehemence in his tone made her smile fade a bit. They were no longer teasing and joking. The attraction between them had been thick from the moment he’d turned around and found her in his room, but they’d been successfully hiding from it. Except, she suddenly remembered, for that long, heated moment when he’d held her in his arms after he’d caught her. She wasn’t a mind reader, but she’d had no difficulty seeing what was going through his head. Probably because the same wild, erotic thoughts had been going through hers.

Sex with a stranger. Nameless, guiltless, hedonistic. Wild and unforgettable and something never to be regretted.

Oh, yes. She’d definitely been thinking those thoughts.

The fact that he had, too, and that he hadn’t taken advantage of the situation, reinforced her hero assessment. She couldn’t think of him as merely a nice guy...that didn’t do justice to this man. She barely knew him, yet she knew he was ever so much more than that.

As if he’d noticed the warm, approving way she was looking at him, he cleared his throat and slid off the bed, standing beside it. “Think you can sit up?”

She nodded, knowing she could do it on her own but somehow unable to refuse his help when he bent and slid a powerful arm behind her shoulders. He helped her into a sitting position and it was all she could do not to turn her head and nip at the rigid muscle flexing near her cheek, or to breathe deeply to inhale his musky, masculine scent.

Tommy had obviously been right. She needed sex, badly. And for a moment, she found herself wishing her first impression had been correct and the man had been for hire. Because completely unencumbered, drop-your-pants-right-now-and-make-me-come sex sounded pretty damned awesome right now.

“By the way,” he said as he stepped away from the bed, “I’m Leo. Leo Santori. What’s your name?”

“My name?” Considering how desperately she’d been trying to evade the scandal her name created lately, she had to think for a second about how to respond.

“You have one, don’t you? It’s the thing they give you at the hospital before you get to go home.”

“I thought that was a blanket.”

“I don’t think they give you the blankets anymore.”

“Pacifier?”

“Judging by the number of kids my cousins have had, I’m thinking they pretty much ship you out the door with just a red-faced mutant and a big old bill.”

She snickered, liking the good humor in his tone. Then she seized on the rest of his comment. “So you don’t have any of your own?”

“Pacifiers?”

She smirked. “Kids.”

“Nope.” He hesitated the briefest moment before adding, “And there’s no one waiting in the wings to supply any.”

So, he was single? How interesting that he’d felt the need to point that out. How fascinating that the knowledge made her heart leap in her chest.

“What about you?”

“No pacifiers. No kids. Nobody trying to get me to have them.”

“Well, that covers just about everything,” he said. “Except one... Are you going to tell me your name?”

“It’s Madison,” she said.

She didn’t add the last name. No need to tempt fate, right? He didn’t look like the kind of guy who followed Hollywood gossip. Nor did he seem the type who would sell her out to the tabloids. But then, the host of that syndicated radio show hadn’t seemed like the type who would release her private number on the air so she could be bombarded with hateful calls and texts, either.

If this Leo Santori was the curious type, he could get online—she supposed even this reclusive resort had internet access—and check her out on Google. If he had her first and last names, he’d come up with a ton of hits, none of which put her in a very good light. Any of them would probably tip somebody off that they could make a quick buck selling her out to the tabloids. That was one reason she’d chosen this resort—they apparently catered to wealthy clientele looking for privacy.

Which made her wonder just what Leo Santori did for a living, and what he’d come here to escape.

“Okay, Madison, how about you stay here? I’ll go talk to the people at the front desk and try to get this straightened out. And I’ll bring you something to eat when I come back.”

“I couldn’t...”

“Sure you could. Feel free to dive into the pool and cool off while I’m gone. You look like you could use it.”

She glanced out the door, seeing the beautiful swimming pool, so secluded in a private, idyllic garden, and realized he was right. Gliding through that cool water sounded like heaven right now.

“You’re sure you don’t mind?” she asked, feeling badly but also really not wanting to make that long trudge back to the front desk again.

“I’m sure,” he said, heading into the bathroom. The bed was angled so that she had a clear view of him standing in front of the large mirror, and she watched as he grabbed a shirt and pulled it on over his massive shoulders.

Gracious, the man’s muscles had muscles. Her heart was being all spastic, thudding and skipping along, and she couldn’t seem to even out her breaths to get the right amount of oxygen. She felt light-headed, no longer queasy but there were definitely butterflies fluttering around in her stomach. Her legs were quivering a little, and she was hot between them.

The stranger was totally turning her on, like she couldn’t ever remember being turned on before. He was like a miracle worker, a sex god who got women all hot and bothered for a living...except he apparently didn’t follow through.

Right. Not a gigolo. Check.

Which was too bad.

You’re being ridiculous a little voice in her head said. One thing Madison had never been accused of was having a limited imagination. Considering she wrote stories for a living—one of which was an extremely erotic film that would surely earn an NC-17 rating if it ever got made, and that looked pretty iffy right now—she couldn’t deny she’d been thinking about wild, wicked sex a lot lately. It seemed the longer it had been since she’d had it, the more it filled her thoughts.

So much for coming to a secret hideaway to get some peace and tranquillity. If this guy’s room was anywhere near hers, she would probably turn into some female Peeping Tom before the week was out. Because her mind just wasn’t going to stop thinking about that white towel until she knew what was under it.

“What do you do, anyway?” she asked when he returned, carrying his shoes. Stripper? Male model?

“I’m a firefighter.”

Her jaw fell open, then she snapped it closed. Because, that totally made sense. She could easily picture him carrying ladders and big, thick hoses. He probably carried one around with him all the time.

Stop it. You’re delirious.

“A real American hero?” she said, amused that her instant assessment of him was so dead-on. He really was a hero.

“I wouldn’t say that,” he insisted with a self-deprecating shrug.

“Have you ever saved anyone’s life?”

Another shrug. He looked embarrassed. “I guess.”

“That was a pretty vague answer to a yes-or-no question,” she said, her voice wry. “‘I guess’ is the type of answer you’d give if someone asked you if you had a good time at a party or if you liked a movie. Saving someone’s life seems to require a bit more specificity.”

“Okay.”

“Was that a yes?”

He grinned. “I guess.”

She couldn’t help chuckling. “Where do you live?”

“Chicago. You?”

Hmm. Good question. She’d been raised in Florida. Then she’d moved to New York after grad school, determined to be a world-class journalist. Only, she’d realized she kind of hated journalists. That was when she’d started writing screenplays. And when she’d gotten engaged to Tommy, she’d moved to Southern California. Now, she honestly didn’t know where she was going to live.

“I’m sort of between housing right now.”

That dimple reappeared. “That was a pretty vague answer.”

“I suppose it was. I’ve been living in L.A. But I’m not sure what I’m going to do when I leave here. I might go back to New York.”

“Chicago’s got better pizza.”

Her jaw dropped. “You must be kidding. That loaf of bread with cheese on it that they serve in Chicago has got nothing on a thin, crispy slice of pepperoni from Ray’s.”

He drew up, looking offended. “My uncle and cousin run a pizza place with food that would make your taste buds decide to commit suicide rather than eat pizza anywhere else ever again.”

“With all due respect to your uncle and cousin, you’re mental cheese has obviously slipped off its crust. Because you’re crazy.”

“I challenge you to a taste test.”

“I don’t think we’re going to find very good examples of New York or Chicago style here in Central America.”

“When we get back stateside then.”

Implying they might see each other again after they left here? Oh, how tempting a thought. But she forced herself to concede, an impossible one.

“Maybe,” she murmured, quickly looking away. A sharp stab of disappointment shot through her because she knew she was lying.

She couldn’t see him again. Not at home. Not here. Once he got the room situation straightened out, she needed to avoid him altogether.

Maybe if he’d been the gigolo she’d thought him, she’d take a chance. Or if he’d been anything but the delightful, warm, friendly, protective man she’d already seen him to be. As it was, though, she couldn’t get involved with anybody like Leo Santori. Her life was too freaking messed up right now to involve anyone else in it.

“Well, guess I’ll head up to the lobby,” he said, as if noticing that she’d pulled away, if only mentally. “And I was serious, feel free to use the pool.”

She nodded. “I might do that. Thanks. Maybe you should take my room key, just in case I’m outside and don’t hear you knock.”

He picked it up off the dresser where she’d tossed it and departed. After he’d gone, Madison thought about his offer to use the pool. She had been serious about how appealing it sounded, though she wouldn’t swim the way she suspected he’d been about to. Judging by the towel he’d been oh-so-inconveniently holding, he’d been planning to skinny-dip. That sounded perfect, delightful, in fact. Letting her naked body soak up the breezes and the warmth was just about her idea of heaven.

Of course, she wasn’t quite desperate enough to strip out of her clothes and pose in front of the door the way he had. Even if she did have a very nice ass, if she did say so herself. Still, she wasn’t about to bare it for some stranger...a stranger she’d already decided she couldn’t have, no matter how much she might want him.

Now that he was gone, now that the room wasn’t full of his warm, masculine presence, she managed to pull the rest of her brain cells together. It wasn’t just that she couldn’t trust anyone she met to keep her secret; there was more to it than that. Coming here to Costa Rica had been about hiding out, licking her wounds, staying out of the limelight and being completely on her own. She needed to rediscover the Madison she’d been six months ago, before her crazy engagement, before she’d become chum for an ocean of avaricious sharks.

There was more, though. She just couldn’t do that to him...or to any man. Because, even if she could keep him in the dark about who she really was—and the scandal she’d hopefully left behind in the states—she’d be exposing him to a lot of danger, too. The last thing she needed was to get involved with some guy, then get tracked down by the paparazzi. Any man she spent time with would be subject to the same vicious scrutiny she’d endured, maybe even accused of being the mystery lover she’d cheated on Tommy with. The one who didn’t exist.

She just couldn’t put anybody else through that, especially not someone as great as Leo seemed to be. So, no. There was no room in her life for a fling with a hot fireman. None whatsoever.

Even if she desperately wished there were.

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