Coming Attractions (13 page)

Even though her mind instantly
acknowledged that she had never stood a chance with Levi, especially with a film
star in the running for his affections, the reality stung like nasty black
barbs digging into her heart and shredding flesh and feelings alike.

As she heard a set of high heels
strolling away, Cara forced herself to suck in a breath and straighten her
shoulders. She blinked to make sure there were no stray tears set to fall and
swallowed to loosen her tightly closed throat. She lifted her chin and rounded
the corner of the house to confront Levi.

His grin, when he saw her, lit up
his whole face.
Scoundrel,
she
thought, and instantly revised her approach. He was devastating in his magnificence,
a scintillating rogue who could make her common sense vaporize with a mere
smile. Imagine if he actually put his mind to disarming her. She would be a
senseless puddle in his wake. Perhaps a full-frontal attack was ill-considered when
facing a dazzling devil like Levi.

Stealth was what she needed.
Stealth, reconnaissance, and subterfuge. She would beat him at his own sneaky
game. She would pretend all was well between them until she knew exactly what
his plans were when it came to the fortune. Then, if he really found it and he
really claimed it, she could challenge him about his right to the money and
demand that he hand it over to the rightful heirs—namely, her and Mia.

Even as the plan of action formed
itself in her mind, she felt a twinge of discomfort, as though some part of her
knew that she was being rash and reactive.

You
don’t think you’re getting all possessive and protective of the treasure as a
substitute for some other thing you suddenly felt threatened about?
Oddly,
it was Mia’s voice in her mind, the voice of rationality and reason. Cara
blocked Mia out. What the hell did she know?

Cara plastered an answering smile
on her dial, climbed the steps, and hugged the traitorous snake good morning.
She had to hug him, she told herself, to make her show of normalcy convincing.
It had nothing to do with her instinctive need to feel his big, capable hands
resting on her tush, nothing to do with sinking into the familiar musky scent
of him, and nothing at all to do with brushing her hungry mouth over his
delectable lips.

“You’ve just missed Selena,” he
said, still holding Cara close, his face against her hair, his firm hand
possessively stroking her derriere. He must have felt her stiffen at the
actress’ name, but seemed utterly distracted by his gentle exploration of the
curve of her bottom. “I thought we might lunch with her and Otto. You know,
chat about the film.”

It was her cue to step away and
tell him about Alessandra’s lover, she realized. The perfect opportunity was shining
like a neon beacon. If she told him Alessandra had not been chaste, he could
have his wretched love scenes and get his filthy mind off her wealth.

If there really was any.

Sure, Alessandra had promised her
daughters a fortune, but a vow was just words. There was no evidence to suggest
there really was any money. After all, how well did either of the girls really
know their mother? All her life, Cara had believed her mother to be celibate
and she had been wrong about that. What was to say she wasn’t wrong about the
money, too?

Then Cara had an even more horrible
thought. What if Levi had picked up her film, not because he thought it would
be a commercial success, but because he was intrigued by the missing fortune?
He had bought Flinders’ Keep by the time he read the script, so he would have
realized two things when he read it—that there were mythical millions missing,
and that, if they were on the property, he would have a claim to them.

Cara shuddered as she followed her
thoughts through to their logical conclusion. Perhaps he had seduced her,
pretended to grow close to her purely for the sake of pumping her for clues
about the fortune, shedding extra light on the mystery, hoping that between the
house, the script, and the woman, he could fit the puzzle pieces together. Her
mind clicked back over their conversations
.
“What was it like growing up here? Do you think there really ever was any fortune?
Your mother had a lot of secrets…?”

Was this whole romantic interlude a
sham?

What had he called himself? “A bit
of a business buccaneer and a financial daredevil, all about risk and return.”

The thought made bile rise in her
throat and she sincerely wished she had skipped breakfast. How could she have
such grave doubts about his character and motives on one hand, but light up
like a Christmas tree at his every touch? Like his fingers currently trawling
down the seam between her butt cheeks and dipping dangerously toward the hot
hollow between her thighs. Making her pant. She couldn’t think clearly while he
was torturing her body so subtly, so exquisitely.

Ruthlessly, Cara extricated herself
from Levi’s embrace, taking a step away to really look at him. Oh yes, he had
the guileless good looks—the dreamy eyes and sensual mouth, the strong jaw and
stunning physique and an all-round sex appeal that just didn’t quit. But Levi
was just a run-of-the-mill gold digger, she reminded herself, fueled by greed
to uncover her inheritance.

Sure, he spoke scathingly of
Alessandra and her hard-hearted matter-of-factness, but he was no better than
she was. Before anything else, anything decent and honorable and true, the pair
of them were thrill seekers and fortune hunters, destined to fuel their needs
for adventure and affluence above all else. Though it hurt to admit it, money
and mystery were irresistible to people like Alessandra—and, it seemed, Levi.

Unfortunately, it also seemed that
people like them were irresistible to Cara. She had loved her mother with the
complete and uninhibited totality of a trusting child, and she had been badly
burned. Now, fool that she was, she had fallen for Levi, hard, fast, and
irrevocably. His duplicity was all the more scalding because it was laced with
her own humiliation. She should have known better. Treasure hunters were
clearly Cara’s kryptonite.

The crushing sadness, boiling
resentment, and bitter disenchantment roiled through her like vinegar through
milk. She needed to buy some time to get her head straight before she said or
did something foolish, and not so much tipped her hand as fisted it and let it
fly at his fast-talking, sensual, delectable kisser.

“Look, I can’t manage lunch today,”
she improvised, trying and failing to meet his eyes. “I really need to go into
town to buy a birthday gift for my niece.” That was true enough, she thought. “Perhaps
we could make it another time?”
Like next
time Halley’s Comet rolls around
.

“Oh, okay. I thought…”

He ran a hand through his streaky
blond hair and shook his head. The corners of his mouth tilted downward and his
strong brows knitted. He looked genuinely forlorn, as though someone had kicked
his puppy or taken away his best game controller.

His sensitive gray-green eyes met
hers and, for a moment, it felt as though he could read everything—her mind,
her heart, her soul. For a split second, it seemed as if there was no space
between them—not a breath, not a heartbeat, not a secret. Standing there,
face-to-face on the veranda of her childhood home in the glow of the morning
sun, it was as though they were two…but not two—separate but deeply and
innately joined at some primordial level. The wash of feeling left her mouth
dry and her eyes damp. Where the hell had all the air gone?

His jaw tensed, his nostrils
flared, and he swallowed. He felt it, just as surely as she had.

“Cara…” he breathed, taking a step
toward her, reaching for her hand with his own, eyes imploring, beckoning,
seducing.

God help her, if she took his hand
now, if she accepted whatever pittance of affection he was offering, she would
be lost. There would be no going back. He would own her completely and she
would be a slave to his whims forever. And, damn him, the idea of being lazily
adrift under his spell for the rest of her life didn’t seem like such a raw
deal. Her fingers prickled with sensation, her fingertips twitched, itching to
meet his, like five mini Levi-seeking missiles.

Her hand quivered, her eyes
acquiesced, her heart surrendered.

Then a cloud crossed the sun, Selena
Simms laughed somewhere nearby, and Cara caught a waft of moss and roses and
childhood.

Levelheadedness kicked in and she
blinked, sucked in air, shook her head, and stepped away. She felt suddenly
weak and woozy.

“Is everything okay?” he asked,
concern creasing his brow.

“Fine. Fine,” she lied, trying not
to let her voice squeak.
I have to get
out of here!

“It’s just you look a little pale
and you’re acting kind of, I don’t know, unusual.”

Wheels.
I need wheels.
Damn the bastard who had nicked her bike.

“I’m great. Peachy. Couldn’t be
better. Hey, any chance I could borrow your truck for a quick trip into town?”

He paused for a moment, thinking.

Just
say yes, just say yes, just say…

“I have a few things to do in town
myself. Not the least of which is to buy more bacon. These people eat more than
a tank of sharks. Why don’t you let me tidy up a couple of things, grab my
jacket and keys, and we’ll head off together in, say, half an hour?”

I’d
rather eat glass than ride with you,
she thought, but
she forced a smile that probably came out more like a grimace and nodded her compliance.

The moment he turned his back, she
fumbled for the back of the nearest seat and collapsed into it, cradling her
head in her hands and forcing herself to breathe deeply and evenly in the hopes
that she could slow her heartbeat and stop her mind from spinning. If she could
just get the rhythm section steady, hopefully the rest would follow, most
especially her common sense.

Chapter
Twelve

Cara spent the half hour sitting on
the front veranda out of everyone’s way, chewing her manicure to bits and
wondering how to play the situation with Levi.

Why had she slept with him? If she
didn’t have a personal interest in this jumble, it would be a lot simpler to
sort out. And why-oh-why had she let herself develop feelings for the man? He
was a bigshot movie producer, used to having women fall at his feet. Why had
she thought she was something special? Clearly, for him, any port in a storm
would do, so to speak. Hadn’t he just demonstrated that with Selena?

Just the thought of Selena prickled
her skin like poison ivy. She hadn’t so much as met the woman, but just her
name made Cara’s scalp crawl. Cara wasn’t usually the judgmental type and she
was surprised and a bit bewildered by her sudden and baseless dislike for the
woman. Sure, Selena clearly had a history and a continuing affection for Levi.
But that was no crime. Levi was a grown man and a free agent. He could be
affectionate or even get reacquainted with whomever he wanted to. In truth,
Cara told herself, Selena barely made it onto her list of concerns. Her main
worry was Levi.

In a nutshell, she had managed to
embroil herself in a terrible tangle with him. Every time she picked up a
thread of the state of affairs, she unwittingly unravelled a whole other twist
of issues. Why had she let her feelings become involved?

Something in her line of thinking
snagged her attention. She replayed her thought process and latched on to an
idea. If she took her feelings for Levi out of the equation, pretended they didn’t
exist, what would she do?

In her mind, she summed up the
circumstances as impartially as she could. That was her knack, after all. She
had excised her feelings about her mother to complete her film script, she
would eliminate them from the equation with Levi now.

Levi needed money. He wanted to
find the missing fortune at all costs, even going so far as buying her
screenplay and offering to make her film, plus pumping her for information
using any methods at his disposal.

God. Even in her confusion and
fury, memories of his “methods” suffused her cheeks with heat and made her
mouth water. Everything about Levi was red-hot, racy, and riveting. The guy was
a sexy ass lust demon and she wanted him beyond reason.

She tried to force her mind back on
track, but quelling her desire was like wrestling an alligator. Everything
inside her resisted her efforts to be objective. Whenever he crossed her
thoughts, her heart flipped and switched like an Olympic trampoline ace. Her
mind threw up random electrifying snapshots of the pair of them
in flagrante—
her head thrown back, his
mouth suckling her breast, his hands in her hair and his sex buried in her
mouth, her riding him ,hard and reckless and exhilarated, him gripping her
buttocks and plunging into her from behind…

And her soul? Her soul hummed along
to its own annoyingly smug tune as though it knew that there was nothing she
could do to escape her fate, a fate intricately intertwined with the destiny of
one devilishly sexy, dangerously addictive movie producer.

However, Cara’s next thought short-circuited
her crazy-making hunger and her prescience.

Maybe the situation was worse than
she had thought. Perhaps Levi had never given a rat’s ass about her screenplay
in the first place. Perhaps he never really intended to make the movie. Could
it be that he just wanted to get Cara here alone and uncover any information
she might have about Alessandra’s cash? Maybe her screenplay was just worthless
self-indulgent crap about her mother. Maybe he was just flattering her with
talk about fame and success. Although, if that were the case, all the people at
work, the scaffolding, the equipment sure suggested Levi was willing to jump
through hoops to make the charade look convincing. But if there was a fortune
wrapped up in looking convincing, wouldn’t he make that effort, financial
daredevil that he was?

On the other hand, how was he to have
known that she would be at Flinders’ Keep a day early? He had no way of guessing
he would find her there alone. And what about the storm? Did her orchestrate
that, too, so they were marooned together? Clearly chance played a large part
in their coming together.

Well, okay, maybe he wasn’t trying
to get her alone. Her early arrival and the storm were a bonus for him. But he
wanted her at Flinders’ Keep where he could push her for information and hunt
for the fortune. Why else would he have invited her? He said it was to work on
the script, but was that the truth? Was the script ever going to make it off
the study floor?

She was more confused by her new
thoughts than when she had started down this trail of supposedly emotionless ponderings.
Levi would be back any minute to take her to Ocean Ridge. She really needed a
game plan if she was going to survive riding with him in the close confines of
the truck’s cab. Maybe she should skip the in depth analytics, she thought, and
get to the bottom line.

Without all the extraneous issues,
it was a simple task for her to sum up their positions impartially.

In her favor, she had the secret
letter that he didn’t know about. Plus, she had firsthand knowledge of Alessandra.
Also, it was widely known that the fortune Alessandra had reputedly left behind
was intended for her daughters. He would have a hard time claiming it.

In Levi’s favor, he owned the Flinders’
Keep property and all its contents. She mentally kicked herself for not
following their lawyer’s advice and keeping the old house until the treasure
turned up. At that point, she had just wanted to be rid of the estate, angry at
her mother and convinced there was no fortune to be found.

Once she summarized the situation
without tainting it with messy feelings, she could see a clear course of
action. She needed to give in to his demands for more sex in the film. She
would show him the letter and he could roll up his sleeves and get lost in his
work, assuming he really wanted to make the film. If it was all a charade, that
would become abundantly clear once she pressed the green light on the sex
scenes.

While he was occupied with getting
the set built and the shooting underway, she could hunt for the fortune and…
And what? Steal it away from the property? Wasn’t that underhanded? Illegal, even?
Some might call it “theft.” She brushed the negative thoughts away. As soon as
she realized his surreptitious agenda, any and all ways and wiles became fair.
Didn’t they?

A little voice piped up, reminding
her that she had no need of a fortune, that, in fact, a fortune was exactly the
kind of burden she had spent her life avoiding. But her stubborn mind, tinged
with prickling pride, insisted that she had to have it, if only to keep Levi’s
hands off it.

It would serve him right, she
thought, for manipulating her and for two-timing with Selena. Not that she and
Levi had made any declarations of exclusivity, of course. But…

Speaking of Selena, it crossed her
mind that fast-tracking the film might push Levi and Selena closer together. What
did they say about romance in a pressure cooker environment? Cara told herself
she didn’t care. She would find the fortune and get the hell out of there. If
she had learned anything over the years, it was that when the going got tough,
getting the hell out of Dodge was her best bet. It was a theory that had never
let her down.

The thought of walking away from
Levi and leaving him for Selena made her heart clench.

She ignored it.

Keeping
emotion out of the equation is highly artificial given that you’ve handed Levi your
heart.

“Shut up, Mia,” she muttered, and
returned Levi’s wave as he came out through the front door.

****

The drive was spent quietly, the
radio playing Springsteen and U2. The tension was unmissable, but as long as
her body language stayed closed, he kept his mouth that way too. He had learned
a thing or two about life over the years and keeping quiet when next to a live
grenade was one of them. He’d wait until she was ready to open up and then take
it slow and easy. Hopefully, they could both get out of the ride alive.

At one point, he thought he saw a
flash of red at a crossroad, three or four streets away that might have been
her bike, but he didn’t raise it with her. Things were too volatile.
She
was too volatile. And this time, not
in a good way.

He smirked, thinking of all the
other times she had been explosive in all the right ways—against him, beneath
him, astride him…man, but she was a spicy sex witch.

But Cara had been acting strangely
that morning. He didn’t know what might be up with her. Hormones acting up? The
thought crossed his mind—hey, he was a guy—but, in his memory, his kid sister
gave him a mental slap.
“Just because a
woman’s upset, don’t assume she’s PMS-ing or tonight, while you’re in bed, I’ll
assume you’re dead and bury you!”
He smiled, imagining Erin’s flushed face
and eyes spitting sparks. She was a pocket rocket all right.

“Happy thought?” Cara asked,
breaking the silence.

His hand went to his scar.

At least Erin had been a pocket
rocket until…

He couldn’t answer Cara. The
grimness was clawing at his chest by then and he could do nothing but shake his
head and keep driving, not looking at her, thinking of nothing but the road and
waiting for the unbearable clutches to let go of his innards, let some air into
his lungs and let his heart beat in time again.

****

Levi pulled up outside Sails where
they had shared a conversation only a few short days ago. Since then, nothing
had really changed, except they’d slept together. A lot.

The film didn’t have more sex, the fortune
was still missing, and he had no clue where to take their relationship. Hell,
he didn’t even know where the relationship stood at that moment.
Hard to know where you’re going when you don’t
know where you’re starting from.

But he didn’t begrudge Cara her
pensive mood. She’d had a heavy week. Not only had her motorcycle been stolen,
she had also come face to face with her past in terms of staying at the family
home and copping a serve from her sister about the film. Both of which had
probably compounded her complex feelings about her mother.

Then, there was the sleeping
together thing. Guys seemed to take it in their stride, or at least pretend to.
He’d noticed that sometimes sex messed with women’s heads. They got mixed up
between feeling and feeling—that is, feeling great with their skin on fire and
their brain exploding mid-orgasm, and feeling messy emotions like caring and love
and stuff.

Mind you, when it came to Cara, he
had to admit was getting a taste of that weird kind of emotive confusion
himself. Why else had he made up that excuse about the bacon so he could drive
her into town? Why hadn’t he handed over the car keys and let her drive, or
better still, left her back at the house to cool her heels and find her own way
into town? It wasn’t like he owed her anything. It wasn’t as if they had any
obligation to one another…

“You want a coffee?” she asked,
though she didn’t seem particularly enthusiastic.

If he drank anymore coffee this
morning, it would probably burn clean through his stomach lining and scar his
intestines, but he wasn’t going to miss the chance to sort things out with her,
so they walked into the café together and settled in the same booth they’d sat
in last time. He ordered a latte.

He waited for her to get settled.
Waited for her to order her tea—Irish Breakfast, this time.
 
Waited for her to set the tone of the
conversation.

“So, I found something,” she told
him.

He raised an eyebrow, his interest
piqued but on the lookout for stray gunfire or loose cannons.

“It was in the book of faerie tales
I was reading.”

“Witch? Big bad wolf? Other talking
animals…” Now really wasn’t the time to wisecrack, he told himself, but he
couldn’t help it. His head was all over the place—one minute he was laughing at
childhood memories, the next he was sorting out the set building crew, but
mostly he was careening up and down a rollercoaster with Cara’s name on it,
plunging into scary emotional places and climbing to the highest physical highs
of his life. Hell, maybe it was
his
hormones playing havoc here. Maybe he was having an early midlife crisis.

****

The waitress arrived with their
order. As she set their drinks out on the table, Cara considered backpedalling.
Not confessing after all. Making up some story about finding a special bookmark
or a pressed flower or a sage passage in the book of faerie tales. But she
needed the film to reflect the truth, and the truth was her mother had had a
lover. She also needed to get Levi busy. So busy he would take his eye of the
very valuable, very hidden ball. That way she could find the fortune and…

Well, she could give Mia her half
and buy a new motorcycle and…donate the rest to the local film school or a
girls’ education program, or even a cat’s home. As long as the sexy slime-bucket
kept his clutches off her inheritance, she didn’t care.