He wanted to rage, throw chairs at walls, strap on an arsenal “Punisher” style, and hunt down the man who would dare threaten the woman he loved. He wanted to bundle Reggie up and haul her off to an impenetrable fortress in the mountains where he could keep her locked up and safe from the world.
Instead, he swallowed his anger, focusing on her melting brown eyes, her soft hand curled so trustingly around his. “You can’t leave me,” she whispered. “You love me, remember?”
S
omehow Reggie got through the rest of the day. A police officer arrived and questioned the assistant, Reggie, and Gabe and took the photo and note as evidence. Gabe also contacted the detective in San Francisco to make sure he was in touch with the LAPD.
It shocked Reggie how easy it was to get back into the groove of the photo shoot, given the morning’s events. The stalker’s message had shaken her to her core, and she didn’t think she was capable of pasting on a sultry smile for the cameras.
Except every time she looked she saw Gabe watching her with that tormented intensity of his. All at once she could feel his hands on her sweaty skin, feel him grinding deep inside her, whispering how much he loved her.
Each time the thought popped into her head, the photographer would shout, “Yes! That’s the look I want!”
Maybe she was turning into a nympho, when even threats of physical harm couldn’t dissuade her body from throbbing with lust every time she so much as looked at Gabe.
Later that evening, she and Gabe met Natalie and Tyler for dinner to discuss how to manage a major public appearance she had scheduled for the following night.
“I can’t cancel every public appearance, Gabe,” she said as she sipped at her Kirin. They were at a trendy sushi place in West Hollywood. She’d been skeptical when Natalie suggested taking them to one of her “favorite L.A. restaurants,” fully expecting the menu to contain nothing but an assortment of lettuces and corresponding fat-free dressings.
Then again, Reggie remembered reading somewhere that sashimi was widely hailed by many stars as a favorite diet food.
Gabe drank iced tea, coldly refusing Tyler’s suggestion of a beer with his patented “I’m on the job and don’t have time to dick around” look. “The guy knows your every move. He says he wants to punish you, and you want to go to an unsecured venue where anyone can get close. It’s a bad idea.” He sat back in his chair, as though the matter was closed.
Reggie expected Tyler to defend her case, but he rubbed his jaw pensively and looked at Natalie as though waiting for her opinion.
Weird. Since when did Tyler give a crap what Natalie thought, Reggie thought crabbily. She took another sip of her beer. Clearly, the stress of the day was catching up.
The waiter came over and Natalie started to order, but Reggie jumped in, too hungry to risk letting her dinner get messed up by Natalie’s finicky food habits. After she requested her nigiri combo and miso soup, she nudged Gabe, who ordered a mountain of sushi and a plate of chicken teriyaki.
Tyler graciously motioned for Natalie to order. “I’ll have the sashimi appetizer and a salad, no dressing.”
Tyler glared at her for a split second, then smiled up to the waiter. “She’ll also have an order of unagi, a California roll, and a spicy tuna hand roll. And a regular beer. I’ll have the nigiri combo with tempura, and bring out edamame and gyoza for the table.”
“I can’t eat all that,” Natalie said through clenched teeth. “I’ll blow up like Jabba the Hutt.”
“You ordered one ounce of fish and lettuce,” Tyler snapped. “You can’t live on that.”
Reggie was fascinated, momentarily distracted from her personal safety issues by the interchange between her sister and Tyler.
As far as she knew, Tyler only tolerated Natalie because she was Reggie’s sister.
Now Natalie, who meticulously controlled every morsel of food she ingested, had allowed someone else to order for her. And when the appetizers arrived, she actually ate a pork-filled, oil-sautéed potsticker.
“You’re going to regret this when I get huge,” Natalie muttered to Tyler around the dumpling. “Especially when I already ate a sandwich today. With mayonnaise!”
“You ate a sandwich?” Reggie said, stunned. “You don’t eat bread.”
“Half a sandwich,” Tyler corrected, expertly wielding the chopsticks to proffer up another dumpling.
Reggie nearly fell off her chair.
Gabe busily chewed his own dumpling, clearly unconcerned by the bizarre interaction occurring across the table.
“Are you a secret chubby chaser?” Natalie said, giving Tyler a look that was positively gooney.
As though she and Gabe didn’t exist, Tyler slid his arm across the back of her sister’s chair and nuzzled his nose into the caramel-streaked hair covering her ear. Whatever he whispered made her emit a squealing giggle and slap him playfully on the shoulder.
Reggie cleared her throat pointedly. “So, Tyler, what do we do about tomorrow? Tickets have been on sale for months.”
Tyler sat up straight, but didn’t remove his arm from Natalie’s chair. “I agree with Gabe,” he said reluctantly. He held up his hand when Reggie opened her mouth to protest. “It’s not safe. People get close to you when you sign their books—what if someone sneaks a weapon in?” He looked to Gabe for confirmation.
“Why can’t we do security checks at the door?” Natalie asked as she nibbled on another soybean pod. “Frisk people and stuff.”
Tyler shook his head, leaning back as the waitress swapped empty appetizer plates for their entrées. “We’re talking tomorrow. That doesn’t give the bookstore enough time to hire a real security force. I’m assuming we’d want something better than the usual rent-a-cops.”
Gabe nodded in agreement.
Reggie chewed sullenly at a piece of yellowtail sushi. “I’m willing to take the risk, so I don’t see why it’s a problem.” She reached out and slid her hand along Gabe’s thigh, reassured by the heat and muscled strength seeping through the fabric of his pants. “I know you’ll protect me.”
Gabe shook his head wearily. “But you’re the only one I can protect. What about Natalie?”
Reggie noticed that Tyler’s hand instinctively tightened over her sister’s shoulder.
“What if this guy goes after the people close to you if he can’t get to you?”
“He did kill Rex,” Natalie pointed out around a mouthful of Ahi tuna.
Guilt and worry turned Reggie’s sushi into a big rice cement ball in her gut. When had she become so selfish? It had never occurred to her that the people around her were in danger too. She would never forgive herself if anything happened to Natalie, or God forbid, Gabe, just because she was too afraid of disappointing fans and getting bad publicity.
“You’re right,” she said quietly. “I’m being stupid.” She pushed her sushi over to Gabe, who obligingly went to work on her uneaten portion. To Tyler, she said, “How do we do this without angering the event organizers?”
It would be a major headache for the store to have to refund tickets and preordered books. Not to mention that it would reflect badly on Tyler when he tried to book future clients.
“I have an idea,” Natalie interjected. “The sketchiest part is the book signing, right? That’s the only time strangers get to actually approach you.” At Reggie’s nod, she continued, “The rest of the time you’re on a stage. So what if we got a few more rent-a-cops to surround the podium area and you just presigned all of the books? Only the book signing is canceled, but fans still get your autograph, and the store keeps money from ticket and book sales.”
Reggie wondered if she’d stumbled into some bizarro parallel universe when Tyler told Natalie she was the biggest creative genius he’d ever met.
It took more prodding to convince Gabe, but he’d finally, albeit reluctantly, agreed to their amended security plan.
“Think of it as a professional challenge,” Reggie had joked. “When’s the last time on this job you’ve had to really be on your toes?”
Gabe was only slightly mollified by the five additional security guards that flanked the demo stage. They all struck him as lazy and unobservant. One had even complained that he’d have to stand for the entire forty-five minutes of Reggie’s presentation.
The way he saw it, he was on his own.
Even more irritating was Reggie’s seemingly cavalier attitude about the whole thing, and he told her so.
“What do you want me to do?” she said as she directed the cooking assistants where to place her ingredients. “Curl up in a cave until this guy gets caught or gives up for real?”
“Sounds good to me.” He ignored her glare. “You strike me as remarkably cheery for a woman who has a guy out there who wants to punish her.”
“But I can also look on the bright side,” she said with a grin. “Since the local press covered the incident yesterday, tickets for this event sold out, and they expect to move every single copy of my book.” She tied an apron around her trim waist.
The sellout crowd was starting to file in. Mostly women, as usual, but a larger than average number of younger men were in the mix. Guys who had seen the gossip and wanted to see whether Reggie was actually hot enough to merit her own stalker.
Judging from the looks she received, every man in the room thought she was.
Gabe’s hands fisted at his sides as he fought the urge to wrap her up in his suit coat, hiding her luscious curves from fifty pairs of leering eyes. “If I didn’t know you better,” he said through clenched teeth, “I’d almost think you were grateful for the stalker and all the extra publicity he’s gotten you.”
Reggie, who was busy fixing her makeup, slowly lowered her lipstick and deliberately rubbed her lips together. “That was a really shitty thing to say.” She snapped her purse shut. “And I’m going to try really hard to forget it.”
Shame filled him, bringing heated color to his face. Fuck. This was why he sucked at relationships. Invariably he got upset and said things he didn’t mean. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I’m worried about you. You know that. And sometimes I don’t think you take your safety seriously enough.”
Her cold expression barely softened. “You can’t blame me for trying to make the best of a crappy situation, Gabe. That’s the kind of person I am. If I see an opportunity, I’ll take it. Even if it means putting a positive spin on having a psycho follow me.”
Before he could reply, the store manager motioned her that it was time to begin. As though a curtain came over her, her tense façade melted away, giving way to the bubbly smile millions of fans knew and loved.
Her rapid, effortless transformation gave him a slightly queasy feeling.
Reggie was a much better actress than he realized.
An hour later, Gabe stood within easy arm’s reach of Reggie as she chatted with the store events manager. The crowd was dispersing quickly, and if they were disappointed that they couldn’t get their books signed personally, they didn’t show it.
Was their guy here? Gabe had scanned the crowd a hundred times looking for any sign that might point him in the right direction. An overly intense stare. Even a fake-looking beard or head of hair that could indicate a disguise.
He’d asked Reggie to keep an eye out for anyone she might recognize with no luck.
Then again, the stalker seemed to get off on contacting Reggie when she least expected it, when her whereabouts were supposed to be secret. This event had been scheduled and publicized for weeks. It would be too obvious for him to show up here.
His eyes locked on to someone approaching Reggie from behind—a man, about five-foot ten with a medium build and enough product in his dirty blond hair to present a fire hazard. His mouth was set in tight lines and his hand was outstretched, reaching for her arm.
A nanosecond later, Gabe had the guy’s forearm in a vice grip behind his back and was grinding his face into the demo table.
“What the hell?” the guy yelled, his voice muffled as Gabe squashed his face into the Formica.
“Keep your hands off her,” Gabe roared, Reggie’s frantic voice barely registering over the pounding in his ears. Something about her tone penetrated the red haze before he snapped the guy’s arm and he eased up, but just barely.
“I know him; you can let him go.” Reggie placed one hand against Gabe’s back, the other on the hand that still viciously gripped the other guy’s arm. “Let him go, Gabe.”
He did so reluctantly enough to convey the message that if the guy so much as breathed wrong, Gabe wouldn’t hesitate to inflict more damage.
The guy shot Reggie a look of outrage, but apparently had enough sense to keep his mouth shut.
“Craig Ferguson, meet Gabe Bankovic.” Neither offered a hand.
Turning to Gabe, she said in a falsely bright tone, “Craig is my ex-boyfriend, who you’ve heard about”—she swung around to Craig—“and Gabe is my bodyguard and…” Her voice trailed off and he heard her mumble something under her breath.
“Bodyguard?” Craig sounded surprised. Obviously he hadn’t been keeping up on his ex’s press clippings lately. “Since when do you need a bodyguard?”
“I’ve had some…unusual fan activity recently,” Reggie replied.
“Hey, if you didn’t like the stuff I sent—”
Gabe leaned forward menacingly. He didn’t think Craig was their guy, but the way he came off, so arrogant and trying to play himself off as a badass, really pissed him off. Not to mention the fact that the guy was apparently so much of a pussy he couldn’t handle it when his girlfriend’s success rivaled his own.
“Hey”—Craig held up his hands and scrambled back—“I’m kidding!” He shot Reggie an indignant look. “How’d you hook up with Cro-Magnon man?”
Reggie gave him the short version of the stalker and his increasingly violent threats. Craig made appropriately sympathetic noises.
“Sorry to hear about your trouble. I was in town and wanted to say hi. Word around the network is that your new show is going to be a huge hit, and I wanted to say congratulations.” Craig said the last part in the tone of someone who is sincerely happy for someone else’s success, while simultaneously burning with envy that it is not his own.
Reggie smiled warmly up at Craig, impulsively drawing him close for a hug. Gabe ignored the tight knot in his belly as he watched the other man return the embrace.
It wasn’t that he was jealous or threatened in any way by the little wuss. He just didn’t like the idea that this man at one point had access to every silky inch of Reggie’s body.
He wondered idly if Reggie would feel the same unpleasant burn the next time she saw Marly Chase on a magazine cover.
Reggie thanked Craig and excused herself to go speak with the event organizer, who looked very pleased with tonight’s turnout.