After getting hardly any sleep, I woke up feeling like death the next day. I barely left my bed and didn’t speak to Hendrix at all. I worked from my room and kept ignoring texts and calls from my brothers.
The day after, I woke up feeling better. My bruises had darkened to a vicious purple that would never let me blend in, but my body didn’t throb under them. I decided to start my plan of softening Hendrix, since I was feeling more human. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I was prepared to work for it. I had to get back to work and that meant escaping his watch.
I showered and changed into more leggings and another one of my brother’s old sweatshirts. They hung off of me, but were more comfortable than anything I owned. I pulled my hair up in a bun and, with a growling stomach, left my room in search of food.
Hendrix was standing at the doorway to the balcony on the back of the house. It overlooked the ocean beautifully. He glanced back at me when I came out and nodded. “You’ve got a beautiful view.”
I nodded. “Jennifer, the woman who hired you, picked this place for me. She didn’t cut corners, that’s for sure.”
He turned to face me completely and I almost sighed. Having been surrounded by Hollywood types for a while, it was almost unnerving to be close to a man whose muscles were obviously hard earned. He was also looking good enough to eat in a simple black t-shirt and jeans. Tattoos covered the parts of his arms that I could see, all the way down to his wrists, and I had to pry my eyes away.
“I’m going to make some breakfast. Would you like some?”
He followed me into the kitchen and leaned against the counter to watch me. “If it’s not too much trouble.”
Turning on the charm, I smiled back at him. “I cooked for six brothers when I was growing up. You’re no trouble. How do you like your eggs?”
“However you make them.” Hendrix crossed his arms and tilted his head back. “Six brothers, huh? That’s a lot. One of them serve?”
I looked down at the label across my chest and nodded. “All of them. They all went into the Navy, except the youngest. He went into the Marines.”
“Me and my brothers all went Navy, too. Your father serve?”
I laughed at the idea of my father serving. He was more Santa Claus than big, bad soldier. “No. He’s a dentist. Way more hippie than any of my brothers like to admit. I don’t know how my brothers ended up going the way they did, besides the fact that they all had too much testosterone to do anything else.”
“Ouch.”
I looked at him over my shoulder and pushed my glasses up with my knuckle. “I’m sure you and your brothers weren’t like mine. The world isn’t cruel enough to have more than one family of brothers like them.”
He shrugged. “I guess we were barely better behaved than a pack of wild dogs.”
I grinned and refocused on cracking eggs into a bowl. “Any sisters?”
“No. Just two brothers.”
I washed my hands and bent over to grab a skillet from the bottom cabinets. “I’m going to scramble them. That sound good? With toast and maybe some bacon, if I have any.”
When he didn’t reply, I glanced back and caught him staring at my ass. I quickly turned away and acted like I hadn’t seen it. Instead, I grabbed the skillet and stood up. Still, he didn’t reply, so I decided that scrambled would be fine.
My cheeks were burning and I was suddenly very aware of just how small the kitchen was. I dropped the skillet onto the stove, my fingers slipping, and the loud bang it made caused me to jump. My nerves were shot with him so close.
“You okay?”
I nodded without looking up from the stove. “Yeah, I’m good. Thanks. Do you need to make rounds or anything?”
A low chuckle was my only indication that he knew I was rattled. “I actually just did them right before you came out, so I’m all yours.”
My core clenched at the idea and I blew out a rough breath. What was wrong with me? I had to get my shit together. My plan to turn on the charm wasn’t working. Instead, I was just finding myself turned on and off-kilter.
I closed my eyes for a second and pretended he wasn’t there. When I opened them, it was easier to push through cooking. I acted like he’d gone into another room and it was just me in the kitchen.
It worked until I turned to grab bread for the toaster. It was in the cabinet right behind Hendrix. I swallowed and it sounded like a bomb going off in the silence.
I could almost see a challenge in the way Hendrix lifted an eyebrow and flexed his arms. Never one to back down, I moved so that I was standing right in front of him. “I’ve got to get the bread from behind you.”
He leaned just enough for me to open the door, but I’d still have to practically press myself against him to get it. “Got it?”
I leaned in closer and stretched up on my toes to grab it. My chest brushed against his and I felt my nipples harden instantly. I bit my lip until it hurt and held his gaze. I wasn’t backing down.
Hendrix’s large hands settled on my hips as he steadied me. “Careful now.”
It was too late for that. Careful would’ve been staying on my own side of the kitchen and never experiencing the feel of his hands on my body. My fingers brushed over the bread but I’d lost the ability to actually grab it. I was in a stupor. How long had it been since I’d had a man’s hands on me?
Hendrix easily spun us around so that I was pressed between his body and the counter. He grabbed the bread from behind me and dropped it on the counter. “Need anything else?”
Yes. I needed a lot of things that could require his assistance. They were all flashing through my head, in varying degrees of nakedness. His nakedness. I wanted to know how far the tattoos went. How much did they cover? Was he big everywhere? What would his fingers feel like? His tongue?
He stared down at me, his eyes narrowed on my mouth. He caught my lower lip with his thumb and pulled it out from between my teeth. “Don’t you think you’re battered enough?”
My phone rang from my bedroom and it was just what I needed to regain my brain. I slipped out from between him and the counter and rushed to grab it. I answered it while hurrying back to make sure the eggs didn’t burn. “Hello?”
“Darby! Thank God. I’ve been trying to get you on Skype. Can you get on and call me? Samford has me trying to shoot a scene and I need you to make sure I have the feeling right.”
I turned the eggs down and grabbed my laptop. “Sure, Laster. Give me just a second.”
I turned on Skype and called him when it was up, unusually eager to talk to him. Anything to ignore the tension with Hendrix. I looked through the fridge while the connection was made and frowned. “Looks like I used all the bacon.”
Before Hendrix could reply, Laster was on the screen. He was dressed like Aaron Gadberry and looked every bit the awkward loser that Aaron was. “Hey, Darby! Thanks for this.”
I nodded. “You’re shooting the scene where Aaron confesses to the murders, right?”
“Yeah. Samford is telling me to play the scene really somber and nervous, but I remembered talking to you about it before and you not thinking about that way.”
I swore. “Fucking Samford. He’s still trying to make this some fucking sympathy film for Aaron. Aaron wasn’t nervous or somber when he confessed. He was happy. He was shaking with excitement because reporters were coming and everyone was paying attention to him. The whole world was about to turn in his direction and he hadn’t even had to work for their attention. He felt like he was fooling everyone, like he was smarter than everyone around. That’s what you act. Samford can shove a somber foot up his ass.”
Laster’s face transformed and suddenly I felt like I was staring down Aaron Gadberry himself. “I did it. I killed the women.”
I watched as a twisted smile curved one corner of his mouth and his eyes widened slightly. My pulse kicked up a few notches and I took a step away from the computer. “That’s perfect. Just do that.”
He grinned and leaned in closer. “I like that sweatshirt on you. I’m going to a party tonight, for Jane Vita’s divorce. You want to come with me?”
My cheeks went red, but it wasn’t because I was flushed with excitement. I was embarrassed to be asked out by a coworker at all, much less in front of Hendrix. “I’m stuck at home, Laster. Doctor’s orders. I’ve gotta go, though. I’m burning my eggs. Call me if you need more help with the script.”
I slammed the laptop shut and kept my back to Hendrix as I stirred the eggs that weren’t burning. I grabbed the toaster from the small pantry and moved past Hendrix to grab the bread. Damn bread.
“It sounds like you’ve got a fan.”
I waved a hand. “He’s a nice guy.”
“Uh huh.” That was all he said on the subject and I wasn’t about to argue with him.
I finished cooking the eggs and toast and plated them. “Salt and pepper?”
“Sure. And maybe a bit of paprika?”
I tossed a grin at him over my shoulder. “Mr. Crimson, you’re a spice man?”
He took his plate and followed me into the living room and then out onto the balcony. “I guess I am. Damn, it’s beautiful out here.”
I curled up in my patio chair and took a bite of my eggs before replying. “The first couple of weeks I was here, I just sat out here and stared. They don’t have a view like this back home. We’ve got a lake, but this is just…the stuff dreams are made of.”
“Where are you from?”
“A little town in Kansas.” I looked over at him and shrugged. “Nowhere, basically. The only thing there is my family and a liquor store, pretty much.”
He put his plate down, already finished. “So, small town girl turned Hollywood big deal, huh?”
I laughed. “Not exactly. You skipped a bunch in the middle. Small town girl turned devoted student, turned nosy-ass journalist, turned novelist, turned Hollywood little fish.”
“Nosy-ass journalist? I read your book yesterday. Interesting stuff. You working on something like that now?”
My heart skipped a beat and my stomach fluttered. He’d read my book. He was also fishing to find out what I was doing, if I was sneaking out for a reason. “Nah, I’m just trying to focus on the movie. The Gadberry case means a lot to me. Unfortunately, Samford, the director, is set on making it some kind of touching movie, instead of what it actually is. He wants Aaron Gadberry to be this victim of circumstance, an innocent character in a play of Thomas’s evil. “That’s just not how it was, though.”
“Jennifer mentioned that you’ve gotten a bunch of hate mail from people who think of Aaron as their generation’s hero. Like he’s some sort of representation of their sad lives and taking control over them.”
I pushed my plate onto the table between us and frowned. “I don’t know. I think it’s all such bullshit.”
“Still not happy to have me here?”
I crossed my arms over my chest and shook my head. “Honestly? No. I don’t think the threat is real. Am I really supposed to be afraid of a group of people whose hero is a boy who couldn’t actually do anything in his life except take credit for someone else’s shit?”
He shrugged. “Better safe than sorry, right?”
I couldn’t hold his gaze, knowing that I was going to sneak away from him whenever I needed to. “Sure.”