Chapter One
PARKER COLLINS SHOVED a handful of M&M’s in her mouth, eyes glued to Saw III. A burst of light illuminated the pitch-black media room, followed by a scream of terror. Christmas, her four-year-old English mastiff, sacked out beside her on the couch, pushed his big head beneath her legs as darkness shrouded them again. Another shrill scream brought her big chicken of a dog deeper into her leg tunnel.
“Whoever said dogs were a man’s best friend was an idiot. My best friend.” Especially now that Bert’s gone. A few tears slipped down her cheek.
Christmas whimpered, pulled his head from beneath her legs, and licked her from chin to eyes, getting every last one of her tears and coming back for more. He’d been lapping up her tears for two weeks, ever since she’d lost her friend, mentor, and the only family she’d ever known. Bert Stein had suffered a massive heart attack while Parker was in Italy filming her latest movie, and she’d been moving on autopilot ever since: picking up Christmas from his housekeeper in Los Angeles because Bert had been watching him while she was away, attending Bert’s funeral, trying to remember how to breathe, and finally, coming to her house in Wellfleet to mourn—and, she hoped, to mend a fence Bert was never able to with his estranged brother.
Holing up in the bay-front home she’d built for the Collins Children’s Foundation, where no one would look for her, was the only way she could grieve without negative ramifications. Heaven forbid an A-list actress went out looking like an average woman whose heart had been ripped from her chest. Rag magazines would pay big bucks for pictures of her puffy, tired eyes and I-don’t-care tangled hair. She could just imagine the headlines: Parker Collins’s New Drug Addiction, or Unplanned Pregnancy for Parker, or anything else that would sell magazines. Nobody cared that she’d never even smoked a cigarette, that she needed to have sex in order to get pregnant, or that she’d gone so long without, she wondered if her best parts even worked anymore.
She pressed her hands to Christmas’s droopy cheeks, kissed her bewildered boy’s snout, and reached for the bottle of tequila she’d been nursing. She’d never had tequila before tonight, but it was the perfect addition to her chocolate–horror movie grief remedy. After pouring herself another shot, she tossed it back in one gulp, savoring the warmth as it slid down her throat and drowned her sadness.
She set the glass beside her on the couch and shoved her hand into the jumbo bag of peanut M&M’s that had consoled her throughout the evening—because a big lazy dog was great for licking tears, but nothing quenched sadness like candy-coated chocolate. And tequila. Definitely tequila. Her fingers scraped the bottom of the bag. Darn it. She tossed the empty bag to the floor. Christmas hung his head over the side of the couch and whimpered.
“Don’t judge me. It can’t be that bad.” She leaned forward to evaluate the damage, knocking an empty pizza box to the floor, and reached for the coffee table to stop the room from spinning. “Whoa.”
Another scream brought her eyes to the movie, then toward the movement in her peripheral vision, where a shadowy figure blocked the entrance to the media room. It took her alcohol-drenched mind a minute to realize the tall, broad man filling the doorway wasn’t supposed to be in her house. Panic spread through her veins, catapulting her to her feet. Christmas darted to the stranger with a friendly woof.
“Oh gosh.” She reached for the wall to steady the spinning room, fighting to push through her drunken haze. She’d seen enough movies to know she was going to die in the media room of this lonely house, wearing chocolate-stained sweatpants—or more accurately, ice-cream-, tequila-, pizza-sauce-, and chocolate-stained sweatpants—while her dog made a new friend of her killer.
“Stay back. He’s a killer. One command and you’re dead!” Not likely with her loving dog.
The man sank to one knee, his face hidden by her big, traitorous dog.
“Yeah, I can see that,” he said casually, as only a coldhearted psycho killer could.
Searching for a weapon, she grabbed the tequila bottle, only too late realizing it was spilling down her wrist. She flipped it upright, wishing this was a movie and someone would yell, Cut!
A piercing scream drew their attention to the heart-pounding terror on the projection screen. Suddenly the room was showered in light. Parker’s eyes slammed shut against the sensory invasion, then flew open to get a look at the man who would probably find fame as the Parker Collins Killer.
Her breath caught in her throat, and her hand flew to her frantically beating heart, as she took in the Greek god rising to his feet before her. His smoldering dark eyes nearly brought her to her knees. Grayson Lacroux.
“Grayson?” Do I sound scared, drunk, or like I want to jump your bones? Probably all three, which wasn’t good. Grayson had won a two-year contract in a design competition last summer, and for the past ten months he’d been designing artwork for the Collins Children’s Foundation. As the founder of CCF, Parker headed up the project, and they’d exchanged hundreds of emails—emails that felt intimate and meaningful and had pulled her through too many long, lonely nights to count.
“What are you doing here?” She cringed at how breathless she sounded. Even in her drunken state she knew it had nothing to do with her initial fears and everything to do with the towering male across the room.
His lips curved up as he surveyed the room. She’d come straight down to the media room in full-on holing-up mode after arriving from LA. Her open suitcase lay in the middle of the floor, lace and silk seeping over the sides. The clothes she’d worn on the flight were strewn across the hardwood floor. One pink high heel peeked out from beneath an empty bag of Twizzlers; the other was nowhere in sight. An orgy of fun-size candy bar wrappers and M&M’s littered the floor.
“I might ask you the same thing.” His voice was low and rich and made the room feel fifty degrees hotter.
Maybe that’s the tequila.
“I came to take measurements for the railing and heard a noise. I didn’t know you were here.”
Measurements? She couldn’t think with his dark, assessing gaze trained on her as he crossed the room. Each step was a declaration of power and control—the same air of confidence he relayed in his emails. Parker was used to beautiful people, but holy mother of hot and sexy men, Grayson brought manliness and sex appeal to a whole new level. An enticingly tempting level. She was five nine, and he had several delicious inches on her. His bulbous biceps and massive breadth made her feel more delicate than she was. His tousled, thick dark hair and unwavering air of command made her knees wobble. She took a deep, unsteady breath and backed against the wall to stabilize those wobbly knees, but he stepped closer, assaulting her senses with his musky, and somehow summery, scent.
Nope. Definitely not the tequila. The man was a walking heat wave.
He eyed the tequila bottle in her hand, and his eyes filled with amusement. “Having a little party?” He plucked a sticky piece of candy from her hair and held it between his large finger and thumb with a cocky grin.
A crazy-hot cocky grin that sent dirty thoughts about his mouth rushing to the front of her mind. “Not exactly,” she mumbled.
“You’ve been avoiding my emails.”
She’d been avoiding email, voicemail, and life since Bert’s funeral. Grayson was on her callback list, along with her agent, a few foundation staff members, and about a dozen so-called friends.
“I…Um…” Can’t really think clearly. She lifted the tequila bottle. “Care to join me?”
His gaze dragged down her tank top, reminding her she’d taken off her bra. As if on cue, Christmas woofed, Parker’s pink lace bra dangling from his mouth. Grayson’s eyes brimmed with heat, making her want to put him on a totally different kind of to-do list.
He’d been the subject of her late-night fantasies for so many months she felt like she already knew him well enough for him to own that list.
This was bad.
Very, very bad.
Parker didn’t have that kind of to-do list. She did relationships. Or rather, didn’t do them, based on her dating history.
Ugh! Her head was too fuzzy to try to untangle the web of lust she’d weaved with every email, every intimate glance into his private world of family, friends, and his love of his craft. Grayson worked with heavy metals, as evident from his insanely perfect physique, which no gym in the world could produce, and his designs were excruciatingly unique and beautiful. Parker had probably driven him crazy making changes, but if she had, he’d never let on. She loved reading his descriptions about why he designed certain pieces and how he felt when he was creating them. Sometimes he wrote about missing his family, or about bonfires and outings he’d gone on when he flew home to work with his brother on specific designs for CCF. She’d been careful not to ask personal questions, so she wouldn’t feel inclined to share her personal life, but she had secretly clung to each of his tales, treasuring the emotions he’d so eloquently shared. She’d made excessive design changes just to keep those intimate glances of him coming.
And now he was here, all six-something feet of him, close enough to see and touch and taste—and between her grief and his hunkiness, she was clearly losing her mind.
She pushed past him, grabbed the lingerie from Christmas, and tossed it into her suitcase. “Lie down.”
Christmas walked in a circle and plopped onto a pile of clothes with a huff.
Parker grabbed a shot glass from the bar, determined to remain in her inebriated state so she could deal with all the testosterone flinging around the room, and sank down to the couch. “Coming, big guy?”
OH YEAH, I’D totally be into… Grayson scrubbed his hand down his face to try to clear that thought from his brain and sat down beside Parker, silently reminding himself that she was technically his boss and a client. That was only one reason he should stop thinking about how incredibly sexy she was. They’d been emailing for almost a year, and he’d sensed affection brewing between them, even if neither one had directly addressed it. Three weeks ago she’d sent him an email pulling him from the foundation project to design a railing for this mini-mansion and had followed it up with a note about being excited to finally get together in person—and he hadn’t heard from her since.
Another reason he needed to keep his sexual urges at bay—because he really needed to find as many reasons as possible right this very second—was the inebriated state and slightly red, puffy eyes of the scrumptious blonde currently reaching across his lap. Her hair tumbled sexily over her bare shoulders as she fished for something between the leather sofa cushions. There was no ignoring the feel of her against his thigh, making him hungry for what he shouldn’t have. At least not tonight, with all that alcohol muddying your thoughts.
She crawled off his lap and held up another shot glass. “Voilà! Fill ’er up!”
Needing the alcohol to calm the inferno inside him, he gladly filled their glasses and handed her one. She wrapped her delicate fingers around his, giving him ideas about what else he’d like to see those slender digits wrapped around. Her blue eyes filled with determination, which he also found incredibly sexy.
“Don’t tell anyone you saw me like this.”
Seriously? Who did she think he’d tell? “I’ll cross putting an article in the paper tomorrow off my list.”
She pushed her face to within an inch of his. His eyes fell to her luscious lips as more erotic thoughts raced through his mind. He was skating on very thin ice.
“Parker can’t do things like cry, or curse, or eat an entire jumbo bag of M&M’s and watch horror movies until her eyes nearly bleed without being judged. Only Polly can do that.”
“Polly?” He reached for her glass, figuring she’d had enough and needed more babysitting than his sexual urges did at the moment.
She pulled her glass out of his reach with a devilish glint in her eyes and clinked it to his. “To Bert. I miss him so much I ache.” She downed the drink in one swallow.
Bert? Jealousy clawed at him. He shifted his gaze away from her, taking in the room again. Tequila, chocolate, pizza? Two weeks of radio silence. Aw, man. Hallmarks of a rough breakup. That thought bugged the heck out of him, so he moved on to another. Maybe this was her typical go-to stress release after filming and Bert was her…director? No way she’d ache for her director. Unless…something else, anything else. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get past his first assessment. Had their emails only felt personal? It was difficult to evaluate a lot of things over email, so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he’d misinterpreted the depth of their friendship, regardless of the heat simmering between them now.
As she refilled their glasses, he realized she’d never mentioned her dog. He’d talked about his family and friends, and if he’d had a dog, he sure as heck would have mentioned it. Who would leave out their dog? Feeling like a complete numskull, he realized she’d never mentioned her family, either. Had he been sucked in by her musings over how pretty the countryside was and how she wished he was there to see it? And her off-the-cuff remarks about how acting would be easier if the other actors were as confident as he was?
Another look around the room told him he was an idiot.
This is a post breakup breakdown. So much for babysitting. He could deal with a lot of things, but picking up the pieces from some other guy’s mistakes was not one of them. He downed the shot, thankful she’d refilled their glasses.
“Bert?” he mumbled to himself, thinking about how he’d like to wring the jerk’s neck—right after he wrung his own for being such a fool. Parker was America’s sweetheart. Right up there with Julia Roberts. While he’d been slowly falling for the sweet, gorgeous woman a million miles away, she’d probably been out with dozens of Hollywood heartthrobs. He didn’t like knowing he’d misinterpreted their friendship, but he only had himself to blame for that. But he didn’t appreciate being blown off or having his time wasted. He couldn’t move forward with the railing designs he’d sent her over the past two weeks without her approval—and she’d obviously been too wrapped up in whoever Bert was to answer a single email.
It was time for him to leave.
She turned her big, tear-filled baby blues on him, making him sorry he’d come by to get the final measurements for the railing. “Bert was the best man on the planet. He was—” Tequila spilled over the top of the glass. “Oh, gosh! Darn it! I…”
“I’ve got it.” Grayson pushed to his feet, needing to put distance between them anyway, because regardless of his not wanting to still be attracted to her, every fiber of his being had been consumed with her for months. He found a towel behind the bar.
Christmas lumbered over, sniffed the spillage, and went back to lying on the pile of clothes, leaving Grayson to mop up the mess—and scrub out his urge to be a jerk and walk out the door, leaving her alone to deal with her breakup woes. Hearing about some guy—other than him—that she thought was the best man on the planet was nowhere on tonight’s agenda.
“Maybe you’ve had enough.” He tossed the wet towel on the bar, grabbed another and wet it down.
“Oh no.” She shook her head, waving a finger at him. “No amount of tequila is enough right now. I’ve never had tequila before, and you know what? I like it. It’s delicious. Numbing. Truly helpful right now.”
He wiped down the coffee table with the clean, wet towel and tried to keep the distaste from coming out in his voice. “I’m sure there are plenty of other guys to take his place.”
Her mouth gaped.
He turned away and tossed the towel on the bar, having no patience for women who pretended they didn’t know they were pretty. “You’re Parker Collins. Tons of guys want y—” He turned around and nearly bowled her over. His arm circled her waist to keep her from falling. “Whoa. You okay?” Apparently she wasn’t only a skilled actress, but she also had wicked ninja skills.
Tears slid down her cheek, conflicting with the anger in her eyes.
“Bert Stein wasn’t a guy. You shouldn’t assume. You’re…infuriatingly male.” She twisted from his grip, downed another shot, and sank down to the couch again. More tears fell, turning the anger in her eyes to sadness and filling him with guilt.
Grayson’s compassion overpowered his hatred of drama. He had a younger sister, and if she was this sad and a guy was with her but didn’t try to help, he’d pummel the guy. He sat beside Parker and gave himself over to five minutes of torture. “All right, I’ll bite. Who was he?” And by the way, why didn’t you tell me you were here? I wouldn’t have barged in.
She reached for the tequila, and he reached for her hand. Their eyes connected. Hers were so full of conflicting emotions—heat and sorrow—it stirred all the affection he was trying to push aside. He kept ahold of her hand and guided her back from the edge of the couch, taking her emotions more seriously, unwilling to let her fall any further into the blankness alcohol had to offer. He knew about that crutch all too well, having dealt with his father’s alcoholism a few years ago.
“Tell me about Bert,” he said in a softer tone. At Bert’s name, Christmas’s head popped up. The dog surveyed the room, then lowered his chin to his paws again and closed his eyes. At least Bert knew she had a dog.
“He was my…everything,” she said just above a whisper. “And now he’s gone.”
His heart ached at the sadness in her voice, pushing the jealousy in him to the pit of his stomach. When she lifted her eyes, another tear slid down her cheek, forcing that ache a little deeper.
“Gone, as in he went somewhere?” Grayson asked, hoping she hadn’t lost her lover forever. “Or gone as in, gone?”
“Gone. He was like a father to me, and two weeks ago he passed away.” She swallowed hard, more tears spilling from her beautiful eyes.
His breath hitched in his throat. A father? They’d emailed for nearly a year. How could he not know about someone so important to her? Now he was not only an idiot, but a jerk for assuming she was overreacting to a rough breakup.
She turned away, causing a torrent of emotions in him. The desire to pull her in to his arms until her sadness subsided obliterated every other thought. He gathered her close, soothingly stroking her back, remembering the gut-wrenching devastation he’d experienced after he’d unexpectedly lost his mother to an aneurysm. He closed his eyes with the memory, pushing his own painful past aside, and pressed a kiss to the top of Parker’s head.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. He held her until her breathing evened out and her tears stopped. He wiped her tears with the pads of his thumbs, wishing he could do something more and knowing time and compassion were the only things that would help.
“You came here to grieve?”
She nodded. “Flew in this morning.”
“What about your family? Don’t you want to be with them?” When he’d lost his mother, he’d needed family as much as he’d needed air to breathe. “Friends?” he asked hopefully.
“There’s only me.” Her eyes shifted to the dog. “And Christmas.”
You’re going through this alone? I should have known you had no family. As painful as that thought was, he realized she’d had no reason to include family in their email conversations. Maybe he hadn’t misinterpreted everything after all. Despite his waffling on the meaning of their interactions, his protective urges surged forth, driving his need to ease her heartache. He slid his hands to either side of her neck, brushing his thumbs over her jaw as he lifted her face so she had no choice but to meet his gaze. She was vulnerable and hurting, so different from the strong, sunny actress the world knew her to be. But grief didn’t care about social status, and neither did he. All he saw was the woman he’d spent almost a year thinking about night and day looking at him with sad, soulful eyes. Despite the warning bells going off in his head about their professional relationship and his potential misinterpretation of their emails, he wanted to hold her all night, to kiss her until her pain subsided, and to protect her from ever being hurt again.
He fought the urge to kiss her and said what remained true regardless of whether he’d misinterpreted their relationship or not. “And me, Parker. Now you’ve got me, too.”