CHAPTER NINETEEN
Lincoln
"I'M IMPRESSED." DANI CLEARED THE LAST dish and loaded it into the dishwasher then grabbed a rag and started wiping down the bar area. "You can actually cook."
"One of my many talents." I tipped back the last remnants of my Corona and winced at the memory of how our dinner had started…
"You know, you can drink beer if you want to." Dani grabbed a Pepsi and pointed at the six-pack that I'd requested before I'd actually thought about it.
"Nah." I waved her off.
She rolled her eyes, grabbed a beer, and tossed it in my direction. "I'm seventeen, not a saint. It's not like I've never witnessed someone drink."
The beer was freezing. I popped the cap and took a long sip. "Does, uh, that mean you've been to lots of parties where you get completely drunk and need your sister to drive you home?"
Dani reached for her long, golden-blonde hair then pulled it back into a tight, low ponytail. "Well, back in the day, you know, when I was sixteen and still drinking milk at night and blending my food so I didn't choke…"
I rolled my eyes. "Very funny."
"Yes. I had one drunken episode that will never, and I mean NEVER be repeated." She shifted uncomfortably on her feet.
"What did you do? Get arrested?"
"Nope." She lunged for her seat and started piling food onto her plate.
"Strip then go skinny dipping?"
"No." A smile appeared as she grabbed a crab leg and wiped her hands on the paper napkin then glanced up at me from her dark lashes. "Are you done now?"
"One more." I lifted the beer bottle into the air. "You… streaked across the beach."
She blushed bright red. "Yes."
Beer spewed out of my mouth, barely missing her by an inch as I started coughing wildly and pounding my chest. Maybe it was the look of pure innocence on her face or the simple fact that she'd admitted to being naked, and my brain had no problem whatsoever coming up with vivid images that would most likely get me a nice, fancy seat in prison.
"Nice." She wiped her cheek with her napkin and glared. "And, for the record, it's not like it was my idea."
"Whose idea was it?" Dear God, let it have been a girl.
"Elliot."
Bastard seriously had a death wish.
"Oh yeah?" I croaked out, chugging more beer as I imagined my fist connecting with his nose. I smiled as the visual of him crying then pissing his pants floated around my head like a happy daydream.
Dani leaned back in her chair, jutting her lower lip out. "Well, we were both drinking way too much, and he thought it would be funny. Apparently, I thought it would be hilarious… It doesn't matter. I'm not that girl anymore. I don't even know if I was that girl then. I just…" She shrugged. "… guess I wanted to be noticed. I was stuck in high school, stuck with this need to be something important. I know you keep saying I'm seventeen, but sometimes, I feel like I'm eighty."
The room went deathly quiet.
"Well…" I reached over and grabbed her hand. "… I think I speak for men everywhere when I say I'm glad you aren't really eighty. Can you imagine what that would look like on camera? You bouncing around on the beach?"
Dani burst out laughing, her blue eyes crinkling at the sides, making me wish again things were different between us. "Hey, don't hate. The last 5k I ran had an eighty-year-old woman who beat my ass."
"Really?" I grabbed a warm roll. "You still run?"
The piece of crab met her lips, but then she set it down and shrugged as if she'd suddenly lost her appetite. "Not so much anymore."
"Maybe you should."
"Right now." Dani grabbed the discarded piece of crab, "My only goal is to finish what's on my plate. Small victories and all that."
"Eating is a victory?"
"For me?" She gulped. "You have no idea."
"Thanks." I jolted the conversation from my head, trying to clear the cobwebs, but all it did was make me more curious.
The thunder overhead threatened to take the roof off the condo as a flash of lightning lit up the entire room.
And then with another loud thud.
We were blanketed in complete darkness.
"Linc!" Dani's voice was panicked as I felt hands reach out and settle on my chest.
"Here." I pulled her against my naked chest. Her hot breath fanned across my skin. "I'm right here."
"I hate storms." Her lips caressed me as the words poured out of her mouth.
"I know." I kissed her head. I shouldn't have, but I did anyway. "It will be fine, I promise. I doubt they have any flashlights in here, so why don't we go into the bedroom and sit by the sliding glass door? At least the lightning flashes will help us see one another, and I highly doubt you want to go to sleep yet."
"So what? We'll just stare at each other?" she mumbled across my chest.
"Yeah? Too soon?"
Her laugh warmed me from the inside out. "Too creepy."
"Damn, and here I thought I was being so seductive. Oh, well. We can always trade Demetri stories. It's the same as a ghost story, only the ending always includes something bad happening to him."
"You really do know him well." Dani pulled back then reached for my hand, though it took her a few false finds with my abs to finally locate it. Luckily, she hadn't reached lower, or she would have been in for a surprise.
I squeezed her fingertips. "Let me lead the way so you don't end up with a black eye. That's the last thing either of us needs. Jay thinking I roughed you up in the whale tank."
"Right, because that would be his first thought."
"It's Jay. His first thought is always the wrong thought. He assumes way too much."
Dani tensed next to me.
Shit. I'd said the wrong thing again.
But fixing it meant admitting something that would get us both in trouble, so I left it, and I had to wonder… Would my relationship with Dani be one in which there was so much left unsaid, that at the end of my life, I'd always look back and wonder how the outcome would have differed had I actually said what I'd meant, rather than let her assume what I didn't?
We walked in silence down the hall. I felt my way into the master bedroom. Luckily, I'd left the curtains open so that, when the storm stopped, we'd at least have the moonlight on our side. A large, blue leather recliner was positioned in front of the glass door. Angry pelts of rain attacked the glass, causing a rhythm of fury to build up within the room.
Dani tensed beside me.
"Come on." I tugged her to the chair, sat, and then pulled her onto my lap. Not the best idea I've ever had, but she was scared, and if I couldn't at least comfort her without seducing her, then I deserved whatever hell was coming for me.
She squirmed a bit. I winced and bit my cheek to keep from doing something stupid, like going in for a third kiss or just letting out a pitiful moan. Finally, she settled back against me, her legs lying across my lap and over the side of the chair, while her body sat comfortably against mine.
The thunder rolled.
"And the lightning strikes…" I said in a country twang. "Another love grows cold—"
"On a sleepless night." She joined in with her smooth voice. "Are you really singing Garth Brooks right now?"
I chuckled. "It seemed to fit the mood."
"A song about adultery fits the mood?"
"I was focusing more on the thunder part… and just in case you were wondering, I don't have some hidden family somewhere else that I'm cheating on by being with you." I chuckled.
She laughed softly. Her fingers brushed the front of my bare chest, dancing in a rhythm I wasn't sure she was aware she was even making. "What about Jo-Jo?"
"The potatoes?"
"The girl."
"Ah." Her fingers kept tickling my chest. Damn it felt… too good. "She, uh…" Focus Lincoln. "… she's gone. Her publicist thought being seen with me would help her, since her newest movie is about to drop, and according to her, I'm Hollywood's newest piece of hot ass."
"Wow." I could feel her breath as her hair tickled my neck. "You okay with that title?"
"Well, I do have a nice ass."
"At the risk of placating your ego… yes, you do."
"Jay know you've been looking at my ass?"
"Well, you're alive so… I'm going to say no." Dani shifted a bit.
I clenched my jaw while she sank further into my body, her heavy sighs doing really bad things to my self-control.
I'd never had to exert any sort of control over my baser instincts. If I wanted something, I took it. Maybe that made me an ass, but I was a guy, and if a girl threw herself at me, it wasn't like I was going to spout some bullshit about not respecting her in the morning.
But with Dani, every ounce of energy I possessed was going toward not listening to my body, and trying desperately to listen to logic and sound reason, something that clearly I'd been out of practice with.
The rain lightened slightly, enough that the angry white-capped waves were visible as they crashed against the rocks in front of us.
"I like it here," Dani finally said.
"On my lap or Depot Bay? You're going to have to be more specific." And then I said shit like that and just made it worse.
She could have cupped my face with her hands; we were familiar enough with one another for her to take any sort of lead in the relationship, and I'd follow. Instead, she crossed her arms and shrugged. "Both, I think."
Pride pricked. I narrowed my eyes. "So you're telling me that between beach — what with all its whaleness — and my lap, it's almost a tie."
"Hey, you're the one who doesn't like whales."
Baffled, I stared at her. Maybe too long for comfort, but I was a bit… taken aback. She was sitting with me, alone, without electricity, and she wasn't hitting on me.
I was the one trying to keep myself from pouncing on her, but she looked just… fine. As if my presence did absolutely nothing to her, when I damn well knew my kiss had affected her just as much as hers had affected me. So, why the hell wasn't she the one dying a slow, painful, arousing death?
"Tell me something." I cleared my throat and looked away from her. I had to. "If things were different. If your parents hadn't died…"
She sucked in a breath.
"If you were… happier. What would you be doing right now?"
"That's kind of personal," she whispered.
"I'm a personal guy."
Dani pressed her lips together, her eyes narrowing. "Honestly, I'd still need a summer job, so I'd probably be in the same place I am now. Only I would have begged Jay for the chance to be your assistant rather than being forced into it."
Ouch. "You weren't forced."
"Um, yeah I was." She laughed softly. "My choices were either work for you or get sent to boarding school. Okay, maybe not boarding school, but the last thing I want to do is hurt Jay or my sister, so I said yes."
Great. So I was with the one girl in the entire universe who didn't actually want to be around me? How unlucky could a guy get? And she was underage? Good one.
"Am I so bad?" I asked, voice hoarse.
"According to the tabloids, you're squeaky clean… no drugs, no partying, no late-night orgies."
"Oh well." I exhaled. "Sorry to disappoint, but I had the best orgy a few weeks ago, drugs everywhere, alcohol…"
Dani burst out laughing. "Oh, I'm sure."
"Fine. I'm tame. And boring. I like reading. And the last time I went to a party, I left early because Outlander was on."
"I like that." Her voice was quiet as she started running her hands up and down my chest again. I thought it was mindless, like tapping her foot or biting her lip, but it made me crazy. "It makes you seem more… normal."
"I am normal."
"Hollywood heartthrobs aren't normal, sorry to break it to you. You forget that I'm best friends with AD2. Do you even know how many times they get bras thrown at their face? Or the amount of fan mail Jay gets in one day? It's not normal. Normal is eating a hamburger without someone taking your picture and posting it on the Internet. Trust me, I'm broken enough to know what normal looks like."
"Are you saying you're just like me? Not normal?"
Her breath hitched. "I guess so. Only I'm a freak in an entirely different way. The only time I speak after months of being mute is in front of someone I should be intimidated by, not to mention a large, ten-ton whale."
"Just to clarify, you meant I was intimidating, not the whale, right?"
Dani didn't laugh.
"I like your brand of weird, Dani. Normal's boring."
"Weird." She huffed. "I can't talk. My ex-boyfriend and best friend called me frigid before we just ended things, and the last time he kissed me he asked if I was a closet lesbian. Idiot, as if lesbians can't kiss, or what?"
"Frigid?" I was hung up on the word. "Why the hell would he say that? I've kissed you. I should know these things. The last word on my mind is frigid. In fact, I wished I thought that about you, then it would make pulling away from the kiss a hell of a lot easier."
Oh, shit! Said that out loud.
Dani froze.
"You have trouble pulling away?"
I didn't want to live my life in those moments of things I should have said. So, I decided to screw us over and admit the obvious. "Regardless of whether it's the second, third, or fourth time, kissing you, even if it's during a scene, and I'm acting. It always feels like the most real thing in my existence."
Her breathing turned heavy. "That would be a great movie line."
"Yeah, well," I croaked, "it's why they pay me so much money. My delivery is…"
I didn't finish.
Because Dani had unlocked her arms and was touching my face. Her fingers trailed over my mouth.
"Dani," I hissed between my teeth. Her innocent touch was almost painful. "You can't."
"Can't what?"
"Look at me like that and expect me to be your boss or even your friend. You can't do that to me."
"Why?" Her heavily lidded eyes screamed seduction as she licked her lower lip.
I let out a bitter curse and tried to look away.
I failed.
Instead, my mouth met hers.
And I instantly forgot all the reasons I'd been pushing her away, and for the first time since meeting her, I did exactly what I'd always wanted to do.
I claimed her.
And had to wonder if it was the last selfish thing I'd do, before the guys buried my body in the ocean.