Safe House

Undisclosed Location Outside Los Angeles

 

Kat sat back and watched as Jason brought bags of food hastily purchased into the house. They’d finally found themselves in a safe house, but it wasn’t near the ocean, and it wasn’t nearly as luxurious and secure as Kat had imagined. Instead, it was an empty house with a For Sale sign in front of it in a boring, middle-class neighborhood in the middle of the Valley. Not that middle-class bothered her all that much, but she could have gone for a bed. Or an air mattress, at least.

She didn’t realize until she saw him take fresh bread from one of the bags that she hadn’t eaten more than a few apple slices all day.

“What’s on the menu?”

“I make a pretty good pasta dish.”

“Yeah? Pizza and pasta in two days. Are you trying to make me fat?”

“Maybe I like a little more meat on my women.”

He smiled, and she realized it was the first real joke he’d made to her in days. Perhaps that meant things were going to start looking up.

He pulled a bottle of wine from one of the bags and popped the cork, pouring them both a glass. Kat sat on the counter and watched as he sliced onions—without crying!—and minced garlic, moving that knife around like he was some sort of expert. And then came the Italian sausage, and her mouth watered so hard that she was almost positive he could see the dribble coming out of the side of her mouth.

“Where did you learn to cook?”

“My grandmother. She was an awesome cook, and it was something we often did together.”

“That’s pretty cool.”

He brought her a taste of the sauce and smiled when she nearly melted, her taste buds tingling and begging for more.

“You are a man of many talents.”

He shrugged, that tension that sometimes came into his expression suddenly making another appearance.

“No,” she said, gesturing toward him with her wine glass. “You can’t get all morose on me again.”

“I need to ask you a few things.”

“Do I have a choice?”

He glanced at her even as his hands carefully dropped pasta into a pot of boiling water. “Did you know that your mother and Ricky have pretty impressive life insurance policies on you?”

“Yeah, I know.”

His eyebrows rose. “You know?”

“I am and was their main source of income. It would be stupid for them not to have some sort of security blanket should something happen to me.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“My mother gave up everything she had to get me to Los Angeles for Idol. You realize they don’t pay for all your expenses unless you make it to the final five, right? I never made it that far.”

He didn’t respond, just continued to watch his pots.

“When I got my record contract, it was still almost a year before we saw any money. My mother worked two jobs to keep us off the streets. And then my career took off seemingly overnight, and she insisted on being my manager because she didn’t want me out there without someone who gave a shit what happened to me.”

“But you fired her as your manager.”

“Because she didn’t know what the hell she was doing!” Kat took a long swallow of her wine while she organized her thoughts. “She let all those producers and agents and everyone tell her what to do, never stopping to make sure it was the right thing for me or my career. It wasn’t until I was in the business for a while that I started to see just how bad she was at managing everything. I started taking over, little by little, making people hear what I wanted, what I needed. It just…we finally got to the point where it would be better if someone who knew what they were doing took over. That’s all.”

“Then why the lawyers and the contract dispute and whatever?”

“Because my mother doesn’t know when to let go. She thinks I still need her around, and you know what? She might be right about that. Maybe I need her emotional support, but her management skills are pretty sad.”

“Then you knew about the policies, knew they both stand to get a lot of money if you die, especially if you die in an accident?”

“I know. That was the plan. If I were to die in an accident, I wouldn’t want my mom to be homeless, you know? She was never good with money. When we started making lots of money, she spent it almost as fast as it came in. She would have gone through whatever I left behind in a matter of months. That’s why the policy. To make sure she had something if I died. The whole thing was written so that the money would go into a trust and would be doled out to her, so she wouldn’t have to worry about spending it all at once.”

“And Ricky?”

“Same thing. He’s been with me since the beginning. I didn’t want him to be jobless if anything happened to me.” She took another drink from her wine glass. “Hell, the whole thing was my idea. I pushed my mother to do it.”

Jason was quiet for a long moment, stirring his pasta into the sauce he’d made, watching as the creamy noodles soaked up the red coloring from the tomatoes.

“Did you know she’s in Los Angeles? That’s she’s been here since you arrived in town?”

Kat shook her head. “No. She’s back at the ranch in Oklahoma.”

“She’s been in a hotel down the street from yours since two days before you arrived.”

That wasn’t possible. She’d talked to her mother several times since she came to Los Angeles. She was in Oklahoma.

“She wouldn’t lie to me.”

“Apparently, she would, because her credit card shows charges at the hotel and surrounding business steadily over the last month.”

“She must have come because she was worried I’d need her.”

“Or she came to oversee her plot to have you die in an accident.”

Kat jumped off the counter, her wine glass slipping from her hand and shattering on the floor. “She would never do that!”

“People have a way of surprising you, Kathleen.”

She shook her head, refusing to believe what he was saying. “It’s always been just me and my mom, the two of us against the world. She never married, never had other children. I was always her main focus. She would never do something like that.”

“Money can be a strong motivator,” Jason said as he knelt in front of her, gathering the broken glass from her wine glass into a dish towel. “It makes people do things they might not ever do otherwise.”

He stood and dumped the towel into the sink before turning to her, touching her face lightly. “I know that’s not what you wanted to hear. But we have to investigate every possibility.”

“Why don’t you suspect Ricky?”

“Because he came to me and showed me the policy before I found it on my own.”

“Ricky came to you?”

“Someone emailed him, told him the policy was about to pay out. It made him freak a little.”

She nodded. “I suppose it would.”

“It’s possible we’ll rule your mother out when we look deeper into her actions. But we have to check it out, babe. We have to know what’s happening, or we can’t protect you.”

He kissed her jaw lightly. Kat turned a little and reached up to slide her arms around his neck. They kissed again, a long, slow kiss that ignited a fire. He lifted her up and sat her back on the counter, his hands moving slowly down her back and along her hips. Their kisses quickly grew heated, their tongues dancing, their hands exploring. He pulled back for an instant, turning the heat off under his pasta, and returned to her, his mouth possessing hers again.

She wasn’t as nervous as she’d been last night. She knew now what he was capable of, what his touch could do to her, for her. She hadn’t been sure she’d want it again this quickly after the last, but the ache deep in her belly was worse now than it had been before. She definitely wanted it.

She pulled at his shirt almost frantically, ripping a couple of buttons off in her frenzy. He lifted her shirt over her head, his hands instantly searching for the small zipper on the front of her bra. When his bare hands were on her flesh, her head began to spin, and she ached everywhere, every inch of her dying to feel his touch. She didn’t wait for him to struggle with her yoga pants this time. She lifted her ass off the counter and pushed them down herself, even more aroused by the dark look of need in his eyes as she did.

This time it was more frantic than before, quicker and more intense. He lifted her off the counter and turned her around, her back to him, as he found that place deep inside of her that begged to be touched and explored by him. Her hips hit against the rounded edge of the counter each time he thrust, but she didn’t even notice, didn’t care. All she cared about was the swelling of him inside of her and the touch of his finger on her delicate button.

Something exploded deep inside of her, a sensation that sent waves and waves of pleasure all through her body. She cried out, the sound more like a scream than a moan. Almost instantly after, he wrapped his arms around her and cried out himself, holding her so tightly as he filled her with life, with pleasure, with potential. She shivered, her hands moving over his arms where he continued to hold her, holding him back the best she could in the position he had her.

 

***

 

He watched her as they curled up on the floor, eating pasta and whispering odd things to one another at strange intervals. This shirt, the one he’d worn all day, was softer and so much more comfortable than the one she’d bought him. But the view, of him stretched out in front of her in nothing but his boxer briefs, made her ache in ways that she couldn’t even describe.

Was this the way it was for all women?

“I’ll go get you some clothes from your hotel room tomorrow. While you’re on set.”

“We’re going to work, then?”

“I think the set, ironically enough, is the safest place for you right now.”

“Okay.”

He leaned forward and brushed her jaw, wiping away a bit of sauce she’d dripped. She grabbed his hand and licked his thumb, drawing it into her mouth the way she’d seen women do in the movies. It was a strange thing to do, but it wasn’t unpleasant. And he seemed to like it.

“Tell me something,” he said as he watched her a moment later. “Have you ever spent a lot of time with men who weren’t in your band or part of your record label?”

She’d been wondering when this question would come up.

“No.”

“What about all those actors you were always taking to the awards shows? What about the guy last year that the tabloids all thought you were getting engaged to?”

Kat snorted. “My mother would have cut his balls off if he’d come closer than a chaste little kiss on my cheek. She was always very careful about who I went out with and made sure everyone knew all the rules. She didn’t want me to be one of those kids, like that actor…Corey Haim. The one who claimed to be sexually abused when he was a child actor and ended up dying of pneumonia after years of drug abuse.”

“She did you a favor, then.”

“My twenty-three-year-old self agrees with you. My sixteen-year-old self would argue that she was overprotective and downright cruel. I mean, I dated Alex Pettyfer, for goodness’ sake! If my mom had left us alone for five minutes, I think that would have gone somewhere, you know?”

“Then, for my sake, I’m glad it didn’t.”

Kat set her plate aside and got up, crawling into his lap. “For your sake, I’m glad, too.”

He slid his arms around her waist and pulled her close to him. “Why me?”

She ran her hands over his head, digging her fingers into his hair. “Because you’re convenient.”

He grunted, threatening to push her off his lap. She laughed, holding on as tightly as she could.

“Kidding! I’m kidding!”

He gave her a dark look, but stopped pushing.

“Because I think there’s something about you, something that draws me in. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know why, but I like you. A lot.”

He brushed his lips against the tip of her nose. “I like you, too.”

“Just like?”

He grunted, twisting her hair around his hand and tugging her close to him. Then he kissed her, one of those kisses that left no questions. And then he showed her just how much he liked her.

There were no doubts left in her mind when he was done.