High Risk Love (11 page)

As it was, his words still hung over me. Jet had a reputation, one that was well-earned both in his stunt career and his overactive love life. Immediately after the stunt, I’d tell him the kiss was a mistake, and that this silly infatuation was going to go nowhere for either of us. I grit my teeth against the hurt playing along the edges of my heart. How come it didn’t feel like an infatuation then? How come—

Someone bumped into me from behind—hard—and sent me sprawling forward. I tripped over a cable laid across the ground and went to one knee, clutching my camera. Crap on toast, breaking my camera at this point would be a freaking disaster!

I glanced over my shoulder to see Tina glaring at me, pure venom in her eyes.

“Oops.” She covered her mouth with her hand, careful not to touch her lipstick.

Anger simmered just below the surface. I stood, checking over my camera to make sure I hadn’t jarred anything. I didn’t have it in me to be subtle; that just wasn’t my style. “You know, Tina. Maybe you’d have a better shot at getting a guy if you weren’t such a bitch.”

Her mouth dropped open and Rodney burst out laughing. I dusted off my knee, which had saved me from taking a full on tumble, and then went to stand on the other side of the director.

“You can’t talk to me like that,” Tina screeched.

I lifted my camera and snapped a shot of her, mouth open, eyes wild—there was even a stream of spittle flying out of her mouth. Tipping the camera, I showed Rodney the digital image. “What do you think? That should help her get all the crazy, psycho woman roles, right?”

Tina froze, her eyes wide with fury. Oh baby, could I make friends or could I make friends? I smiled at her. “If you give me your email, I’ll send it to you. As a reminder of what you look like when you’re being a snaggy cow.”

She stormed away and I lowered my camera. Rodney continued to chuckle. “You’ll do just fine here. Don’t let them push you around . . . er . . . you know what I mean. They’ll come to respect you, even though you’re young.”

“That how you get them to respect you?”

“Hell no, I’ve got money and they want it, so everyone plays nice around me. You’d best remember that too.” He smiled though when he said that last bit, so I didn’t take it seriously.

I shook my head, and then went quiet as the scene set up. Jet was to run across the open ground and leap onto the bottom rungs of a helicopter as it lifted off. Rodney and I were just outside of the shot, and as the helicopter began to warm up, I lifted my camera in preparation.

The blades whirred to life, louder with each pass they made in the air, as the engine came to full speed. Lightweight, the helicopter wasn’t designed to carry much weight and apparently Jet was about the maximum of what it could take, along with the pilot. Faster now, the blades whirred into a high-pitched whine that filled the air, the down draft finally creating the lift needed, and the bottom rungs slowly lifted from the ground. Dust and dirt swirled around us, debris from the set kicked up in a man-made dust storm. I couldn’t hear a damn thing over the whir of the blades, but that didn’t matter anyway. My job was pictures and pictures didn’t need sound. I focused on getting the best shots of Jet in action, doing what he did best.

I swung my view toward the outside edges of the shoot where Jet and his boss Reggie stood waiting. Reggie had a hold of the back of Jet’s black shirt, as if he was physically holding him back. Which he might have been. One look at Jet’s face and I sidled closer, staying within the area I’d been told I could stand, but as close to Jet as I could get. His eyes were narrowed, and I could see the tension in his body as he leaned forward, just waiting to be unleashed. I shivered as I took shot after shot, catching this side of him. I’d seen him playful, sad, goofy and angry. But this . . . I could see the danger in him, the unspoken nod to a wildness that he was only just containing. Fear whispered along the nape of my neck, telling me once more that Jet was not right for me, never would be right for me no matter how much he made me laugh and smile. Then the idea of him unleashing the wildness that I saw in his eyes on
me
buckled my knees. My body rippled as if in an aftershock of an orgasm, and it took everything I had to keep standing. All that from just looking at him?

What would happen if I let him touch me? I sucked in a sharp breath and bit down on my lower lip at the exact moment Reggie let go of Jet’s shirt.

He took off in a full sprint, arms pumping, biceps flexing with each swing, long legs eating up the ground. Following him with my camera, the moment slowed, and I could see why Jet was so good.

He loved what he did. He’d never said that, never even hinted at it in our conversations. But it was there in his eyes, the intensity in him. I’d felt something similar when I’d worked gigs with Ryan, when we’d sang and played together. But in Jet, it was more than that; it was like seeing someone born to perform. Like Ryan, he reveled in it and the performance took on a life of its own. Seeing Jet work, there was that same feeling that he’d been born to this, to this moment and this job.

The bottom rungs of the helicopter were about five feet up, but Jet didn’t hesitate, didn’t even pause. He threw his body at the helicopter with complete abandon, reaching for the rungs with outstretched arms. My camera caught every nuance of his outstretched body in frame after frame.

He caught the rung with one hand, and I let go of the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. Then the helicopter began to climb, tipping first one way then the other, as if the pilot was trying to dislodge Jet. He hung from the one arm, and then got a leg hooked over the rung, then the other arm. My heart climbed into my throat the higher the helicopter got. Ten feet, fifteen, twenty. This was getting silly now; didn’t they have the shot they needed yet? My mind flashed forward to the worst case scenario and in my mind I saw the blood, saw the broken bones, saw the light dim and go out of Jet’s eyes. Just like Ryan’s eyes; just like my parents’ eyes. I sucked in a sharp breath, fought the nausea clawing its way up my throat. That wouldn’t happen, it couldn’t. This was a scene, a stunt that had been choreographed. He would be fine.

The pilot swerved to one side in a sharp movement that sent Jet’s legs swinging out and off the bottom rung. Jet hung from
just
his arms now, dangling precariously so high above the ground. They hadn’t even put any mats down for him. I bit down on my knuckle to stop the whimper that crept up my throat. I couldn’t watch this, yet I couldn’t turn away.

The pop of guns suddenly filtered through the air, and even knowing they weren’t real I jumped. Rodney glanced at me with a condescending smile.

My hands trembled as I lifted the camera again, putting it on a long distance setting. With it, I could easily see Jet’s face, could see the wild grin stretched across it. He wasn’t worried, so I shouldn’t be either. Right. Ryan hadn’t been worried about his diagnosis either, not at first.

There was a scream from the rooftop across from the helicopter, and by the way everyone turned to look, I didn’t think it was planned. This couldn’t be good.

Blonde curls swirled in the downdraft of the helicopter’s rotors. Elise stood on the rooftop, screaming at Jet, her arms flailing in the air. Everything around me froze, the collective indrawn breath of a hundred people watching disaster strike and not being able to do anything about it.

But I don’t think anyone expected what happened next. Jet hung from the helicopter by one leg and an arm, about ten feet out from the roof ledge when Elise jumped.

The crazy woman jumped! Straight at Jet. I knew I should be taking pictures; that was my job. But I couldn’t, the realization of all my fears coming out in one single mind-numbing moment. If she made it across to the helicopter her weight would be too much and they would crash, shrapnel taking out people in every direction when the helicopter broke apart. If Jet tried to catch her and missed, he would fall, and both of them would die in a horrible waste of life, their bodies smashed to on the ground below like broken dolls.

Jet reached for her, and managed to grab her around one wrist as she sailed toward him, the jerk of her bodyweight on him unhinging his one arm from around the bottom rung, leaving them with only his leg holding them thirty feet in the air. The helicopter dipped with the sudden added weight and the pilot let the blades drop at a dangerous angle toward the roof. Blades came within inches of slicing into the adobe roof before the pilot corrected the helicopter, stopped it from swinging any further.

Jet hung from his one leg, slowly getting his other leg up and around the bottom rung. Maybe it wasn’t slowly, but it seemed slow to me, far too slow. I clutched my camera, unable to move, my eyes glued to the scene. Elise dangled from his hands and she continued to scream and cry by the look on her face. The pilot got the helicopter straightened the rest of the way out, and he drifted up and over the roof where Jet dropped Elise and then followed suit. The stunt crew was already there, waiting on them. The onsite paramedics flooded out onto the rooftop, pinning Elise down to a gurney, tying her to it and then rushing her off the roof.

“Son of a bitch, that was one hell of a shot!” Rodney yelled, breaking the silence around us, startling me. Voices babbled about how amazing the jump and rescue was, how great Jet was, how they’d never seen anything like it before. Rodney left his chair and scampered, yes scampered, toward the building where the crowd gathered.

I could barely breathe, slid into the seat Rodney had vacated, feeling every moment as if it were a brick on my chest, stealing my breath.

My heart thumped painfully, each beat reminding me that I was the only one left in my family alive. That if for one second I’d considered Jet as anything more than an assignment, I was a fool. Lily was right. Rodney was right. Jet was beyond wrong for me.

But . . . the idea of him dying, the thought of never seeing him again stripped me down to the bareness of my soul. I was torn between wanting to tell him I was leaving Mexico, that I had enough pictures and would be gone by morning, and telling him I’d take him in any way I could have him so that when he was gone, and I knew it would happen, I’d at least have some memories of him to cling to.

Ryan’s final words whispered across my heart.
You have to live, really live. Don’t be afraid to love because you might get hurt, because you might lose someone.

I closed my eyes, the bright sunlight beating down on me.

“But I’m so afraid, Ryan,” I whispered.

And then arms were around me, swinging me up and holding me tight, the smell of woods and spice that was only one man I knew. My eyes flashed open, seeing Jet almost like the first time. Like this side of him was the real Jet, not the one he wanted people to see. He wasn’t exultant, wasn’t crowing his success at another stunt that would go down as ‘the best.’

“Are you all right?” He smoothed my hair away from my face, his eyes full of worry.

“Me?” I choked out. “You’re the one hanging from the damn helicopter with an
insane
woman jumping off the roof for you to catch. You almost fell, you were barely hanging on.”

He tried to smile, the corner of his mouth lifting for a split second before he gave up and crushed me to his chest. “Shit, all I could think about was that if I slipped, if I couldn’t hang on, I’d never see you again. I couldn’t let that happen.”

His words struck through my heart. He hadn’t been thinking of himself.

He’d been thinking about me.

I looked at him to see if he was teasing, but I couldn’t read his face.

Don’t be afraid to love.

Love, love wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Jet was right; if he’d fallen he wouldn’t have seen me again. He faced dangers like this, took risks like that,
every day
. The fear of losing him once I gave my heart to him was what scared the bejeesus out of me.

His eyes were soft, his hands holding me lightly, stroking along my spine. “Jazzy, are you okay?”

My nickname on his lips undid me; tears slipped from my traitorous eyes. I dashed them away, tried to pull back from him. “I can’t do this, Jet. I can’t. I’ve lost so much already . . .”

Over his shoulder Rodney and Hugh were headed our way, huge grins on both their faces. “Look, you’ve got to work. I’ve got to pack. I’m glad you’re okay.” I leaned in and brushed a kiss on his cheek, breathed him in one last time, tried to memorize his smell, the feel of his skin under my lips. The fear was too much; I couldn’t face it, didn’t want to try.

He blinked as if I’d spoken another language. “What are you talking about, packing?”

Then Rodney was on him, slapping his back and doing the crowing I’d expected out of Jet.

“Fucking brilliant! I’m having the writers shift the script so we can use this. Shitballs, that was like nothing I’ve ever shot before!”

Hugh laughed and knuckle bumped Jet as I backed away, the three men talking loud and brash, already spinning the scene as if it had been planned.

This was my last moment here, my last moment where I would see Jet in person and not just in the magazine or on a TV screen. I lifted my camera, took picture after picture of Jet talking, holding the façade together. His eyes followed me, though he spoke to Hugh and Rodney. Those golden eyes burned into me, as if they could read my mind, knew that I was leaving because I was afraid of what he did to me. He wasn’t what he appeared; I knew that now. He wasn’t the man he showed to the world. So much more, so much depth, and no one would ever see it, know it. It lurked right below the surface, but how many people would take the time to look past the stunts and the goofy behavior? Not many. It was a perfect mask . . . one he’d let me see behind.

Stomach twisting into a giant knot, I turned and speed walked to my hotel, refusing to let into the urge to run. Whatever it was between Jet and I was not a good idea, not good for one moment. I had to go, because if I stayed, I knew that despite my job being on the line, despite knowing Jet would break my heart, saying no to him again would be nearly impossible.