Not a Fairy Tale: HarperImpulse Contemporary Romance (3 page)

Dominic took her free hand and led her through the crowd, not towards the kitchens or a service entrance, as she’d hoped, but straight toward their host. She prayed he knew what he was doing.

It wasn’t easy walking with one hand clasped behind her back, holding her gaping dress together, but she kept her chin up and she smiled. Not the furious, bright smile of before. She aimed more for a Mona Lisa effect now. It was about as much as she could manage.

Though people looked at them as they passed, with expressions ranging from sympathetic to curious to gleeful, no one stopped them to talk until they stood before the editor-in-chief of
Vanity Fair
himself, Graydon Carter. Satirical journalist, media mogul, social arbiter and celebrity in his own right.

Nina had never said more than two words to him in her life.

Graydon turned at their approach, smiling. “Leaving so soon, Dom?”

Dom grinned and shrugged. “You know how it is – I have a thing for damsels in distress. Thanks for another great dinner, and we’ll talk about that canoeing trip soon.”

Had Dominic been invited to the dinner and viewing party earlier in the night? Those tickets were gold. You practically had to be in Graydon Carter’s inner circle to be invited.

She did a rapid recalculation of this ‘lowly’ stunt man.

“I look forward to it.” Graydon’s eyes twinkled as he shook Dom’s hand. “There’s certainly never a dull moment with you around.” He glanced down to where Nina clutched her torn gown together, then summoned over a minion with an all-access security pass around his neck. “Ms. Alexander has had a wardrobe malfunction. Please take them out the private exit.” Then he turned to Nina. “Thank you.”

She tried to sound as cool and amused as he did. “My pleasure. But what for?”

Graydon’s grin reached ear to ear. “For providing me with the headline story for our webpage tomorrow.”

She wished she hadn’t asked.

The tuxedoed minion led them through the dining area, where the most privileged guests had sat for dinner, to an exit she hadn’t known existed.

“Shall I call the valet to bring your car around, Mr. Kelly?” the minion asked Dom.

“No need. I’m parked right outside.”

The minion frowned. Nina only just managed to stop her own frown from wrinkling her forehead. When she’d arrived there’d been a mile-long traffic jam and police everywhere. No one could have parked within walking distance of this place.

They passed two security checkpoints before they reached the exit to the back end of the Sunset Plaza parking lot and the minion left them. Nina dropped Dom’s hand and breathed in the cool night air. There were no fancy black Escalades parked out here, just vans and other working vehicles.

“What now?” she asked. “Are you going to sneak me out in a delivery van, or do you have a magical flying carpet stashed out here?”

Dom grinned. “As good as. How precious is that dress of yours?”

She glanced down to assess the damage and groaned. “I think it’s past saving.”

“Good.” He kneeled down and with a quick rip tore the remaining skirt off her dress.

“What are you doing?” she asked, trying to stop him. But she was too late. What had once been a slinky, scarlet, floor-length evening gown was now the length of a cocktail dress. A very short cocktail dress, with an uneven hemline that barely covered the granny pants.

Shit. Her PA was going to have to be very inventive to explain these new modifications to the designer.

He handed the torn expanse of fabric to her, then removed his jacket. “Cover yourself with this.” He helped her into the jacket, then placed his hand on her lower back to guide her between the cars.

To a motorbike.

No, not just any motorbike. A KTM offroad bike, with fiery orange paintwork and gleaming chrome. Not exactly subtle, but it was close and wouldn’t get stuck in the traffic jam out front. Nina nearly wept with relief.

A quick escape was worth the loss of one couture ball gown.

“Where do you want to go?” he asked, handing her the helmet hooked over the handle- bars.

“There’s only one,” she pointed out.

“I wasn’t expecting to leave with a passenger. You wear it. Anything happens to that pretty face, you can kiss your career goodbye. But my career…” He shrugged. “Let’s just leave it at that.”

The helmet was going to wreck the beautiful curls her stylist had labored over all day. But no one would see her now. They were as good as home free.

She pulled the helmet on, her fingers fumbling with the chin-strap. Dom stepped close to help her and she caught her breath.

A light bulb popped.

She looked around.

Just when you thought things couldn’t get worse…they did. Not a bulb, but a camera flash.

The pap who’d spotted them gave a shout and began to run toward them, camera held high.

Dom lifted her onto the back of his bike as if she weighed nothing, then straddled the seat between her legs and revved the bike to life. The roar nearly drowned out his voice. “Where are we going?”

“Anywhere,” she shouted back. Anywhere but home. The condo was barely a few blocks from here and the press would be all over it in two minutes as soon as this story broke.

She laughed. “I’m starving. I’d kill for a burger right now.”

Dom grinned back at her. “Hold on tight. I know just the place, but it’s gonna be a long drive.”

Once he’d put enough distance between them and Sunset Plaza, and he was sure they didn’t have a tail, Dom slowed the bike.

It was the perfect night for the long twisting ride along Sunset Boulevard. A clear spring evening, with a cool breeze sweeping in off the ocean and a pretty woman with her arms wrapped around him.

And to think he almost hadn’t gone to Graydon’s party.

There was no way he could take her to 25 Degrees now. Or any place else where she might be spotted and recognized. Not in a torn evening gown that barely covered her ass. Even with the ban on social media at the party, he’d bet the story was all over Twitter by now.

She’d turned down Paul de Angelo – the most eligible bachelor in this town and one of the few people who could be called a ‘star’ these days. She was either very brave or very stupid, but either way he admired her. In a town so full of fake it was almost impossible to recognize real, Nina Alexander surprised him by being real. A woman who said what she thought. There weren’t a lot of actresses who knew how to do that anymore.

No wonder de Angelo had stormed out the party. He’d been in this town so long he probably didn’t know how to deal with someone who didn’t play the game by his rules.

At the end of Sunset, where the ocean stretched wide and the bright moon cast a silver beam across the water, Dom turned onto the Pacific Coast Highway. The salt-tanged wind whipped about them and Nina’s grip tightened around his waist.

When he glanced back at her, she was smiling, looking more relaxed than she had all evening and a whole lot less like she wanted to cry. Then she rested her cheek on his shoulder and he concentrated on the road ahead.

In Malibu he cruised into the McDonalds drive-thru and pulled up at the window. Nina shifted behind him, relaxing her grip around his waist as he placed their order. Then she held the paper bag between them for the few more miles it took to reach his destination.

He parked at the side of the road, deserted at this early hour, and climbed off, stretching stiff legs. His hip ached, more than usual, and he rubbed it absently before helping her down from the bike.

Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. “Where are we?”

“Point Dume, the best beach in LA. Not a great surfing beach, but I love to come here when I need space to think.” The ideal place to escape the crowds and the hustle of the city.

He guided her along the trail to the steep, metal staircase, which plunged down to the rocky shore. She removed her shoes, then followed him cautiously down the dark stairs. As they walked along the rocks to the sandy part of the beach, a series of barks drifted to them through the dark.

“Only the sea lions,” he said, catching Nina’s shudder.

Her gaze stayed on the patch of darkness the sounds had come from. “Is it safe here?”

“Safer than most public beaches after dark.” There wasn’t much he was afraid of, and the odd homeless drifter punting for change certainly didn’t bother him.

They sat on the beach and looked out over the moonlit sea as the waves washed in, digging their toes into the soft sand. He took the packet of fries Nina refused, smiling as she bit into the burger. She closed her eyes and savored the taste, all her concentration focused on the food.

“What?” she asked, looking up and catching his grin. She wiped at the sauce dribbling down her chin. “Have I sprouted another head? Or are my granny pants showing again?”

“No, though now I’m really tempted to take a peek under that jacket. It’s a rare sight to see a woman enjoy her food the way you do.”

She shook her head. “I’m going to pay for it tomorrow.”

“It
is
tomorrow.” He licked his salty fingers. “Who’s Sonia? Your agent said you could kiss Sonia goodbye.”

“Sonia Fairchild.”

He shook his head. “I’m still not getting it.”

“From the
Revelations
books.”

“Books? Those are the things you have to sit down for hours on end to read, right?”

Nina’s wide, dark eyes reflected the moonlight. “You don’t read?”

“Unless it’s the Hollywood edition of
Vanity Fair
, no. Would that be a deal-breaker?”

She bit her lip for a moment, considering him. He didn’t need to be a genius to decode that look. He’d seen it often enough on other faces over the years. She was figuring him for all brawn and no brains, the stereotypical stuntman. He shrugged it off and tossed the empty fries packet into the paper bag.

“The Revelations trilogy is a fantasy series in which angels and demons come down to earth to fight the final battle between good and evil. Sonia’s an ordinary girl trying to get through college when she loses her family to this new holy war. Then she discovers she has some special skills, kind of like Neo in
The Matrix
, and she goes Ninja to save the world.”

“She sounds like a kick-ass chick. I might like her.”

“They’re casting the movies based on the books and I want to play her.” Nina sucked in a breath. “That’s why I wanted to meet with you.”

He arched an eyebrow and waited for her to go on.

“Every actress from here to London wants to play Sonia. It’s the role of a lifetime. Paul got me a chance to read for the part, but the producers weren’t convinced. I’ve been stereo-typed as the ditsy romantic interest for too long. They don’t see me as the intense, hard-core action type. They’re looking for someone more
heroic
.” She flinched at the last word.

“And you thought I could toughen you up to help you get the role? If it helps, you’re already my hero. It takes guts to do what you did tonight – to stay true to yourself.”

She bit her lip. “I guess there isn’t any point bothering now. They’ll never take a chance on me after tonight.”

“You turned down a marriage proposal. It’s not like you mainlined heroin in front of everyone or got so wasted they had to call the cops.”

“I might as well have. Paul has a lot of influence and I hurt his feelings.”

It wasn’t his feelings that were hurt. Dom shook his head and stretched out on the sand. “The days of any one person controlling this business are long gone. He’s not the only one with friends.”

He knew a few people, too. But how much did she really want this? Because he wasn’t going to put himself out for some fickle actress who wasn’t prepared to do the work. His reputation was all he had going for him right now and he wasn’t about to throw it away for a pretty face. Pretty faces were cheap as dirt in this town.

Character, now that was a different creature entirely.

Nina bit into the burger, taking her time over it before she spoke again. “I’m still an idiot. I could have said yes and then changed my mind later, in a less public place.”

“He’s the idiot. Who in their right mind proposes to a woman in front of a crowd like that?” Only someone with an ego the size of the Antarctic would be so confident of being accepted. Only someone who cared more about the spectacle than about the woman he’d proposed to would share such a private moment with a room full of strangers.

Or… “When an actor has been on the market as long as Paul de Angelo has, without even one failed marriage behind him, the rumors start.”

“Paul is NOT gay.”

“He doesn’t need to be for the gossip to spread. You know that. You’ve obviously heard the rumors. But an engagement would shut them up for a little while. A very public engagement at the party hosted by the hottest celebrity magazine on the planet would shut the rumors up a whole lot longer.”

She bit her lip as she digested the thought. “You think he was only dating me for his image?”

He hoped she didn’t want an answer, because he couldn’t answer honestly without offending her. Not that she looked particularly offended. Or heart-broken. “Why didn’t you want to marry him?” he asked instead.

She shrugged and looked away, but nothing could hide the flush that stained her neck and cheeks. Not even the moonlit darkness.

“Tell me,” he coaxed. “There’s no one here but you and me, and the sea.”

She shuddered, still not looking back at him. “I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of my life with him. I’d grow bored and I’d want excitement, and quite frankly I don’t see any point making a promise to spend my life with someone, knowing from the very beginning that I wouldn’t keep it.”

He nodded slowly. He hadn’t realized they had so much in common. He grew bored quickly too and craved excitement, and he never made promises he couldn’t keep.

“How would
you
propose?” she asked, licking her fingers.

The question was unexpected and not one he had an answer for. He hadn’t given proposals any thought before. The opportunity had never come up. Or to be more precise, he’d never met a woman he liked enough to live with, let alone marry. He loved women, with the emphasis on the plural. But settling down with just one? She’d have to be something really special for him to give up all the others.

He shrugged. “Some place like this, I guess. Some place special, where we can be alone. Shall we take a walk?”

They dumped the paper bag in a garbage can and walked along the beach, sipping their sodas. The tide crept in, filling up the tidal pools.

Nina walked with her arms wrapped around herself, his jacket incongruously large on her, dwarfing her curves. He didn’t need to see them to remember those voluptuous curves. He’d spent the handful of weeks they’d worked together admiring them.

She’d gone out of her way to tempt him with them too, not that it had taken much effort. With her throaty, sexy voice, full, red lips and big, dark eyes that could go from a dangerous glint to wide and innocent in a moment, she was temptation personified.

But contrary to popular opinion, he was able to control his impulses. Nina was different from the other women he met. Though she batted her eyelashes at him, same as every other woman, she didn’t look at him like he was an object. And if he was honest with himself, it terrified him.

He was okay with being objectified. He didn’t mind that most women only wanted him for his body. Their low expectations were easy to satisfy.

He wasn’t sure Nina would be satisfied.

They strolled in silence and he left her alone with her thoughts as he enjoyed the stillness and the soothing tumble of the breakers on the shore.

One thing in Nina’s favor: she didn’t feel the incessant need to talk. With most women in Hollywood there was only one thing that made them stop talking. Admittedly, then they were usually moaning his name instead.

They reached the end of the long curve of beach and paused.

“You know, I’ve never been to the beach in LA,” Nina said. She wrapped her arms around her chest, hugging herself as if she was cold. But she wasn’t cold. She looked almost haunted.

“You should make more effort. We have some great beaches. Some excellent surfing, too.”

She shuddered. “No thanks. I don’t like the sea.”

And there was
his
deal-breaker. He loved the sea and spent every spare moment at the beach. He lived within a stone’s throw of the ocean just so it would be the first thing he saw every morning.

They meandered back the way they’d come, Dom splashing through the shallows, Nina keeping as far away from the lapping edge as she could. He watched her out the corner of his eye.

In public she always appeared so confident, so sparky, but here, alone in the dark with no one to primp and pose for, she seemed a different person, vulnerable, lost. It tugged at him.

As he’d told Graydon, he was a sucker for a damsel in distress.

He paused to look out across the restless ocean.

He’d heard of the
Revelations
project somewhere, and that it was in pre-production. He didn’t know much, but he’d heard enough to know that it was very different from any movie Nina had done before. It wasn’t surprising she was a long shot for the role, but if she wanted it enough, he had no doubt she could do it. He’d watched her perform opposite his friend Christian in
Pirate’s Revenge
and he knew she was worth more than the roles she usually played.

He could help her. Unconsciously he rubbed the constant ache in his hip again. Why was he even considering it? He wasn’t in any shape to conduct an actress boot camp.

He could find someone else to train her… He discarded the idea as quickly it came. Perhaps it was the arrogance of professional pride, but the thought of her spending all her time the next few weeks working with someone other than him made his stomach revolt.

“What are you thinking?” she whispered beside him. She’d ventured into the shallows, tentatively letting the waves bury her bare feet in the sand.

Though she didn’t like the sea, she’d faced its challenge. He liked that in a woman.

Nina was just as obsessed with how she looked and what people thought as every other actress he knew, and she probably lived on a diet of grated carrots and lettuce leaves most of the time, but she had potential. She didn’t seem like the kind of woman who’d have a hissy fit if she broke a nail working out.

“Why me?” he asked. “Why not book yourself into a boot camp or hire a personal trainer?”

She shook her head. “Anyone can do that. I need to be better. To win this role I’m going to need to do a lot more than just run on a treadmill or do Pilates classes. I don’t only need to get physically fit, I also need to get into Sonia’s headspace. I need someone to push me, to challenge me. I need to be able to walk and talk like her. Now when I walk into a room, people see the girl next door, maybe a little sassy, a little outspoken, a bit of a klutz, but no one would think of me as a badass. I want to be able to walk into the casting director’s office and have her think Lara Croft just walked in.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And you think I’m going to be able to teach you all that?”

She grinned, expression cheeky. “You’re the most badass person I know.”

“I’m not badass. I live in the suburbs and drink green tea.”

“What can I say? I don’t get out much.” She cast him a sideways glance, all but batting those too-long fake lashes of hers. “Besides, you wouldn’t really want me to go hang out in some biker bar to learn to be badass, would you?”