Private Passions (5 page)

"And you decided to make yourself feel better
by fucking someone on your payroll?"

Her face flooded with heat, the pleasurable
afterglow fading. "You make it sound so tawdry—"

"It is tawdry, Jane. You go and fuck your
bodyguard the same day Katya Morgan breaks the news that she's
pregnant? Do you have any idea how trashy and pathetic you'll
look?"

Denial bubbled in her chest. She wanted to
tell Hal it was nothing like that. That she'd wanted Deck from the
moment she'd met him, but she'd never given in, at first because
she still loved Ryan and wanted her marriage to work, and later
because Deck hadn't shown even a flicker of attraction toward her
and she wasn't about to go throwing herself anywhere she wasn't
wanted.

And, she admitted with a prickle of what felt
an awful lot like shame, because of the very reasons Hal cited.
Even though she was regarded as beautiful and highly desirable, a
woman any straight man would kill to be with, there would be
whispers.

"I don't see how anyone is going to find out
about this. I certainly don't plan on telling anyone."

"I don't either, but what about Deck? Do you
know how much the tabloids will pay for a story like this? Not to
mention the cred he gets from shtupping America's sweetheart."

Everything in her rejected that notion. "Deck
would never sell me out—" She jumped at the sound of a throat
clearing behind her and turned to see Deck. He was fully dressed
now.

Her stomach twisted at the hard, closed
expression on his face. The way he was looking at her, it was like
the last hour of her life hadn't even happened.
The smartest
thing you can do is act like it didn't.

Her throat tightened as she accepted that
truth. "You won't tell anyone, will you?"

His mouth flattened and his eyes narrowed
almost imperceptibly. "Of course not."

Jane winced at the coldness of his voice and
realized she'd offended him. "Right, of course you wouldn't," Jane
said, reaching out but stopping short of touching him.

"I'm going to get going," Deck said
curtly.

Jane nodded, knowing that was probably best.
But there was no mistaking the tight set to his shoulders as he
walked out. And there was no denying the tightness in her chest as
Hal listed all the reasons why what happened with Deck could never
happen again.

###

Deck forced himself to back slowly out of his
parking space instead of stomping on the gas and peeling out. That
he saved for when he reached the bottom of her long driveway, where
there was no way she and Hal would hear the roar of his four
hundred twenty horsepower engine and the squeal of tires. He didn't
want to give Jane any clue that he was upset, any idea that what
happened was as meaningless to him as it apparently was to her.

Fucking the help
. Hal's coarse
description burned in Deck's gut. But it didn't burn nearly as much
as the fact that Jane hadn't denied it.

What did you expect her to do, asshole? Tell
him that no, this wasn't just a meaningless fuck to help her forget
about the grief stirred up by Ryan's announcement? That, despite
the fact she'd always been careful to maintain a professional
distance between the two of you, all this time she was as into you
as you are into her and was just waiting for you to make a
move?

The truth was, in some naive corner of his
mind, he'd actually been hoping that she would say exactly that.
Which only made the humiliation burn hotter as he remembered the
stricken look on her face when Hal had discovered them, followed by
the palpable fear when faced with the prospect of their secret
leaking to the press.

You won't say anything will you?
Christ, he didn't consider himself the least bit sensitive, but the
genuine doubt in her voice was like a dagger in his chest. In all
the years he'd worked for her, he'd seen sides of her life—with and
without Ryan—that were nobody's business but hers. When she and
Ryan first split, he'd had celebrity rags offer him tens of
thousands of dollars to give inside information.

Even if he hadn't signed a confidentiality
agreement threatening major monetary damages, Deck still would have
turned them down flat. He couldn't say the same for a lot of people
working for her at that time, including Hal himself.

Yet Deck was the one she doubted, and even
the look of shame after she'd asked the question, as if she
realized what a low blow she'd delivered, wasn't enough to ease the
sting.

After trusting him not just with her privacy
but her very life for the better part of the last six years, in
that split second Jane had truly doubted him. She'd really believed
that Deck could walk out of that house, go straight to the press
and crow about how he'd nailed Jane Bowden, the ultimate notch on
any man's bedpost.

If she knew him at all, if he'd shown her
anything, it was that he would never betray her trust.

But it shouldn't surprise him, how little she
knew him. Though they were around each other often, there was a
distance there. They talked, but Jane always pulled back before
anything got too personal. Deck respected that and followed her
lead. Then when he realized his feelings for his client were
veering sharply into inappropriate territory, he doubled down on
the professional stoicism.

Still, moron that he was, when she'd turned
to him today, let him take her in his arms, kiss her lips, he was
ready to kick down the wall they'd mutually built between them and
take their relationship to a whole new place.

He suppose he couldn't blame her after
everything she'd been through, both for her lack of trust and her
unwillingness to go public with her indiscretion with her
bodyguard. He'd seen for himself the toll it took on her, having
her life constantly dissected.

Still, understanding it didn't make him feel
any less hurt, or any less of an idiot for getting his hopes up in
the first place.

He pulled onto the freeway, his hands
tightening around the steering wheel, his frustration growing at
the bumper to bumper traffic. He wanted to be home in front of his
flat screen watching the Bronco game he'd DVR'd and dulling the
edges with a cold beer. The last thing he needed was to be stuck in
a car for an hour and a half with only his own thoughts to keep him
company.

He flipped on the radio and found the the
post game report on a satellite station, but the announcer's voice
wasn't enough to distract his brain from a different kind of play
by play.

Every second of the last couple hours
unfolded in his head in excruciating detail. The scent of her, the
familiar citrusy perfume he'd smelled a thousand times that became
an intoxicant when it mingled with the unique fragrance of her
skin. The taste of her mouth, the shock that had gone through him
at the first brush of her lips, the first sweep of her tongue. For
the first time since his teens he'd actually worried that he was
going to come just from making out with a girl.

And then her body, under him, the soft weight
of her tits in his hands, the tight grip of her pussy as he drove
deep inside. He shifted in his seat as his cock, undaunted by
Jane's rejection, strained against his fly. Deck rolled down the
window, but the chilly January breeze was no match for the sizzling
memories of Jane's hands on his skin, the sound of her moans, the
way her body gripped and pulsed around him as she came.

Jane might want to pretend this never
happened, but Deck knew that wouldn't be possible, not for him
anyway.

By the time he finally pulled into his
garage, he knew exactly what he needed to do.

###

Jane checked her reflection for the dozenth
time, her gaze flicking anxiously to the clock. Only three minutes
until Deck was supposed to arrive to accompany her to tonight's
Screen Actors Guild Awards. Her stomach twisted in nervous knots at
the prospect of seeing him for the first time since what she
silently referred to as the great orgasm fest. Her body hummed with
excitement - when wasn't she excited to see Deck? - but
apprehension too.

She hated the awkward way things had ended
up, and she knew Hal's "fucking the help" comment had stung his
pride. Still, Deck had worked with her long enough that she knew he
would understand why they needed to keep things quiet for awhile,
just until the buzz about Ryan blew over.

She and Hal had come up with a strategy of
how to handle the press in the first wave of scrutiny. Rather than
jump publicly into a new relationship, which would show signs of
desperation, Jane would show herself to be the epitome of the
serene single woman. The fact that she was working with her
production partner to write and produce her own sitcom, and was
slated to begin principal photography on a film in Vancouver
starting in April would give credence to her protests that she was
way too busy with work to even think about dating.

Meanwhile, no one—not even Hal—would have to
know that she and Deck were quietly taking their relationship to
the next level. And hopefully by the time she left for Canada, the
furor over Katya's baby bump would have passed, and she and Deck
would be ready to announce to the world that he was more than a
mere bodyguard.

Of course, Hal had no idea she was adding
this addendum to their strategy, and he'd probably clutch his heart
and start shrieking "Holy Shitballs" if he did. But while Jane knew
his instincts were right for the time being, there was no way she
was giving up a chance to be with Deck.

Not after she'd wanted it for so long, spent
so many hours spinning fantasies of what it would be like to feel
his huge, hard body driving into hers. But it was so much more than
the sex she wanted. It was the feel of him pulling her into his
arms to comfort her, flashing her that sexy smile that transformed
his hard features.

She couldn't wait to fully let down her
guard, to finally close the distance she'd been so careful to
maintain between them for fear she'd slip up and reveal how she
really felt about him.

That night, with her emotions running so
high, that guard had slipped. And though the timing couldn't have
been worse, she was grateful that it had. Because instead of
pushing her away as she'd always feared, he'd let his own guard
down enough to show her the passion raging beneath his cool,
controlled surface.

All of this, of course, assumed that Deck was
interested in more than one meaningless fuck. The doorbell buzzed
over the intercom and her heart leapt to her throat. Very soon she
was going to get her answer.

Hailey, her assistant bounced out of the
armchair in Jane's sitting room to go answer the door. "Wait." Jane
stopped her before she could open the door. "Are you sure this
looks okay? It's not too tight?"

Mira had assured her that the form fitting
red sheath emphasized all of the right curves, but Jane couldn't
help worrying that she'd take too deep a breath, maybe swallow an
olive, and breach the constraints of her spanx. At which point all
hell would break loose.

Hailey, a delicately pretty brunette who had
been Jane's assistant for two years, eyed her from behind the
lenses of her heavy framed glasses. "It's a great color, and really
shows off your legs."

"You think so?" Jane said making a half turn
so she could see the backs of her legs, left on display by the
dress's skirt that ended mid-thigh. Would Deck like it, she
wondered? In her head she could hear the rumble of his voice,
telling her she had a gorgeous body as he ran his hands over her
bare skin. The memory alone was enough to make her nipples tighten
against the lace of her bra.

"Absolutely." Hailey nodded. "But you should
be careful not to eat too much."

That shouldn't be a problem, Jane thought as
she gathered up her clutch and the matching wrap Mira had left to
ward off the January chill. The butterflies in her stomach were
flapping their wings a hundred miles an hour at the thought of Deck
waiting downstairs.

She walked down the steps, willing herself to
breathe. She was more nervous now than she'd been the first time
she presented at the Emmy's, knowing millions of people would be
watching.

Still, she couldn't suppress a smile when she
heard Deck's low-pitched voice coming from the entry way. Her smile
dimmed when she passed through the archway and saw deck dressed in
jeans, boots, and a wool sweater. "Deck, I know the SAGs are less
formal than the Globes or the Oscars, but you should have at least
thrown on a jacket."

Deck turned his attention to her, and the
flat look in his amber gaze made goosebumps prickle up and down her
bare arms and legs.

"I'm not going. He is."

Jane had been so focused on Deck, she hadn't
registered the man standing a few feet away from him. It wasn't
like he was hard to miss either. Tall and broad-shouldered he had
the same chiseled, hardened set to his features and military
bearing she'd learned to recognize after spending so much time with
Deck. Unlike Deck, the dark haired man wore a well-tailored gray
suit.

"Who is he?" Jane asked.

"This is Scott Ramirez. He's my
replacement.

"

"For—for tonight?" she stammered.

"Permanently," Deck said curtly. "Ramirez
will be handling your personal protection from now on."

"But I—"
I want you
, Jane thought
desperately, but she wasn't about to embarrass herself by admitting
it out loud. Not in front of Hailey and some guy she didn't even
know. "I don't even know him," she said. "I haven't interviewed
him, I have no references," she added, infusing her voice with at
haughty tone. She didn't pull out the entitled celebrity persona
very often, but she'd use whatever it took to maintain her
composure.