Sparked (city2city: Hollywood) (8 page)

Here was the movie star, the actress at the top of her craft, and the transformation shook him. His former fantasy stood before him, but he didn’t want that woman anymore. He knew now he’d never wanted
that
woman. No, he wanted the Sadie who had planned to hook herself into a harness and jump into a castle moat, who bit his shoulder as she came, and who believed there was some sort of magic in their first kiss.
 

Ryan wanted to deserve her sunshine. “So we’re back to where we started. Figuring out where we stand.”

“For a man so smart, you are incredibly slow on the uptake here.” She shook her head. “I already know where I stand. I’ve known all along. You are the one who needs to come to a decision.” Grasping her clutch, she moved gracefully toward the door, no worse for wear for having spent the evening in a stuffy closet. “Do you know what else I want to say?”

A phantom hand wrapped icy fingers around his heart, squeezed. “Tell me.”
 

Dark, depthless eyes found his as she glanced over her shoulder, flicking over his features as if weighing him, measuring him, and, ultimately, finding him lacking. “Find me to find out. I’m done chasing after you, Ryan Young.”

SIX

Christmas Eve

Ryan’s finger hovered over the doorbell. This was, in all likelihood, a terrible idea, but he had decided, as he stood in the projection booth two nights ago, that he was sick and tired of ignoring his heart. If the stupid thing was going to be so dang insistent, he owed it to himself to find out why; the real why, not the clung-to fantasy.

So he rang the doorbell and held his breath.

“I want to know,” he said in a rush when she opened the door. “The last thing you were going to say. I want to know.”

He had the pleasure of seeing her beautiful dark eyes go wide, watching her perfect pink mouth soften momentarily as she stared up at him before donning the mask he was growing to hate—the one worn by Sadie Bower, award-winning and internationally acclaimed actress. Elegant, cool, the picture of aristocratic discipline, and nothing at all like the woman who’d sunk her teeth into his shoulder when she orgasmed with him in a storage room, vibrant and alive in the multicolored lights of a fake Christmas tree.

Anger sparked within him. He’d spent far too long wrapped up in thoughts of the woman in the mask, and not the one behind it, and he needed her unmasked with him for what he planned to say. “Can I come in?”

Silently, she stepped back from the door, waving him into the front hall of her luxurious house. The ceiling stretched two stories over their heads, constructed of sheets of glass and clean white beams. In daylight, sunlight would brighten the space, the white walls glowing brilliant and warm. His throat tightened, gladdened to know she had sunshine like that in her life every single day.
 

After closing the door behind him, she turned her careful gaze on him, taking in his appearance from his Chuck Taylors, over his favorite pair of jeans to the well-worn chambray shirt unbuttoned at his throat, sleeves rolled to his elbows. He hadn’t shaved since the premiere, and he hadn’t bothered trying to tame the wildness that was his hair.

Sadie, on the other hand, looked pristine and edible at the same time. Barefoot and seemingly casual, she’d paired sleek black pants with an oversized creamy sweater, the neckline of which drooped artfully over one bare shoulder to reveal the lacy, wine-colored strap of her bra. Her straight hair, which had hung halfway down her back during filming for
Vendetta
, now brushed her collarbone in a fall of soft black.
 

She didn’t wear a speck of makeup. She didn’t need to.
 

It was the lack of cosmetics that jarred him, and he realized that for the first time since their night together in London a decade ago, he was seeing her, Sadie. Sadako. It didn’t matter that her expression was guarded, her posture tense—the physical mask had disappeared.

The intimacy she allowed him simply by inviting him into her home sparked a flicker of hope inside him. “Shouldn’t you be spending Christmas with your family?” he asked, chest tight, heart racing.
 

“Shouldn’t you?” she countered sharply before pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Seeing that she wasn’t any closer to relaxing in his presence, nor inclined to lead him further into the house, he strove for a casual tone. “Jon is flying out to visit over New Year’s. He’s swamped with work right now.”

“Oh?”

Ryan shrugged, as if he wasn’t blindingly proud of his twin’s accomplishments. “That’s what happens when you’re the youngest U.S. senator from the state of Illinois since the early nineteenth century.” Though the session had dismissed for the holidays, he knew Jon would spend tonight cooped up in his fancy apartment in Washington, D.C., poring over paperwork like the overachieving pain in the butt he’d always been. “I called him on my way over here.”

“Did you tell him what you were doing?”

“I told him what I
hoped
to be doing.”

“If the answer to that is me, then—”

“I said I was going to go tell the woman I fell in love with ten years ago that I loved her.” Panic buzzed in his ears, but he could hear how calm he sounded, how steady. “You smiled at me on that train and stole my heart, and I’ve never gotten it back from you.”

Her lips parted, breath catching audibly as she stared up at him. “Do you want your heart back, Ryan?”

“No.” He stood tall, shoulders back and spine straight, and felt everything click into place inside him. Finally, he listened to what his masochistic heart had been trying to tell him since the moment he’d met Sadie, so he handed it over into her keeping, permanently. “I think you’ll do a much better job of looking after it than I ever could.”

“You love me.” She looked shocked.

“I love you,” he confirmed. “I’ve loved you my entire adult life, whether I knew it or not.” There wasn’t a single part of him anymore untouched by the loving of her, and it was a terrible power she held in those delicate hands of hers. He scrubbed his palm over his sternum, where the worst of the aching in his chest centered, and heard himself laugh, but without humor. “Is love at first sight even a thing?” Except it had been more than that between them, and he knew it. “I’ll admit, I still don’t know why you looked at me like I looked at you.” He might not know, but he was intensely grateful for it.
 

“That’s….” Her gaze dropped to her feet. “That’s an excellent question.”

“What—why you looked at me?” Dread curdled low in his gut when she nodded. “So tell me why. Why me, on that train on Christmas Eve? You have to know, after ten years.” After all her pursuit during filming, the fervent earnestness with which she had continued to put herself out there in the face of his standoffishness, his hesitancy, she must know why she had chosen him.

Uncertainty clogged his throat. There had to be a reason, or how could this be real? How could it be anything more than a fantasy, this time one she clung to, instead of one of his making? He had faced facts the moment she had come back into his life last April, and he had changed. He’d learned who the girl on the train had grown into, and he had found he far and away preferred that woman than the false idol his imagination and ten years apart had created to focus his drive. He’d spent the past months paying a penance of his own making, but now he had come out the other side, ready to be the man for her. The right man.
 

“I don’t know.” His heart sank as she shook her head. “I don’t know why you.”

Pain sliced through him. “God damn it, Sadie.”

She froze, eyes wide with shock. “You…you just
swore
.”

“Yeah, so?” Shoving a frustrated hand through his hair, he stalked past her out the hall and into her kitchen. Water. He needed a glass of water, he thought, slamming cabinet doors and glaring at the faucet over the sink. The woman was nothing less than a wrecking ball to his life, her destruction spanning ten years and whole freaking continents, torpedoing relationships and changing the entire course of his career and, therefore, his future.

And he loved her for it. For all of it.
 

“I’ve never heard you curse. Not once.”

He paused with the glass halfway to his lips. “My mother—” A bracing swallow of water. “Mom didn’t like it when we used bad language.” Not willing to say more, he set the glass down, braced both hands on the island countertop, and watched her warily.

The caution in his green eyes made her chest hurt. “Do you realize I didn’t learn your full name until Wes introduced us during screen tests for
Vendetta
?”
 

“No. But I wondered.”

Her throat felt thick, her mouth dry. “Not knowing your name didn’t stop me from looking for you back then.”

He stilled. “What do you mean?”

“I called my brother, asked him if he knew an American named Jon at Cambridge. He asked around for weeks for me, even though he thought I was silly. I tried to find information about your parents’ car crash and track you down that way, but I didn’t know what town you were from to even search for an obituary notice.” Her shoulders drooped as he paled in front of her. “It was why I came to the United States, actually.” When he said nothing, she gestured, helplessly. “I told myself it was to audition—and I did, by the way, and got the role that started my career in Hollywood—but, really, it was because I thought…I thought perhaps I might stand a better chance at finding you if we were on the same continent.” She tried to laugh and failed, the sound akin to a broken wheeze. “So no, I can’t tell you
why
you
on the train, because I don’t know how to explain something like that. Luck or coincidence or holiday magic, I don’t know. I don’t know, Ryan, but I didn’t need to know, because not knowing didn’t stop me from recognizing all the possibilities suddenly spread out before me when I saw you standing there. It’s a shame you didn’t see the same p-possibilities.”
 

A sob escaped before she could reel it back, and then he was circling the counter and wrapping her in long, strong arms. The curves of her body molded to the lean lines of his, and the explicit warmth of homecoming enveloped her—completely, utterly,
finally
.
 

“I don’t have an excuse,” he murmured, his lips pressed to the crown of her head, “except that it was easier not to find you, for a while. But it didn’t stay easy. Every time I saw one of your films, or walked by a magazine with you on the cover, or tortured myself by watching interviews you’d done on YouTube, it got less easy to stay away.” His arms squeezed her tight, so tight she could barely breathe, but she refused to move away. “I quit my job and moved to L.A., because…”

“Because?” Tilting her head back, she gazed into gleaming green eyes, their expression so tender, so hopeful.

His mouth quirked, as if he wanted to smile but had momentarily forgotten how. “Because maybe I thought this would happen, if I waited, and worked, and placed myself in your orbit somehow. If I wanted it badly enough.” His breath shuddered from him. “And then
Vendetta
happened, and I had my come-to-Jesus moment.”

She frowned. “What moment was that?”

Lifting his hands to cup her face, he used the pads of his thumbs to swipe at the wetness that had collected below her lashes. “I had this idea in my head of who you were: Sadie Bower, the movie star I had a magical night with when we were basically kids. That version of you was who I’d spent all these years fixated on. But I’d forgotten that I had fallen in love with the real Sadie, the girl on the train, whose smile was sunlight on one of the darkest moments in my life—when I was afraid I’d just lost my brother forever. When I was alone, and you looked at me, and—” He broke off abruptly, jaw clenched and throat working against the strong emotion obviously gripping him. “It took me a while to find my way back to you, Sadie, because I had to find myself first. Thank you for being so patient.”

Her heart burst. “Ryan.”

He lifted her suddenly, setting her on the island counter and stepping between her legs. His hands tangled in her hair, forcing her face to his, and then he took her mouth with a groan that melted her to her bones.
 

Her lips parted, and she gripped the front of his shirt, anchoring herself with the solidity of him as he kissed her like a starving man. As though he’d truly gone ten years without sustenance, without her, instead of having tasted her lips a mere forty-eight hours earlier. He licked at her, the slick slide of tongue against tongue making her writhe on the countertop.

His hands clenched on her hips. “Where’s the bedroom?” he demanded as he nipped at her, soothing the sting caused by his teeth with a sweep of his tongue.

“We can do it here—”

“I want you in a bed. Right now. So where is it?”

The fierceness in his voice set her blood on fire. “Upstairs, top level.”
 

“Hold on.” A moment later he was carrying her through the kitchen, into the front hall, and up the stairs, all while she clung to him with arms at his neck and her legs around his waist. Unable to hold back, dying to drown in him, she nuzzled his throat, dropping little kisses as she worked her way toward his scruffy jaw.

Her fingers slipped into the soft weight of his hair when they arrived in the bedroom. Immediately, he had her on her back, covering her with his body as their kisses turned frantic, their need for one another a living thing. Her sweater was the first to go, followed by his shirt. “Don’t worry. I remembered the condom this time.” He fumbled in his back pocket for a minute, then pressed the packet into her palm before returning to the task of peeling her pants down her legs.

“I w-wasn’t worried,” she stuttered as his tongue traced a hot path from the waistband of her panties to the bottom of her bra. His hands raced over her, shaping and stroking her thighs, hips, waist, and then, thank God, her breasts. She moaned as his thumbs toyed with her nipples through the sheer lace, writhing when his mouth replaced his thumbs, sucking first one, then the other. “Ryan.”