Page 28 of Heart of Danger
Stella Cummings, once the most famous actress in the world, who’d commanded $40 million dollars a picture, whose face had graced a thousand gossip magazines, who’d been a celebrity almost as long as she’d been alive until she’d disappeared from the public eye.
That woman had been a fashion plate, waif-thin and blindingly beautiful. Remote, untouchable. Perennially unsmiling and gorgeous in the pictures of her on the red carpet or in the tabloid snapshots. A 21stcentury Greta Garbo, only thinner.
The Stella that sat across from Catherine was a healthy-looking woman who was no longer beautiful and laughed constantly.
Her face had been savagely slashed then carefully put together again by a master plastic surgeon, but nothing would ever make her beautiful again. Catherine forgot the scars ten seconds after Stella had knocked on her door bearing a tray of delicious-smelling food.
Stella gave a lopsided smile and rolled her eyes. “Gay, honey.”
Catherine’s eyes bugged. “Gary Hopkins isgay?”
“As a plaid suitcase. Like Lawrence Rome. The two actually dated.”
“Man.” Catherine sat back. Gary Hopkins and to a lesser extent Lawrence Rome were the epitome of macho. Ripped and brooding. Gary had personally saved Planet Earth by his courage and ability with humongous weaponry inDeadly Evil. “Makes a girl think, doesn’t it? Though I suppose he was too good-looking to be straight.”
They both turned as the door to Catherine’s room whooshed open.
“Speaking of good-looking men,” Stella said as Mac walked in.
He gave her the hairy eyeball, but she responded with a sunny smile.
Catherine could barely move. The instant Mac filled the doorway, her muscles were paralyzed, the breath left her body, her palms started sweating. Though her muscles were in lockdown, inside she was a riot of roiling emotions she could barely understand and couldn’t control.
He fascinated her.
That uber male thing made up of long lean muscles, shoulders out to here, huge capable hands that looked like they could snap a man’s neck in two and then repair a tank. He made Gary Hopkins look like a cocker spaniel.
Then there was the fear thing. She’d touched him and had felt that he didn’t plan on killing her. Today. But her gift was uneven, unreliable, incomplete and she knew he had violence in him. Violence he could wield like a surgeon, but still.
She could very well be wrong. The expression on that flat, ugly yet compelling face was stony. There was danger in every single line of his big body and she had no guarantees that the danger wasn’t to herself.
And then, there was the attraction thing. Last night she’d been exhausted, frightened out of her mind, in the iron grip of her compulsion. But now, rested and refreshed, the sudden appearance of Mac made her heart leap in her chest. Part of it was the fear and part was the fascination, but a goodly portion of it was sheer old fashioned sex.
He turned her on.
It happened to her so seldom she barely recognized it as something belonging to her. The whole sex thing was so incredibly fraught with problems, whole thorny forests of problems, she’d more or less given up on it.
Her body hadn’t. It was as if her body had been quietly lying in wait to leap for something it wanted and it turned out what her body wanted was Mac. She shuddered. This wasn’t just inappropriate, like getting a crush on your married dentist or your banker. This was dangerous. Because the man who walked in, swept the room with a fierce scowl and stood there like an immovable force of nature was terrifying.
She had no idea of his background but he looked like a soldier and not the ceremonial kind who stood around in a fancy uniform with a long shiny sword and who knew how to snap out a salute. No, he looked like special forces. The kind of guys who came in under cover of darkness, snapped necks rather than salutes, then left quietly before you even knew they were there.
He distrusted her. That had been made very clear. He distrusted her, didn’t believe her story, half suspected she’d been sent to spy on him.
What a terrible trick biology had played on her that this man, huge, dangerous, a man who didn’t trust her, was the one man she had a violent sexual reaction to.
It was explicit, too, which terrified her. It wasn’t a generic attraction, the kind you’d feel for some good-looking man who crossed your path, even though Mac was the farthest thing possible from good-looking.
This man, this particular man with the muscles and the scowl and the scarred face, he was the one she reacted to as if her body had been waiting all its life for him and him alone.
Her brain telling her bodyforget itdidn’t work.
Her heart was pounding so hard she thought she’d crack a rib. She didn’t dare move, didn’t dare speak, because then he’d know she’d started trembling the instant appeared at the door.
Oh, God.
Heat blossomed between her thighs and she was shocked to feel her vagina clench once, very hard, just as it did in her infrequent orgasms. Her chest was tight, yes, but her breasts felt swollen, heavy. Most shocking of all was a weak, trembly feeling, as if all he had to do was hold out one big hand and she’d run straight to him.
That was the scariest thing of all. She couldn’t throw herself at him because he wouldn’t catch her.
