Page 24 of Sexy as Sin
“Hang on,” she told the man on the phone. After that, he got the unwelcome sight of her setting her tray back on the windowsill and standing up. “I’ll only be in a minute,” she told him. “Go on and eat that before it gets cold.”
He recognized the ringtone, finally. Chalk up his delayed reaction to the painkillers and the fact that the song was older than he was.
You Sexy Thing.
Great.
“Wait,” Willow told her cousin Rafe when she was out the door and down the corridor a few paces. “This bloke whose hospital room I was just in happens to live inSinful?What are the odds? How big is that town?” She’d never been to Rafe’s brand-new family base, but that wasn’t exactly a surprise. Sinful, Montana, was on nobody’s list of international destinations. She’d never been to Rafe’s house in LA, for that matter. As far as she could tell, LA was the beach and the motorway. She had the beach, and she didn’t need the motorway.
“Small.” Rafe’s voice, as always, took up more air space than anybody else’s, his charisma radiating all the way down the line. “Lily told him about Byron a while back. They’re mates. He started checking it out, he got interested, and there you are. He’s got a nose for untapped potential, or so they say. I’d call it a nose for money, myself. I hope he’s not down there spoiling the unspoilt beauty.”
“Oh.” She felt stupid, and too slow. “I didn’t know he was Lily’s friend. Enough so she’d learn about his leg?”
“Like I said, small town, and Brett Hunter could be the biggest thing in it. I’m trying to hear what else is behind that note in your voice, and I can’t. I should be worried about leaving my new bride alone in Sinful with Hunter’s charms, you reckon? Nah. Not worried.”
“Of course not. What are you ranked on the Hollywood earner list now, fifteen? Don’t be stupid. Anyway, it’s your beautiful face and charming personality that won her heart, obviously. I like Lily, despite her shallow taste in men. Where are you, then, if she’s alone again?”
“New Mexico, with Jace. He’s turning me into a commando. Shooting starts in March onHard to Kill.”
“That’s exciting.” Jace, Rafe’s brother, had turned his years of life lived at the sharp end into a series of bestselling thrillers that had been picked up by Hollywood. The first would star his brother, Rafe, as Matt Sawyer, Aussie commando extraordinaire. And, yes, the two of them were the kind of brother act that was hard to follow, especially for a chef.
“Pretty cool, yeah,” Rafe said. “Never mind. Why were you in Hunter’s hospital room, exactly? I’m still struggling to understand that.”
“I was catering his event, if you must know. With him when he fell, and we’d met earlier.”
Silence for a minute. “Oh, no,” Rafe said. “Not happening.”
“What isn’t happening?” She was starting to get narky. “For that matter, why should you struggle to understand anything? I’m thirty years old.”
“And he has to be in his forties. I’ve seen him in action. He’s so far—” He cut himself off. “He’s not a match for you.” A rumbling noise nearby that was either an earthquake, a rockfall, or a once-and-always commando, and Rafe said, “Jace says the same, and you know how little attentionhepays.”
“Hang on,” Willow said. “Let me make sure I’ve got this. So far out of my league? Is that what you’re both saying?”
“No,” Rafe said, not all his acting skill succeeding in making that sound like anything but a lie. “Of course not. But he’s got heaps of backstory as well as heaps of money, and he’s had both for a long time. He’s guarded as hell, and he’s about two hundred years old, soul-wise. He may actually be a vampire. Also, he doesn’t get involved. He gets interested, and I’m sure he gets plenty, but that’s as far as it goes. Not a good bet for your heart.”
“Pardon bloody me?” Her cousins were protective, loving, generous men. Most of the time. The rest of the time, they were as annoying a set of humans as you’d find from Australia to the Arctic. “Maybe I’m not interested in being his Cinderella. Maybe I’m just using him for sex.”
“Then you’re out of luck,” Rafe said, “if he’s broken his leg.”
She said, “I’m ringing off. Tell Lily you weren’t tactful.” And did it.
Willow came back into the room at the same time Brett’s phone rang. She asked, “Aren’t you going to answer that?”
“Let’s see,” he said. “Chances of it being somebody I’d rather talk to than you? Zero. Which makes that a no.”
“Crikey, you’re decisive.”
“It’s my thing,” he agreed gravely, and she finally smiled and sat down. She was still looking flustered, though. He wished he knew why.
His phone started to ring again, and she eyed it and said, “If you don’t answer, I’m going to think you’re married. You do realize that.”
He said, “Can’t have that,” and glanced at the display. “It’s not my wife.” At her answering glare, he laughed, pushed the button, and said, “Rafe. Hey.” Upon which Willow went poker-straight. What was that about? He told Rafe, “Hang on a sec,” and told Willow, “Rafael. Male name. Let me reiterate: I’m not married.”
“Hang up,” she said, sounding fiercer than he’d ever heard her.
He blinked. “What?” The pills were still making him fuzzy. Wait. Was Rafe Blackstone somehow, weirdly, Willow’s ex, and the reason for her caution? Blackstone was Australian. More than that—he was from Brisbane, just a couple hours north of here. But he’d been in the States for... years, surely. Brett wasn’t too up on his Hollywood gossip. “Rafe,” he said, deciding that for now, hanging up was his best plan, “good to hear from you, but I’m in the middle of something.”
Hollywood’s favorite werewolf didn’t indulge in any pleasantries. Instead, he said, “Willow Sanderson is my cousin.” His voice didn’t sound one bit friendly, either.
