Extreme Bachelor (26 page)

Behind her, he kissed the nape of her neck,
caressed her back and her hips, then grabbed her thigh and lifted
her leg. “Touch yourself,” he demanded in a whisper.

Leah dropped her head back to his shoulder,
slid her hand down between her legs, and began to rub her fingers
against herself. She could hear Michael’s breathing quicken, could
feel his hand on her breast, his mouth in her hair, his cock
rubbing against her hips.

She was so revved up, so ready to release
the years of sexual frustration that had followed her after they
had split up that her hand began to move faster. But then Michael’s
hand joined hers, moving hers aside, and slowing the rhythm as he
dipped down and eased himself inside her.

“Ah hell,” he muttered as he slid deep into
her. “Ah, baby,” he said as he began to move inside her, matching
the work of his hand.

“Don’t stop,” she begged him, lifting her
hips and pressing against him. “Please don’t stop.”

Michael groaned like an animal and began to
move faster, plunging deep inside her, his hand teasing her to the
climax he had twice denied her. Leah could hardly catch her breath;
she clung to the column, moving with Michael, meeting each of his
strokes, gulping for air as she sank into that sexual bliss that
surrounded her.

He slid deeper and harder into her, pushing
her toward release with his body and his fingers. Leah could feel
her release nearing the surface, could feel it on the verge of
eruption.

When it did, she cried out with ecstasy and
fell headlong into a sea of pure pleasure. She crested in that
wave, heard Michael’s guttural moan as he found his release.

He collapsed on her, his dark head on her
shoulder until he could get his breath. When he had, he pulled her
down onto the carpet with him. They lay together, their limbs
tangled in one another. Leah pushed her fingers through his hair as
they quietly waited for their breathing to return to normal.

It was just like old times. That burst of
excitement and fulfillment and love trickling into every pore. It
was several minutes before they had the energy to untangle
themselves from one another, but still they lay on the carpet,
stroking one another, each of them lost in their private
thoughts.

Leah felt alive for the first time in years,
and while she was afraid to think it, she was quietly wondering if
this could really be, if she really could go back in time and pick
up where they’d left off.

After a moment, Michael asked, “What are you
thinking?”

She looked into his handsome face and smiled
at the odds stacked against them. At that moment, she thought she
could gladly live with the odds. “I was thinking about the
soufflé,” she said, and laughed when he groaned and pressed his
forehead to her bare belly and made a remark about her
irrepressible appetite.

AT some point in the night, Michael enticed
Leah into his bedroom, where they made love again, only this time,
he allowed Leah to do some of the touching, too. They’d fallen
asleep in the midst of an argument about where their favorite New
York restaurant was—on the corner of 74th and Columbus? Or 75th and
Columbus?

The following morning, however, Michael woke
up to an empty bed. But she’d left a note:

Hey Raney, you gorgeous man, some of us
actually have to show up at work on time. You looked so damn good
sleeping there that I just let myself out. Don’t worry, I called a
cab. I’ll see you later. L.

P.S. I had an AWESOME
time. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Absolutely 100% awesome,
especially here in your crib. Seriously, it couldn’t have been
better even if you’d turned out to be Prince William, heir to the
throne. Kidding! That would have been a whole lot better, haha. You
made me feel like a queen. Can’t wait to see you again. Leah


He smiled. It
had
been awesome. That
was some of the best sex he’d ever had, and he was getting hard
again just thinking about it. He couldn’t wait to see her, either.
And he got up, headed for the shower, anxious to get to
work.

THE guys had the soccer moms down at the
paintball course for the Saturday morning makeup training session,
putting them through the paces with the real stuff while Michael
was stuck in the office with a couple of studio people, who were
now worried about the schedule as well as the budget. He spent a
good part of the day in one long, mind-numbing meeting, going over
the sequence of scenes they would shoot, making sure that T.A.
would have the time necessary to set up for each stunt, of which,
he was beginning to note, there was a huge number. How would they
ever pull it off?

The only bright spot was that at midday,
when they broke for the weekend, Leah was waiting for him at his
car, wearing a short little halter dress, sunglasses rimmed with
sparkly rhinestones, and a huge smile.

“Let me guess,” he said peering at her
shades as he walked up to his car and tossed his briefcase behind
the driver’s seat. “Trudy.”

“Right on. And if you play your cards right,
I think I can get you one of the Siesta shirts she bought in
bulk.”

“Why would she do that?” he asked,
curious.

Leah shrugged. “Who knows with her? I’m just
thankful I don’t have to take one.”

“So what are you doing?”

“Me?” She tossed her hair over her shoulder
and coyly looked away. “Waiting on a guy.”

“Excellent. Would that guy happen to be
me?”

“No,” she said with a laugh. “You’re not the
only one with passes to movie premieres, you know.”

“Wait a minute,” he said,
putting his hands on his hips, “Don’t tell me one of my partners is
trying to score with you on
any
level—”

“God, no—”

“That’s good, because I’d have to kill
whoever tried it.”

“No, your partners actually look annoyed
most of the time I see them. The other guy happens to be someone
with the lighting crew. And he doesn’t have tickets to a movie
premiere. He only has tickets to a movie. Very pedestrian.”

Thank God, he thought. “I hope he was at
least offering dinner with the movie.”

“Oh yeah, he offered dinner.” She wrinkled
her nose. “Mexican food.”

“Idiot,” Michael opined with a grin. “So let
me take you to dinner instead.”

“Okay. Where are we going?”

“Mexican food,” he said, and Leah
laughed.

THEY spent the remainder of the weekend
together, walking along the Third Street Promenade, bodysurfing at
Malibu, and eating all the seafood they could possibly stomach at
Gladstone’s, a popular joint in Malibu. When they weren’t eating,
they were in his loft, making love.

Somewhere in the course of the weekend, the
years started to move away from them, drifting like little clouds
out the expansive windows in his loft. It began to feel as if
they’d never missed a moment—they fell into a rhythm that seemed so
natural and real and completely unchanged in the years they’d spent
apart. If Leah was harboring any lingering misgivings about him, he
was not seeing it or feeling it.

But the love affair they shared was
snake-bit from the start, or so Michael would soon come to believe,
because by Tuesday of the following week, when the women were being
outfitted and meeting with production staff and the director,
running lines, and practicing the war scenes, the replacement for
the soccer mom with the broken leg showed up.

That wasn’t a big deal—she was athletic and
eager to please and learned the stuff so fast that the guys
bemoaned the fact they didn’t have fifteen more just like her. What
was a big deal, however, was that the woman—Ariel—was known to both
Jack and Michael. She was Lindsey’s friend. The same Lindsey Jack
was trying so hard to date, and the same woman Jack had talked
Michael into accompanying on two dates.

Now Jack had finagled a role in the film for
her as a favor to Lindsey.

Not that any of it meant
anything in the greater scheme of things—nothing had happened
between Michael and Ariel, and in fact, he’d found her to be young
and sort of goofy. Of course he said hello to her. He even shared a
laugh with her, and chatted about their afternoon in Malibu. He
thought nothing of it; he had given her no indication that he was
the slightest bit interested, and considered her just another
acquaintance. But it obviously meant something to Ariel, who heard
about the
Spy who Loved Them
from the other actresses and felt compelled to
mention that she had “dated” Michael a couple of times.

She also mentioned that she had “dated”
Michael as recently as last week, which, when pressed by Trudy, who
had overheard the conversation, Jack agreed that she had.

Michael knew all this courtesy of Trudy. By
Thursday afternoon, he couldn’t seem to catch Leah anywhere on the
lot, but he caught up with Trudy. “Hey, kid,” he said, putting an
arm around her shoulders. “You’re mean with that paint gun.”

Trudy removed her sunburst sunglasses and
smiled up at him. “Ya think?”

“Absolutely.”

She smiled, clearly pleased with his
praise.

“So where’s the Yang to your Yin?” he
asked.

“Oh honey, who cares? Wanna get a drink? I
can show you other tricks I can do with paint guns,” she said with
a wink.

He laughed. “I’d love to, but I can’t. I
just need to talk to Leah.”

“She went somewhere with Adolfo.”

“With who?” he asked as a couple of red
flags quickly popped up in his brain.

“Adolfo,” she said with a shrug. “Some
friend of hers.”

A few more red flags and a couple of orange
cones popped up. “I didn’t know she had any friends on set besides
you.”

“She does. And you should have one, too,”
Trudy added, sidling up to him and touching the button of his
shirt.

With a chuckle, Michael grabbed her hand and
smiled. “I’m tempted, gorgeous . . . but I really need to talk to
Leah.”

Trudy sighed. “She’s not going to talk to
you, Michael.”

“Why not?”

“Because, silly, she knows about your other
date.”

“What other date?” he asked, his confusion
raging. “I don’t have another date.”

“Ariel?” Trudy said with a slight roll of
her eyes.

“Ariel?”

“Ariel. The new girl.” At Michael’s baffled
look, Trudy sighed and said, “The one you went out with just last
week? At least she told everyone you did.”

The light suddenly went
off. “Oh,” he said, nodding unthinkingly. “Ariel. But wait, Trudy—I
didn’t go out with her like
that
.”

“You’ll have to convince Leah of that. And
Nicole.”

“Oh shit,” he muttered.

Trudy laughed, punched him playfully on the
shoulder. “But you don’t have to convince me.”

He smiled, took Trudy’s hand, and kissed it.
“I adore you, Yin. Thanks for the heads up.”

Trudy sighed and looked at her hand. “God,
you’re good,” she said, and smiled after him as he walked on.

ACROSS the studio lot in the commissary
tent, Leah was smiling at Adolfo, but she wasn’t really hearing
anything he said. He was talking, she thought, about surfing. She
smiled, picked up her bottle of juice, and drank, put it down
again, and smiled.

Adolfo suddenly paused in whatever he was
saying and cocked his head to one side. “What is this frown?” he
asked.

“Frown?” she echoed. She’d been trying so
hard to smile.

“No, no,” he said, shaking his head as she
tried to smile harder. “This is not a smile. This is a frown that
is . . . how do you say . . . upside down.”

So busted. “I’m sorry, Adolfo,” she said
with a sigh. “I guess my mind is just elsewhere.”

“Where is your mind?” he asked in all
seriousness.

She sighed, thinking back to what Ariel had
said at lunch today, bragging about the luxury yacht Michael had
taken her on the same weekend Leah was trying to call him and thank
him for the Van Cleef perfume.

Adolfo was looking at her expectantly.

With a slight grimace, Leah spread her
fingers across the table and tried to think of a tactful way to
tell him she was thinking of another guy.

“It is with a man, eh?” Adolfo surmised,
startling her.

“How did you know?”

“How do I know? It is
obvious,
mi amor
.
Men can be very mean to their women.”

She laughed at his quick intuition.

“Tell me,” he said, leaning back in his
chair.

“I’m not a whiner.”

“Yes, you do not like wine, this I know. Now
tell me,” he said with much authority.

“Okay,” Leah said, suddenly sitting up and
propping her elbows on the table. “There’s this guy that I knew
five years ago. We were a couple, you know, and then one day, out
of the clear blue, he breaks it off. He basically says he’s in a
place that doesn’t include me.”

“Bastard,” Adolfo spat.

“Right,” she said, nodding. “So then, I run
into him five years later,” she continued. “And he tells me that he
made a huge mistake and that he has thought of only me—”

“Liar,” Adolfo cried, jabbing a finger in
the air.

“Well, he
did
show me all the
things he remembered about me, and it was pretty much everything,
and he did seem very sincere—”

“Sincere? What is sincere?”

“Honest.”

“Ah,” he said, and made a circular motion
with his hand. “Continue.”

“He was bringing me gifts
and telling me that he’d had this . . . this
job
that had prevented him from
being with me, but he didn’t have that job anymore, and he begged
me for a second chance.”