Her Red-Carpet Romance (16 page)

Not that it really mattered. Because either way, her mother would somehow convert the words into what she wanted to hear.

“I think,” she began slowly, examining her words very carefully before she uttered them, “for the sake of my continuing to work for you, you should just abandon the idea of talking to my mother, of even saying a single word to her.”

“Come again?”

“Talking to my mother might make you want to permanently terminate our association, if only to make sure that there was no reason for you to ever encounter my mother on a one-to-one basis again,” she warned him. For once, she didn't feel as if she was exaggerating.

“Get that notion out of your head,” he told her. “That's not about to happen, not from my end. There's nothing your mother could possibly do to make me entertain the idea of sending you away so I wouldn't have to deal with her.”

In her heart Yohanna felt she knew better. “My mother would have made Gandhi look around for the nearest gun shop.”

He laughed. “She can't be
that
bad.”

“Trust me, she can. She's not a bad person,” Yohanna quickly interjected so that he wouldn't get the wrong idea. Her mother was a peaceful soul—she was just a harpy. “But she can totally make you crazy inside of five minutes. Sometimes less.”

Lukkas began to speak, but she held her hand up to silence him. Cornering his attention, she pressed the play button on her answering machine.

“Listen to a couple of her messages and then tell me that she can't be that bad,” she told him.

Lukkas dutifully sat on the sofa and listened to the two messages she had already screened.

When she pressed the stop button, Yohanna looked at him, waiting for Lukkas to react. He remained silent for a very long moment. And then he smiled. “I guess you win this round. Apparently your mother
can
be that bad.”

“Told you.” It gave her no pleasure to be right this time.

“But she's just motivated by her concern for you,” he added.

The addendum to his initial appraisal surprised her.

“I do believe you missed your true calling.”

He looked at her, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“You should have joined the diplomatic corps,” she told him. “You obviously know how to twist a phrase to make it sound not just good, but like a compliment.” Yohanna took a deep breath. She wasn't finished just yet. This was serious. “I could try to get the story squelched.”

“You do that,” he told her, “and the media'll really feel as if they're on to something. In my experience, you just hang tight and, eventually, the story blows over and something new becomes the focus of every one of those vultures' attention. Big story or little, the one constant is that they all run their course. I wouldn't worry about squelching the story if I were you. The story will die a natural death,” he promised.

Still a bit nervous, she ran the tip of her tongue along her lips, trying to moisten them. “So we're okay?” she asked.

The look in her eyes tugged at something he had been so certain he no longer possessed. His heart.

The smile he gave her said it all.

“We're more than okay,” Lukkas assured her. “Unless—”

“Unless?” she asked uncertainly.

Here it came. He was going to tell her that if she thought they had a future, then he'd have to bow out because his heart belonged to the woman he'd been forced to bury.

“Unless this is going to scare you away. Every one of those photographers can be pretty intense and intimidating.”

“This
definitely
proves you've never met my mother,” she told him with a laugh. “You want to talk about being intense and intimidating, my mother is the national poster child.”

“I like her already,” he said with a laugh.

Getting into the spirit of the situation, Yohanna grinned. “I will remind you of that statement when the times comes.”

“You do that, Hanna. But right now, we've got work to do.” He rose from the sofa. “Your chariot awaits, milady.”

She got up beside him, as well. The feeling of relief she was experiencing was immeasurable. Smiling into his eyes, she laughed and said, “I could
really
get used to this.”

 

Chapter Sixteen

A
few days later Lukkas had to leave town on business for a couple of days. He went alone, asking her to “hold down the fort.”

She never thought she could miss someone so much.

It felt as if a piece of her—a vital piece—was missing. The only way she knew how to cope with the stark emptiness she felt was to work. Mercifully, there was still a lot to do so she threw herself into it wholeheartedly.

Anything to blot out the ache.

She was so busy prioritizing Lukkas's schedule for his next movie after the present one wrapped, she didn't notice it at first.

But she sensed it.

Sensed someone watching her.

It was actually more of an edgy feeling than anything else. For the most part she dismissed it, telling herself she was beginning to imagine things, the way anyone running on little sleep and dark coffee might after going at her present pace for more than a day.

But there were sounds she
thought
she kept hearing; sounds suspiciously resembling the clicking noise a camera made when a photograph was snapped. But each time she would look up, her gaze sweeping the general area, she wouldn't actually
see
anything that was amiss.

She considered telling Lukkas when he called to see how things were going, but she didn't want him to think she was paranoid. And she definitely didn't want him to worry, so she went on wrestling with this—at present—unsubstantiated feeling that she was being watched, doing her best to talk herself out of it.

Until she finally caught him.

She was being tailed by a freelance photographer.

“Wait!” she cried as he started to run down her block toward a parked car. “I won't call the police,” she promised, heading after him. “I just want to know why you've been taking pictures. You've got me confused with someone else. I'm not anybody,” she told the scruffy-looking man with the very expensive camera.

Apparently schooled by experience, despite the fact that, for the moment, he stopped running, the man kept a safe distance between them.

“You are to Lukkas Spader. You're the first woman he's been seen with since his wife died—and he's produced movies with some really hot little babes in them. If he thinks you're special, then the public wants to see you. It's that simple.”

Raising his camera, he snapped three more shots in incredibly fast succession—and then he took off again, leaving her to ponder his words.

She tried to see his license number, but the plate was obscured.

Was the paparazzo right? she wondered as she returned to her house.
Was
she special to Lukkas? Or was he just with her to help him transition back to the regular world, the world he'd known before he had lost his wife?

She didn't know.

She only knew that she missed Lukkas something awful. Especially at night. Somehow the dark just made the longing worse. Even her own home felt strange to her.

Without Lukkas to fill the spaces of her evening—which she had gotten extremely used to in a short amount of time—her house felt extra empty, extra lonely.

“I need a dog,” she said out loud, her voice echoing back at her as she locked the front door, then walked through the house, turning on lights in each room she came to.

She'd put in another extralong day at the studio today, getting everything prepared for Lukkas so when he got back, he would be ready to roll. She absolutely loved the fact that she had gotten really good at anticipating his needs and requirements when it came to working with him.

The other part of it, anticipating his needs as a man... She was more than happy about keeping her finger on
that
particular pulse, as well.

It was past ten o'clock. She was exhausted but too wired to sleep. A vague hunger nudged at her, reminding her that she hadn't eaten very much.

She went into the kitchen and opened her refrigerator. It all but mocked her as she stared unseeingly into its interior.

Nothing seemed to move her or to tempt her taste buds. There were several things she could whip up—chicken Parmesan took her less than twenty minutes and she had both the chicken and the extras that went with it. But the idea of cooking for herself held absolutely no appeal for her.

Because she knew she had to eat
something
, Yohanna took out a cherry-flavored yogurt, uncovered the top and then, picking up a spoon, started to eat it as she leaned over the sink.

It took a few moments for the scenario to sink in. And horrify her.

“My God, I've become one of those women who eats out of a container while standing over a sink,” she muttered, appalled.

She hadn't been like that before Lukkas had entered her life. She'd been independent and had made her peace with living a solitary life while making the most of it. Now all the freedom in the world couldn't begin to make up for the loneliness that was gnawing away at her.

She missed Lukkas. Missed him so much that it physically hurt.

How had she gotten here? She had absolutely no right to think that Lukkas was going to be a permanent person in her life. She had to live in the moment, not the future. Lukkas was kind, handsome, fun and very approachable. But the man's heart, she sternly reminded herself, still belonged to his late wife, and if she thought there was a way she was going to burrow into that heart and stake a claim to it, then she was going to be horribly disappointed.

She knew that.

Telling herself anything else was just delusional and putting off the inevitable.

Her spoon hit bottom. Somehow she'd managed to consume the yogurt without even realizing it. Or tasting it.

Listlessly, she threw out the container.

Her landline rang just then. She instantly brightened, pushing aside the darkness that threatened to swallow her up.

Yohanna pulled the receiver out of the cradle and put it to her ear. At this point she'd even welcome a call from her mother. Anything to keep her mind from sliding back down into the darkness.

She yanked the receiver up so quickly, she didn't even look at the name on the small screen identifying the caller.

“Hello?”

“How's everything going?”

Her face broke out in a wreath of smiles. Lukkas's voice had a way of reassuring her.

She dutifully gave him a quick summary. “The schedule's coming together. Everything's going to be ready for your review when you get back.” Which she hoped was going to be sometime tomorrow—the sooner the better.

“Are you sure about that?”

She thought that was rather an odd statement to make—he didn't usually question what she said—but she gave him the reassurance he was looking for. “I wouldn't tell you if I wasn't,” she pointed out.

“What if I get back early?”

Oh, please get back early
, she silently prayed. “It's actually ready right now, so you can come back anytime you want,” she told him.

“Sounds good,” he told her.

The doorbell rang just then.

“What's that noise?” Lukkas asked.

“That's just someone at the door.” She was perfectly willing to ignore whoever was there since the most important person in her world was on the phone with her.

“Aren't you going to answer it?” Lukkas asked her.

“I'm busy,” she told him, her voice soft and low. “Talking to you.” The doorbell rang again, splicing into her sentence.

“Whoever it is sounds as if they're going to be persistent,” Lukkas observed, and then advised, “Maybe you should call your security service, just in case there's a problem.”

“I don't have a security service,” she reminded him.

She closed her eyes as the doorbell rang yet again. There was only one person who didn't give up after a couple of tries.

“It's probably my mother,” she said with a sigh. “Hold on.”

With that, still holding the receiver in her hand, she went to the front door and opened it.

“I'm not your mother,” Lukkas said, closing the cell phone he had in his hand.

She let her portable receiver slip through her fingers. It fell on the floor. She hardly noticed. Overjoyed that he'd come back early, she threw her arms around Lukkas.

“What are you doing here?” she cried.

“Currently?” he asked with a straight face. “Having the air squeezed out of my lungs,” he answered with a laugh.

Suddenly realizing that her arms had all but tightened into a viselike grip, she loosened her hold on him.

“Don't take this the wrong way, because I'm thrilled to have you back, but what happened? You weren't supposed to be back for at least one more day, if not more,” she told him.

Lukkas shrugged. “I cut myself a little slack. You're so efficient that I figured I could do that once in a while. Besides, I missed you,” he told her.

As he began to lower his mouth to hers, he stopped abruptly when he saw them. “Hey, what's this? Tears?” he asked incredulously, lightly touching the damp path the tear had created. “I didn't say that to make you cry.”

“Too late,” she told him. Up on her toes, she pulled him closer and covered his lips with her own.

Lukkas meant to only kiss her lightly before he told her why he'd
really
cut things short and flown back earlier than planned. But when she kissed him like that, it felt as if everything inside him just began to radiate, to glow.

Accustomed to flying here, there and everywhere at the drop of a hat, fitting in all those different places, belonging nowhere, he hadn't experienced a feeling of homecoming for years now.

“Home” was everywhere and nowhere—until now.

Now
she
was home, he realized. Hanna was his go-to place. His haven.

But all of this hit him afterward. After he had kissed her until his lips were all but numb. After he'd savored every inch of her and made love with her not once, but twice.

Gloriously.

Recklessly.

Lying in her bed, holding her to him, Lukkas searched for the right words to convey all this to her. This and more.

But just when he needed it most, eloquence escaped him.

“I know it's only been a few days, but I've missed you,” he told her, murmuring the words softly into her hair. At first he thought she hadn't heard him, but then he felt her curl farther into him, her arm across his chest tightening.

He felt his whole body quicken in response.

“I missed you, too,” she told him, her words floating on her warm breath and skimming across his skin.

He wanted her all over again.

Lukkas struggled to hold himself in check. He needed to get something out in the open first.

“Then, why didn't you call?” he asked. “You didn't even call when you had updates for me.”

He'd had to be the one to call, making him feel that he needed her more than she needed him.

“I texted them,” she pointed out. “And I didn't want to bother you—or to sound needy,” she finally admitted.

“You wouldn't have bothered me,” he told her, wondering where she had gotten that impression. “And I really doubt you could sound needy even if you tried.”

She was strong and forceful—and soft in all the right places, he couldn't help thinking.

“Oh, you'd be surprised,” Yohanna told him.

She'd worried about that more than once—that he would see how much she cared about him, how much she wanted to be part of his life. Because of his past and what the loss of his wife had done to him, she was afraid that he would see her behavior as encroaching on him and he would wind up severing all ties with her.

She didn't know if she could bear that, even if, ultimately, Lukkas had done it for his own good. She wasn't that selfless, even if she wanted to be.

“Does that mean you'd miss me if I were gone?”

Lukkas's question brought her up out of her thoughts with a thud.

It sounded like an innocent question, but she had learned that nothing was really all that innocent.

Feeling as if she was walking on a thin, scarred wooden plank stretched over a bed of quicksand where one misstep would make her disappear, she asked him quietly, “Are you going somewhere?”

Lukkas continued to play devil's advocate. “If I was, how would you feel about it?” he asked. “Would you ask me not to go?”

Her first reaction was that she wouldn't ask him not to go, she'd beg him not to. But she couldn't say that; she didn't have the right.

And, after a moment, that was what she told him, as well.

“If you wanted to go, I wouldn't have the right to ask you not to.”

“But if you did have the right?” he asked, continuing to play out the line, waiting for her to tell him what he wanted to hear.

She was doing her best to hold her emotions in check. To be his assistant, not the woman who was in love with him.

“I'd want you to be happy. If going made you happy, then I wouldn't stop you.”

Lukkas continued watching her face, searching it for a sign. “So what you're telling me is that you're indifferent,” he concluded.

She knew what she was supposed to say, what she
should
say as his assistant, which was the only official position she held. But despite that, something within her just couldn't allow her to continue with the charade she was playing.

“I am
so
not indifferent,” she said, contradicting his conclusion.

The look in his eyes seemed to urge her on, so even though she was certain she was probably destroying the tiny piece of paradise she was temporarily claiming as her own, she told Lukkas exactly what was in her heart.

“If I could, I'd ask you—beg you, really—to stay because when you're gone, nothing makes sense to me. I know I've spent the first thirty years of my life without you and I functioned just fine like that. I got through one end of the day to the other, accomplishing whatever it was I was supposed to accomplish. But now everything's changed. All I can think of is how many minutes before I can see you again, before you kiss me again. Before we make the world stand still again.