Her Red-Carpet Romance (8 page)

To him, relationships were tantamount to the experience, and he hadn't had a relationship since Natalie had died in that senseless crash.

Sitting back, he shook his head. “It's really stuck.” He rolled the problem over in his head. “I guess I'm going to have to take drastic measures,” he told her.

And just what did he mean by “drastic”?

“You're not leaving me here, are you?” she asked, looking at him uncertainly.

“As a sacrifice to the airplane gods?” he asked with a genuine laugh. “No, what I meant by that is that I'm going to have to cut the belt. Wait here,” he told her, getting up again.

“It's not as if I have a choice,” she called after him, frustrated and annoyed that she couldn't free herself without all this extra added effort.

She heard Lukkas laugh in response.

* * *

He came back ten minutes later, a pair of heavy-duty shears in his hand.

“I was getting worried,” she confessed. “You were gone longer than I thought you'd be.”

“You'd be surprised how hard it is to find a pair of scissors on a single-engine plane,” he told her.

He sat to be closer to her when he made the necessary surgical cut. “Okay, now hold still,” he instructed just before he got started.

“The idea of dancing around the cabin has a certain drawback at the moment,” she told him, watching as he slipped one of the blades underneath the contrary seat belt.

She held her breath as she saw him grip the scissor handles and very slowly cut through the belt.

The latter was thicker than she had thought and the process was a slow one because, she assumed, he was trying not to cut her, as well.

In what felt like an eternity later, the two sides of the seat belt finally separated, freeing her from her gripping prison.

“You're free,” he declared. “This makes you my very first official damsel in distress that I've rescued.” He frowned as he looked at the severed belt. “Sorry you had to go through that.”

“As long as you got me free, that's all that matters,” Yohanna told him, very relieved that it was all over with and that she could finally get off the plane. “Thank you!”

Impulsively, going with the moment, Yohanna stood up on her toes and brushed her lips against his cheek.

Or at least that was her intent when she started.

 

Chapter Eight

C
aught off guard by her closeness and the feel of something whisper soft and silky against his cheek, Lukkas automatically turned his head toward the source of that softness.

And just like that, it wasn't his cheek that her lips were touching. It was his
lips
.

A sense of propriety urged him to pull back. To mumble some sort of an apology even though he hadn't been the one to initiate the action that lay behind this situation.

But needs that far outweighed that sense of right and wrong prohibited him from stepping away from something he'd been missing these past few years. For the first time in all those months, the loneliness that haunted everything he did, that haunted all his waking hours, actually disappeared. The darkness that had hovered over his spirit moved aside and suddenly, just for a second, as he made this intimate contact with another human being, the sun flooded into every aching corner of his soul.

She tasted of strawberry and sweetness.

Most of all, she tasted of hope and, just possibly, salvation.

His
salvation.

* * *

Horrified at what Lukkas probably thought she was trying to do, Yohanna ordered herself to pull back. All she had wanted to do was to thank him. Granted, this extra step had been an impulsive one on her part, but she hadn't meant for it to turn into anything else, especially not this.

Oh, but it had.

Big-time.

Instead of expressing simple gratitude, she found herself experiencing a wild surge within her veins that she had, until just this very moment, thought was merely the product of overimaginative writers who clearly dabbled in fiction, creating mythical scenarios that could not possibly be achieved in real life.

Except that they could.

Because she was having just such a reaction right now.

She still knew her own name, but as for anything else—where she was, what time it was, things like that—it was all hazy and even now was swiftly dissolving in the heat her body insisted on generating.

Yohanna had no idea how long the kiss continued. One eternity, maybe two. What she did know was that she had never felt this alive before. She felt like someone who could leap over tall buildings, who could do wonderful, wondrous things.

Without being fully aware of what she was actually doing, she slipped her arms around Lukkas's neck. At that moment she felt his arms tightening around her, felt him bringing her closer so that her body swayed into his. That, in turn, ignited every single inch of her.

She wanted the moment, the kiss, to go on forever. She had never felt this alive before.

And then, as unintentionally as it began, it was over.

One of them had stepped back.

Had it been her?

Or maybe him?

She wasn't sure. One minute, they were all but bound to one another, utterly connected at the lips.

The next, they weren't.

* * *

“A simple handshake would have sufficed,” Lukkas heard himself saying.

He'd seen the uncertain look in her eyes and knew he had to set the tone if they were ever going to move past this. If he was being honest with himself, all he really wanted to do was to kiss her again, to take her home and get to know every single inch of her.

Slowly.

But that wasn't possible or advisable on so many levels.

“What?”

Stunned, Yohanna looked at him. She replayed his words in her head. “Oh.” Belatedly, she realized that he was teasing her and giving her a way to save face at the same time.

She silently blessed him for it.

“Okay, the next time I find myself trapped in my seat and you come to my rescue, I'll remember to shake your hand. How's that?” she asked him, playing along.

Lukkas nodded as he escorted her from the plane and down the metal stairs. Her heels hitting the metal made a rhythmic staccato sound.

“It's been a
long
day. Let's get you home.” When he saw her slanting a startled look at him, he clarified, “
Your
home.”

“Oh.” She was relieved—and yet somehow, just on the fringes of her mind was another feeling lurking.

Disappointment.

* * *

Determined not to have Lukkas harbor any sort of doubts about the way she saw her actual job description and the subsequent performance evaluation that would eventually come, Yohanna threw herself into her work, determined to be the ultimate employee. It wasn't hard. She was good at this.

She came in early, stayed late and, bit by bit, brought complete order to what had otherwise threatened to dissolve into an utterly chaotic mess where nothing of any importance could be located—easily or otherwise—when it was needed.

She took to the work waiting to be done around her with amazing precision, organizing Lukkas's schedules, his meetings, all the while making certain that there were no overlaps and that none of the people Lukkas dealt with fell through the cracks.

And as always, she kept lists.

Lists of the people he could count on for financial backing for his project no matter what, and lists of people who needed to be wooed a little.

Or a lot.

In addition, she began to compile files on each of these people, noting their likes, their dislikes, their affiliations as well as the names and ages of their family members. In short, she did whatever it took to round out the mental picture for Lukkas so that he knew exactly who he was dealing with and just how to deal with them. Her research allowed him to always remain two steps ahead of anyone he interacted with.

The first time she showed him what she had worked up—and it was always going to be a work in progress, she assured him, since new people came into his life all the time—Lukkas found himself all but speechless.

The amount of time and effort she had to have put into organizing his life was astonishing.

“You did all this?” he marveled as Yohanna scrolled through the information on one of his new associates, a man who had come on board for the film Lukkas had produced just last spring.

Yohanna curbed the desire to tell him that the tooth fairy was behind all this. She wasn't sure if he could take a joke—or reject it because it wasn't of his own making.

“Yes,” she replied instead.

She could see by his expression that he found the work she'd done to be extensive. In her opinion, it had to be. Otherwise, why else bother putting it together in the first place?

“Is Eli the only one you've worked up like this?”

Instead of answering him, Yohanna went back a couple of screens on the laptop, stopping when she pulled up the directory that she had created.

Silently, she scrolled down all the entries.

For the moment it seemed as if there were too many to count.

“When did you have time for all this?” Lukkas asked.

She shrugged. “I found pockets of time here and there.” And then she elaborated a little for him. “I did it when I wasn't inputting your storyboard.”

“You did
what
to my storyboard?” he asked uncertainly, glancing at the item under discussion. The storyboard was off to the extreme left-hand side so it would be out of everyone's way until needed.

A film's storyboard was literally a large board on which drawings of the movie were pinned in their proper sequential order. It was the entire movie summed up as succinctly as possible. The director used it to help remind himself of the movie's ultimate focus or message.

Lukkas had asked her just to put up the drawings in their proper sequence.

She was obviously not referring to the corkboard that could be wheeled onto the set if he needed to have it brought there.

“I made up a virtual storyboard and saved it onto a USB drive as well as your smartphone. That way, you can always access it and make changes no matter where you are.”

“You sure you never worked in the industry before?” Lukkas asked, scrutinizing her. She had such natural instincts about what was necessary—and what wasn't—he was having a hard time believing that she'd been a complete novice just a few weeks ago.

“I'm sure. I just know how to anticipate a boss,” Yohanna replied, flashing her take-no-prisoners smile at him.

“Oh, really?” His tone had her bracing herself, instinctively knowing that he had just decided to throw her a curve. Thinking of it as a challenge, she was ready for anything. “Did your powers of anticipation allow you to anticipate being asked to that premiere and the party afterward that I have to attend?”

Yohanna was well aware of the premiere and subsequent party Lukkas had to attend since he'd had her call each of the major stars in the movie to coax, cajole or plead with them, doing whatever she had to do to get them to promise to appear at the showing.

She had just assumed he'd already had someone to go with. This was a whole new twist she hadn't prepared for and, for a moment, she was at a complete loss as to how to respond.

“You're asking me to attend?” Yohanna asked in disbelief.

He gave her a look that whispered of moderately bridled impatience. “I'm pretty sure I was just speaking English, so yes, I'm asking you to attend the premiere—and the party—with me.”

“Why?” The question had slipped out like a stunned whisper.

This man was one of Hollywood's most eligible bachelors. What was the man doing, asking her to attend a premiere with him?
And
the party afterward? He could easily have his pick of any one of a large number of stunning women. She couldn't begin to compete with any of those.

So why was he asking
her
to come with him to this premiere?

“Because if I go alone, aside from speculation about my playing the lonely widower, since I'm the producer and I'm under seventy with all my own teeth, I will be a walking target for any starlet on the rise and willing to go to great lengths to get to the top of the heap. I'll also be easy prey for any backer who has a female relative he'd like to see married or at least involved with someone.”

“And you don't want to be that someone,” Yohanna ventured.

Lukkas nodded. “Give that young lady a prize,” he declared like a carnival barker.

“So you want me to be your beard,” she summarized astutely.

The label conjured up the wrong image—at least in his head. “I'd rather think of you as my entanglement repellent.”

Yohanna laughed at his choice of words. “That makes me sound like a bug spray.”

Lukkas shrugged. He went to his desk to take something out of one of the lower drawers. “Call it any way you see it as long as you're ready to be picked up at five-thirty tomorrow.”

She felt her stomach quickening. She wasn't quite as blasé about things as she would have liked to portray. “I know this sounds clichéd, but I don't have a thing to wear for something of this magnitude.”

If she thought that would be the end of it, she was sadly mistaken. Lukkas was not a man who gave up easily and he could be just as stubborn as she could.

Possibly more so.

Lukkas reached into his back pocket, took out his wallet and almost without looking selected a credit card, which he then in turn handed to her.

“Here,” he told her. “Get something that'll make a good showing at tomorrow's premiere of
Diamonds and Dust
—but not so much that it takes the focus off the movie,” he warned.

Yohanna stared at the credit card. Specifically, she stared at his name embossed on the credit card. She had her own credit cards, but since she had taken over issuing payment checks for his bills, she knew that her cards had a far lower cut-off ceiling than his did.

She looked back up at him incredulously. “You're kidding, right?”

“If I were kidding, laughter would be involved somewhere. Real laughter, not nervous laughter,” he attested. “You hear any?”

Yohanna slowly moved her head from side to side. “No.”

“Then, I'm not kidding,” he concluded. He glanced at the card he had just given her. The same one she was still clutching as if she expected it to either burst into flame or levitate away from her. “You want to take a few hours off to go shopping?”

Her first response was to say yes, but then her stubborn streak kicked in. She was not about to take advantage of either him or the situation—no matter how tempting it might be.

“No, I'll take care of it on my own time,” she answered.

Admittedly, Yohanna was still a little shell-shocked over what had just happened, but she instinctively knew what to do to take care of herself—even around drop-dead gorgeous men, a club that Lukkas clearly belonged to.

“Have it your way—you do know that there's such a thing as being
too
good to be true, right?” Lukkas asked her.

Lukkas started to leave his office when he stopped to impart one last thought on the subject. “Oh, and by the way, do something with your hair.”

Her hand automatically came up to touch the back of her hair. Did he find it lacking? Distracting? Or—what? She needed to know to understand how to remedy the situation.

“My hair?”

“Yes. Wear it up,” he answered, waving one hand around in the air as if he were a wand-wielding fairy godmother, able to make things do his bidding with a flick of his wrist. “This is going to be on the formal side.”

“Are you
sure
you want me to go with you?” she asked, hoping that he'd change his mind at the final moment.

Lukkas rephrased her question and turned it into an answer. “Am I sure I don't want to be inundated with women who, for one reason or another, see me as a means to an end? Yes, I'm sure. Think of it as part of your job description,” he instructed.

“
What
part?” she challenged.

“The part that comes under ‘miscellaneous,'” he answered as he left the office.

She stared at his credit card for several moments before she finally put it away into her own wallet. Her fingertips felt almost icy as she handled the card. It represented a great deal of power in its own right, she thought, tucking the wallet with Lukkas's card into the depths of her purse, otherwise known—according to Lukkas—as “no man's land.”