Peaches Monroe: The Return of Ursula (Short Story) (2 page)

I bit my lip again. “Am I dreaming?”

“We both are.” He leaned over and kissed me. My skin came alive at his heavenly touch.

I probably would have tried to get our clothes off right there in the back of the car, but Vern opened the door and cleared his throat.

Dalton pulled away, his green eyes dancing with mischief. “You know what happens next,” he said.

At the growl of his voice, my body electrified.

“I have a pretty good idea what happens next,” I answered. I didn’t say more, because Vern was standing right there, but I had a feeling it involved my sexy platform shoes and every single room of the house.

We stepped out of the car and walked toward the tall, brushed-metal door. The house was built in the sixties, but like many of the older ladies in L.A., she’s had some work done over the years. Vern trotted ahead and unlocked the door for us.

Something red on the front steps caught my eye—terra cotta flower pots, filled with red geraniums.

“Those are new.” I pointed to the red flowers, which were exactly like the ones I kept back in Beaverdale, at the old house I shared with my cousin.

He picked up one of the pots. “They aren’t new. I had Vern ship them down here with the rest of your things. I wanted you to feel at home in your new house.”

I held my hand over my mouth, too overcome with emotion to speak for a moment.

He asked, “Have I swept you off your feet?”

“The flowers are—”

I didn’t get to finish what I was saying, because Dalton reached down and literally swept me off my feet. This was no simple task, because I am a woman of heavenly curves, but Dalton is stacked with muscles, and they’re not just for the camera. He uses those muscles to move his body and do wild, wild things to me.

With me cradled in his arms, he stepped over the threshold and into
our
house. High overhead, the industrial ceiling fans (which really are industrial, because they’re from actual airplanes) were gently turning, swirling the air around. His indoor plants had grown since I’d been there last, and he joked about fighting his way through a jungle as we made our way into the living room.

Vern closed the door and disappeared, off to his private quarters.

It was just me and Dalton, in his living room, and he was still holding me in his arms, because I was his. Completely his.

“You can set me down any time,” I said.

“Promise you won’t run away?”

I laughed. “Where would I go?”

He set me down, keeping his eyes on me the whole time. He wasn’t wrong about my tendency to freak out and run away from him. But now that we were married, everything felt different.

“It’s been a long day,” I said. “I’ll go take a shower, if I can find the bathroom.”

He pulled his shirt off over his head in one smooth motion, then ran his hands over his washboard stomach. I sucked in my breath, because the sight of his million-dollar chest still took me by surprise. He’d fallen off the no-carbs wagon and enjoyed cake at our wedding, but it sure wasn’t showing.

“Do you think you can find your way to the pool?” he asked. “It’s that big blue thing at the back of the house.”

“If you’re there, that’s more than enough motivation.”

He chuckled. “Motivation. That’s funny.”

I looked around the master bedroom. Vern had set up my closet a few days earlier, and he’d done a much better job than I would have.

I pulled out a two-piece swimsuit, in a periwinkle blue that complemented my pale skin, blond hair, and blue eyes. Dalton probably expected me to go out there naked, but I felt more comfortable with a bit of fabric keeping everything where it ought to be.

There were a bunch of new clothes in the closet, purchased by Vern on my behalf. I felt like a princess.

Looking at my closet, the shock of my incredible new situation hit me, and so I took a moment to squeal and jump around like a little girl. Once I’d calmed myself, I selected a pretty pool-side wrap. The sun had already set outside, but my outfit needed a pair of sunglasses, so I put on a pair, skillfully purchased by Vern.

“That butler deserves a raise,” I said to myself.

I walked out to the back yard, where I barely glanced at Dalton in the pool before my eyes went to the view. Los Angeles lay before us, stretching out across the valley. I turned and looked over my shoulder, back at the house. During one of the renovations, they’d replaced all the back walls with windows, so from the back, the house looked like a cliff made of glass.

Dalton whistled. “Hey, sexy stranger. You’d better get off my property. You’re trespassing. My wife is meeting me here any minute, and she’s got a really bad temper. She’ll spray you down with a garden hose, or punch you some new freckles, whatever that means.”

I pulled off the sunglasses. “Very funny.”

He splashed around in the pool. “My wife swears she’s going to behave herself in L.A., but I don’t think she can control herself.”

“When I say ‘very funny,’ I mean you’re
not
that funny.”

“Get into this pool before I drag you in.”

“Sounds like a threat. What else are you going to do, once you get your hands on me?”

“I’m going to make you bark like those sea lions we saw in San Francisco.”

“That will never happen.”

He made a barking sea lion sound. “Aroop, aroop.”

“It’s more like this: Urp, urp, urp.”

“You are so damn sexy. Get in this pool.”

I let the robe slip off, and stepped down into the water to join Dalton. The water temperature was perfect.

He handed me a glass of sparkling champagne, in a disposable plastic cup. He explained that Vern had him trained to keep breakable glass away from the pool.

“Aren’t you the responsible one,” I commented.

He suddenly lunged out, grabbed me, and pulled me up against him. “How dare you,” he said in mock horror, and then he tipped his glass into my cleavage.

I squealed as some of the bubbly liquid tricked down between my breasts. The remainder formed a triangle-shaped pool in my cleavage. Dalton dove in face-first and noisily slurped away at the champagne.

I nearly collapsed from laughing so hard, but then he stopped slurping champagne and was kissing me sensuously, his lips moving up and down my chest and neck as he clutched my body to his.

The fire of my lust started up deep inside, and Miss Kitty got very interested in everything he was doing. I tossed back my own glass of champagne and then sighed with pleasure as he refilled my cleavage and went in for another heavenly drink.

We were standing in water that came to the bottom of my breasts. After his second drink, we started moving. He kept one hand on my lower back as he guided us deeper into the pool, until the water line reached the bottom of my chin, and the tops of his shoulders.

With one hand still on my lower back, he kept me close while he slipped his other hand down the front of my bikini bottoms. He moved his fingers down slowly, in no rush, even though I was dying to have him touch me.

We kept kissing, and finally he nudged his hand down and slipped a finger into my flesh.

He held me close and breathed against my ear. I groaned in lust, already trembling from the swirling of his fingertips.

“What’s your motivation right now?” he whispered.

I moaned in response.

He asked me again, “What’s your motivation?”

Finally, I opened my eyes and said, “What on earth are you talking about?”

He slipped a finger inside me and stroked. It felt good, but not as good as it had been before all this conversation nonsense.

“Motivation,” he said. “As an actor, I was always trying to figure out my motivation in a scene, but I think it’s all junk. In real life, people don’t think about their motivation. Only their intent, which is different.”

His talking took me out of the moment, and his fingers seemed equally distracted, moving without rhythm.

I reached down and withdrew his hand from the bottom of my swimsuit. He seemed to not notice.

“So, from now on, I’m going to focus mainly on intention,” he said. “I think that’s what actors mean when they talk about motivation, anyway.” He was looking in my direction, but over my shoulder, at the lights of L.A. “I started thinking about this on the plane, and it makes sense, don’t you think?”

I used my arms to help propel myself over to the edge of the pool, where I refilled my plastic champagne glass.

“Peaches? Is something wrong?”

“No, not at all,” I said, which was only a bit of a lie. “You’ve got your work tomorrow morning, so I can understand that’s on your mind.”

“I know playing Drake Cheshire isn’t exactly Hamlet, but I still want to do a good job.”

“You’re amazing as Drake. I can’t see how you could be better, but you should definitely try.”

“Thanks.” He kept looking off into the distance. He wasn’t due on set until the next morning, but it seemed like he was already there.

I tipped my glass over my cleavage and made a small pool of bubbly. “Dalton, if you want to talk about acting, we can talk about acting… any time you want.” I glanced down, trying to drop the hint that maybe we could talk about work stuff
after
we’d made love for the first time in our shared house.

He didn’t take the hint, though, and the champagne all trickled away.

Finally, I said, “I can’t wait to see you in action. I’m really excited.”

“The episode we’re shooting tomorrow won’t air for a few months yet.”

“I mean about seeing you tomorrow. On the set.”

“Oh.” He cast his gaze down, and I got a bad feeling he was going to say something I didn’t want to hear. “You don’t want to visit the set tomorrow. It’s always so boring at the best of times, but ballroom scenes are the worst, because of the scale. There’s nothing to do but sit around and wait.”

I shrugged. “All the more reason for me to come. I’ll hang out and keep you company.”

He still wasn’t looking me in the eyes. “Let’s talk about this next week.”

I put my hands on my hips so fast, I sent up two splashes of water. “Are you kidding me? I’m your wife, but I’m not good enough to come visit you on the set? What do you want from me, besides sex? Why did you even marry me?” I looked up at the night sky, where I could see the moon, but no stars. “Oh, that’s right. You married me for good publicity.”

“And also because I love you.”

My jaw dropped open.
Also
? What the Fudgeeo cookies?!

He quickly said, “I mean,
only
because I love you. Not
also
. That came out wrong. I told you before, I’m no good with words, unless someone writes them for me in a script.”

“You’re plenty good with words when you’re trying to get something, Dalton Deangelo.”

I turned away and started walking through the water to the stairs. He splashed and caught up with me, grabbing me in his strong arms. He held on. I could struggle all I wanted, but he wasn’t going to let me go unless I hurt him.

Oh, but I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to elbow him in the stomach, or hit him in the nose with the back of my head, but I resisted the urge and went limp in his arms.

His voice deep and thick, he growled, “You’re my wife now.”

I sniffed. “I know. That’s why it hurts so bad.”

“I’ll be thinking about you tomorrow. Go shopping with Vern.”

“Sure,” I said coolly.

“Don’t be mad.”

“I’m not,” I lied.

He kept hugging me from behind, and nodded his head forward to kiss my shoulder.

His grip loosened, so I slipped free of him and swam quickly to the stairs. I stepped up, out of the pool, and wrapped myself in the robe.

“I know you’re stressed about moving,” he said. “Even good changes are still difficult. Trust me, everything’s going to settle down soon.”

I grabbed a handful of my wet hair and wrung out the water. Dalton stood in the shimmering blue pool, bare chested and gorgeous, looking like a page from a magazine.

Part of me wanted to forget all about him teasing me on the plane and now this. I could let it all go and join him in the pool, on this beautiful summer night.

But another part of me still wanted to run. Now I had an enormous diamond weighing down my ring finger, but I was still the same girl who left Dalton in a hotel room and ran home in the dark.

“Trust me,” Dalton said again. “Everything will look better in the morning.”

“Is it okay if I sleep in one of the guest rooms tonight? I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since before the wedding.”

Disappointment flickered across his face. “Of course it’s okay,” he said. “This is a big house, with plenty of space.”

I turned around and looked up at the glass wall. It certainly was a big house, all right. Between the house and the huge city of L.A., I felt very small.

I went inside, gathered my laptop and a few things from the master bedroom, and got myself set up in a spare room at the opposite end of the house.

After about an hour, Dalton came by to say goodnight. We talked about schedules and wake-up times, but we didn’t talk about what had been said in the pool.

He stood in the doorway, glancing over at the bed a few times. I knew he was waiting for an invitation, but I didn’t give him one. If we were going to make love for the first time in our new home, I didn’t want it to be like this.

He went off to bed, and I phoned my best friend and cousin, Shayla, to tell her everything.

When she heard about me not getting invited to the set, she got even more angry than I had.

I sure do love Shayla.

She was the one who suggested I call my new L.A. friend Mitchell, and get him to help me sneak onto the set of
One Vamp to Love
.

I had a few more glasses of wine, thanks to a bottle I liberated from the wine cellar, and then I phoned Mitchell.

When I got out of bed Monday morning, Dalton was already gone for work. He’d gotten up before five o’clock so he could be on the set by six.

Mitchell arrived at the house at nine, wheeling a suitcase full of wigs he’d borrowed from his drag queen roommate.

“This house is almost exactly what I imagined,” Mitchell said as he looked around the living room, with its polished concrete floor and fifteen-foot-high ceilings. Mitchell isn’t a very tall guy, and he looked even smaller in the big room, like a fresh-faced, muscular kid with curly blond hair. “Needs more art.”