Stripped (20 page)

“Of course it is.” Her arms were crossed over her midsection, shoulders tight, looking as though she’d rather be anywhere but there, standing in front of a three-time Sexiest Man Alive. “But there’s nothing I can say to Wes. It’s his movie.”

“Word around town is that you’ve got his ear.” He sidled closer. Too close. “Do you remember when we met during screen tests?”

Declan’s jaw clamped shut as Fiona nodded warily.

“I said we’d be friends. I’d love to be friends with you, Fiona.”

“I think I’m going to have to say ‘thanks, but no thanks.’ I’m fairly set when it comes to friends at the moment.” Her chin lifted, eyes flashing from behind the lenses of her glasses. “So whatever it is you think I can do for you, I can’t. More importantly, I won’t.”

Declan couldn’t stay silent any longer. “Fi?”

At the sound of his voice, Lunsford stiffened and fell back a step, giving Fiona some much-needed air as he shot Declan a killing look.

Declan moved closer, until he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Fiona. “Everything okay, darlin’?”

“We’re fine. But we’re also done.” For a brief moment, she leaned into Declan’s side, gaze never leaving Lunsford. “Talk to Wes, Christopher. Not to me.”

“He already did,” Declan informed her, trying to ignore the primitive pleasure he got from Fiona’s subtle claiming of him, but he stood a little taller, anyway. “Thanks for stopping by.” It took every ounce of his skill as an actor to muster up a polite smile, but at least Lunsford seemed able to read the cues.

After all, he was an actor, too. White teeth flashed as he raised both hands, a gesture of innocence, and began backing away from them. “It was nice seeing you again, Fiona.” Without a word to Declan, Lunsford jogged away from the lot toward the rows of parked cars. A moment later, lights flashed on a low-slung silver Ferrari, and then Lunsford was tearing out of the studio in a spit of gravel on asphalt.
 

Running a palm down her spine, Declan turned Fiona to face him, unable to keep the concern from his face or his voice. “Are you really okay?”

“Mmhm.”
 

Oddly, she didn’t relax under his hands. After so many days together, he was used to his slightest touch making her melt. “It’s been kind of a day, hasn’t it?”

She nodded. “You have no idea.” Glancing up at him, she gave a halfhearted smile. “I left my makeup bag in your trailer when we….” A blush tinged her cheeks as she stepped out of his arms. “I’m just going to grab it real quick. I—” But she shook her head and disappeared into the trailer, returning a second later and closing the door quietly behind her.

Hefting the bag, she settled the strap on her shoulder, knuckles white where she clutched it over her chest. “Can I ask you something?”

He used a fingertip to push her glasses higher on her nose, smiling when she frowned at him and adjusted them herself. “Anything.”

“What are your plans?”

“My plans?”

“For when we finish filming. When
Vendetta
’s done.”

He shrugged, hands finding the pockets of his trousers as a new tension strung his shoulders taut. “I’ve got another project startin’ in August.”

She swallowed visibly. “You hadn’t mentioned.”

“You hadn’t asked,” he retorted, wondering why he suddenly felt on the defensive.
 

“I’m asking now.”

That tension started to slowly creep down the backs of his arms. “A movie version of
Othello
. I’m playin’ Iago. We’re filming in Cape Town—it’s why I was there before flying into L.A.”

“How long is filming?”
 

“Two months.”

“And after that?” Her voice sounded strained.

Pulling his hands from his pockets, he shrugged again, jerkily. “A three-episode miniseries with the BBC. Press tour for
Vendetta
. I’ve got a stack of scripts in my hotel room and Molly, my agent, is breathing down my neck to tell her which I’m interested in auditioning for, movies and TV alike.” All good things, in his mind.

All great fucking things, actually.
Box-office gold
, Wes had said. Declan supposed they’d find out soon enough, as excitement at the prospect dispelled some of his tension.

“So, what you’re saying is…we’d be apart, for months at a time.”

Wait. That’s what this was about? “I could fly here. Or you could fly to wherever I was.”

“I don’t have that kind of money, Declan.” Her chest rose and fell in a sharp exhalation. “I’m trying to buy a house. Pretty much every spare penny’s going toward that.”

“Then I’ll pay for your plane tickets.” For all that, as Wes had pointed out, he was being paid far less than Lunsford would’ve been, Declan was earning what he personally considered a rather obscene paycheck from this film, not to mention what he’d already made overseas. Their relationship could work, if they wanted it to. If
she
wanted it to.

She was shaking her head before he’d finished his sentence. “I don’t want to argue with you about money, but I’m telling you right now I wouldn’t be comfortable with that. Thousands of dollars, just to see me for a few days here and there? I have a job.
You
have a job. It doesn’t make sense. Hell, you don’t even live in this country. I’m not having a Skype boyfriend. Neither of us would be happy with that.”

“But…I love you.” The words spilled out before he could doubt their wisdom. “Fi, I’ve fallen in love with you.”

Her lips parted, but she shook her head. Vehemently. “No.”

Frustration slashed at him. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“That’s not what we are.” Her jaw clenched. “It’s not what we were supposed to be, when this started.”

“How do you know?” It took far too much effort not to reach out and touch her, but self-preservation was foremost in his mind…and if he touched her now, something inside him might break, irrevocably. “We never talked about where this was gonna go, so what’s to say it can’t go here?” Why couldn’t he be allowed to love her?

Or perhaps… “You don’t love me.”

She said nothing, gaze focused somewhere over his shoulder.
 

In the end, it didn’t matter whether or not he touched her—things were breaking inside him anyway. “Fi.”
 

She looked at him, a wealth of emotion in her eyes. “I woke up and started thinking about houses, remember? First thing in the morning, what do you think about?”

You. I think about you
. But saying as much was a complete impossibility now, with the fists of her refusal to confirm or deny her feelings battering his tender heart. “I’m allowed to make plans,” he murmured, recognizing anger as it thundered through his veins. “I’m allowed to think flyin’ to foreign countries and livin’ out of a suitcase for three months at a time is the coolest fuckin’ job in the world, and I’m certainly allowed to put my career first.” Except that he hadn’t. In his mind, he’d already started putting Fiona first, putting
them
first,
together
.
 

“I know. I…I want you to.”

He scoffed. “Do you really? Because it doesn’t sound that way. Seems more like you want me to choose one over the other—work or you.” And maybe, just maybe, he would have picked her.
 

Not anymore.

Resisting the urge to scrub a hand over his ravaged chest, he took a step back, away from where she stood clutching the strap of her makeup bag. “I think you’re right, Miss O’Brien. This isn’t what we’re
supposed to
be—people who love each other.” Oh, Christ, his chest. “I won’t be stickin’ around after we wrap the second block in Venice. So it’s probably better that we end this now, don’t you think? Before it gets…messy.”

“It’s already messy.” Her voice was a strained whisper.
 

“I bloody well know that, darlin’.” Turning on his heel, he left her to stand and stare after him.
 

And rather hoped she went blind from the effort.

FIFTEEN

“Night, Fi!” called Amy, one of the other key artists, as Fiona grabbed her purse and headed for the makeup trailer door. “See you in two weeks!”

Fiona nodded. “See you.”
 

Nine o’clock at night in Los Angeles meant the sun had gone down, but the city glowed with the lights from the skyline. Most of the cast and crew would be going out into that strange darkness to celebrate finishing the first block of shooting, which Wes had called a wrap only two hours earlier—an announcement met with cheers and hugs, and the mass invitation to one of her father’s famous backyard barbeques tomorrow afternoon. Amy and Beth had tried cajoling her into hitting the town with them this evening, but she’d managed to put them off, pleading fatigue.
 

The truth was, she just wasn’t in the mood.
 

She hadn’t been in the mood for much of anything in the way of socializing for three weeks, since that awful night outside Declan’s trailer, when he’d told her he loved her…and then left her standing there, alone and confused, panicked and elated.
 

It wasn’t fair, how he’d given her practically no time to process before stalking off in a pout. But it also hadn’t been fair to him, how unprepared she’d been to hear his confession.
 

Before Rick had barged in on them, before everything had changed, she had been so scared to rock the boat. What if it was just a fling to Declan? What if she said something, and then all of the amazing sex went away? What if things ended and it got awkward between them professionally?

It hadn’t been a fling.
 

The amazing sex
did
go away.

But, oddly enough, after a few days of zero conversation during his time in her makeup chair, they’d latched onto a form of stilted professionalism. He would very politely ask how her day was going, and she would compliment him on a scene or two that she’d been able to catch. On the surface, they were no different than any other cast-crew pairing.
 

Underneath, though…
 

Underneath, Fiona was hurting.

She supposed she ought to be thankful that Declan had been able to set aside his anger at her—because he
had
been angry, no doubt about that—and find a way to work with her. And then there was no small amount of pride in herself, for behaving like a responsible adult and not letting her personal life interfere with her professional life.
 

Except that the clash of her personal and professional lives was what had gotten her into this situation to begin with, and she couldn’t decide if she was very stupid or very smart to have allowed fear to drive a wedge straight into the heart of her relationship with Declan.
 

Her dad thought she’d made the right choice, she knew. There’d been the consoling hug that night, when she’d walked back into the soundstage, met his gaze, and shook her head. There had also been the repeated invitations to dinner at her parents’ house, which she had found herself accepting. Her mom had even managed to coerce her into sleeping over a few nights in her childhood bedroom.
 

Nothing like coming home to soothe a broken heart, she was learning.

Fiona sighed as she slid into the driver’s seat of her Prius and slowly backed out of the lot. There was no denying it—Fiona’s heart
was
broken, or at least very, very bruised. Calling the sensation uncomfortable would be an understatement.
 

Stopping at a red light, she fiddled with the radio until something sad and country was crooning out of her speakers, and glanced out the passenger window, noting that she was in front of a hotel.

Recognition hit her. This was
Declan
’s hotel.

Before she could think better of it, she turned into the circle drive leading to the Deco-style portico and killed the engine. Handing the approaching valet her keys, she slung her purse over her shoulder and entered the lobby.
 

She may never have been in Declan’s hotel room, but she’d memorized the room number when he’d told it to her, curled together late at night in her bed. “
I don’t see why you’d rather be in my apartment than your hotel. I’m sure the hotel’s nicer
.
”

“This is your space.” He rubbed the tip of his nose against hers. “I like getting my stuff all over your space.”

“Perv.” But she’d nuzzled him right back, nestling deeper into the circle of his arms, bare legs tangling with his beneath the sheets. “I want to see
your
space.”

“Darlin’, you can go see it anytime. Room 1236. Just know that I won’t be there. I’m too busy bein’ here.”

A sleek glass elevator whisked her from the ground floor to level twelve. Following the sign, she turned right upon exiting, and soon found herself standing in front of a heavy, cream-colored door bearing the number “1236” on a small placard beneath the peephole. She raised her hand, prepared to knock, and was immediately seized with doubt.
 

What the hell was she doing here? They were over—because of her. Because she had wanted to know what was next for them, and when what was next turned out to be the prospect of months’ worth of separation from one another, she’d balked. Not just because her potential boyfriend would be, for the most part, of the long-distance variety, but because he had tried using those three terrifying words to make her
okay
with that distance.
 

She’d felt cornered in that moment, manipulated in the next. The worst of it was, she didn’t think he’d meant her to feel either. It had been obvious that he was putting his heart on the line, but he hadn’t bothered to wait around and see whether she’d place her own heart there, as well.
 

In the end, it had been smarter—easier?—to let him stalk away from her, all fierce and wounded. She’d been selfish, just as Rick had encouraged her to be, and put herself first. No struggling to find a balance between work and a relationship, no worrying that she wasn’t giving her partner enough of herself—or that she was, perhaps, giving him too much. She’d lost herself once before to infatuation, when she had allowed her affair with Alexei Wolkov to not simply derail her, but destroy her.