The Movie Star's Red Hot Holiday Fling: A novella (Entangled Indulgence) (Sweetbriar Springs)

One dare and he’ll lose his heart...

Determined to qualify for the fire department’s grueling physical, former marine Jessie Sullivan never gives up, despite the pins in her leg. The last thing she needs is a tall, incredibly hot action movie star sharing her gym...and who makes her want to trade in her reps for some sexy physical activity. Of the naked kind.

Blake Johnston is more than just a Big Screen Sex Machine, and he’s willing to prove it. Especially to a spirited and sexy ex-marine like Jessie. But when a harmless dare leads to sizzling fireworks, Jessie and Blake’s workout ends up generating some serious heat between the sheets. And it’s more than Jessie could have imagined. Much, much more.

But flings don’t last forever. And in two weeks, Jessie will have to say goodbye to her red-hot Christmas fantasy...

The Movie Star’s Red Hot Holiday Fling

a Sweetbriar Springs novella

Christine Glover

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by Christine Glover. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

2614 South Timberline Road

Suite 109

Fort Collins, CO 80525

Visit our website at
www.entangledpublishing.com
.

Indulgence is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

Edited by Kate Fall

Cover design by Liz Pelletier

ISBN 978-1-63375-138-5

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition November 2014

Thank you to all the people who serve to protect our country and to their families who stay behind to keep the home fires burning.

Chapter One

O’dark thirty in the early morning and war vet Jessie Sullivan slid her key into Sweetbriar Springs Resort gym’s lock. She stepped inside the room, grateful for the solitude and lack of lighting and needing the peace of her family’s resort to obliterate her personal demons. Only four hours ago, she’d called her teammate Gunnery Sergeant Nick Constanza, who was fighting to recover from his multiple battleground injuries. She’d reassured him that he’d beat the loss of his limb, learn to live with one eye, and regain his hearing. Now her words of comfort rang hollow in her brain.

After all, she still couldn’t remember everything that had happened the day the IED exploded. The trauma blasted, white hot, as real today as the actual moment. But the events were as tangled up as a mess of electrical cords. She couldn’t unravel the knots and recall the details.

Ignoring a lance of pain stabbing her right thigh, she walked to the row of weights stacked from weenie three-pound dumbbells all the way up to macho double-digit presses.
Screw weenie.
She tightened the Velcro on her lifting gloves, then hoisted two thirty-pound weights, faced the floor-to-ceiling mirror, and focused on maintaining proper body alignment.

Her last practice run at the fire department hadn’t gone well. If she couldn’t pass the eight job-specific tests, she wouldn’t get into the fire academy. And Marines didn’t quit.

Not even if they were sidelined by honorable medical discharges.

Her stomach hardened into a ball of clay and she tasted gravel.
I wanted to serve my country, but helping Sweetbriar’s citizens is a close second.
At least she’d regain some sense of normalcy, a team, and a life. Wasn’t that what she’d promised Constanza? If only she could promise him that he’d feel whole again, but Jessie couldn’t lie. Not when she hadn’t found a way back to the person she’d been before the accident.

A shadow in the hallway outside the room reflected in the mirror, catching her attention. “Damn it, Mom,” she called, curling the weights to her chest and lowering them. “Please find another one of your kids to hover over.”

All she wanted was two blessed hours alone. At twenty-four years old, she didn’t need her mother constantly checking her with eagle eyes, assessing her with more skills than an experienced medic, and asking her with unspoken words if the real Jessie Sullivan would ever reappear.

Though she longed to paint a different picture, Jessie couldn’t dredge up the will to pretend all was well. The girl she’d been her whole life was long gone. And she doubted she’d ever be that happy or eager or innocent again.

She’d changed. Nothing, not even the pins and bolts that put her together again, could repair the internal carnage to her soul. Hell, they’d medically evacuated her out of the field. She may as well have been dishonorably discharged as far as she was concerned. None of the medals she’d received afterward could overcome the stigma of that humiliation.

Jessie performed another rep, heard the door open. “Mom, what part of leave me the hell alone do you not understand?” she demanded, turning to face her mother.

Her heart stuttered to a brief halt. Action hero, larger than life movie star, Blake Johnston hefted his gym bag over his shoulder. His sister Maisey’s Winter Wonderland-themed wedding at Sweetbriar Springs had taken months to arrange: a private affair the Saturday before Christmas that meant booking the entire resort for the Johnstons to keep the intrusive paparazzi from spoiling the day.

“You always this grumpy about sharing the facilities?” Blake asked. “’Cause your mom assured me that using the resort’s gym before it officially opens wouldn’t be a problem.”

That his mother and hers had gone to high school together had come as quite a surprise to the entire family. While Jessie had been recuperating from her injuries in Germany, Maisey Johnston had contacted the Sullivans in an effort to find a connection to her past. And Jessie’s mom never turned away a stray soul. A year later, Maisey was practically part of the family. When Blake had arrived in Sweetbriar Springs for the two plus weeks of wedding celebrations, Shannon Sullivan had taken him under her wing too, treating him like one of her own.

Everyone at Sweetbriar Springs admired Blake, but Jessie bowed to no man. Not when she believed that the real heroes were the men and women who protected her country every day.

Unfortunately, her hormones were curtseying like crazy for Blake Johnston.

Jessie inhaled a deep breath and waited for her heart to resume normal functions. “Mom thought wrong,” she said. Not only that, she didn’t want anyone to see the extent of the damage to her leg. Yet here was the sexiest guy in Hollywood, an A-list hunk of gorgeousness, walking toward her until they stood only inches apart. And though they didn’t touch, her skin tingled as if he’d brushed against her.

He gave her one of his trademark drool-worthy, cocky grins. “I expected to have the place to myself, but I’m cool with sharing.”

Her stomach fluttered, and dangerous electrical charges zipped into all her woman parts. The gym seemed to shrink because of the sheer magnitude of the man. Not only that, why did he have to smell so damned good? All spicy and delicious and man-edible?

A normal red-blooded woman would kill to be in Jessie’s Nike’s. But not her. No matter how much her erogenous zones were high-fiving each other at the sight of the star.

“I prefer to work out alone.” She returned her dumbbells to the rack. “Come back in an hour, and I’ll leave early.” It would mean losing valuable training time, but she’d make up for it with a run through the resort’s wooded paths.

“No can do.” He dropped his bag to the floor next to another bench, knelt and unzipped it, and tugged on his gloves. “Next Quinn Sawyer movie starts shooting in three weeks. Got to bulk up the muscles.”

From where she stood, those thickly corded arms and broad shoulders didn’t need any more definition. And the six-pack of abs his T-shirt accented didn’t have an ounce of fat on them. Blake Johnston might not be a real Marine, but his awesome physique was not the result of movie magic.

Jessie turned slightly to the right when he stood in front of her. “And I’m training for a fire department physical. Although I need every minute I can clock in this gym, at least I’m willing to compromise.”

He regarded her with piercing green eyes, his transfixing gaze traveling from the top of her spiky, short brunette hair all the way to her sneakers. “From where I sit, you can afford to compromise. You’re in great shape.”

Her heart rate accelerated, and a rush of sound beat volumes of blood in her ears. Quinn Sawyer—no, Blake Johnston—thought she had a good figure?

“Maybe for a come-on. Not for a four hour grueling test of strength to get into the fire academy,” she said, looking away.

Her leg reflected in the gym mirror, and she grimaced. All these months after she’d been medevacked stateside, she still couldn’t stand the sight of the jagged scar marring the right side of her thigh. Though a constant visual reminder of all she’d lost in a matter of seconds, her strenuous workout routine forced her to dress in shorts to keep cooler.

He held her eyes in the mirror, his face a mixture of intelligence and understanding, before he locked his gaze onto her taut, puckered skin. A slight tic jumped in his jaw.

“I see,” he said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that your mother assured me I could use the gym before it opened.”

Jessie’s face burned, her ears scorching. Embarrassed, mortified beyond belief. After the multiple surgeries to save her mangled thigh, she’d inspected the damage alone. Only then had she broken down, grieving the loss of the symmetry of her formerly strong, lean legs. Still, she didn’t want Blake’s sympathy.

She struggled to regain her stock badass attitude to counter the pity in his voice. “My mother was mistaken.” Jessie sucked in a long breath, willing mental ice to flow through her veins.

He crossed his arms. “You need to check the contract your father signed when I booked the resort. What I want, I get.”

Though she doubted seriously that he’d act on his threat, Jessie didn’t want to risk upsetting her dad. Slowly, ever so slowly, she released the air in her lungs. With each long second that passed, her cheeks cooled and her pulse rate returned to normal. “Wow, I had no idea
Action Hero Quinn Sawyer
was such a prima donna.” Jessie hitched her right hip and tucked her fist into the crease. Pain shafted through her muscles, tearing her nerves, shredding through her ligaments. She ignored it. “Maybe I should alert your adoring fans.”

He relaxed his stance, loosening his muscles with the grace of a panther sneaking up on its prey. “That would definitely breach the terms.” Blake tightened his weight gloves with a smooth succession of Velcro zips. “Can’t let that happen. Would hate to lose my hero creds.”

Her breath caught in her throat. Why did it sound like he was joking around instead of being serious? She refused to play his game. Instead she opted to put him in his place and force him out of her space. “Pretending to be a hero doesn’t make you one,” she said.

He closed the mere inches between them and leveled his eyes on hers. “What makes a person a hero to you?” he asked, his voice dark and dangerously tantalizing.

“Dodging real bullets, not fake ones.”

He briefly broke eye contact, then cleared his throat. “I may not dodge real bullets, Jessica Sullivan,” Blake said. “But I know what it takes to build a hero from the inside out.”

The air between them charged, electrified. A storm of need, something long forgotten and buried beneath guilt and anguish and desolation, surged to the surface. It was as if he could see beyond her snarky bravado to the depths of her soul.
Don’t cave. Stay strong. And refuse to be charmed.

“How?” Jessie straightened to her full height. “By method acting?”

His full, oh-so-sexy lips curved into an alarmingly seductive smile. “By putting you through one hell of a training program guaranteed to give you a shot at passing your physical.”

…

Jessie raised her eyebrows. “You’re kidding, right?” she asked. “Don’t you want your privacy?”

Blake peered at the dog tags she rubbed between her finger and thumb, nerves making the movement choppy, then back into Jessie’s slate blue eyes. “Privacy’s overrated,” he said.

“That’s not what Maisey said when she booked the resort,” Jessie said. “I believe her exact words were
Blake’s over the bullshit paparazzi stalking him just to catch him in his underwear
.”

He stifled a laugh. Tough as nails had been her mother’s description, but after Shannon Sullivan had shared stories about his own mother, she’d revealed her worry for Jessie. So he’d offered to break Jessie out of her self-imposed exile, because Jessica Sullivan was a hero in more ways than his movie franchise character Quinn Sawyer.

“Doesn’t mean I want to be alone all the time,” Blake said. “I’m as human as the next guy. Your family’s been damn nice to mine, and you need a training buddy. So what gives? You don’t think I’m qualified for the job?”

He wanted to slip beneath the surface of her prickly attitude and repay her mother’s kindness. Plus, spending time with Jessie could add a touch of reality to his script about a wounded warrior adjusting to his new life stateside. One Blake hoped would prove he was more than a pretty face with a hot body.

“You really think you’re more qualified than a Marine?” she asked. “Then you’re mistaken.”

“My workouts were pulled together by a former Marine force recon. Plus, I don’t see another Marine in this room,” he said. “You up to the challenge?”

She hesitated, but Blake didn’t push. He had toured enough VA hospitals, had seen the devastation of war after the fact, and had heard the stories. The scars on her thigh ran deeper than her skin, and she’d endured months of rehab. But the drive to go back and fight was superseded by the harsh reality of her injuries.

Here stood a classic example of a former combat vet with more than her physical limitations holding her back. If he could crack through her shell, he might find the heart of his story that meant making a difference with his movie franchise and not just focusing on the studio’s bottom line.

Most people had only seen him as a body and a face and never as a man with the brains to write a script. He planned to prove them wrong. For once in his life, he’d be accepted because he had earned people’s respect. And that would keep him earning an income a lot longer than relying on his looks.

Blake pressed for an answer. “What’s the matter, Marine?” he asked. “You scared?”

Steel crept into her returning gaze. “I never back down from a challenge, but
I
don’t need your help.” She released her tags.

He held his hands behind his back, his stomach tight.
Play it cool or you’ll lose this chance.
He’d volunteered to help—albeit with a slight ulterior motive. He buried the guilt tugging at his conscience. He wanted to redirect the course of his future, and this opportunity was a win-win as far as he was concerned.

Blake loaded weights onto a barbell. He sensed that she wanted to ask for something, but her pride and a strong stubborn streak kept her mouth clamped shut. Gently, but with enough force behind his voice to make her lock her eyes on his, he said, “Why not? I have a kick-ass program. And we’re here.”

“You could just
leave.
”

Blake added
feisty
and
obstinate
to the list of adjectives that described Jessie Sullivan.

And hot. Definitely sizzling, sexy as hell. Jessie stood as tall as a runway model, at least
five foot nine, give or take a quarter inch. Sculpted muscles corded through her arms, legs, and torso. But she was all woman with enticing feminine curves. Curves that were accentuated by black spandex shorts hugging her perfect, rounded bottom. And the matching Lycra top highlighted the swell of her full breasts.