Bombshell (Hollywood A-List #1)(60)

“You need to go on one ride,” he said, folding a tuft of cotton candy in his mouth. He and Nicole were on a bench by a cluster of shade trees. I crouched in front of her.

He wore sunglasses, but I knew he was looking at me. I could feel his eyes burning through my clothes. We’d stopped for strawberry pie just ten minutes before. He’d speared his pie, watching me with one message.

Us southern boys eat * like pie.

Turns out, Nicole didn’t like strawberry pie. I had to finish her piece.

“No,” I said, wiping sticky pink strings from Nicole’s right hand while she licked the paper cone she had in her left. “I don’t like rides. And it’s not about me today. It’s your day.”

“My day means you do what I say.”

“Forcing me onto a ride might be fun for you—”

“It is fun for me. Completely fun.”

“I’m here to facilitate. No more.”

He leaned up, elbows on knees, dropping his voice to the exact timbre of my spine’s vibration. “You’re a professional. We get it. Now loosen up, buttercup.”

“Has any woman ever resisted you?” I asked. He shook his head ever so slowly. I wasn’t surprised I didn’t have company.

“Teacups!” Nicole pointed back the way we came. “Come on! The teacups!”

I looked back that way for no particular reason. I knew where they were. I just had to look away from him. But if I could resist him, Nicole had other equally powerful talents against me. She hopped off the bench and pulled me down the path.

“Teacups,” Brad announced to John/Steve/Bob, and the entire entourage trundled down the brick path. We hustled past the line, through the back, and were seated in our own personal lavender-and-white cup with purple and pink flowers.

Nicole pulled me close to her, then Brad, until we took up half the cup. She held one of our hands in each of hers and giggled uncontrollably.

“Was she like this on all the rides?” I asked.

“Yep. She knows how to have fun.”

“Oh, like I don’t?” The ride started churning. Slowly at first. Almost pleasantly.

“I want you to spend the next three minutes on this ride not worrying about something.”

He slipped to the spot across from me. The world behind him zipped out of focus with a smear of color.

“I have to worry.”

“I admire the way you think you can take care of anything that comes along. But now you’ve gotta put that away . . .”

His last few words were drowned out by the whipping wind and Nicole’s delighted cries. I lost control of my body, sliding around before I could grab on. Brad had his arms on the backs of the seats, and Nicole hung on to the edge for dear life, her smile a point of stillness in the swirl.

Was this a kid’s ride? The force of the spinning was incredible. I slid into Brad and landed with my head on his chest and he laughed, arm casually draped behind me. I tried to straighten up, got halfway, and laughed with him as my face got pushed into his.

I didn’t worry.

Not for a second.

He put his arm around me and held me fast. The torque threw all the worry and anxiety out of me. The laughter dislodged it and inertia flung it away to a far corner of the park. We had now. These two wonderful people and me, in a purple teacup, screaming with music I could barely hear over the whooshing wind in my ears.

I let the ride push me into him and we laughed together, squealing with Nicole at this silly spinning teacup. Even when my stomach lurched, it lurched up to a smile. Even after I knew I was going to lose the handful of blue-ribbon strawberry pie, I didn’t worry. I was happy. Centrifugal force was like a drug that separated body and mind.

I puked midlaugh. It landed on Nicole, whose squeals of delight turned to screams of horror. My stomach flipped again and a stream of bright red pie made a circular pattern from my mouth to, well, everywhere.

How much pie did I eat?

The volume of pie puke far outweighed the piece, but it kept coming, splattering the back of the teacup, Nicole, and my shirt.

Brad got a little on him, but he was more worried about me. The arm that had been coolly behind my seat grasped my shoulders and held me still.

I can’t say I wasn’t happy. In a way, because my mind was there while my body was here, the carefree minutes stuck with me. But I was certainly sick to my stomach.

The ride came to a stop after about a dozen more turns and body and mind snapped together again.

“Oh my God,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

Puke everywhere. Brad gathered up Nicole. I covered my mouth as he crouched by me with his crying daughter on his knee.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m so embarrassed.”

“That’s not gonna kill you.”

You know what was funny?

I wasn’t embarrassed. I just thought I should be. By the time the team of suits got to us, I was chuckling behind my hands and Brad was laughing as if I’d just done a world-class sight gag.

I was a part of something. A little triangle of people. I didn’t stop to worry about inappropriate intimacy or attachment just then. Didn’t stop myself from naming it and accepting it because Brad had me. Stupid party boy Brad Sinclair in sandals and shorts. He had me.

And he had Nicole, who was beside herself.