Bombshell (Hollywood A-List #1)(65)

“Promises, promises,” she said, rolling over. That ass.

My shorts were a soaked, ten-pound pile on the floor. I wasn’t putting them back on. She got up on her knees, back to me, and I wasn’t letting that pass. I grabbed a fistful of hair and pulled until she was bent, looking at me. I wrapped my other arm around her and got my fingers between her legs. She gasped. The way that made me feel. Like a f*cking lion.

“I say what I mean and I mean what I say.”

“That a southern thing?” She moved her hips against my fingers. She liked it. That cold, emotionless professional liked my fingers on her *. Every thought in my head was filthy.

“You’re never going to forget me.”

“One more time.” She whispered it. I could make her beg. The thought got me hard again. “Can we?”

Could we? Shit, she was already begging. Sure we could. I kissed her hard. Let that be her answer.

“Daddy? Miss Cara.” Nicole called from behind the door to the suite. I’d closed but not locked it. “I’m lonely!”

“Coming!” Cara jumped off the bed like a shot, leaving me kneeling on the mattress naked, dick at half-mast.

As far as I was concerned, she hadn’t even started coming.





CHAPTER 47


CARA


I wiggled into sweatpants and a T-shirt, totally commando. I went into the suite and closed the door behind me. Nicole stood in the middle of the living room with her dad’s phone in one hand and Pony Pie in the other.

“This beeps too much.”

“Did it wake you?” I took the phone from her and put it on the side table, scooping her up. She rubbed her eyes with her fist, dislodging a huge sleepy bit from the corner of her eye.

“I was dreaming about the ride with the log. The one that goes down the river like this?” She dropped Pony Pie to flatten her hand and move it down diagonally.

“Maybe after lunch we can go.” I rubbed her sleepy crust away. It was only late morning. We’d left very early, and that’s how fast the park goes when there are no lines.

Behind me, I heard Brad creep up to the door. His clothes were wet, and I didn’t have to turn around to know he hadn’t gone to get a hotel robe and he was as naked as a stunning male jaybird. “Let’s go to the potty.”

I took her down the hall, and she wiggled down. I assumed she was going to run to the bathroom, but she went in the other direction.

“I forgot Pony Pie!”

“Wait!”

I chased her, but it was too late. When I turned the corner into the living area, Brad was in the middle of the room, stark raving naked, holding his phone over his magnificent— “Daddy! How did you get naked?”

“He was taking a shower.” I picked her up, but she was too big to get picked up if she didn’t want to be and I was trying not to laugh. So she got herself back to the floor.

“Why were you taking a shower in the living room?”

“I’m not. Go on, now.” He took a hand off the phone to shoo her away.

The scene was entirely too delicious, but Brad looked as if he wanted to die a quick death and I couldn’t watch him suffer.

“Come on, Nicole, let’s go potty.”

She hopped toward me and took my hand, ready to drag me down the hall. I copped one last glance at Brad’s naked body, ready to give him a look that would let him know how I didn’t mind the view. My eyes met his. He winked at me. I drank in his entire body, right to the core of him, where he held the phone between me and perfection.

—ORM IN A TEACU—

The letters his fingers didn’t cover glowed yellow and huge on the phone. I froze. Nicole yanked on me.

“What?” he asked.

“Storm in a teacup? What is that?”

“Come on, Miss Cara!”

But I couldn’t move. The font was blocky and tall. Headline font. I’d seen it a hundred times when I was turning supermarket magazines backward for Blakely.

“Later,” he said.

“Brad.”

“Go on, now.”

He was serious, and he was right. I took Nicole to the potty, but a cloud had settled over me.





CHAPTER 48


BRAD


Coming right off a really nice f*ck, the last thing I wanted to deal with was Ken. Didn’t want to deal with my daughter either, but there wasn’t much I could do about that. At least she was cute.

And now it was final. I’d f*cked Cara five minutes before her life went tits up.

I had a hard time reading from a screen on normal days, and if I was anxious or distracted, forget it. And of course, in the new text, the headline was embedded in the image so I couldn’t use the voice app. So I grabbed the pen and pad from the night table, copied the gibberish like a grade schooler, and deciphered it from there.

STORM IN A TEACUP

Not a big deal. Not worth a text from Ken. So I focused back on the photo. There was the problem.

The picture was ridiculous. The angle and the movement lied. I hated liars, and I hated that picture.

All the pictures. Someone had the shutter on repeat, and all of them were pasted together and posted like a f*cking flip book.

The motion sickness was in full Technicolor, and yeah, she’d be ashamed, but we could laugh at that. What we couldn’t laugh at was the movement before it, where she slid across the seat and it looked as if she was kissing me. The tilt of my head. The position of our mouths. My arm around the seat, then her. Nicole watching.