Bombshell (Hollywood A-List #1)(71)

“It’s great,” I said. “I have the best job in the world.”

Because my boss has the dick of a god.

“Is Paula still around?” Susan tried to look casual as she cut the rest of the onion.

“Yeah.” I was conspicuously silent. Not another word would pass my lips.

“She and Brad still doing it?” Susan ate another sliver of onion and looked at me intensely with her gray eyes.

“Susan.” Erma punctuated the name by slapping a slab of raw meat on the island. “Why are you poking this woman?” She put her clean hand on my shoulder. “Ignore her. Paula gave her grief when she went to visit. Acted like the queen and someone’s looking to take her down a peg.”

“She treated me like a servant. Then she told me not to bother my brother when they were working and don’t ask questions. Like I don’t know his ‘big secret.’” She froze with air quotes suspended and the onion hanging from her mouth half-eaten. She glanced at her mother, who shook her head and put her attention back on tying the meat.

“She cares about him is all,” Erma lilted. “Bless her heart.”

Aunt Rochelle, who didn’t express anything beyond nonverbal reactions, snorted derisively as she measured out two cups of rice.

“Sure does,” I said, cutting my carrot. More words about Paula were going to pass my lips despite my best intentions. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Not technically. Not outwardly. Not to me. “And bless her heart for it.”

Brad had his mother’s smirk. She didn’t look at me when she tried to hide it, but I saw. He looked just like her.

Susan was less circumspect. She laughed and clapped. It sounded just like him.

She stopped abruptly when the windows started shaking. LA earthquakes shook the windows. If it was strong and you were in the hills, you could hear an unnerving rumble. The blubbering engine fart that rattled the side windows was much louder than that.

“Buddy!” Susan shouted with an offhandedness that could only come from issuing the same warning hundreds of times. “Get that thing off our property!”

Brad’s mother opened the window over the sink.

“Bradley! You know better!”

“Where’s Cara?” he shouted over the rumble. “I can’t find her.”

I abandoned my carrots and leaned over the sink, knife still in my hand. Brad sat on a Harley that barely fit in the driveway. In the night dark and the flood of the headlight, he looked like James Dean, but sexier, sweeter. With sneakers instead of boots and hair unweighted by grease. I didn’t realize I was biting my lower lip until it hurt.

“Let me take you for a ride,” he shouted.

I loved the feel of his attention, and I let myself enjoy it before I answered. I was the nanny. The staff. Not the first person he should be thinking of when he wanted company on a motorcycle ride.

“Nicole would love it,” I called out the window, deflecting the attention.

“Oh no!” Erma shouted. “You are not putting that little girl on that monster.” She plucked the knife from my hand. “Go. Please. Before he gets exhaust in the roast.” She shooed me away exactly like her son shooed.

“You sure?”

“I need to give Susan the carrots before she eats all the onions.” She squeezed my forearm. “Please.”

She pushed me out. Literally pushed me.

I took the hint and ran outside.





CHAPTER 53


CARA


The last wedge of sun had slipped below the horizon five minutes earlier, and the sky darkened to teal on the east and glowed orange on the western horizon. Margie rumbled between my legs and my arms wrapped around the hard tight shape of Brad’s waist.

He hadn’t been wearing a helmet, and hadn’t offered me one. The safe cocoon of his family must have already formed around me, because I thought nothing of it. Rounding a highway, through a wooded area, down a main street, I was lost in five minutes. I pressed my cheek to his back, smelling the leather and the wind, and let him take me wherever he wanted to go.

He turned at a wooded road and stopped where the road ended. When the engine cut I could hear the trickle of a creek and the click of the kickstand going down.

The headlight flickered out. When the bike was stable I got off.

“How you feeling, teacup?” He swung a leg over the bike.

“Fine. That was a nice ride.”

“I was worried you’d toss your cookies.”

“Take me for a ride on the teacups again. You’ll see some cookie-tossing.”

He took my hand. I hesitated. It was too dark. I couldn’t see a foot in front of me.

“I have you.” He pulled me forward, telling me to watch my step when a root jutted up, until the trees cleared and I could see the edge of the starry sky above and hear the rustle of the brush and trickle of a creek.

Brad pulled off his jacket and laid it on a boulder on the bank, then took my hand again. He helped me to the ground and sat behind me, legs around mine, arms around my waist, chin on my shoulder.

Words to describe how that felt. None in English. Best thing ever with a shade of this-is-wrong. Comforting and disconcerting.

“Your family’s very nice.”

“I feel like I live on another planet,” he said. “They don’t know why I can’t clean my own house as it is. They don’t understand why I brought you.”