Bombshell (Hollywood A-List #1)(94)

He continued. “You’re my glue. You’ve made me bigger. Better. And you hold it together. All my life. I’m nothing without you.”

I squeezed his hand.

“You were a good man before you met me.”

“I was worthless.”

“You said you figured out something about going back home?”

“I was just saying it’s not about convenience. What I figured. It’s not me doing the easy thing.”

“Can you get on with it?”

“You have to marry me.”

Surprised, I tried to pull my hand back. I tried to curl up so I could think for a minute. But Brad wasn’t about deep thoughts. He was about action.

“I mean it,” he said.

“Brad. It’s soon.”

“So? You’re not going anywhere, are you?”

“No, but—”

“Good, because I’ll chase you down.”

It was yes. Of course it was yes. I didn’t really have a choice. He gave me purpose. He made me happy. I wasn’t going to choose misery over him because we hadn’t known each other long enough. We’d bonded over the well-being of another person.

Maybe that was my worry. I didn’t have to worry, but I always did. I squeezed his hand and looked him in the eye.

“Promise me you’re not doing this for Nicole.”

“What do you mean?”

He knew exactly what I meant. He was making me articulate it.

“If she wasn’t around, would you have asked me to marry you?”

“You mean if I met you . . . where? At a bar? In the SAG waiting room?” He leaned back. “I can’t imagine you without her. My life changed, and you were a part of it. Without the life change, you wouldn’t want me.”

He picked his ass off the bench and leaned over so he was that much closer to me, tugging my hands closer to him. I knew I was going to say yes, because he was right. The man he’d been wasn’t a man I’d take seriously. But the Brad Sinclair who quit the best job in the world to make room for his daughter? That was a guy I took seriously.

I half stood off my chair so my face was close to his.

“You know no woman can resist you.”

“You’re not just any woman. You’re mine.”

“I am. Always.”

Our lips met only briefly.

“Don’t kiss on the lips!” Nicole cried on her way back from the garden. “It’s germs!”

I pulled away, but Brad grabbed me by the back of the neck and pulled me closer, sealing the deal. He tasted like the salt of the earth and the breeze brushing through the trees. I was safe with him.

No matter where we were, we were home.





EPILOGUE


CARA


It was the one-year anniversary of Nicole’s arrival, and we had a huge surprise planned for her. A pony. We didn’t have a minute to f*ck. Not even a quickie.

Nope. Not a second to spare.

“Hush,” he said. “Not a sound.”

Brad’s voice was no more than a breath in my ear. We’d left Nicole by the pool with Blue, Bonnie Greydon, and Perla, her nanny. We had so much to do that sex had to be quick, but I never promised quiet.

“No way,” I breathed back. Brad jerked his hips.

We were in the second guest bedroom, which was dangerously close to the play area. I’d started it. I could be getting dressed already, but when he picked Nicole up and threw her in the pool, laughing, his taut forearms called me. I figured I had ten minutes to get him off.

I’d closed the blinds, dimming the room into a few strokes of light that got in between the wall and the curtains. I’d got on my knees in front of him and took him in my mouth, running my hands all over him.

I couldn’t ever get enough.

He was barely in my mouth a minute before he threw me on the bed and took me with nothing louder than a gasp. I was on my back, sweating in the unreasonable early summer heat, sliding against him, my legs wrapped around his waist.

“They’ll hear,” I said, holding his face in my hands.

“Not if you hush.” Push, roll, a gentle thrust. He was going slow on purpose. “And when you come, you come for just me.”

My fingers pressed into his back as my body vibrated in a heated throb.

I looked him in the eye, nose to nose.

“Faster. Fuck faster.”

“No. You’re too sexy like this.”

His mouth said no, but he thrust inside me again. Hard. Slow. I was heated to a boil on simmer.

“I’ll be quiet.”

“You will. Yes, you will.”

Slow and steady, he coaxed an orgasm out of me, teasing it higher and higher. I bit my lips between my teeth as he whispered how much he loved me.



Family first.

Brad didn’t invent the phrase, but it would forever be associated with him getting out of his car in the pickup line at Nicole’s school to confront the umpteenth pack of paparazzi with the umpteenth battery of questions.

Why’d you back out of the Brotherhood?

What do you think of them casting an unknown?

We hear you’re being sued by Overland Studios.

“You guys want to know why I backed out on Bangkok Brotherhood?”