Hollywood Dirt (Hollywood Dirt, #1)(87)
Momma met me at the door, and I didn’t ask why she wasn’t at work. I just dove into her open arms and sobbed. Sobbed like a little girl. She sat with me in bed, handed me tissues, and listened to my incoherent ramblings while rubbing my back. At some point, while her hand smoothed back my hair, I fell asleep. And when I woke up to the smell of chicken and vegetable soup, I wasn’t upset any more. Instead, I was pissed. At Scott, at Bobbie Jo, at Variety Freaking Magazine. I wanted to chop down ten trees, run fifty miles, take my gun to the big oak out back and empty a hundred clips. I wanted to screw and be screwed ten ways from Sunday by Cole Masten, and I wanted it immediately.
I had gone into the kitchen and kissed Momma on the cheek. Had a bite or two of soup, then excused myself into the bathroom. Used two razors and half a can of shaving cream. Stuck my box-o-condoms in my purse and dressed, pulling on the only sexy panties I owned, then a blue Tommy Hilfiger sundress that Ross had had on discount. It was then that I got stuck, my brain catching up with my libido, the simple logistics of the hookup foreign to me. That was when I’d called Ben. Ben, still in Vancouver, hadn’t yet heard my news. Either Canada didn’t give two craps about a no-name actress in Georgia, or he’d been too busy, but either way, I didn’t chase down the subject. Instead, I made excuses and hopped off the call as soon as possible, telling him I’d call him tomorrow.
Ben was right. Me showing up with an overnight bag would be weird. Really weird. As we clearly worked through in the Franks’ dining room—this was not a date. This was for one thing. One thing that I badly needed to work out the funk that was collecting in my system. My earlier thought process had merit. He would be my distraction. An earth-shattering, toe-curling distraction.
I grabbed my purse and kissed Mama goodbye. Then I opened the back door and jogged down the steps, heading to the fields, his home visible in the setting sun, lights on inside, his truck parked in front. Behind me, at the end of the Holdens’ long drive, a cluster of strange cars squatted outside the locked entry fence. We’d never locked that fence, not in the six years I’d been on the plantation. But Casey had called during my nap and warned Mama. Told her to tell me to stay put, to not talk to anyone, to avoid them. I took a deep breath and entered the fields, pushing everything out of my mind with each step farther away from the vultures.
A distraction. That was all this was.
Maybe an entire box of condoms was a little intimidating. I should have opened it and just pulled out one or two. Or three. Was this a one-sex visit? Scott and I had never had sex more than once per twenty-four hour period. But I read books, I watched Showtime, I knew that other couples were not the prudes that Scott and I were.
Not that Cole and I were a couple. It was a figurative reference.
It was stupid for me to wear flip-flops to walk there. My toes were already covered in dust, and I was only halfway there. Cole was not going to want to have sex with a girl with dirty feet. And it wasn’t like I could invite myself in and then ask to wash them off.
Rainboots. That would have matched this sundress and still kept my feet clean. Though the whole boot-removal process was a pain. And super unsexy, my hands gripping one boot while I grunted and wheezed through the contortions required to get a rubber object off a sweaty foot.
I should have eaten more. I was already hungry and those two bites of soup were tiny. When I was chicken-sitting at Cole’s, I raided his kitchen, and it was pathetic. The man appeared to live off milk, beer, and ham sandwiches.
I came to the end of the field and stopped. Before me, the Kirklands’ backyard, green grass stretching fifty yards in either direction, the white fence keeping the wildflowers at bay, the large home looming up and breaking the canvas of the night sky. And in the middle of the yard stood Cole, his hands on his hips, his white T-shirt stretched tight over a muscular chest, workout shorts on, his eyes on me. My dirty feet and I waited, stuck in place, and tried to think of something to say.
CHAPTER 95
He had been so worried she wouldn’t show. When she’d stepped out of the Franks’ house, her head had been down, her eyes not meeting his. He was sure that she’d change her mind, would leave him hanging. But now, coming to a stop outside the fence, she was here. He skirted around Cocky and walked over to the gate, resting his weight on it and looking at her.
“You came,” he said.
“Yeah.” She shifted her purse higher on her shoulder. “I brought condoms. Or…” She blushed. “A condom. You know. If…” She brought a hand to her mouth and giggled. “Oh my Lord. I’m an idiot.”
He laughed. “I have condoms but thank you.” The dusk light made her hair look pink, the wind picked up wisps of it and took it across her face, and she suddenly looked vulnerable. It was a new look on her and stirred some alpha male instinct deep within him, one he didn’t recognize. He put one foot up on the fence. “Before you come in, I wanted to propose something.”
“I don’t want to talk about the night of the dinner,” she said quickly. “If we could just, right now, ignore that.”
He shrugged. “Fine by me. It’s your thing. You change your mind, I’m here.”
“What’s the proposal?” She narrowed her eyes in suspicion, and he wondered, for an insane moment, if a child of theirs would have hazel or green eyes.
“Twenty-four hour truce.” He gestured between the two of them. “You and I have some aversion to civility. It’s a Friday night. We don’t have to work tomorrow. For the next twenty-four hours, no fighting.”