Take Two by Laurelin Paige
“Good,” Micah said, his eyes still closed. “I prefer the cast and crew separated. I hope you’re dropping me off first.”
“Certainly.” The ever cheerful Sam seemed only slightly downtrodden by the superiority in Micah’s tone.
Maddie’s insides echoed the same disappointment. Who knew Micah Preston was such a jerk? Had he been that guy when she’d first met him? Or had he become that way with fame and money? Whichever, he was bad news. Now if someone could convince her body…
Her phone buzzed with a text. He doesn’t remember u? So no replays of your night together?
Not a chance. So over him.
It was only partially a lie. He still made her insides hot and bothered like no one had in a long time, but he was cocky, a player, and had forgotten her. Three strikes against him. Maddie had never been a sports fan, but she was pretty sure that three strikes meant you were out.
Chapter Four
Her.
Even with his eyes closed he still saw her face.
Micah had spotted her talking to Sam by baggage claim, and though it took him a moment, he knew there was something familiar about her big dark eyes, high cheekbones and long legs, hidden beneath her baggy sweats. And that perky bosom of hers that peeked out above the low neckline of her tank top—he’d definitely fondled those tits before. But when?
He was so distracted trying to place her that he hadn’t even minded signing autographs for fans. He’d needed those couple of minutes to gather himself.
It wasn’t until he’d seen her up close, her hair all mussed and cheeks flushed like a woman after a night of pleasure, that he suddenly remembered her. Maddie from the party. Oh, yeah. That chick.
If he remembered correctly, that party was before he’d even signed with Stu. He had to be careful or she’d want to hook up again. Women from his past didn’t ever want anything except his fame and fortune. Hell, women in his present only wanted that. He decided it best to pretend he didn’t remember her at all.
She remembered him, though. It was obvious. Recognition spread over her face the minute he said her name. Her eyes glimmered with hopefulness.
Then the spark left and letdown settled on her features. He could have thrown her a bone then, given her a hint that he knew her, but he didn’t.
Yeah, he was an asshole.
Then he was stuffed in the SUV with her, drowning in her unique smell and memories of their evening together crashed over him like a giant wave—her tentative flirting, his smooth moves, that apple-pear body spray she used, the one she still wore now. He hadn’t done anything big yet. She hadn’t even known he was an actor. And still, she’d let him kiss her and touch her. Very intimately.
Was she the last woman he’d kissed before he’d become known? Too many years and women had passed for him to be sure. Maybe she wasn’t, but she reminded him of that time. Before he doubted the sincerity of every compliment. When his pick-up lines were meant to start relationships, not just get some for the night.
Now no pick-up lines were necessary at all. He could bag a girl with a flash of his famous smile. And though having models and costars and willing fans lined up at his bedroom door was out-of-this-world awesome, it got boring. Hot sex wasn’t the same as just talking and flirting and connecting with a woman. How long had it been since he’d done that?
What if he could recapture those days? With her. With Maddie. They still had chemistry. He could cut the sexual tension in the backseat with a knife. He felt her lean into his leg. He got it. He wanted to touch her too. And he did—a brush of her cheek, a hand on her knee. It wouldn’t take much to get her alone and underneath him.
But then she flirted with that overly chipper, butt-kisser Sam and he remembered—he wasn’t that guy. He wasn’t the guy who was in it for the long haul. Micah was a movie star. He was into girls for a minute. He couldn’t recapture the days before his fame and that was the price he’d paid. Even if he tried to get involved with a woman, he could never trust their intentions with him. He’d chosen this life, made a very deliberate decision of career over love.
And getting tangled up with a girl like Maddie Bauers, a girl from the days when he was that guy, wasn’t what he needed.
What he needed was to get to his room and take a cold shower. He crossed his hands low in his lap to hide his stiff bulge and shut his eyes, attempting sleep. Or, at least the pretense.
“Hey, Micah.” Fudge paused. “Dude?”
His bodyguard’s insistent tone pulled Micah out of his pretend sleep. “What?”
“Look out your window. The mountains are dope. Why do we only come out here in the winter?”
“Because you think sliding down a mountain on a surfboard is fun.” But he leaned forward to look at the scenery through the front window. Fudge was right, it was gorgeous. “We’ll do some sightseeing while we’re here, okay?”
“You should invite Lulu.”
He swallowed a sigh. “Maybe.” Lulu was his mother. Lucille, actually, but he and his friends had always referred to her as Lulu.
“Come on, she’d love it out here.”
“I’ll think about it.” She would love it. His mother had a thing for nature and Micah flew her out to many of his more picturesque locations.
It was just that, though he adored his mom, she also brought him down. She’d remained single since she’d flown off to California when he was twelve and Micah worried about her being by herself. He couldn’t help but fear that she was sad and, well, lonely.
Sometimes that made him question his own decision to be alone.
But then he’d remind himself that he was nothing like Lulu. She’d given up love for a career and it hadn’t worked out. Micah’s sacrifice had worked out. He had the life most people only dreamed of. He had the life he’d dreamed of. He didn’t want for anything.
Well, almost anything.
He snuck a peek behind him at Maddie. He’d moved nearer to her to look out the window, but didn’t have the luck of brushing against her again. Now he saw why. She was leaning against her window, her beautiful body pressed against the door, away from him. Thick irritation emanated from her like a barrier between them. So thick it bordered on loathing.
Good. Hate him. It would make it easier to avoid her if she was also avoiding him.
He sat back in his seat and closed his eyes again. It was simpler now to fight any urge to make amends with Maddie. Now that he saw how turned off by him she was, he had no desire to ease the tension between them.
He closed his eyes again and succeeded in putting her out of his mind until they pulled up in front of his hotel. As Sam retrieved his luggage from the trunk, Micah stole one more glance at the brunette beauty beside him before he stepped out of the car. Only then did he realize that Maddie’s expression didn’t read as angry—it read as hurt.
Aw, shit. That wasn’t what he was going for at all.
He should have left it at that, painful as it was to see her distressed. But he couldn’t stand it. He swallowed. “Hey, Maddie Bauers.” She looked up at him, her eyes big with curiosity. “I got to know Adam when we were filming in L.A. He’s the best cameraman I’ve ever worked with. You must be pretty stellar to get his recommendation. Welcome aboard.”
“Thanks,” she said softly.
That wasn’t so bad. He remained professional yet seemed to lift her spirits. Problem was the smile she gave him had his cock jumping again. He shifted, hoping she didn’t notice as he stepped from the car.
Fudge joined Micah at the bellhop station. He chuckled as Micah watched the SUV pull away down the mountain.
“What?” Micah asked.
“Nothing.” But the amusement remained on his face.
Damn. Fudge knew Micah too well. He was much more than an employee. The two had met in middle school when Fudge stood up for Micah after a bully had teased him about a commercial he’d appeared in. They’d been good friends ever since. Half the reason Micah employed him was for the company. The life of a famous Holly
Not much later, Micah tipped the bellhop and closed the door behind him in his room. He threw his jacket over a chair and crossed to the large windows. The small town didn’t have the luxury hotels Micah usually stayed in, but the view from his room—a breathtaking landscape of mountains and wildflowers—couldn’t be topped. He took a moment to memorize the scene, wondering if Fudge had a similar view across the hall.
Maybe he would invite Lulu. She’d go gaga over this place.
And maybe being with her would make them both feel less lonely.
With a sigh, he drew the fire curtains. Heavy window coverings were one of his best friends. They shut out zoom lenses and the prying eyes of fans.
He rummaged through his carry-on for his iPad and stretched out on his king-size bed. Checking his email, he found his schedule for the next day. Seven a.m. call time. That left almost thirteen hours before he would see Maddie again.
Had he really just calculated that? Yes, yes he had.
He ran his hand over his stubbly chin, debating how to handle his Maddie thoughts. The night was still young. He could try to find a pretty young fan in the hotel bar, someone willing to suck off a star just so she could brag to her friends.
Or he could try to find her.
No, bad idea. Instead, he used the newly discovered information of her last name to look for her on Facebook. He didn’t have an account himself—just a fan page his publicist maintained, but he knew his way around the site.
He found Maddie’s profile easily. Her privacy settings didn’t allow him to see her wall, but her photos were set for public view. There were only two, but they were enough. The first was a simple headshot, her long gorgeous brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, her smile slight and professional. This was the one she currently had set as her profile picture.
The other, though, was the one that Micah zoomed in on. It was a candid shot taken with the ocean as a backdrop. Maddie held her loose hair out of her face with one hand the other hung at her side. The modest tankini showed off her body and verified what Micah had suspected, that her legs were gorgeous and never-ending.
His dick throbbed as he ran his finger over the screen, tracing the curve of her breast. He pretended he could remember the feel of it under his hands, her nipple taut against the thin fabric of her top. How she’d moaned and responded to his touch.
God, it was too much. He propped the iPad on the pillow next to him and undid his jeans, releasing his straining erection. With long strokes from root to crown, he fisted his pulsing shaft, fantasizing it was her mouth sucking and taking him in. Slowly she would tease him, licking along the thick nerve that ran the length of his penis. Then she’d curve her lips tightly around his tip and draw him in, inch by inch, her hands massaging his balls as she bobbed her head up and down.
He closed his eyes, imagining his busy hand was tangled in her hair. With a low grunt, hot fluid spurted over his fist, and still he pumped, not wanting the fantasy to end, while he came and came and came.
After, he basked in the pleasure of release, knowing from experience it would soon fade to a lonely ache. He looked at Maddie’s picture one more time, then turned his tablet off and made his way to clean up.
In the bathroom, as the dullness crept in, he stared at his reflection and groaned.
Fuck.
He‘d spent the last seven years on top of his game, focused on his career. He’d been tempted into love by the hottest women, offered the best drugs and the sweetest of sins and he’d always resisted. No hesitation or doubt.
But now he faced six weeks on set with a woman who once upon a time didn’t care about what or who he was.
Maddie Bauers just might be his undoing.
Chapter Five
Micah sat in his director’s chair, script in hand, trying his damndest to get his lines down for the day’s scene. He usually was great at memorization, but in the three days since he’d arrived on set in Colorado, all his concentration had gone to shit. He blamed it on the mountains, told Beaumont he hadn’t adjusted to the altitude yet.
But it was her. Maddie was there, everywhere, every day. Her job as camera assistant kept her on set at all times. Focus puller was the term for her crew position. Focus puller was right—she pulled his focus anytime she was within a hundred feet of him. Most the time she was closer than that. Her job kept her near the camera. And since the camera was always in his face, so was she.
Maddie barely acknowledged Micah while she worked. She stayed out of the way during blocking and took all her camera measurements with the stand-ins. If she noticed he had missed a mark, she informed Adam instead of Micah directly. Which was what she should do. And it was what he had wanted. But it drove him crazy—having her so close yet so ambivalent about him.
Not that he was going out of his way to talk to her either. It took all his willpower not to find an excuse to touch her or strike up a casual conversation, but he’d managed so far. Just at the detriment of his concentration.
He looked at his watch for the fourth time in ten minutes. His costar, Heather, was exactly forty minutes late for call. She had a reputation for being unreliable, but this was the first time in several weeks that she’d blown call time. It was unprofessional, and a lesser star would have been blacklisted a long time ago. But this was Heather Wainwright, the top female actress in Hollywood. She could do whatever she wanted.
He sighed as he turned back to his script. He really wasn’t that pissed at the blonde diva—he didn’t mind the delay. He needed to work on his lines. No, his irritation came from the brunette camera assistant.
Without lifting his head, he glanced sideways at her. She was in video village, the area set up with monitors from all the cameras. Beaumont, Adam, and Joe—the show’s assistant director—stood talking with her, probably planning what to do about the scenes they were supposed to be filming. He smiled at her outfit, black jeans and a tank top, a black button-down shirt over it. The black absorbed light, rather than reflected it onto the actors. It was supposed to help her fade into the darkness, but Micah didn’t think Maddie could fade into anything. She shone, vibrant and gorgeous at all times, no matter what she wore. It surprised him that every guy wasn’t falling all over her. She was hands-down the most beautiful woman on the set. Probably the most beautiful woman in the state and no one, except that yuppie assistant Sam, seemed to notice.
Christ, he was absolutely pathetic. Pining over a woman? Maybe he should be making romantic comedies. Or movies for Lifetime, since he’d totally seemed to have lost his balls.
He glanced at Fudge, who sat who sat nearby reading a magazine. At least he didn’t know the reason for Micah’s pining. Fudge would never let Micah hear the end of it.
“Chin up!” Darla, his makeup artist fluttered over him, applying powder to his face. “Sugar, you keep sweating off all your makeup. Why don’t you sit under the tent where it’s cooler until they’re ready to shoot your scene?”
He shook his head. That was where video village was—where Maddie was. “No, I’m fine here.”
“But you’re getting too much sun, sweetie.” Darla mothered Micah, which was why he liked working with her.
Today it irritated him. “I said I’m fine.”
“He can’t stand to be too near the hottie that’s assisting Adam,” Fudge said. “He’s gotta bit of a crush.”
“What the… That’s not true.”
“Then I guess the hard-on you’ve been sportin’ since the airport is from that cheerleader assistant, Sam.” Fudge flipped a page casually in the magazine.
“You’ve been checking out my dick, man? That’s just weird.” Of course Fudge would have noticed Micah’s behavior regarding Maddie. But he didn’t have to bring it up in front of his makeup artist. Better yet, he didn’t have to bring it up at all.
Darla laughed. “Oh honey, you don’t need to be embarrassed. I’ve been working with you for five years now and this is the
“It’s not—” Micah cut himself off, then started again at a more reasonable volume. “It’s not the girl. It’s the altitude.”
“Whatever you need to tell yourself, sweetie.” Amusement sparkled in Darla’s eyes.
Fudge tossed his magazine on the grass. “What I don’t understand is why you don’t just hit it and get it over with.”
Now that was a good question.
Micah thought about it as Darla patted more powder over his face. Why the hell not? They had the chemistry. So she reminded him of the past. That didn’t have to interfere with his present. And he was already distracted by her. Wasn’t that what his no-strings rule was meant to avoid?
But he’d already been an ass to her. Who knew if she’d even be receptive? All right. If she showed some interest, then he’d consider pursuing it.
“By the way, that girl jogs by the hotel every morning,” Fudge said. “Her hotel’s about two miles away. It’s funny she chooses that same route.”
Hmm. That sure sounded like she was interested.
“I need more coffee.” Micah stood, rolling his script under his arm and grabbing his still half-full coffee mug from his cup holder. It was a lame excuse, but he couldn’t bring himself to say outright that he planned to corner Maddie.
“I can get it for you,” Darla offered.
“No, I’m getting it.” Micah heard Darla and Fudge chuckling at him as he made his way toward the main tent. Yeah, who was he kidding? They knew where he was headed.
He didn’t have far to walk before reaching the tent. Generally only a few members of the cast and crew hung out in the video village, but since the show was at a standstill without Heather, more people were around than usual.
Seeing that Maddie was still conversing with Beaumont, Adam, and Joe, Micah slipped behind her to the coffee center. A whiff of apples caught on the breeze, a scent he’d learned to recognize as Maddie’s. Was it her shampoo, her lotion? It drove him mad. He glanced at her, his cock stirring at the view of her curvy hips and round behind. God, she was beautiful. He could strip her naked and fuck her right then and there. Maybe that would help his concentration.