One Night with the Sexiest Man Alive (The One Book 1) Read online

  He nodded gravely, with barely concealed laugher in his eyes, as if they were discussing issues of world import, not making the most ridiculous small talk. “I thought it prudent to check.”

  She could withdraw her hand, he wasn’t stopping her, but her blood was drunk on whatever pheromones he emitted. “Because you’re worried you might be a figment of my imagination?”

  “Something like that.” He laughed and she was richer, even as she knew he’d release her hand and it would feel like a loss.

  “I’m definitely planning on dining out on the story of this encounter for the rest of my life. If you’re not real that will make me an awful fraud and a liar.”

  “We can’t have that. What do I need to do to convince you that I’m warm flesh and a beating heart?”

  “Not a single thing.” But she was almost sure he could convince her of anything right now.

  He brought her hand to his lips and pressed them there, smiling up at her through a furrowed brow and a wayward fall of hair. The move had to be a well-practiced one, teetering somewhere between showy and gallant. It was the humor in his cheekbones, in the single dimple, in the pale spark of his eyes that landed it on the side of chivalrous.

  She was way past hopelessly charmed. On a sliding scale of a boy likes me to my sex is on fire, this was ring the alarm.

  “That should do it,” she said. “I’m forever convinced.”

  He let her hand go and straightened up. “Excellent.” He slipped the wrist brace back on and offered the crook of his arm. When she told this story, she’d describe the look on his face as possessive, though it was probably method acting and hunger. “You’re fun, Teela Carpenter. Shall we go eat?”

  Sweet hell. Like torrential rain on your wedding day. “I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you to brave dinner alone. I’m not on the guest list.”

  Up went one brow, down came his arm. “Have you been bad?” He made a tsk sound around a shocked expression, but instead of feeling scolded Teela felt wicked. “I can sort this out.”

  He no doubt could without unduly annoying the chef and embarrassing Lynda, and it was tempting to stroll in at his side and enjoy the meal and more of his company.

  Desperately, desperately tempting.

  Also utterly superfluous, as well as being disruptive and calling the wrong kind of attention to her. Conference managers weren’t supposed seduce the talent.

  And Haydn Delany made her imagine being bad enough that she could.

  It was all the ego boost she needed. Dear God, the man was delicious. He made her brain fizz. If she thought for a second he wasn’t acting the part of charismatic hero in a meaningless meet-cute, she’d have trouble breathing. Oh, get real. She’d genuinely contemplate propositioning him. Where would she ever get another chance to do something so wild. He wasn’t traveling with a partner and what’s the worst that could happen?

  And wouldn’t that be a story for the grandkids. The night Nanna hooked up with the Sexiest Man Alive. Sophie could never know, and Evie would wet herself.

  The notion made her want to laugh. She knew he’d have a ready way of letting her down that wouldn’t make her feel cheap. He probably had a dozen or more of them, a different one for every day of the week, every hour of the day.

  This was the part of the story where Evie would kick her.

  “I’m not a paying guest and there’s nothing at all you need to do except enjoy your evening. I’m delighted to have had this chance to meet you.”

  He inclined his head, offered his hand again. “If you’re sure?” He waited a beat and when she nodded, he said. “It was lovely to meet you. You provided just the light I was looking for. Good night, Ms. Carpenter.”

  He made the word Ms. into a question mark. When she put her hand in his again, he brushed his thumb lightly, suggestively, over her knuckles. That was a whole different kind of light, like fireworks inside her chest.

  Flirtiest Man Alive

  “Miss.” It would be improper to leave him dangling. “Good night, Mr. Delany.”

  He tipped an imaginary hat, released her hand and said, “Miss. Carpenter,” and he was gone.

  There wasn’t a single imaginary thing about the way her body was left vibrating with want.

  On the walk back to her car, there was music playing in her head, and it wasn’t her tired feet that were throbbing. Her nipples ached, and her inner muscles twitched from contracting. It was probably a figment of her imagination, but her ovaries were humming. She was loose-limbed and electrified at the same time. The pleasure shimmer lasted until it was replaced with a shiver as dark storm clouds racing over the city delivered fat drops of cool rain that made the pavement sizzle.

  By the time she ducked into the parking garage, the sky was grumbling from the gathering summer storm. With luck, she’d make it home before the worst of it hit. Vehicle ransom paid, she sent a quick message to Evie. The SAM sexed all over my hand. Never washing it.

  Her phone started bleating as she drove through the boom gate and onto the street into what was now a heavy downfall. Evie’s triumphant cackle through the hands-free speakers had to compete with the crack of lightning.

  “What’s it like giving a hand job to Hollywood royalty?” Evie said.

  Teela checked her rear view and signaled to change lanes. “He did call himself a fluff actor.”

  “Noo. You made words together. You cow. I’m sooo jealous.”

  “You’re best friends with rock stars and go out with people who get written up in gossip columns on the regular.” And she was going to be stuck in this lane till her next birthday because the traffic wasn’t moving, and the rain kept coming and now there was thunder rolling overhead.

  “This is not about me, Tee. You meet famous, rich people all the time too. But not Sexiest Man Alive, uber celebrity people. This is about you and Haydn Delany’s cock.”

  Evie’s musical family was legitimately famous. The famous people Teela met were the clandestine type. Wealthy corporate players and influential politicians who only courted the limelight when it suited their interests.

  “I did get to feast my eyes on him,” she said, fiddling with the air conditioning to try to stop the inside of the front window from fogging up. “I did not see the cock, but if it’s as charismatic as the rest of him, I’m probably already three months pregnant, despite the two of us remining fully clothed and my no-expense-spared birth control.”

  Evie hooted. “Moo. You complete cow. You really did talk to him. You’re not just making this up.”

  Teela upped her wiper speed but still had to peer though the downpour. “He kissed my hand.”

  “Oh, fuck me rigid. He did not. Who goes around kissing hands in the Anthropocene age? That shit went extinct generations ago.”

  “You’re more ready to believe I wanked him between appetizer and main course than that he was ridiculously charming.”

  “I wish. He is screaming hot. If you touched his magnificent appendage I want to lick your fingers. Tell me everything.”

  A horn sounded. The traffic went nowhere. There was water running in the gutters, a veritable stream. “I will, but this weather is a shocker, and the traffic is a mess. I don’t want to rear end someone when you shout in my ear.”

  “Why would I shout?”

  “Later. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Why would I shout?” Evie shouted. “You can’t leave me hanging like this. It’s un-Australian.”

  “Hang on to this.” Another horn blast. It had to compete with a roll of thunder right over the top of her to be heard. “He offered me his crooked arm.”

  She disconnected the call before Evie finished shout-laughing and she was still smiling when the delivery van behind slid into her, tapping her bumper and turning her car into sandwich meat as she was shoved into the stopped vehicle in front.

  Other than pride, no one was hurt, but her car was a mess, with both headlights and taillights smashed. It took over two hours to sort out insurance details,
wait for a tow, and fail to find a taxi or an affordable ride share car to get her home. By the time she started walking towards a cab rank she was wet through, dress a limp rag, hair plastered to her head and shoes totally ruined. Whatever magic she liked to imagine Haydn Delany had kissed into her skin was long washed away.

  Until he pulled up beside her in a limo, flung open the door and said, “Miss. Carpenter. You’re very wet. Get in.”

  TWO

  Teela Carpenter looked like she’d taken an unscheduled swim in Sydney Harbour and yet she hesitated, standing dripping wet, in the downpour, silhouetted by the purple clouds of the storm before getting into Haydn’s car.

  When he made it out to that balcony and spotted her, his third thought after this fag is a bad idea and goddam, I’m not alone, was that she was Rum’s prank for this year’s Sexiest Man Alive title win. He’d known it was only a matter of time before Rum got his revenge. The surf lesson sprained wrist was an own goal.

  The first year, Rum had been cool about being beaten to the title despite Haydn having ten years on him. The second, gracious. The third year, Rum had taken a full-page ad in USA Today that said for a good time message Haydn Delany and included his real cell number and the covert twitter handle he used to read other people’s timelines. Thank fuck he’d never made a post of his own and dumping cell numbers wasn’t a big deal.

  The fourth time, Rum had all the locks and security codes on his homes in LA, Côte d'Azur and Bora Bora changed. It was hard to know which event had been more disruptive.

  The fifth time was going to be a doozy.

  Would’ve been easy enough for Rum to have planted someone in his orbit. If Haydn had a type it was smart, leggy brunettes and Rum knew that, but when he quit resenting the unwanted interruption to his time out, he realized Teela couldn’t possibly be a plant. She was the woman Lynda had raved about. The secret weapon. The one who apparently understood the difference between star power and genuine influence and that it was the latter he was trying to build.

  He’d been uncharacteristically on edge when he’d stepped out on that balcony, because this was his first corporate event. He wasn’t being paid to act a part, instead he was working for free to convince people to support his aid satellite-tracking project.

  He needed to raise money to match his own to fund the purchase of expensive satellite time to track the movement of aid shipments and prevent them falling into the hands of warlords and profiteers, instead of the refugees who needed them. If he failed, the anti-piracy project would collapse, and millions of dollars of aid would continue to benefit the wrong people.

  The invitation to Sydney had come at just the right time between movie commitments, but all anyone wanted to talk about was Hollywood gossip, and on top of that his meeting with a potential big donor did not go well. Teela, it turned out, was exactly the diversion he’d needed. She didn’t have a light, but she did set his imagination to crackling.

  Smart, funny, with a reputation for professional excellence and quick with the banter. It didn’t hurt that she was a classic beauty, her understated dress only serving to highlight her figure and those legs that went on for miles and would look even better trapped by his.

  “Your mother told you never to get into a car with a strange man, right?” he said, offering his hand to help her into the back seat.

  “My mother told me to buy my own car so I didn’t need strange men,” she said, climbing in awkwardly, her wetness making her stick to the leather seat.

  “I can only assume she’d be terribly disappointed in you about now.”

  Teela laughed, pushing stray pieces of wet hair off her face. “I had a little bingle and my car had to be towed. If you could drop me at a taxi rank that would be fantastic.”

  “Nearest cab queue,” said Rick in the front seat to the driver.

  “Teela Carpenter, that’s my bodyman, Rick. Our driver is Hassan.”

  “Hi. Thanks for this,” she said, trying to dry her hands on her clinging dress.

  “Nearest cab rank is your hotel, Haydn,” Rick said, “but Hassan will drop Miss. Carpenter where she needs to go once we get you back there.”

  Teela shifted forward to get closer to the two men in the front, her dress riding up her thighs. Haydn got an eyeful of those forever legs before she yanked the dress down, squirming to get it to cover her. “There’s no need. I can wait for a taxi at the hotel. Once the storm clears there’ll be more cars available.”

  “Ah, this is a storm, I thought it might be the apocalypse,” Haydn said.

  “Sudden tropical storms are a thing in summer. Cools everything down,” she said. “Wreaks havoc on transport. Lucky there was no hail.”

  Teela Carpenter was the havoc. She’d caught him looking at her legs and she was amused, a smile hitching on her lips. He’d like to kiss those lips, glossy from the rain. If she was an elaborate plant, he was going to strangle Rum, but first he was going to explore his options, get to know one of the locals.

  “You’re not hurt?” he said.

  “Only my no-claim bonus.”

  Seemed the whiplash was all his. “Hassan will drive you, but I’m sure you’d be more comfortable if you could dry off a little first.”

  She wriggled back into the seat and twisted to face him. And she smirked. “Are you inviting me to accompany you to your hotel, Mr. Delany?”

  That smirk did things to him that were very anatomically pleasing. “What would your mother say about that?”

  “My mother is a very practical woman.”

  “Mine was too.” He made it a rule to talk about Mom when he could, helped keep his memories fresh.

  “You must miss her terribly.” Not a question. One of those well-known facts about his life and Teela sounded hesitant, caught between wishing he’d never mentioned Mom and needing to do the polite thing to acknowledge his loss.

  “It’s a toss-up between Dad and I who misses her most.” He’d gotten used to navigating around his grief with strangers, making light of it, absorbing any awkwardness. “My mom would have insisted I find you a towel.” She’d have approved of secret weapon, Teela Carpenter.

  “I guess we should honor her memory.”

  His options were looking wide open and the locals were friendly.

  Five minutes later, after enough sustained eye contact to create a virtual sub-tropical climate in the back seat, almost hot enough to raise steam, Hassan drove into the driveway of the hotel, easing alongside the private entrance. Rick got the car door and made sure they made it inside the elevator without being spotted or disturbed.

  “Are we going to your suite?” Teela said, noting the controls only showed one floor past the mezzanine.

  “Unless you’d rather not.” He didn’t want her to feel trapped.

  “I imagine the towels are thick.”

  Okay, good to go. “Top quality towels.” Also, where were his manners? “Have you eaten?”

  She shook her head. Her shoes squelched as she shifted. Water dripped off her laptop bag. She had racoon eyes and he couldn’t remember wanting to kiss someone so badly for the sheer fun of it.

  They stepped out into the vestibule and Rick let them into the suite and disappeared. For a man the size of a house, he had stealth-level discretion.

  The suite was forty floors up and wall-to-ceiling glass, but there was nothing to see except cloud. Not a neon light, not a celestial one either. He pointed to the second of the three bedrooms. “Why don’t you take a warm shower, use the robe. I’ll see if the hotel can get your dress dry and order you something to eat.”

  She went still. She’d stepped out of her shoes and placed her laptop bag on a glass-topped coffee table. Now she stood facing him, a look of indecision on her face, in her posture.

  “Teela, you’re in control here. I won’t do anything you don’t want. The door is unlocked, and you can leave at any time. If you scream, Rick will be in here in less time than it will take you to wring out your hair.”

  “What if
I want?”

  He gave her a moment to finish that sentence and when she didn’t, he closed the distance between them. “What is it that you want?”

  “To dry off, to eat, to spend time with you.”

  He might be an actor who came alive with a good script, but he knew the value of silence.

  She colored it in. “To do something out of character for me. To kiss you. To go to bed with you.” Going outside all the lines.

  He watched her face. “Storm has set in. It’s nasty out there.”

  “Looks like it.” Not that either of them did any looking.

  “You don’t have anyone waiting for you?” Drama outside a day on set he didn’t need.

  She shook her head. He took the brace off his wrist and tossed it aside. Took his suit coat off and draped it over a chair. Giving her time to get off this particular flight path, destination sex, if she considered the risk too high.

  “Would you be cheating on anyone?” she asked. “This is unexpected.”

  Delightfully so. “I’m not currently seeing anyone, no matter what you might’ve read.”

  He reached for her hand. Ten p.m. Not late and he didn’t need to be anywhere early in the morning. He was intrigued by her, if not a little closer to captivated. “Spend the night with me.” He normally didn’t do that. He liked to sleep alone. Liked to send his dates home safely in the back of a limo with a smile on their face and a huge bunch of flowers to remember the occasion by. He’d be long gone before the blooms were compost.

  He didn’t normally pick up half-drowned women on the street, or go for the accidental racoon look either. And Teela wasn’t standard-issue entertainment-industry savvy. He could see this kind of thing wasn’t something she was experienced with.

  She slipped her hand into his. “I’d like that.” The first smile since she’d stepped into the suite. She wasn’t diving into this, consequences be damned, as if he was some kind of dare, and that was incredibly satisfying.

  “I’m glad.” This would be an extended-play hit it and quit it arrangement where no one would get hurt. “Hassan will take you home or to your office after breakfast. But if you want to leave at any time, dial one on the black phone and Rick will pick up and get you what you need. Do you want that kiss now or after you’ve dried off?”