dim.
‘And you’re coming with me.’ He didn’t know he was going to say the words until they left his mouth. ‘I want you to come with me.’
‘To the Sapphires?’ Her jaw dropped. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘I’m deadly serious.’ Being with her felt good, he reasoned. She was easy company. Unselfish. Cheerful. And sexy.
Why wouldn’t he want her with him?
It didn’t mean anything.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS all very well having good intentions. Harder to stick to them when the man you were determined not to fall for was Nathaniel Wolfe.
Katie curled up on the sofa in his private jet, trying to hold hope in check. It wasn’t just the thought of attending the Sapphire ceremony that excited her, it was the knowledge that Nathaniel wanted her with him.
He could have flown her home or left her on the island.
But he’d chosen to invite her. Not a skinny A-list actress with visible hip bones. Her. Katie Field. Costume Designer.
And he was no longer acting when he was with her. He was the real Nathaniel.
‘We’ve extended the acting project—’ he was reading an email from Gabriela ‘—and she says Carlos has been back every day.’
‘That’s great.’ And it was. But what really warmed her was how involved he’d become. Far from shutting himself off, he’d opened himself up.
‘He’s emailed me. Gabriela let him use the connection from her office.’ His smile was tinged with self-mockery. ‘I’m going to regret that one. Never given my private email to a snotty kid before. Next thing, he’s going to want to come and stay with me in LA.’ But there was satisfaction in his voice and a smile on his lips as he tapped a reply.
Katie blinked back the tears that stung her eyes. ‘I think that would be great.’
Nathaniel turned his head slowly and held her gaze. ‘I’m glad I got involved. I wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been for you.’ He leaned forward and kissed her. They’d kissed so many times over the past two weeks, and yet this kiss was different. She felt the difference. And so did he.
Lifting his head, he frowned. ‘Katie—’
She waited, her heart in her mouth. She had no idea what he wanted to say but she felt the tension and the shift in the atmosphere.
‘Five minutes to landing.’ The captain’s voice filled the cabin and Nathaniel pulled back from her, his eyes blank.
‘Nothing. We’ve arrived. Welcome to Los Angeles.’
They walked off the plane straight into a heaving crowd of reporters and photographers.
‘Nathaniel? Is it true you saw your brother Jacob on your opening night in London?’
‘Do you have any comment about why you walked off the stage?’
‘Have you spoken to him since that night?’
Shocked by the relentless battering by the press, Katie gripped his hand, horrified that all the things he hated talking about were being flung out there for public consumption. To her it seemed monumentally insensitive and cruel and she wanted to shout at them to leave him alone but she knew that wouldn’t help. They were like a pack of hungry hyenas converging on a juicy carcass. They showed respect for neither privacy nor personal space and she found the crowd and the cameras both threatening and intimidating.
The confidence she’d found on the island evaporated and suddenly she wanted to shrink into the background again.
In contrast, Nathaniel was cool and confident, striding through the ranks of photographers with a bored smile that was absolutely in character with his public persona. The man she’d spent the past two weeks with had vanished and he was every inch the remote, supersuccessful movie star.
‘I have nothing to say about my private life,’ he drawled, ‘but if you want to talk about Alpha Man, then contact one of my team.’
‘Do you blame Jacob for murdering your father?’
Nathaniel didn’t break stride, nor did he give any indication that he’d heard, but Katie thought that he gripped her hand a little tighter.
‘Do you think Alpha Man will win the Sapphire for Best Movie, Nathaniel?’
‘Katie, how does it feel to have trapped the wealthiest movie star in the world? Is he paying off your debts?’
Before she had time to recover from the shock, Nathaniel sprang like a leopard trapping its prey. Lithe and lethal, he ploughed through the front row and grabbed the journalist by the front of his shirt, dragging him forward. ‘She did not “trap” me,’ he growled, ‘and what I do with my money is none of your business.’
Frozen with shock, Katie closed her hand over his arm and tugged. ‘Let him go. He isn’t worth it.’
For a moment she thought he hadn’t heard her, and then he released the journalist and the man staggered. His face was white and he looked shaken.
‘Don’t ever speak to her like that again or I’ll rip your throat out.’ Nathaniel wrapped a protective arm round Katie. ‘Now leave us alone.’
Touched by his violent defence of her, Katie suddenly wished the journalists would just vanish. At that moment she felt closer to him than she ever had, and when he lowered his head to kiss her in blatant disregard of the cameras, she felt happiness brim over.
Through the mists of pleasure and the explosion of flashbulbs she heard a voice—a clear, hard voice—shout from the back of the crowd. ‘What about Carrie? Isn’t it time you talked about Carrie?’
Because her mouth was pressed against his, she felt the change, felt the ripples of tension as he slowly lifted his head.
Anxious murmurings spread across the crowd from journalists worried that they’d missed an important story. People turned to one another, seeking enlightenment as to who ‘Carrie’ was.
The journalist who had spoken pushed to the front. She was an icy blonde who had ruthless ambition stamped over every centimetre of her carefully made-up face. Behind her was a cameraman determined not to miss a shot. ‘Must have been a hell of a childhood, Nathaniel.’
Confused, Katie glanced at the woman and then back at Nathaniel. His face was the colour of the palest marble.
‘My childhood was fine.’
‘Really?’ It was obvious that the journalist wasn’t going to let it go. ‘If I knew my mother tried to drown me when I was a baby, I don’t think I’d be fine.’
His mother? Katie frowned, wondering how the woman could have got the story so wrong. It wasn’t his mother who had tried to drown him, it was his father. She waited for Nathaniel to correct the woman but he stood silent, the black fury in his
