Melissa James – Celebrity Wedding of the Year (страница 2)

He’d changed his world for Nicole.

Mia, though thrilled for her dad’s happiness, felt rudderless. It wasn’t just Dad and Nicole who needed a break, but until Dad was better she needed a plan.

Laughing green eyes flashed into her mind … a crooked, lazy smile and a voice like a rough angel.

Don’t be stupid. That’s not what counts here!

The crucial thing was that he was the C.J. Hunter. Every magazine in the country—and his very active fan base—still wanted to know about his life since he’d vanished from their world at the height of his fame. Since he’d won a second Grammy a few weeks ago, media interest had spiked.

Yes, yes—C.J. was perfect for this—if only he was up for it.

She bit her lip. They’d never truly been friends—but he was still close to Dad. Bribe, blackmail or call in the world’s biggest favor. If she could only get him to do it, she could give her dad what he needed right now—and it would even help kick-start her own new career.

Billy smiled and whispered in Nicole’s ear. “She only gets that look when she thinks of him. I’ve been hoping since the wedding.”

Nicole nodded, smiling at the girl she’d considered her daughter long before she’d gone to Billy. “I wonder if she even knows how she feels,” she whispered back. “She wouldn’t look at him at our wedding, but he couldn’t stop looking at her …”

Billy nodded, a smile curving his mouth despite his health shock. “She’s so much like Sarah.” And she’d learned her mother’s lessons too deeply.

For all his mistakes, he’d always known whom he loved. He didn’t think he’d ever met a girl who knew her own desires and needs less than Mia did—and maybe that was his fault as well. He had to make it right. If Mia didn’t take action on her happiness soon, for once he’d take over and stage-manage his daughter’s life. He wasn’t above using his illness to help if he had to. He knew C.J. wouldn’t be hard to convince.

“We need a distraction,” Mia announced. “Something has to happen that makes the paparazzi chase after someone else.”

Billy lifted a brow. “Sorry, love. I don’t think Paris or Angelina would announce something outrageous for an old rocker like me.”

Mia rolled her eyes. “No, Dad, not the usual suspects. We want someone who’d cause a media flurry if they did something … out of the ordinary.”

“Of whom were you thinking—and what would they do?” Nicole asked.

Slowly Mia looked up, seeing two hopeful faces grinning at her—and she smiled back, feeling a rush of long-unfamiliar excitement. “I think it’s best if the two of you know nothing. Plausible deniability and all that … But, suffice it to say, when everybody’s good girl does the unexpected, hopefully the tabloid readers of the world will want to know about it.”

He was completely wasted.

You wish, Hunter.

So he wasn’t the kind of wasted he’d indulged in during his rocking days, but after thirty-six hours of Emergency Room roster, C.J. felt a little bit dizzy and totally inarticulate, as if he’d been drinking vodka straight for hours. He wouldn’t risk driving his car home. It was in the hospital car park. He’d pick it up tomorrow or the next day, depending on when he woke up.

With a grin, he grabbed a cab outside the hospital and headed homeward. Ten whole days of freedom in a row before he began his surgery rotation: his last as a resident. Six more months and he’d be fully qualified, ready to start on the research track.

All the way home he thought of nothing but sleep, glorious sleep. Hitting the sack with a vengeance. A big, beautiful, empty bed—just him, splatted across the pillow-top mattress and catching lots of Zs.

The cab pulled up in front of his old house in a quiet Sydney street, and with a lazy smile he overpaid the guy who was smart enough to know when a guy wasn’t up for a chat on the cricket or footy. He turned to the house. Sleep, glorious sleep …

Or not.

You’ve got to be kidding me!

Today of all days she showed up? Talk about turning a guy’s hidden dreams into nightmares.

Though it had been more than seven years since he’d walked away from the world of rock music, her memory haunted him. Mia’s silky pale skin and masses of glossy black hair, the dark brown eyes that looked on the world with an amused tranquility he ached to know, and her luscious, indescribable mouth jerked him awake in a sweat at night even now.

He’d loved her quaint sayings, her quick laughter, her reliable good sense, quiet irony and ruthless honesty: a refreshing reality check in the world of me-first rockers. He loved her curvaceous figure in a world of women who believed half-starved scrawniness meant beauty. Even the way her cute little John Lennon glasses perched on her nose had always turned him on …

But what hadn’t done it for him was the way she’d always looked at him—like he was one species removed from a cockroach. Even four weeks ago, at Billy and Nicole’s wedding, tearing his gaze from her had been an effort—but after the cool “hello to an old friend” hug, whenever she’d caught him staring her return glances had held amused disdain.

So why was she camped on his doorstep? And why right now, when his brain was so fuddled with exhaustion he couldn’t find his defenses if they screamed in his ear?

And why was it still Mia that turned him upside-down and inside-out when he got a dozen offers a day even now, if a female patient or relative recognized C.J. Hunter of End Game as the exhausted doctor holding the patient notes? Other women made it clear they found him attractive, whether they knew his name or not.

And still it was Mia …

He slung his backpack over his shoulder and walked toward her. She was sitting on the top step of his half-renovated old house in Sydney’s inner west: as good a hiding place as any, and light-years from his life of fame. “Well, this is a turn-up for the books. Mia Browning’s actually sitting on my doorstep.”

Mia uncrossed her legs from their odd, intricate weaving that always fascinated him, reminding him of a contortionist, and stood. Damn, how did that little half-smile of hers—like she had a delicious secret she wouldn’t share—still make him think of all the things he shouldn’t?

“Hi, C.J. Hope I’m not intruding?”

His mother would be horrified if he uttered one of the ungracious sentences that sprang to his lips. So he did the polite thing—or as polite as a man could be when firing on half a cylinder. “I was about to make coffee.” Before bed. Lots of bed.

Bed and Mia. Not good in the same sentence.

He led the way into the house and straight to the still-ugly-from-the-70s kitchen. But for once he didn’t think of the renovation work to come. A massive caffeine hit was his only hope of sanity. Maybe when he had it he’d wake up and realize she was nothing but a mirage.

Mia put down the duffel bag she’d brought inside and said, “So, how’ve you been since the wedding, C.J?”

Just hearing her voice, soft and pretty, with that tiny slur on her “s”s, gave his fingers that old itch—the one he’d never been able to scratch. Not to mention that she was so close to him her breath touched his skin—

Don’t look at her.

He filled the kettle, set out mugs and cleaned the plunger from two- or three-day-old grounds, fervently hoping the milk hadn’t gone off. He’d slept at the hospital the past two nights. “I’m fine, thanks. And you?”

“I’m fine—but Dad isn’t.”

At that C.J. swung around, spilling the coffee from the scoop. “Billy? What’s the matter with him?”

Mia took the scoop from his hand, brushing his fingers as she did. “Sit. You’ve had a long shift, by the looks of you. Have you had breakfast?”

Grateful, cross-eyed, and too damned turned on for his level of exhaustion, he sat at the dining table. “Sort of.”

“Don’t tell me—a donut grabbed out of last night’s box at five a.m.?”

“Pizza—and four a.m.,” he corrected, rubbing his hand over his two-day growth of stubble. Wondering what she thought of him. Wondering why he cared after all this time.

But he knew why. Just like four weeks ago, he couldn’t stop looking at her. Her thick fall of straight black hair, her curvy body, the way she tossed a quick smile over her shoulder, still did things to him he couldn’t say out loud. Not to mention that she still had the sweetest butt he’d ever laid eyes on. Why couldn’t she have put on twenty kilos and be all dimpled with cellulite?

“How old was the pizza?”

Her glasses slipped down her nose as she worked around the kitchen—the same glasses that always made him ache to kiss that slightly stubby little nose … and the rest of her … “Huh … what?” He rubbed his forehead. Right. Pizza. Age of pizza. “I’m not sure.”

He reared back when she crouched in front of him, her face filling his line of vision with its little crinkle between her brows that sent a shaft of unwanted tenderness through him. So serious, so practical, and somehow so adorable—and he was the same sucker for her he’d been a decade ago.

“The doctor needs someone to look after him.” She touched his hand, and the whole dizzy-and-inarticulate thing got worse—he was an incoherent wreck. “Coffee will be ready in twenty—along with a decent breakfast. Go shower, shave, and change into something ready for sleep. You know you want to,” she added with a glimmering smile over her shoulder as she stood again and turned back to the kettle.