Hollywood Wedding (Landon's Legacy 3)

His kiss was harsh and demanding, forged in fire and tasting of hunger and passion, and she tried to resist it, standing rigid in his embrace while her brain shrieked a warning. But it was her body that was reacting, with a primitive need as old as time.

In less time than it took for her heart to send the blood surging through her veins, she was on fire.

She whimpered, rose on tiptoe and curled her arms around his neck, drawing his face closer to hers, her lips parting to the searing thrust of his tongue.

Yes, she thought, yes, oh, yes. This was what she wanted, this was who she’d wanted. The man in her arms was everything, and she would not deny him or herself.

Zach groaned against her mouth. His arms tightened around her and he swept her closer, one hand pressed into the small of her back to tilt her hips to his, the other fisted in her hair while he kissed her again and again.

He said something, or she thought he did. She couldn’t tell, couldn’t think. Not anymore. She was nothing but shimmering sensation.

Zach bent his head, closed his teeth lightly on the tender skin of her throat. She moaned, threaded her fingers into his hair, guided him as he kissed his way over the curve of her breast to her nipple.

The soft cotton of her skirt bunched in his hands. He slid the skirt up her legs and she whimpered as his fingers, cool as the night air, brushed across her thighs.

“Eve,” he said, “oh, God, Eve…”

Her breath caught in her throat. His hands skimmed over her silk panties, his touch feather light, but she felt the immediate, answering throb of desire begin beating deep inside her. He whispered her name again, cupped her bottom and lifted her into the hardness and heat of his erection, and then his fingers slid under the silk and touched her flesh.

She cried out in passion. Her head fell back and her hands dug hard into his shoulders, and he bent to her, seeking her mouth and, when he found it, ravishing it with his.

Eve’s response was almost Zach’s undoing. She was sobbing in his arms, kissing him with an openmouthed frenzy. And she was hot, so hot; her skin burned against his. He moved against her, blindly seeking her warmth, aching now to bury himself within the velvet dampness he knew awaited him.

He caught her hand, brought it down to him, pressed her palm over his jeans, over his straining erection. Her fingers curled over him and he groaned and pressed feverishly against her hand, wanting her to touch him yet knowing what would happen if he let her go on touching him.

He was losing control. Hell, he was out of control, in a way he had never been, not even when he was a boy. And he didn’t want that, didn’t want this to end here, with him straining against her hand instead of buried deep within her heat and softness.

“Zach,” she whispered, “oh, please, Zach, please…”

Suddenly, the sky lit above them. Blue and red flame streamed out across the darkness.

Eve cried out, and Zach drew her close.

“It’s nothing,” he whispered. “It’s only fireworks, Eve.”

The sky lit again, and this time she could feel the deep, primal roar of the explosion vibrate through her bones.

“Don’t be afraid,” Zach whispered, his mouth at her throat.

Fireworks, she thought. Fireworks, explosive, hot and brilliant…

And then gone, leaving nothing behind but wisps of trailing smoke.

She went rigid in Zach’s arms.

“Eve?”

“Stop it,” she said.

“Eve, baby…”

She struck out at him blindly, her blows fierce against his shoulders and chest.

“Get away from me, damn you!”

The night sky, alive with shining bursts of flame, seemed to have drained the color from her face. The passion that had lit her eyes was gone. All Zach could see in them now was disgust, and suddenly all his hunger was gone, replaced by more than enough self-loathing for the both of them.

His hands fell to his sides and he took a step back.

“I’ll take you home,” he said tonelessly.

Eve didn’t answer. She straightened her dress, ran her fingers through her hair and walked off into the darkness.

Zach took a deep breath. He waited a moment and then followed after her.

CHAPTER SIX

ZACH came through the door of his suite, tossed his keys on the coffee table and reached for the phone. By the time room service answered, he’d already pulled off his jacket and his tie.

“Yeah,” he said, as he unbuttoned his shirt, “this is Suite 708. How long to send up a bottle of Rolling Rock, a hamburger, an order of French fries and a tossed salad?” He nodded. “Half an hour’s fine. On second thought, better make that two beers.”

By the time the waiter wheeled in his dinner—if you could call a hamburger dinner, Zach thought with a grimace—he’d showered and changed to a pair of cutoff denims, sneakers and a navy blue T-shirt. He signed the check, saw the waiter out, turned the TV to something mindless and sank down on the sitting-room sofa to eat his first bite of food in hours.

The hamburger was charred on the outside, raw in the middle and generally tasted as if it had been cooked sometime last Tuesday. Zach dumped it back on his plate and reached instead for a bottle of Rolling Rock.

The beer, cold and crisp, was just what he needed after his endless day in the salt mines. He sighed, lay his head back against the sofa and put his feet up on the coffee table.

Amazing, how much a producer’s job involved. Zach tilted the bottle to his lips again. Somewhere he’d gotten the idea a producer just signed checks. The fact was that every problem ended up on his desk, now that Eve…

Zach frowned. Never mind. What mattered was that The Ghost Stallion was finally wrapped, or in the can, or whatever it was you said when a movie was done. He still had trouble with the lingo, but considering that the time he’d been out here gave new meaning to the concept of on-the-job training, not speaking the jargon was the least of his problems.

“The very least,” he muttered, putting down the bottle and reaching for the French fries. He bit into one, made a face and reached for the beer again.

At least Eve was out of the picture. That was something to be grateful for. How he’d ever convinced himself she could possibly help him sort his way through the orchestrated chaos of making a film still amazed him.

Zach aimed the remote control at the TV and clicked it to silence. Then he rose, went into the bedroom and took his laptop computer from the closet. He sat down on the edge of the king-size bed, turned on the computer, plugged its modem into the telephone jack and punched up the screen.

Whatever talent Eve Palmer had for running a business was second-best to the talent she had for screwing up a man’s head. Her blend of beauty and brains and hotblooded sexuality was…

The computer screen filled with numbers and graphs. Zach frowned, scanned them, then scrolled to the next screen. After a couple of minutes, he relaxed.

At least all was well on the home front. Not that he’d expected anything less. He didn’t need to be in the office to stay on top of things, not in this age of computers and faxes and modems. Besides, Jason Emery, his second-in-command back in Boston, was more than capable of holding down the fort.

He typed a quick E-mail note for Jace, added some instructions to be carried out at tomorrow’s market opening, then signed off and unplugged the modem. It was good to know that Landon Brokerage was riding the waves.

His smile faded as he made his way back to the sitting room and sank down on the sofa again. If only he could say the same for Triad.

He reached for the salad, but it looked as wilted as he felt. With a sigh, he pushed it aside, picked up the second bottle of beer and took a long, cool drink.

He’d spent every day of the past week either in that hovel of an office or on location, and Triad’s problems were as miserable as ever. He coul

dn’t even take credit for finishing The Ghost Stallion. Except for lowering the hammer on the little twerp with the goatee when his ego got in the way of reality, Zach knew he’d been little more than a bystander.

He took another drink, then lay his head back. Goodbye, Francis Cranshaw and Horace the Wonder Horse. Hello, Hollywood Wedding.

Damn, what a mess.

His mess, he thought, heaving a sigh. Eve had committed virtually all the company’s credit to the film, a stupid move if ever he’d seen one. And he was stuck with the result, a bunch of signed contracts tying him to a script, a director, a set designer, camera operators, light men, sound men and who in hell knew what else. He had a leading lady—not a bad start for what was basically a two-character script, Zach thought wryly.

But he didn’t have a director, or a location, and he didn’t have a leading man—details that had apparently escaped Eve’s attention.

“What the hell is this?” he’d roared at Emma when he’d realized the problem. “Didn’t your boss notice something was missing?”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that, sir,” Emma had said coldly. “You’d have to ask her yourself.”

Zach sat up and drank down the rest of the beer. He’d sooner have asked Horace the Wonder Horse a question before asking one of Eve. The only good thing that had happened lately was that she’d had the good sense to clear out.

He had not seen her since the night of the party, nor had he expected to. A woman who first reduced a man to a panting teenager and then damned near tossed a bucket of iced water over his head would have the brains to know that her career as his assistant was over.

The next morning, he’d written her a check for three months’ pay, added a note reaffirming his verbal promise to pay her a percentage of profits from Hollywood Wedding—which was the equivalent of promising to pay bonuses to Eskimos who bought freezer chests—and sent the package off by special messenger.

It had come back with the same messenger. Zach had not been impressed by the gesture. All he cared about was that he’d closed the books on Eve Palmer.

He certainly didn’t need her to help him run Triad. Learning the movie business was no mystery. You asked questions, you observed, you learned. And if things took a little longer that way—if they took a little longer…