His Girl Hollywood

Chapter 17

Arlene had spent the entire drive home in her tiny Chevy wondering if she’d made a horrible mistake. She and Don—flushed in a way that she was certain made it immediately evident what they’d been up to in the yard—had made their excuses to her mother, citing an early call time on set tomorrow. They’d both raced to their cars, breathless to get their hands on each other again as soon as possible.

But as she’d made the quiet drive through oil fields and orange groves back to her little bungalow in the middle of the city, doubts had crept in. She had told herself from the beginning that this couldn’t happen. That her old feelings for Don could not be given an inch. There was too much at stake. But no matter what she did, she couldn’t forget that kiss on set. She’d been overwhelmed by it at dinner tonight—and then the way he’d been all night, charming her mother, reminiscing about their childhood, creating something exciting and new together. It had cast a spell over her. And when he’d told her in the backyard that Eleanor meant nothing to him. That she was the only girl who made him better. She’d melted, hearing words she had always wanted him to say. Something had possessed her and she’d kissed him without thought, needing to grab the way his words made her feel and hold on to it. In that moment, she’d been seventeen again and twenty-eight at the same time. In love with her best friend, but woman enough to do something about it.

Joan had long teased her for her strange blend of pragmatism and hopeless romanticism. Arlene’s ability to keep her head in a crisis was eternally at war with her enduring belief in love. But she thought she’d conquered this, accepted that Don would be forever the one that got away. Somehow, though, he’d danced and kick-stepped his way through the walls she’d so carefully tried to erect around her heart. If she was honest with herself, those walls had been easy to build. Without him in her life, she had no one to yearn for, no one to dream about. But with him back, flesh and blood before her, it had become increasingly difficult to resist the tug of her heart as it beat in patterns she’d hewn as a girl.

She knew it was dangerous. Not just for her career, but for her life beyond it too. He’d broken her heart once before without even knowing he’d done it. Could she risk letting him break it again? On the other hand, could she give up the chance to finally have him in all the ways she’d always dreamed? He’d shown her that he wasn’t the callous Broadway star she thought he was. There was something more complicated about his absence from all of their lives. She wanted to know the details of those complications, unearth every secret he held, learn the intricacies of each of the days of the ten years of his life she had missed.

A knock at the door of her bungalow shook her from her thoughts. She’d sped home so caught in the turmoil of her mind that she’d been shocked to look down and see the dial on the speedometer pointing far past her normally cautious limit.

She looked around the room. Her tidy little home wasn’t much to look at. A small living room with a fireplace and a white stucco hearth. A basket of her knitting, which she hadn’t touched since production began, was tucked in the corner. She’d been in the middle of making Bill a scarf to wear on cold autumn mornings out on the boat. He’d need it come October.

The only decorations on her mantel were photographs—one of her and her brother in the backyard, a simple picture of her father on his boat looking across the horizon, and one of Don with a glint of determination in his eye that she had snapped the morning he left for New York. She contemplated hiding it or at least turning it facedown, but the knock at the door grew more persistent. “Coming,” she yelped.

She opened the door and there was Don, backlit by the streetlight and impossibly handsome. He grinned, pulling the scar on his cheek into the dimple she loved so well. She resisted the urge for her knees to give way beneath her.

“I thought you might have changed your mind,” he teased, a hint of nervousness in his voice.

It flustered her because she’d debated that the whole way home. Was she being a fool? “I’ll admit, I thought about it,” she said, twisting her hands in the fabric of her skirt.

“I’ll go if you want,” he said, turning on his heel.

“No!” She stopped him. Surprised by her own vehemence. “No, I just meant you can at least come in for a nightcap or something.”

She moved aside to let him enter the house, and he did, stepping across the threshold and taking in the space. The shabbiness of the room suddenly stuck out to her. The threadbare rug under her coffee table, the lack of decoration. She’d spent so much of her time at Joan’s place as her assistant that she’d never felt much need to fill her house with things. Why pile up a house with stuff when the only thing you did in it was sleep?

“It’s—” Don started to say.

“Not much, I know.”

He reached for her hand and lifted it to his mouth, grazing her knuckles softly with his lips. She shivered at the contact. “I was going to say it’s perfect.”

“Oh.”

He dropped her hand and walked farther into the room.

“I’m not here much, so it still needs a lot of work.”

“Seems like paradise to me. I’ve been living out of hotel rooms for the last ten years. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have a space that is yours completely. To do with as you wish.”

She hadn’t thought of that. She did love it for that reason. It was the only thing she’d had that was hers and hers alone. Perhaps that was also why she hadn’t decorated much. It felt too monumental to decide what she should hang on a wall or what piece of furniture she should buy to populate her home for years to come. “I bought it with Joan’s money. She gave me a loan when I was her assistant. Said it was too much for me to drive back and forth from San Pedro every day. I paid her back last year with the money I earned writing Reno Rendezvous .”

He nodded and took off his hat, throwing it onto the couch as if it were his home too. There was a pang in her chest at the idea. She’d never dared to imagine that this version of Don would be here, standing in her living room as if he belonged there. She should give it up, dismiss it as the mirage it was meant to be. But she simply couldn’t. Not after dreaming of it for so long. “It was a great picture. I went to see it three times.”

Arlene blushed and looked at her bare feet, focusing on the chipped pale-pink polish on her toes. “I wrote it for Joan. So she could finally have the script she deserved.”

Don looked at her with admiration in his eyes. “She’s lucky to have a friend like you.”

“Oh, no, it’s me who’s the lucky one. I wouldn’t have anything if it weren’t for Joan.”

Don smiled and shook his head. “I bet you five bucks she’d say the same about you.”

Arlene couldn’t suppress a smile at that. “Well, probably you’re right. She was rather stubborn about Dash Howard until I helped them see they were hopelessly in love with each other. They were so blind to their feelings.”

He barked out a laugh. “That seems to be a common problem for everyone but you.”

His words changed the air in the room. Suddenly, there was an electric charge. The pulse of want that had sprung up between them in the backyard returned. Arlene didn’t know what to say. “What do you mean?”

“How about I show you?” He crossed the room in two steps and took her in his arms, tangling his hand in the hair at the nape of her neck. He kissed her. She froze in his arms, afraid to give in to the pull of her attraction. Because once she did, there would be no turning back. Don was not the self-obsessed cad she’d believed him to be. But that didn’t change the fact that getting involved with her leading man would endanger everything she’d worked for.

He pulled back, noticing her reticence. “Should I go?” he asked, meeting her eyes and gazing at her with such care and affection that she could swear a small crack in her heart knit itself back together. He’d put it there, but now he was mending it. Could she not just have this? One night with him to fulfill all her fantasies. Surely, that would be enough. It had to be.

She answered him with bruising passion, biting at his lip as he threw himself back into the clinch with renewed devotion. It was even better than the kiss on set and the one in the yard. It was all-consuming. She allowed him to push her gently against the wall behind them, the one that divided the kitchen from the living room. She arched her back into it and reached for him, her fingers dipping under the edge of the royal-blue knit shirt he’d worn to dinner.

He began dotting a trail of kisses from the corner of her mouth down her neck to the hollow above her collarbone. He swirled his tongue there and she gasped, circling her arms around him and digging her nails into his back, silently grateful she kept them short for working on set.

He raised his hands and undid the top button of her gingham day dress, looking in her eyes as if he was seeking approval. She nodded furiously and he undid the rest, making quick work of them. He slipped his hands through the panels of her dress, exploring the curves and undulations of her body. Her dress was undone and she stood before him in her bra and girdle. He stepped back and let his eyes trace her body, scorching every inch of her with a glance as he took her in. Like her nails, her undergarments were practical—a white bra and girdle, simple and unfussy. Their distinct lack of sex appeal was suddenly extremely evident to her. She lifted her arms to cover herself. “I’m sorry.”

He frowned. “For what?”

“I don’t own anything fancy—nothing with lace or…or the sexy things.”

He grinned a lascivious smile. “Lena, I don’t care. You’re beautiful. Beautiful things don’t need adornment.”

She blushed from the top of her head to her toes, unable to hide the pink flush that covered her body at his words.

He slid his hands once more through her open dress, around her back, and reached behind her to the clasp of her bra. He was kissing her neck, and he whispered in her ear, “Is this all right?”

“Yes,” she whispered. God yes. He undid her bra and gently peeled it away from her, kissing the tops of her breasts as he uncovered them.

“You even blush here.” He chuckled. He took the tip of one of her breasts into his mouth and sucked. She writhed against the wall in pleasure. In all her days of loving Don, she’d never thought it could be like this. It had been a schoolgirl’s idea of love, chaste and innocent. This was better. So much better. His ministrations continued as he moved to offer her other breast equal attention. His hands wandered to the open collar of her unbuttoned dress, and he pushed it back from her shoulders. She arched her back so that it would it fall gently down her arms and to the floor, pooling at her feet, as he finished removing her bra. His hands meandered to the edge of her girdle, dipping to find the plain edge of her panties beneath it. She strained unconsciously, pushing his hand lower, and he looked up at her with a wolfish smile. “Good things come to those who wait.”

“I don’t know if you remember this,” she huffed. “But I’m a fairly impatient person.” He chuckled and kneeled, gently tugging her girdle off her hips and down her legs. She stepped out of it, now standing before him in only her unbuttoned dress and her orchid-colored underwear, the one indulgence she permitted herself. He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, kneeling before her with his hair a tousled mess from where her fingers had gripped at it, his need for her evident in his tightly fitted pants, all tailored to meet his needs as a dancer.

She stretched, raising her arms above her, causing the pink tips of her breasts to rise. He groaned, and she smiled. “You like that?”

“I think you might kill me,” he retorted.

She looked down at him and giggled. God, how was this real? Would she wake up tomorrow and find it had all been a dream? But then he crawled toward her on his hands and knees and pressed his face into the space between her legs, slipping his tongue between the edge of her underwear and the skin beneath, and holy mother of God, there was no denying this was real. Real and better than anything she could have imagined. He’d breached all her defenses and she surrendered to his touch. She decided she could have her dream, if only for tonight.

He found her clit quickly and moved his hands to hold her underwear to the side to give himself better access. She was struggling to stand now, the wave of pleasure building inside her at such a rapid pace that her knees threatened to give out at any moment. “Let’s…” she huffed, her voice breathier than she’d ever heard it. “Let’s go to my bedroom.”

He drew his head back and licked his lips. A pool of warmth gathered in her, pleasure at the sight of him enjoying the taste of her. “I thought you’d never ask.”

He stood and placed his arms around her bottom, pulling her up so she could straddle him. She looked down into his eyes and was amazed at the pure, white-hot desire burning there. She kissed him as hard as she could muster, and he groaned as he carried her from the living room to the bedroom. She giggled as he knocked them into the wall, lost in their kiss.

“It’s over there.” She pointed down the tiny hallway, past her bathroom to the wooden door.

He kissed her as he walked the length of the hallway, not coming up for air as he kicked open the door to the inner sanctum of her bedroom. It was clean and neat like the rest of the house, a pale-purple chenille bedspread the only sign that this room belonged to a woman capable of grand romantic fantasies. Fantasies she was eager to enact on said bedspread. He gently laid her down across the bed, crawling onto his knees above her and pulling her underwear down her legs, dotting the inside of her thighs, the backs of her knees, and the tips of her toes with kisses until she lay completely naked before him.

He sat back on his heels and took her in, and she preened beneath his gaze. “If I’d known this was what I was missing, I would’ve come home sooner.”

This time she didn’t blush. But the words pierced her heart. It was what she’d spent a decade longing for, that Don would come home. To her. For her. She looked up at him, her eyelids heavy with desire.

He sighed. “You look so wanton right now.”

She smirked. “And you have on entirely too many clothes.”

He barked a laugh at that. Then, he reached for the hem of his knit shirt and pulled it over his head. He stood up and went to the closet.

“What on earth are you doing?”

He turned back, now holding a hanger he’d fished from the dark depths of her closet. “Hanging up my sweater.”

He was so matter-of-fact about it. It was infuriating. “At a time like this?”

He lifted a shoulder. “It’s a nice sweater.”

She rolled her eyes. Unbelievable. Hanging up his sweater in the midst of making love to her. He placed the hanger on the doorknob, and the sense that he was keeping something from her niggled at her once again. But she banished the thought quickly, eager to let no secrets, no regrets, no recriminations come between them, if only for tonight.

He turned back to her and smiled. He still had on an undershirt, which he yanked over his head with unnecessary force and threw onto the floor. “Happy now?” he asked, a devilish grin causing his scar to slice his dimple in two. His chest was strong, but lean, bearing the musculature of a dancer who had honed his body as his instrument.

She giggled. “Not quite,” she murmured. She gave him her best come-hither gaze, a face she had never thought to make in her life. “Come here.” He kneeled at the foot of the bed again and reached for his belt, seeming to know exactly what she was after. But she stopped him. “Wait…”

He gave her a queer look. But she answered him by sitting up and placing her hands over his. “I want to do it for you.” She could feel him stiffen with need at the words, and she fumbled with his belt buckle, desperate to unclasp it as quickly as possible. She pushed down his trousers and his underwear all together, gasping as his cock jutted forward, released from his clothing.

She felt bold in a way she never had before, with everything she had ever dreamed of here before her. She wrapped her hand around him and shivered with delight as the movement elicited a sharp hiss of pleasure from Don. She was already on her knees and couldn’t wait anymore, so she leaned forward and slowly licked the underside of his girth, enjoying the way his stomach muscles contracted with each long drag of her tongue. She swirled her tongue around the head before taking him into her mouth.

“Jesus, Lena.”

She laughed at his outburst, and he groaned as the hum of her laughter vibrated against him. She continued to work him in her mouth, locking eyes with him so she could study what he liked, what made him close his eyes because it was so intense. He had his hands on her shoulders, and she could see the ropy veins in his arms redden as he fought to control himself. But she wanted him to lose control. She wanted to be in charge, to claim some power in this dance that had always left her feeling on the back foot. She worked him faster, enjoying this more than she ever had, relishing the salty tang of his body in her mouth—so different from the clean, crisp scent of the rest of him.

She sucked and teased, refusing to slow down, and when he braced his arms against her and muttered, “Lena, I’m going to—” she sucked harder and let him come undone in her mouth. Then, she swallowed, sat up, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Holy Mary, mother of God,” he murmured, reaching for her wrists and holding her steady so he could kiss her. She giggled and leaned back so that he could lie on top of her, skin to skin. He was warm and strong, and this was right. Oh so right.

Her ear was flush with his chest and she listened to his heart beat, still fluttering rapidly from his climax. She had done that. She smiled against his skin, heady with bliss and her own power. As his heartbeat slowed to a more normal pace, his hand wandered lower, resuming its ministrations to her body, her nub of pleasure tightening at first contact. She gasped as he slid two fingers inside her, and he locked eyes with her. “All right?”

She nodded, unable to speak with the wanting, answering him with a ferocious kiss. He curled his fingers inside her, and she clenched around him as he made contact with her most sensitive places. He worked his fingers in and out, playing her like a violin, before removing them. She moaned at the loss, but it was short-lived as he pushed himself up to his knees and replaced his hand with his mouth. She was lost then, writhing with pleasure, a wild creature she’d been too frightened to unleash taking up residence in her heart and soul. He reached beneath her and slid his hands under her ass, pulling her closer so he could devour her. She put her own hands to her breasts, tweaking and kneading her nipples as he proved his tongue was as nimble as his feet.

It was both an eternity and only moments before everything in her tightened as if she’d reached the crest of a mountain and was looking over the precipice. Then, without warning, she was falling, stars exploding behind her eyes, and electric waves of pleasure crashing over her with an intensity she’d never known. When it stopped and she was spent, Don pressed a gentle kiss to her folds and rose to take her in his arms. She snuggled close to him, content in ways she had never dreamed. He kissed her cheeks, her forehead, the tip of her nose, and a comforting warmth spread through her at his tenderness. She nestled into him, wanting more, wanting to know the feeling of him moving inside her. “Don, I want, I need—”

He chuckled against her hair, kissing her temple, and pulled her tightly against him. “I know, sweetheart, I know. But you’ll have to give me a minute.”

“Oh.” A puff of air escaped her mouth, and then there was an awkward silence. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“No, of course you’d want that. But, Lena, don’t you think maybe we should wait?” He leaned back against the pillow and crossed his hands behind his head, suddenly distant.

She wanted to tell him she was done waiting. That she’d been waiting since she was seventeen years old and that was long enough. But he was right. She’d fallen headlong into this, inviting him back here. She’d questioned how wise a decision it had been. At least one of them was being sensible. “You’re right, of course.” She gave him a quick kiss and burrowed deeper under the covers and into him.

“There’s no need to rush. We can have as many nights as you want.” It was a promise, but there was something missing behind the words. Something tentative and unsure in his voice. She’d told herself they would have this one night. That it would have to be enough to answer the unfulfilled want that had lived inside her for so many years. So why then did it hurt so much to hear the hollowness there? To sense he was holding back?

Lena wasn’t kidding herself. She knew that even if they could have another night, if she allowed herself to, that “as many nights as you want” meant as many nights as Don was willing to give her. She struggled to find a way to respond to him, but he rolled over and before long the soft wheeze of his breath signaled that he had fallen asleep. Meanwhile, she lay wide awake, the weight of the future and her refusal to let him disappoint her again whirring through her mind like film through a projector.