International Guy_Paris, New York, Copenhagen Page 18

  She laughs dryly. “Park, we can’t just walk out the front door. The paparazzi are staked out. All the time. I’ve never had a single day where they weren’t camped there waiting for even a glimpse.”

  I purse my lips. “This is true. However, your private penthouse access has a lock option to take you straight to the lobby or the parking garage. In the garage, I’m going to have you get in the back seat and hide under a blanket. I’m going to drive out of the building every day in a new car so the paps don’t get wind of you hiding out and leaving with me.”

  Honestly it’s a stroke of genius, and I firmly believe it will work. As long as she’ll trust me, we’re golden.

  Sky shakes her head and sighs. “I’m not sure it will work, but I’m willing to give it a try if it means having the sunshine on my face and wind in my hair.”

  I grin, stand, and pull her up and out of the bed. “You go get ready. Today’s attire: jeans, flats or tennis shoes, and nothing fancy.”

  “Basically, what I wear around the house.”

  “Sounds perfect.” Pushing her out my door, I smack her on the butt and watch as her tight ass jiggles just a tiny bit. Nice! Need to get more food in her, though. I like my women with a little junk in the trunk; gives me something meaty to grip while I’m fucking them.

  “Ouch!” She rubs at her ass cheek and sends a set of daggers over her shoulder with her gaze.

  I waggle my eyebrows. “Get movin’. I’ll make the coffee.”

  Skyler wiggles her little butt and makes faces at me, but does as I’ve directed and heads to her room.

  I slip on a T-shirt and a pair of plaid pajama pants to set about making the coffee and getting the week situated.

  Hitting speed dial one, I mosey to the kitchen while the call connects.

  “International Guy, how can my guys be of service to you today?” Wendy’s comical tone comes through bright and cheery.

  “Good morning, Wendy. Parker here.”

  “Well, hello, boss man. How goes it in the Big Apple?”

  “Haven’t seen much of it. Actually, any of it.”

  She makes a disgruntled sound. “Bummer. What can I do to make it better?”

  I grin.

  “This week’s going to be a doozy as far as requests go. Do the guys have you slammed?” I ask, making sure they haven’t already settled in and thrown her all of our admin work yet.

  She chuckles. “Royce has me hopping on database building and reports, but I finished those yesterday. Bo had me pulling some recon on a couple of suspected bad guys working at a company we’re inspecting for another client.”

  “Cool. Sounds like they’ve got you working those computer skills.”

  “Yep. What can I do for you, hot stuff?”

  “Minx!” I fire off the nickname I know she likes.

  “I love how you tell it like it is. Now lay it on me.” She finishes in a tone that means business.

  “I’m going to need you to reserve a standard boring rental car with blacked-out windows in the back so I can sneak Skyler in and out of her building with the paps being none the wiser.”

  Through the connection I can hear her fingers flying on the keyboard. “Do you want to pay for these cars, or is it a slip of their inventory?”

  I can’t help but burst out laughing. “Yes, I want to pay for them. Keep track of everything, though, because the bill is going to Triumph Talent Agency for all expenses related to this client.” I grab a coffee filter, remove the other one, toss it in the trash, and replace it with the clean one.

  “Cool.”

  “And Wendy?”

  “Right here, boss man.”

  “International Guy will always pay for things. No freebies, but discounts are nice.” I grab the coffee and pour a healthy dose into the filter straight from the bag.

  “Got it!”

  “Second, I want you to book box seats for a hit Broadway show. Also, contact the theater, connect with the manager. Tell them a celebrity is coming and needs to arrive through a back entrance right after the house lights dim and leave right when the curtain falls. We’ll pay whatever the service costs as well as the top-tier price for the tickets. Shoot me all the info via email. Yeah?”

  More typing through the connection. “Got it. Anything else?”

  “Yeah, can you find and send over some realistic male and female wigs along with a few different hats?” Grabbing the carafe, I fill it all the way to the top and pour it into the machine’s reservoir. Once finished, I flick the switch and rest against the counter, the heavenly scent of brewing coffee filling the air.

  “Little incognito sleuthing. I got you,” she chirps. “And for the record: this job kicks ass over everything I’ve done before. And Royce is paying me a whack!”

  I chuckle and shake my head. Leave it to Wendy, my punk/techy/BDSM/genius assistant, to let it all hang out about what she’s thinking and feeling. At least she’s not one of those women you have to try and figure out. Rather refreshing. I may have just won the lottery of bomb assistants.

  “I’m glad you’re happy.” And I am. There’s something about owning your own company and having employees who genuinely like working with you, enjoy what they do, and dig the environment you’ve set. It wasn’t a priority for us at the start, but now that we’re growing, it’s good to know we can give that sense of security to our staff.

  “Is tomorrow-morning delivery good enough for the disguises?”

  “Excellent,” I confirm.

  “I’ll take care of it. Anything else?”

  “Yeah, late in the week I’d like to take Skyler to a public dinner. A place called Trattoria Dell’Arte. It’s an incredible Italian restaurant I frequent when I’m here. I know the maître d’ very well. His name is Christian, but he goes by C-i-c-c-i-o, pronounced ‘cha-chee-o.’ Call him personally, tell him it’s for me and we want a table in the back, a bit secluded, but still part of the action. We need to make sure that once word gets out to the press that Skyler is there, we’ll need back-exit access and a private limo waiting. Also, touch base with Skyler’s security firm and make sure we have a bodyguard manning the front and back exits as well as two other limos so we can play the shuffle game with the cars.”

  “Cool! This is some seriously great shit!” She whoops into my ear, and I have to pull back my cell so my eardrum doesn’t crack.

  I smile and run my hand through my messy morning hair. “I’m glad you think so. I’ll be in touch for anything else, but I think you’ve got enough to tackle for now.”

  She makes a psst sound. “Boss man, this is nuthin’. Usually I’m hacking three things at once, eating my lunch, and shooting the breeze with Sir Mick. Doing one thing at a time is going to be novel. I’ll have everything set up shortly and email you specifics.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Catch you on the flip, boss man,” she says, about to hang up.

  “Wendy!” I call out.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks. And we think you’re the shit too. I’m very grateful you hacked our system and made yourself an interview.”

  “Aw, how sweet. What did I tell you about being sweet to me? It’s kind of flirty, and Sir Mick would not like that one bit. So . . . I just won’t tell him.” She giggles. Full-on giggles.

  “Looking forward to the day I get to meet the elusive Mick.”

  I ring off and head to the shower.

  “This isn’t going to work.” I hear her voice come from the back seat, muffled by the blanket I brought down to cover her.

  “If you keep hidden and shut up so it doesn’t look like I’m talking to someone, it will. Trust me.”

  “They always check out the cars as they leave. I swear I think there are two sets of them. One for the front entrance, one for the back.”

  I laugh, slip on my tortoiseshell Ray-Bans with the bluish tint, and maneuver the Ford Fusion out of its parking spot. Keeping things slow, I go all the way up the five levels and pretend I don’t see anything when I spy
a few guys with cameras at the entrance. All five of them barely glance at the nondescript car. Probably thinking I’m just a patron of the building.

  After I get ten blocks down the road and have taken a handful of turns, I check the rearview mirror to make sure no one is following us. They aren’t.

  I holler to the back. “Okay, you can come up for air.”

  Skyler flings the blanket off, looks left to right and all around. “Holy shit!”

  Out of the bag I stashed, I hand her my favorite, well-loved, worn-out Red Sox baseball cap. She pulls her hair into a ponytail, secures it with an elastic band she has on her wrist, puts the hat on, and weaves the tail through the back. She looks cute as a button.

  “Damn, you’re cute in my hat.” I adjust my seat and my pants as my dick notices her cuteness too.

  Once she’s got the hat on, she maneuvers her frame through the two front seats and places her ass in the passenger seat. I hand her a pair of her own sunglasses I spied on the kitchen counter.

  “Thanks.”

  She tugs on the glasses, fastens her seat belt, shimmies in her seat so she’s eased back, and puts down the window. The sounds of the city blast through the car.

  When we hit a red light, I look over at her and am taken aback by her beauty. Sitting in a cheap rental, an old baseball cap on her head, hair pulled back in a tail, feet bouncing excitedly, she’s never looked more beautiful. The smile on her face is wide and white. Heart-stopping. It’s no wonder she’s a movie star. Her transformation just with the change of location and mood is magical.

  I can’t help it when I put my hand over hers and intertwine our fingers. Lifting her hand, I bring the back to my lips and kiss her there. “Peaches, you look so happy.”

  She grins wide. “It’s because I am. If you weren’t driving, I’d kiss you crazy, Parker! This. Is. Awesome!”

  The light turns green, and I head to our destination. Today’s all about doing something normal, hopefully spirit-lifting, maybe even inspiring. The first task being getting her out and about.

  We get over to lower Manhattan, and I turn onto Liberty Street, find the parking garage I scoped out online, and park the car.

  Sky looks around the garage, as if she’s shocked that we’re alone. She smiles, jumps out of the car, and throws her arms in the air in a wide V, like a sexy-as-all-get-out cheerleader.

  I chuckle, go around the car, grab her wrist, and slide my hand down until our palms are connected. Sky stares at our clasped hands and looks up at me. Even through her glasses I know she’s also feeling the sizzling connection between us from just a simple handhold.

  She opens her mouth to say something, shakes her head, and looks away.

  “Come on, I’ve got something I want to show you. Something I think everyone should see once in their lifetime.”

  I hold her hand and lead her out onto Liberty Street. We walk hand in hand, hers squeezing mine every time she sees someone holding a camera up at a building, or a person tapping out things on their phone. After a couple of blocks of not being recognized, her nervousness starts to seep out of her. Her grip on my hand relaxes, her shoulders fall to an easy sway, and her focus becomes the view, not what could potentially ruin the moment.

  After about a quarter mile or so, we come upon a grove of trees and groups of tourists. There’s a huge section of space, with open sky where the twin towers of the World Trade Center used to be.

  “Do you know where we are?” I ask.

  She shakes her head.

  Instead of telling her, I put my arm around her shoulder, keeping it casual, not bringing any attention to us. We’re just a man and a woman, tourists about to see the most stunning memorial in all of history.

  The sound of the water hits our ears before the visual. Rushing water, a lot of it, along with the city noises of cars, people, horns, cranes, and the like, fades away as we get closer to the pool that is closest to the new One World Trade Center.

  “Oh, my word,” Skyler gasps, her hands flying over her mouth. She approaches the pool as though it’s a sleeping baby and even the tiniest sound might wake it. I watch with awe as she places her dainty hands on the black metal frame surrounding the edge. In a three-foot space around the entire acre of each of the two pools is a metal frame, which has names stamped on it. At night, lights sparkle through the empty space of each letter. The names of the men, women, children, and first responders who lost their lives on September 11 as well as in the bombing in 1993.

  Having seen this memorial before, I find it is no less breathtaking the second time. Each pool is encompassed by the largest man-made waterfalls in our nation. The pools are nearly a square acre apiece, with rushing water sliding down the walls, falling into a square black hole at the center. I step up behind Skyler as she pulls her sunglasses off and hooks them inside her tank. Easing my front to her back, I wrap my arms around her waist as she leans both hands onto the frame as if she can no longer hold her own body weight. I place my chin at her neck so I can whisper into her ear.

  “The memorial is supposed to provide us with the sense of the vast emptiness we feel upon remembering the lives lost in the attack on our country . . . hell, on the world. The names are so we never forget who we lost. The trees surrounding it are to give us hope for our future as a united nation. One nation, under God. I don’t know about you, but I feel God’s presence here.”

  She nods and settles her back against my front, her arms crossing over mine at her waist. “It’s beautifully sad.” Her words are almost a prayer. “So much loss. It’s hard to comprehend until you’re here seeing it in real life.”

  I nod into her neck. “Yeah, but it also shows how resilient humans are. We take a hit, but we keep on living and create memorials like this so we’ll never forget where things went wrong. I think that’s what our teachers growing up were always trying to hammer into our heads in history class. Don’t repeat past transgressions; learn and grow from them. The bright side? Even in the face of disaster, humanity prevails.”

  Skyler turns around and hugs me. I tilt us to the side so we both can watch the water fall and disappear into the center while we embrace, sharing the profound moment.

  Rubbing her back, I tip my head toward her and rest my chin on the top of her ball cap. “Maybe you can take from this that whatever happened before no longer matters. It’s a part of your history. Now is the time for revitalization. I think it’s time for you to live your truth.”

  “What’s that?” Her brown eyes convey her need to understand, to grasp anything that might lift her out of this negative place in her life.

  “Live your truth.” The words soak into my soul. It’s exactly what she needs to do. Present herself to the world as she is, not as she thinks she needs to be. Show the world that Skyler Paige Lumpkin and Skyler Paige the actress are one and the same.

  “How do I do it? I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

  I grin, cupping her cheek and portraying as much confidence as I feel, because I know I can help her find herself again. “Skyler, that’s what I’m here for. To help you. Can you trust me to do that?”

  She blinks slowly. Without even thirty seconds of thought, she nods. “I trust you, Parker. I trust you completely.”

  6

  Day five, and I’ve narrowly escaped banging my client, but that does not mean each and every day is not a lesson in restraint. Five days seem like a short amount of time to the regular populace, but when you’ve got Skyler freakin’ Paige in your bed, rubbing her sexy body all over you in her sleep, the way she is right now, those days feel like years! Hell, decades even.

  Unfortunately I know if I don’t hop right out of bed and jump into a very cold shower, I’ll be rolling over onto one hot-as-fuck leggy blonde in about two-point-five seconds and taking advantage of what she’s been offering.

  Skyler hums in her sleep, and the sound rips through my chest and settles in my already stiff prick. Morning wood is no joke. Morning wood with a dream woman in your bed, excru
ciatingly painful.

  With every ounce of control I’ve got in me, I slide out of her warm embrace, unhook her thighs from mine, slip out of bed, and head for the bathroom.

  You’re doing the right thing, Park.

  Mental pep talks are necessary at this stage. I’m not sure I can hold out another day, but I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out whether or not taking her to bed is going to fuck up her head even more, or do us both a favor and put us out of our misery. The last thing I want is her believing I don’t want her.

  Shucking off my boxer briefs and getting under the warm shower spray, I chuckle to myself.

  “Yeah, like that’s a possibility.” I tilt my head under the water but still hear her melodic voice through the noise of the rushing water.

  “What’s a possibility?” she asks, sounding much closer than I first thought.

  I spin around and find a stark-naked Skyler Paige entering the shower behind me.

  “Jesus, fuck!” I gasp, taking in every ounce of her beauty from the tips of her pink toes to the top of her golden hair.

  She smirks and runs her hands down her sides seductively. She might as well have been stroking my dick for how my body jolted in reaction. Rivers of arousal pour through every vein as though they were my life source.

  “Got tired of waiting for you to move things along, Park,” she says coyly, tipping her head, eyes practically crawling all over my naked skin.

  My gaze lands on her lush tits, and my mouth waters. They’re a perfect, large handful with pale-pink tips I’m itching to suck. Her skin is all one color and tan for someone who spends a lot of time indoors. Probably her natural skin tone. I grip my hands into fists as my once-softening dick now hardens to stone and points straight up at the beautiful blonde.

  One of her eyebrows cocks up toward her hairline. “I see you’re up and raring to go. You gonna deny me again? Deny what’s happening between us?”

  What is happening between us?

  I shake my head, knowing I can’t deny her anything. Not with all this perfect skin on display, her willingness and my raging hard-on controlling every speck of brain power I have left.