The Gideon Affair

Pushing him with a gentle shove, she smacked him lightly on the chest. “Okay, okay. Enough with the Mr. Handsy thing,” she teased.

“No good?” He chuckled back.

He was still crowding her personal space, not that she minded in the least, so she surveyed the mess she’d made of his hair—reaching up to push it off his forehead.

“Well,” she shrugged, smiling with a half-grin, “coming out of left field and all, you have to give me a chance to catch up.”

She didn’t expect the rough grunt he made when he pushed off her and backed up. “No left field for me, Paige. This has been a long time coming.”

Her mouth dropped, and she was pretty sure her eyes had the deer in the headlights look to them. Finally, she frowned, her eyebrows almost meeting from the tension on her face. “Edward, what are you saying?”

He tapped her playfully on the nose. “You’re a smart girl. Can’t you figure it out?”

“Uhh …” Paige mentally rolled her eyes. Smooth. And to think, she aced a public speaking course at the university. Pfft. “Should we be doing this?” The question appeared out of nowhere, but she trusted her judgment enough to know it came from honesty. Should they be doing this?

“There is no this, babe. There’s only us. So what you’re asking is if we should be doing us.”

He sounded so serious.

“Us,” she murmured.

“Come on, Paige. You can’t be that surprised.”

Surprised? She was flabbergasted. Wanting Edward Ba

Those mesmerizing blue eyes bored into hers. “Don’t you think we should talk about this?”

Hmm. Fight or flight? Talk or run? Run sounded good. For now. She needed time to think about everything. That did not mean, however, that she didn’t secretly want him to make the decision for her, just tear off their clothes, and make love to her right there in the damn hallway.

Giving him a cheeky grin, she fished her keys from the pocket of her shorts and jangled them.

“Nope.”

Ducking her head under the strap of a purse that she had placed across her body, Paige stuck her arm through a loop on the backpack she took everywhere and turned for the door.

“Wait!” He chuckled. “Are you fucking serious? Nope? That’s what you have to say? Just nope?”

Toeing her sandals with one foot, she arranged them on the floor to make them easier to slide into.

With a final smirk and a wink, she laughed in his smiling but shocked face.

“That’s right, sweetie. Nope.”

Yanking on the door, she made to leave turning one last time to wiggle some fingers at him in good-bye.

“Toodles,” she chirped then quickly bolted through the door when Edward burst out laughing and lunged for her as if he meant to unleash the tickle monster.

As she scurried along the path to the driveway, she heard him still laughing in the doorway. “Did you just use the word toodles?”

She smiled the whole way home.

Sometimes, the lag between the end of one project and the start of another was so laidback and slow that life almost felt normal. And then there were times when the transition from one movie set to another took on time warp qualities. Everything sped up, which in turn made Paige feel like she needed to be operating at Mach speed to stay on top of things. They had a long few weeks until they had to be in Montana, but her days were full and busy.

Even though just twenty-four hours had passed since the extraordinary encounter she’d experienced with Edward, it seemed like the following day had gone on for a year.

Fresh from excitement of their dangerous game of flirt, retreat, flirt, kiss, and then run like hell, she’d barely survived the sleep-deprived coma of yesterday. The detailed and highly erotic scene that had played out in her dreams after she had dragged her gri

It was one thing to watch Gideon Shaw make love to a movie character and another thing altogether to experience firsthand, deliciously so, how Edward went about kissing. His movie star alter ego might be one of the sexiest men alive, but the fabricated individual was a pale shadow to the real man.

Had it been inevitable then that her dreams would be a veritable encyclopedia of carnal scenes? Probably.

Her thighs were burning from the grueling workout she’d programmed into the hi-tech treadmill on which she was currently pounding out a rhythm. Hiding out at the gym had seemed like such a great idea after the hellacious day she’d just endured. Between an excess of unfulfilled sexual desire and after a workday that had tried her patience as well as her composure, working up a serious sweat and burning off some energy had been her only choice.

Things had steadily gone from bad to shit-tacular as the day wore on, starting with a full bore argument she’d walked in on between a red-faced and furious Mickey and the director of Gideon’s just-wrapped movie.

Markus Gladford was one of a handful of in-demand directors who was enjoying his fifteen minutes of applause and industry fame. Edward had been excited to work with the intense, mercurial visual artist who’d racked up one box office hit after another.

The shoot had been uneventful until the last couple of weeks when Gladford had gone off the rails. At the time, she had figured the pressure of directing a highly anticipated adaptation of a famous book was making the man lose his shit.

But finding him at Mickey’s swank Beverly Hills office and looking like a bad kid who’d just been handed his ass by a stern parent, Paige couldn't ignore the warning bells.

With Edward off radar going through a standard physical— that the insurance company handling his next film always insisted on when the script in question contained stunts and physical exertion—, she’d put on her serious business face and headed to Mickey’s office. One look at the worried expression on the receptionist’s face, and she knew something was up.

The yelling in Russian that was evident despite a closed door was the perfect soundtrack for everything that happened next.

Marilyn … was that even her real name … cringed at Paige when a string of blunt expletives filled the air. Clearly, the agent was on a roll.

With an arched eyebrow, Paige asked as coolly as she could, “Who’s on the receiving end of that bad-ittude?”

One of the agency’s top draws, a Stepford Agent as she liked to call the cookie-cutter squad of ruthless people who controlled nearly everyone and everything, strolled by and gave her a wry grin. “That ass reaming is being handed to one Mister Markus Gladford.”

Oh, no. Not good, not good at all.

She all but sprinted in to Mickey’s office, not waiting for Marilyn to a