by Jill Shalvis
Tanner made a sound of affirmation that didn’t fool Cole for a second, but then he walked off in the opposite direction as Sam.
Alone, Cole crossed the street and hit the pier. The arcade and Ferris wheel were open until Halloween, and Cole headed straight for the ice cream stand. He bought a chocolate shake from Lance, who ran the stand.
“Heard you’re dating that hot Unique Boutique chick,” Lance said.
Lance and Cole went way back. Cole had been a sickly kid, though not like Lance, who had suffered his entire life with cystic fibrosis. The guy meant a whole hell of a lot to Cole, and he was a walking time bomb, which sucked so hard that Cole tried not to think about it much. “I’m not dating anyone,” he said.
“Tumblr says otherwise,” Lance said.
Cole groaned, and Lance laughed. “So it’s true? You’re finally seeing someone again?”
“Not you too,” Cole grumbled.
“Hey,” Lance said, losing the teasing tone. “Life’s too fucking short, man. You know that better than anyone else I know.”
True statement. He and Lance bumped fists and then Cole kept moving down the pier, sucking down his shake.
Ahead was the Ferris wheel, backlit against the deepening purple sky. It was operated by Tiny, the six-foot-nine badass biker who owned both the Ferris wheel and the arcade.
Tiny wasn’t alone. There was one other person standing there with him, a dark brunette who Cole had no trouble recognizing, even from the back.
Olivia.
Olivia stared up at the Ferris wheel, which was lit with strings of lights that twinkled like stars far above. The thing was huge against the quickly darkening sky. Huge, and both a little terrifying and exciting, she thought as she just watched, slurping her chocolate shake.
She hadn’t had a shake since she was a kid.
And she’d never been on a real Ferris wheel. She’d been on a pretend one on a set once. She’d also been pretend horseback riding. And on a pretend helicopter.
Hell, she’d been to the White House.
Also a set.
Maybe it was time to start doing stuff for real.
“You want to buy a ticket?” This was asked by a giant linebacker of a guy in head-to-toe leather and studs. He smiled at her with straight white teeth. “Half off,” he said, “just for you.”
“Why?” she asked.
He shrugged his broad-as-a-mountain shoulders. “You’ve been standing here for five minutes looking up at the Ferris wheel like it’s your Kryptonite. You’re either chicken or broke. I figured I’d find out. So…which is it? You want a ticket?”
No way was she going up alone. “Yeah, I don’t think—”
“Two tickets.”
Olivia whirled around and came face-to-face with, of all people, Cole. “What are you doing?” she asked.
He touched his shake cup to hers. “Same thing as you, apparently.” He turned to Biker Dude. “Hey, Tiny.”
Tiny?
The two of them did some complicated male bonding handshake thing, and then Cole pulled a five out of his pocket and handed it over.
And then she was being ushered onto the Ferris wheel.
“Wait,” she said, stopping. “Wait a damn minute. I didn’t say yes.”
“She’s chicken,” Tiny said helpfully. “I thought maybe she was broke, but you just offered to pay for her and she’s still dragging her feet.”
Cole cocked his head at her. “You’re afraid?”
Try petrified. “Of course not.”
He smiled as if delighted by her big, fat, obvious lie.
Tiny did the same.
With a low laugh, Cole took her hand.
“I’m not afraid,” she told him, as if repeating this statement would make it more true, as they—deep breath—took a seat on the ride.
Tiny locked them in and winked at Olivia.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I hardly ever kill people on this thing anymore.”
Oh, God.
Cole grinned at Tiny.
Tiny pointed at him. “You get a kiss because of me, you owe me.”
Cole saluted him and turned to Olivia.
“You’re not getting a kiss,” she said.
Ignoring that, he put a big, warm hand over the cold-fingered clench she had on the bar in front of her. “Wait till you get a glimpse of the view from the top,” he said. “You can see everything, the whole world in a glance.”
“I don’t need to see— Oh, crap,” she whispered as the Ferris wheel jerked and began to move.
Cole laughed softly but tightened his grip on her hand.
“This isn’t funny,” she said.
“It’s okay, I’m right here.”
She’d been staring down at her shoes to avoid the dizzying view, but she turned to eyeball him. “What are you going to do if we get stuck up here?”
“Get us unstuck.”
He said this so calmly, so reasonably, that she had to laugh too, but it was a breathless laugh.
He sipped at his shake, looking steady as a rock.
“We’re both drinking shakes,” she said inanely.
He nodded.
“And walking the pier,” she said.
Another nod.
“Do you do this a lot?” she asked.
“Always have,” he said. “Started when I was young. I told you I was the runt of the house, right? I’d escape and come here.”
The idea that he’d had anything to escape from caught at her, even more than the night air in her face, ocean-scented and chilly. “What was wrong at your house?”
“Estrogen overload in the form of three bossy older sisters,” he said. “Ever been held down and had your hair curled, makeup put on, and your toenails painted?”
Actually, yes. It was called the makeup trailer. She took in his long, leanly muscled build. He was strong as hell, and she knew it. “You were the runt?” she asked in disbelief.
“Yep,” he said. “Small and puny. I weighed about eighty-five pounds soaking wet until high school.”
“What happened in high school?” she asked, unable to help herself.
“I caught up.” He met her gaze, his smile fading. “So we both came looking for comfort tonight.”
“I hardly call being a million feet in the air comfort,” she said. And though she hadn’t looked out, she could feel her stomach drop, signaling that they were getting higher. And higher. She closed her eyes.
“What were you seeking comfort from?” he asked.
“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “Not going there. Not in space.” Or ever.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll go first.” She felt him shift slightly and risked a quick peek. He was leaning back now, long legs stretched out in front of him as if he didn’t have a care. He was staring out into the admittedly glorious night, and still they were rising, rising, rising, and she slammed her eyes closed again.
“I just left a meeting with Sam and Tanner,” he said casually. “It was a good meeting. Our business is solid, we’re solid. But it’s a lot of pressure to keep up with our expectations. Open your eyes, Olivia.”
She squeezed them tighter. “Hell no.”
She felt him shift again, felt his arm settle along the back of the bench, brushing her shoulders comfortingly, his fingers lightly stroking the nape of her neck.
She shivered. “Still no.”
Something brushed her jaw. His mouth? Her entire body tightened at the thought and her eyes flew involuntarily open.
And met his.
It wasn’t his mouth touching her, it was his thumb, though he was close enough that they could—and did—share their next breath. He stroked her jaw again. “We’re at the top.”
Chapter 11
We’re at the top…
That’s what Olivia used to hear every week when the ratings would come in. And then the network would shower her with love and appreciation, and life would go on.
Until it’d come to a crashing halt.
She opened her eyes, going stock still. Behind Cole, the sky was purple, with only a hint of the stars that would light it up when full darkness hit. The ocean swells stretched out as far as the eye could see, meeting the horizon. Far below them were the twinkling lights of Lucky Harbor.
He was right. She could see everything, the whole world in a glance.
“Breathe,” he said quietly, entwining their hands and bringing them up to his torso, letting her feel his chest rise and fall steadily. “Just breathe.”
She sucked in some air, suitably distracted by the feel of the hard pecs beneath her hand. He looked so deceptively normal in his clothes that she forgot that beneath he was anything but. She’d seen that for herself, every single perfectly sculpted inch.
And a certain number of those inches? Mouthwatering.
She’d been wondering about him over the past few days. The town had gotten it in its collective head that they were seeing each other, and she’d been fending off the “So you and Cole?” question at least once a day.
At night she had only her own questions to fend off…
“Better?” he asked, still holding her hand to his chest.
She thought of his reaction to her peeking beneath the blankets at him and smiled in spite of herself.
“Yeah,” he said, watching her face carefully. “Better.”
Good thing he didn’t know why.
His gaze never left hers, and his mouth twitched. “Care to share?” he asked.
“Expectations.” She breathed some more and stared out as they—finally!—began their slow descent back to earth, the cool, salty ocean air blowing in her face. “You said it was hard to live up to the expectations you had of your business.” Her entire life had been nothing but one long expectation. ”I know how that feels.”
“You don’t say much about yourself,” he said after a moment. “When did you leave home?”
“You never really leave, do you?” she said.
“You mean you can take the girl out of Kentucky, but you can’t take Kentucky out of the girl?”
She laughed. “Something like that.”
“You said you didn’t miss it, but I’m getting the feeling you do. At least on some level.”
She stared out at the black sea. Did she miss Hollywood? That was the place she really considered home. Not Kentucky.
Never Kentucky.
“I miss the people,” she finally said. God’s honest truth. She missed her director, and the producer. She missed the caterer, the wardrobe people…her agent. He’d been like a father to her. In fact, she’d often pretended he was her father, which was better than the truth—that she’d been conceived during a one-night stand at a party and Tamilyn had never named the guy.
Olivia had found her real family on set. The wardrobe lady had been the grandma she’d never had, since her mother had been estranged from her own family for decades. The set director had been like an uncle. The other kids on the set were her siblings. It’d been a dysfunctional family, but still a family, and she missed the close camaraderie. “I miss the people a lot.”
“You were close.”
They’d been lucky. Their cast had been a large, young, boisterous, happy one. After spending the first seven years of her life poorer than dirt, life on that set had been a dream come true. Food tables, constantly filled. Games, toys, books, whatever she’d wanted. “Extremely,” she said, knowing damn well that he thought they were talking about her real family. But these people had been her family, for all intents and purposes.
Until, of course, she’d hit puberty and the show had been canceled. Her identity had, poof, vanished, and the people she’d cared about had all moved on, leaving her alone, confused, and more than a little frightened at the easy abandonment.
As an adult, she’d come to realize it hadn’t been anything personal. It’d simply been the way of the industry. The way of the world, in fact.
Didn’t make it hurt any less.
“How about you?” she asked. “You’re close to your family.”
He laughed and rubbed his jaw. He had at least a day’s worth of growth there, and the scraping sound it made against his palm activated the butterfly colony living in her belly.
“My dad’s gone now,” he said, “but both he and my mom grew up here, and they never left. Raised all four of us here, and yeah, we’re close. Though I think nosy’s a better word. We’re all up in each other’s business a lot.”
“And you all stuck in Lucky Harbor?” she marveled, unable to fathom that. He’d said his sisters were crazy, but she could tell by the softness in his gaze that he was just joking, that he had the real deal in his family.
“All of us,” he said. “I left for a while after graduation. Worked on the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico for five years before coming back here.”
“Wow,” she breathed. “Five years. What did you do?”
“I was the chief positioning operator and navigator for the ship and in charge of the equipment and safety for all the guys. Eighty-five, to be exact.”
“I’m trying to imagine living with eighty-five guys on a rig for that long.”
“Three were women, actually.”
“Not the best of odds,” she said, fascinated by him, by his family, by everything.
He shrugged, but something in his gaze caught her interest. “You beat the odds,” she said, guessing. She laughed when he grimaced. “You did,” she said. “Eighty-two to three, and you caught one of them.”
He grimaced again and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Only because as a supervisor, I stuck out from the general population,” he said. “Authority tends to look good to some women.”
She studied him. Heart-stopping blue eyes. Silky brown hair that tended to fall over his forehead when he was wet from head to toe, and also when he was riding Ferris wheels.
He looked pretty damn good to her, and she wasn’t into authority figures. “You don’t think you’re hot?” she asked.
He actually squirmed, and she laughed again.
He met her gaze, his own rueful. “You know I love your laugh, but this is starting to remind me of when you were pointing and laughing at my naked ass on the boat last week.”
“I never pointed and laughed at your naked ass. I never saw your naked ass. I saw…other parts.” Oh boy, had she. “And I wasn’t laughing at…it.”
He arched a brow. “It?”
Now she squirmed. “You’ve got a better term?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “It’s called a co—”
She put her hand over his mouth. “We were talking about the rigs,” she said firmly, doing her damnedest not to blush—as if she had any control over that. “You had a girlfriend out there.”
He nodded, a little reluctantly she thought. She had no