He hadn’t noticed before, but she was a real stunner. Classically beautiful, with high cheekbones and blonde hair, almost white beneath the street lights, swept back into one of those elegant twist things. She was dressed in a short, dark swing coat, buttoned up to conceal whatever lay beneath.
Like a model, she was thinner and less curvy than he preferred, but her stockinged legs, revealed now she was out the car, were the clincher. Perfectly shaped legs that went on forever. Legs he could see bare and wrapped around him in his very near future.
He grinned. Maybe he was going to like Westerwald after all.
Her classy attire was in stark contrast with his own, however. He glanced down at his torn suit. There was no way he could arrive at the party like this. It was a charity banquet and there was sure to be a press presence, and he really wasn’t in the mood for lengthy explanations.
Not when there was a much more pleasant diversion available than speeches and shaking hands.
“A lift back to my hotel for a change of clothes would be much appreciated.” And once he got her back to his hotel room…
“I’ll take you,” the woman offered, in lightly accented English. Where she’d looked pale moments before, now she looked flushed. “It’s the least I could do for not giving you a chance to explain.”
The policeman beamed. “All’s well that ends well, then.” His eyes twinkled as he turned to the young woman and addressed her in dialect. “This is your lucky day. Do you have any idea how many women would like to be in your shoes right now?”
Christian flinched. He’d just found out the hard way how popular he was in this little country.
His getaway driver didn’t look as if she felt particularly lucky either, but she nodded and climbed back into the car. Christian followed suit, this time buckling himself in. His ribs couldn’t take any more abuse.
She took a shaky breath, as if pulling herself together, and re-started the engine.
“I’m Christian Taylor,” he said as she put the car in gear and pulled off.
“I gathered.” That touch of ice was still there. So knowing who he was hadn’t melted any of her stiff attitude. “I assume I should know who you are?”
“I’m an actor. And you are?” He smiled, warming up for a charm assault, but she didn’t even glance his way. If anything, she seemed to freeze up even more.
“Teresa.”
Sheesh. Glaciers were warmer.
“Thank you for coming to my rescue, Teresa.”
“Were you really attacked by fans, or were you just pulling some stunt?”
“You didn’t see them – the girls on the sidewalk?”
Her brow furrowed and she pursed her lips, troubled. “Which hotel are you staying at?”
“The Grand. It’s on… ”
“I know where it is.”
He’d never worked such a hard crowd. But there wasn’t a woman he couldn’t seduce when he set his mind to it. He upped the smoulder. “I thought you recognised me. Who did you think I was?”
“I don’t watch much television, but the story’s been all over the news lately… Two prisoners escaped from their transit van on the way to court. I thought you were one of them.”
Another punch to the gut – an emotional one this time. “You thought I was an escaped con? Why – because I’m black?”
“Of course not.” She turned her head to look at him, as if seeing him properly for the first time.
He was a little mollified she hadn’t judged him by the colour of his skin. Even in his adopted homeland, which had made him far more welcome than his own people ever had, that still happened all too frequently.
But this woman, looking down her regal nose at him, had still judged him and found him wanting. Something started to sizzle inside him, something old, dark and unhealed.
They paused at a traffic light. “I knew I’d seen your face somewhere before,” she said.
“Which of my movies have you seen?”
“I don’t know, but I suppose I must have seen one once.”
One once? His face had been on the cover of more magazines than he could count, he was a household name on at least five continents, and she’d seen one once?
“I told you, I don’t watch much television.”
Nor was he some two-bit TV actor. His movies were Hollywood tent poles and their marketing alone cost millions of dollars. Time magazine called him the world’s most bankable star, and Vogue had voted him the world’s sexiest. And this woman didn’t know who he was?
“Besides, when you’ve seen one of those action movies, you’ve seen them all. It’s not real acting,” she said.
The punches just kept on coming. He frowned. “So if you don’t watch movies or television, what do you do for fun?”
“I read. Or I go to the opera and the ballet.”
He rolled his eyes. Bor-ing. “People don’t do those things for fun. They do those things to impress other people.”
“Maybe in Hollywood. But here in Westerwald we’re not cultural philistines. We have brains and we use them.”
Ouch. Two hits in one perfectly enunciated sentence. She spoke better English than the Queen.
The swift sensation that accompanied her words was one he hadn’t felt in years. His hackles rose. “You wanna bet? Clearly there are a few philistines here who watch my movies. I’ve never been attacked by fans in California before.”
“They were probably Americans.”
“So now you not only have a problem with movie-goers and Hollywood, but with Americans too?”
She lifted her chin. “When were you last even inside a theatre? The kind with a proscenium arch, not a screen?”
“Do the Academy Awards count?”
Her lips pursed. No sense of humour, then.
Her gaze fixed firmly back on the road as she indicated and turned into a wider street that looked vaguely familiar to him. “You Americans place so much emphasis on entertainment and beauty. On your own immediate gratification. Nothing lasts, movies are quickly forgotten. Who will even remember your movies five or ten years from now? Audiences will have moved on to the Next Big Thing and what difference will you have made in the world?”
Forget the fact that he’d been wondering the same thing these past few months. His blood boiled, the temper he usually kept in check flaring like a Californian wildfire.
What did she know about him? He’d given nearly a third of his income to Los Pajaros over the years. Not that the people there deserved it. The happiest time in his life was after he left the islands and moved to California.
“So what difference are you making in the world?” he bit out.
He eyed her tailored coat and the diamonds on her wristwatch that twinkled as she moved. It was easy to talk about making a difference in the world when you didn’t have to fight for your place in it.
“I do volunteer work for several local charities.”
And that confirmed it. Only the idle rich had time to spare to volunteer for charities. She’d probably never had a real job in her life, had never had to make it on her own or prove her worth to anyone.
She continued, her gaze still on the road ahead: “If only half the money spent on frivolous things, like movies