Page 35 of Play Hard
“Okay. Let me in so I can help make it better.”
I shook my head as if he could see me. “You can’t.”
“I will.”
“Noah,” I sighed. “I’m sorry I got you involved in this mess. Sorry I even came here. Sorry I thought we could…just?—”
“Stop!” his voice boomed, and I jumped. “You’ve got three seconds to open this door or I’m kicking it in.”
I scrambled to my feet because I knew from the anger in his voice that his three seconds really meant one and I didn’t want to be sitting against the door when it came crashing down. I was never afraid of Noah, never felt anything but love and caring from him, but I knew he had a temper and a past peppered with predicaments he found himself in because of that temper. My family thought he was dangerous because, of course, they’d looked into his background, but Noah had always been honest with me, so I already knew the type of man he was. At this moment, he sounded like the man with the temper.
I disengaged the lock, and seconds after the light clicking sound echoed, he turned the knob from the other side. Yanking my hand away from the door, I took a few steps back andwatched as he entered the bathroom. His cinnamon brown skin was on full display as my gaze dropped to his bare chest ripped with muscle. He held me with those strong arms last night and I’d wrapped my legs around his waist.
“Baby,” he said, his voice much softer now.
My gaze lifted to his face, to his furrowed brow and eyes that burned with barely banked rage and concern. To his thick lips and the barest hint of beard stubble forming on the sides of the goatee he preferred.
It wasn’t until he took another step to close the short space between us that I realized I was naked. I asked for one of his T-shirts after our shower last night and he’d only laughed. He preferred we both sleep naked. At some point this morning he’d pulled on a pair of basketball shorts, and now held a T-shirt in his hand as he approached me. Before I could speak, he was close enough to drop the shirt over my head. I lifted my arms to push through the sleeves, and he smoothed it down until it fell almost to my knees.
The shirt smelled like him. Or was that because I was in his bathroom, just inches from the man? Basically, surrounded by him.
“First,” he said, settling his hands on my shoulders as he stared down at me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you to go to your phone like that. I should’ve just told you what was happening.” He sighed. “This is a lot for you, and I didn’t think about that first.”
Now, I saw it. I hadn’t in the moment when he told me to grab my phone or the minutes after that when I’d been too consumed by my own distress to acknowledge anything else. But, right this second, in this bathroom flooded with morning light from the narrow windows that bordered the top of one of the walls, I could see it. The tenseness in his jaw, the way his nostrils flared on each inhale, and the stiffness of his shoulders.He was just as angry as I was. And why shouldn’t he be? That picture and part of the headline was about him, too.
“No.” It was my turn to sigh now. “I apologize.” Closing my eyes momentarily, I shook my head, then opened them to look at him again. “I was only thinking about how this affected me. How much it pissed me off, and I didn’t pay enough attention to how it might’ve made you feel.” Not that it didn’t cross my mind, the fact that I’d brought a spotlight into this new life he’d created for himself.
“I know it’s been a while since you’ve been in the line of cameras, and the movies you did definitely didn’t garner you this type of negative attention. I hate that I brought this to your doorstep. I’ll deal with it though. I just need to get dressed and head back to the lake house. Then I’ll call my publicist, and we’ll figure out what to do. This won’t touch you anymore, Noah, I promise. I’ll make sure that from this point on this chaos only surrounds me.”
His fingers tightened on my shoulders as he gave them a little shake. “Stop it,” he said. “Stop talking nonsense. You are not going to run out of here and deal with this by yourself. Like you said, I was mentioned in that headline and featured in that picture, too.”
“But—” I started, only to be quickly cut off by his raised brow and insistent voice.
“Nah, no buts.” His hands slid from my shoulders, down my arms. Instant warmth moved through me. “We’re going to shower and order some breakfast. You’ll call your publicist while we wait for the food, then you and I will discuss what she says. What you are definitely not going to do is go on social media and read any of the foolishness that’s going on there. Got it?”
He posed it as a question, but I knew there was only one right answer. I could argue that I was an adult and capable of deciding what my next steps were without him outlining them like myguardian or another title I definitely did not want to explore. But that would be counterproductive since what he said made perfect sense. Besides, I planned to go back to the lake house and do the exact same thing, without him, of course. Maybe that was the part that had my mind looping at the moment.
“Got it?” he asked again, this time snaking his arms around my waist and pulling me into him.
I nodded.
“Nope. I need the words.” One corner of his mouth tilted and the wrinkles in his brow smoothed out.
“Got it,” I replied.
“Good.” He leaned in closer. “Now, I need those lips.”
I didn’t wait as long to reply this time, didn’t need to because my body already knew what it wanted. “Got it,” I said before tilting my head so my lips could meet his.
CHAPTER 16
Noah
“How the fuck do we still not know who took that picture?” I scrubbed my hands down my face. I’d asked this question at least twice a day in the two days since Serra and I woke up to our very private moment being blasted on social media. There was still no answer.
“I just finished the interviews for the new security team,” Rock said from where he stood close to the door of the office.
Lance sat forward in the chair across from the desk. He rested his elbows on his knees. “And I finally got in touch with my old pool hall buddy from the force. He’s been freelancing with this PI company up in Connecticut, but his daughter and her kids still live here. He got in late last night and did a walk around the property.”
