Calling His Bluff Read online

  “Easy, girl.”

  “Don’t ‘easy’ me, Joey Damico. I expected more manners from the guy who rescued my bikini top when it came off after I did a high dive into the deep end of the pool.”

  Great. Now she was thinking about him seeing her topless. She wondered if her face had actually turned purple yet. All of her reactions felt slightly off, as if she were both over- and underreacting at the same time. She wondered if she looked as strange as she felt, like her skin was made of broken mirror shards, reflecting a hundred different emotions at once.

  J.D. wobbled on his crutches and for a second she thought he was going to topple. She sprinted to his side and braced him with a hand on his elbow.

  “Whoa, watch the wine glasses,” J.D. said. “I was lucky to find these two.” Stepping back, she rescued the crossed stems of the glasses from his one-handed grip and caught the wine bottle that he’d clamped to his side with one elbow. “Ah, c’mon, Sarah. Share a glass with me.” She ducked her head as he reached up to tousle her hair in that infuriating, older-brother way he’d always had. In an instant, the vibe between them mellowed. Her shoulders relaxed and some of the stiffness left her spine. “And you know I could never stand that name. Just J.D., okay? Whenever someone calls me Joey, all I can hear is my mom shrieking my name out for the whole block to hear.”

  She wrinkled her nose. Growing up, every neighborhood had them: the parents who embarrassed their kids because they were crazy or drunk or oblivious to social norms like putting on clothes before leaving the house. J.D.’s parents had managed to be all that and worse.

  “Fine. One glass. How are your folks?” She didn’t really want to know. She wanted to know if he was dating anyone. Her brother had only given her the sketchiest of details about J.D.’s recent divorce.

  “Dad’s horrifying the neighbors down in Florida, last I heard, with Mom following behind him to apologize. Some things really don’t change.” He grinned with his mouth shut, a twisted line that sank into bitterness. Bracing his hands on the crutch’s crossbars, he swung over to the couch and indicated with a toss of his chin as he passed it that she should drop the bottle and glasses on the end table. Then he changed the subject, lightening the mood once more.

  “I saw your mom the other day at Tyler’s pub, looking fantastic as always.” J.D. had always worshipped the Tyler matriarch with the pure love of a boy whose own mother was a walking disaster. “She recognized me instantly, of course. But she could have warned me about you. I hardly recognized you when I opened the door. You grew up just fine, Sarah.” He winked at her. “Didn’t you have a crush on me at one point?”

  She stuck out her tongue at him, pleased that she could take his teasing with barely a flutter of uneasy excitement, and went to search the kitchen for a corkscrew.

  “Yeah, well, as a girl I was easily impressed. Remind me to beat up my brother for not keeping his mouth shut about it. And of course Mom recognized you—you were standing next to my brother. The terrible twosome, reunited. You’ll have to come to her birthday party next month.” She ducked her head, as if J.D. might be able to see on her face the dozen voice mails about party planning she’d ignored from her family. Although, he was probably the one person who’d understand wanting to avoid family for a while. “Ah ha,” she said after another moment of searching the cluttered drawer. She lifted the corkscrew in the air, and then strolled back to the couch, where J.D. had eased himself down onto the cushions.

  No longer able to restrain her burning curiosity, she heard herself asking, “You got a new celebrity girlfriend we should put on the RSVP list?” Yeah, that was subtle. And sheesh, it was hot in here. Seriously. A drop of sweat trickled down her spine. No sweating in Armani, she reminded herself. Dropping the corkscrew in his lap, she headed off into the dimmer corner of the apartment. “Is there a bathroom back here somewhere? And maybe some beachwear for this sauna you’ve got going on?” she said. “I’m inappropriately dressed.”

  He groaned and tilted his head back to rest on the high cushions of the couch. The light flickered around the edges of his profile, outlining the bump on his nose. It had been broken by a wild curveball thrown by her brother a dozen summers ago. “In the corner. Look in the closet for a T-shirt and shorts if you want. I keep workout clothes down here. Bedroom’s upstairs. And I never should have sent Tyler the picture from that magazine,” he called after her. “I go to one Hollywood premiere with the supporting actress and your brother tells everyone within a two-hundred-mile radius.”

  She found the bathroom back by what looked like a weight room, barbells and weight plates stacked along the walls. She pushed the door halfway shut behind her and started to shuck off her clothes while she shouted back to him. “You could have knocked him over with a feather when the next picture he saw was your wedding picture. Same blonde, different slinky ten-thousand-dollar dress.” Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she hoped she could blame the flush in her cheeks on the heat of the fire.

  “Get a grip, girl. You’re just two old friends sitting in front of a fire while drinking some wine.” She brushed a strand of long brown hair behind one ear and smiled at herself in the mirror. “Yeah, he’s an old friend who just happens to be a phenomenally hot man too injured to escape.”

  Oh, for crying out loud. Now she was flirting with herself in the bathroom mirror. She shut her eyes, threw every fantasy of seeing Joseph David Damico naked out of her brain, opened her eyes and turned to the open-faced linen closet. The uninstalled door was propped against the wall next to it. Now that she knew he hadn’t changed as much as she’d feared, she saw this place a bit differently, too. It had gone from a barely habitable, starving-artist space to a cool, incomplete renovation. Reaching inside the open closet, she grabbed the first things she found and pulled them on.

  “Where is the ex-Mrs. Joey, sorry, J.D. Damico, by the way?” she asked, determined to nail down details about the dreaded ex-wife. “All the lunchtime construction boys at the pub were hoping for her autograph.”

  “Lost her in the Amazon,” was his reply, but she decided to wait until she returned to the living area for a translation. This place was like a cavern.

  Leaving her own clothes neatly folded on the counter, she flipped off the light and padded back to the couch in her bare feet. She twisted one hand in the loose waistband of the silky running shorts and used the other to yank the wide neck of one of J.D.’s old baseball T-shirts back up her shoulder.

  He was still sitting on the couch, two glasses of deep red wine on the table at his knees, watching her walk toward him. Her own gaze bounced around the room so she wouldn’t have to look directly at him. Even though only her legs and arms were bare, she felt like she was naked and under a spotlight. She was extraordinarily self-conscious about wearing his clothes, the scent of his laundry detergent rising all around her, the slippery nylon sliding between her bare thighs.

  “That’s a nice look for you, Sarah Bearah.”

  The childhood nickname had an unfortunate effect on her maturity level. She stuck out her tongue at him.

  That’s twice now. What are you, twelve?

  When she reached the couch, he patted the cushion next to him.

  She didn’t even need her mind to protest, “Bad idea!” She was already sinking to the floor next to the couch. She patted the cushion herself. “Throw your gimpy leg on up there. You know you want to.” With a groan, he stretched out, leaving her face a less-than-comfortable twelve inches from his lap. She scooted a little closer to the head of the couch, and he pulled a pillow from beneath his head and tossed it to her.

  “You’re so right. Sit on this.”

  “Thanks.” She scooched the pillow under her butt and propped her arm on the couch. Manageable. Closer to his face, which was distracting, but much less so than his crotch, which would have made coherent, non-blushing, non-stammering conversation absolutely impossible. “Your ex-wife’s lost where?”

  He grimaced as he handed one of the glasse
s of wine to her.

  “She’s not lost. In fact, I guess you’d say she found herself.” He took a swallow of his wine and stared at the glass. “What I said was that I lost her in the Amazon. That’s where we broke up. She was filming, of course, and I was working on the scrapbook for the movie.”

  Sarah snorted into her own glass at his use of the casual term. J.D.’s “scrapbooks” as he called them had started out as a private project and become all the rage, first with the filmmakers in Hollywood and then with the general public. The first scrapbook had been a gift for his friend, Ben, the director of a small but beautiful documentary about a Hollywood legend’s relationship with his daughter, who directed him in her first independent film. The documentary had explored the intense relationship between father and daughter, actor and director, during the shooting of the film. J.D.’s photos had captured slivers of private time away from the cameras, intimate moments with the cast and crew that made you feel like you’d been allowed to peek through a window on the set.

  “I love that you call them scrapbooks,” she admitted and looked up at him. He had his head propped on one hand and was staring at her with unwavering dark eyes. “That makes it sound a little less like celebrity gawking when I buy one.”

  His grin and chuckle had her stomach doing tiny flip-flops. Her cheeks felt like they were on fire, though she decided she’d blame that one on the heat of the room.

  “It was pure hero worship for me when I did that first one. I don’t think I’d ever admitted to anyone, myself included, that I wanted to be a photographer until I started working on that documentary, even though I made my parents pay for all those classes when I was a kid. But I’d been watching him in the movies my whole life.” He rolled his shoulders back and looked up at the ceiling. “He was always the good guy, you know? Even when he was playing an outlaw.” She saw his cheeks lift in a faint smile at the old memories. “I asked his permission the first time I took his picture. He laughed at that. The man has twenty cameras on him when he takes the trash out.”

  “That was the picture on the cover, right? It’s a beautiful shot.” And it was. He’d captured the older actor leaning against the rough bark of an oak tree. You could tell from the tension in his face and the angle of his hips that he was in some physical pain. But his head was turned slightly away from the camera, as if someone had just called his name, and his shoulders were thrust back as if he was ready to step forward and shoulder the mantle of his role once more. “It shows that he’s still the good guy.”

  “Yeah, he is. He’s the whole reason I have a career now. Him and Ben.” J.D.’s attention shifted back to her. He wrapped his fingers around the neck of the wine bottle and ignored her protests as he splashed more cabernet into her glass. Droplets of red wine puddled on the back of her hand where she’d tried to shield her glass. She licked the rich berry wine off her skin and rubbed her hand against her warm thigh to dry it.

  “What do you mean?” she asked when he didn’t pick up the thread of their conversation.

  J.D. seemed to have lost his train of thought. He was staring blankly at her mouth. When he blinked and lifted his eyes back to meet hers, she saw him reconnect with the conversation.

  “He saw the book I’d made for Ben, my director friend, and he asked if I’d make him a couple dozen more so that he could give them as gifts to his daughter and some of the crew. Someone showed it to the director of this historical film that was being shot, and he called me.” He shrugged. “Everything else just fell into place.”

  “And how did this lead to you losing your wife during filming in the Amazon?”

  She stretched her arms over her head and recrossed her legs, seeing J.D.’s gaze wander again as his T-shirt rode up above the sagging waistband of his silky shorts on her hips. So she was watching as his eyes widened and his mouth fell open.

  “Sarah. Tyler. Is that a tattoo?”

  Shit. Talk about a reason to blush. She loved the delicate scrollwork of the old-fashioned ace of hearts playing card that rode her hip, invisible unless she was wearing a skimpy swimsuit.

  Or saggy shorts.

  But a tattoo was so not what people expected from her. It was just one little secret thing she’d done for herself, a reminder of a side of her personality that she kept hidden from almost everyone. But making a big deal about it would only intensify J.D.’s curiosity. And right now it was her curiosity that needed to be satisfied.

  “Duh. A million people have them, Damico.” She tugged the hem of his T-shirt back down and hoped her casual dismissal would put him off. “The lost wife?”

  He tore his gaze away from her waist.

  “I thought the director told me it would be the chance of my life. Turns out I should have heard, ‘I want a chance at your wife.’ Lana’s part was a small one, but I was happy that we’d be working together for the first time.”

  “And the director cast your wife just to get her to come to the Amazon with you and then hit on her?” Her mouth dropped open. “I mean, I know the movie business is supposed to be sleazy, but come on. Yuck.”

  “To be fair, I don’t think the director even knew we were married. Lana and I didn’t exactly bring anyone to Vegas with us for the wedding. It was pretty spontaneous.”

  “Okay, but surely everyone on set knew the two of you were together.”

  “Not exactly.” He sat up abruptly and grabbed the thigh of his uninjured leg with one hand, kneading it. “Sorry. I get muscle cramps now that I’m using this leg so much.” He set down his wine glass and bent forward to massage his leg with both hands. “It was only Lana’s second role, and she didn’t want people to think she expected any special treatment just because she was married to a hotshot Hollywood photographer. She’s pretty cool like that. So she asked me not to let anyone know we were married.”

  He winced again, and before she gave any thought to what she was doing, she waved at him to sit back and rest and started to knead the hard knot out of his thigh.

  Talk about whoops.

  His flesh was warm beneath her hands, almost hot, even through the thick cloth of his sweatpants. She could feel the long ridge of his quadriceps muscle flexing beneath her fingers as she applied pressure to the knot.

  Right. Keep talking.

  What had they been talking about?

  The super cool ex-wife. Right.

  “So, you, ah, fell for that one, huh?”

  “Thanks. Yeah,” he sighed and leaned back against the arm of the couch. “Well, she was spending all of her free time in the director’s trailer between takes, but I figured what was the harm?”

  “What was the harm?” she repeated in disbelief. She quit the massage and smacked him on the kneecap. “Is there something in the water down there that made you stupid?”

  “The director’s name is Jane.”

  “Ah.” She stared at him, struggling to keep her face expressionless. “I see.”

  “Live and learn.”

  A heartbeat more and she couldn’t help it. The giggles just spilled up and out of her throat until she had to cover her face, because each time she glanced at J.D. he just looked more offended.

  “I’m sorry,” she said and snorted as she tried to stop laughing. “It’s not funny.”

  “Funny? No.” But his eyes were crinkling up at the corners and he shook his head as he started to smile too. “Ridiculous? Just a little bit.”

  “Poor J.D.” She smiled and hugged his knees sympathetically. “That must have been pretty painful, your wife sleeping with the director.”

  “It was.” He toasted her with his wine glass. “Not quite as painful as when I walked in on them in our trailer, and then tripped as I was storming out. That’s how I got this.” He rapped his knuckles against the cast.

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah. And even that didn’t hurt as much as finding out my leg hadn’t been set properly, so it needed to be rebroken and reset unless I wanted a permanent limp.”

  “Ouch. Again.” />
  “Yeah, it’s frigging raining bad luck over here.”

  She swigged back a healthy gulp of wine as empathetic shudders made her neck crawl. “I would’ve kept the limp.”

  “Thought about it. And even though the cast comes off in a couple days, it’ll be weeks of physical therapy before I’m sure I won’t have one. But it did have one good side effect.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “By the time I was done cursing all doctors, both north and south of the border, I wasn’t that pissed off at Lana anymore. Maybe she broke my heart, but at least she only did it once.”

  “Cheers to that,” she said and leaned forward to clink glasses with him, although she would have been happier to hear that he despised his ex and never wanted to hear her name spoken aloud again.

  J.D. snagged her hand when she went to sit back. Braceleting her wrist with his thumb and forefinger, he rubbed the rest of his fingers against the skin of her arm.

  “Enough about my drama. What about you? How’s your love life these days?”

  She tugged against his grip, but he didn’t let go.

  “Me? Oh, no. I’m off men completely.”

  “You too?” He pulled her toward him, and since she was tired of leaning forward, she slid off the pillow and eased closer to him. “And here I was just thinking of asking you to climb on top of me.”

  “Shut up,” she scoffed and reminded herself that he’d always teased her like this.

  Okay, maybe there’d been a little less sexual tension when she was twelve.

  Maybe a lot less.

  “I am not climbing on top of anyone these days. Male or female,” she added in response to the speculative glint in his eyes. “I am officially a no-climbing zone.”

  “Come on, Sarah Bearah—” he winked at her “—Haven’t you ever wondered what it would be like?” He flipped her palm over and pressed his lips to the crease at the base of her thumb. She felt the warmth of his breath float over her skin and wondered if teasing shouldn’t be outlawed even if both people were old enough for consensual sex.