High Risk Love by Shannon Mayer Page A

next question as softly as I could. “Is there a reason why you don’t work together? Did one of you get hurt on a stunt or something?”
    Jet’s hand clenched on the napkin I’d thrown at him. “Nothing that I want to discuss.”
    I stole a glance at Hugh, but he was watching Jet carefully, like he wanted to hear the answer as much as I did. Secrets, the man had secrets, and I wanted to know what they were. Not for the magazine.
    For myself.
    Letting out a soft breath, I drummed my fingers lightly on the table, knowing I had to somehow lighten this dark cloud over us. “Any illegitimate children floating around?”
    Jet choked and jerked forward, his eyes wide. “Good God, I hope not.”
    Hugh laughed and the tension was broken—by a question that I thought would have sent most people into orbit at the mere suggestion. Curioser and curioser.
    Our food came and the conversation flowed easily between the three of us, questions asked, answers given, all of it light, on the surface. Nothing more was said about Jasper or Jet’s childhood, and if ever anything got close, he steered the conversation back to the present.
    “We’ve done it all,” Jet said, motioning to Hugh. “Rock climbing, skydiving, scuba diving . . . .”
    Hugh grinned around a tortilla chip. “Muff diving.”
    A laugh burst out of me and both men stared at me as if I’d been the one to say muff diving. “What, I can’t laugh at that?” I lifted an eyebrow at the two men.
    Jet’s eyes were sparkling, the gold flecks all but dancing. “Most women wouldn’t find that funny.”
    I shrugged, still smiling. “Oh, please. You must be hanging out with the wrong kind of women.”
    His eyes widened and he threw back his head, howling to the sky. Hugh slapped the table with his hands, shaking the plates.
    They could be so . . . so what? Goofy? Over the top? Some of both. Unrepentant, that’s what it was. They didn’t seem to care what people thought of them and they were genuine about it. Unrepentant flirts who were completely solid in themselves. I liked being around them; I didn’t feel like I had to be anything other than what I was.
    If I could just forget whatever secrets Jet was hiding, it would have been perfect.
    Smiling, I bit into a jalapeño, savoring the heat as it burned a path along my tongue, as the men argued about the movie sets they’d been on, the locations, the actors they’d met, the pranks they’d pulled on one another.
    I held up my hand at one point. “Wait, stop. Jet, you’re telling me you wrestled Hugh, on camera, in the snow when you were on location in Canada for a
job
and the goal was to see who could strip the other one out of his clothes and leave his friend naked in the sub zero temperatures?”
    They looked at one another, nodded, and then looked back at me. Like they were the normal ones, like they did that sort of stuff all the time.
    “Why?” Jet said. “Doesn’t that seem logical? It was a bet—who was the better wrestler, without beating the shit out of each other. I don’t fight, not for real, and Hugh knows it.”
    Hugh scooted his chair closer to mine. “It was Jasper’s idea, actually. Said we’d both get ladies out of the deal. He was right. He usually is when it comes to women.”
    Again, Jet acted like Jasper’s name wasn’t even mentioned, though his eyes darkened with pain. It was there, just under the surface, though he hid it well. I think if I hadn’t been looking for it, I never would have seen the flicker of his eyelids, the shrinking of his pupils, though the light around us hadn’t changed.
    Ticking his fingers off one by one, Jet said, “All right, so now you know about the movies I’ve been on, my favorite color, no kids, no previous marriages—”
    I shook the tortilla chip I was holding at him. “Except Elise.”
    He groaned, eyes closing. “I never should have told you about her.”
    Laughing, I leaned back in my chair. “Don’t worry, it won’t go into the