Hot in Hellcat Canyon by Julie Anne Long Page B

tricky wrestling maneuver.
    And then the devil actually grinned .
    And planted his feet ever so slightly apart as if he was settling in for a good debate.
    “When my career first took off, I could pretty much go out with any woman I wanted. I could flip through a magazine, call up my publicist, boom. It was practically like ordering something from Amazon. I might have gotten a little carried away.”
    “ Amazon? Now you’re only making my case for me.”
    This was actually kind of fun. She’d forgotten how thoroughly she loved to argue with someone who was good at it.
    “Hold on. I was young then. Still figuring things out. What did I know? What would you do? And everybody is good-looking in Hollywood. What I learned is, when everybody’s a four leaf clover, nobody is. Does that make sense?”
    She hesitated. “In a Zenlike way, sure. I get it.”
    She did. And damn it, she liked it a lot.
    J. T. McCord, she was learning, was not only hot. He was smart.
    He might possibly even be soulful.
    Something was asserting itself through her panic. The Want was still present and accounted for. But its gentler cousin, Yearning, had just shown up. Yearning was seductive. She hadn’t felt anything like that in years.
    Yearning was really only a few degrees different from pain.
    “So I kind of had to learn about myself and women the hard way, Britt. And I did learn. Discretion, as you say.”
    She pictured the photographers hunting him through an airport and knew again a surge of outrage, as surely as if his happiness was critical to her own. It was hardly rational. It was just that she so hated injustice. And bullies.
    “You ever learn anything the hard way, Britt?” he tried. Softer now.
    She hesitated. She swallowed.
    “Sure,” she said faintly. Because she was fundamentally honest.
    She could have said, And how.
    She didn’t have to. She was pretty sure that was the way he heard it.
    He was studying her again.
    He was a little too good at this persuasion thing and a little too intuitive.
    “Okay. Ever think that maybe I’m hopelessly captivated by your command of the English language? ‘Enigmatic.’ ‘Vuvuzela.’ ‘Lady peanuts.’ ”
    She shrugged. “Who could blame you?”
    He flashed a grin. “Well?”
    “. . . But that’s not really why you’re asking me out.”
    “Oh, for God’s sake, of course it isn’t,” he said so exasperatedly and unapologetically she laughed. “I might be in Hellcat Canyon for just a few weeks, give or take, but I don’t see a single reason why we can’t kick off a beautiful friendship for the duration based on what you and I see when we look at each other. We were given five senses for a reason. It’s how we connect as a species. It’s part of the natural order. You have to start somewhere and I’m not gonna apologize for liking what I see when I look at you.”
    And just in case she missed his meaning, the way he looked at her now erased all thought except for what it might feel like to allow her five senses to run amok over this man like the starved little gluttons they were.
    His faint little smile suggested he knew exactly which parts of her body were tingling right now.
    “As much as I’m enjoying the nature lecture . . .” Her voice was a little frayed. “. . . and all your adroit rationalization, I’m not really looking for a”—she bobbed her fingers in air quotes—“ ‘beautiful friendship.’ ”
    Amazement flickered across his face.
    “ ‘Adroit . . . rationalization’?” He repeated slowly. His expression was frustration and amazement all shot through with delight.
    They stood in a peculiar stalemate.
    It was just that there was no way on God’s green earth she was going to say to him, “My last relationship pretty much shattered me and I’m still collecting all the pieces and trying to figure out where they go, and most of those pieces are still jagged and raw. You are too much in every way and I have no business dipping my toe