Katie huffed out an annoyed breath, ‘Crikey, calm down, Mr Worst Case Scenario. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: this is a safe area, not the backstreets of downtown LA.’ Katie didn’t think she had ever met a man with a bleaker outlook on life.
‘Not everything is unicorns and flowers, and not everyone is kind and wonderful, Katie,’ he told her in what she was coming to understand was his Voice Of Authority, which he seemed to deploy with alarming regularity around her. ‘Please tell me you are at least a member of the RAC.’
Katie glared at him and scrunched her nose in frustration. She wasn’t a complete idiot. His eyes dropped to her nose and that soft look was back again, confusing her even more.
*****
Katie looked tiny in the passenger seat of his Land Rover, her legs not even touching the floor in those ridiculous boots. Sam noticed her folding her arms around herself and shiver, and he leaned forward to crank up the heat. She spared him a brief glance before tucking her hair behind her ears and turning to stare out of the window.
He didn’t know what he was more annoyed about: the additional lecture she received from the RAC man when he arrived and organized for her Mini to be towed, or the second run-in she’d had with Lydia. After she’d phoned the RAC, Sam had taken her to the lookout at the entrance to the set to sit with a cup of tea and one of the grumpiest (but hardest) bastards Sam knew; Geoff had worked for the security company now for two years after leaving the army to settle with his wife and kids. (How an actual real-life woman tolerated the man, Sam would never know.) Sam had told Geoff to ring him once the breakdown van arrived.
An hour later he’d returned to the lookout just as the truck was pulling in, and did a double take when he saw Katie and Geoff laughing together whilst she mock-punched him in the arm as they climbed down from the lookout. The last person Sam had seen throw a punch Geoff’s way had been taken to A&E with both eyes swollen shut and some suspected broken ribs, but Katie’s feeble effort only seemed to make him laugh harder. He frowned as Geoff leaned over and pulled her into a casual side-hug.
‘Hadn’t you better get back to your post?’ he snapped at Geoff, who, noticing Sam’s furious expression, dropped his arm but not his smile as he looked between them with curiosity.
‘Catch you later, Short Stuff,’ Geoff said to Katie, then jerked his chin at Sam and strolled back to the lookout.
Halfway through the RAC man’s lecture number one, which was to Sam’s satisfaction along the similar lines to his own, he felt a hand on his arm and turned in frustration to see that Lydia had actually gone as far as coming back out to the car park with all her security in tow to track him down. Understandably, being faced with a celebrity model-slash-actress threw the RAC man, and for long moments he simply stood staring at Lydia with an open mouth. She was after all still in full medieval regalia, looking like a slightly pornographic version of Queen Gwynevere. (Sam doubted that in medieval times they had access to quite that amount of make-up, or for that matter rather large breast implants.)
‘Darling, so glad I caught you,’ she said, positioning herself firmly between Sam and Katie. ‘I desperately need to discuss the security arrangements for next week. I know it’s a pain, but Taylor has said she may drop in, seeing as she’s over here for the Brits anyway, so it might be better if –’
At this point Sam had had quite enough of this woman. He’d let her down nicely to start with, not that they’d ever been committed to each other; in fact she had been the one to insist that it was only going to be casual sex. But after over a week of hounding and stalking, he was done.
Shagging her had seemed like a fantastic plan when he was all set to bugger off to Somalia for another few weeks. The filming would have finished by then. But if Sam wanted to stay in the area his only option was to take over the supervision of security from Rob, who quite frankly needed a hand what with being up to his eyeballs in his pregnant wife’s hormones and his maniac children.
‘Woman,’ he all but growled, ‘get back to the set. Donotdrag my men out here on some mission to be a pain in my arse. I don’t care what celebrities you’ve got visiting you next week –’ Sam doubted that Lydia had ever even spoken to Taylor Swift, making this conversation all the more irrelevant ‘– but their security is not my problem. Lydia stiffened and threw Katie a murderous glance before stalking away, dragging Sam with her. He allowed himself to be moved a few feet, and then stopped.
She turned to him and hissed: ‘It’s because of the Technicolor Dwarf, isn’t it?’
He looked over Lydia’s shoulder and saw Katie’s face drain of colour. Furious with Lydia for being such a raving bitch, and himself for not dragging her well away from Katie before she managed to open her mouth, he grabbed her elbow and started marching her out of hearing distance. Not taking any chances this time, he took her all the way back to her trailer with the security men in his wake, hearing the RAC man shout, ‘Any chance of an autograph?’ after them.
Once he made it back to the car park, the RAC man had finished lecture number one and had then asked Katie the innocent question: ‘Where do you get this serviced, then?’
Katie’s blank stare and the fact she bit her lip nervously told the RAC man all he needed to know, and Sam could see him gearing up for lecture number two. Although he agreed wholeheartedly with the fact that Katie’s idea of car maintenance and safety was a joke, he could see the defeated look on her face and the tense hunch of her small shoulders, and a wave of annoyance stole over him. It was okay forhimto lecture her, but he felt strangely protective when somebody else decided to do it.
So what if she didn’t maintain her car? he reasoned, rapidly deciding that the lesson in car upkeep she was receiving (which she did not appear to be taking in much of anyway, judging by the vacant look in her eyes) was not going to be necessary, seeing ashewas looking after her car from now on. He cut off the RAC man, giving him directions as to where the car should be towed. Then he phoned said garage, and with his hand at the small of her back he propelled a rather resistant Katie to the passenger side of his car.
‘I’ll call a taxi,’ she said once he’d opened the door. ‘Oi!’ she shrieked as he put his hands on her hips and lifted her into it. ‘I said I’d call a cab!’ Sam ignored her, slammed the door, and jogged round to his side. She was still scrabbling to find the door handle when he put the car in gear and started out onto the road.
Chapter 13
Boy stuff
‘Bloody hidden bloody stupid handles. Sodding pathetic petrol-guzzling Rambo-mobile,’ Katie muttered, throwing her hands up in defeat and then plastering herself against the door, creating the maximum possible distance between them. Sam smiled again. He realized that since spending time with Katie he’d smiled more in the last two weeks than the whole of the last two years put together.
How an obviously intelligent woman, capable in such a demanding job, could be so lacking in common sense and self-preservation instincts, he had no idea. But instead of irritating him as it had before, Sam found that this fact was now making him feel positively cheerful. Maybe he wasn’t good enough for Katie, maybe he didn’t have much to offer her, but he was slowly coming to the conclusion that Katie Kendrick just needed a man full stop (and judging by the fact she chose to spend her Saturday nights somewhere where the average age was well over eighty, he doubted there were any on the horizon).
She was so dizzily optimistic about everything that sometimes he really felt like he wanted to shake her. It wasn’t even as though life had taught her to be trusting. He’d seen that police report. He knew what that bastard had done with all that optimism and sparkle seven years ago. But somehow she must have worked her way back to the light, something Sam had yet to do. Then again, he’d learnt lessons, even as a child, about the harsh reality of life. His time in Special Forces, the blood, horror and suffering just confirmed what he already knew: life was hard and you were best getting through it as numb as possible.
To feel was pain.
Best to be numb. Best to stay damaged. Best to stay beyond repair.
But staying numb was proving harder and harder around this particular woman. He was tired of being scared, and tired of fighting himself. He’d been attracted to her from the very first time they met six years ago at Rob’s house. When Sarah introduced them at the engagement party, he’d been knocked for six. She’d been standing in Rob’s kitchen with Benji balanced on her hip. Her hair was up in a tangled knot on top of her head, she was wearing the most ridiculous brightly coloured outfit, her small feet were bare and she wore no make-up; but Sam knew that she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life.
She’d had to juggle the baby to shake his hand, and when they touched she’d blushed to the roots of her hair, her mouth falling open and her eyes becoming ever so slightly glazed. She was so dazed she almost dropped Benji causing him to shriek and giggle. Whilst trying to control the giggling, squirming baby, her hair had fallen out of its confines, her beautiful dark curls tumbling around her shoulders and down her back, and she’d started laughing herself, complete with an actual snort – it was adorable. From the first, he’d known that Katie was fiercely attracted to him, and for him it only added to her charm. He knew that his less-than-sparkling personality and the odd put-down had meant that even in Katie World where everyone and everything was wonderful and viewed through rose-tinted glasses, he had managed to creep into the category of dickhead in her eyes. But he also knew that despite this her attraction for him had never completely fizzled out.
As he glanced over at her hunched in the passenger seat, he sighed. He’d hurt her the night of the big reveal at Rob and Sarah’s. But he knew as soon as he heard Katie say ‘Igam ogam’ with her Welsh lilt and her little hand gesture, that if he didn’t do something he would crack. If he didn’t try to erase her with another woman he would literally have snatched her out of that house, dragged her back to his flat and never let her leave.
