Held A New Adult Romance(28)

"Did you bring my cigarettes?" she asks.

I laugh and grab her hand before she can reach up to slap me. The look in her eye frightens me and I decide right then and there that I never want to see it again. It's pure panic. The color drains from her face in seconds.

"There's a camera," I say, still holding onto her wrist. "Right on us. Over the door."

"Are you insane?"

"Nope. Are you?"

She tugs her wrist free of me and turns to look up. When she catches sight of the camera she sucks in an angry, indrawn breath and once again I get a sense of the fire in her. "You've got to be fucking kidding me," she says.

Her hands squeeze her elbows, crushing her small breasts together under her thin tank top. I can see the shape of her nipples and I get the unsettling sense that she's doing this on purpose. She only wants me because she shouldn't have me. We'd be bad for one another. Her head's not on straight - I have it direct from her old man. But she looks directly at my mouth and bites her lower lip and in that moment I'm breathless by the strength of the desire she could inspire in me, if I'd only let her.

"Why are they watching you?" I ask.

"It doesn't matter."

"It does matter."

She shakes her head. "It's really none of your business."

"Are you being held here?"

She snorts. "Don't be so melodramatic," she says, like she didn't try to deliver a full-on telenovela backhand a moment ago. "I can leave whenever I please."

"So why the cameras?"

Amber sighs. "I told you; it's none of your business."

"I thought you wanted to be friends," I say. "Last night..."

Frustration makes her cruel. "Last night?" she says, with a mocking chime in her voice. "I wanted to fuck, Jimmy. No hearts and flowers about it. Maybe you're right. Maybe you are sentimental."

"Maybe I am," I say, amazed by how bad she can make me feel. She doesn't even know my name - not my real name, the one my family calls me. She's nothing but a mean, skinny white girl, just another Hollywood brat.

I walk away before she can see how much she's hurt me. Cory can take this route. She can try hitting on him for a change, if that's how she gets her kicks. I don't have to take this crap. It's bad enough wandering through this monster-sized house and knowing that if my mother worked every hour God sends for the rest of her life until she dropped down dead of exhaustion, she still wouldn't be able to buy so much as a corner of the kitchen or a guest bathroom. So much for money making you happy. I'm done with the imaginary problems of the rich. Maybe I should just do as Beca says and call Emily - she is my kind of girl. She's capable, clever, probably on fire to make babies. Not some breakable wisp of a W.A.S.P. who needs a shrink to persuade her to get out of bed every morning.

"Take over my round," I tell Cory. "Take her a pack of smokes every day. She likes that. She can sit in the sun and smoke herself cancerous."

He raises an eyebrow. "Dude - trouble in paradise?"

I shrug and flop back on the sofa. "I'm done. I don't have to take her shit on top of everything else."

"What happened?"

"She found the new camera," I say. It's only half a lie. "And she's not happy."

He snorts. "When is she?"

I wanted to fuck. I turn those words over and over in my head. She's so used to getting what she wants. Part of me is almost sorry I didn't give it to her; she's off-limits, the boss's daughter. And wouldn't that just make it that little bit more fun?

Jesus. What's gotten into me? I glance at the screen. It's quiet. No Amber. Just the oval expanse of the pool and a closed door. I want to hurt her. I want to get her back for what she said. Maybe I should look online. Maybe I should find out what the story is with her. Can it really be classed as invading her privacy when her life is already a matter of public record?

I would have done it, right then. I would have peeked. But then the darkness behind the glass door widens and a figure appears on the camera. Slim, dark clothes, a baseball cap pulled down low. Holy shit. The figure disappears back through the door. None of the alarms have tripped and deep down I know exactly why. Nobody has crossed the perimeter or entered the house. It's her.

She comes back out, carrying a bag this time. She sets it down and pulls a chair up towards the door. When she steps up onto the seat I see what she has in her free hand - a baseball bat.

She's wearing huge sunglasses but I recognize the shape of her lips, before she swings the bat and the camera cuts out to fuzz.

"Shit!"

"What?" Cory glances in from behind the door.

"Camera's out."

"Huh?"