After the text he’d sent Smith a few minutes ago—I need to use your place tonight—Marcus knew he’d be hearing from his brother to get the dirt on why.

And who.

Stepping past the foyer, Marcus looked over at the stairway leading up to the bedrooms, but somehow it didn’t feel right to take Nicola up there. A bed would be too intimate and he didn’t want her to wake up in the middle of the night and assume that something had happened between them.

Fortunately, Smith’s couches were as plush and comfortable as they came. Moving into the living room, Marcus laid Nicola down on the long couch and slipped off her high heels and the little purse she had wrapped around her wrist.

Even in her sleep, she seemed reluctant to let go of him and he found himself kneeling with her so that she could lie down and still have her arms around his shoulders. She sighed with pleasure as she immediately curled up into a ball on her side, her face toward his, her full lips turning up slightly at the corners.

What would it be like to kiss that mouth?

Marcus had to work really, really hard to shove the thought away.

Those plans, those fantasies, had to be erased. He was now on tap for a quiet evening watching over a beautiful girl whose scent and soft curves he wouldn’t be able to forget for a very long time.

He covered her with a blanket that was thrown over the couch, then looked around for a pillow, but there were none. He could go upstairs to get one off a bed, but considering the way her hand had sought out his, he had a feeling she might wake up if he moved completely away.

He moved so that he was sitting on the couch by her head and shifted her so that his legs became her pillow. She seemed unsettled again for a moment, her free hand pressing against his leg as she clearly wondered why her pillow was so hard.

Without thinking, he captured that hand with his free one. She immediately settled into him, curling into an even tighter ball on the couch beneath the thick blanket, reminding him again of the wild kittens that he often found sleeping in patches of sun at his winery.

He wanted her so badly that it was difficult to relax at first. Every breath she took stoked his libido higher as her head shifted on his lap. He was glad she was so soundly asleep, otherwise she’d realize that his thigh muscles weren’t the only hard thing she was lying on.

Calling on his steel will that had rarely, if ever, let him down, he forced himself to move his gaze away from her to the huge living room windows that overlooked the lights of San Francisco and the bay.

Marcus had been in other actors’ houses over the years and he was always struck by how many pictures—and even paintings—they had of themselves. Almost as if they were afraid to ever let anyone, including themselves, look away from the face that had made them famous, just in case it was forgotten. Smith was the exact opposite. Not only were there no photos of him, there were no personal photos anywhere in the house.

None of the Sullivans spent much time in front of the mirror. Not even his sisters, except Lori when she was working. Her job as a choreographer meant she needed to keep a careful eye on her lines, her movements, her expressions as she danced. And even though Marcus’s mother had been a model when she was younger, he couldn’t remember her ever wasting much time with makeup or hair. Raising eight kids would make it pretty damn hard for anyone to find the time to primp and be vain.

In any case, Marcus wasn’t particularly interested in any changes Smith had made to his part-time home. Not when it already felt like he’d taken too much time away from Nicola.

His chest tightened again as he looked down at her pretty profile. Recognition tried to jog in his mind. He’d been so struck by his attraction to her right from that first glance that he hadn’t been able to think of anything else.

But now, as he got the chance to simply stare at her, he found himself wondering if he’d seen her somewhere before.

No, he decided a moment later. It was impossible.

Nicola wasn’t a woman he could ever have forgotten.

He stared down at her for a long while, memorizing the curve of her cheekbones, the sweep of her eyelashes, the way her eyebrows arched and peaked, her slightly pointed chin that fit her so perfectly, the sweet curve of one ear.

The soft hairs at her hairline were several shades lighter than her current hair color and he wondered why she felt she had to change anything about herself when she was already perfect. One day, he found himself thinking, he’d like to see what she looked like with her natural hair color.

What was he thinking? He wasn’t going to see her again after tonight.

His thoughts cycled back to his ex-girlfriend, to how furious he’d been to find Jill with Rocco. Then again, if he was being honest with himself, he’d been angry and frustrated for longer than that. For weeks, months, as Jill made more and more excuses for why she wasn’t ready to get engaged, as she cancelled one weekend together after another, as she committed to seeing his family at various events and then backed out at the last minute.

He’d assumed he’d be furious at Jill all night long. But since meeting Nicola, he hadn’t thought about Jill once until now. And, amazingly, with Nicola sleeping on his lap and her hands in his, Marcus’s anger was on a slow simmer rather than a rolling boil.

Sex was supposed to be his medicine tonight, not soft, sweet Nicola.

And yet, instead of being even more frustrated by the turn his evening of mindless sex had taken, a smile was on his face as he leaned back against the couch, closed his eyes, and fell asleep.

Chapter Four

Nicola was so warm. She felt so safe. Safer than she’d felt in years, when she’d still lived in her parents’ house rather than in hotels throughout the world.

But she could tell without opening her eyes that she wasn’t in her childhood bed. For one, her bed didn’t smell like leather. Her pillow wasn’t made of hard muscle. And there hadn’t ever been anyone who had held her hands so gently in her bed.

She swallowed hard as she realized what must have happened. She’d propositioned a gorgeous man at a nightclub last night…and then she’d promptly fallen asleep on him.

Oh God, how stupid had she been? Had she actually thought she was taking control of her life by going to that club to pick up a stranger?

In the cold light of day that she hadn’t wanted to think about last night, she faced facts: After leaving Marcus this morning, she was going to have to deal with the fallout from being hooked up with a strange man in the press.

The irony that she hadn’t actually done a darn thing with him—not even kiss him—wouldn’t matter to anyone.