“Willow, this guy’s been hired by the studio. Have to keep the rabid fans off, you know,” Kevin said.
Which was translation for camera-happy tabloids.
“Tom Miller. But everyone calls me Miller,” the man said, and I stared up at him and muttered a hello.
Towering over me by several inches, Miller was smooth-faced with a buzz cut, as orange as the cast of that skull-grating show about the upper east coast, and probably steroided out of his mind, with what Jessica had always called “bear shoulders.” I was guessing he was in his late-twenties, but I could never tell with the gym junkies.
“Willow,” I said at last, half-expecting Miller to give me Cooper’s smart ass “everybody knows Willow Avery” remark. He didn’t, and I was glad he wasn’t a total jackass.
After I finished signing the paperwork, Kevin gave me his “behave yourself” spiel and then volunteered his assistant to drive Miller and me to the airport. We were quiet the whole ride over to LAX, and once I was alone with him, I felt intimidated. I should have been as used to strangers being hired to protect me as I was to paparazzo cameras flashing in my face, but it was unnerving to sit next to a stranger who was at least twice my size. It always would be.
As we waited quietly in the terminal, I flipped through an old fashion magazine someone had left in the airport, trying my best to be inconspicuous. Miller’s phone rang and he answered, recited a string of numbers and letters, and hung up in thirty seconds flat. I glanced over at him curiously.
“My little sister.” Miller shrugged sheepishly. “I had to tell her the password to my bank.” Then, he smiled, showing off a tiny gap in the front of his top teeth. His relaxed expression lifted a weight from my chest. He probably wouldn’t hover once we reached Hawaii, so long as he was receiving a steady paycheck.
One down, I thought. An image of Cooper flashed in my mind. One to go. God, one mocking, confident, ass**le-ish—
“Careful, Wills, overthinking is dangerous,” someone said from a few feet away. In that soft voice that sounded like the sexy love child of a British and a Southern accent. I inhaled a sharp gasp of air and every muscle in my body went taut.
Speak of the blue-eyed devil.
My new bodyguard was on high alert and came up out of his seat, but I touched his arm, shaking my head quickly. “He’s . . . with us,” I mumbled before turning sideways in my seat to get a better look at Cooper.
Standing a few feet away, with a black duffle bag slung over his shoulder, he looked confident and relaxed in a black t-shirt that accentuated his tall, toned body and frayed jeans. And he was smiling—a heart-stopping, panty-dropping smile. I was torn between wanting to pop him in the mouth or kissing him until our lips were so freaking numb I could get this damn attraction thing out of the way.
One taste before I decided whether or not I needed to dull my reality.
I dug my fingers into the wrinkled hem of my flannel shirt. No, no, no—I didn’t need to dull anything except my bad habits. I just needed to get my work done and get on with my life. I could have the chaos I craved in my life without getting f**ked up.
Cooper waited for a noisy, groping couple to pass between us and then he crept closer, so that he was right next to my seat. I glared up at him. “You could try not to be a dick,” I said. He rubbed his tongue over his teeth, and I felt something sharp twist in the center of my chest, between my ribcage.
God, why were all the good-looking ones complete jerks?
“Why? I think I like you when you’re all flustered,” Cooper replied, winking. He glided his palm along the high back of my chair, and when the heel of his hand brushed between my shoulder blades, I shivered. “You’re less inhuman, much more . . .” His voice drifted off, as if he couldn’t quite find the right word to describe me.
Right now, I needed him to say it. Wanted to know what he really thought of me. “I’m much more what?”
He cocked his head to one side, sizing me up. Beside me, Miller snorted, but said nothing. At last, Cooper bent down and whispered into my ear, “Beautiful.”
I’d been a performer, a liar who could mask her emotions, for as long as I could remember and yet his words made me burst into flames from head to toe. As he went to sit across from Miller and me, slamming his duffle bag on the resin floor, I gave myself a mental shanking for having yet another knee-jerk reaction to Cooper.
He is an ass. He is your coach. Slow the f**k down, dumbass, before you get in trouble again.
So I decided to focus on the negative in what he said. “Glad to know I’m not quite human,” I said in an icy voice.
Cooper’s smile faded into an apologetic look. “Maybe I worded that wrong. You don’t seem so . . . mechanical.”
I released a tiny groan from the back of my throat. Where had Dickson found this guy? Narrowing my eyes into tight slits, I leaned forward, resting my forearms on my bare thighs. “Maybe you should just stop using words, period,” I suggested.
He raked his hand through his floppy blonde hair. “Ah, Wills . . .”
“My name is Willow,” I snapped through clenched teeth. He smirked.
“I’m pretty sure I read on Wikipedia that it’s Brittany,” he said, and I cringed. The only person who ever called me by my actual first name was the guy who’d ripped me to shreds three years ago. Cooper didn’t seem to notice the change in my expression when he asked in a sincere voice, “So, Wills, why don’t we just start over?”
“Whatever.”
He bent far over in his seat and stretched his hand toward me. “I’m Cooper Taylor. I’m a Scorpio. I enjoy women, long walks on the beach, and my roommate says I use girly shampoo. Oh, and I generally hate anyone in the film industry because they’re total ass**les. Guess you could say I’m your Pai Mei.”