The Siren KATHERINE JOHN (100 best novels of all time .TXT) 📖

He pulled his finger out of me and drained his drink. “Got it. Never mind.”

My resolution wavered. It had been so long since I’d been touched, and we were more mature now. This time would be different. “So let’s go somewhere else,” I suggested.

He leaned against the bar, considering me with those baby blues. I allowed myself to enjoy the attention, finally beginning to feel the effect of my extra pill mingling with the rum. “We can revisit old times,” I insinuated.

“I heard”—he reached over the bar and grabbed a bottle of Scotch—“you’re writing a book about old times.” He raised a single eyebrow.

“Where’d you hear that?” I asked, taken aback. Though of course I’d said it in an interview, so it wasn’t like it was a secret.

“But I knew it couldn’t be true,” he went on, tracing my jaw gently with his fingers. “I thought, Stella’s not that stupid. She knows any secrets she might spill would implicate her as much as they would me.”

“I wasn’t—”

“And she knows how the press can be. She’d never in a million years give them an entire book’s worth of confessions to prey upon.” He held my chin for a moment before running his thumb down my throat, ending in the soft hole between my collarbones. “Would you, darling?”

Without a backward glance, he strode out of the restaurant and down the hallway that led to the lobby, leaving me alone at the bar. I took a gulp of my cocktail, considering his words. Was that why he’d asked me here? To ensure I wouldn’t say anything in the book to damage his image? He had always been so protective of his image. I thought of what I’d written the other night about the beginning of our relationship. The bit about Bar’s warning would definitely have to be edited out, but I knew that when I wrote it.

My intention with the memoir had only been to set the record straight (and hopefully make a buck); there was plenty to dish about without implicating anyone. My mother pushed me into acting and then stole all my money; my best friend sold my heart-wrenching miscarriage to the press as an abortion; my representation dropped me while I wrestled with depression; a reality television producer convinced me to put my life savings into a spiritual center that he had every intention of bankrupting for ratings, and then I lost my suit against him. I’d been victimized at every turn; my life story was a cautionary tale if ever I heard one—a tale I hoped would have a happy ending once the public understood what I’d wrestled with over the years and once again embraced me. At any rate, I never would have spilled the real secrets, the ones Cole was worried about. Those secrets didn’t exactly cast me in the best light either.

Maybe it was the fault of the rum, but after a moment I decided to follow him and tell him all of this. The hallway was dark and empty, as was the lobby beyond. “Cole?” I called.

“Down here!”

I followed the sound of his voice down a stairwell that descended into the dark depths of the building, where I found him in a short cement-walled hall lined with movie posters of his films, standing before a giant steel door. “Bad Boy,” I commented, studying twenty-four-year-old Cole on the poster. It was remarkable how much Jackson favored him. “What was your famous line? Wait, don’t tell me. I’m finished taking orders?”

He shook his head. “I’m through taking stock.” He smoldered, exactly like he’d done in the movie half his lifetime ago. “Because my father had given me stock in his company as a bribe to keep quiet about a hit-and-run he was involved in.”

“Right! I love a good double entendre,” I enthused.

He slid a latch the size of a two-by-four and pulled open the heavy door. The room beyond was perhaps eight by twelve feet, with a flagstone floor and walls lined with bottles of wine lit by an eerie bluish light. I followed him inside, remembering what I’d come down here for. “Cole, about the book—I want you to know—”

“Shhhh…” He put his finger to my lips, turned me so my back was against the countertop beneath the rows of bottles, and pressed his hips to mine. My body tingled with anticipation as he kissed me deeply, cupping my ass in his hands. “Some things are best kept between us.”

“I know.”

He reached for a bottle above my head, pulled it down, and unscrewed the cap. “Fucking screw caps,” he said. “Ruin the whole experience.”

“But much more convenient,” I pointed out, wrapping my arms around myself to control my shivering. “It’s freezing in here!”

“Fifty-five degrees.” He leaned against the granite-topped island in the middle of the room and poured us each a glass of red. “Temperature controlled. Flood proof. Safest wine room south of Miami. This entire building is made of concrete block designed to withstand two-hundred-mile-per-hour winds. Though there hasn’t been a hurricane since I built it. And check this out.” He pulled the door to the room shut and lifted an enormous latch identical to the one on the outside into place. “It works as a safe room as well, just in case.”

“Gotta keep that wine safe,” I teased.

“It’s expensive wine,” he said defensively. “And I keep other stuff down here too.” He slid open a panel in the wall, revealing a row of antique handguns. “This collection is worth more than a hundred grand.” He took a six-shooter out of the compartment and pointed it at the opposite wall. “This is the actual gun my character Bad Billy in The Lone Shooter carried in real life. He killed Wildman Sam with it in 1877.”

I controlled my instinct to recoil like it was a snake. “Beautiful gun,” I managed.

“Know how he killed him?”

I shook my head, but he’d gone to that place in his brain where he stored all his characters