“What do I care if he’s single or not? What’s so great about Everett Hughes? The guy dresses like a bum,” Max mumbled under his breath. “His friend there—now she’s a different story.”

Joy chuckled at the same moment that Sarah whispered, “Be quiet. He’s coming this way.” Joy glanced in the direction where Sarah was staring and suddenly found herself looking into shadowed, gleaming eyes that were trained directly on her.

A memory flickered in Joy’s brain and faded elusively. Something inside her quickened.

She looked away. It must be true what they said about Everett Hughes: His insouciant good looks and easygoing charm reputedly had the power to stun a woman. His sex appeal was utterly effortless, but that didn’t make it any less potent. She was vaguely aware that Sarah went stiff as a board next to her.

“Oh my God,” her friend whispered shakily.

“Joy?”

Joy blinked at the sound of the deep, resonant voice. Everett stood right next to their table, an expectant look on his face, his gaze fixed on Joy. Sarah was looking at her, aghast.

“Uh . . . yes, I’m Joy,” she said, her feeling of disorientation only escalating. She crushed the napkin in her fist.

“Hi. I’m Everett. Everett Hughes?”

“I know who you are,” said Joy, blushing at the stupidity of her statement. Everybody in the coffee shop knew who he was. Everyone in the country did. Why was he looking at her that way? “I’m sorry . . . I’m a little . . .”

Confused, shocked, breathless.

He straightened. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

“Well, I’ve seen several of your films.”

“No. We met,” he said significantly. When she just stared at him with blank incredulity, he glanced first at Max, then at Sarah. He must have decided he wasn’t going to get any help from that department, because he returned to Joy. “On the set of Maritime? Remember? Your uncle was busy, so you gave me the starburst tattoo.”

The napkin she’d been clutching dropped heedlessly to the table.

“Joy, you didn’t tell us you did Everett Hughes’s tattoo for Maritime,” Max said. “I’m Max Weisman, and this is my wife, Sarah.” He held out his hand and Everett shook it. “We work with Joy at the Steadman School. On Joy’s résumé, she said she did body paint and tattoos for some of Maritime’s extras, but she never mentioned she did your tattoo. Modest,” Max said, giving Everett a significant glance, which Everett didn’t see. He was too busy studying Joy, his brow creased in consternation.

“No. I wasn’t being modest. I didn’t know,” Joy said in a strangled voice. “I . . . I thought he was an extra.”

“Hi.” Everett’s companion approached their table carrying two cups. Sunlight turned her hair into a golden cascade of waves and curls. She gave everyone a friendly, frank appraisal and smile, and then nudged Everett with one of the cups. “Here’s your coffee. Who are your friends?”

“This is Max and Sarah Weisman and Joy Hightower. Remember, I told you about Joy?” The blond woman’s green eyes widened and she stared at Joy with increased interest. Joy wanted to slither beneath the table, she was so mortified. She couldn’t believe this was happening to her. The man she’d shared that impulsive, crazy, steaming sexual encounter with on the set of Maritime had been him?

She’d gone down on Everett Hughes?

“I’m Everett’s sister, Katie. I’ve heard all about you from Everett.”

A wave of panic flashed through her.

“I just mentioned how talented I thought you were. As an artist,” Everett added quickly. She met his stare. His eyelids narrowed. Joy couldn’t decide if he seemed confused or concerned as he observed her.

“And of course I know all about Hightower Special Effects,” Katie continued. “Your uncle is very well respected in the business. Rill would do cartwheels to get Seth Hightower for Razor Pass,” she murmured as an aside to her brother, then smiled at Joy. “You might even see him do a couple tomorrow at the premiere to get your uncle’s attention,” she said, her grin widening as if she found the prospect amusing.

Joy inhaled slowly, commanding herself to focus. She’d been doing nothing but gaping like an idiot and blushing the entire time. “Are you referring to Rill Pierce?” she managed to ask.

Katie nodded. “He’s my husband. Do you know him?”

Joy shook her head. She’d never met the renowned Irish director, but she’d read somewhere that he’d done a screenplay adaptation of the postapocalyptic classic biker novel Razor Pass and planned to direct the film. Everett himself had been slated to play the lead role of Slader.

“You’ll get to meet Rill at the premiere tomorrow, then,” Katie said brightly.

“Oh . . . I’m not going.”

Katie’s smile faltered. “No? Isn’t that why you’re in Chicago?”

“She works here,” Everett said gruffly. He’d been standing there wearing a slight frown for the past minute, his gaze never leaving Joy.

“I teach at a high school near here,” Joy said.

“She teaches drawing and painting,” Sarah said in a rapid, pressured fashion, as if she’d just found her voice and couldn’t wait to use it. “It’s an art school for gifted students.”

“That’s interesting,” Katie said warmly. “I must have misunderstood Everett when he spoke of you. I thought you lived and worked in the Los Angeles area.”

“I did. I moved here last winter.”

“Well, how come you’re not coming to the premiere? It seems a shame, since you worked on the movie and all. Can’t your uncle get tickets? Why don’t you ask her, Everett?” Katie said, sipping her coffee and glancing at her brother casually.

Joy’s cheeks went from hot to scalding. “Oh no, that’s not it—”

“Do you have other plans?” Everett asked.

“No, I just hadn’t planned to go.”

“Well, why don’t you? We can all sit together,” Katie said.

“Katie,” Everett warned under his breath.

“Well, I just meant—”

Everett jerked his arm abruptly, waving toward an empty corner of the café. “Can I talk to you for a second? In private?” Everett asked Joy pointedly.

A bomb going off would have startled Joy less. Four sets of eyes pinned her to the spot.

“I . . . well, yes, of course.”

Sarah shot out of the booth, making way for her. Joy stood and glanced at Everett warily. He gestured for her to pass in front of him. She led him to an empty corner and turned to face him, her forearms crossed beneath her breasts, and stared at the second button on his shirt. Her heart began to beat uncomfortably.

“You cut your hair. I like it.”

She blinked and glanced up into his face. This close, she could make out the bluish-green color of his eyes beneath the shadow of the bill of his cap.

“Thank you,” sh

e murmured, studying his shirt again.

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” he said.

“It’s okay. You’re not making me uncomfortable.”

He gave a soft bark of sarcastic laughter. Her gaze shot up to meet his, and this time it stuck. No wonder he was a movie star. Those eyes were like sensual laser beams.

“When you didn’t come to the statue after that . . . that time, I asked your uncle for your phone number. Seth and I always got along pretty well, but after that day, he got pretty tight-mouthed when it came to you. I guess I shouldn’t have bothered him about it. You must have told him not to tell me anything about you.”

“I never said anything to Seth about it,” she blurted out. Tell her uncle she’d impulsively gone down on a stranger? Not likely. But that wasn’t the most significant thing Everett had said. “And I did go to the statue,” she said, anger filtering into her voice for the first time. How dare he claim she’d stood him up, when it happened the other way around?

His expression shifted. “I waited for hours and hours for you by the statue after the shoot. I thought maybe you were held up, helping Seth, but when I went back inside, the studio was empty. Everyone, including Seth, was gone.”

“That’s not true,” she said, irritation melting away the haze of mortification and shock that had settled on her since Everett had greeted her like an old friend earlier. “Why would you bother to say that when you know perfectly well that I’ll know you’re lying?”

His expression stiffened. “Yeah, why would I? It would be stupid to lie about it. I was at that statue.”

“I was at that statue.”

Something flickered across his face. “How long were you there?”

“More than an hour,” she muttered after a pause, hating to have to admit the truth to him. “I thought maybe you’d been held up.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Of course I’m serious. Why would I lie about . . .” She faded off as something struck her. “The statue of the seven muses, right? At the entrance of the studio?”

He shook his head mutely.

“There’s more than one statue at United Studios?” she asked, understanding dawning.

“If there is, I didn’t know it until now. I was talking about the statue of Leon Schuster,” he said, referring to the founder of United Studios. “The one in that little park area by the café?”

“I was at the statue of the seven muses. By the front entrance.”

“I’ve never seen it.” Something about the flat incredulity of his tone told her he was telling the absolute truth. She exhaled shakily. Of course. Superstar Everett Hughes wouldn’t use the visitor’s entrance to the large studio.

“But you were there,” he murmured. “You went to meet me.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “And you went to meet me.”

Joy swallowed thickly. She’d been more affected by that heated encounter with a stranger than she cared to admit. Her behavior on that afternoon had bothered her deeply, as had being stood up in the aftermath. But in the weeks and months that followed, she’d been too caught up with treatment, too focused on survival to dwell on an uncharacteristic moment of sexual promiscuity for long.

Now all of it came back to her in a rush. Her embarrassment. Her attraction. The mesmerizing quality of Everett Hughes’s eyes.

“It was a misunderstanding,” Everett said, his nostrils flaring slightly.

She lowered her head. “All of it was.”

He touched her elbow and waited for her to meet his stare. “Not all of it.”

She swallowed thickly.

“Will you go with me to the premiere tomorrow night?” he asked.

She grimaced. “Everett, I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t have anything to wear.” It’d been the lame excuse she used with her uncle because she didn’t feel up to a huge public spectacle, but it was technically the truth, as well.

He glanced down at her figure appraisingly. “Katie and you are about the same size, even if you are a little taller. I’m sure she brought more than one dress—she usually takes the contents of a walk-in closet with her for an overnight stay.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t even know her.”

“Wear what you’ve got on then. We’ll make a pact. I won’t change clothes, either. I hate dressing up for these stupid things.”

She studied him for signs that he was joking, but no . . . he was completely serious. She even got the impression he was hoping she’d agree with his proposal.

“If I go, I’m not going like this,” she assured him, thinking how out of place she’d feel going to such a high-profile event on Everett’s arm. She’d melt in embarrassment if she appeared under the microscope of the world wearing jean shorts and a T-shirt.

“Whatever you want. Just say you’ll go.”

“I don’t know,” she hedged, her thoughts swirling around her head like a jerky Tilt-A-Whirl ride. His fingers tightened ever so slightly on her arm.

“Please?” he murmured.

Her mouth dropped open. She knew it was foolish, but it was difficult to deny an entreating Everett Hughes. She dared any straight woman on the planet to try.

“Okay,” she whispered.

His mouth tilted into a grin. Warmth flooded her. She’d forgotten the impact of seeing that smile up close and personal. She found herself smiling back. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket.

“First things first,” he murmured, tapping his thumb. “Give me your phone number. There’s no way in hell I’m going to take the chance of your disappearing for another fourteen months.”

* * *

Forty-five minutes later, Everett stood in the shadowed entryway of a brownstone that was up for sale. He watched the entrance of Harry’s Brew and Bake unblinkingly. Katie and he had left with their coffees almost immediately after he’d won Joy’s consent to go out with him tomorrow night. He’d walked Katie to the Wicker Park townhome where Rill and she were staying with a friend this weekend. He’d told himself he’d catch a cab over to his hotel, but found himself retracing his steps back to the coffee shop. One surreptitious glance in the window told him that Joy was still in there with her friends.

After the hot, oppressive day, a storm brewed. Dark gray clouds on the southwestern horizon rushed toward the city. Thunder rumbled ominously. He took a step back in the entryway when a hot wind rushed down the street, bending some of the young saplings lining the sidewalk until he wondered if they’d snap. The air—his very blood—felt charged with electricity.

Joy walked out of the café with her friends when the dry squall remitted slightly. She planted her long, bare legs as she shouted a cursory good-bye. The Weismans did the same, clearly as intent on getting home before the storm hit as Joy appeared to be. He heard Max’s deep voice before it was carried away by another gust of wind. Joy’s short hair whipped around her head, and the T-shirt she wore plastered against her breasts. She nodded, waved and hurried in the opposite direction from the couple.

He sprang out of the entryway. He ran down the street holding his hat in his hand, hurling himself against the wind like a running back against a monster defensive line, keeping Joy’s pale T-shirt in the center of his vision the entire time.

He was behaving purely on instinct.

It started to rain when he got halfway down the block. Thunder cracked, and a second later it started to pour so heavily he was blinded. He flopped on his hat, the bill providing his eyes the chance to blink out the water so he could see. Joy opened a wrought iron fence gate and dashed between it, her head ducked against the torrent.

“Joy!”

The rain pounded on the pavement so hard, she couldn’t hear him. She raced toward the front steps of a brownstone. He was about to lose her . . . again.

“Joy,” he bellowed, running down the wet sidewalk, holding his hat in place.

She still didn’t appear to hear him. She opened the heavy wooden door and ducked her head out of the downpour. His heart dived. He opened his mouth to give one last desperate shout, but she paused suddenly on the threshold and hesitated. She turned and looked back. The wind whipped water into his eyes, but even in his half-blinded state, he felt her stare on him. For a second as he ran, he held his breath.

Would she turn away?

She backed into the doorframe, her front facing him, waiting. Electricity made the hair on his forearms stand on end. Lightning split the gray sky, and thunder boomed. He raced up the front steps, squinting to see her. Her exquisite face gleamed with moisture. Water dripped from her lips. Her hair spiked onto her cheeks and clung to her head. Her new haircut emphasized her elegant neck and the graceful shape of her skull. Earlier, when he’d been talking to her at the café, he’d felt an urge to cup the back of her head in his palm.

“Come in,” he thought he heard her say when he stomped up the last step.

He entered a stuffy foyer with a hallway to the right and a flight of stairs to the left. Joy shut the door behind him, and the roar of the rain became a muffled hum. He took off his hat and wiped his face of dripping water before he turned to her. She was watching him, her arms crossed loosely beneath her breasts. He read the question in her large eyes.

“I’m not usually so impatient,” he explained, swiping his hand over his wet hair. “But tomorrow night started to seem like an awfully long time when I’ve been waiting since last year.”

Her lips quivered. He found himself longing to witness her full-out smile. There was something a little sad about her . . . poignant. Lovely. Looking at her was like glimpsing a crack in the matrix of the universe. The world really was a larger, more incredible place than he’d ever considered. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She dropped her arms, and his gaze dropped to her breasts outlined in clinging, wet fabric. He felt his body stir.

“I’m upstairs,” she said, pointing, her voice tickling in his right ear. She had a low, melodic voice that reminded him a little of the actress Kate Winslet’s, whom he admired greatly. B

ut Joy’s voice was even sultrier . . . sexier.

“You’re sure it’s okay?”

“Yes.”