“Yes. Have you ever been here?”
“No.”
“My parents and I would come here to see Grandma’s movies. It was the only place my mom could go where people wouldn’t recognize her as Abigail Hamilton’s daughter. My grandmother loved the spotlight and wasn’t concerned about keeping my mom out of it, so she was in the media quite a bit growing up.” She paused. “I guess after being scrutinized so much, it made sense for my parents to want to keep me out of the spotlight. I often wonder if they’d be disappointed by the path I’ve chosen to take, when it was something they worked hard to shield me from.”
“I don’t think so. I think they would be proud of you for following your own path.”
But had she? Or had she just walked along her grandmother’s well-beaten, familiar trail?
“What happened, anyway? With the fire?” he asked.
“It was an electrical fire. We went to bed one night, and the next thing I remember the smoke detector outside my room was going off and I heard my mom yelling to me from down the hall to get outside.” She paused, the night so vivid in her mind. “So, I grabbed my Cabbage Patch Doll and a little box of special items I kept under my bed, and I ran until I was outside. My parents weren’t coming out and I was terrified. The neighbors were there with me . . . I don’t remember them well, but they were very kind and they took care of me until the next morning, when my grandmother arrived from LA.” She shrugged. “The firemen said a beam collapsed in front of their bedroom door, blocking their escape. They’d been unable to get to them.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago, but I remember that night better than any other memory.” She paused as it washed over her now. That night had changed the course of her entire life. And while she’d been young and couldn’t remember them as well as she’d like to, she missed her parents every day. She swallowed the lump in her throat as she glanced at him. “You talk about your dad all the time, but what about your mom? Where is she?” she asked, feeling as though now was the only chance she might have to ask him anything as personal. After all, she’d just shared her tragic story.
“She died of a brain aneurysm,” he said simply.
“I’m sorry . . . How old were you?”
“Fifteen.”
He was staring off into the distance and she sensed that was as much as he wanted to say about it, so she didn’t press further. She’d learned to take the little bits of himself he offered and try to piece the rest together like a puzzle as they went along. Toward what exactly, she wasn’t sure, but at that moment, it didn’t matter.
As they pulled up to the booth, Tyson scanned the field. “There’s like five screens in there.”
“I know. We just decide which two movies we want to see and then they will direct us to the right screen and which radio channel to tune in to,” she said, excitedly. She hadn’t been to the drive-in in years.
He stared at her. “You really love movies, huh?”
“Who doesn’t?”
“Even though you’ve worked on sets and know how they’re made, you can still find the magic in them?”
She nodded. “When you’re filming individual scenes out of order most of the time, it’s fascinating to later watch how it all fits together onscreen. I’ll never get tired of it.”
They selected their movie and parked in front of the screen, and her mind wandered. Was it really up to her, though? Or would Hollywood decide when her career was over? She was taking a huge gamble on this MMA movie, hoping it was the right move to save her failing career.
“Hey—you okay?” Tyson asked when she was quiet.
“Yeah . . . I’m fine . . .” She hesitated before being honest. “I’m worried I only got this role because the director was hoping for additional funding by having a big name attached to the film.”
He turned in the seat to face her. “Why would you think that?”
She sighed. “Just overheard something to that effect on the plane coming back from the audition.” She bit her lip, staring out into the dark.
He reached for her hand. “I’m sure that’s not the reason.”
She shot him a look. “How can you say that? You’ve admitted you’ve never even seen any of my movies, so how would you know if I can act or not?”
He brought her palm to his lips. “Okay, so maybe I’m not the most qualified to make that statement, but I’ve read lines with you and that was good.”
“It’s just my entire career, I’ve always had a crutch—first my grandmother’s success helped pave the way for me and then being with a director helped to secure roles . . .” Maybe that had been part of the appeal of her and Brantley together. She’d never felt confident enough in her own abilities, so having his influence had made her feel safe. She didn’t want to feel safe anymore;, she wanted to take a risk and prove to herself that she could make it on her own. “I just need to succeed on my own.”
“You will. Parker, you’re amazing,” Tyson said, touching her cheek.
He was trying to make her feel better and whether he actually believed what he was saying or not was irrelevant. She felt better just because he’d tried. His lips moved up her arm as the first movie started.
“Hey, stop that . . . the movie’s on.” She giggled as his lips tickled her shoulder.
“I thought this was the point of a drive-in movie,” he said, sliding the hand on his good arm up her thigh.
He made a good point. She closed her eyes as his lips brushed hers. “Are you sure your arm can handle this?”
Removing the sling, he’d found at the gym, he tossed it into the back, and effortlessly picked her up and placed her on his lap on the passenger seat. “My arm won’t be doing the work,” he said with a grin before claiming her mouth.
* * *
“What are you doing in there?” Tyson fought to keep his eyes open, lying on her bed an hour later. Sex in a car turned out to be tougher than he’d anticipated with his busted shoulder, so they’d skipped out halfway through the first movie. Parker hadn’t seemed to mind ending their date early, driving at a ticket-inviting speed back to her place.
“I’ll be out in just a sec,” she called from inside her bathroom, where she’d been for more than fifteen minutes.
He was starting to lose his hard-on and fighting sleep was becoming a challenge. “If you take too much longer, these pain meds are going to have me out co . . .” He stopped as the bathroom door opened and she stepped out wearing a man’s dress shirt and a pair of heels. “Maybe I’m already dreaming,” he mumbled, as she hit the button on a remote, controlling the central sound system and a slow, hip hop tempo’d song started to play. She started toward him, crossing one foot slowly over the other, as her hips swayed to the opening beats of the music. “In fear that you’ll stop, I just have to ask . . . what’s going on here?”
“You were wondering where I got such strong lat muscles . . . well, I played a dancer in my most recent failed movie and I learned a lot for that part too.” She placed her foot on the bed in front of him, and starting at her ankle, she traced her fingers upward, slowly, over her smooth, tanned leg. At the top of her thigh, she stopped, and stepping her foot down, she turned slowly, her hips moving in a tantalizing slow figure eight.
He released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding as she placed her hands on her knees and rotated her hips, as she dropped lower toward the floor. The edge of the shirt rose to reveal the bottom of her butt cheeks and he wanted to reach out and grab her and pull her down onto his lap, bad shoulder and all. But he resisted. The show in front of him was too fantastic to interrupt.
When she glanced back over one shoulder and softly spanked her ass, he smiled.
This woman was unlike any he’d ever dated . . . she was fun, flirty, so confident in her sexuality, but she made it a challenge for him. A challenge to keep his hands off of her, a challenge to be satisfied with just one kiss, one touch.