“Viva King Hef.” Aster frowned, feeling suddenly grumpy.
“You asked.” Ryan playfully bumped shoulders with her, reminding her of the pact they’d made that night at Madison’s when they agreed to be totally honest with each other, no matter what. It was the only way they could successfully work together, they reasoned. And while Aster mostly liked their new open way of communicating, she realized she’d become so used to (and so good at) playing the usual games between guys and girls that the honesty didn’t come quite as easily as she’d thought it would. Or maybe that was just her. In the short time they’d been working together, Ryan had divulged all sorts of secrets that, in retrospect, Aster wasn’t sure she actually wanted to know. Even for an actor—which she constantly reminded herself Ryan was—it was impossible to believe he was faking.
Where sex was concerned, Ryan was quick to put it all out there. Lingerie parties, naked FaceTime dates with Madison—nothing was off-limits. His easy, open attitude both amazed and frightened her. It also made her realize she hadn’t been as ready to sleep with him as she’d thought. At least she’d managed to dodge that particular bullet, though under the circumstances, it wasn’t by choice.
“On a scale of one to ten, how mad will Ira be that we’re arriving so late?” She was eager to change the subject. Only before Ryan could answer, the lights blew and the entire neighborhood was plunged into blackness.
“What the hell?” Aster stumbled and fought to grab hold of Ryan in an effort to steady herself as she blinked into a blanket of darkness. She’d been born and raised in the city and she’d never seen it like that. And with the Santa Ana winds stirring, combined with the chorus of startled shrieks echoing from the house, the eerie factor was at an all-time high. “No way am I going in there.” Aster stopped dead in her tracks, refusing to budge another inch.
“You got your cell phone handy?” Ryan set his to flashlight mode, and Aster did the same. A moment later, he was leading her back down the hill.
“Ira must be furious.” She glanced back toward the house.
“Because we’re so late, or because of the blackout?”
“Both.”
In the not-so-far distance, a coyote howled, causing Aster to shiver and Ryan to loop a protective arm around her. Normally, she’d waste no time pushing him away, but between the pitch-black night and the razor-fanged predators, she was glad she didn’t have to face it alone.
And yet, there was something about being plunged into darkness that left her feeling oddly safe and unseen. For the first time in a long time she felt freed from the burden of constantly needing to hide her identity. She’d been so overexposed for so long, it was nice to know that the only ones aware of her immediate presence were Ryan Hawthorne and a pack of coyotes. Okay, maybe not the coyotes.
“What now?” she asked. “We told the driver to go.”
Ryan’s features lit up like a Halloween mask as he stared down at his phone. “And unfortunately, the next Uber is forty-two minutes away.”
“Which may as well be an eternity,” Aster groaned.
“Maybe we should stop and sit and wait it out? Surely the lights will come back on eventually. These brownouts never last very long.”
It sounded reasonable on the surface, until the coyotes started yipping like they did when they were surrounding their kill, and Aster started moving tentatively down the hill.
“You’re going to break your neck trying to navigate in those things.” Ryan shined his phone on her four-inch Aquazzura sandals.
“I know.” She sighed. “I should probably get over the ick factor and go barefoot instead.”
She stopped and grabbed hold of his shoulder, about to slip off her shoes, when Ryan said, “Or I could carry you.”
Aster laughed, until she realized he was serious, and next thing she knew, her arms were wrapped around Ryan’s shoulders as her legs straddled his back. “I’m not sure this is the best idea,” she said, feeling suddenly self-conscious, both at being a burden to him and how good it felt to embrace him.
“You got a better one?”
At the sight of people fleeing the party and barking at the valets to bring them their cars, Ryan and Aster moved toward the edge of the street. Funny to think how rich and famous most of them were, and yet, in a power outage everyone was rendered equally helpless, left to rely on someone else to fix the problem and return their world to normal.
Ryan maneuvered around the long line of cars the valets were busy positioning, when, without warning, he darted toward one in particular with its lights on and doors open.
“Quick, get in!” Before she could stop him, he’d deposited her onto the passenger seat, shut her door, and raced around to his side.
“What are you doing?” Aster cried in horror as Ryan slipped behind the wheel, shifted into drive, and raced down the pitch-black street.
She pressed a hand hard against the dashboard as though that would somehow stop the nightmare from happening.
Had she misjudged him?
Had he been plotting against her this whole time?
Was he really stealing a car and making her an accomplice?
Whatever it was, she wanted no part of it.