‘What do you mean, he’s not here? If you’re here, he has to be here.’ Glancing down, he noticed a lumpy shape beneath the bedding and his temper flared. ‘What the—?’
The woman scrambled up the bed as he jerked the quilt free of her hands. ‘Are you crazy? What are you doing?’
Arlo gazed down at the pillow, and then back at the woman, and a bolt of heat exploded in his groin. The shock of finding her in his bed had blinded him to all but the most obvious features of her appearance, so that he’d registered nothing much more than those eyes, a lot of freckles, and that hair. Now, though, he was registering a lot more.
His eyes skimmed over her near-naked body.
A whole lot more.
She was wearing some kind of dark blue silky slip. Yes, slip was the right word for it, he thought, his heart pounding like a cannon against his ribcage. He felt as though the floor had turned to ice and he was sliding sideways.
Her skin was pale, and he knew it would be stupidly smooth to the touch, but it was what was hinted at beneath the slip that was that was making his body ache. The press of her nipples, the provocative curve of her bo
ttom...
He closed his eyes briefly to compose himself, and then tossed the bedding back towards her. ‘He’s not here.’
‘I just told you that,’ she said hotly. ‘We were supposed to come up here together, only then he got called back for a part and he had to fly out to LA. Anyway, he gave me a key and told me I could have the run of the place.’
‘Did he?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘How very generous of him.’ He saw her teeth clench.
‘He didn’t know you were going to be here. He was just trying to do a nice thing for me.’
She left the sentence there, but it was clear from the curl of her lip that she considered such ‘niceness’ beyond Arlo.
‘And you are...?’ he said impatiently.
‘Frankie Fox.’
What kind of a name was that?
A rush of exasperation collided with a sharp, intense desire to press his mouth against hers and wipe that impudent curl from her lips.
‘Hence the hair, I suppose?’ He stared at her witheringly. ‘Do you change your name when you dye it a different colour?’
‘This is my hair colour.’ Her eyes flashed with undisguised irritation. ‘And my name is the one my parents gave me.’
Tilting his head to one side, he sighed. ‘I’m guessing you’re an actor too. They usually are... Johnny’s fangirls.’
He’d wanted to cut her down to size only watching the way she wrapped her arms around herself, as if she was cold, he suddenly felt something pinch inside him.
But it wasn’t as if Johnny could be serious about her. Sure, she was pretty, but his brother was swimming in beautiful women.
Her chin jutted forward. ‘I’m not an actor,’ she said stiffly. ‘I’m a social media influencer.’
He frowned. ‘A what?’
He knew what social media was, but an influencer...?
‘A. Social. Media. Influencer.’
She was speaking each word slowly, as if English wasn’t his first language or he was hard of hearing.
‘Basically, brands send me clothes and accessories and I get paid to tell my followers about them.’
By ‘followers’ he supposed she meant a bunch of young men with their tongues hanging out.
‘Sounds fascinating.’