Nothing but Trouble

* * *

Chelsea pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head and looked way up at the man standing in the entryway’s natural light. His damp hair was brushed back. It curled around his ears and along the neckline of his bright white shirt. He scowled at her from beneath dark brows; the annoyance shining in his brown eyes made his feelings for her clear. He hadn’t shaved, and a dark shadow covered his cheeks and strong prominent jaw. He looked big and bad and dominant. All dark and foreboding, and she might have been a little intimidated if he hadn’t had the longest lashes she’d ever seen on a man. Those lashes were so out of place on his chiseled masculine face that she smiled.

“Are you going to invite me inside?” she asked.

“Are you going to go away if I don’t?”

“No.”

He gave her a hard look for several long seconds before hemp „ turned and walked across the stone flooring. As she’d noticed yesterday, he moved slower than men of his age. His cane was a smooth extension of his left hand. What she hadn’t noticed was that he used the cane on his left side, the wrong side. She might not have noticed at all if not for the big brouhaha about Gregory House using his cane on the wrong side in the television medical drama House. The writers of House had made a mistake, but she supposed Mark Bressler used the wrong side because he wore some sort of splint made of aluminum and blue Velcro on his right hand.

“There’s nothing for you to do today,” he said over his shoulder. “Go home.”

“I have your schedule.” She closed the front door behind her, and the three-inch heels of her sandals echoed on the marble floor as she followed him into a large office filled with hockey memorabilia. “You have an appointment with your orthopedic doctor this morning at ten-thirty and an interview with Sports Illustrated at one o’clock at the Spitfire.”

He leaned his black cane against the edge of a massive mahogany desk and turned to face her. “I’m not doing the Sports Illustrated interview today.”

Chelsea had worked with a lot of difficult employers. It was her job to get them where they needed to be, even when they didn’t want to be there. “It’s been rescheduled twice.”

“It can be rescheduled a third time.”

“Why?”

He looked her in the eyes and said, “I need a haircut.” Either he was a bad liar or he just didn’t care if she knew he was lying.

She pulled her phone out of her handbag. “Do you have a preference?”

“For what? A haircut?” He shrugged and lowered himself into a big leather chair.

Chelsea dialed her sister’s number, and when Bo answered she said, “I need the name of a good hair salon or barber.”

“Gee, I don’t know,” her sister answered. “Hold on. I’ll ask Jules. He’s standing right here.” Chelsea walked to the window and pushed aside the heavy drapery to look out. The fight she’d had with her sister the night before still bothered her. If the one person in the world she loved and trusted above all others thought she was a loser… was she?

Bo got back on the line with the name and number of a salon in Belltown. Chelsea hung up, then dialed. “Let’s keep our fingers crossed,” she said as she turned back to the room.

“You’re wasting your time,” Mark grumbled as he opened a drawer in the desk. “I’m not doing the interview today.”

Chelsea held up one finger as the salon picked up. “John Louis Salon. This is Isis.”

“Hello, Isis. My name is Chelsea Ross and I work for Mark Bressler. He has an important interview and photo shoot with Sports Illustrated this afternoon at one o’clock. Is there any way you can get him in for a cut and blow?”

“Cut and blow? Jesus,” the grump behind the desk contin ihe desknued to grumble.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Isis assured her in a tone usually used by uppity receptionists in snooty salons.

“We’ll be grateful if—” The bitch put her on hold.

“Even if I get my hair cut, I’m still not doing the interview.”

Chelsea moved the phone away from her mouth. “What’s your next objection?”

“I’m not dressed for it,” he said, but she knew that was a lie too. She hadn’t a clue why he didn’t want to do the interview, but she doubted it had anything to do with the way he looked. Which, even she had to admit, was absolutely gorgeous in a casual, scruffy way that only truly good-looking men could get away with. Too bad he was such a jerk.

“Well, since it’s just an interview and not a photo shoot, I don’t think it matters.”

“You said photo shoot.”

“Yeah, I may have prevaricated.”

“You lied.”

Isis came back on the line, and Chelsea returned the phone to her mouth. “Yes.”

“We have a two o’clock opening.”

“I need to have him cut and blown and on his way out the door by twelve-forty-five.”

“Well, I don’t think we can help you.”

“Let me talk to your manager because I’m fairly sure he or she will want to take credit for making the captain of the Chinooks’ hockey team look good in a magazine that is read by millions worldwide.” She looked across the room at a big poster of Mark all geared up and shooting a puck. “Or I can just as easily chose another salon if you—” She pulled the phone away from her face and stared at it. “Bitch did it again,” she muttered, and moved to the framed poster. Mark didn’t look all that different in the poster than he did today. Maybe a little meaner. His brown eyes a little more intense as he stared out from beneath the black helmet on his head. She studied his eyes and then glanced over her shoulder to study him. “What are you doing?” she asked as she watched him pick up the phone on his desk.

“Calling the service to send a car.”

“There’s no need. It’s my job to get you to your appointments. I’ll drive you.”

“In what?”

“My car.”

He pointed the phone at the front of the house. “That piece of shit in my driveway?”

She held up her finger once more as Isis came back on the line.

“We can get Mr. Bressler in at noon.”

“Fabulous. What’s the address?” She moved to the desk and wrote on a sticky note before flipping her phone closed and dropping it in her bag. “You don’t like the Honda, fine. What wheels do you have in your garage?”

He set the phone back i" w phone n the cradle. “You want to drive my vehicle?”

It wasn’t unheard of. She’d driven her former employers around in their cars all the time. The more D list, the more they’d wanted to appear as if they had drivers. “Sure.”

“You’re fucking nuts if you think I’m going to let you drive my car. I saw the dents in your Honda.”

“Minor parking lot dings,” she assured him. “Isn’t your car insured?”

“Of course.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his wide chest.

“And wouldn’t it be more convenient for you to have me chauffeur you than waiting around on a car service all the time?”

He didn’t say anything, just scowled.

She looked at her watch. “It’s after ten now. You don’t have time to wait for a service to pick you up.”

“I can be late,” he said with the confidence of a man who was used to the world waiting on him.

“I’m offering you an opportunity to make your life easier, and you’re being obstinate and unreasonable for no logical reason. Unless you like to depend on a car service.”

“What’s the difference between depending on a service and depending on you? Other than you’re more annoying.”

She held up three fingers and counted down. “I’m cute, you don’t have to tip me, and I’m already here.”

He stared at her for several long moments, then slowly stood and reached for his cane. “You’re not that cute. If you ‘ding’ my car, I’ll kill you.”

She smiled and followed him out of the room. Her gaze landed on his wide shoulders and followed his tapered back to his waist. A wallet bulged the pocket of his dark nylon running pants. There were some men who wore sweats and looked like goof-balls. Then there were men like Mark who made them look good, with his long legs and tight behind. He might have had a serious accident six months ago, but his body was still hard from a lifetime of exercise. “Don’t you get a little lonely living in this big house by yourself?” she asked to fill the silence.

“No.” The way he walked, his cane, and the splint on his hand contrasted with his dominant aura. A clash of strength and vulnerability that was appealing. And which he totally ruined with his rude, abrasive personality. “Until recently, I’ve rarely been here,” he added. “For the last few years, I’ve been meaning to put it on the market. You interested?”

“Sure. What’s your asking price?” She couldn’t afford the lawn care.

“At least what I paid for it.” They moved through the gigantic kitchen with its intricate stone and tile work and professional-grade appliances. She followed him past the pantry and laundry room, and above a built-in mud bench next to the back door, two sets of keys hung from hooks. One set had a Mercedes emblem, the other unmistakably the keys to a Hummer. “I’m probably going to regret this,” he muttered as he grabbed the Mercedes keys with the thumb and forefinger of his bad hand.

Chelsea slid around him and opened the back door, holding it for him as he carefully stepped down. A shiny gold Mercedes S550 sedan sat in the middle of his five-car garage. The lights blinked, the locks deactivated by the key fob. One of her previous employers had driven a S550. Only older. This one was brand-spanking-new. She shut the door behind them. “Ooh. Come to Mama.”

“You’re going to drive careful. Right?” He turned, and she almost ran into his chest.

“Right.” A hand’s width separated her Gaultier from plain white cotton, and she ran her gaze up his T-shirt, over his throat and stubbly chin, to his mouth.

“I’ve driven this car one time,” she watched him say before she looked up into his eyes staring down at her. “Three days before my accident, I drove it home from the dealership.” He might be a jerk, but he smelled wonderful. Like some sort of manly soap on clean manly skin. He held up the keys, then dropped them into her waiting palm. “I’m not kidding about killing you.”

He looked serious. “I haven’t had a ticket in about five years,” she said as she followed him around to the passenger side. “Well, maybe a parking ticket, but nonmoving violations don’t count.”

He reached for the front passenger door as she reached for the back. “I’m not sitting back there.” The hard splint surrounding his middle finger hit against the door, and he couldn’t grasp the handle with his other fingers. Chelsea pushed his hand aside and opened the door for him. “I can open my own freakin’ door,” he barked.

“I’m the chauffeur. Remember?” Really though, it was just easier and faster if she did it. She watched him slowly lower himself into the car, one corner of his mouth tightening as he pulled his legs inside. “Do you need help with your seat belt?”

“No.” He reached for it with his left hand. “I’m not two years old. I can buckle my own seat belt. I can feed myself, tie my own shoes, and I don’t need help taking a piss.”

Chelsea closed the door and walked around to the side. “Ten thousand dollars. Ten thousand dollars,” she whispered.

The new-car smell filled her head as she climbed inside and dumped her purse in the back. Soft beige leather caressed her back and behind. She sighed and pressed the ignition button. The motor purred like a content little kitten. “You have the premium package.” She ran her hands over the leather-covered steering wheel. “Heated everything. GPS. A place to plug in your iPod. Nice.”

“How do you know about my premium package?”

She ignored the innuendo. “I’m from L.A. We get heated seats and steering wheels even though it hardly ever drops below sixty degrees.” She pushed the garage opener clipped to the visor, and one of the doors slid up. When she engaged the GPS system, it lit up and asked in a perky female voice, “Hello Mark. Where to?” She glanced at his stony profile as she requested the medical center. Then she buckled her seat belt and looked behind her as she backed the Mercedes out of the shadowy garage and into the sunlight. “Whenever I drive an expensive car out of someone’s garage, I always feel So alwayslike Ferris Bueller. I swear I can hear the music in my head.” She lowered her voice and said as deep as possible, “Bow bow—oooohhh yeeeaah.”

“Are you high?”

The garage door closed and she slid the car into drive.

“No. I don’t take drugs.” There’d been a time when she’d toyed with drugs. Experimenting with this and that, but she’d seen firsthand the horrible waste of addiction and she’d chosen not to go down that road. “You’ll be happy to know that I passed a drug test to get this job.” She eased her foot off the brake, rolled past her Honda, and proceeded down the driveway. “Apparently they’re careful about whom they hire.”

“Obviously.” He leaned his head back and brushed his thumb along the handle of his cane. “They sent me a nurse who’d rather play chauffeur.”

“Turn right,” the GPS instructed, and Chelsea headed for the 520. “One mile north. 8.8 miles till destination.”

“That’s annoying,” Mark grumbled as he leaned forward, and messed around with the GPS screen until the voice command option was silenced.

The Mercedes rolled along the asphalt as if it owned the road. For a few seconds, she debated whether to tell him that she wasn’t a nurse. If he found out later, he might get mad. Then again, maybe if he found out later, he’d like her and it wouldn’t matter. She looked at him out of the corners of her eyes, sitting over there like the Grim Reaper. Yeah, right. “Listen, Mark—May I call you Mark?”

“Mr. Bressler is good.”

She returned her attention to the road. “Listen, Mr. Bressler, I’m not a nurse. Not technically a health care worker either.” Since he was probably going to get mad anyway, she went for broke. “You’ve been such a pain in the ass—with all due respect—that no one in the Chinooks’ organization bothered to fill me in on what I should do for you. I suspect that no one expects me to last more than ten minutes. I was just handed a schedule and told good luck.”

For several tense moments, stunned silence filled the car. “You’re not ‘technically a health care worker.’ Do you have any sort of medical training?”

“I know CPR and I played a nurse on TV.”

“You what?”

“I played a nurse on The Bold and the Beautiful.”

“If you’re ‘not technically a health care worker,’ what are you?”

She glanced across the Mercedes at him. Morning sunlight penetrated the leafy pattern of the tree-lined street and poured in through the windshield. The gray shadows brushed his face and slid across his blinding white T-?shirt. “I’m an actress.”

His mouth parted in shock. “They sent me an actress?”

“Yeah, evidently.”

“Take the 520 West,” he advised, even thoughsor, even the navigation system was showing her the same thing.

Behind her sunglasses, she rolled her eyes and took the freeway ramp to Seattle. “I’ve been the personal assistant to various celebrities for more than seven years. I have a lot of experience putting up with bull crap.” Arrogant whiners, the lot of them. “An assistant is better than a nurse. I do all the work, you take all the credit. If something bad happens, I get the blame. There is no down side.”

“Except that I have to put up with you. Hovering around, watching me. And you don’t even have the qualifications to take my pulse or wipe my ass.” He opened the console between the seats and pulled out a pair of silver-rimmed aviator sunglasses.

“You seem to be a healthy guy. Do you need someone to wipe your ass?”

“You offering?”

She shook her head and passed a minivan with a my-kid’s-smarter-than-your-kid bumper sticker. “No. I draw the line at any sort of personal contact with my employer.” She glanced over her left shoulder and merged into the faster lane.

“You just cut off that van full of kids.”

She glanced at him. “Plenty of room.”

“You’re driving too fast,” he said through a dark scowl that might have intimidated other people. Other people who weren’t used to dealing with difficult egomaniacs.

“I’m only going five miles over the speed limit. Everyone knows five miles doesn’t count.” She returned her attention to the road. “If you’re going to be a backseat driver, I’m going to make you sit in the backseat like Miss Daisy.” It was pretty much an empty threat and they both knew it. Her brain scrambled for a response if he called her on it. The key to assistant survival was to remain physically and mentally nimble and anticipate your bigheaded employer’s next move.

“You must not be a very good actress if you’re in Seattle babysitting me.”

Her nimble brain hadn’t anticipated that from him. She told herself there were ten thousand reasons why she shouldn’t push him out of the car. “I’m a very good actress,” she said instead. “I just haven’t had a big break. Most of my roles have been bit parts or have landed on the cutting room floor.” She glanced at the GPS and turned on her blinker.

“What have you acted in?”

“A lot of different things.” Chelsea was used to that question. She got it a lot. “Did you see Juno?”

“You were in Juno?”

“Yeah. I was up in Canada assisting one of my B stars, who was working on a movie for Lifetime, when I got the call that the production company needed background people so I showed up.” She took the I–5 South exit. “I was in the shopping mall scene. If you look past Ellen Page’s big belly, you can see me talking on a cell phone.”

“That’s it?”

“For my part in Juno, yes. But I’ve done a lot of other films.”

“Name something. Other than blink-and-you-miss-it parts.”

“Slasher Camp, Killer Valentine, Prom Night 2, He Knows It’s You, and Motel on Lake Hell.”

Silence filled the car, and then he started to laugh. A deep rumble that came from his chest. “You’re a scream queen. No shit?”

She didn’t know that she could be considered a scream queen. More like a scream slut. Or the best friend of the scream queen. Her roles had never been big enough to be considered the queen. “I’ve done other things. Like walk-on parts on The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful. And on CSI: Miami, I played one of a series of dead girls that kept washing up on the beach. The makeup was really interesting.” She looked over her left shoulder and passed a delivery truck. “Most people assume CSI: Miami is filmed in Miami but it’s not. It’s actually filmed on Manhattan Beach and Long Beach,” she continued. “I’ve done a ton of series pilots that never got picked up. Not to mention tons of commercials. The last commercial I did was for Hillshire Farms. I wore a cheerleader’s outfit and yelled, ‘Go meat.’ That was about six months ago. When I was in—”

“Jesus!” he interrupted as he reached for the buttons to the radio and filled the inside of the Mercedes with “Slither.” The heavy bass vibrated the floor beneath her feet, and Chelsea bit the side of her lip to keep from laughing. He no doubt meant to be rude, but Velvet Revolver was one of her favorite bands. Scott Weiland was a skinny, hot rock god, and she’d rather listen to Scott than tax her brain in a futile effort to entertain a grumpy hockey player.

Too bad Scott was such a junkie, she thought as she tapped her fingers on the steering wheel along with the heavy beat. If she were alone, she’d bust out and sing along, but Mr. Bressler was already annoyed with her. And while Chelsea had near perfect recall of song lyrics and movie dialogue—kind of a hidden savant talent—she couldn’t carry a tune.

She glanced at the GPS and took exit 165A and merged onto James Street just as the trusty navigation system instructed. Within a few minutes, Chelsea pulled the Mercedes in front of the massive medical center.

Mark turned off the radio and pointed the handle of his cane toward the windshield. “Keep going. The clinic entrance is further down.”

“I’ll find the parking garage, then I’ll come find you.”

“I don’t need you to find me,” he said as the car pulled to a stop beside the curb. “I’ll have one of the nurses call you when I’m ready to be picked up.”

“Do you have my number?”

“No.” He unbuckled his seat belt and opened the door with his good hand. “Write it on something.”

Chelsea reached into the backseat and grabbed her purse. She pulled out an old business card and a pen. She wrote her new cell phone number on the back, then looked through the car at Mark. “My new number’s on the back,” she said as she handed it across to him.

The tips of his fingers bumped into hers as he took the card and glanced over it. He slid his legs out of the car and grabbed his cane. “Don’t wreck the car,” he said as he grabbed the top of the door frame and stood. He shoved the card into his back pocket and shut the door.

A taxi behind the Mercedes honked, and Chelsea eased her foot off the brake and headed toward the street. In her rearview mirror she caught a glimpse of Mark Bressler just before he entered the building. The bright morning sun shot glistening sparks off his aviators and shone in his dark hair. He paused to watch her—no doubt to make sure she didn’t “wreck the car”—before he moved within the deep shadows of the building.

She turned her attention to the road and figured she had a little over an hour to kill. She was in downtown Seattle. There had to be somewhere she could go to scrub her mind free of the past hour. She needed to find her happy place.

She touched the GPS screen and turned on the voice command mode. “Where to, Mark?” it asked. Clearly it didn’t know that it was supposed to address him as Mr. Bressler.

“Neiman Marcus,” she said. “I need Neiman Marcus.”