Free Aim For Love by Pamela Aares Page B

words. Alcohol was not Derrick’s friend.
    “Well, that might push you to the cover.” Joe grinned as he gulped down his martini.
    “We’re not getting married,” Sabrina bit out. What the hell was Derrick up to?
    “Getting married?” One of the hovering photographers snapped a photo.
    Sabrina stood. “Excuse me.” She headed toward the ladies’ room and then zigged back to the VIP entrance. She handed the bouncer a twenty and asked him to see her to a cab. Spending her evening with drunken men was not going to help her at all.
     

     
    The next day Sabrina dodged Derrick’s calls. She didn’t have to buy a copy of the tabloids to know that her face was plastered across them with headlines about their upcoming wedding—Alex had already emailed her the news.
    Hype sold magazines.
    And sometimes ruined lives.
    Hers wasn’t going to be one of them.
    She tapped out an email telling Alex she was going to Kaz’s the next day. She didn’t bother to address the tabloid shots. He knew better than to believe them.
    The third time Derrick called, she turned off her phone. He might’ve had a few too many, but that didn’t excuse his drunken comments.
    The worst of it was, she needed him. She wanted to succeed as an actor, wanted professional success more than she’d ever wanted anything. And Derrick had the magic. And the gift of being able to teach what he knew. The marriage thing would blow over while she was away, and then they could settle back into their work. Derrick was at his best when he was focused on acting. Still, evading his schemes wasn’t a price she’d expected to have to pay.
     

Chapter Eight
     
    Sabrina turned off the two-lane road onto a gravel drive lined on both sides with budding peach trees. As she’d driven down the north side of the Tehachapi Pass and left LA behind, a sense of lightness had entered her. She took a deep breath. Now, surrounded by the orchard and under the spreading blue sky, she felt nearly giddy.
    She pulled up in front of a well-kept farmhouse. A covered porch wrapped around the first floor and colorful flowers trailed from stone urns lined up beside the front door.
    Sunlight glinted off paned glass as the door opened and Kaz stepped out. He lifted a hand in greeting, and the giddy feeling rolling through her screeched to a dead stop.
    In making her plans and packing for her trip, she hadn’t really taken in the fact that she’d be spending three days with him. Three straight days with a man who she was pretty sure held her in disdain. A man who set her off in ways she had yet to sort out. She reminded herself that he was helping her as a favor to Alex and that Alex trusted him. She should trust him. But Derrick’s performance at the club had her on edge. It’d take a while before she trusted any man.
    Kaz opened her car door before she could.
    “Traffic?”
    Already she could sense that he was more at ease on his home turf. She couldn’t say the same for herself.
    “Not too bad,” she said as she stepped out.
    “Do you have luggage?”
    “Do you have sisters?”
    He knitted his brows.
    “One.”
    “Then you must know that no woman goes anywhere for three days without luggage.” Her teasing words were more to ease her tension than to entertain. “Even Mother Teresa had luggage—she just had loads of minions to carry it.”
    “Then consider me a minion.” Kaz opened her trunk and lifted out her two suitcases.
    She was used to Alex lifting things effortlessly, but Kaz did so with a fluid grace that stunned her. She stared and wondered what his arm span was. Alex’s was seventy-two inches from fingertip to fingertip; they’d measured once. Kaz’s might be even broader, his chest was wider and—
    “I asked if you preferred an upstairs or downstairs guest room.”
    Evidently she hadn’t heard him ask the first time.
    “Upstairs, thank you. I prefer a view.”
    “Follow me then.” At the front door he kicked off his shoes and slipped into a pair of