Free Just Another Pretty Face (HT 459) by Candace Schuler Page B

had applied foundation and mascara and—because "the lights wash all the color out of your face"—even a faint dusting of blusher, and it hadn't affected her opinion of his masculinity one iota. If anything, it had reenforced it. Any man who could look macho while wearing mascara was too rampantly male for anything short of a sex-change operation to threaten his virility.
    "Are we ready for the clip now?" Arsenio asked someone off camera when Pierce had finished setting up the bare bones of the preview scene for the audience.
    Apparently they were, because the image on the monitor suddenly switched from the stage in the Bur-bank studio to the steamy interior of some unspecified Central American country. Dressed in faded fatigues, with an automatic Mauser tucked into his waistband, a twelve-inch hunting knife strapped to his thigh, and an all-too-realistic gash on his temple slowly oozing blood down the side of his face, Pierce appeared to be slogging his way through a guerrilla-infested jungle with an Uzi slung over one shoulder and an unconscious woman over the other. She began to struggle weakly.
    "Hold still, goddamn it," he hissed, clamping his arm tighter over her thrashing legs.
    She continued to struggle until he stopped and let her slide down his body. Her face filled the screen as she looked up at him. Her eyes went wide.
    "Luc," she breathed.
    "Did you think I wouldn't find you?" he demanded fiercely, fisting a hand in her long dark hair as he pulled her head back. "Did you really think I'd let you get away?"
    "Luc, I..." Her fingers curled in the fabric of his dirty fatigue shirt. "Please," she said.
    Their lips met in a searing, openmouthed kiss.
    In the studio audience, women squealed and hooted, hollering for more. In the green room, Nikki curled her fingers against the urge to yank every strand of hair from the actress's head. On the screen, the scene faded briefly to black and then faded back in on the face of the host. He grinned and fanned himself. "I'd heard you and your leading lady were hot together." His smile turned coaxing, inviting confidences. "Is it true you were just as hot off the screen?"
    "Andie MacDowell is a happily married woman," Pierce said easily, showing absolutely no sign that he hated those kinds of personal questions. "And I'm involved with someone else. Someone," he added with a grin, "who wouldn't like it if I talked about our relationship on national television."
    Nikki, along with every other woman in the viewing audience, wondered just who the lucky woman was while Arsenio Hall thanked his guest for appearing on the show.
    * * *
    PIERCE HANDED his keys to the parking valet and took Nikki's hand in his. "I thought we'd start out slow," he said, explaining his choice of Chasen's over the more trendy Mortons or Spago for dinner. "We need to get used to being seen in public together. And we need to agree to some ground rules before we go inside," he added, as they headed toward the entrance to one of the favorite restaurants of Hollywood's old guard.
    "Ground rules?" Nikki said skeptically. "What kind of ground rules? Why?"
    "So you don't try to give me a karate chop to the neck if I put my arm around you."
    Nikki shot him a sidelong look. "I didn't realize you were planning to put your arm around me."
    "I'm not planning it," he said, although that was exactly what he was planning. That and anything else she'd let him get away with. "But it might happen naturally in the course of the evening."
    She gave him a wry look. "During dinner?"
    He sighed. Deeply. "We're supposed to be fostering the impression that we're having the hottest romance of the decade," he said in an aggrieved voice. "Under those circumstances I don't think an occasional hug is out of line." He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye in an effort to gauge her reaction to his next words. "You might even try hugging me back."
    "What about the woman you're involved with? How is she going to feel about all this