A Wilder Heart Read online

  “We have to have drinks,” she said. “Drinks for days.”

  Aster agreed to Sarah’s plan and for a few minutes, all was well. They enjoyed their drinks and Aster enjoyed soaking in Sarah’s admiration. Seeing herself through Sarah’s eyes was quite a relief, because Sarah had no idea how terrible the whole event had been. To her it was just a funny anecdote, something to laugh over.

  “I think that guy is checking you out,” Sarah said suddenly. “He’s hot.”

  Aster turned, following Sarah’s eye line. It culminated in the figure of Owen in the mid-distance.

  “Oh,” Aster said. “He’s not. He’s just the bodyguard my father is insisting follows me everywhere now.”

  “Really?” Sarah grinned broadly. “Let’s go say hello.”

  “I’d rather not,” Aster said, sipping her cocktail. “He’s a bit weird.”

  “He doesn’t look weird,” Sarah said. “I’m going to say hello.”

  With no way to stop her friend, Aster watched as Sarah sashayed across to Owen and began chatting with him.

  He seemed to enjoy Sarah’s attentions. And why not? Sarah was adorable. Aster couldn’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy though. It wasn’t often she was upstaged by another woman, especially not one of her own circle.

  “Oh, my god, you’re Aster Wilder!” A shrill voice to her left heralded the beginning of the end.

  Aster wasn’t used to being recognized. Then again, she also wasn’t used to having her picture splashed across television, print and the Internet. She realized that behind the woman who had recognized her there were a half dozen more people staring at her, and beyond that, several paparazzi with cameras. For a moment, she wondered why they were there. Then she realized it was all on her account.

  Simultaneously a little scared and annoyed, Aster glanced around at Owen and Sarah. They weren’t where they had been at the bar. A spike of panic rose in Aster, but a moment later she felt someone touch her elbow. It was Owen, guiding her up from the chair as the paparazzi surged forward, sensing blood in the water.

  “Aster!” Someone yelled her name. “How high are you right now?”

  The question made her screw her face up. A second later a flash went off, immortalizing her expression for all time.

  Aster did not think of herself as being a particularly volatile or aggressive person. Then again, she had never been surrounded by what seemed to her to be human jackals of one kind or another, snickering photographers crowding her unbearably.

  “Aster! Is it true you’re addicted to crack cocaine?”

  “Aster! Will you be going to prison for these charges?”

  “Aster!”

  “Aster!”

  “Aster!”

  Aster never thought she’d be sick of the sound of her own name, but if she heard it again she was fairly certain that she was going to do something she’d probably regret. This was a far cry from the hallowed academic halls of Woolridge College where she had done her postgraduate work. There people knew her only as a top student and a respected academic adviser.

  It was all much too much, more than any reasonable person could ever be expected to bear. Her most embarrassing moment had become a matter for public consumption and now she was to be hounded every time she stepped out in public.

  Her drink was in her hand one moment and flying at a paparazzi’s camera the next. Owen grabbed at her arm, but it was too late. The drink had smashed into the lens, eliciting excited cries from all and sundry. Flashes went off in a cacophony of light, nearly blinding her as strong arms wrapped around her waist and lifted off her feet. She was carried to relatively safety in Owen’s arms, taken to a nearby SUV and put inside with a hard swat to her bottom.

  “Ow! What the hell?” Squealing indignantly, Aster rounded on Owen. In the confined space of the car she found herself practically nose to nose with him as she rubbed her bottom and scowled furiously. “What did you do that for?”

  “You shouldn’t be throwing things,” Owen informed her.

  Aster threw her hands up. “Did you hear what they were saying to me?”

  “It doesn’t matter what they say to you. That’s why they say those things, so you lose your temper.”

  Her glare became more intense. “So, what do you care? It’s not your problem.”

  “You’re my problem,” he said in that laconic drawl which belied his intensity. He sat back and started talking to the driver, ignoring Aster. The windows of the SUV were tinted which protected her from the cameras, but not from the general commotion. She could hear the hubbub and clamor outside clear as day.

  Her phone rang and she answered it.

  “Oh, my god,” Sarah squealed. “That was hilarious. You are going to be in all the magazines tomorrow too. They’re already talking about your meltdown.”

  Aster covered her eyes with her hand and shook her head. This was not good. This was not good at all. For years she’d smugly judged the young women of Hollywood for being complete hot messes. It had taken less than a week to turn into one of them herself.

  Her phone rang again, call waiting beeping through Sarah’s glee.

  “I have to go, Sarah, someone else is on the line. It’s probably my father wanting to kill me.”

  “Good luck,” Sarah giggled as she hung up.

  It was not Aster’s father on the phone. It was Dirk Wendigo, the director of the film. “Aster, baby,” he said in energized tones. “You have to pace yourself.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Aster apologized. “It’s... none of it is what it looks like.”

  “It’s great for the movie,” Dirk boomed. “But leave it a little closer to launch.”

  Simultaneously effulgent and cynical, there was not one jot of genuine concern in Dirk’s tone. Much like Sarah, he seemed to find the whole thing hilarious. There were only two people not taking any delight in recent events, Owen – and her father.

  Owen was sitting in alert silence next to her. She still hadn’t processed the fact that he’d struck her. Smacked her ass none too gently, in fact.

  “When I tell my father what you did, he’s going to tear you up,” she promised Owen after hanging up from Dirk. “You laid your hands on me. You hit me.”

  “I gave you a little smack,” Owen told her. It was worse when he spoke, when he looked at her with those maddeningly calm eyes and just stated facts such as they were. “You were getting out of hand.”

  “Out of hand? I was the one being harassed. None of that was my fault.”

  “You didn’t have to throw anything.”

  Frustrated almost to the point of tears both by the passage of events and her own annoyance with herself, Aster felt her temper rising all over again. Owen was sitting there all smug and silent, passing casual judgment on her. Who the hell was he?

  “I don’t need your opinion,” she snapped. “Your job isn’t to tell me how to behave.”

  “Actually, it is,” Owen disagreed. “It’s my job to keep you safe, which is difficult if you throw glasses at everyone who annoys you. You escalated the situation.”

  “I escalated the situation?” Aster’s voice rose to a high squeal. “I’ll show you what escalating a situation is.” She grabbed the nearest thing to hand, which happened to be a can of soda sitting in the cooled cup holder. She held it high behind her shoulder, ready to launch it. At what, she did not know, all she knew was that she was such a mess of nerves and upset that she needed to get some of those feelings out somehow.

  Owen nailed her with his golden brown gaze. “Put that down.” All of a sudden, he didn’t sound so laid back anymore. All of a sudden he sounded clipped and authoritarian.

  “No,” Aster said. “I can do what I want.”

  He didn’t bother with any further discussion on the matter. He reached out with one long arm, took the soda can and Aster’s hand with it and drew it down. Aster found herself pulled unceremoniously across her bodyguard’s thighs as she struggled to keep a hold of her soda.

  “L
et it go.” He was back to that drawl, which seemed tinged with a touch of amusement. And why not? He had her sprawled across his lap in a position, which wasn’t precisely sexual, but was undeniably intimate.

  Aster didn’t let the can go. A part of her knew she was being silly, but another, much more powerful part didn’t want to lose another battle. If she could just keep a hold of the can, maybe she would have some shred of control.

  She felt a sudden blaze of heat flash across her bottom as his palm caught her cheeks. This time it was no simple swat. This time it was a hard smack, which made her gasp with pain and outrage. It hurt. It hurt very much, the tingling echoes and the sting sinking through her bottom for seconds after it landed.

  Springing up from his lap, Aster looked at him with wide eyes, her mouth open in an expression of shocked surprise. “What was that!”

  “Put your seat belt on,” Owen said calmly as if nothing had happened. “I’m taking you home.”

  Chapter Two

  “You put your seat belt on,” Aster snapped. “And stop the car. I’m getting out.”

  “No, you’re not,” Owen replied.

  “You can’t stop me.”

  Aster knew she was being quite ridiculous, but for some reason it was difficult to restrain her impulses. She had never been quite so challenged before; she had certainly never had such a hard 48 hours. From the giddy heights of landing her first role to the unbelievable low of being thrown into a cell, and now being harassed by the paparazzi and having her bottom smacked by a bodyguard, she couldn’t quite keep up with it all.

  Owen looked at her with one brow raised, a slow half smile passing over his face. “You’re really winding yourself up to something aren’t you?”

  “I am not,” she denied hotly. “You assaulted me.”

  “Listen,” he said, leaning back in a very relaxed pose she found almost insulting. “If you calm down, you won’t get into any more trouble. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Don’t talk to me that way.”

  “What way?”

  “That-that way as if you’re in charge of me or something. You’re an employee,” she reminded him. “And when my father finds out that you hit me you’re going to be a fired employee.”

  “We’ll see,” Owen said, not in the least bit concerned.

  “We will see,” Aster replied. “You’ll see, because I don’t need to see. I’ve already seen. I know.”

  Owen shook his head slightly with just a hint of a smirk on his lips and ignored her fairly convoluted threats. Aster flung herself back against the seat and scowled furiously out the window. Her bottom was still stinging and her pride was tremendously bruised. In the short time she’d known Owen, she’d somehow managed to turn from a perfectly normal sophisticated, educated woman to a spitting hellion. It had to be his fault somehow. It certainly wasn’t hers.

  As the car turned up between the large main gates which lead to the winding drive to her father’s mansion, a place so big she had been residence for a week without him noticing, Aster sat up a little straighter. She would get her revenge now. Oh, yes she would.

  As soon as the car stopped, she was out of it. She ran into the foyer, shouting for her father. It took a few minutes to find him out on his private driving range and Owen followed behind her pretty much the whole time, like a smirking shadow. When she finally did spot her father, she ran to him, pointing back at Owen.

  “Daddy, you have to fire him,” she declared. “He hit me.”

  Her father turned around, club in hand. “What do you mean he hit you?”

  “She means that I smacked her bottom after she threw glass at a tourist,” Owen interjected.

  “That was a paparazzi!”

  “That was an elderly German lady,” Owen drawled. “The paparazzi were to her left.”

  “Well,” Aster said, feeling a little less certain of herself. “She had a camera.”

  “You struck my daughter?” Zach asked the question with dangerous calm. Aster smirked at Owen. Oh, he was in trouble now.

  “I swatted her backside,” Owen said without any trace of shame or concern. “She put an innocent bystander at risk. Frankly, I think she deserves a damn good spanking.”

  Aster’s jaw dropped.

  Zach gave Owen a long look. The tension between the men rose for the duration of the silence, but was broken when Aster’s father let out a laugh. “I knew you were the right man for the job,” he said, clapping Owen on the shoulder. “She’s a sweet girl, but she’s always had a temper.”

  “She is the cat’s mother,” Aster snapped. “How dare you talk about me as if I’m not even here? And how dare you laugh at what he did!”

  “Aster, I had to pick you up from jail yesterday,” her father said. “Maybe if I were a little more like Owen, that wouldn’t have happened.”

  “That wasn’t my fault!” Aster’s voice rose in frustration. “I was framed! All I did—”

  |“All you did was sneak around, disobey me and get yourself into a world of trouble,” her father replied. “And it sounds like you’ve done it again. We’ll be lucky if you’re not charged with assault. I think it’s best you head out to New Zealand as soon as possible. Owen will have an easier time keeping you out of jail there. I’m not having you in this city another day, that’s for sure.”

  “Fine,” Aster agreed. “I don’t want to stay here anyway.”

  She was very displeased with her father, and even more displeased with Owen. Neither one of them appeared to be on her side.

  “Don’t be afraid to be firm with my daughter,” her father said, making matters worse. “The last thing I want is to see is Aster in trouble. There’s far too much permissiveness in this industry.”

  Aster folded her arms over her chest and rolled her eyes. “You do know I’m a grown woman.”

  “It doesn’t matter how old you get, I’m still going to make sure you’re looked after,” her father informed her. “You’re the most precious thing in the world to me.”

  It was hard to stay angry with him when he spoke with such genuine concern. Aster knew he only wanted the best for her; it was all he’d ever wanted. Owen, on the other hand, could go do unmentionable things to himself. She did not like how calm and collected he was when talking about smacking her as if she were some recalcitrant juvenile. She also didn’t like how he’d held back the fact it was tourist and not a paparazzi she’d hit with the glass. Now she felt bad about the whole affair, she would have liked to apologize, but it was too late for that now.

  Annoyed and feeling guilty, Aster hugged her father and excused herself to go and pack for New Zealand. She had no doubt tickets would be produced in very short order and she needed some time to gather herself.

  * * *

  Aster spent the afternoon in her room packing. She still could not believe that she was to be saddled with the overbearing bodyguard who apparently thought he had carte blanche to discipline her. As she went through the clothes in her wardrobe, Aster wracked her brains for some way to get out of the situation. Maybe she could give Owen the slip. Or maybe she could fire him herself.

  Unfortunately, neither option was a viable one. She doubted Owen was the sort of man to be given the slip and as her father was paying him, there was certainly no way to fire him. If she wanted to do the movie, she was stuck with him. Hell, now that she’d gotten into all this trouble she was probably stuck with him anyway.

  Sighing, Aster sat on her bed. There weren’t many other women in her position, she was sure of that. Sometimes being the protected daughter of a billionaire was actually a lot more trouble than it was worth. Well, maybe not more than it was worth. Her father was worth a lot, a ridiculous amount really.

  Aster was very much looking forward to making a name for herself and showing her father just how independent she really was. Sighing, she realized that the only real way to do that was to keep herself in check and make Owen obsolete. Fine. That shouldn’t be so hard. It wasn’t hard to be normal, was it? No,
of course not.

  A knock at the door roused her from her thoughts. “Come in!”

  “Are you packed?” Owen put his head around the door. “We’ve got tickets on the next flight out. Leaves in three hours.”

  Something about his appearance completely discombobulated her. All thoughts of being nice and normal and muted and inoffensive went flying out and were replaced with a rushing torrent of emotions that didn’t really have names, but which impelled her to say something to him. The slights of the afternoon could not go unrighted. If her father would not chastise Owen, then she would.

  “I’m ready,” Aster said stiffly. “But I need to talk to you first. There’s something I have to tell you.”

  “Oh, yes?” Owen took another step into the room and waited patiently. She stalked across to him and shook a finger under his nose. Aster was not a small woman and he was not really that much taller than her, but somehow he managed to look it with some trick of masculine presence.

  “I don’t like you,” she informed him in hissing tones. “I don’t like you, I don’t want you around me and if you dare lay so much as a finger on me again I’ll see you loose it. You might have my father fooled, but my father isn’t the only one with resources. You should be careful.”

  The right hand corner of his mouth quirked. “Are you threatening me, Aster?”

  “I am,” she said, narrowing her eyes dramatically. Though she had not received much in the way of formal acting training, drama ran in the blood. Every part of her feminine frame spoke to disdain and danger as she stood tall, glaring at the man with as much pure venom as she could muster.

  Owen grinned, reached out and patted her on the top of the head. “Cute.”

  Aster’s jaw dropped and she made a squeak of impotent rage. “You should take me seriously.”

  “I take you very seriously,” Owen informed her. “But I’m not going to take your tantrums seriously. Now come on. We have a flight to catch.”

  “This isn’t a tantrum,” she informed him. “This is a warning.”