Chapter 13: Stargazing

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He had made it his mission to know every corner of her property, never letting a single crevice go unexplored. Sometimes he wondered if his obsession had more to do with getting to know her than just simply protecting her. Because exploring the rooms of Rachel's house fascinated him.

It was strange to see a celebrity of such high status sleeping in a room which was more reminiscent of a little girl's room than that of a wealthy grown woman. When Bill had first shown him the tall golden suite that had served as her bedroom only for magazine covers, Frank would not have been shocked if Rachel had actually slept there. When he learned the whereabouts of her real bedroom, it had taken him by surprise. Her room was humble, unassuming, a little messy, and not glamorous in the slightest.

Likewise, the entire west wing of the property was filled with personal touches that strayed far from the glitz and glam of the rest of her mansion. He had found one room in particular to be most intriguing: her private studio.

Here, he could see the passion and creativity of the real Rachel Marron come to life. The room was lined with windows, overlooking warm green palm trees and short waterfalls along the rocks. There were instruments and scattered papers strewn about the hardwood floors, pencils and reading glasses on the surface of the old upright piano, and stacks of music books on the armchair in the corner.

He had walked among the mess with careful steps, as if he were navigating the room of someone who had recently died, not wanting to move anything from the last place they'd left it. He was entranced by the little snippets of lyrics she'd written, the graceful curve of her handwriting, her lead-ridden fingerprints left on the corners of sheet music that peeked out from inside her books.

Along the many shelves that lined the back wall of her studio was her impressive record collection. He felt an immediate connection to it, relating the fact that his own father was a collector as well. Most of the records remained tucked in their sleeves, in order of their release dates, but some of them were on display in glass cases to show off their colored vinyl or a favorite artist.

He had been deeply moved by the contents of that room ever since he'd made the discovery. It added another layer to the Rachel Marron he'd come to know. She wasn't just a beautiful brat with an amazing voice – she was a stunning human with a love for music that many could not match. She never showcased that side of herself on stage, he thought. She focused so much on the provocative and the seductive - or at least, these were the aspects she had been encouraged to focus on. His heart ached at the idea that behind the seductress in scandalous clothing was a creative soul whose first love was music.

His motivation to protect her only seemed to increase the more he got to know her.

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The next morning, Rachel woke up alone. According to her phone, it was already ten A.M., which meant she had likely missed breakfast, but she was fine with that. She got ready for the day at a leisurely pace, then went downstairs, eager to find out what the boys had been up to all morning.

It didn't take very long for her to figure out that they were not in the house. Curiously, she walked into the back hall which led to the garage, and opening the door she found them there, engaged in some sort of Kung Fu demonstration.

"Trigger point," Frank said, pushing two fingers into one side of Fletcher's neck, then repeating, "trigger point" as he pressed the other side.

Fletcher nodded. "I got it now." He put his hands out in a practiced gesture of defense as Frank circled him then repeated a sudden attack.

The sight of Frank with his arm wrapped around her son's neck would have been alarming if it weren't for the grin on Fletcher's face.

"See, hand up to your face, like this—" Frank instructed, releasing Fletcher from his hold to place his hand in front of his neck. Fletcher copied the motion, then Frank swung his arm around the boy's neck again. "—now you can grab my arm from the inside and push off."

Fletcher laughed nervously as he followed his fake assailant's instructions, executing a perfect twist of defense. Rachel raised her eyebrows, impressed.

"Good," Frank approved. Fletcher paused to catch his breath.

"Did he tell you he quit Karate after two lessons when he was thirteen?" Rachel interrupted, drawing their attention to the door.

Fletcher said defensively, "The instructor was a psycho."

Rachel smirked as she walked over to where Frank was standing and said in a quiet voice, "Mm hm… traded one psycho for another."

Frank conveniently didn't acknowledge Rachel's comment before inviting Fletcher to go for another round. Fletcher jumped at the chance to show off his new self-defense skills while his mom was watching.

If she didn't know any better, Rachel would've guessed she was watching a real life scuffle. Fletcher had proven time and time again that he was a fast learner. This was no exception. In fact, they seemed so invested in their efforts, Rachel worried that someone might actually get injured as they practiced.

"Fletcher, go easy on him," Rachel chided. "Remember he's in his forties now."

Frank whipped his head up to shoot Rachel an offended look. "That extra decade of experience is an advantage in my favor."

He grunted as Fletcher attacked him from behind, then with seemingly no effort at all, he swung the boy's lanky body around with one arm and swiftly pinned him to the ground.

"Jesus, Frank!"

"You just told him to go easy on me," Frank laughed as he helped pull Fletcher up to his feet. Fletcher dusted himself off, staring in awe at his mentor.

It took Rachel a moment to recover from what she had just witnessed. When he had been her bodyguard, she had sometimes caught glimpses of Frank pushing off overeager fans or stiff-arming rowdy crowds for her to get through safely. It was the same sort of thing Tony did, with those little bursts of brute force. But she had never before seen the elegant violence of Frank's martial arts abilities before.

It was quite the turn-on.

"Mom, we've been practicing all morning," Fletcher said excitedly. "Frank says I'm a natural!"

Rachel cleared her throat. "That, I'm not surprised by." She shivered even under her heavy knit sweater. "It's so damn cold in here."

As she walked past them to head back inside the house, she jumped and cried out at the sight of something by her foot. "Oh, my God! A mouse! A fucking mouse!"

She scampered out of the way as Frank bent down to retrieve the object. Then rising up, he opened his hand to reveal a small pinecone.

"Oh," Rachel mumbled in embarrassment, still out of breath.

Fletcher laughed as he shoved past her into the house. "Still jumpy from that spider, Mom?"

With a satisfied smirk, Frank opened her hand to set the pinecone in her palm as if it were a gift and started to follow Fletcher inside. She promptly tossed the pinecone at his head, but it never made contact before he grabbed it out of the air.

Rachel blinked in surprise as he turned back around to face her.

"What the fuck?" She marveled.

He tossed the pinecone back to her, which she barely managed to catch. "I have good reflexes."

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Fletcher was thrilled to have gotten to show off his cooking skills for both lunch and dinner that day. Rachel had to admit she was impressed by her son's well-rounded skill set, which seemed to grow by the hour. Being so observant, Fletcher picked up on things quickly, and often only had to be shown once how to do something before he became a master at it himself. Rachel pitied the girl who had ditched her son on what would have been their first date. It was most certainly her loss.

After dinner, Fletcher decorated the tree while Rachel and Frank watched in admiration. The ornaments had belonged to Frank's father, and as such the selection was very narrow. Rachel had never seen so many baseball themed Christmas ornaments in her life. Many of them were vintage and in surprisingly good shape given their age.

Rachel had practically forgotten that it was Christmas Eve. She had never really had any set-in-stone traditions for the holiday, being that as a celebrity she was often invited to fancy parties and forced to mingle with her peers. She had always spent at least part of the day with just Fletcher, though. She'd thought she would miss having the time alone with her son, but she had been so entertained throughout the day it hadn't even crossed her mind.

The three of them could converse for hours about random topics. Fletcher was unusually gregarious when Frank was around. It was obvious that Fletcher had craved male companionship at the house. Growing up with a single mom, an aunt, and female nannies had turned him into a sensitive and smart young man, but he seemed to breathe easier without all the estrogen clouding the air around him.

Neither Fletcher nor Frank seemed to ever want to sit down. Fletcher paced around the room as he made conversation, fiddling with the tree, then inspecting the woodgrain of the coffee table, then shuffling his bare feet against the area rug. Frank stood in one spot, leaning with one elbow against the mantle of the fireplace, watching the boy in amused contentment and responding occasionally when spoken to.

As the evening wore on, Rachel met Frank's eyes multiple times across the room.

The first time was just a flicker. He glanced away as soon as she caught him staring at her.

The second time, his eyes lingered just a bit longer than would be considered appropriate if Fletcher had noticed.

The third time, he had caught her staring at him, and it was all he could do to ward off the threat of a knowing smile.

The fourth time, they locked gazes in tandem, and held for an obscenely long minute as Fletcher ranted about the classes he was signed up to take next semester.

They knew the risk of staring for too long, but Frank had lost all willpower to care, and Rachel had lost all restraint to look away. He looked irresistible just standing there, in his khaki pants and midnight blue turtleneck sweater, his tall frame accentuated by the flickering light of the fire. His expression was smoldering, and he was utterly oblivious to it.

It was quite clear what they were both doing.

It was an unspoken game they seemed to play. Neither of them wanted to be the one to cave. They stifled so many yawns, it was getting suspicious. But Fletcher didn't seem to notice the yawns or the staring. At long last, when the clock struck midnight, the loquacious 18-year-old decided only then that he was ready to retire for the night. When he'd disappeared up the stairs, Rachel and Frank exchanged a longing look of empathy.

"Jesus, I thought he'd never go to bed," Rachel admitted. Frank held back a laugh. Her dark eyes wandered around the room before settling back on him. "So, what do you wanna do now?"

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Frank wouldn't have normally suggested stargazing on a night this cold, but he desperately wanted to show off how many constellations he knew off the top of his head. For as much as she hated the cold, Rachel didn't protest when he asked her to come sit outside on the porch with him. So she'd gathered up her coat, a flannel scarf, gloves, two pairs of socks, her boots, a hat, and several blankets from the sofa. Frank only donned his gloves and boots when he followed her outside.

He wasn't fooling himself. Of course he wanted to impress her. He'd spent his entire life living humbly, a good part of it as a bachelor. It wasn't fair that he should have to hold his cards so tightly to his chest when she was the only woman in the picture now.

Wanting her to feel protected, he brought one of his rifles outside and laid it beside him where they sat down on the porch.

"I can't believe how many stars you can see from out here," she marveled after he'd pointed out several constellations to her.

"Less pollution," he stated simply.

She glanced at the rifle beside his leg. "You shoot deer?"

"Only buck."

"You don't have any taxidermy on your walls." He could tell she was proud to be able to use the word 'taxidermy' in a sentence.

"We sold the taxidermy," he said, then added with a devilish smile, "Dad and I used to stuff them ourselves."

Rachel feigned a gag. "You have a stomach of steel, Farmer."

He laughed and leaned back on his elbow so that he was partly reclined. "I haven't hunted in a while, mostly because I haven't had time. But I can shoot a twelve-point right between the eyes." He made a gesture with his two fingers pointing to the center of his forehead.

Rachel smirked at him, quickly picking up on his intention. "You don't have to drag a dead deer back here in the morning to impress me."

"Well, how am I supposed to make you try venison?" he asked, inspecting her eyes to see if she knew what it meant.

She shook her head slowly. "I'm no wilderness woman. Whatever your dad fed us last time was just fine."

"Was that quail? Waterfowl?"

Rachel put her hands up. "I don't know. It's all Greek to me." After a moment of content silence, Rachel asked, "You miss your dad when you're up here, huh?"

He nodded, a tender smile on his face.

"I know what that's like. I miss my parents, too."

Intrigued, he decided to pry her for once. "What happened to your parents, Rachel?"

She didn't hesitate before answering. "Daddy died when I was nineteen. Got involved with the wrong crowd. He was killed in a scuffle in Homestead." Frank's mouth fell open in surprise. "Then four years later, when my first song hit the charts, mama died of an overdose."

He was stunned by how casually she mentioned it. She shook her head. "She never got to see what her daughter became."

Frank looked down for a moment, processing the very intimate information Rachel had just shared so openly with him. "But she had the privilege of knowing who her daughter really was," he said.

Rachel's eyes were deep, reflecting the stars as she stared intensely at him. "You know almost everything about me now, Farmer." Her voice was full of suggestion, and he felt a surge of pleasure at her words. "Well, I guess there is one secret I can think of that I've still been keeping from you."

He raised one eyebrow for her to continue.

"That night in Miami…" she started, and his heart began to quake. "Nothing happened." He waited with bated breath for her to clarify. "I didn't sleep with Portman."

Frank never dared to think she would make this revelation. A part of him had always hoped to hear it, but he had always been unsure. It changed his entire perspective on everything that had happened between them from that trip. He realized then the reason he'd always had such a bitter taste in his mouth about Miami. It had very little to do with her behavior, terrible as she'd been; it had everything to do with her presumably lusting after another man in his presence – in particular the very man who was out to kill her.

"I wanted to make you jealous," she admitted. Seeing her humble herself in this way was overwhelmingly attractive. Frank found contentment in her words, knowing how difficult they were for her to say.

"It worked," he confessed, suppressing a sudden urge to smile.

"I hope you're mad at me for it," she said, almost aggressively. "I was a complete bitch to you."

He cocked his head in thought. "Do you find yourself doing a lot of things that you regret immediately after?"

"Yeah…"

"See, there's this thing I do called 'stop and think…'"

He laughed at the look she gave him. "Gee, thanks for the tip, Professor." She shook her head with a small smile. "I don't know, Frank, I guess I just have a short fuse is all."

He raised his eyebrows in consideration. "Believe it or not, my dad used to say that I had a short fuse."

She looked dubiously at him, her moonlit eyes tracing his body up and down where he reclined next to her. "I think yours is pretty long."

He exhaled in a nervous sort of half-laugh, relishing in the burn from her adoring gaze. "You about ready to get back inside?" He got up and dusted himself off.

"I think you're ready to get back inside," she insinuated with a smile. She was unrelenting.

He offered her his hand to help her stand up. Even through their gloves, the spark between them was intolerable. As soon as she made it through the door, she shed her layers, tossing them down on the sofa as the firelight outlined her shapely silhouette.

As he degloved his own hands, Frank felt a bit like a coyote watching a rabbit. Being alone in a room with Rachel for any amount of time was dangerous. It awakened within him a carnal insanity that had been dormant for too long. Why did she have to be so beautiful? She was so different from him in every possible way. It made him ache.

She turned to look at him when she carelessly shed her jacket, then slipped her scarf slowly from around her neck. He felt his arousal brewing rebelliously in the pit of his stomach as he watched her scarf fall like a silken snake around her feet. "Want me to keep going?" she teased in a sultry whisper, her fingers fiddling with the small buttons of her form-fitting red thermal.

He closed the distance between them, breathing heavy, and snatched her fingers away from the buttons. The gesture was faster and clumsier than he'd intended, distracted as he was by desire. It seemed to have an even stronger effect on Rachel, though, who suddenly grabbed his arms and slammed him against the lattice-paned door. She kissed him feverishly, pushing her pelvis roughly against his to prove her point. If they hadn't been sharing the house with another person, he would have fucked her against the wall until her bare back had rubbed the lacquer right off the wood.

God, what had gotten into him?

He had never endured such primal thoughts of another woman. As an openly primal creature herself, Rachel stirred a side of him that didn't seem to exist in her absence. She did everything in her life with an audience, but this was just between them. The thought made him mad with lust. It gave him a loathsome amount of pleasure to think of how adored this woman was, how she would walk into rooms and cause riots, how commanding she was over the stage and screen, how otherworldly her voice was. Her celebrity status had been a thorn in his side when he served her, but in the rare times he had her under his command, it was like a forbidden prize. If only all of her obsessed fans and stalkers could see him now . . .

Just like that, he was as hard as the rock he'd been living under. She had him wrapped around her little finger, and he wasn't mad about it. The sounds she was making were driving him crazy. Every passionate moan and musical sigh was like a knife in his heart. With all the mastery of a martial arts expert, he skillfully maneuvered her body so that she was now pushed up against the door, his hand claiming her thigh from behind to hitch her leg around his hip. Her jeans were a frustrating barrier, providing little friction and leaving little to the imagination in the way of her curves.

The advantage of having grown his hair out was that her fingers had woven into it, tenderly taming the ends on the back of his neck. She pulled him closer, begging him with every breath. All he could do was bow his head and kiss her pulse-point, reveling in the warmth of her skin. Her skin was so soft, it actually upset him. It was especially soft along the column of her throat, the birthplace of her voice, his greatest weakness. Needing to feel more, he grasped both of her wrists at her sides and pushed her sleeves up just to her elbows. The underside of her bare forearms was velvety, like the sleeves of an angel ought to be. The sensation depleted all but one percent of his control, and he knew that if he did not stop now, he would surrender it all.

"We can't," he whispered against her neck. She whimpered in agony, and it nearly undid him again. Standing up straighter, he looked down into her ebony eyes and sighed, "Not yet. Not tonight."

She threw her head back so that she was staring at the ceiling. He watched her throat ripple invitingly as she swallowed hard. Her hand rested against his racing heart and she closed her eyes, waiting for it to slow. "I can't believe you're making me wait," she whined softly.

"You know why," he said. The solemn look in her eyes confirmed this. But that solemn look simmered alive with a sudden challenge beneath her dark, wispy lashes.

"You'd better fuck me hard enough to make up for lost time," she said. The demanding tone of her voice speared his loins.

"I'll fuck you hard enough for a decade of lost time," he promised, lips just barely touching the shell of her ear.

Her eyes were teasing despite her obvious trembling. "That's a lot of pressure to put on yourself, Farmer," she warned.

"I'm good under pressure."

For the first time in thirty years, Frank took a hot shower before bed.

Author's Note: My apologies for the long wait on this chapter! I was out of town for the holidays and had no access to a computer. Hopefully this chapter makes up for the lost time. Updates should be more frequent from this point onward!

Xox, Mack