The Gideon Affair Read online

  Copyright © 2015 by Suzanne Halliday

  THE GIDEON AFFAIR

  ISBN: 978-0-9961894-9-1

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by an means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This book is meant for mature readers who are 18+. It contains explicit language, and graphic sexual content.

  Edited by Editing for Indies

  Book Cover Design by Sara Eirew

  Formatting By Champagne Formats

  Cover Model: Pierre-Luc Lanthier

  Table of Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  QUOTE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  OTHER BOOKS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  “I remember a time when a cabbage could sell itself by being a cabbage. Nowadays it’s no good being a cabbage – unless you have an agent and pay him a commission.”

  – Jean Giraudoux, The Madwoman of Chaillot

  “Oh, no. Here he comes,” an anxious gasp next to her declared. “Move. I’m squished.”

  “Shh,” she snapped in a harsh whisper. “And stop fidgeting. Just be quiet and we’ll be fine.”

  Peering through a crack in the closet door where they hid, Paige’s breath caught when the door to the trailer whooshed open. It hit the siding with a tremendous bang, making her companion flinch.

  Flashing a menacing glare and a silently delivered, “Shh,” she elbowed the young woman by her side and hoped their sounds didn’t give them away.

  Voices carried from outside, but she wasn’t able to make out what was said. Didn’t matter, not really. All she cared about was that he came into the trailer by himself. Catching him alone was imperative. No way did she want an audience.

  There was a thud, followed shortly by another. Slow, plodding footsteps and grunts accompanied his climb up the short steps. A moment of heavy silence fell. Paige wondered if they’d been discovered, but then a long, drawn-out sigh drifted through the air, and she relaxed.

  So far, so good.

  Careful not to make so much as a rustling sound, she tilted her head to the side and peeked through the crack again. Even turned as he was with most of his back to her, she’d recognize the man anywhere.

  Looking an awful lot like a refugee from a homeless camp, he wore a long coat that at one time might have been a khaki color but was now filthy and splattered with dirt and grime.

  Hunched over slightly as if the effort to stand straight was too much, he shuffled to the couch—the exertion bringing a strained groan from his throat.

  Beside her, a stifled giggle at the man’s obvious distress got Paige’s eyes rolling. Talk about laughing at the wrong damn time!

  A mighty croak, something that landed halfway between a grunt and cry, echoed as he tore off the dirty overcoat and flung it aside. Not that it made much difference. The clothes beneath it were equally disheveled and grimy.

  Clutching the back of the sofa, he leaned for a brief second, and then, with a tremendous growl, he tore at his shirt until the sides hung open.

  Paige shrank back in mute concern. Damn. She hadn’t considered that he might get undressed while they skulked in the closet. Now, what should she do? Decisions, decisions.

  The sound of a brief struggle, typical for an elderly man taking his clothes off, got her heart thumping. And then there was a loud clunk and a half-muttered curse.

  One more peek and then she’d decide what to do.

  The man turned toward the closet. No longer hunched and bowed from the fake, weighted belly strapped to his middle, he straightened, and Paige almost laughed. It was like watching a Transformer click into shape.

  A clean white t-shirt that in no way resembled the cruddy clothes he’d removed was tossed onto the growing pile of clothing strewn on the floor. And just like that, the elderly senior who’d labored up the stairs looking like a man close to his last breath vanished. Instead of a wrinkled, saggy chest covered with gray hair, a six-pack calendar torso mocked her voyeur’s gaze.

  Phooey. Her skin prickling in all the wrong spots warned Paige that she was on thin ice. Despite the fun of lurk-stalking the quickly disrobing man, she knew it was time to act before hormones ruined their carefully thought out plan.

  Nudging her sidekick, Paige held up three fingers, then two, then one. She motioned with her head that it was time to move and forcefully opened the closet door with a mighty kick. Rushing headlong into the tiny room, the clamor of their abrupt appearance would have startled the Buddha himself.

  “Surprise!” the young woman fast on her heels squealed as they rushed toward the astonished, half-naked Adonis gaping at them. “Happy Birthday, Gideon,” she shouted excitedly.

  Paige liked the plump girl with crazy hair and the organizational skills of the Queen’s private secretary. Carolyn was a worker bee with a green tea obsession that took having an excess of energy to an eleven. Sometimes, like now, her caffeine-fueled exuberance made Paige cringe. That and the girl’s ardent fangirling over every breath their boss took were exhausting.

  “What the shit?” Gideon whooped huskily, a sly smile tugging the corners of his strikingly kissable lips.

  Wait a minute! She knew that look. They hadn’t surprised him at all. He was just playing nice for Carolyn’s benefit.

  “It was Paige’s idea,” her assistant trilled excitedly. Shoving an ice-cream cake in his face with one hand, she struggled to maintain her grip on a bundle of helium balloons that had shockingly survived the closet-bursting stunt.

  Closet-bursting stunt. Ha! She’d have to add that to her extensive résumé of worthless piffle. Accomplishments: burst out of the closet. In this insane town, that alone was likely to get her an interview. It was a shame that none of the stupid bullshit that cluttered her work experience was of any value. A Hollywood work history had the tendency to run along the lines of absurd. Something that, after nearly six years as Gideon Shaw’s personal assistant, she knew all too well.

  The warm smile he gave Carolyn was like a punch to Paige’s stomach, threading through her nervous system and heading straight to her privates. That damn knowing smirk of his always made her wet. And exactly what the hell did that say about her?

  “Was it now? Hmm.” The droll tone he delivered with such ease earned a stern eye from her. “Leave it to Paige.” He laughed at his joke and then quipped, “Actually, sounds like a great pitch idea for a reality show.”

  Punctuating the comment with a flirty wink at her adoring assistant was overkill.

  What. A. Shithead.

  “Don’t make me regret this, Sh
aw,” she muttered in a cool, overly polite voice. Straightening her shoulders, Paige pushed a pair of glasses up the bridge of her nose with her middle finger. Yes, that finger.

  Carolyn’s fangirl-gasm, though annoying and getting old, could not have been timed more perfectly. The dull ache in her back and a sharp twinge every so often real low in her belly reminded Paige this was her time of the month to say less and listen more. Letting him work her into a snit until holy-hormonal hell broke loose and she chopped him into tiny manageable pieces before scattering them to the wind was only going to give him a laugh attack.

  “Oh, you two!” Carolyn comically bawled. “Cut it out and let’s have cake!”

  The pink-haired ball of energy hurried to the kitchenette, dropping the solid ice-cream cake onto the counter with a loud thud. “It’s chocolate,” the girl swooned. “Your favorite, Gideon!”

  Oh, for heaven’s sake.

  Rolling her eyes at the object of Carolyn’s drooling display, she snapped at their boss. “Cover up before she self-combusts.”

  Snickering, he reached for the t-shirt thrown on the floor while Paige tried not to stare, something at which she failed miserably.

  Standing nearly six-foot-three, Gideon Shaw was a card-carrying member of the panty-melting hot guy club. Broad shouldered and lean, he was muscled in all the right places but not in a crazy steroid way. The natural symmetry to his physique suggested a physically active man more than a pumped up bodybuilder.

  She gave him a quick once-over before the t-shirt slid on, covering the unusual tribal ink at his waist that she knew extended down his hip. Having seen him countless times in nothing but briefs, she was aware of the marking. Even more so after one memorable occasion when he’d been wearing what the industry refers to as a cock sock for his privates—an absolute requirement in his contract. There would be no full frontal for Mister Gideon Shaw.

  She’d been hard pressed not to fall to her knees and sing out “Hallelujah” when she got a firsthand look at the magnificent body he'd been blessed with. The only thing she’d never seen happened to quite literally be just the ol’ cock and balls.

  But the rest of that remarkably sexy ink? It flowed across his hip, edging close to the seam where thigh met torso before ending perilously close to what the annoying cock sock covered. She’d never know if it went further.

  With that randy memory thoroughly rattling her composure, Paige tidied a tendril of hair that had escaped her hairband and put some real effort into appearing unmoved by his display.

  “Who’s got a lighter?” Carolyn chirped excitedly.

  The helium-filled bouquet with the obnoxiously large Over-the-Hill at 30 center balloon mocked the occasion. It was his thirty-second, but in Hollywood, the longer you believably stayed in the younger demographic, the harder your agent’s dick was. Paige wouldn’t know, but Gideon certainly did. It was his quote, after all.

  Snatching a promo lighter from a pile of swag the studio had sent over, he tossed it across the room barking, “Catch,” with a teasing chuckle.

  Carolyn snagged it with one hand and absolutely no effort. According to her résumé, she’d been co-captain of the girls’ softball team in high school. It showed.

  Applauding, their birthday boss heartily declared, “You‘re trying out for the studio team, Caro. And no whining! We need to beat those special effects guys this year.”

  With a grumpy smirk in Paige’s knowing direction, he drawled, “Sick of having to salute every time one of ‘em walks by.”

  She snorted loudly, unable to stop the rude noise because, after all, that part of winning the championship was amusing. The team that came out on top after a winner-takes-all three-game series walked away with sports glory, a hideous trophy, and the opportunity to bestow a penalty on the losing team. Nothing too outrageous, usually just a small dig that scoffed at the second-place status. The salute was minor compared to the stunts from previous winners.

  Waving a red flag opportunity at her hopelessly starstruck assistant to hang out with their boss after work hours was a recipe for disaster, but Paige bit her tongue rather than pop the girl’s happiness balloon.

  “Dibs on center field!” Carolyn hooted. “Suh-wing, right up the middle, straight for my magic glove.”

  Paige sighed, her brows snapping together. Shoot. Was the girl ridiculously infatuated? Hmm. She had to stay on top of this situation—make sure it didn’t get ugly. Carolyn was a key member of Team Shaw. Paige could only realistically do so many things in a day. Without a competent assistant she could trust, her work life would be hell.

  There was only one small complication with her reasoning, and that was Gideon himself. Paige’s primary function as his personal assistant was to support the phenomenon that was Gideon Shaw.

  After a meteoric rise through a brutal industry and having starred in several blockbusters, he was the latest mega-action star and designated sexiest man. His two most recent roles, both highly successful romantic comedies, effectively silenced a chorus of naysayers and critics. Overnight, he became a romantic lead with huge dollar signs above his head.

  Bottom line—they worked for a man who all the guys wanted to be, and every woman wanted to sleep with. Perfect.

  It was natural that Caroline would have stars in her eyes. She was twenty-one years old and new to Tinseltown. Paige remembered what that was like. She’d been just twenty-two when she’d first arrived, but not as a starstruck kid.

  In her case, she’d been at the jumping off point in a promise she’d made to herself. She’d decided that after graduation, she’d take a year to try something different. After acing four rigorous years at Cornell University, she walked away with a management degree that positioned her incredibly well for almost any industry. She had chosen courses to hone her skills in leadership, human resources, business law, entrepreneurship, and even intercultural-global business communication. She could mobilize resources like a queen bitch. In short, thanks to an incredibly expensive education, she, Paige Marie Turner from a little redneck mud fest in the boondocks, was set to tackle anything thrown her way.

  With her parents’ blessing, she emptied her dorm room, packed everything she could into her aging Nissan, and, within thirty-six hours of taking off her cap and gown, was MapQuesting her way west. All the way west. To Los Angeles, California. The City of Angels—with no idea what was next for her.

  She enjoyed thinking back on those early days. Back when all that she took for granted today was new and exciting. A planner by nature, Paige disliked flying by the seat of her pants, so she gave herself ten days to freak out and act like a typical tourist. Get it out of her system so she could concentrate on the work before her—finding a job and a new life.

  Managing on a shoestring budget in the outrageously expensive town presented endless challenges but luck had been on her side. She'd been in the right place at the right time to land a studio apartment in the Valley that she rented on the cheap.

  God, she had loved that apartment. Situated on the top floor of a two-story complex shaped like a crooked U, her front window had looked out over the pool in the courtyard and the bougainvillea and palm tree-lined driveway. To Paige, it had been a slice of heaven.

  And that was where she’d first encountered Gideon; only he wasn’t called that at the time.

  There was nothing more enjoyable than yanking Paige’s chain.

  Hmm. Well, maybe that wasn’t entirely accurate. He also enjoyed animal videos. The funnier, the better. His all-time favorites were of a smiling kitten sliding on its back across a polished floor. And another of a huge Great Dane, who must’ve thought he was the size of a handbag, trying to squeeze into a child’s car seat. That shit never failed to make him laugh.

  But when it came to fucking with Paige? Practically his favorite pastime.

  He knew she was somewhere in his trailer the second the door flew open and the unmistakable scent of soap and mint filled the air. Those two things had made an impression on him the very f
irst time he’d ever spoken to her.

  The years since had been a whirlwind, but she’d stuck by his side. Over time, as their relationship had deepened, she became his closest friend and ally. In a town where your entourage mattered, his consisted of an enigmatic country girl with a fancy degree who made others green with envy. Never without an endless supply of Wintergreen Breathsavers stuffed in every pocket, bag, and center console, she was his most trusted assistant … and the only person besides his family who knew the real man behind the movie star image.

  Oh, yeah. And Caro was part of the entourage, only she didn’t actually know him. Her part in his crazy world was as someone with absolute integrity who willingly took a blood oath to serve him faithfully all the days of her life and essentially be his number one groupie. He wasn’t so full of himself that he didn’t recognize the charity of her adoration, always making sure to consider her feelings and talents.

  He might be the one in the spotlight, but he knew that Paige was the real star. Her drive and the fact that she had more in the way of balls than half the people he knew had done more to shape his movie career than his acting had.

  After six years of working side by side, Paige and he were a formidable duo. During that time, he went from being a pool guy to earning insane sums of money for taking off his shirt, playing bang-bang shoot ‘em up, and nailing his sexy leading lady co-star. She easily finished his sentences, diplomatically dismissed a bedmate five minutes past her welcome, and micromanaged his agent without the crazed dynamo realizing she was playing him. He also asked her to weigh in on every project passed his way.

  Paige Turner was unique, and no, he didn’t hesitate to chuckle at her ironic sounding name. Thank god she was eye-rollingly used to it.

  She was also indispensable, and that should have been the end of it if for no reason other than that the woman worked for him. The thing was, though, that he was more than just a little in lust with her. Not that she knew it, of course.

  Maybe that was why it was such fun messing with her at every opportunity. If he couldn’t have her naked and dripping with arousal—pinned to a bed by his dick while she cried out his name—he’d find his release in other ways. Jacking her up for the hell of it then jumping feet first into her reaction and holding on for a wild ride was always a good time.