The Redhead Series

by Alice Clayton

  “Okay, thanks. Thanks so much.” I stepped into the elevator and smiled at him, my tummy suddenly very nervous at the thought that Jack was only five floors away from me.

  “Oh, and Ms. Sheridan?” he said just as I pressed the button.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m a— I’m a big fan,” he stuttered, his neck and ears going the color of a kidney bean.

  The door closed, and I was left with an embarrassed smile of my own. Surreal.

  Before I could blink, the door opened again and I was faced with a desk full of nurses who looked at me suspiciously. I imagine once word got out who was on the fifth floor, there were lots of people who seemed to have business up there.

  I walked to the desk and gave someone my name. By now my throat was dry, but my palms were not. I just wanted to see him, to make sure he was okay.

  I walked to the end of the hall, turned the knob, and went into his room.

  Lying on the bed, his face turned toward the window, was Jack. His arm in a sling, looking bruised and pale, his left eye a starburst of gray and purple, it was Jack. I gasped as I saw him—I couldn’t help it. He looked so beautiful and so terrible at the same time, and my eyes filled with tears.

  Hearing my noise, he turned to the door with an impatient groan, but his eyes widened as he took me in. The smile that threatened to break over his face was luminous, and my heart caught in my throat. But then shame crept in, and he looked down at the bed.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked quietly, wincing.

  I closed the door behind me and walked toward the bed. I stood next to him until he looked up at me. I smoothed his hair back from his face, the entire world stopping as I touched his skin.

  “Where else would I be, you stupid jerk?” I grinned down at him, scratching at his scalp lightly.

  Relief broke across his face, crowding out the shame. He closed his eyes, a small smile at the edge of his mouth, and leaned in to my hand.

  “Grace, I’m so—”

  “Shhh . . . not now. Let’s just get you fixed up and get you out of here. There’ll be time for that.” I sat down on the edge of the bed. With my fingers, I traced the face I knew so well, running a path from his forehead to his cheekbones, along his strong jaw, now colored with bruises, to his mouth, which was split in two places. When I looked back up, his eyes were on mine.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he murmured.

  The doctor who had treated Jack came in a little while later to let us know he was being released. He had no injuries other than a badly sprained shoulder, a black eye, a few stitches in his forehead, and a split lip. With prescriptions for pain medication and instructions on aftercare for the stitches and shoulder in hand, we began filling out paperwork for his release. The doctor wanted Jack to remain until after lunch, which would also give us time to make some plans.

  The lawyer Holly had hired arrived, and while he took Jack’s statement, I stepped out to call her. She answered on the first ring.

  “How bad is he?”

  “Not too bad. Sprained shoulder, black eye—he looks worse than he really is.”

  “He got lucky. Doesn’t sound like the police are going to press charges. But you can bet there’ll be a lawsuit.”

  “I was afraid of that. They’re letting him out after lunch. How’s the press?” I looked through the window into his room.

  “Stories are all over the place. His fans love him, though. They just want to know he’s okay. He needs to release a statement.”

  “No, he doesn’t. You put out a statement for him. He’s fine, he’s resting. Just a few scrapes, but he’s okay. That’s it.”

  “Sure, sure. I can work with that. You’ll be so pleased to know that I’ve heard through the grapevine—the grapevine being his sleazy publicist—that Adam is in the same hospital.”

  “Great! There’ll be a doctor close by when I slap that face right off his head,” I snapped. “Not kidding, Holly. I better not see that guy.”

  “Easy, trigger. He’s too busy tweeting to worry about you. This kind of press is great for him. Furthers his bad-boy image, you know?”

  I seethed.

  “Anyway, I’ve got Bryan flying out there now. He should be there soon. He can get you guys out, but where are you going to go?”

  I peeked back into his room. He looked exhausted.

  “We’ll go back to his hotel. He needs to get some sleep. That’ll give the lawyer time to figure out everything and determine whether Jack can leave town. This is quite a mess.” I sighed, leaning against the wall and yawning. The night and the drive were taking their toll.

  “Yep, but we’ll figure it out. I talked to the hospital administrator, and they’re gonna play ball. They’ve had VIPs there before, so they know how to handle this kind of thing. I’ll handle the press on this end.”

  “You got it. And, hey, Holly?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for calling me last night.”

  “Of course. Besides, you would’ve killed me if I let you wake up to this, right?”

  “Dead. Would have killed you dead.” I laughed.

  We said our good-byes just as I saw Bryan coming down the hall. He and I went into Jack’s room and began to plan exactly how to get him out of there with the least amount of fuss and muss.

  In the end, it was Adam who created a perfect diversion. That asshole held a press conference right in front of the hospital while we slipped out the back in a laundry truck. Honestly, sometimes it was like being in a movie . . .

  “Wow,” I breathed, setting down my bag. Spread out in front of me was a bird’s-eye view of Las Vegas as seen through the impossibly tall, floor-to-ceiling windows of the Brit’s suite. This place was mac daddy and tricked out: dining room, living room, two bedrooms—sweet mother-of-pearl, it was a palace! “Wow,” I said again, earning a sheepish smile from Jack as he moved past me and farther inside.

  He had said not a word since we left the hospital, other than a slipped curse when he bumped his shoulder while moving from the laundry truck into Bryan’s Suburban. Now he moved around the giant suite, first sitting on the couch, then moving to the dining room table, standing by the balcony but not going out. He fretted and fidgeted, not able to stand still but clearly dead on his feet. Nervous. He was nervous. His eyes met mine, then glanced away, then came right back just as fast, full of questions.

  Not ready for that, I said briskly, “Okay, let’s get you comfortable and into bed. You need to get some sleep.” I crossed to him, tugging on his good arm. “Come on, baller, which giant bedroom is yours?”

  He rolled his eyes but began to move toward one of the rooms. Once inside, he let me help him out of his jacket, which was a little difficult with the sling on his arm. Pulling down the covers, I patted the pillow.

  He finally broke the silence. “You think a nap is gonna make this better?”

  “I think it’s a start, yes. And then we’ll see.”

  “We?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “We. Now get in bed.”

  He looked like he wanted to say more, but he wisely got in. As I smoothed the covers down I caught a glimpse of tomcat on his face. “Would be nicer if you got in with me . . .”

  “Sleep, Jack,” I warned as he snorted, settling back.

  I went into the bathroom to splash some water on my face, and by the time I was finished, he was sound asleep. I went back out to the living room, tucked my legs underneath me on the couch, and began to decide what to do next.

  In a town built on playing the odds, I hoped like hell I hadn’t bet everything on a long shot . . .

  Seriously? Gambling metaphors?

  Quiet.

  nineteen

  Jack slept all day, through the night, and well into the following afternoon. Calls came in almost constantly—everyone wanted updates, everyone wanted to know what was going on. With the exception of the lawyer, who gave us the all clear to go back to L.A. when Jack was ready, I stopped answering the
phone, needing the quiet.

  Holly put out a statement acknowledging that indeed there had been an incident involving Jack Hamilton but that he was fine and in good health, and there was no further information to be shared with the media at this time.

  Adam, on the other hand, took full advantage of the interest, using the press to tell his own story. He spun a tale that furthered his bad-boy image: that it was just him and his friends out on the town for a night of drunken excess. Confirming an earlier eyewitness account, Adam let the press infer that it was Jack who had started the fight, had escalated the argument that ended in punches thrown, and that Adam had just jumped into the fray to “help out my boys.”

  Yeah. He’d called too. I picked up, then promptly hung up the phone, then called down to the front desk to make sure no more calls got through, and that they knew Adam Kasen was not to be allowed upstairs under any circumstances. Jack could argue with me about it later, but that guy wasn’t getting anywhere near me.

  I slept too, on the couch. Thinly. Not much more than dozing, really, so when Jack finally came out of the bedroom, rubbing his eyes, I sat right up. Wide-awake.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi, yourself,” I replied.

  He looked around the room, looked at the light outside. “I’m starving.”

  “I’ll bet. You’ve been asleep for a thousand years.”

  “That would explain why I feel a thousand years old.” He smiled, wincing as his face wrinkled a bit and stretched his stitches.

  “You need to eat, then take some of your pain medicine. You slept through the first round.” I started for the table where I’d left everything from the hospital. “Come on Jack, you really must be starving, and then we should probably—”

  He stopped me with a hand on my arm as I walked past him. “Then we talk, Grace,” he said, his fingertips brushing over my skin as he held me in place. “Then we talk.”

  I stopped breathing.

  He licked his lips.

  I licked my own in response.

  His tummy growled.

  I smiled.

  “Okay, we eat, then we talk,” he said, smiling a little as well.

  I sniffed.

  “How about a shower, then we eat, then we talk?” I offered.

  “Deal.” He went to get the room-service menu.

  He wants to talk? That’s new.

  That’s good.

  One shower, two cheeseburgers, and three chocolate shakes later, we sat at the table, across from each other. Over his shoulder I could see the lights of the Strip, the evening made the entire city sparkle.

  “So . . .” he began, startling me a little bit.

  “So,” I responded.

  You really should go back to speech writing . . .

  “I don’t really know how to start here. Not quite sure where to begin,” he said, fiddling with the saltshaker, head down and not meeting my eyes. The tension was growing in him. I could feel it even with seven feet of polished oak between us.

  “Hey, it’s me. Just talk,” I encouraged, wanting so much to go to his side of the table. It would be so very easy to go over to him, to crawl into his lap, to hold him close and feel his breath on my skin and make this okay for him. But I couldn’t. He had a lot to explain, and he needed to get it out. Didn’t mean the temptation wasn’t strong, though, and I clenched the arms of the chair to stop from going over there and doing just that. Especially when he was worrying that saltshaker to death.

  He grasped the shaker, held it tightly, then looked at me. “I hate my life,” he said through clenched teeth, and I blanched. Seeing my reaction, he backed up. “No, no, see, that’s the thing—parts of my life are amazing, were amazing, until I just fucked everything up. Dammit! I can’t even explain this right!” he bit out, his frustration bubbling up. “Everything—it was all getting so close, you know? Everyone wanting something, not being able to make decisions just because they felt right. Everything had to be so calculated, so planned out, and it was just . . . Fuck, I hated it!”

  I nodded for him to go on, watching as his fingers turned almost white as he squeezed the little glass bottle.

  “And it was so easy to just go out, let loose, check out, and not care, you know? At first, it was just that. But then it became a regular thing, and my God, do you know what it’s like to have people just bend over backward to get things for you? I mean, no one had a bloody clue who I was eighteen months ago, and then suddenly everyone wants to know you, wants to kiss your ass and get you whatever you want, and it’s, like, normal, right? That’s just how it is? How the fuck is that normal?” He yelled now, standing up and pacing around the room.

  “And what happens? You fuck it all up, that’s what happens. Christ, what an ass I was—to you, to everyone! It was just . . . God, it was like it was happening underwater, you know? I saw it happening, you saw it happening, but it was just so much easier to not deal with it! Not to admit it was too much, too soon, too fast, and too damned good. Just too much, too damned much.” He continued to pace as he raged.

  “And the drinking? That was one thing. I always held my own, but then it’s like, the harder we partied, the easier it was to check out, to forget all the other bullshit. And the other stuff? The coke? I can see how people can let that get inside, get inside and take over. That shit’s amazing. I only did that a few times—too much for me. The last time I did it was that night, the night your show premiered. That was the last night . . .”

  I had tears streaming down my face at this point. I couldn’t help it. The raw emotion that poured off him was staggering.

  He whirled, saw my tears, and stopped dead cold.

  “I can’t even believe you’re here, actually,” he said after a moment, his voice no longer a yell. “After the way I treated you, why in the world are you here? Shit. I wanted to call so much. I wanted to apologize, but Christ, it was so messed up! And I hated the way people were treating you because of me! The things they wrote about you? The awful things that they said just because you maybe were dating a prat like me, because you didn’t have the sense to get as far away from me as you could—”

  “Jack!” I ran around the table to stand in front of him. “No way. You don’t get to take that on, not on your own. Anything that was written about me, anything that any idiot on a website wrote, or a reporter gossiped about, nothing could be so bad that I would even think of not being with you. Don’t you know that? How can you not know that?”

  He was breathing hard, his own tears now shining in his eyes. “I watched your show, you know. I watched it every week,” he said, his voice rough as he struggled to get control. “I read every article, watched every interview, saw every picture. My God, Grace, do you know how much I wanted to call you, talk to you? You seemed like you were doing so well. You seemed happy, and I was here and so messed up. And so much time had passed. I didn’t think I could come home . . . I didn’t know if you still loved—”

  “I was going out of my mind! Are you kidding me?” I cried, slapping at his chest. “I went to bed every night wondering where you were and what you were doing, and I woke up every morning to go online to check and make sure you were okay, to see what kind of trouble you’d gotten yourself in the night before. And the mornings there wasn’t any news, I spent the day trying not to panic, hoping I wouldn’t get a call like the one I did the other night saying something had happened! That you’d been in an accident or any of the other million terrible things I dreamed up in my head because I didn’t know, Jack! I didn’t know what was going on, and the worst thing was, I couldn’t help you! So don’t give me ‘I looked happy’ or ‘I seemed like I was doing well’ when you of all people should know, it’s not always how it looks.” I paused, shaking. “And of course I still love you, Jack. Of course I do.”

  We stared at each other, both with the tears and the sniffling.

  “I’m so sorry, so damn sorry,” he whispered.

  Thank you.

  “C’mere,” I whis
pered, prying the saltshaker out of his hand and tangling my fingers with his own. Slowly I stepped closer to him, and he opened his good arm to me. I pressed myself into him, a new wave of tears showing up as I breathed in his scent and nuzzled my face into his neck.

  God. Damn. I had missed this man. I sighed into his skin as he clutched me closer, a deep throaty groan coming from him as he held me as tightly as he could. Tilting my head up, I let my eyes travel the column of his neck to his soft lips, to the strong jaw and the cheekbones for days, which now bore the scars of his troubles. And finally to his eyes, that green that swirled and deepened, forecasting his thoughts.

  “I’m so in love with you, Grace.” He looked down at me, my sweet, broken, wonderful boy. “And I’m dying to kiss you.”

  I raised up on my tippy toes as he leaned down. “I’m kind of dying for you to kiss me.”

  His lips feathered against my own, tentative, gentle, but warm. I smiled against his mouth, knowing this would not be the last conversation we had about everything that had happened, but knowing this wouldn’t be the last kiss either.

  We kissed. We kissed for two minutes or two hours, I haven’t the foggiest. We kissed long and deep, sweet and wicked. We kissed until my leg cramped and his arm fell asleep in the sling. And then we kissed some more. I fell in love with his mouth all over again, wanted to crawl inside and live there for an indeterminate amount of time.

  Would be humid, like living in Florida.

  Don’t spoil this. I’ve earned some schmaltz.

  And when his mouth began to move, tracing the tiniest of kisses along my eyes, fluttering against my eyelashes, sneaking over and nibbling on my ear in a way designed to make me come unglued, I knew there was not, could not ever be, another man who would know my body so well. And I knew where this was heading. And it would be good, so very, very good. Which is why I was completely surprised when he whispered in my ear, “Let’s go home, Crazy.”

  My eyes popped open, my neck snapped up from its position somewhere behind me, where it had fallen when he turned my spine to goo. “You want to go home now? Drive all the way back to L.A.?” I asked as he nuzzled at me.