Happily Ever Hers: Movie Stars in Maryland, Book Two

by Stewart, Delancey

  He shifted on the stool and I got the sense he was uncomfortable.

  "I'll pay you more," I said quickly. Was he worried I was asking him to do more work?

  "No," he said. "It's not that. It's just ..."

  "I need someone I can trust." I dropped my head into my hands. "It's like I don't even know what's real anymore. Does that make sense?"

  He didn't say anything for a long second, and I swiveled my head so I could see his face. I'd had lots of bodyguards since that first incident, most of who kept their distance and didn't say much. They opened doors, they lent a hand when needed. But they were like shadows. For some reason, since the day Jace was assigned to me just over a year ago, I'd felt something different from him. I was more comfortable in his presence, more at ease.

  And I couldn't pretend I hadn't entertained a fantasy or two about those muscled biceps, that hard wide torso. He was like a statue in a dark T-shirt, and something about him looked fierce and dangerous. But at the same time, he was always quick with a gentle smile, a kind word. The other guys didn't speak to me most of the time, but Jace always said hello. I'd come to think of him differently.

  It was possible I had a little crush on him. And the thrill of having him alone here with me, in my kitchen, even in the face of having just discovered my asshole husband face down in our chef, was intriguing, even through my misery.

  "You can always trust me, Miss Manchester," he said, his rich dark voice earnest and sincere.

  "Please call me Juliet."

  "Juliet."

  I smiled at him then. My heart was ripped to shreds and I felt lonelier than I ever had, despite being more successful professionally than I'd ever dreamed I could be. But there was a little glimmer of something inside me when Jace smiled back.

  Chapter Two

  Jace

  I'd never been the kind of guy who went after the most popular girl. I knew who I was—and that was just a regular guy from a small town. Not a celebrity, not even a fan. But there was something about Juliet Manchester that made me rethink everything.

  In the weeks after Zac made his spectacular exit, the firm decided to station one guard inside Juliet's house based on the fact her on-again, off-again stalker had been spotted in the neighborhood. We'd always held posts outside—two of us taking quarters in the two-bedroom guest house off the driveway. But in light of Juliet's changed circumstances, I'd been assigned to move into the main house.

  "Hey, Jace?" A light knock came at my door one night after I'd seen Juliet off to her room and turned in for the night. Things had been polite and a little tense between us. We were both getting used to the change. I liked being closer to her, and I told myself it was only because I could do my job better if I kept her in sight. But when her quiet knock came at my door in the stillness of the night, the twisting want stirring inside me had little to do with work. I knew there was nothing urgently wrong—her voice was too soft, too calm for that.

  "Juliet?" I pulled open the bedroom door, realizing a beat too late that I hadn't managed to pull my shirt back on before answering. "Oh, sorry, I was just ..." I moved across the room, pulling a loose USMC T-shirt over my head quickly. She didn't say anything until I faced her again, and it was hard to read the expression on her face. "Everything okay?"

  "Yeah, I uh … listen, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have bothered you." She began to pull the door shut again, looking so sad and defeated I nearly pulled her into my arms as my pulse raced.

  "Hey," I said, stepping to block the swing of the door. "What's up?"

  Those green eyes met mine then, her little chin tilting up to meet my gaze. She stared at me a second, and then her expression shifted and fell before she gathered herself again. "It's silly really, I just ... I didn't feel like going to sleep and I kind of wanted some company." She looked around the dark hallway at her back. "It's hard to admit this, but I guess I don't really have a lot of friends. And Elvis is out for the night. Sometimes it's lonely, that's all." She didn't meet my eye again.

  The part about the dog was no surprise. Elvis, Juliet's narcoleptic pug, was often "out." I didn't see the appeal of this particular dog, but Juliet seemed to love him, so I took on the additional responsibility of scooping him up whenever he went to sleep in the midst of a run or out in town. But the idea of Juliet being lonely made me think for a second. She was arguably the most beloved star in America—how could she be lonely? The idea made me sad.

  Juliet was watching me consider, and my heart squeezed at the pleading look in her eyes as I thought. I wanted to keep her company. She had no idea how much. But this was a job for me—one I'd been given on the back of an honorable discharge from the Marine Corps, and it would definitely be something less than honorable for me to forget that Juliet was a client. Not a friend. Definitely nothing more.

  Still, those liquid eyes and the defeated slump of her shoulders told me maybe my job was about more than just physical safety. At least right now.

  "I play a mean game of Uno," I told her, not sure quite where the words came from.

  "You do, huh?" She smiled at me. "My sister and my Gran used to play that with me."

  "Yeah?" I imagined a little white-haired lady patiently playing cards with two little girls. I was sure Juliet came from a picture-perfect background.

  "Yeah, until they got tired of losing." She practically sneered this last part, and a spike of amusement and surprise whipped through me. I hadn't seen this side of Juliet before.

  "Is that right?" I chuckled. "Well, bring it on."

  "I've got Mastermind, too," she said over her shoulder as we stepped out toward the stairs.

  "Well, now you're talking."

  We settled ourselves on the floor in her living room in front of a gas fire that made the space seem cozy, despite it being bigger than most people's homes. Juliet insisted on bringing a bottle of red wine in and pouring for us both.

  "I'm on duty," I reminded her.

  "Jace, it's after ten o'clock. You're off."

  "As long as I'm with you, I'm on." Technically, she was right—I wasn’t on the clock. But that didn't mean I was about to let down my guard. If anything happened to her on my watch, I’d never forgive myself.

  She lifted her wine glass and gave me a pointed look, daring me not to drink mine. I lifted it and we sipped. At two-hundred and twenty pounds, it would take more than a glass of wine to muddy my senses.

  "Wanna start with Mastermind? I probably intimidated you telling you about defeating all my enemies at Uno back in the day," she said. There was a playful glint in her eyes that I loved, and I relaxed a bit, enjoying myself.

  "Sure," I said, lifting the lid off the box.

  "You have played before, I take it?"

  "I loved this game when I was a kid." I smiled at her as I turned the code maker side toward me and put up the little shield so she couldn't see what I was doing.

  "Did you play with brothers? Sisters?" She huffed out a little breath. "I'm sorry. I'm just realizing I know nothing about you. And I'm being nosey."

  "No worries," I told her. I didn't share with many people, preferring to listen instead of talk most of the time. "I played with some of my cousins when I was a kid. I have a brother, but that's it."

  "But it sounds like you had a big family. That's nice."

  It was the combination of the wine, the fire, and Juliet's easy posture across from me as she leaned against the armchair and tried to break my code as we began to play. It made me want to talk.

  "My mom came from a big family. But I didn't know most of them well. She married a guy they didn't approve of, and we didn't get invited around a lot."

  Juliet's head snapped up and her eyes met mine, full of sympathy. "That's awful," she said.

  I tried to shrug it off, the old hurt of being unwanted, not good enough, was like a roughened scar that only ached a little if I bumped it. "I grew up in the south and Mom fell in love with a guy who had the wrong family and not a lot of money."

  Her eyes held min
e and warmth bloomed inside me. It was actually nice to share—I knew a little bit about Juliet Manchester. Now she would know something about me.

  "They let us come around now and then. Her parents wanted to know my brother and me. But we weren't exactly first on the list for family gatherings. The older we got, the more we understood how it was. Her family had money, ours didn’t, and Dad’s family was part of a social caste that just didn’t mix with Mom’s. For a while, her family treated us like their own personal charity case. When we were little and cute, it was fine. But it got harder as we got older and started to understand. When we weren’t cute little boys anymore, they treated us like we didn’t fit, didn’t belong. It was hard not to resent it. For Mom too, I think. And for Dad."

  "That had to be difficult," she said. "I'm from the south too. Kind of."

  "Yeah?" I didn’t know where Juliet was from. She hadn’t talked about family before.

  Juliet had still not cracked my code, though her guesses were getting close. She was only two colors off.

  "Maryland," she said. "South of the Mason-Dixon line, but not exactly the deep south."

  "Y'all were on the wrong side in the war, weren't you?"

  She laughed at my twang, something easy for me to pull back on when I wanted to. "I think you're right. I'm not exactly a history buff. You'd have to talk to my sister Tessy for that."

  "I'd rather talk to you." It slipped out before I could help it. I forgot my place, crossed a line. Something my family history should have made easy enough to remember. "I'm sorry, Juliet. That was inappropriate."

  "Was it?" She leaned slightly toward me, finishing another guess at my code. "Or maybe you're just being honest."

  I lifted the shield over my code to show her that she'd gotten it.

  "Yes!" She did a little fist pump and there was something so charming and real in the motion. If we'd been other people, in another situation, I'd have leaned across the board and kissed her right then. Maybe she felt it too, because there was a lingering moment when her gaze tangled with mine and something shuddered and shivered around us.

  I dropped her eyes, took a big swallow of wine. "Again?"

  "Yes." She busied herself setting up the board, and I sensed that she was relieved, that we’d dodged a bullet.

  As the night stilled outside and the level in the wine bottle decreased, we laughed and played childish games, and it felt more and more like we were two friends. Or something more.

  "Juliet?" I asked as we packed up the games. I felt like we’d built a bridge of sorts, like maybe now it was okay to pry a little bit. And I found that I cared about Juliet. More than I should. And I understood she was lonely, but I thought there might be something else going on. She’d looked upset when she’d come to my door.

  "Yeah?"

  "Was there something going on tonight? Earlier, when you came to my door. Is everything okay?"

  She squeezed her eyes shut a long second, her hands stilling over the game box. Then she blew out a controlled breath. "Zac is making some accusations."

  Indignation swept through me. That asshole. I'd watched him treat her like shit for a full year before she'd walked in on him. I hated the guy and had been glad to see him go, though I knew it had hurt Juliet. "Against you?" The words came out like a honed steel blade.

  "He says I cheated on him. He's suing me for a huge amount of my estate." She paused, cringed. "And there's a tape."

  I felt my eyebrows shoot up. It was hard to imagine Juliet in the kind of tape I figured she meant. "A tape?"

  "You understand," she said, blushing and dropping her eyes. "When we were first together. We made a tape."

  "Shit." I forced myself not to think about how much I might like to see such a tape. Even if it meant seeing her with Zac. I swallowed hard.

  "Yeah. Pretty much."

  "So he's blackmailing you," I said, anger sending every cell in my body into violent overdrive. I shot to my feet, unable to help it.

  "There's nothing you can do. My lawyers and manager are handling it. They'll give him a settlement to make him stop."

  "You sure?" I thought about how I’d like to settle things with Zac Stephens.

  "I hope so."

  Hope was rarely an effective offense. I knew that from my time in the Corps, but I wasn't going to overstep the bounds of my engagement here by inserting myself. She was handling it. I took a few steadying breaths in an effort to calm down.

  "Thanks for hanging out with me," she said, switching off the gas fire and picking up the bottle. She turned to head to the dark kitchen, but I stepped close, taking the empty bottle from her hand.

  "I'll take care of this. You go on up. I'm just going to do a quick perimeter check. Make sure everything's secure before I turn in."

  She sighed and the little line of worry on her forehead eased. "Thanks, Jace." She took a couple steps toward the stairs and turned back. "If I haven't said it, it's really nice having you here. Thank you."

  I watched her slim form head up the stairs, and forced my mind to shift back to where it had lived before we'd sat on the rug drinking wine and laughing together. No matter how much I liked her, Juliet Manchester was not my friend. And I was absolutely the boy from the wrong side of the tracks where she was concerned.

  Besides, it didn’t matter how I might feel. Even if I wasn't her employee, she'd never consider dating a guy like me.

  Chapter Three

  Juliet

  I listened as Jace made his rounds downstairs after I'd told him goodnight, satisfaction warming me when I finally heard him come up the stairs and close the door to his bedroom, just down the hall from mine.

  My hand rested on the door, my forehead leaned against the cool wood. I wanted to go to him again, but he would think I was some crazy desperate woman. And what would I say? Just one more round of Uno?

  It was hard, having him just down the hall, all that warm, comforting muscle. That careful smile of his.

  I didn't want it to be true—lord knew I didn't need the complication—but since Jace had moved in, my crush had begun to grow. And I was having trouble sorting through the list of actions I was considering taking as a result of my attraction to him. I was pretty sure most of those actions were completely inappropriate. Tonight I'd been desperate for company. I told myself that was it, that it was less about him and more about me. I was probably lying to myself, but I had needed a friend—even if it was one I was paying to be here.

  I glanced over at Elvis, who'd actually made it to his little white satin bejeweled dog bed before disappearing into sleep, where he spent a lot of his time. His little side was moving up and down as he snored softly, and now and then his paws twitched in a pug dream. Probably about figs. Elvis was the only dog in the world who adored figs. Good thing we lived in California.

  Elvis was a companion, when he wasn't asleep. But he wasn't exactly a friend.

  A year ago I would have called Marina, even late at night, but my marriage to Zac had created some serious distance between my best friend and me. I hadn't been able to close it since Zac had made it clear she wasn't welcome at our house. Maybe he felt threatened because she'd never liked him and had told him so. I should have listened.

  I thought about reaching out, offering an olive branch. Marina had been a good friend. She’d seen clearly things that I hadn’t been able to. It just felt like it might be too late.

  But Jace. He was so close, and so tempting. What was I going to do?

  I had decided playing children's games would be safe and not something I'd selected out of a complete misunderstanding of the situation between us.

  Other options on the list I'd considered had included things like:

  Asking him to remove all my clothes, douse me in chocolate sauce and lick every inch of me clean (probably inappropriate)

  Letting me snuggle in his lap and investigate the actual size of his massive biceps. And maybe some other parts of his anatomy (also most likely not okay). Or

  Just fling
ing open the door to his room and swan diving into his bed. (I'd never been great at diving. And there was the chance he'd turn me away. I'd had enough rejection lately.)

  I just wanted to be close to him. The way he treated me, the way he talked to me like an actual person—it made me want to spend more time with him. He was different from the other people in my life.

  The problem was that it was becoming harder and harder to sort through the kinds of things people said and did around me because of who I am supposed to be ... and not because of who I really was.

  My life was built on acting. And it turned out that as my acting career made me more and more successful, it was becoming harder and harder to figure out what was real. I had a few friends, who I suspected were much closer to side actors, all participating in the Juliet Manchester show. I had a husband, and I knew now that he'd definitely been playing a role, working for a salary comprised of fame by association and a pretty impressive assortment of material goods.

  The door to my bedroom, which I was leaning my head against, was solid and real enough—I could trust it. But there wasn't much else in my life that felt trustworthy and real.

  Except Jace.

  I pushed off the door and went to the little table in the corner of the master suite, where a lamp glowed softly. I slid into the chair and spread the file on the table open again.

  It was Jace's file, the one the company had sent me when he'd first started working for me. I was supposed to give it back, but I'd held onto it for some reason. Even back then, when I'd been married—happily, I'd thought—there'd been something in Jace's dark eyes, the steady confidence in his gaze, that had made me want to hold onto the pictures in his file. He was handsome and sure, and knowing he'd served two tours as a Marine impressed me. I stared at the service photo, Jace in his uniform, the soft olive green of the shirt beneath the camouflage setting off the dark eyes. He looked sure and capable. Just a little bit dangerous.