As soon as I was on his level, Pilot plunged his scruffy face into the side of my neck, and the prickle of his whiskers instantly erased all my annoyance with him. “High spirits is a very kind way of describing it. I really am sorry if he upset your dog.”
“Roxanne can take care of herself.”
I peered over Pilot’s ears at the massive, sleek head of Ian Hale’s silvery blue pit bull—probably a Staffordshire terrier. The dog’s jaws looked strong enough to bite through concrete. I wrapped an arm around Pilot’s neck, belatedly concerned for his foolish life.
“I bet she can,” I said, a little nervously.
“She wouldn’t hurt anyone except to defend herself.” He let go of Pilot’s collar and stepped back, the move putting the bulk of his body between his pit bull and me. Oh man. My heart clenched when I realized he was actually shielding his dog from me.
I scrambled to my feet, the opposite of graceful, and I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t reach out a hand to help me up. “Oh, Mr. Hale . . .”
It was clear, the exact moment when he knew I’d recognized him. He looked to the side, the sun finally falling across his rugged, golden-tanned cheekbones and bringing out bronze and copper glints in his hair, which was cropped shorter than the way it looked in the Mount Olympus movies. It was almost buzzed at the sides and back, and allowed to wave a little longer on top. The more modern style gave his handsome face a dangerous edge that struck a deep chord of awareness in my belly.
God, he was beautiful.
A muscle clenched in his hard jaw. Until the moment it vanished, I hadn’t appreciated the warmth and vitality of the man I’d been speaking to. He turned to stone right before my eyes.
I was the absolute worst. Here this international movie star was, on his day off, trying to walk his dog in peace. And then he gets besieged by a wild American lady and her mutt. Pilot leaned into my leg as if he could feel me drooping. I wanted to apologize again, this time for knowing who he was, but that seemed nuts. Everyone knew who he was. It was a fact of his life, and I could tell he accepted it, but he didn’t like it. Not one bit. I ducked my head, expecting him to just walk away, but he didn’t.
Into the excruciatingly awkward silence, I said, “You know, the most decorated dog of World War I was a pit bull named Sergeant Stubby. And not because he was an attack dog or something. His job was comforting wounded soldiers.”
He looked down at the solid, well-muscled dog sitting calmly at his side. “Makes sense.”
I wondered how much time Roxanne spent comforting Ian Hale. Probably not much, I would have assumed, between all the glamorous parties and awards shows and film sets. But something in the set of the man’s insanely broad shoulders said he was thinking of a time when he’d needed the unconditional love of a furry companion.
“The outside of a dog is good for the insides of a man,” I blurted, then flushed. “I mean, Winston Churchill said it about horses, but I think it applies to dogs too.”
“Nice bits of trivia you have at your fingertips,” he offered.
There was a definite crack in the stonework. I grinned. “I’m full of trivia. My sister would say I’m a very trivial person.”
Slanting a glance at me from under his ridiculously long lashes, Ian Hale gave me a look I’d swear I never saw on his famous face before. It was the smallest smile, just enough to kick up one corner of his beautifully shaped mouth, but it was completely and entirely genuine. And it was all for me.
It faded between one heartbeat and the next, leaving me wondering if I’d imagined it.
“I don’t believe it,” he said quietly, and for an instant I didn’t know what he was talking about.
When I picked up the thread of the conversation, I laughed, embarrassed. “Well, no. It’s kind of true. In the sense that I get easily distracted by little tangents, offshoots of whatever I’m supposed to be looking up—I’m a writer.”
“A writer. And an American.” He was looking at me now, looking right into my eyes, and it was intense. Like staring into the sun. “And a dog lover.”
“If you can call this big baby a dog.” I bent at the waist to give Pilot a good snuffle between his perked ears, and when I stood up again, Ian Hale gave me that tiny, unfamiliar, dazzling smile again.
“You love him,” he said. “That’s good.”
“I was only supposed to be fostering him until we could find him a forever home. His first owners left him tied up in their backyard and freaking moved house. Can you believe someone would do that? But in the end, I couldn’t let him go. I’ve never been very good at forever, but we’re giving it our best shot.”
I bit my lip, aware that I was babbling. But Ian Hale didn’t look bored or annoyed. In fact, his whole face had softened until he almost looked approachable, like someone I could go up to and introduce myself . . . if he hadn’t been the sexiest man I’d ever seen in my life.
“Roxanne is a rescue too. Abused as a pup.”
“Humans are the worst,” I offered, my heart swelling.
The entire situation was starting to feel like a dream. I kept expecting to wake up, or at the very least for Ian Hale—movie star Ian Hale!—to take his dog and walk off down the hill and out of my ordinary life for good.
He was nothing like I’d ever imagined him, to the extent that I’d thought of him as a real person at all. And didn’t that make me feel like a jerk? Because Ian Hale was very, very real.
It was a crisp, bright morning; a rare fall day in London without rain. I was wearing my “research uniform” of yoga pants and a chunky cable-knit sweater that swung down to my thick thighs. I surreptitiously tugged at the hem to make sure it covered my ample ass.
Ian Hale was wearing a thin white T-shirt. His bare arms, dusted with dark hair and corded with the thick muscle of a man who played a literal Greek god for a living, showed no evidence of feeling the cold breeze.
He emanated a version of the leashed vitality that I’d admired from my seat in a darkened movie theater, chocolate-covered raisins in one hand and Coke in the other. But the difference between Ian Hale as Zeus ruling the world and Ian Hale walking his dog in a baseball cap tugged low over his shockingly blue eyes . . . I couldn’t even explain it.
I mean, I would’ve expected an actor to have charisma. That wasn’t some huge surprise. But his intensity, the way he studied my face as if he didn’t want to miss a single tiny shift in expression. I never could’ve predicted that.
And the way it made me feel to be the focus of that close attention? Also surprising, because I’d always been content to sit in the back of the class and keep my head down. It was easy to hide when you were the fat girl. People’s eyes tended to skim right over me, as if my curves made me invisible.
Standing here on this windy hilltop, with Ian Hale’s gaze on me, I was having a hard time remembering what it felt like to be unseen.
Pilot whined, his wiry body wriggling with the need to run. With every fiber of my being, I did not want to cut this surreal, once-in-a-lifetime encounter short, but . . .
“I should let this guy do his thing,” I said reluctantly, glancing at my watch. “The British Museum study room I reserved opens in an hour.”
“Are you doing research for a book?”
The strangeness of being asked about my work by an attractive man heated my cheeks with something that was half embarrassment, half pleasure.
“Actually, yeah. That’s why I’m in London. I’m here to study the museum’s collection of early cookbooks.”
“You like to cook, then?” he asked, and I had to laugh, even as I felt my cheeks heat with the familiar embarrassment of admitting that, yes, I was a human person who enjoyed food. As if that wasn’t completely normal and universal. Maybe skinny women didn’t worry about it? I wouldn’t know.
“I guess that’s an easy leap to make.” I tucked a curl behind my ear self-consciously. “But no, actually, I write nonfiction. Intimate histories of ordinary things.”
“So you’re
not writing a cookbook.” He produced a tennis ball from the back pocket of his jeans and showed it to the dogs. Roxanne coiled with graceful strength and sprang after it when her master let it fly. Pilot followed, barking delightedly. “A book . . . about cookbooks?”
“You can learn a lot about a culture by reading its guides to food and cookery. From the evolution of people’s understanding of nutrition and wellness to the social implications of who the cookbook writers assume will be doing the cooking—the first major works of cookery writing were by professional chefs, mostly men, and aimed at other professional chefs. I’m interested in the moment when it shifted, in the eighteenth century. When cookbooks started appearing that were by women, for women who were maintaining their own households. Did you know the first cookbook ever published in the American colonies was by a woman? An Englishwoman, in fact. And oh my God, I’m rambling.”
I took a breath. Yikes, Mallory, way to go all nerdy professor on the guy. “I’m so sorry to go on and on.”
“No, it’s interesting,” he said as Roxanne returned, triumphant, and dropped the ball at his feet while Pilot wagged his tail as proudly as if he were the one who’d caught it. Ian Hale picked up the ball and threw it again. “You’re very passionate.”
“Huh. That’s not what my ex thought.” I froze. “I . . . did not mean to say that.”
Ian Hale’s brows lowered threateningly over his icy blue eyes. “Your ex sounds like a right wanker.”
“He really kind of was.”
“Is he part of the reason you came to London, then?”
I shrugged, but my heart was racing. We were in the middle of a public park, but somehow this felt like the most intimate conversation I’d had with a man in my whole life. Having already spilled half my guts onto the grass between us, I decided to go full out. I was never going to see this incredible man again, anyway. And the way he was looking at me, as if every word I said mattered to him—it was intoxicating.
“We had a bad breakup, yeah. But it was mostly my fault. No, really. Tony was the first guy I’d been with after a long, shall we say, dry spell. And early on, he seemed great—he paid so much attention to me, he wanted to do everything together, working out and shopping and cooking. And then I realized that all those activities were about changing me. Slimming me down and dressing me up to match some image in his head of what his perfect woman should be, until I barely recognized myself in the mirror. And I decided I’d rather be me, and be alone, than be with someone who didn’t even like the real me.”
Yup, intoxicating was the right word. I couldn’t believe I’d gushed all of that out like a drunk to a sympathetic bartender.
Only Ian Hale didn’t look sympathetic. He looked pissed.
I flinched back from the anger on his face, and his expression immediately twisted into something anguished before he looked away. His shoulders hunched and he jammed his hands into his pockets as if he was trying to make himself smaller.
Confused, I reached out to him right as Pilot rammed himself into the backs of my knees, nearly buckling them. Grateful for the distraction, I bent down to wrestle the slobbery tennis ball out of his mouth. When I looked up again, Ian Hale was halfway down the hill, striding away with his pit bull trotting obediently at his side.
What the hell just happened?
Chapter Two
“It’s not over!” Samantha’s face got larger on the screen, like she’d dragged her laptop closer to make her point.
“I dumped a load of drama about my ex-boyfriend onto a complete and total stranger who just happens to be the sexiest man alive.” I flopped backward onto my bed, holding my phone up over my head and giving my sister big, tragic eyes.
It was late in London. After a long, very distracted day of taking notes and a bit of dinnertime mooning over a bottle of wine, my tiny image in the corner of the phone screen looked even more disheveled than usual. My sister, even after having arrived home after a long commute from her high-powered corporate job at eight p.m. New York time, looked as fresh as if she’d just brushed bronzer onto her creamy cheeks.
“He talked to you,” she insisted. “For like, whole minutes. When he didn’t have to. He’s into you.”
A delicious, full-body shudder made me wriggle a little on the sheets at the very idea. “He’s not into me. That’s . . . beyond ludicrous, Sam. It’s impossible. You didn’t see him.”
“Oh, I’ve seen him. I’ve seen all of him.” She waggled her straight, full brows, referencing the near full frontal he’d done in Immortal Wars.
“Yeah, but he was different in real life. I can’t explain it.”
“I told you!” she crowed, triumphant. “Hotter in person. Admit it.”
I gave in, like I always did. “Yeah, he definitely is.”
But that wasn’t what I meant. It was more about the way he’d talked, rough and quiet and with as few words as possible. Or the darkness that filtered through the bright blue of his eyes, like the unexplored depths of the ocean. I didn’t know how to articulate it to my sister and, totally bizarrely, it almost would have felt like a betrayal to try.
Like a betrayal of Ian Hale, a man I’d met for all of ten minutes, and would never see again except on the cover of a tabloid or on the silver screen. I was losing my damn mind.
I didn’t know what Samantha saw in my face, but she got gentle all of a sudden. In that don’t-spook-the-horses tone she’d used so much in the wake of Tony, she said, “You think he couldn’t be attracted to you because Tony the Tool made you feel unlovable, but it’s so not true, Mal. You deserve to be loved.”
Always nice to hear, right? And I knew my sister meant it with her whole, huge heart. So how could I ruin the moment by pointing out the elephant in the room?
Okay, that was harsh. I was a healthy woman with lots of curves. It had taken some work, but I didn’t hate the way I looked. However, I wasn’t enough of a dreamer to delude myself that the rest of the world felt the same. I’d been hearing comments pretty much my entire life about how I’d be so sexy if I only lost twenty pounds, or how I had pretty hair or pretty eyes, because no one who was on the plus side of the scale could ever just be pretty, right?
My sister, on the other hand, looked exactly like me, but with all the fat shaved off and the curves trimmed down. She’d been popular, she’d never gone longer than a couple of weeks between boyfriends, and she could look at a magazine or a TV show and see people wearing clothes that would fit her body and look good.
Basically, Samantha didn’t get it, and I didn’t think she ever would. But she loved me with the fierce loyalty of an older sister who had never once allowed me to be bullied in our neighborhood.
So I didn’t say, “Get real, Sam. You think a man who has supermodels and A-list actresses hanging all over him is going to look twice at a chubby nerd?”
Instead I said, “I know I deserve to be loved. That’s why I ditched Tony, if you recall. But it doesn’t matter right now, because not only does Ian Hale not love me, he’s gone. He didn’t give me his number or ask for mine. I don’t know where he lives. And even if I did, what am I supposed to do, stand under his window and yell up to him asking for ten more minutes to lecture him about how the first recipe for ketchup had anchovies in it?”
She flipped a wave of dark hair out of her face. Her eyes, a clear brown just like mine, sparkled with mischief. “You don’t need to stalk him at his house. You know where he walks his dog.”
So that’s how I ended up at Primrose Hill bright and early the very next morning, slightly regretting that bottle of wine but showered and made up and wearing a cute dress. I’d even given Pilot a bath that morning, when I woke up in a panicked sweat at five a.m., nervous about what Samantha had convinced me to do.
Which was to doll up and hunt down a movie star.
I’ll just be here, I told myself silently. I won’t bother him, if he seems like he doesn’t want to talk. I’ll let him approach me. I’ll play it cool.
Play it cool. Fo
r the first time in my entire life. No problem.
Pilot nudged my hand with his cold, wet nose. He couldn't figure out why I was clutching that stupid tennis ball instead of throwing it for him to chase. My bare legs goose-pimpled in the morning fog and a light rain started misting down.
I stared around the park. There were a lot fewer people this morning, probably because the weather had turned from yesterday’s surprise sunshine back to the regularly scheduled London mist and chill. There was a white couple walking a Labrador retriever, and an older Asian lady on a bench with a sensible mackintosh and a very silly poodle. There was no tall, broad-shouldered movie star anywhere in sight.
“This was a dumb idea,” I told Pilot, who looked at me as if to say, “I agree, lady. Now throw that ball.”
I’d brought the ball to give back to Ian Hale if I saw him, but who was I kidding? He wasn’t going to show up. Yesterday was a fluke, a bizarre and random chance encounter that would never be repeated—most likely because if Ian Hale had any sense, he’d find another park so he could avoid any possibility of running into Pilot and me.
So I sighed and threw the ball, wrapping my cold arms around my torso and staring across the park at the view of central London.
I was pathetic. I couldn’t believe I’d let Samantha and Chardonnay talk me into traipsing around London in this stupid getup, pathetically hoping to run into a movie star.
“What are you wearing?”
The gravelly voice made me jump and sent my pulse into overdrive. It was him! I took a deep breath and turned to face Ian Hale, dropping my arms self-consciously to my sides. He was wearing a baseball cap again, tugged low, and a black waxed canvas jacket with a leather collar.
Which made sense, because it was like sixty degrees out, and rainy, and yet here I was in a navy blue cotton dress with tiny white polka dots. It had seemed pretty and feminine when I took it out of my closet, long enough to swirl gracefully below my knees and cover my thick thighs, but darted so that it skimmed my curves instead of hanging like a sack. I originally bought it because it had elbow-length sleeves, and I automatically loved any dress that covered my upper arms, but this one had the added bonus of a sweetheart neckline that made my generous boobs look fantastic.
Naughty Brits: An Anthology Page 25