by Maisey Yates
Julian relied on his acting skills to fake interest. “Sounds great.”
Grace nodded, pleased. “Now I’ll show you to your private elevator.”
As he, Kat and the manager squeezed into a rickety lift that led straight to his floor, Julian wondered if he might run into the woman on the stairs again, if only to apologize.
The lift opened to a wide, sun-filled walkway leading to a pair of sturdy doors. Grace ushered them inside, all the while entertaining Kat with the highlights of the mansion’s storied past. In her excitement, she missed the luggage stacked neatly in the entrance. The Louis Vuitton weekender bag and matching tote did not belong to him. He was not a fancy-luggage type of guy.
“Come see the view from the balcony,” Grace said.
Kat followed Grace. Julian swiveled on his heel and took off in the opposite direction. The master bedroom was behind a pair of thick wood doors. He drifted over, quietly turned the heavy brass knob and peeked through the crack. There she was. Taking a selfie on the bed.
Shit. This was not the second encounter he’d hoped for. Now instead of apologizing, he’d have to call security.
He entered the room. “Does the bed feel just right, Goldilocks?”
At his words, she stiffened and dropped her phone. He took no joy in her reaction. He didn’t like seeing her so defeated where earlier she’d been so defiant. Come on. Where’s that fighting spirit? When she finally stood to confront him, her eyes were wild with panic. Julian tried to muster something stronger than amused annoyance but came up short. If it were up to him, he’d let her escape and pretend this incident never happened. This wouldn’t be the first time a fan tried to sneak into his hotel room. He was blasé enough to shrug it off. But it wasn’t up to him. She didn’t know it, but the countdown had begun. Before too long—
“Ah!” Kat screamed in Julian’s ear. “What’s going on? How did she get in?”
The manager stormed the bedroom. “Ms. Taylor!”
The porter arrived with Julian’s plain black logo-free luggage and offered to call security.
Julian stepped forward to cover Ms. Taylor from the incoming fire. She may be an intruder, but she was his intruder. But she stepped out of his shadow and addressed the room.
“Settle down,” she said. “This is just one big misunderstanding.”
Her voice was calm. Julian liked that.
“Someone get Jim up here!” Grace yelled.
“Leave Jim out of it,” she said. “It was a mistake. Probably your mistake. I bet this suite is still under my name.”
“Ms. Taylor, we have an agreement. This suite is not yours, and you know it.”
“What agreement?” Julian asked, and Ms. Taylor got him up to speed.
“The agreement we reached after she kicked me out to accommodate you.”
Julian turned to Grace. “Is that true?”
She went pale. He had his answer.
An assistant arrived, flanked by security guards and trailed by poor Jim. The comedy of errors checked out. The suite was still reserved under Ms. Taylor’s name. Jim was given the wrong key at the front desk. To complicate matters, the hotel had no vacancies.
The assistant clutched an iPad with a white-knuckled grip. “We’re fully booked for the holiday.”
“I thought the Garden Room was available,” Grace said, her voice thin.
“Full, ma’am.” An elderly guest had thrown out his back and couldn’t be moved until his pain medications kicked in. “Our hands are tied.”
Grace switched to Spanish to vent her frustration. Julian glanced at Kat. She was chewing on her bottom lip the way she did when she was anxious. All this turmoil over a hotel room was ridiculous to Julian. People liked to treat him as if he were a descendant of the royal family, but he’d stayed in hostels and motels that he’d like to forget. He’d slept in his car for a month when he first moved out to Los Angeles. He’d gladly give up the suite, but unfortunately, he needed the buffer the private floor provided.
“That’s enough,” Julian said. “Ms. Taylor and I will figure this out. We’ll draw straws or something. Please wait outside.”
“Julian, it’s not your job to figure this out,” Kat said.
“I agree, Mr. Knight,” Grace said.
“Even so, I’d prefer you clear the room.”
After he ushered the delegation out the door, Julian turned to the crafty Ms. Taylor. She stared at him with a vacant expression, and he worried that she might have suffered a stroke. “Hey! Are you okay?”
She uncurled an index finger and pointed at him. “You’re JL Knight!”
Here we go.
Julian cupped the nape of his neck and rubbed out the kinks. He could speak up now or let the madness run its course. He decided to let it run.
She continued to launch accusations. “And you’re British?”
“Jamaican and British,” he specified. “Is that bad?”
“I don’t know! Malcolm Brown was from the South Bronx.”
For two seasons, Julian had played paramedic Malcolm Brown on Riverside Rescue, a long-running network police procedural. Very few people remembered his early work. “I’ve been in a few projects since then.”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “I binge-watched Riverside last Christmas, and Malcolm was my favorite.”
“Thank you,” he said. “And sorry for this mix-up. My assistant handled the travel arrangements. Usually she’ll call, drop my name and—”
“And people drop everything?”
“Something like that.”
“Must be nice,” she said.
“You know what? It is.”
“Well, I handle my own business. You should try it sometime.”
“Want it back?” he offered. “I’ll go elsewhere.”
Sand Castle was central to his presence in Miami, but he wouldn’t have insisted on staying here had he known the suite was booked. There was no shortage of five-star hotels on the beach. And in retrospect, showing up in Miami on a holiday weekend was a stupid idea.
“Keep it,” she said firmly. “The manager will poison my food if you walk out. You’re too important.”
“How about we share it? There’s no reason you can’t stay here until the Garden, Fountain or whatever opens up.”
“You’re wrong.” She folded her arms over her chest. “There are about one hundred reasons. Top of the list—stranger danger.”
“Never played that game. Sounds fun.”
What was he doing flirting with the woman he’d caught taking a selfie on his bed? Talk about stranger danger.
“It would only be for a night, maybe two,” he said. “This place is huge. We could go for days and not run into each other.”
“There is a second bedroom with a private bath,” she said, speaking more to herself than to him.
“Look how much you know,” Julian said.
“I wrote a piece about this hotel long ago,” she said. “Also, the porter told me.”
“Good old Jim?”
She looked uneasy. “I hope I didn’t get him fired.”
“If it helps, I’ll put in a good word,” Julian said. “So, you’re a writer?”
She raised her chin. “I am.”
“What do you write?”
“Books,” she said. “Well…I wrote one book, but there are several formats.”
“Okay.”
He must have hit a sore spot. She was suddenly less sure of herself, stumbling over her words. But she was no less beautiful. The light from the windows washed over her face, warming her bronze skin and adding specks of gold to her brown eyes. Julian itched to reach for his camera.
There was a double knock on the door. He moved away from it. “They’re getting restless. Time to decide.”
She let out a sigh. “Well, what abou
t the blonde?”
Her question left him confused. “Which blonde?”
“The one you’re traveling with,” she said. “She won’t want me around. Three is a crowd.”
“Blondes are people with parents and pets and feelings. They’re objectified enough without you piling on, Ms. Taylor.”
She wrapped her arms around her waist as if to control the spread of a full-body laugh. “I apologize, Mr. Knight. Thanks for shining a light on the plight of the blondes.”
“You’re welcome,” Julian said. “Her name is Katia Wells, and she’s my assistant.”
“The one who booked your travel?”
“The same.” Kat was in Florida to attend a family reunion. She’d gladly abandoned her seat on a commercial airline to fly private with him. A car was waiting outside to take her to her grandparents’ house in Boca Raton. “If we were together, do you think she’d be waiting on the other side of the door?”
“I don’t know anything about you or how you live your life,” she said. “Which brings us back to stranger danger.”
“Yeah? Of the two of us, only one has demonstrated a disregard for social norms.”
A triple knock rattled the door. Kat called out to him. “Julian! I can get you a suite at the Fontainebleau.”
That was timely information. He liked having options.
“We could both leave,” he suggested to Ms. Taylor. “I’m sure there’s more than one available room at the Fontainebleau.”
“Or we could both stay.”
They fell silent and, in that silence, they reached an agreement. Still, there were some wrinkles to iron out. “Are you traveling alone?” he asked. “You booked this entire suite for yourself, or are you expecting a full bachelorette party?”
“Did anyone question you for wanting a suite to yourself?”
“It’s mainly for privacy reasons,” he said. “Which brings me to my one caveat.”
“Just one? I have a few.”
“You’re a writer,” Julian said.
“And you’re an actor.”
“You can’t write about me or anything that happens while you’re here.”
She eyed him with suspicion. “What do you think will happen?”
“Not much,” he said with a shrug. “I’m going to dive into bed as soon as everyone clears out. What are your plans?”
For the first time ever, she relaxed. Her rigid posture loosened, and her arms fell to her side. “Same. I’m exhausted.”
“All right, then.”
He went to open the door, but she stopped him. “Wait! Why are you being so nice?”
“This is not about niceness,” he said. “It’s about fairness. If I hadn’t showed up, you wouldn’t be in this position.”
“I got a good deal out of it,” she said.
“Yeah? What’s the deal?”
“Two free nights.”
“Not bad.”
“Right?”
Another loud, imperious knock, and the manager scolded him from the other side of the door. “Mr. Knight! This is not how we do things at Sand Castle. Let us handle it.”
This summit had to end. Julian was seriously sleep-deprived and all that knocking was drilling into his skull. He turned to her for confirmation. “Are we doing this?”
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll stay until my room becomes available. And don’t worry; I have no interest in writing about you. A, I don’t find you that compelling. B, I’m only really qualified to write about myself.”
“Not compelling?”
There were feature stories dedicated to the rise and fall of his career. A talentless hack to some, an action hero legend to others, but nothing if not compelling.
She rolled her eyes and murmured something about fragile Hollywood egos.
“Excuse me,” he said.
“Open the door before they call the cops.”
“Fair point.” He’d sweep up the shards of his ego later. “Let’s face the firing squad.”
CHAPTER THREE
Ha! Joke’s on me! The second bedroom is actually a tidy study with an attached bath. All this opulence and I’m spending the night on a pullout couch.
Nina put aside her journal and closed her eyes. She’d kept a diary since childhood. An only child, her diary was often the guardian of her deepest secrets. When her fiction had failed to sell, she’d turned a year’s worth of old journals from her late teens into a memoir—a decision she now regretted. Regretting important life decisions was becoming a pattern.
She never should have come to Miami. What had she hoped to achieve? Closure? I mean…come on! This was life, not the Oprah show, and this trip was one big, unmitigated disaster.
Oh, but that wasn’t entirely true. There was one tall, dark and handsome mitigating factor.
Nina grabbed her phone and googled JL Knight. A torrent of results crowded the small screen. She started with the facts:
Julian Leroy Knight is an English actor. He is best known for his starring role in Thunder, directed by George Kirby.
Then she searched for the fluff. There was so much of it: fan art, photographs, video, essays and articles. Nina swiped through photos of the actor posing on the red carpet to snapshots of the man stretched out all but naked on a beach. However, the most recent photo was of him, hunched low, handing a handsome black cat to an ecstatic little girl. It had a clever little caption: JL Knight literally saves the cat! There were batches of cheerful on-camera interviews and one grainy thirty-second clip of a young JL Knight, drunk at a Hollywood party, with a message for the critics who’d panned his debut feature film: “Kiss my ass!”
Celebrity gossip sites provided relationship status updates (Love Is Dead: JL Knight and Bettina Ford Have Split) and chronicled professional setbacks (JL Knight—of “Kiss My Ass” Infamy—Gets His Ass Kicked at Box Office). A few more clicks and Nina landed on a blog dedicated to the film industry that put it all in context. JL Knight’s ex-girlfriend and former costar, Bettina Ford, had spearheaded a boycott of his latest release after most of her scenes were cut in postproduction. The movie had flopped.
And, to top it all off, she came across a devastating profile of the actor in Vanities, titled Nite Nite, JL Knight.
The star’s brand of toxic masculinity should have gone the way of the Hummer. His bloated films glorify violence, celebrate hypermasculine culture and belittle women. The actor is famous for his portrayal of an assassin for hire (code name “Thunder”) in the film adaptation of a once-popular video game. In the films, he stops at nothing to fulfill a contract, sometimes destroying entire cities to wipe out one target. Having not made much of his talent, content to feed from the bottom of the Hollywood swamp, JL Knight ought to retire.
Well, damn.
Nina, a reader, writer and theater geek, was not one to line up for a big Hollywood release. A regular at her neighborhood’s art house movie theater, she preferred her movies with subtitles. All this fuss about an action movie seemed a bit much. A fast-paced, high-voltage action flick served a purpose and had a place on the entertainment spectrum—particularly at the end of a long, hard day. On the other hand, why cut the scenes of a female character? Who’d made that call? Representation mattered, and she would’ve supported a boycott.
A new-message alert popped up on her phone screen. It was a much-awaited email from her literary agent.
Had lunch with editor today. She passed on the short story collection BUT expressed great interest in a follow-up to Backstage Diva. This is promising. Let’s have lunch next week and discuss.
Nina moaned. Another memoir? She was done with all that. Backstage Diva chronicled her experience growing up in Manhattan, the daughter of a Broadway actress. The book tour had been torture. She’d had to crisscross America answering intrusive questions from strangers that she would have never entertained otherw
ise. That was the price she had to pay for offering up details of her family life for public consumption. She’d vowed never to do it again.
“Ugh!” she cried up to the ceiling. The vaulted ceiling was fresco-free, not one rosy-cheeked angel to be found—a disappointment.
Nina kicked off her shoes, stacked a couple throw pillows under her head and sank into the couch. Thunder was available for streaming, and because this qualified as a long, hard day, she slipped on her headphones and hit Play.
* * *
The best room at Sand Castle didn’t guarantee rest. Julian was stretched out on his back on the comically large bed, staring at the painted ceiling and wondered who, in their right mind, would want to have sex with angels staring down at them.
He closed his eyes, desperate for sleep. Two days ago, he’d woken up in California to the threat of wildfire overtaking his neighborhood. The view from his bedroom window was walled off with smoke. On a clear day he could see as far as the Pacific.
He’d turned on the television and checked his phone for information. The news headlines were short, capturing the general state of panic. Brush Fire Erupts. Brush Fire Doubles in Size. Fire Changes Course. An evacuation order was in effect for the Hollywood Hills. His landlord sent him a text message in all caps to reinforce it. GET PACKING! Since his landlord was also his neighbor, he couldn’t ignore the directive.
It had irked him to abandon his house, only it wasn’t his to stay and defend. The modern home, nestled in the Hollywood Hills, was a rental. He’d moved in after his breakup. The house had come fully furnished. Most of his personal belongings were still in storage, which made packing a breeze. Julian folded his clothes into two large suitcases and tossed in his toiletries. He gathered his laptop, tablet, camera, personal phone and burner phone. He emptied the contents of his file cabinet into a messenger bag. The only thing left to do was return the cat.
Wasabi, his neighbor’s green-eyed cat, would be asleep under his car. As per their routines, Julian popped open the trunk of his black Ferrari and the cat sprang out. He scooped him up. It would only take a minute to deliver him to Rosie, the neighbor’s nanny.