Fake Fiance Christmas Collection: Countdown to Christmas

by Taylor Hart

  “There’s some extra fruitcake on the counter from the old lady. You might want to eat it.”

  Grant shook his head. “Whatever. Bye.”

  Giving him a quizzical look, Jewel asked, “Does he really like fruitcake?”

  Laughing, Grant threw up a hand. “Apparently so.”

  “Are you sure this is okay?”

  He grinned at her. “Absolutely.”

  Chapter 14

  After a wonderful dinner of chicken, rice, and vegetables, Jewel found herself slipping into the hot tub. The warm water felt amazing.

  Grant was still in the house changing, but he’d gotten it all ready and shoveled a little path for them. He’d put out towels, and there was music on. It was kind of flattering because being with him felt way out of her league, yet he did the work. The way he’d cooked an amazing chicken and veggie dish and made salad. Of course, she’d helped with the salad, but he’d turned on music and danced around the kitchen like he belonged there. He’d even taken her hand and danced with her.

  Truthfully, spending time with Grant felt like she was in a movie. There was no way to deny the attraction she had for him. It ebbed and flowed, but mostly it flowed.

  Now, as she waited for him and took in the breathtaking view of the Teton Mountains that were practically in Sloane’s backyard, she couldn’t help but think about what Grant had been distracting her from. Her mother. Jewel wanted this search to be over and felt exhausted by having another barrier to meeting her.

  As the bubbles engulfed her and she laid her head back against the cement, she thought of how it made sense that finding her mother would still be a journey. She’d recovered from the fact that her mother was married with a family, but now she had this niggling fear that maybe she’d been a horrible baby or something.

  “Penny for your thoughts.”

  She jolted. She hadn’t even heard Grant come out of the house.

  Plopping down next to her, he splashed her with water. “Sorry.”

  She smiled. Like she could be mad at this man after he’d done so much for her today. She shrugged and stared at him, not caring at the moment that he was beautiful.

  Leaning back, he closed his eyes. “Stop checking me out, Polka Dot.”

  “I wasn’t—” She stopped talking, not wanting to lie. “I don’t like that nickname.”

  “Teasing, sheesh.”

  Settling back, all her focus turned to this man who’d saved her bacon that morning. She would still be driving, she reasoned, if it weren’t for him.

  Silence settled between them, but it wasn’t uncomfortable silence.

  He kept his head back and his eyes closed.

  “I do like you better without the dreads,” she admitted.

  Keeping his eyes closed, he said, “See, you were checking me out.”

  Jewel pushed him softly on the shoulder.

  His hand slipped around hers and tugged it beneath the water. “If you want to touch me, just do it nicely. Don’t shove.”

  He sounded like a parent, and she smiled, nervous angst weaving into her at the touch of his hand. It was strange, but at this moment, everything circled down on her. “If you hadn’t insisted on coming, I would still be driving. I would get here late, wait all night until the gallery opened, and find out she wasn’t even there.” She sighed, thinking how awful that would have been. “So thank you.”

  His eyes opened. “You’re welcome.”

  “I don’t even know if it’s worth going to Park City …” She trailed off uncertainly.

  He squeezed her hand lightly. “We’re going, and we’re going to find her.”

  Misery swirled inside of her, and she nodded and blinked, her attention drifting away.

  “What’s wrong, Ping Pong?”

  She jerked. “Ping Pong? Where did that one come from?”

  He put a hand up. “You don’t like that one either? Note to self: she’s picky about nicknames.”

  Even though he was acting stupid, his antics made her smile.

  “See, you like me.”

  She leaned back, sucking in a breath.

  Grant pulled her hand above the surface and inspected it.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” He shrugged and put their hands back underwater.

  “What?”

  “Honestly, nothing, I just … I need some lines here, but I don’t have any writers at the moment.”

  They sat in comfortable silence, but her thoughts kept coming back to this one thing. “What kind of a mom leaves a baby at a hospital?”

  His gaze met hers.

  “What kind of a mom leaves a baby with a Raggedy Ann doll and then … and then twenty- five years later ends up married?” She threw up her hands. “Owning an art gallery? With another child? Even if she had something going on in her life then, couldn’t she have reached out later?”

  He squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged, and there was nothing more to say. It was mystical, really, that they were holding hands. “I don’t think we should do this.” She tugged her hand away.

  He slipped his head all the way beneath the water and popped back up, brushing the water off his face and shaking out his hair.

  The water splashed her again. “Hey!”

  His grin widened, and she imagined it had looked like that when he was a teenager. That smile was just a bit mischievous.

  “I still don’t get why you wanted to bring me. And don’t say you want to earn angel’s wings.”

  He let out a laugh. “Yeah, because we know that ain’t gonna happen, don’t we?”

  She scowled. “Don’t twist my words.”

  Grant sighed. “When I saw you hurriedly scrawl a check so that kid could be part of the camp, it made an impression on me.” He glanced up at her, and the air thickened between them. “I mean, have you ever heard the expression ‘when there’s one rat, there has to be fifty rats’?”

  “No.” Why was he talking about rats?

  He cleared his throat and sat up. “I was ten when my dad passed.”

  Her heart rate ratcheted up a notch. She remembered reading about it, but she’d noticed that Grant never spoke of his father. When the press asked him questions, he’d say he preferred to keep his father’s memory sacred. She admired that.

  “One year, before we moved to Colorado, we lived closer to New York. We lived in base housing that was old and run down. All I remember is that one day my mama yelled that there was a rat. When my father came home that night, he enlisted me and Walker and Zane to help because we were the oldest.”

  She nodded.

  “We went on a hunt. My father had bought some traps and some poison. He sat us boys down and said, ‘Men—’” Grant grinned. “I always loved how he addressed us as men. Like we were his soldiers. Anyway, he said, ‘Men, here’s a life lesson for you.’ He was always teaching us ‘life lessons.’”

  She smiled and waited, liking how Grant was telling this story.

  “‘Men, we have a rat problem. The thing you’ll find about rats, whether it’s the actual rodent or whether it’s a person in an organization—’” Grant paused. “I remembered the word organization too, because I had to ask Zane what that meant later. Anyway, he said, ‘The thing about rats is that when you find one, there’s at least fifty more. So, we’re going to pull off these baseboards, and we’re going to put poison in their dens. We’re going to take the fight to them. We’ll catch and kill any rat that tries to escape, and then I’m going to rely on you boys to finish this job. I ship out tomorrow, but the rats will keep dying from the poison. I need you boys to clean it up. Can I count on you?’”

  Grant laughed. “You would have thought we were in charge of some clandestine operation, because Zane and Walker and I took patrol shifts. We banged a lot of rats with shovels and we cleaned them up with plastic grocery bags. When we would reopen the baseboards and find them dead, we would keep cleaning.”

  “So were there really fifty?”

/>   His eyes widened. “Final count was eighty-nine.”

  Jewel gagged. “And how did you know?”

  “We put a tally mark on our shovel with each one before we threw it out.”

  The image of him and his brothers hovering over dead rat bodies and carving the shovel handle made her shiver. “That’s crazy.”

  Grant waved a hand. “Hey, my father was right. Mama saw one rat.” He held up a finger. “One, and there were eighty-eight more.”

  She’d been so lost in the story that she’d forgotten where he was going with this.

  Grant took her hand. “When I saw you cut one check, so nonchalantly without praise or pomp or anything, I realized there must be eighty-eight more acts of service that I haven’t seen.”

  Jewel felt a surge of warmth. She thought about the countless hours she’d planned inner-city acting camps and how she’d used a lot of her own money but she’d never expected anything else. She did feel passionate about those kids getting the same opportunities. “It’s not a big deal, because I love it.”

  Grant scooted closer to her, his eyes smoldering. “That’s exactly why it’s a big deal. That’s exactly why I’ve been stalking you and wanted to come with you. Initially, my infatuation may have been because you called me a hack. Then I saw your goodness, and that was really attractive. You’re real. And you’re right. You have a job that matters. You reach out to people, and you’re beautiful without being fake. No fake eyelashes, fake hair, fake—”

  “Body parts.” Embarrassment burned through her, and she couldn’t believe she’d said that. But she’d been thinking about the supermodels and famous actresses he’d dated.

  Grant squeezed her hand. “Exactly.”

  Jewel felt self-conscious, imagining all the women he’d dated, probably kissed, probably … her mind shied away from that last thought. “You’ve dated lots of women.”

  Sucking in a slow breath, he nodded and played with the bubbles on the surface of the hot tub. “True.”

  She didn’t know why, but it kinda felt like it mattered. “We’re so different.”

  “That’s true too, but maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe you can suddenly just know when something might be right?” He grinned. “My brother Tom was just telling me about this phenomenon.”

  She was confused, but she didn’t want to press it. How come it suddenly felt like it didn’t matter if they were so different? “Grant, that … I really don’t understand what you’re saying. All I know is that, even after this ‘jet trip,’ you’re going to go back to your Hollywood world, and I’ll just be an acting teacher.”

  “When my contract’s over, maybe you would consider dating for real.”

  Jewel was flattered, but she still didn’t see how it would work. Plus, she felt overwhelmed with this journey to find her mother.

  “Don’t answer now.” He lifted her hand out of the water again, tracing her palm.

  “You going to tell me my fortune?”

  He sighed.

  Suddenly, she wanted to know more. “Why don’t you ever talk about the Secret Service?”

  Every part of him tensed, and she could tell she’d just gone into uncharted territory again.

  “I think it might help you,” she said. Was that really why she wanted him to talk about it? To help him? She didn’t know.

  “Because someone I loved died because of me.”

  Her heart ached for him, and she squeezed his hand. “I’ve seen the footage. You took a bullet for her. You tried—”

  His jaw clenched hard, and he dropped her hand, looking away. “Trying isn’t succeeding.” His words were clipped, and he swung his blue eyes to hers. “Trying is stupid.”

  She felt the pain, the anger, the pure hatred toward himself in those words. Unable to help it, her eyes were drawn to the scar on his shoulder. She thought about the president’s daughter and how, just like Jewel had to live with something that hurt her, he also lived with knowing he couldn’t prevent the girl’s death.

  “Please, don’t look at that,” he said, staring off at the mountains.

  His pain was beautiful and horrible, and all she wanted to do was soothe it. That was a new feeling for her. Gently, she put her hand on his shoulder. “You can trust me.”

  She thought he might, but then he took her hand away. “Sorry, that’s one of the untouchables for me.”

  “You’re a good man, Grant Kent.” Her heart raced, and the attraction between them was powerful. Even more powerful was their connection. “You should forgive yourself. Because you are forgiven. I feel that. You’ve suffered enough for that little girl.”

  He looked angry enough that she thought he’d storm out. Without asking, without warning, he leaned in and brushed his lips to hers.

  It was soft and gentle and brief. Their lips lingered after the kiss was over, and she knew he was deciding if he should kiss her again.

  She didn’t wait for him to decide. She looped her arms around his shoulders, and right or wrong, she pulled him back to her.

  He reacted, putting his hands on her waist and drawing her closer.

  The kiss was slow, and a wave of thoughts rushed over her. This man had kissed a lot of women, and dang, he was good at it.

  Moving her hands to his hair, she ran her hands through the short, wet bristles, then back to his face. He had the perfect sexy facial hair: not too long, just a couple of days of growth, just a bit prickly.

  His hands ran up her shoulders and tangled in her hair, gently pulling, knotting.

  The kiss deepened, and Jewel felt herself drowning. She jerked back. “Wait.”

  He let out a breath. “Yeah?”

  She struggled to pick out a single thought in the flood. “I’m here to find my mom.”

  “I know.” His breath came out quickly.

  “And this isn’t real. You’re not my fiancé.”

  “I know.” He sounded irritated that she was even saying this.

  At an utter loss for words, she pulled back and leaned against the back of the hot tub. “You can’t have a relationship. You have to be off the grid.”

  Grant nodded.

  She was confused at all the things she’d felt in that kiss. At the moment, she was overwhelmed, partly because it felt like she’d scratched the surface of something real. This man was a real man, not just a movie star, and she liked him.

  She stood, unable to take in any more emotion, unable to think about all the things that were happening in her world. “It’s been a long day. I guess I should get some sleep. Excuse me.”

  Chapter 15

  Grant knew from the moment his lips first made contact with hers that everything changed with that kiss. Or maybe he’d been changing since the moment he’d met her at the school and she’d explained why he was a hack.

  Maybe this was one of those movies where the protagonist had been waiting for something his whole life, and he didn’t know it until that special moment when he would give up anything for a woman. Had that just happened?

  Yes. He puffed out a disbelieving breath. She’d cracked all of his façades, tearing apart the layers of fake he’d put between him and the rest of the world. Amidst all those shattered walls, the light had crept in. He had seen the truth when he’d met her.

  Raking a hand through his hair, he looked up at the moon. It was bright enough that he could see the outline of the Tetons. Dang, he’d been so vulnerable with her. He’d pretty much confessed he had a mini crush on her for her goodness, and she’d excused herself. For someone who was frequently accused of being a ladies’ man in the press, he sure didn’t feel like one.

  He sucked in a breath and thought of how sad she had looked when she’d asked why her mother would have left her. The truth was, he’d never liked those kinds of questions. How come my dad died when I was ten? How come it was so hard on Mama? How come Mama had passed of cancer? How come Elsie got shot?

  That kind of thinking never helped. Normally, women weren’t pressing him about stuff like this. B
ut this woman was the kind who felt things. Real things. Maybe that’s why he’d made a concerted effort over the last five years to surround himself with the kind of women who worried about their next nail appointment or how they were too heavy on one side of their face and they needed to get a contract that agreed they would only shoot them from the left angle.

  Huh. He smiled, thinking how when he put every woman he’d dated up against Jewel Olympia, they lacked almost everything.

  Plus, Jewel wouldn’t even listen to his compliments. He could tell they just rolled off of her. She didn’t do stuff for compliments, that’s why. She was refreshing, even though everything with her felt a bit harder.

  Getting out of the hot tub, he grabbed his phone from a chair and pressed Will’s number.

  “What?” Will answered like the idiot he was.

  “Why ya gotta be so rude, dude?”

  “Rude? Rude? Do you know what I just did?”

  “No, I have something I want to ask you.” Grant didn’t feel like entertaining Will’s annoying habit of telling him about every little thing he did, and he nearly hung up and pretended he hadn’t called him. “If I wanted to know that, I would have checked my social media.”

  “Ha.” Will grunted. “I just found Tara Lighthouse. Did you know she’s living in Denver, and she’s recently divorced?”

  Grant’s mind flashed to the girl Will had dated in high school. “What?” He thought of Tom being with Emily. “Maybe there is truth to the fruitcake curse.”

  Will laughed. “Dude, I made a bet with some of the guys that we had to find the woman who got away and kiss her by Christmas Eve.”

  “That’s stupid.” Even as he said it, Grant thought it sounded kind of fun. He hadn’t really dated just one girl in high school, because he’d been so focused on theater.

  “Right, I’m the stupid one when you just rushed off to Jackson with a woman you barely know.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Tom texted me.”

  “You’re all gossips.”

  Will ignored his outburst. “What’s your question?”

  “Oh.” His mind went to the woman staying here at Sloane’s house with him. “How long do you think I’ve been a fake for?”