Second Act

by Herkness, Nancy

  “So you can have dinner with me while Aidan is off clubbing.” Hugh crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame. “You must at least have Sunday off.”

  “A lot of my clients work, so I’m open on weekends.” She finally threw in the towel. She knew Hugh wouldn’t give up until he’d gotten what he wanted. “Yesterday was my day off. That’s why I chased the stray into your movie shoot. We can have dinner next Wednesday.”

  A frown drew down Hugh’s slashing eyebrows for a split second. Then he nodded. “Wednesday it is. Tell me where to pick you up.”

  “Why don’t I just meet you at the restaurant?” She didn’t want him to see her fixer-upper row house, which was only about a third of the way toward fixed up. She’d bought the run-down building dirt cheap when she’d moved to New York, foolishly believing she could renovate it in the spare time she never had.

  “You can’t possibly think I’d agree to that,” he said.

  “I know. It’s just . . .” She surrendered and held out her hand. “Give me your phone and I’ll put my contact info in.”

  The phone he passed to her was a work of art, its ultraslim shape wrapped in brown leather with gold accents that had the unmistakable luster of fourteen karats. She tapped in her address and phone number, running her fingers over the exquisite case before handing it back. He’d finally gotten the beautiful things he’d craved.

  He swiped a few times, and her phone pinged in her lab-coat pocket. “Now you have my number,” he said. “I’ll be in touch about the time.”

  “How about seven?” Jessica said.

  “I need to check the shooting schedule.” He glanced at the elegant gold watch on his wrist. “In fact, I have to get back to the set.”

  But there was one question she wanted an answer to. “Hugh, why do you want to have dinner with me after all these years?”

  He gave an elegant shrug, the fabric of his jacket pulling tight across his broad shoulders. “You remind me of when I was a different man.”

  Hugh ducked into the limousine waiting for him outside Jessica’s clinic. He hoped like hell that the scene between his archenemy and his love interest had taken longer to shoot than expected. Otherwise, everyone would be standing around waiting for him to show up.

  Nobody would dare to complain, because Hugh was always on time and always knew his lines. Of course, he expected everyone else to do the same, which was why directors loved him. His less professional fellow cast members were not always as enthusiastic about his high standards. That meant he needed to stick to them himself.

  However, he had felt an overwhelming need to find Jess. So much so that he had been less than fully focused on his performance this morning. He’d decided he should fix the problem by tracking her down.

  Then he’d told her only part of the truth. She did remind him of another time and place, when he’d felt good about himself. Because Jess had loved him, he had felt worthy of that love. When she had handed back the ring he’d gone into debt to buy for her, the blow had felt physical. He could still remember groping for the back of their hideous plaid sofa so he didn’t crumple to his knees. Of course he’d realized they were having some problems, but he knew how great her capacity for love was. He’d counted on that.

  Then she’d rejected him.

  He’d been so devastated that he couldn’t bring himself to speak to her after that terrible night, although he’d saved her voice messages and played them over and over again. Finally, one of his friends had deleted them because his behavior was deemed unhealthy.

  Then he had let too much time go by, and his pride threw up a senseless but unyielding blockade to keep him from reaching out to break the silence between them.

  Now he knew that while he’d been pretending to be a fictional character, Jessica had been saving lives in a place that truly needed her. Not to mention that she was clearly struggling financially. He’d noted the cracked linoleum floor in the hallway of her veterinary clinic and the motley array of chairs in the waiting area. Except for the desk chair, the furniture in her office looked as though it had been scavenged from a dumpster.

  However, when he’d glanced into the examining room he’d passed by en route to Jessica’s office, the equipment gleamed with cleanliness and looked far more up to date than the computer on her receptionist’s desk. Of course, Jess would spend her money on the best care for her patients.

  Guilt shot needles into his chest, and he caught himself rubbing at it with his palm.

  The Julian Best movies had made him a fortune once Gavin had helped him negotiate a cut of the profits instead of a flat fee. The overseas distribution of the films turned out to be a box-office platinum mine. After this movie released, he intended to apply for membership in Gavin’s favorite hangout, the ultraexclusive Bellwether Club, which required that the applicant have amassed a fortune of a billion dollars, starting from scratch.

  Yes, he’d put a large percentage of his earnings into the foundation he’d started to help foster kids like the child he’d once been. But he just wrote checks and made the occasional visit to the organizations his money funded. He wasn’t down in the trenches getting his hands dirty like Jess.

  The thought added to his nagging sense of dissatisfaction with his life.

  Maybe this was just a side effect of the new, softer Julian Best. In the novel this movie was based on, Gavin Miller had killed off Julian’s old lover, the Machiavellian double agent Samantha Dubois. Gavin claimed it wasn’t because Irene Bartram, the actress who played Samantha, had interfered with Gavin’s love life, but Hugh didn’t believe it. Not that he had any sympathy for Irene. She was a first-class bitch.

  Julian’s new love was a normal woman, not involved in the spy game. Gavin’s wife, Allie, had come up with the idea as a way to humanize the super spy. It also increased the stakes—Julian would have to work doubly hard to protect her since, unlike Samantha, she didn’t have the skills to protect herself.

  So maybe Hugh’s sudden longing to be normal, to be more in touch with real life, was nothing more than too close an identification with Julian’s character.

  The limo eased to a stop by Hugh’s trailer. He heaved a sigh of relief when no stressed-out production assistant paced the curb outside it.

  But when he stepped inside, Meryl was artfully arranged on his sofa, her long legs crossed at the ankles to show off the graceful arch of her feet in their high-heeled pumps. Her skirt was slightly rucked up to reveal an expanse of smooth thigh. This time his internal sigh was not one of relief.

  “Hugh, sweetie!” she said in her honeyed voice. “Bryan told us to take a break, so I thought I’d run lines with you. Since you weren’t here, I raided your fruit bowl.” She held up a half-eaten pear. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  “How long a break?” he asked.

  She glanced at the large clock that hung on the wall opposite the sofa. “Another fifteen minutes. They were having some technical difficulties with the sound. Too much ambient noise in New York City. Who’d have thought?” Her tone was heavy with the irony he generally appreciated.

  In fact, he liked Meryl. She was prepared and professional. Unfortunately, she’d also hinted that she would like to extend their relationship to off the screen. Five years ago he might have felt the same way. Now he wanted to do his job and leave it behind him when he exited the set.

  The problem was that Meryl was so subtle he’d had no opportunity to turn her down. And he didn’t want to risk killing the chemistry she generated between them, because it showed up on the dailies. That’s one reason Bryan had cast her.

  Or maybe she was even cleverer than he thought and knew exactly what she was doing to steam up the camera lenses.

  “Must be garbage pickup day,” Hugh said. “I’ve had far too many scenes ruined by the crash of dumpsters being emptied.”

  Meryl gave a throaty chuckle. “I worked on a movie in Hawaii where they had to pay one helicopter sightseeing tour to shut down for three days because of the rotor
noise. Cost them a fortune and the tourists were grumpy, but we got our shots. That’s the movie business. You do whatever is necessary.”

  Something in her tone implied she meant more than just stopping helicopter noise. A faint disgust moved through him. “What lines did you want to run?” he asked, propping a hip against the kitchen counter.

  Meryl swung her legs off the sofa so she could pick up a sheaf of papers from the coffee table, causing her skirt to slide even farther up her thighs. He had the odd thought that Jess looked sexier in her green scrubs than Meryl did with her calculated display of flesh.

  She patted the sofa beside her and gave him the smile of a temptress. “Why don’t you sit here, and we’ll start right after we wake up and realize that we’re locked in a pitch-dark shipping container.”

  Chapter 3

  Jessica inserted her key into the lock only to discover her front door was already open. “You’re not in Iowa anymore, Aidan,” she snapped under her breath as she stepped in and shot home the dead bolt behind her. The thick oak door wouldn’t offer much protection if it wasn’t locked.

  Between Boots the cat reacting so badly to the anesthesia and Hugh showing up in her office, it had been a strange day. Thank goodness Boots seemed to have made a full recovery. However, Jessica still hadn’t regained her equilibrium after Hugh’s visit.

  “Jess! Come on in here. I have a surprise for you.” Aidan’s greeting came from the living room.

  “In a minute.” Jessica shrugged out of her puffy coat and hung it up in the hall closet. She stood for a moment, letting her gaze wander over the quarter-sawn oak paneling and the white and yellow roses depicted in the stained-glass window by the front door. The front hall was the last room she’d had a chance to renovate before she had gotten too busy with the clinic. It soothed her irritation with her brother a bit to admire the results of all her labor in stripping and revarnishing the wood.

  She took a deep breath and walked into the living room. It was still a work in progress, with only one wall rescued from the garish 1960s wallpaper that was especially cringeworthy against the exquisite Victorian woodwork. The carved marble mantel was sooty with smoke stains while the wooden planks of the floor still bore the nail damage from the wall-to-wall green shag carpet she’d pulled up.

  Seated on her blue crushed-velvet sofa were Aidan and a man with white-blond hair, drinking two of the craft beers she kept in reserve for a really bad day at the office.

  The man rose and set his beer on one of the veterinary magazines strewn over the mahogany coffee table. “Jessica, you probably don’t remember me, but I’m Pete Larson. From Wellsburg.” He smiled, his teeth straight and white.

  “Pete? The last time I saw you, you were . . .” She held her hand up level with her own head. Now he towered well over six feet with a breadth of shoulder that his blue button-down shirt outlined to good effect.

  Pete laughed. “I had a growth spurt after you left for college.” He was a year older than Aidan, which made Pete two years younger than Jessica.

  “I’ll say.” Jessica held out her hand across the table. “It’s good to see you again. Where did Aidan find you?”

  “At a bar,” her brother said. “You need to get out more, sis. Fellow Iowans are everywhere.”

  She’d made a concerted effort to leave Iowa behind, so Aidan’s supposed enticement didn’t convince her to increase her socializing. But no one in her family had ever understood her desire to get away.

  “You look great,” Pete said, genuine admiration in his gaze. “And you run your own veterinary practice in New York City. I always knew you’d make a success of yourself.”

  Jessica sat down on a carved walnut chair she’d found on the curb and refurbished. He was a nice man to say she looked good in her rumpled scrubs.

  “Want one of these excellent beers?” Aidan asked, holding up his bottle. “You have good taste in beverages.”

  Jessica decided she’d better enjoy her own beer before it disappeared. “If there are any left.”

  Aidan headed for the kitchen while Pete leaned forward, his elbows resting on well-muscled thighs clad in khaki chinos. “I’m sorry to barge in on your evening like this. Honestly, I don’t go to bars much myself. Some folks from work talked me into it, and there was Aidan. We started reminiscing, and he thought you’d want to join the fun.”

  A long-forgotten memory surfaced, making Jessica cringe inwardly. When she was a senior in high school, Aidan had persuaded her to accompany him to a party, mostly so she would drive him there. After pushing through the crush of bodies, she’d realized it was a younger crowd and had been headed for the front door when Pete had caught her wrist. “Let’s dance,” he’d shouted over the din of voices and music as he towed her toward a dark room where bodies gyrated.

  Thinking one dance couldn’t hurt, she’d joined the writhing crowd. After a few fast dances, the music had turned slow. Pete had pulled her into him, his chest and arms ropy with muscle from hauling hay bales on his family’s farm. She’d hesitated because it was not cool to get involved with your younger brother’s friend. Wellsburg was a tiny town, and word would get around. But it felt good to be pressed against his solid, male body and when he inexpertly sought her mouth with his, she’d let him kiss her.

  Soon, they’d stopped dancing altogether.

  When the music had picked up speed again, she had broken away, making it clear that the kiss had been a onetime deal. Pete probably didn’t remember any of it, but she felt a flush heat her cheeks.

  “Are you thinking about what I’m thinking about?” He gave her another smile, this one a little flirty. “There’s one memory I’ve held on to for years. You kissed me at a party when I was about, oh, fifteen. It was the best kiss I’d ever had.”

  “I was hoping you’d forgotten that. Especially since I wasn’t so nice about it afterward.”

  “No, you let me down easy. I knew I had no business kissing my friend’s big sister.” He chuckled. “But that didn’t stop me from enjoying it.”

  Aidan reappeared with her drink, which kept her from having to respond. Pete sat back on the cushions while Jessica took a gulp of beer.

  “Did you all start without me?” Aidan asked, looking back and forth between them.

  “Just a short warm-up,” Pete said with a wink for Jessica.

  “Good, because I don’t want to miss anything,” Aidan said. “Jess, do you remember when the Schmidts’ sow got loose and lay down in the middle of Route 23? She must have weighed about five hundred pounds. No one could get her to move, and traffic was backed up in both directions.”

  Jessica laughed. “All four members of the police force surrounded her, and she still wouldn’t budge.”

  “I’ve never known a hog to be impressed by a badge,” Pete said, deadpan.

  “So they called in the vo-ag teacher and he said to get Jess,” Aidan said, nodding to his sister. “I was jealous because you got out of class.”

  “I didn’t understand why Mr. Hansen thought I could move a pig, but I wasn’t going to argue with missing trigonometry.”

  “Everyone knew you were amazing with animals, even when you were a kid,” Aidan said. “And you did manage to get her off the road.”

  “You used some kind of exotic food, didn’t you?” Pete asked.

  “Exotic only to a sow in Iowa,” Jessica said. “Pigs like fresh fruit, and I figured oranges were something she wouldn’t usually get fed. Also, oranges have a strong aroma, to get her salivating. I fed her one orange to hook her on the taste and then laid a trail of fruit from the sow to the side of the highway.”

  “And so was born the legend of Jessica the Sow Whisperer,” Aidan intoned.

  “Maybe we should talk about some of your escapades,” Jessica said to her brother, as she remembered she was annoyed with him.

  “Pete’s already heard them all,” Aidan said with an airy wave of dismissal.

  “In that case, how did you end up in New York, Pete?” Jessica ask
ed.

  “Work,” he said with a shrug.

  “He’s being too modest,” Aidan said. “He got headhunted from a tech firm in Silicon Valley. Now he’s the CFO of a hot start-up.”

  “What kind of tech?” Jessica asked.

  “Capturing, packaging, and selling data exhaust,” Pete said with a twinkle in his eye. “Aren’t you glad you asked?”

  She laughed. “It sounds like a cross between hard drives and automobile engines.”

  “You’re not too far off,” Pete said. “Why don’t you have dinner with me Saturday, and I’ll explain it more fully? Or not, depending on your preference.” His tone was wry.

  Jessica rocked back in her chair. She hadn’t had—or wanted—a date in months, and all of a sudden two men had asked her out within the same day. The memory of Hugh’s intense blue eyes flitted through her brain.

  She caught sight of her brother’s face and realized he looked like a cat that had dunked its head into the cream pitcher.

  “Thanks, Pete, but I’m tied up at the clinic on Saturday. I appreciate the offer, though.”

  “What night would work better for you?” he asked without any hesitation.

  Something about how unfazed he sounded in the face of her rejection made her look at him again. He wasn’t the fifteen-year-old boy she had kissed and dumped. Pete Larson was a broad-shouldered, full-grown, very attractive man with his pale blue eyes, corn-silk hair, and big, square hands. He wore his khakis and his blue button-down shirt with the ease of someone who didn’t need clothes to prove his worth. He waited for her answer without rushing her, his patience showing a confidence that piqued her interest even more.

  She decided she deserved some fun, even if she paid for it by being exhausted the next day. “How about Sunday? But I turn into a pumpkin at nine.”

  “I hear you,” Pete said. “Monday mornings are rough. We’ll start early, then. I’ll pick you up at six.” He pulled out a cell phone that was far more utilitarian than Hugh’s. “What’s your number?”