Second Act

by Herkness, Nancy

  “It’s just a publicity stunt or something,” Aidan said, reaching for the phone. “Don’t let it get to you.”

  Jessica moved the phone away from his grasp, wanting to hear what other bombshells Meryl was going to drop.

  “Two very different worlds colliding,” Meryl continued. “She may find it hard to fit in.”

  Jessica’s anger faltered in the face of that truth. Meryl might be annoying, but she wasn’t wrong on at least one point. Now Jessica wasn’t sure she wanted to hear any more.

  Fortunately, the interview’s time slot was at an end. She could tell the host was frustrated, believing he could get Meryl to stir the pot more, if he only had extra time. Instead he had to turn to the camera to do the obligatory touting of Meryl and the movie.

  “How did you know about that?” Jessica said, handing the phone to her brother.

  “I’ve got alerts set for Hugh and the movie title. When the paps started bothering you, I thought it might be a good idea. Just so you’d know if something blew up.”

  Touched by his concern, she squeezed his shoulder. “You’re a good brother.”

  “Seriously, you can’t get mad at Hugh about this,” Aidan said. “He wasn’t on the show.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going to lose any sleep over what a publicity-hungry actress says to get attention.” Jessica turned the burner back on and picked up the spatula. Aidan hovered for a moment and then went back to the table when his sister appeared unperturbed.

  She knew in her heart of hearts that Hugh would have told her if there had ever been anything between him and Meryl. That she trusted him on. But she wondered if he was okay with the actress’s innuendos. His fame had made him cynical about the stories the press published, but this seemed different to Jessica. Meryl worked with him, so her words carried the weight of real access. Would her staff and clients believe Meryl and feel sorry for Jessica now? Or even worse, think she was a gullible fool?

  She cursed as she realized the mushrooms were turning black while she stewed about the unexpected drawbacks of loving a celebrity.

  “You okay?” Aidan looked up from his phone.

  “The mushrooms just got a bit burned.” And so had she.

  “What the hell does she think she’s doing?” Hugh slammed the cell phone down on his hotel suite’s coffee table, making his assistant, Trevor, wince, possibly because it was Trevor’s phone being abused. “How long ago was this aired?” Hugh demanded.

  Trevor picked up his phone and checked the screen’s integrity. “About two hours.”

  “Shit!” Hugh vaulted off the sofa where he’d been reviewing tomorrow’s script to stalk around the living room. “Where is my damn phone? I hope Jess hasn’t seen this.”

  A ringtone issued from another room. “It’s in your bedroom,” Trevor said. “I’ll keep letting it ring until you find it.”

  Hugh turned on one heel to veer toward the sound. Equal parts of anger and fear boiled in his chest. He knew Meryl had made the whole thing up, but Jess didn’t. Would she believe him if he told her that? If it had been in a tabloid, she would, but Meryl was his costar and it had come from her own mouth on television. His anger escalated to fury. How dare Meryl drag the woman he loved into a sordid quest for media attention!

  Instead of calling Jess, he scrolled to Meryl’s cell number.

  “Hugh, baby, I was just having some fun. No harm, no foul,” she said without preamble, her voice amused.

  “You’re wrong about that. It was extremely foul. I’m pissed as all hell at you.”

  “Don’t be that way.” Meryl’s tone shifted to cajoling.

  Hugh came to a decision. “You’re going to apologize to Jessica tonight. In person.”

  “Have you forgotten we’re in DC and she’s in New York? And it’s snowing?” Now she sounded exasperated.

  “That’s what helicopters are for. It’s not snowing hard enough to stop them from flying. Trevor will let you know when and where to meet me for the flight.”

  “Do you intend to make everyone who says something you don’t like about your girlfriend apologize in person? Because if you do, you won’t have much time to make movies. She’ll need to toughen up if she’s going to keep dating you. And by the way, I’m not being dragged to New York in the snow to grovel in front of her.”

  A red mist hazed over Hugh’s vision, but his voice was arctic. “Don’t forget that Irene Bartram thought she would play Samantha Dubois for the rest of the Julian Best series. Then Irene interfered with Gavin Miller’s personal life. And now Samantha is dead.”

  Instead of being intimidated by his veiled threat, Meryl laughed. “Oh, Hugh, baby, you’re far too honorable to do anything to damage my career. In fact, I sometimes wonder how you succeeded in this dirty business with all your gleaming integrity. Nice guys usually finish last in Hollywood.”

  That one was a right hook to his chest. He had not been at all nice to Jessica in those early scrambling days of his ascent to stardom. It was only because he’d made it to the top that he could afford to have principles now.

  All the anger drained out of him. “Forget it. I don’t need you there. But I’m going to give you some advice. Don’t discount the power of integrity. Doing the right thing may appear inconvenient at times, but it breeds trust, which is a valuable commodity in this business.” He didn’t give Meryl a chance to respond before he disconnected.

  For a long moment, he simply stared down at his cell phone before hitting Jessica’s number on speed dial. A shudder of fear passed through him. What if she didn’t believe that Meryl was lying?

  Her greeting held nothing but pleasure at hearing his voice. There was no sign of anger or distress, so she must not have seen the interview. He dreaded the revulsion he might hear, but he had to tell her. “Jess, I’m calling because Meryl gave a television interview this evening and said things that were not only untrue but which could upset you.”

  “Oh, I saw it. Aidan has some sort of alert set up on his phone.” Yet she sounded untroubled. “I kind of liked Meryl when I met her in your trailer, so it surprised me that she would do that. But I guess she wanted to stir up some publicity, right?”

  Hugh winced at Jessica’s matter-of-fact tone. He hated knowing his cynicism had rubbed off on her. Yet relief rolled through him that Meryl’s insinuations hadn’t sent her running for the exit. “Just to be clear, there has never been any kind of relationship between Meryl and me, other than a professional one.” He didn’t mention that Meryl had tried and failed.

  “I never doubted that you would have told me if there was.”

  “I’m coming up there to prove it to you. Tonight.”

  “Oh, Hugh, you don’t have to do that. I mean, I’d love to see you. I miss you all the time, but you have to work tomorrow.” She sounded torn between happiness and distress.

  “I’ll text you my expected arrival time as soon as I know it. I won’t keep you long because you have to work, too, but I need to talk with you face-to-face.”

  “It will be wonderful to see you.” She sounded like she meant it. “I love you.”

  “I adore you.” He disconnected and walked back into the living room to put Trevor to work on travel arrangements.

  Two and a half hours later, the limousine pulled up at Jessica’s house. The wrought iron lamp over her front door tinted the snowflakes drifting down with a golden glow, and the solid, brick Victorian town house projected an air of timeless serenity that he envied.

  Unfortunately, the trip had given him far too much time to think about what Meryl had said. He had tried to dismiss her comments about Jessica needing to be tough as sour grapes, but she’d planted the seeds of misgivings in his mind, where they’d taken root. His righteous anger had diminished into an uneasy sense of guilt by the time he exited the limousine.

  Jessica opened the door just as Hugh walked up the steps, so he could enter straight into the warmth of her home and her presence.

  She wore jeans and a purple sweat
er, and her hair fell in a shining curtain over her shoulders. He wanted to stand and bask in the sight of her after just a day’s absence. He hated to think how intensely he’d miss her after the weeks his foreign filming schedule would keep them apart. Meryl’s words about exactly that echoed through his brain.

  He bent to brush his lips against Jess’s, tamping down his desire to pull her against him so he could feel every inch of her body. “Hello, my love. I’m so sorry to arrive late on a work night, but this is important.”

  He searched Jess’s face, trying to read what she really felt about Meryl’s stupid ploy. But her expression wasn’t giving anything away. So he simply wrapped his arms around her, folding her into him as he inhaled the fragrance of her soft hair, and the warm, feminine scent that was just Jess. “I’m sorry, my love,” he said again.

  She melted into him, her arms tight around his waist. “Hey, it got you here when I was missing you like crazy, so I’m not complaining.”

  Hugh closed his eyes. Only Jess could have the generosity of heart to see this as a positive. He ran one hand over the silk of her hair.

  She continued, her voice muffled again his chest. “I just have to get used to this sort of thing, and I might as well start now.”

  The guilt sliced at Hugh. “No, we should at least be able to trust my colleagues to behave like professionals.”

  “It wasn’t that terrible, because I didn’t believe her.” Jess sighed, her breath a whisper. “I’m more worried about what my clients are going to think. They’re not used to having a celebrity’s, um, girlfriend in their midst, so they don’t know that most of that crap is made up.”

  Remorse sank its talons deep into Hugh’s chest. He hadn’t considered the impact on her employees and clients. He lived in a bubble with his multimillion-dollar houses, chartered private helicopters, and staff to ward off unwanted intrusions. But Jess had to deal with the fallout from stunts like Meryl’s. Expecting her to join him in his majestic isolation was out of the question. Her work was part of who she was. He couldn’t cut her off from that. Yet Meryl had reminded him of the conflicts it would create.

  “Can you enlist Carla’s help with that? She tells it like it is.” Hugh knew that was a cop-out, but he was grasping at straws.

  Jess tilted her head to look up at him. “Carla would be happy to run interference, but I have to handle this myself. It won’t be the last time gossip will circulate about us. I need to learn not to care.”

  “No!” Her words ripped into him like bullets, making him face the truth. “Caring makes you the person you are. It’s why I love you.” He somehow forced his arms to fall away from her. He took a long step back so that she had to release him, too. “You were right back then, Jess. You don’t belong in my world.” His world of isolation and pretense, of meaningless air-kisses and backbiting gossip. “It was wrong of me to try to draw you back into it.”

  She stood with her arms still slightly curved as though ready to wind them back around his waist. “What are you talking about?” she said. “You didn’t draw me into it. I came willingly.”

  He curled his hands into fists so he wouldn’t reach for her again. “You don’t understand the price you would pay. Even I didn’t understand it until now.” He made himself tell her the unpleasant realities he had been withholding. “You know my limo driver? He’s also a bodyguard, specifically trained to deal with the possibility of armed kidnapping. You’d need someone like him.”

  Her expression went from baffled to stunned, but he didn’t stop.

  “When I’m making a Julian Best movie—and I will make one every two years now that Gavin’s overcome his writer’s block—I spend a solid six months traveling with virtually no breaks. We would have a hard time seeing each other, given that you have an important job to do.”

  She started to speak, but he lifted his hand. “And no matter how many interviews we give, the paparazzi will never go away. Something like Meryl’s stupidity will happen, and they’ll stake out your clinic, interfere with your clients, and make themselves a pain in your ass until you’ll give up and stop working there.” He shook his head. “I can’t do this to you, Jess.”

  She went silent, and he could see her absorbing the truth of what he’d said. But then anger flashed in her eyes. “Don’t make decisions for me. I love you. That makes it worth dealing with all those other issues.”

  He wished that were true. “Eight years ago, you hated all the trappings that went with my job, and it’s a thousand times worse now.” He scraped his fingers through his hair, trying to explain his nightmare. She would hate it, and she would want out. Again. “I was tough already—I needed to be—so I didn’t have to change. You would have to alter the most fundamental qualities about yourself. You would come to resent, if not me, then our life together.” As pain joined the anger on her face and clawed at his gut, he realized why he’d welcomed the anger. He deserved it.

  “Why do you think I can’t be strong enough to ignore gossip and still care about what’s important?” Jess waved her hands in frustration. “I’m not that same naive girl I was when we met, you know. I live in New York City, for God’s sake. Doesn’t that tell you something about my toughness?”

  “That’s exactly the issue. You live in the real world. I can’t anymore.” He would never be able to make her understand how artificial his life was, how few people he trusted. Hell, that was why he’d fallen in love with her again . . . or maybe had never stopped loving her. She counterbalanced all of that. “I can’t do this, Jess. It would kill me to see you come to hate me.” And walk away. Into the arms of someone like Pete Larson, a normal, hardworking fellow Iowan who would give her a happy life with two kids, four dogs, and a white picket fence. Hugh wanted to rip down that picket fence with his bare hands.

  Jessica closed the distance between them and poked a finger at his chest, her hair rippling with every movement. “You can’t predict what I will feel. You can’t decide this is wrong without my agreement.”

  He couldn’t stop himself. He curled his hands around her shoulders, savoring the feel of her vitality under his palms. “I love you too much to destroy you.”

  His desire to kiss her one more time nearly overwhelmed his certainty that he’d be lost if he did. He clenched his jaw and simply tried to memorize all the beloved features of her face to carry with him when the darkness started to close in.

  Then he bolted out the door.

  Jessica stood in the hallway, staring at the oak panels of her front door. Surely Hugh would stride back through it at any moment, saying he had temporarily lost his mind. He’d come all the way to New York just to apologize. How had that metamorphosed into breaking up with her? Her mind refused to accept it, even as her heart began to crack into fragments of loss and anguish.

  Her knees started to tremble, so she tottered over to the stairway and sat down on the hard wooden step.

  She’d been so careful not to make a big deal out of Meryl’s interview. He was the one who’d decided the incident was so awful that he needed to fly up here in a helicopter. She braced her elbows on her knees and dropped her face into her hands. What had she said to drive him away? Only that she needed to learn not to care about stupid gossip. How had that set him off?

  He had spoken as though he was listening to some strange voice in his head, reeling off a list of reasons she would come to hate him, when she had thought he was there to make sure she still loved him.

  Baffled, she closed her eyes and let the tears leak down her cheeks. Maybe he’d decided Meryl really would make a better girlfriend. The actress already lived in his world, as he kept referring to it. She understood the rules. It would be easier for Hugh. Maybe he’d realized that on the trip up to New York.

  No, Jessica didn’t—couldn’t—believe that. Hugh wouldn’t lie to her about his relationship with his costar.

  She thought back eight years and saw that the pattern was the same. He didn’t love her enough to allow her to adjust to the pitfalls of
his fame. He needed her to fit in right away or he became frustrated.

  Maybe he was right. Maybe she wasn’t cut out to love a movie star, except in a brief, bright flare of passion. Maybe the price of loving him was higher than she could afford.

  Desolation flooded through her, wrenching a sob from her throat.

  The price of losing him seemed even higher.

  Chapter 22

  A text pinged on Jessica’s phone as she finished up the notes on her last patient. It was probably Aidan. After she had told him about Hugh, her brother had appointed himself her sympathetic guardian, checking up on her multiple times a day. He even informed her he’d sent a blistering text message to Hugh, telling him what a heartless jerk he was. That had actually made Jessica smile, albeit with a sad twist. It took all her willpower not to ask if Hugh had responded.

  The thought of Hugh sent a dagger thrust lancing through her, and she had to lean against the counter for a moment to get through the pain of his absence. She hadn’t expected to feel this level of anguish. Hugh had only been back in her life for a few weeks. How had he become so necessary to her?

  She sucked in a couple of shallow breaths before she pulled out her phone. She might as well send Aidan a reassuring message.

  But the text wasn’t from her brother. It was from Pete. She opened it with trepidation.

  I know tomorrow is your day off, so I hoped I might be able to buy you a friendly drink, emphasis on “friendly.” Aidan says you could use one.

  Jessica groaned. Aidan had evidently decided that five days was all she needed to get over Hugh, and it was time for her to move on. Or move back to Pete. But the truth was that she had been dreading the long, empty hours of her day off. She could use a drink with a friend. Maybe she should go.

  Just then, Tiana ushered in a golden retriever mix and his owner. “Looks like Casimir has a hematoma in his right ear,” the vet tech said.

  Jessica shoved her phone back in her pocket and forgot about the text. Until another ping sounded a couple of hours later.