by Romy Sommer
“Dom never tells us fun stories like this,” Laura said, bouncing her baby on her knee. “And we’ve missed having Christian around to entertain us.”
This was why she avoided hanging out with non-celebrities. Easy for Dom to tell her to be “herself”. Being herself was exhausting when she was the performing seal, having to be “on” all the time.
“Where is Christian, anyway?” Kathy asked. “We’ve hardly seen him since he got married.”
Dom shrugged. “Working on this new project of his.” He turned to Nina. “You’re not the only one reinventing yourself at the moment.”
Then the barbecue food was set out on a table on the patio and Nina helped to lay out the crockery and cutlery. The mouthwatering display of foods was enough to make her stomach groan. She couldn’t touch at least half the foods on display, not without gaining at least five extra pounds, but the temptation was harder than usual.
“This looks amazing,” Nina commented to Dom’s mother. “Now I can see where Dom gets his cooking skills.”
Juliet coughed and both Dom and his father looked away, stifling grins.
“Mom’s a terrible cook. We don’t allow her anywhere near the kitchen,” Laura explained.
“I’m sorry.” Nina stuttered as unaccustomed heat flooded her face. So much for making them like her.
“Don’t be.” Dom’s mother patted her arm. “It’s because I can screw up even a boiled egg that my children have all emerged such excellent cooks.” She leaned close and stage-whispered. “It was all part of my diabolical master plan.”
Dom laughed and placed a reassuring hand on Nina’s waist. “I’ll show you the hole in the kitchen floor from what we call the Exploding Turkey Incident.”
His touch steadied her. It was that night at the Vanity Fair party all over again, and Dom was her lifeline, her anchor in treacherous waters.
Then she caught Moira’s raised eyebrow and slight smile, her gaze on Dom’s hand at Nina’s waist, and she flinched away from his touch.
She did not need Dom’s family getting any ideas that this was going anywhere. It meant nothing. Meeting his family meant nothing. The way that meeting his friends had meant nothing. The way the intimacy they shared when they were alone meant nothing.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and kept her smile bright. Sonia wouldn’t get a lump in her throat over things she couldn’t change either.
“Here, Dom, have another kebab.” Laura placed a skewer of roasted lamb and peppers on his plate, beside all the other offerings piled on it.
He frowned, trying to duck his plate away. “I’m a grown man, for heaven’s sake. I can get my own food if I’m hungry.”
When no one was paying them any attention she whispered in his ear: “Now I get it.”
“Get what?”
“Your need to jump in to help every damsel in distress you meet. You’re surrounded by women who dote on you and baby you, so with every other woman you need to be The Man.”
His frown cleared and he laughed. “I am The Man. And I’ll prove it to you later.”
His hand snuck to her ass and she giggled. “Oh goodie.”
After lunch, Nina helped clear away the empty plates.
“The coffee mugs are in there,” Juliet said, pointing to a cupboard as she started making a pot of coffee. “You’ll need to start learning where everything is.”
Nina stopped in her tracks. “What do you mean?”
“This is a ‘help yourself’ kind of household, so next time you’ll be expected to look after yourself.”
Next time? There wouldn’t be a next time.
Blinking against the sudden rush of emotions assaulting her, Nina fetched the mugs, set them down beside Juliet and leaned against the counter.
The hole in the laminate kitchen floor was unmistakable.
“Thanksgiving 2005,” Juliet explained with a laugh. “The last time Mom attempted cooking a turkey.”
An electric shock shot through Nina. She remembered that year’s Thanksgiving only too well. But while Dom and his family had been laughing over a spoiled turkey dinner, she’d stood beside her father’s empty casket. They still hadn’t found his body.
And then her mother had left too.
“What’s wrong?” Juliet asked, grabbing her arm. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”
Nina shook her head. “I’m okay.” The dizzying feeling passed, the prickle of tears subsided. “It’s nothing.”
She tried to move away, but Juliet still held her arm. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch. I’m a little over-protective of my little brother. It’s something I need to work on, I know. Even though he’s a grown man, I still remember when he was a kid and he wanted to be Superman and he tried to fly off the roof. I still don’t want to see him hurt.”
He wasn’t the one likely to get hurt this time. It was more likely to be the other way around. Because that’s what happened every time Nina let someone into her heart. They left and she got hurt.
She couldn’t go through that again. Never again would she open her heart to someone. She hadn’t wanted to marry Paul, but she’d been safe with him. There was no risk of losing her heart to him.
But Dominic Kelly was a risk. If he weren’t, then she wouldn’t be the blubbering mess she was right now. Grief she’d kept at bay for years crept in through the crack he’d opened in the wall she’d built around herself.
Grief intermingled with loneliness and with fear. Fear of losing him the way she’d lost everyone else she’d ever loved. She needed to get real and quickly. Before the inevitable hurt turned into full-on heartbreak.
She needed to remember that at any moment a big wave could roll in off the sea and sweep everything away. Things like that happened all the time.
As long as she remembered that, the crack wouldn’t get any wider.
She shook her head, swallowed the lump in her throat, and smiled at Juliet. “I understand. I won’t hurt him.”
“Friends, then?”
She nodded. Though that was hardly likely either. In a few weeks her training would be over and they’d never see each other again.
Returning to the yard, they were confronted with screams and tears. One of Laura’s little children had been hurt in a boisterous game and blood streamed from her knee.
“It was an accident!” wailed Eric’s sister, an older child on the cusp of teenagehood.
“Take Liam,” Laura said, thrusting her baby at Nina as she and Juliet ran to attend to the drama.
Given no choice, Nina took the baby, holding him awkwardly in the crook of an arm. What was one supposed to do with a baby? She bounced him on her hip and resisted the urge to swear as sticky fingers covered in soggy cookie crumbs twisted in her hair.
And her sister wanted one of these things so badly she’d practically taken out a second mortgage?
She looked at the baby’s downy head. So soft, smelling of warm, sweet baby smell. Her hands started to shake as a long-suppressed memory grasped hold of her.
She sighed in audible relief as Moira arrived and took the baby from her.
“You don’t have much experience with babies, do you?” Moira asked, grinning.
Nina shuddered. “No, and I don’t plan to either.”
“You don’t want to have a family of your own?” Moira’s eyes widened, her voice hushed as if Nina had spoken some kind of sacrilege.
Nina shrugged and looked away. “Babies don’t exactly fit in very well with my chosen career.”
“You’ll feel different when you’re older.” The words were spoken with that sort of smug authority that mothers got.
Nina shook her head. The long hours she worked on set weren’t conducive to raising children. And why bother having them at all if you were just going to pay someone else to raise them?
“But family is everything,” Moira persisted.
To the Kelly clan, family obviously was everything. They were a big, noisy family, who lived in each other’s po
ckets. But the Alexanders had never been like that. Service to others always came before family. After Dad died and first mom then Jess had gone off to save the world, it had just been her and Gran left in that empty, echoing house in Cedar Falls. Much as she loved her grandmother, family for her was nothing like the one she was in right now.
Nina shivered. “Not wondering how I’m going to pay my bills every month is much more important to me.”
Moira laughed, but it sounded strained. “Surely you’re rich enough you don’t need to worry about paying bills?”
It hadn’t always been that way, but that was exactly how Nina planned to keep it. She had a condo she owned outright and no one was ever taking it from her.
She plastered on a smile. “Besides, I love being famous. Living inside a goldfish bowl comes with a lot of perks and opens all sorts of doors. I can get tickets to any show, invitations to any party, reservations at any restaurant. And now that I can afford to buy stuff, people keep offering it to me for free! It’s a great life, but it’s not fair on partners or children and I wouldn’t want to put an innocent child through that.”
“You could make it work if you wanted to. Other people have.”
Nina shook her head. She’d met a few of the grown-up children of celebrities and they were even more screwed up than their parents.
“But what if you fall in love with a man who wants a family?” Moira asked and something clicked in Nina’s head. Moira wasn’t defending the virtues of familyhood. She was projecting a future for Dom. With Nina. And children.
She suppressed the manic laugh that bubbled up inside her. So not going to happen. Even if Dom were a different kind of man, she wasn’t about to become a different kind of woman.
And the moment they got out of here she was calling Wendy. The sooner she could get her hands on the morning-after pill, the better.
She’d made uncomfortable requests of her PA before. None was as excruciating as asking Wendy for contraceptives and a pregnancy test kit. As always, her PA remained professional. Nina was the one who was mortified.
“It should be effective up to three days after unprotected sex, but the longer you wait, the less effective it is,” Wendy said. “How long has it been?”
Nina’s face flamed. “Not that long,” she mumbled, hiding the brown-paper packet beneath the breakfast table before Dom’s housekeeper could spot it.
“You have the Easter Red Cross benefit in a few weeks. They want to know if you’re bringing a date. For the seating arrangements.”
Nina was sure that was a glint in Wendy’s eye as she asked, but her PA got extra credit for not glancing towards the French doors, where Dom had disappeared into the house.
“I don’t think so.” Nina’s cheeks couldn’t get any hotter. She’d forgotten all about the fundraiser. She’d need a new dress. Preferably one that wouldn’t reveal the yellowing bruises from the damage Vicki had inflicted on her yesterday. Dom had taken her at her word when she’d said she wanted to toughen up. Yesterday’s session hadn’t been stage fighting, it had been for real.
“You can be my date.” Again. One of the many perks of being a celebrity assistant was the entrée into the hottest events in town. Wendy got more of those than most.
Wendy poured herself a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice from the jug on the table. “I had lunch with the Celebrity Assistants Association on the weekend.” Her voice was a study in casual. “One of the assistants has a connection at the studio. Rumor has it Jenn Law was offered the role of Sonia, but she turned it down. It’s too similar to her role in Hunger Games and she doesn’t want to be typecast.”
“Any speculation on who else they’re looking at?” Nina’s stomach clenched with anxiety. If they’d already offered the role to someone else, then all this training was in vain. There would be no point in continuing.
She didn’t know which was worse: losing the role or stopping training.
“There are a few names on the shortlist.”
Nina’s heart thudded to the bottom of her ruby-red ballet flats. The carefully guarded look on Wendy’s face said everything her words didn’t. Whoever was on the producers’ shortlist, she wasn’t.
“Which names?” she managed to ask.
“Gracie Carr’s the current front runner.” Wendy arranged her face in a cheery smile. “But she hasn’t signed a contract, so it’s not over yet. We just need to up your game.”
“I can’t do any more than I already am.”
Wendy’s voice dropped so low even Nina barely caught the words. “But nobody knows what you’re doing. We need to leak pictures of you in training.”
Nina rubbed her temple. Dom wouldn’t like it. But Wendy was right. There were no second prizes in this contest, and she was in it to win. She wasn’t about to lose the role of a lifetime to save Dom’s feelings. “Not someone from the press. They can’t be trusted. We need a photographer we can trust to take the pictures we want. Someone with connections to the right kind of magazines, who’ll do exactly what we say.”
“Chrissie has a guy. He’ll be discreet. Dominic will never know.”
It didn’t surprise her that her PA and her publicist had already planned this out between them. After all, all their careers depended on Nina staying on the A-list as much as hers did. The responsibility weighed her shoulders down and she sighed. “Okay, call him. Today Dom’s starting me boxing. That should make for some interesting pictures. I’ll text you the address. Tell him to bring a long lens. Dom mustn’t know.”
But it wouldn’t be long before he’d find out. And too soon this idyll would be over.
Her PA had left by the time Dom returned outside, his gym bag slung over his shoulder, his t-shirt pulling up to reveal his tanned, lean abs. Nina allowed herself a satisfied smile. She’d just have to make the most of every uninterrupted minute she had left with him.
“Ready to go?” he asked.
“Give me a moment.” She hurried inside, clutching the brown paper bag. Locking herself in the bathroom, she swallowed the morning-after pill then pulled out a pregnancy test kit. Wendy had brought three. Nina fumbled open the first box.
The first rose-pink line took forever to appear. Long, heart-stopping moments as the second hand on her wristwatch ticked around. One line. The hands on her watch ticked over to five minutes.
If there was going to be a second line it would have appeared by now, surely.
Dom banged on the door. “We’re going to be late,” he called.
She carefully wrapped the remaining test kits back in the brown-paper bag and stashed them inside her toiletry bag. Then she threw away the used test and washed her hands.
When she emerged from the bathroom, it was with a bounce in her step. “Okay, I’m good to go.” Everything was going to be okay. Anything was possible.
Another two weeks flew past. Now and then Nina caught a glint of light she was sure was the lens of a camera, but Dom didn’t seem to notice and she kept her mouth shut. But the knowledge that every day together could be their last hung over her like the Sword of Damocles.
Not that she had time to dwell on her fears. Dom kept her working until long after dark each day, without a day off. In addition to boxing and Krav Maga, he’d started her doing actual stunts, everyday bread-and-butter work for stunt people, but the kinds of things most actors never attempted. The kind of things that would give film insurers heebie-jeebies if they suspected their prize actors were even attempting them.
She mastered climbing walls and sword fighting, abseiled and learned how to do low falls – step-outs and headers and back falls. Dom taught her to ride a motorcycle and how to roll across the hood of a slow-moving car, making it look as if she’d been hit.
They had their first argument when he refused to let her try a full-body burn, but she took part in a SWAT team tactical training exercise, a building entry and clearance which ended in choreographed gun fight, complete with live ammunition and squibs exploding all around.
Using
what she’d learned on the trapeze and the lyra, she did simple wirework and one of the biggest thrills was being shot off an air ram into an airbag, as if she’d been thrown by an explosion.
This was a world away from the sweet rom-com roles she’d played before and it was fun. She wanted the role of Sonia more than ever because the thought of spending the next two years of her life being paid to do this almost every day was the biggest carrot ever dangled before her. It would make the dull work of press junkets and premieres much more palatable.
By far the most fascinating aspect of stunt work, she discovered, was the planning that went into it. She listened carefully as Dom and his team plotted out every step, scrutinized the risks, discussed the safety measures. There wasn’t a single element of any stunt that was left to chance. She learned to look at stunt people in a whole new light. Like true warriors, they weren’t daredevils or adrenalin junkies. They took their work seriously.
She looked at Dom differently, too. He wasn’t the badass she’d once believed him to be. He was a professional, devoted to a job he loved, and doing it to the best of his abilities. She understood that better than anyone.
“When am I going to see you do a real stunt?” she asked, as they lay in bed one night. Her fingers trailed idly over his chest. “Vicki tells me your specialty is high falls and that you’re in very big demand.”
“I’m not accepting any stunt jobs right now. I’m training you.”
Her hand stilled. “Wendy showed me the invoice you sent her. You’ve charged your friends’ regular daily fees and for the hard costs of the protective gear and the materials you’re using to train me, but you’re not charging much for your own time.”
Dom shrugged, a slight move that dislodged her head from where it had lain against his shoulder. She leaned up on her elbow to look at him. “You’d be earning a great deal more taking on proper paying stunt work. Don’t you need the money?”
“I’m good, thanks.”
She frowned and sat up, brushing the hair out of her eyes. This bungalow might not be large, but the trendy neighborhood wasn’t exactly cheap. Nor was the brand-new Jeep parked in his garage. And from what she’d seen of his family home, his parents were comfortable but not wealthy, so it wasn’t as if they were bank-rolling him. How was he able to maintain this lifestyle without working?