by Nicole Helm
The sound of an engine starting prompted Celia to reopen her eyes. She couldn’t face Ryan, so she didn’t look in his direction. She opened the passenger car door and slid into the passenger seat.
Seconds ticked by, maybe minutes, maybe hours. She kept her body rigid, her gaze straight ahead. The Celia armor was back on. Where it belonged.
Chapter Nine
Ryan walked into his house, Celia trudging behind him. He hadn’t said anything in the car, hadn’t let himself unleash the kind of anger brewing inside him on Celia when she was obviously already at the end of her rope. She didn’t deserve his anger when it wasn’t geared at her. It was for Cathy. For his father. For himself, sure, but not her.
She’d looked so much like beaten-down, beaten-up, scared-and-alone CeeCee. And he was teenager Ry. The pathetic kid who’d never really done anything for her.
In fact, he’d made everything worse. Well, his father had. What else was new there?
“Say something.” Celia looked at him, imploring, desperate. “Please say something.”
“What do you want me to say?”
She walked away, circling his couch, stopping in the kitchen. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I…I need help.”
It was tempting to give her that. To set her down and put together a plan where they’d both get what they wanted, but for what? It didn’t do anything for them when they’d loved each other, why would it do anything now?
“Eventually, she’s going to run me dry.” Celia gripped the edge of the table. “I’m not sure I can keep up.”
“And for what? So you can get the roles you want? You’re going to give her that much money just so people don’t send you the wrong kinds of scripts?” He couldn’t understand it. No matter what she’d dreamed, no matter what she wanted to forget, how could she be giving that much money to Cathy?
“You don’t get it.”
“So explain it to me.”
“What does it matter, Ryan? What does any of this matter? I’ve lost. You heard her. What I really am? It’s not just about money anymore. I…can’t fight that. I can only put it off for a little longer.” The last words broke and he tried not to feel her pain along with his own.
It was a valid question. What did it matter? But it did. She did. He cared for the woman he’d once been in love with and for the woman who’d come back here, guns blazing. She’d gone after what she wanted and succeeded beyond anything most people even dreamed was possible. This woman in front of him now wasn’t the girl he’d loved back then. But there was still…something there.
He could keep pretending it was old feelings causing this concern, this want to protect, but there was something about the woman now, underneath the Celia Grant lie, that he very much couldn’t get out of his head.
“I’m falling apart here. I need… I’ve done a few days filming. We can ask Vivvy if that’s enough. I can’t be here anymore.” She fisted a hand at her heart. “This is my nightmare. Worse than back then.”
“How could anything be worse than then?”
“I didn’t have a choice then.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “It was terrible. Worse because he physically hurt me, but…but, I didn’t have anywhere to go or any way to escape. It was the worst, but it was out of my hands. Right now all that’s standing in the way of what I want is you keeping me here to do this show so we can get the annulment.”
It was possibly true. And nothing different from what she’d said when she’d first arrived. So why did it hurt a little more now? Why did the prick of conscience pop up now? “I’m not trying to hurt you, but you can’t go.” He wasn’t ready for her to go.
The fact that it was for him and not the show scared the living shit out of him. That wasn’t supposed to happen. He was supposed to get what he wanted and move on, but somehow what she wanted got mixed up in there. She got mixed up in there.
“This show is so important you can’t give me this?”
He hesitated because neither answer would be right. Would give them what they needed. “I’ll talk to Hank. We’ll make sure you don’t have to see her again. I’ll discuss wrapping things up earlier with Vivvy. I’ll…do what I can.”
She didn’t say anything, but after a beat, she nodded.
“I don’t want Cathy to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you.” So why did he feel as though he was anyway? Constantly hurting her, and himself.
“I know.” She took a deep breath. “I do believe you’re not trying to hurt me,” she said, managing a smile, as sad and pathetic as that was. She touched fingertips to his chest, right above his heart. “You stepped in. Between us. Me and her.”
And he didn’t care what he was or wasn’t. He just cared that she’d touched him. “Of course I did.” Without thinking the action through, he took her hand in his and squeezed. “That woman.” He wished he had something to punch. Cathy McAvoy was the scum of the earth. Maybe worse than that. “Where’s karma when you need it?”
She made a little sound, something like a laugh. A tiny glimpse of a laugh anyway. Then she looked at him, and even though the expression wasn’t some blank Celia construct, it was something he didn’t understand, couldn’t name.
“I won’t let her come in here and hurt you. She’s not going to use our past against you. She doesn’t have that right.” And maybe he hadn’t had that right, either, so maybe he was a hypocrite, but so be it. “But you stood up to her. I’ve never seen you stand up to her. She’s threatening you because she’s scared. Scared of what you are. You can beat her. I know you can.”
She blinked up at him, her mouth hanging open for a second. Her brows drew together and her breath came out in a gust. “Ryan.”
“Huh?”
“Would you consider doing something for me?”
She stood there, the midday sun slanted against her face, making her eyes seem bluer. Like a spotlight. And he should remember that’s who she was, that’s what she wanted. The spotlight. This character she’d created. That’s what she wanted, what she’d always wanted.
Not him. Never him.
But when her hand cupped his face, rasping her thumb across the stubble on his jaw, cheekbone, he didn’t move. He didn’t, or maybe couldn’t, force himself to believe he didn’t matter or that they hadn’t. Something, whether it was a possible thing or not, was between them. In the here and now as much as in the past.
Her other hand came up, cupped the other side of his face, and then pulled until their mouths were only a whisper of breath apart. “Show me something good.” Her mouth brushed his, not enough. Never enough. “Please.”
He liked to think her “please” wasn’t what undid him. He liked to think he was in control; he just happened to want to kiss her back. To fist his hands in her shirt and pull her to him, body to body.
But there was more to it, and that made him desperate and stupid and wrong, but her lips were on his, her hands roaming his back, so who gave a shit about wrong?
…
“God, you feel good.” His hands roamed over her arms, her neck, her face. She pulled the bottom of his shirt from his jeans, pushed it up with shaky hands. A voice, her common sense perhaps, kept telling her this risked everything. It would hurt more to leave. She should be calling Brad or Aubrey or the whole damn universe, anything but doing this with him.
But he had his hands fisted in her hair, he was murmuring encouraging words, he was holding her here so she couldn’t think. She couldn’t think beyond that one thing. Good. She wanted a reminder good existed. Somewhere. Anywhere.
But especially with him, the man who’d first shown her that good was possible. That thought spurred her on, so she grabbed his arm and led him to his bedroom.
They were going to do this, and it would be her reminder, her talisman for as long as she needed it. She still existed, and that wasn’t the end of the world.
He brushed a palm over her hair, pressed his mouth to the side of her neck. God, not the end of the world.
“Cee, are you su
re you want to do this?”
In what universe could she say no with his mouth on her neck, pressing kisses along the curve all the way up to the base of her hairline? “Completely.”
“Good.” He fumbled with her belt, so she took over, and then they were both shedding their clothes as quickly as possible, tumbling onto the bed in a mix of arms and legs and not one ounce of reason or sense between them.
Celia tried to catch her breath, catch her scrambling mind in one coherent thought. She got out his name, but his lips met hers and any other word was lost.
Still, his kiss slowed, lingered. Their hands no longer frantically touched anywhere close. They clung together, tangled up in his sheets, skin against skin. His fingertips brushed her jaw, her neck, down the curve of her shoulder.
“You’re beautiful.”
Celia closed her eyes. Why should his compliment cause her pain and joy at the same time? “I pay a lot of people a lot of money to make me beautiful.”
“You were always beautiful.”
Oh, God. He was going to make her cry. He was going to make her feel like…like someone she hadn’t been in a very long time. A woman stripped of every lie, every polished facade. Just a woman. Just her.
Tentatively, as though together for the first time, as if he were new, unexplored territory, she touched his cheek. She kissed him and let go. His tongue traced her lips, and she sighed against his mouth.
Celia gave over to her emotions, to the sensation that being together meant more than it should. She gave herself over completely, in a way she’d only ever done with Ryan.
Only ever would do with Ryan.
He leveraged his body over hers, whispering things she didn’t catch as his hands roamed her body. She clung to his neck, to the metallic smell of airplane grease fighting with the pine scent of his soap. She tangled her fingers in his hair, bringing him closer, desperate to be so close there wouldn’t be one breath of space between them.
He paused, and to Celia it felt like the now-or-never moment. Were they really going to give in to the dangerous, altering feelings? Or would reason make an appearance, a last-ditch effort to remind them they could never be to each other what they had once been?
He retrieved a condom from the dresser, and she took it from him. Screw reason. It had no place today. She slid the condom on and Ryan let out an audible sigh, sliding slowly inside her, resting his forehead on hers, her body completely covered by his heated skin.
No amount of logic could undercut what she felt, what she would always feel when Ryan was inside her, a part of her.
They moved slowly together, languorous movements, just a torturous climb, a million almost-there moments coming closer together, then further apart, then back together again. She cupped his cheeks, kept his mouth on hers. He used one arm to keep his weight from crushing her, his opposite hand tracing the outline of her body. Over and over again.
Knowing it was the wrong move, Celia opened her eyes. Their mouths parted, but they kept so close she could make out every detail in his face—every hard plane, every spot of rough whiskers meeting soft skin.
His eyes held hers, a dark green in the murky light of his room. They didn’t speak, but Celia knew they were saying something neither of them wanted to admit out loud. Something neither of them wanted to accept.
They cared. The people they’d become fit. But only here. In this moment. In this place. It could never work anywhere else. It could never last. But for now, in this moment, they cared. Deeply. For each other.
Emotion ebbed into the moment until they fell into just sensation, holding on to each other as if it was all they had left.
Chapter Ten
Ryan stared at the ceiling, because if he looked to the right and at Celia, he wasn’t sure what he might say. It was out of the ordinary for him, but he’d give himself a pass since he’d just slept with his exish-wife.
“It was…the good thing I needed,” she offered into the silence.
He forced himself to glance over. She was staring at the ceiling as he had been, and she had the sheet pulled all the way up to her chin.
“Don’t you have an Oscar? That was the least convincing response to sex I’ve ever heard.” Humor seemed the way to go. A much better response than regret, completely favored over seriousness. Emotions. Dealing.
Not appealing at all.
“Well, at least I wasn’t acting during.”
Ryan snorted.
“I think we’re better at that than we used to be.”
“I’d say so.”
“Maybe even better than the rainstorm night.” She pressed her face into his shoulder, snuggled in. As though this was…something that was okay. Even though he knew he shouldn’t believe it, he wanted to.
“I don’t know. That was pretty hot. You were wearing that see-through white shirt.”
“You remember that?”
“A man does not forget a see-through white shirt.” He trailed his fingers along her bare arm. It was the first time remembering didn’t hurt, and he wanted that moment to last.
She tilted her head back, beautiful and smiling, and his heart did things he wasn’t at all comfortable analyzing. So he touched her cheek, brushed his thumb across her bottom lip until her smile dimmed and she turned back toward the ceiling.
“We… Well, I can’t say we shouldn’t have, but I’m not sure…what I can let it mean.” She said each word carefully, her gaze never straying from the pure white of the ceiling. “I wanted to do it. I certainly don’t regret it, but…”
“But the distraction is over and now the bad stuff is back.” Because, big surprise, sex didn’t solve a damn thing.
“It wasn’t just distraction.” She pushed out a breath, blowing hair out of her face. “But we need to get to Harrington. Filming is supposed to start back up in ten minutes. People will talk.”
Yes, they would. He wasn’t sure getting back on time was going to change that. They’d left together at lunch and would return together. Even if no one was raising an eyebrow at him playing chauffeur, it was a stretch to think it would all be ignored.
Celia slid out of bed, hurriedly pushed her limbs into clothes. She paused, with her back to him. “Maybe you could call Nate and tell him we’ll be a little late. I…need to call my lawyer.”
“You’re really going to give her more money?” He didn’t understand it. Maybe he’d found a way to see how she might want to keep that dream of being Celia Grant completely separate from CeeCee, but giving money to Cathy? Hand over fist?
“Yes, I am.”
Ryan forced himself to leave the warm cocoon of insanity. “Did you ever think it might all come out anyway?”
“Why do you think I didn’t want to come here?”
Her back was still to him, even as he moved to the foot of the bed to put his pants on. It was a deliberate move on her part, he could tell, but what she was trying to do with it he wasn’t sure. “What I’m saying is, paying her off…again… You said you lost. You said it’s not just about the money, so why keep giving it to her?”
Her shoulders slumped. “Please don’t argue with me.”
“I’m not arguing. I’m trying to understand. Believe it or not, I’m on your side. I’ve told you from the beginning I didn’t do this to hurt you.”
She turned to face him, clutching her belt. “Okay, yeah, it’s a stopgap, not a solution. I told Aubrey, my publicist, that I’d think about sitting down with my mother, but… I can only handle one thing at a time. Right now, babe, you’re about all I can handle. The money will buy me the time I need.”
“She doesn’t deserve a cent from you.”
“Ryan.” She waited until his gaze met hers. “It is what it is. There’s no way to fix it. This is my life, and I’m okay with that.”
“But are you happy?” Maybe not the most sensible question to ask her. Her happiness was none of his business, and he was just now finding his own.
“Look at me. My picture is on magazines. I didn�
�t just go to the Oscars, I won. Me. I have the same award as Katharine Hepburn and Meryl Streep. I have everything I ever dreamed. How could I not be happy?”
“Because you’re paying your mother—a woman who gave you less than nothing— to keep hidden something you were right to do.”
She waved it away as if that were nothing. As if it meant nothing. “Background noise. At least it is when I’m in LA.”
“You know, I had everything I thought I wanted in KC but I wasn’t happy.”
“We’re not the same, Ry. I’ll never give it up. Not even for happy. Some things are bigger than happy.”
“Like what?”
“Control. Success.”
“You’re pretending to be someone you’re not. You’re shoving all your money at someone who doesn’t deserve a cent. I brought you here. How is that control? “
“Because I’m choosing it. All of it.”
Speechless. Again. Yes, this Celia Grant had a lot more in her arsenal than CeeCee ever had, and Ryan was beginning to think all it was was honesty.
“Is that what you wanted? When we were kids, you did all those plays, but all you ever said was you wanted to be a teacher. You never told me…”
“How could I tell anyone I dreamed of this? This.” She gestured at herself. “From that weak little girl.”
“You weren’t weak. You were a victim, and you survived.” In so many ways, he thought he’d distanced himself from the anger he’d had on her behalf, but even just a few days’ reminder was enough to have him boiling at rage. Toward a dead man. And the woman who should have saved her child. “Don’t pay her off.”
“Call Nate. Tell him we’ll be late.” She strode toward the door, and it was like erasing the past hour. Her mother showing up, sex, some kind of connection.
Gone.
He should let it go. That would be the smart thing to do, to let her go, but he’d spent his entire life being smart, and all it got him was people leaving him or him leaving them. Well, he was back at Harrington now. Maybe there was something to be said for standing in one place, and changing to accommodate it. “Wait.”