by Nicole Helm
“I’m too tired to argue.”
“I won’t.”
She took a deep breath. “Pardon me if I don’t—”
He crossed the room as she spoke and before she could finish, pressed his mouth to hers. She sighed against his mouth and leaned against the wall behind her, breaking the kiss. But he didn’t break eye contact, or the determination that he was going to make things right. Whatever right might be. “I’m not going to fight with you.”
“Because you want to have sex with me?”
“There’s that.”
“What else could there be?”
That was a minefield of a question, so he’d walk around it. “I guess we’ll find out.” He gave her one last peck. “Bring whatever you need to fly the Cirrus.”
“Huh?”
“Just do it.” Then he left his room before she could argue.
They’d find out all right what else there could be. He was going to help her find a way to make this right, and maybe that meant there was a chance for them or maybe it didn’t. But somewhere between his terms and hers, his world and hers, there was a way to make this come out right for both of them. And he wouldn’t let himself believe a middle ground was fiction. If he wanted it to be possible, it’d be possible.
…
Celia eyed Ryan warily, but he was grinning at her, and that was…new.
Well, she supposed sex could cause a few grins no matter how ill-advised it was. “So, you want to fly my plane?” The crew had left for the day; Nate and Vivvy were inside the main office working on something.
And Ryan wanted to go for a sunset plane ride. What she really wanted to do was curl up in a ball and sleep and pretend that nothing that had happened today had…happened. Pretending was just not an option in Demo, apparently.
Only a few more days then she could go back to pretending. But there’s no sex in pretending. At least not sex-with-Ryan-sex.
And that was really good. Not as good as pretend. Maybe. No. It wasn’t. Really.
“Come on. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“Well, when you’re talking about flying a plane usually the worst that can happen is John Denver and decapitation.”
Ryan shook his head. “We won’t go far, and no mountains in Kansas. Now let me fly your plane, baby.”
“I wish that was a euphemism,” she muttered. “All right. But I’m riding shotgun.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.” He pulled open the pilot-side door and whistled. “Damn, that’s a nice cockpit.”
Celia snorted and he looked back at her.
“What?”
“Cockpit. It’s a funny word. Nice cockpit. It’s…funny.”
He shook his head, sliding into the pilot’s seat. “You’ve been away from aviation too long.”
“Maybe you’ve been away from cock too long,” she returned, walking around to the passenger side. She slid into the seat. It was strange, but some of the tiredness, the wariness, left her. There was something about being in an airplane.
He arched an eyebrow at her as she settled herself into the copilot seat. “I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean, but considering you were just intimately using that part of my body I suppose I’ll have to trust your judgment.”
He started up the plane, running his hands over all the dials. “This is freaking sweet.”
She couldn’t stop a smile, the even lighter feeling buoying her spirits. “I know, right? I don’t get to fly it nearly enough, but I couldn’t resist. I mean, the Cub will be great once you guys do your work. In fact, it’ll probably be the only one I keep, but this was one of those ridiculous splurges I thought I owed myself.”
She talked him through the controls as he propelled the plane down the runway. Takeoff was smooth and Celia felt more relaxed than she had since…well, probably since those five seconds after orgasm before her brain had fully engaged.
Oh, that had been nice.
She looked out the window to the flat vastness of fields below. It caused a little ache in her chest. Not a bitter, hurtful one. More like longing. Wistfulness. Sad but not painful. “I think I only miss Kansas up here.”
“This doesn’t make you miss California? Imagine it’s a bit prettier.”
“It is, but this is too.” Things weren’t quite green yet, but they edged that way. The sun, a ball of orange, glowed behind spindly trees still not recovered from winter. It was sparser, less in-your-face and breathtaking, but it was still beautiful. Some part of her, no longer how much she’d wished to forget, connected to it. Reminding her this was home.
But it wasn’t the type of home you came back to, no matter how pretty it might look. She needed to remember that. Her life didn’t fit in these flat plains and occasional trees. Her life didn’t fit on a tiny airport with her not-quite-ex-husband.
“Do you remember the first ride Gramps let me take alone after I got my license and we flew over to Moulton and went to a bar with fake IDs and you got drunk off your ass and we stayed in that shady hotel?”
“Oh, God. It was after the Shakespeare festival I did?”
“You performed some scene from…one of his plays or something. Taking off an item of clothing for each line you remembered. Luckily in our hotel room, not in the bar.”
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream. ‘How happy some o’er other some can be! Through Athens I am thought as fair as she. But what of that?’”
“What’s that, like two lines? Ditch two items of clothing, sweetheart.”
“Sadly, I’m not drunk.”
“It’s…kind of nice to remember it wasn’t all shit, I guess.”
“It is. And it wasn’t.”
“Here, do the throttle for me.” He said, taking her hand and placing it over the throttle that was situated in the console between their seats.
She wrinkled her nose. “Why?”
“So I can do this.” He slung an arm around her shoulders, as he would’ve all those years ago when they’d barely been able to keep their hands off each other. It had been a little desperate then, but this was nice.
A kind of nice that couldn’t last, but maybe she could enjoy it for the time being.
Chapter Eleven
Celia stood on the sidelines while Nate and Ryan put the Cirrus away. Occasionally, she glanced at the text from Aubrey, but that made her stomach hurt so she’d look back at Nate and Ry chatting with each other.
You’ve got to be shitting me.
Aubrey’s response to upping the amount she was giving Cathy wasn’t exactly supportive. How is this control? Ryan’s question repeated itself in her mind, over and over, like a terrible song lyric you couldn’t erase from looping in your brain, the peace of the plane ride gone.
She could argue with it, over and over again, all night, but it wouldn’t go away. It lingered and ached, and no amount of answers thrown at it erased those feelings.
She looked at her phone again. You’ve got to be shitting me. And Aubrey still didn’t know she was here, didn’t know about Ryan. If she found out…
Before she could figure out how to finish that thought, Nate and Ryan and Vivvy approached and Celia had to pretend to be Celia again.
“Nate and Vivvy, um, invited us to dinner.” With his hands in his pockets and a weird expression on his face, Celia didn’t know what to think about Ryan’s little proclamation.
She plastered on her best gracious movie star smile. “Oh, thank you, really, but I can’t be seen, you know?”
“That’s okay,” Vivvy said. “Nate was just going to do his man cooking. Grill steaks and the like. We weren’t planning on going anywhere.”
Celia looked helplessly at Ryan. They couldn’t just…go have dinner with his brother. At Nate’s home with Nate’s fiancée. That would be so…
Normal. The word was normal. And it hurt. In running away from pain and bad, she’d run away from any chance or semblance of normal, too. After that plane ride, all nice and happy-memory-laden, normal might be lethal.<
br />
“Don’t you guys want a night to yourselves?” Ryan gestured toward Vivvy’s ring. Celia wondered if he knew he was grimacing as he spoke.
“I asked her last night, so we did have a night to ourselves, but we actually have something we need to talk to you about. Nothing big, but private.” Nate and Vivvy smiled, but they weren’t easy smiles.
Dread pitted in Celia’s stomach, but she wouldn’t let it break the facade of ease on her face. “Then of course we’ll come. Some new company would be great.” She couldn’t help it. She couldn’t stand in front of them and not be Celia Grant. Gracious and kind, especially when Ryan wasn’t being either of those things. “What time?”
“Why don’t you guys just come right over? We can have our little chat while we get dinner ready.”
“Bad news?” Ryan asked.
“It’s not really good or bad at this point. Just information.” Nate clapped Ryan’s shoulder, then took Vivvy’s hand. “See you in a few.” They disappeared, hand in hand, and Celia couldn’t identify the strange ache in her chest.
“What the hell did you do that for? I was coming up with an excuse,” Ryan grumbled.
“You were being rude…and weird. I didn’t want you to offend your family. Besides, they said they had something they wanted to discuss in private. Did you…bring up cutting filming short?”
“Yeah, Vivvy said she’d work with the director and see, but she wouldn’t know for sure until tomorrow. So it’s not about that.” He scowled over at her. “And I wasn’t being weird.”
Celia screwed her mouth around and widened her eyes to copy his look from earlier. “Don’t you guys want a night to yourself?”
“I did not sound like that. Or look like that.”
“Trust me. You did.” She pushed off her seat, glanced at the crew that was packing up all the sound and video equipment. Were they listening? Could they tell things between her and Ryan had changed? Is that why Nate and Vivvy were acting weird? Had they inferred something from the way Ryan and Celia were around each other?
“Sorry if I’m not super pumped about being around a newly engaged couple while we’re…”
“We’re what? What are we doing, Ryan?” She followed him through the front office and out to the parking lot. “Aside from each other,” she muttered. God, she was tired all over again.
“Whose idea was it to make your image squeaky-clean? Did you just go for complete opposite of yourself?”
She wanted the flip comment to be that, flip, but it didn’t bounce off, it barbed its way in. Complete opposite of herself. Well, yes, actually that’s exactly what she’d been going for. Sweet. Innocent. Happy. “Maybe I did.” Not relevant. Not now. “Look, it’ll be good, to be around other people.” That way she could stop thinking about being with him, the nice old times. Over and over and over.
He shrugged. “If you say so. Just tap your nose or something when you’re ready to leave and I’ll get us out of there. I have a feeling the Celia Grant is unfailingly polite.”
She stopped in front of his car, surprised. Pleased. Yeah, she was touched, stupidly, but touched nonetheless. “You’re trying to protect my rep?”
He waved a hand in the air before sliding into the driver’s seat. “I’m trying to draw as little attention as possible about our past to Vivvy. Last thing I need is her knowing we’re married. She’d be blackmailing both of us every other week to get this show off the ground.”
“I thought you liked and trusted Vivvy.”
“I do.”
“But you just said—”
“This show means a lot. To her. To Nate. This doesn’t get off the ground, the idiot’s girl—fiancée—will barely have time to live here.” He drove, all but scowling at the road. If Celia’s heart hadn’t already softened, that right there would have done it.
“It’s not just about Harrington. It’s not even just about Millard. It’s about helping Nate.”
“Please. Nate can help himself,” he scoffed, but she could see through it. Him. The way he stared a little harder at the road, his knuckles going whiter on the steering wheel.
“I know enough about TV to know half the draw of this show will be identical twins. Hot identical twins. You’re half that equation and you’re doing this so Nate and Vivvy can have more time together.” She put a hand to his shoulder. “You’re a big old softie.”
He shrugged her hand away. “Right, because there’s nothing in it for me to have a successful show here so leaving my job in Kansas City wasn’t the biggest mistake of my life.”
“Say what you want, but I think you did it at least a little bit for Nate.”
He grumbled something she couldn’t catch as they pulled into the lot of Nate’s little house. After putting the car in park, he grinned at her. “You think I’m hot, huh?”
“Don’t forget I said twins. That means I think Nate’s hot too.”
“Admit it. I’m hotter.”
“You’re identical!” She laughed, and it felt good to laugh and have it not be pretend. Ryan stepped out of the car and she followed, but her humor died when Vivvy opened the door to them before they even got to the porch.
Whatever this was about, was serious. Whether Nate and Vivvy had found something out or wanted to find something out, it wasn’t a joking matter. And considering they were Ryan’s family, and she wasn’t—aside from their paper-only marriage—it meant she was on her own.
Vivvy’s greeting was friendly, but Celia got the distinct impression Vivvy was putting on a mask to rival her own. Stepping inside, they were greeted with small talk and drink offers.
Then Nate took a big plate of uncooked steaks and nodded toward the door. “Why don’t you help me, Ry?”
“Ookay.”
They were being split up, and Celia wasn’t sure why unless they were going to be interrogated. But Ryan and Nate disappeared onto the front porch, which meant Celia had to put on the big Celia act and make small talk.
“I’m glad you could come. It must be kind of…boring in Ryan’s house all evening.”
The way Vivvy smiled and asked the question seemed nice enough, but Celia could recognize a fishing expedition when she saw one. “I brought plenty of reading material.”
Vivvy nodded, something like a tip of the hat or “you got me there.”
“I just wanted to let you know, I don’t know anything more than what little Nate has told me. You and Ryan dated in high school and you’re from here, but that seems to be a secret. That’s all I know, and as curious as I am, getting this show picked up is my top priority. So I’m not going to jeopardize that by poking around in your business. Neither will my staff, on threat of losing their job.”
It was a relief, but not much of one when she was still here. Sitting in front of Vivvy having no clue why she was. “Well, that’s good.”
“I saw Nate and Ryan’s father at the airport yesterday morning before security got in, trying to get into my office. I told Nate and he just did the macho ‘I’ll handle it’ thing, but I thought perhaps you should know. I’m not sure what kind of relationship you might have had, but I certainly don’t trust Jed as far as I can throw him.”
The second time Jed’s name had been brought up today. Celia felt a little sick. “No, I don’t trust Jed either, but I’m sure it’s fine.”
“Well, that’s what Nate said, and he had it in his head to tell Ryan and not you, but I wanted to make sure you knew as well. Just in case it affected something for you.”
“Thank you.” Celia tried to hide her surprise, but was sure she failed. She wasn’t used to people offering her information if they didn’t have to. Not used to people giving her some kind of power in her own decision making without having to fight for that right. “Doesn’t Nate being all ‘I’ll handle it’ bother you?”
“Well, maybe in another situation, but Jed is his father, so I mainly keep my nose out of that unless I can help it. And in this case, I am handling it my own way by telling you.”
W
ell, that she was. What a concept.
“Are you all right?”
Celia forced her famous smile. “Of course. I didn’t know Jed very well, but my impression of him was never pleasant. Still, I don’t think there’s much damage he can do.”
Vivvy let out a loud breath. “Nate doesn’t think Ryan will take it well. Any time Jed is involved in a situation, things tend to go from bad to worse. And they don’t have the kindest father-son relationship.”
Celia snorted. “No shit.”
At Vivvy’s cocked head, she realized her Celia attitude had slipped. Celia Grant didn’t say things like shit in bitter tones. “So, um, you like it here?” she asked, desperate to change the subject. “If Nate is anything like Ryan, most of the pictures and pillows around here are your touch. And at the office for that matter.”
“Good eye. I do like it here.” Vivvy smiled, her gaze on the window overlooking the porch. “Don’t get me wrong, the trips back to LA are pretty nice when I need a new pair of pants or cuisine outside of fast food, but here is a really good place to be.”
“Because of…Nate.” Demo could never be a good place to be. If Ryan hadn’t been able to make it one back then… It could never be.
“Yes, because of Nate. It’s none of my business, so of course you can tell me to back off, but Ryan is my soon-to-be brother-in-law. Is everything going smoothly with you two?”
Celia glanced at the brunette with the high heels and business suits and fancy jewelry. She didn’t look as if she belonged or wanted to, but apparently she did. Belonged enough to question Celia.
But Celia didn’t know how to answer that question. This wasn’t her world anymore, and she never wanted it to be again. She wanted a silent annulment and then to forget Demo ever existed.
Right? She didn’t want any part of her life to be like that old life she’d left behind. But why did Vivvy’s saying she belonged here, wanted to belong here, keep giving Celia some weird feeling of… She didn’t know what. A glimpse of a possibility.
She couldn’t let herself believe in that. “Smoothly enough. I do appreciate your concern, though.” She was Celia Grant. Now and forever. And Celia Grant did not spend a minute longer in Demo, Kansas, than she had to. Celia liked designer clothes and indie coffee shops and color and noise. Being in the thick of things, lost in the throngs of people. Demo was all about gray and silence and thinking too much.