He grinned and turned into the road which led into Ellesmere Circle, and this time Clint waved us straight through, obviously remembering Jacob’s car from a few weeks ago.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you at work tomorrow,” Jacob said as we pulled into my driveway.
“Maybe not,” I said, checking my phone. “Bonnie just texted me. Apparently this storm is going to last a few days so filming will be shut down.”
“Damn. Guess I’ll see you next week, then.”
I nodded as I climbed out of the car. “Yeah. Anyway, thanks for the ride. I appreciate it.”
“No worries. And hey, where does James live again?” Jacob asked, leaning out the window.
“Sherman Oaks, near the…wait, why? You aren’t going to do something to his car, are you?”
“Of course not,” he said, flashing me a beatific smile. “I just want to add him to my Christmas card list.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Why don’t I believe you?”
“Because you don’t trust men?”
I let out a snort of laughter. “Touché. Well, do what you want, but you aren’t getting his address from me.”
“I’m sure Chris can get it for me.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Don’t you dare steal James’ car!”
He winked. “Oh, I won’t steal it. Anyway, see you later.”
With that, he reversed out of the driveway and tore away, honking the horn as he left. I sighed as I watched him go, a small smile playing on my lips.
Somehow, despite how wrong it felt, I was pretty sure I’d just become friends with Jacob Archer.
Chapter Ten
Jacob
“I still don’t understand why you need his address,” Chris said through my car’s speakers as I talked to him on the phone on my way out of a grocery store’s parking lot.
“I told you, it’s about Nora.”
“Are you going to go beat him up or something?” Chris asked. “I thought you were a bit older and wiser than that.”
“I’m not going to beat him up,” I said with a snort. “And no one’s ever accused me of being wise or mature.”
Chris laughed. “True. So what’s the deal then?”
“I need to talk to him about Nora. Get his side of the story again so I can figure out once and for all if she’s telling the truth or not,” I lied. It was bullshit—I knew Nora wouldn’t lie to me—but Chris wouldn’t give me his colleague’s home address if he thought I was going to cause any trouble.
“Fair enough. I’m still not sure about their situation myself. He seems so decent. Hard to believe he’d make all that shit up,” Chris replied.
He told me to wait while he looked up James’ address on the company database. Once I had it, I thanked him and plugged it into my GPS before cruising down an off-ramp toward the nearest major exit that would get me close to his place.
I knew my plan was childish as fuck, but that wasn’t going to stop me. I just wanted to do a little something to piss James off without him suspecting that Nora had anything to do with it (because obviously I didn’t want him harassing her any more than he already was). What I was planning wasn’t illegal—at least I didn’t think it was—and no one was going to get hurt, so it was fine.
At least that’s what I was going to tell myself.
When I arrived in James’ area, I parked a couple of blocks away from his house and walked the rest of the way so he wouldn’t see or hear my car. I was carrying a couple of pounds of shrimp from the grocery store I’d just left, and when I reached James’ place, I ditched the bag behind a bush while I cased the place. I could hear voices drifting out from an open window, so he was obviously home, but I needed to make sure he was entirely distracted before trying to get into his garage.
I crept up to what I assumed was the living room window and crouched under it. I could hear a young woman fawning and sighing as James told her all about his ‘psycho ex’, and I seethed. The fucking prick was using his lies about Nora to try and get some other poor girl into bed.
“And then she just left,” he said. “Took the dog and everything.”
“You poor baby,” said the girl, her voice filled with sympathy. “I can make you feel better.”
That was my cue to leave my spot beneath the window—he was obviously well-distracted. I retrieved the shrimp bag from underneath the bush, and then I walked around to the other side of James’ house, where the garage was. The door was open, luckily, and I set the bag down and hunted around for the spare key to the old-fashioned Chevy that was sitting in the space. Nora had said it was under some sort of plant pot, and I finally located a set of old herb planters on the far side of the garage.
I gleefully grabbed the key and quietly unlocked the Chevy, praying that James hadn’t jimmied up some sort of alarm system for the old girl, and when everything remained silent, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Then I began the process of fucking with James’ head…and nose.
I removed the door panels on either side and stuck the fresh shrimp inside them before replacing the panels, and for good measure, I rubbed the shrimp juice from the bottom of the bag all over the surfaces of the car’s interior. When I was finished with that, I decided I wasn’t done fucking with James just yet. I headed back to the front of the house, grabbed a few flowers from the garden and knocked on the front door before trying the handle.
It was unlocked.
“Hold on, I’m coming,” I heard James call out. I was already in the foyer.
“Hey, babe, thought I’d surprise you,” I replied, stepping into the front room and holding out the flowers.
James’ date’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh my god. You’re Jacob Archer,” she squealed.
I frowned. “Yeah, and who are you? A friend of James?”
She gaped at me, and James stood up and narrowed his eyes. “Uh, hi, Jacob. What are you doing here, man? Is Chris with you?”
“Answer my question first,” I said, gesturing to the girl. “Who is she?”
“I’m his date,” the girl said, face mired in confusion.
I feigned a disgusted expression. “Wow. Just….wow. I try to give my boyfriend a nice surprise and I find him on a date with someone else. How fucking lovely,” I said, throwing down the flowers.
“Wait, you’re bi? And Jacob Archer is your boyfriend?” the girl said, turning to James.
He held his hands up to her. “Kara, I have no clue what he’s doing here. I think this is some sort of joke.”
She glared at him. “Then why did you seem to know him when he walked in?”
I glared at him too. “Our relationship is just a joke to you?” I screeched, affecting the highest pitch I could.
“I’m leaving,” Kara said. “I’m not messing with this. My last boyfriend turned out to be married, and I’m sick of this shit! You men are all cheating fucking assholes!”
She had her cell phone out already, and I knew there’d be tabloid articles about my secret sexuality all over the internet by tomorrow. I couldn’t care less. Rumors were spread about me all the time; that was fine. But this little prick James was out here spreading rumors about Nora, and that wasn’t fine.
Not one bit.
“No, babe, don’t go!” James called out after Kara as she stomped out of the room, tapping away at her iPhone keypad. He chased her out of the room and down the hall to the front door, but she was already out the door and storming toward her car.
I watched him beg and plead her to stay as I headed out myself, and then I heard footsteps pounding along the pavement as I began the short walk back to my car.
“Jacob! What the hell is wrong with you? Was that supposed to be funny?”
I turned to see James following me, and I rolled my eyes and kept walking.
“What the fuck is your problem, man?” he repeated as he caught up.
I shrugged. “Just doing a public service and saving another innocent woman from your bullshit.”
“Nora sent you, d
idn’t she?”
I stopped and shook my head. “No. Nora is a mature, sensible woman. She’d never do something like that. But as for me…well, I’m not mature or sensible. And I don’t like being fucking lied to.”
“I…look man, maybe I exaggerated a bit, but that’s not a reason to come to my house and blow up my fucking date,” he said.
“You’re lucky I don’t blow your fucking house up,” I bit back. “You need to stop contacting Nora.”
“I haven’t spoken to her since she dumped me!” he said.
“Bullshit. She’s told me all about the incessant Facebook messages from the new accounts you keep making to get around the fact that she blocked you.”
“That’s not true. I told you, I haven’t spoken to Nora since she dumped me,” he said.
“Bullshit.”
“Well, I see that cunt has already got you wrapped around her little finger,” he said with a sneer, quickly changing his tune. “Not surprising. She has a nice, tight pussy, doesn’t she? Bound to rope even the biggest of playboy pricks like you in.”
“What the fuck did you just call her?” I asked, narrowing my eyes as my hands balled into fists.
“I called her a cunt. Because she’s acting like a fucking cun—”
He didn’t manage to finish that second insult, because my fist connected with his jaw before his mouth could form the letter ‘T’. He cried out, and I hit him square in the face again, sending him flying back onto the neighbor’s neatly-trimmed lawn.
I glared at the prick on the ground, thinking about all the shit he’d done to Nora as blood dripped from his nose onto the green grass. I hadn’t wanted to resort to violence—as they say, it’s never the answer, so hitting him was probably the wrong thing to do—but fuck, I wasn’t going to let him get away with calling her names like that, even if it was behind her back.
“You’ll regret this,” James spat as he wiped his face and tried to sit up.
I resisted the urge to give him another punch, another kick. Instead I simply gritted my teeth. “And you’ll regret letting a woman like Nora go,” I said. “Don’t ever say anything about her again, you little piece of shit.”
“I’ll have you charged for assault!” he called out as I turned around.
I didn’t look back over my shoulder; I simply waved. “Go ahead.”
I smiled as I headed back to my car, pleased with the knowledge that someone was out there defending Nora’s honor, even if that ‘someone’ was an asshole like me. She deserved it, and even if I couldn’t be with her, I could sure as hell stick up for her and be friends with her.
And maybe that was enough.
Chapter Eleven
Nora
“When I was your age, I was already married.”
I rolled my eyes and sipped my morning coffee as my mother prattled on about my love life, and when she finished speaking, I sighed. “Mom, you and Dad got married when you were twenty-five. I’m only twenty-four.”
“It’s your birthday soon. You’ll be twenty-five.”
“Oh, for the love of…since when is twenty-five old? I feel like I only just graduated high school!”
“But you didn’t. You’re in your mid-twenties. Almost a quarter of a century old.”
“Thanks for the reminder,” I said through gritted teeth. “And if you must know, I have a boyfriend!”
I don’t know why I said it. It wasn’t true at all, and she knew it, surely. Then again, she’d never had the greatest memory. Maybe she’d already forgotten about all the drama with James.
There was a surprised pause on the other end of the phone line. “You do? You mean that fellow…what was his name…something beginning with J?”
“Yes, him.”
“Didn’t he call me a few weeks ago accusing you of being a lady of the night?” she asked, a note of suspicion creeping into her tone.
“I…uh…that was a prank, Mom. It was a friend of his who called you. They thought it would be funny.”
“I see. Well, it wasn’t funny. Anyway, I want to meet him. You said earlier that you’re on a short rain break from work until filming starts up again, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So come and visit us today. We’re only a two hour drive away. You can bring the boyfriend with you. How does that sound?”
Shit. “Uh…he might be busy. This is really short notice.”
“I’m sure he’ll come. Unless he isn’t real.”
“He’s real!” I snapped. “And fine, we’d love to visit. We’ll be there later this afternoon.”
“Wonderful. I’ll tell your father.”
When we ended the call, I texted Angie, my mind whirling. Help. Got myself into a situation. Why am I so dumb?
She sent me back a single ‘?’ and I filled her in on the enormous lie I’d just unloaded on my mother to shut her up about my love life.
So tell her you just broke up, she said. Easy-peasy.
I don’t think she’ll believe we just conveniently broke up right this second, I replied.
Okay. So you need a pretend boyfriend whose name starts with J. Someone who will be available at the last minute.
Yes, I replied. If I call her back and cancel for any other reason, she’ll know I lied.
Her response came instantly. Well, it’s lucky you know someone starting with J who owes you…
I groaned and picked up the phone again, glancing through the file of Fourth Down contacts that I’d left sitting on the kitchen counter the other day after returning from the studio. After locating Jacob’s home number, I dialed and waited with bated breath, my heart racing.
“Hello?” A feminine, eastern-European accented voice answered, and I almost hung up, assuming it was one of Jacob’s most recent model conquests.
“Uh, hi,” I choked out instead. “Is Jacob there? It’s Nora from work.”
“Oh, of course. Let me grab him for you.”
Jacob’s voice came onto the line a minute later. “Hi, Nora. What’s up?”
“Who was that?” I practically screeched, and I mentally slapped myself as soon as I said it. It was none of my business who Jacob entertained in his home at eight o’clock in the morning. He was just a friend, as we’d established yesterday, and I had no reason to be interrogating him like a jealous banshee.
“That was…uh…my housekeeper. Why?” he said, a note of surprise in his tone. I had a hunch he wasn’t telling the truth about the woman’s identity, but that didn’t matter right now.
“No reason. Anyway, I was just wondering if you’d do me a favor. I figured you kinda still owe me after that horrendous date you took me on.”
He chuckled. “So we’re still on that, are we?”
“It was pretty bad, you have to admit,” I said. A small smile quirked my lips up as an idea occurred to me. “And besides, I’d be doing you a favor at the same time.”
“How so?”
“Yesterday you were saying that you thought meeting Walter Simmons could help with your portrayal of him during filming. Obviously you can’t meet him because he’s dead, but his family live a couple of hours north of here. I was thinking we could drive up there today and meet them. I’d call them first to make sure it was okay, of course. I think hearing them talk about him could really help you.”
“Yeah, that does sound like it could help. Good idea,” he mused. “So what do you get out of it?”
“Promise you won’t laugh?”
“I’ll try.”
I explained the situation with my parents, and I heard him stifling laughter on the other end of the line.
“You promised you wouldn’t laugh!” I said indignantly.
“I said I’d try,” he replied. “So your parents conveniently live in the same area as Walter’s family, and you need me to be your fake boyfriend for the afternoon. Is that the general gist of what you’re asking me to do?”
“Um. Yes. But only because you’re the only male friend I have whose name starts with J.”
/>
“Wow, you really take this whole friendship thing seriously. Up until yesterday you could barely stand me, and then the second we become friends, boom, you’ve got me going on road trips and meeting your family.”
I sighed. “Sorry. Don’t worry about it; it was a stupid idea.”
He laughed. “No, no, I think it’s a great idea.”
I frowned. “You do?”
“Of course. Like you said, I’ll get to meet Walter’s family beforehand, which could really help me on this movie. And then afterwards, I’ll be able to practice my acting skills with your family, seeing as I’ll be faking a relationship with you. Always good to practice.”
“You’re a lifesaver.”
“No, just doing what I can to make up for that awful date I took you on. Like you said earlier, I owe you.”
“True. Well, I think we’ll be even after this,” I said. “Meet me here in half an hour or so?”
“Sure,” he replied. “Looking forward to it.”
I hated to admit it, but so was I.
Chapter Twelve
Jacob
“The address is 5 Shafto Lane,” Nora said, looking up from her phone as we cruised into Santa Barbara. “Any idea where that is?”
“Nope, but we’ll figure it out,” I said, nodding toward my GPS. “Put the address in there.”
“Sure.”
I smiled as I watched her figure out the device, still almost unable to believe I was here with her. She’d masked the trip as a helpful learning experience for my portrayal of Walter Simmons, but we both knew the one and only reason she’d called me was because she needed a fake boyfriend. A guy like me would knock her parents’ socks off. After all, it wasn’t every day a girl brought home a hotshot movie star to meet her parents.
I knew it didn’t really mean anything; at the end of the day, I’d go home and return to being nothing more than a casual friend and colleague to Nora. But for now, I was her ‘boyfriend’, and I was damn well going to play the part to perfection. Any excuse to spend more time with her.
“The Simmons family is looking forward to meeting you,” Nora said once she’d figured out the GPS. “Seeing as you’re playing Walter.”
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