The Passionate One: A Billionaire Bride Pact Romance

by Lewis, Jeanette

  “I was, but I had to quit when we started rehearsals,” she said, imagining him grinding his teeth the way he did when he got annoyed. She rushed ahead. “But Broadway is looking really promising and if it happens—”

  “Do you have that in writing?”

  “In writing? Um ... no, not yet. My contract is with the company here in Morgantown.”

  “Then don’t count on it.”

  Her fingers clenched around the steering wheel. She hated talking to her father about money. Why couldn’t her mother handle it? Mom never lectured or asked difficult questions. Erin knew her father loved her and he was always fair, but at the mention of money, he’d snap just as fiercely as the turtles she used to find along the banks of the river. Erin usually left the turtles alone, but she couldn’t afford to do the same with her father.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a low voice. “I’ll pay it back. I’ve always said I’ll pay it back or ...”

  “Or I can count it against your inheritance. Yes I know, Erin.” her father said. “How much do you need?”

  She gave him an amount and he sighed. “Fine, I’ll send you a check.”

  “Thank you, Daddy. I really appreciate it,” she said, relieved.

  “But ...” he began, and her feeling of relief evaporated, “this is the last time. If you can’t support yourself with acting, you need to be adult enough to admit it and make changes. Just like your brother did.”

  Erin had always thought Dalton caved too easily to their father’s demands to find a stable career. But now that she was on the receiving end of his pressure and disdain, she wondered if she’d been too hard on her oldest brother.

  Dalton had always wanted to be a musician. He’d taken guitar lessons, practiced endlessly, and even formed a cliché garage band when he was a teenager. But aside from playing a few gigs in smelly bars when he was in college, the band had gone nowhere and their father had absolutely refused to bankroll what he deemed a waste of time and money.

  Dalton had talent, no question, but he’d given in during his second year of college and switched from a music major to business. Now he helped run their father’s marketing firm.

  “It’s a process, Daddy,” she said, playing her baby girl cards. “I’m getting there.”

  “You’re already twenty-six; you don’t want to be farther behind your peers than you already are,” he shot back, apparently unmoved. “My offer to pay for college still stands, you know.”

  Her throat was too tight to reply.

  “I’m not trying to upset you, honey,” he pressed when she didn’t answer. “Call it tough love, if you will, but all I want is for you to be successful and happy.”

  In that order too, no doubt. In her father’s world, happiness was inexorably linked with success and success meant money.

  “I know. Thank you,” she managed.

  After he hung up, she sat for a while in the idling car, watching the rain dribble down her windshield. Her hands were shaking as she thought over his threat to cut off financial help. What would she do if this play didn’t take off? She could go back to retail or restaurant work, but she could never support herself with those.

  College? Maybe. But she had no idea what she would do. Performing was all she’d ever wanted. She could start her own theater company, but that was a long uphill struggle before she’d see any kind of profit. So what did that leave? Teach acting and voice lessons?

  “But I want to be the one on stage,” she whispered. She didn’t want to sit in the audience watching one of her students perform, watching someone else live her dream. Did that make her selfish?

  Maybe she should move to California. Several of her theater friends had gone to L.A. and were making the endless audition rounds for movies, TV shows, and commercials. A few of them were even doing pretty well.

  Her hand twitched toward the phone, wanting to call Matt, to unload her troubles on him and ask his advice. But Matt was a sturdy shoulder to cry on, not an objective outsider. It wouldn’t matter if she got scathing reviews from every theater critic on the eastern seaboard, Matt would staunchly insist she was the best actress in the world.

  She threw the car into gear, her mind spinning as quickly as the wheel as she did a U-turn and edged her car back into traffic, back toward the theater.

  **

  Chapter 10

  It was Erin’s last Saturday off before the nonstop craziness of tech week kicked in and she was determined to make the most of it—which meant no alarms, pancakes at noon, and spending the day buried in a good book.

  So she was more than a little annoyed to be awakened so rudely.

  “Day one of the great Matt is not boring experiment starts now!” Matt hollered, yanking her covers off.

  She shot a glance at the clock and groaned. “It’s six in the morning!”

  “Yes, and we have a lot to do. So get up!” He bounced the mattress with his knee.

  She clawed for the duvet desperately. “Nooooo. Five more minutes?”

  “Uh-uh,” he shook his head. “Sleep is for the weak. C’mon, I’ve got the whole day planned.”

  “Whatever I said about you being predictable, I take it back,” she mumbled. “You’re the most interesting man in the world. Can I please go back to sleep?”

  “Nice try,” Matt said. “But I’m not buying it. Get your lazy butt out of bed.”

  Erin dragged herself toward the shower with a scowl. What kind of monster had she created?

  She emerged from the bathroom, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, but still barefoot and with her hair caught up in a towel, to find him sitting on her unmade bed with his iPad.

  “So what’s your grand, amazing plan that’s taken over my day off?”

  “C’mere,” he patted the mattress.

  She sat beside him and studied the colorful spreadsheet on the iPad. Across the top was the title “Matt is NOT Boring.”

  She burst into laughter. “Seriously? You made a spreadsheet?”

  “Yes,” he said defensively. “And it’s very helpful. See?” He pointed to the side column, which held a list of activities along with their location and time. “You can pick any activity you want, then when we’ve done it, I’ll put a check in the correct box,” he demonstrated by tapping one of the boxes and sighed in satisfaction when a thick black checkmark appeared. “It’ll help us keep track of what we’ve already done. I even added a column where we can rate each experience so we’ll know which we want to do again.”

  She broke into a peal of helpless giggles.

  “What?” he insisted.

  “You made a spreadsheet, the most boring document on the planet, to prove you’re not boring?” She started giggling again.

  Matt looked from the iPad to her and back again. “It’s not boring,” he protested, pointing. “Look, I made it colored. That’s cool.”

  Her only response was to collapse backward on the bed, laughing harder than ever.

  “It’ll be very useful. You’ll see, smartypants,” Matt said, setting the iPad on her nightstand. Before she could stop him, he leaned over, grabbed her ankle, and began tickling the bottom of her bare foot. “Say it,” he urged. “I’m a genius ... say it!”

  Erin shrieked and kicked, trying to break his grip.

  “Say it!” Matt insisted, laughing.

  “Okay, you two, what’s going on it here?” Sarah stood in the open doorway, hands on her hips, her sleep-mussed hair sticking out in all directions.

  Matt dropped her foot and Erin sat up. “Ask him, he’s being a brat!” she panted.

  “Me?” Matt’s face was a picture of innocence. “I’m never a brat. You on the other hand ... ” He nudged her with his shoulder.

  “I’m staying out of it.” Sarah rolled her eyes and went toward the kitchen.

  “Hurry.” Matt grabbed his iPad and stood up. “We have things to do today.” He left her bedroom, closing the door behind him.

  Erin couldn’t help smiling. This was better than pancakes at no
on.

  “Where are we going?” she asked twenty minutes later when she emerged from her bedroom. She’d changed into an embroidered white blouse, topped with a navy blazer, her skinny jeans, and brown boots, and she’d left her hair long and loose down her back in rose-gold waves. “I didn’t pick from your cute little list.”

  “You lost choosing privilege because you mocked my cute little list,” Matt replied. “So I get to pick. And today we’re going to Pittsburgh.”

  Erin looped a narrow scarf of gold sequins around her neck a few times. “Okay. Why?”

  “Anna Skibska has a new exhibit at the Carnegie.”

  “Anna who?”

  He sighed tragically. “Anna Skibska. The famous glass artist.”

  “Oh.” Erin tried to think if she’d ever seen any of her work, but nothing came to mind.

  “And—” Matt continued, “Guys and Dolls is playing at the Bendum, so I thought we could do both.”

  “I love Guys and Dolls!” Erin squealed.

  “I know,” he said proudly.

  Erin didn’t miss the sideways glance Sarah gave her from the table. “What are we waiting for then?” She laughed a little uneasily, acutely aware he’d just shown her up.

  Matt’s car was a small, serviceable bottle-green Honda. It had seen better days and probably wouldn’t be a great choice for a cross country road trip, but it could handle the two-hour drive to Pittsburgh. When they arrived, they went directly to the Carnegie.

  Anna Skibska’s work was an unreal display of precision and skill. The black rooms were lit primarily by the white lights bathing the enormous exhibits, each made from thousands of clear or amber glass rods and bent, worked, and balanced to create complex, three-dimensional shapes. One room held cubes of varying sizes, another had spheres, and another featured cylinders. Their intricate webs of glass somehow projected an immensely heavy, yet oddly ethereal quality.

  Matt was completely absorbed and his excitement as they entered each room was palpable. He took his time, taking each piece as a whole, then gradually getting closer so he could examine the minute details, such as the way the glass rods were joined or how the varying degrees of thickness added to the piece.

  “Why don’t you do this?” Erin asked as they stood next to a large glass pyramid dangling from the ceiling.

  “Do what? This?” he waved his arm toward the pyramid.

  “No,” she clarified. “Why don’t you have an art exhibit of your own? You have some amazing work.”

  He laughed wryly.

  “You do,” she insisted. “You’re a great artist. You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

  “That’s nice of you to say so,” he replied, but she could tell he didn’t really believe her.

  After the museum, they had lunch at a sandwich shop, then made their way to the theater for the matinee performance of Guys and Dolls.

  Having spent years in the business, it was sometimes hard for Erin to get completely lost in a show. She noticed technical details, like how the lighting worked to set the mood, whether the costumes were appropriate to the time period, or how smoothly, or not, the set changes happened

  But the cast and crew were doing their jobs well, and Erin soon found herself transported to Runyonland along with the characters.

  While Miss Adelaide was singing her lament, Erin moved to rest her elbow on the armrest just as Matt did the same, and they collided.

  “Sorry,” she murmured, quickly withdrawing her arm.

  The lament was one of Erin’s favorite parts of the show; she had even used it as an audition piece. But suddenly she couldn’t focus. Suddenly, she was very aware of Matt—his nearness, the heat coming from his shoulder inches from hers, the way he clasped his hands together across his stomach as he watched the performance. If she were to rest her head on his shoulder, would he put his arm around her?

  His cologne had faded, but she knew he wore a slightly spicy scent. Would she be able to smell it again if she buried her face in his neck?

  She forced her attention back to the show, but the spell was broken and she was an outsider again, noticing Nicely’s microphone buzzed slightly and the spotlight was a tad slow following Sky during his rendition of “Luck Be a Lady.” Her awareness of Matt seemed to wash over her like a wave. With it came a sense of ... longing?

  “Now what shall we do?” he asked when they emerged from the theater. “Are you hungry?”

  “It’s rush hour,” she pointed out. The street in front of the theater was already packed with slow moving cars. “I’ll bet traffic’s going to be bad for a while.”

  He shrugged. “So? We don’t have anywhere to go, do we?”

  When they reached the car, they pulled up restaurant suggestions on Matt’s phone, and decided on place a few miles away.

  “What’s your life goal?” Matt asked as they crawled through city traffic.

  “Like my main, ultimate life goal?” she asked. “You already know. I want to be a Broadway star. Maybe even a legend like Bernadette Peters. I mean, I know it’s a long shot, but as long as we’re dreaming ... ” She gave him a sheepish grin. “What’s yours?”

  He was quiet for a minute, studying the road. “I guess ... I want to feel like I was a good person. Even if I didn’t believe in God and thought this life was the end, I’d want to die knowing I contributed more good than evil to the world.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about that,” Erin told him. “You’re pretty much the best person I know.”

  “Thanks,” he blushed slightly. “That means a lot to me.”

  “Your answer makes mine seem really dumb by comparison,” she said after they’d gone several blocks in silence.

  “No,” he said at once, giving her a quick sideways smile. “You want to do good too. You want to give people art, help them experience something amazing. That’s a great goal.”

  “You’re making me sound much more altruistic than I really am,” Erin admitted. “I’m kind of selfish, I guess.”

  “Because you want fame?”

  She shrugged. “Don’t all actors live for applause?”

  “But why do you want applause?” he pressed. “Because it means approval. And that means you gave someone else an experience that made them happy. You touched their heart in some way and might have even touched their life. Sounds pretty unselfish to me.”

  “You’re simply determined to try and see the best in me.”

  “It’s pretty easy,” he winked.

  He was so open, so trusting; he would never break her heart. If she gave him any encouragement, he would be right there, patiently waiting for her for as long as it took.

  The thought was irritating. It wasn’t fair of him to put it all on her, to make her decide the depth of their relationship.

  She thought back to her reaction in the theater, the urge she’d had to lean into him. He’d upset the routine by taking them away from home and away from the familiar. It was messing with her head and her heart.

  What if she let herself go like he had and they became a couple and it didn’t work out? If they took it to the next level, it could ruin their friendship, and Matt’s friendship was one of the most important things she had.

  “You know what? I’ve changed my mind,” she said. “I’m not that hungry after all. Why don’t we just stop for something quick on the way home?”

  “You can’t run away from this forever,” he said softly.

  “I’m not running away,” she protested. “I’m just tired and ready to go home.”

  His eyes betrayed his disappointment, but he only nodded and pulled into a nearby Wendy’s for burgers and fries. They ate in the car and drove back to Morgantown mostly in silence.

  **

  Chapter 11

  The doorbell rang at seven the next morning. Erin groaned. Two days in a row? Matt was definitely going to get it.

  The doorbell rang again and she jumped out of bed. She met Sarah in the hallway.

  “That bette
r either be Tom Hiddleston or someone with a huge lottery check,” Sarah muttered.

  Erin turned the deadbolt and opened the door.

  Mrs. Brinkerhoff stood in the hallway. She wore a fitted dress in an eye-watering shade of fuchsia topped with a bright yellow cardigan, suntan nylons, and black snow boots. Her white hair was pulled back with large black bobby pins. One hand clutched a leash attached to a large dog; the other gripped the handle of an enormous suitcase.

  “We’re here,” she said brightly, pushing past Erin and into the apartment. “Thank you so much for taking Roswell for me. All his things and his instructions are in here.” She parked the suitcase by the couch. “I’ve left money in case you run out of food. He eats the food in the blue cans at the pet store on twenty-second; that’s the only place I’ve been able to find it. He needs walks twice a day and a bath every other day. Oh, and make sure to clean his teeth after he eats; he’s prone to halitosis, so good dental care is very important.”

  Erin’s brain clicked into action and she stared in stunned amazement at the dog. “I thought ... When you said dog-sit, I thought Roswell would stay at your place and I could check on him,” she stammered.

  “Oh, no! Huskies do not do well if left alone for too long. Just last month he completely destroyed a brand new pair of shoes I got on sale at JC Penney .” Mrs. Brinkerhoff ran her hand down Roswell’s furry back. “At first I was very annoyed, but he looked so sorry, I couldn’t stay mad for long.”

  Roswell was an enormous puff of fur. Erin didn’t remember him being so big. But then, she’d only seen him from a distance. When he was standing, his head reached her waist. His coat was mostly white speckled with gray, and his ears were pointed. His long, fluffy tail curved over his back like a question mark and wagged in ecstasy as Mrs. Brinkerhoff scratched behind his ears with her short, fuchsia-painted nails.

  “You be a good boy while I’m gone.” She bent to kiss the dog on the nose, then turned to Erin. “Thank you so much for doing this, dear heart. I don’t know what I would have done without you.” She whirled out of the room as quickly as she had come, leaving behind the scent of baby powder and lilacs.