by Dee J. Adams
He doubted it. “I miss you already.”
She swiped her bag from the chair in the corner and backed up toward the door. “I’ll talk to you later after my audition,” she said.
“Can’t wait.” He waved as she eyed him and finally opened the door.
“Oh, shit. I just remembered. I told my brother I’d help him unpack since he’s moved back into his place.”
“If it doesn’t work out tonight, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Her pretty smile didn’t hold a candle to Julie’s. “Yes, you will. Bye,” she said, closing the door behind her.
Finally. Alone.
He leaned back on the bed. Had to think this through. He’d have to wait until Julie got back. But when she did, he’d do her a favor and get rid of the new deadweight hanging onto her. Taking out this guy was bound to be harder than offing his father, but that didn’t mean it was impossible. It just required a plan and he happened to be very good at planning.
* * *
“How much longer?” Julie asked. Today marked the first day Troy allowed her to sit in the front seat like an adult. She suspected the only reason he caved in to her constant nagging was because they had a shorter drive to the final destination. Though the last three days had been great as far as research and catching up on the scripts, her vision was shot to hell from reading so much.
“You sound like a ten-year-old.”
She caught the smile he tried to conceal. “Are we there yet?” This time he reached out to tickle her. She laughed and caught his hand, laced their fingers together in an intimacy they hadn’t shared outside the bed. His gaze latched on to hers for a few seconds before turning back to the road.
Yeah...they had something brewing between them. Something big. She felt it bone deep.
Her phone rang. She had to let go of Troy’s hand to fish it out of her pocket and was already annoyed at the caller who’d ruined a good thing. But maybe the detectives had some good news. She checked the screen. Cal. So much for that thought.
“Speak,” she said in her usual greeting to her best friend, as she watched green trees fly by while the car zipped down the road.
“Woof,” Cal answered.
“What’s up? How are you? How’s my house? Everything okay?” She’d had to cut their last conversation short because her battery had been seconds from dying.
“I’m fine and the house is fine. Are you off the road yet? Where the hell are you?” Cal sounded testier than normal.
“Just about the other side of the country.”
Troy shot her a warning glance and shook his head.
“Uh oh. I’ve spilled company secrets. You’re not supposed to know where I am. Actually, I’m not even sure so I couldn’t tell you if I wanted to.” Which was a slight lie because she knew they’d had crazy monkey sex in Erie, Pennsylvania, and tonight they’d be somewhere in Massachusetts. She sighed and a little shiver ran down her spine just thinking about last night.
“Well, when you get there,” Cal said, bringing her out of her daydream, “would you please ditch the bodyguard and tell me? One of us here should know where you are. I don’t like that you’re with some guy we barely know.”
“That guy saved my life. Three times. I think we can trust him.” She pulled some chocolate out of her purse.
“What if he’s the one that’s behind all this?”
Julie hated this conversation. “I don’t believe for one second that he’d take a bullet to somehow drive me toward him. I went six weeks without seeing him after the first attempt.”
“And you don’t think it’s a little strange that he was around when someone shot at you a second time?” Cal asked.
“He nearly died trying to save me, Cal, and you’re not going to convince me that I have something to worry about where he’s concerned.”
Troy’s lifted eyebrows conveyed his surprise at the obvious turn the conversation had taken, but he rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“Fine...whatever. We just don’t know anything about him, so I’m worried. Just please call me when you get there. Hey, before I forget. I met one of your neighbors. Al Gates.”
Julie searched for a face to go with the name as she unwrapped a Hershey’s Kiss. “That doesn’t ring a bell. Which house?”
“The one at the top of the hill.”
“Hmm,” Julie said. “What’s he look like?”
“Nerd. Short curly hair, medium height. Kind of skinny, dark brown eyes and Coke-bottle glasses. He’s one of those gamer guys. Invents those violent video games that sell millions.”
She pictured every house along her run, but this guy didn’t match any neighbors she remembered. “Well, that didn’t help. Where’d you meet him?” She bit off the tip of chocolate.
“He knocked on your door because he was worried that his backyard had slid into yours.”
“Did it?” Her pulse bumped up. If the hill had slid into her yard, she was making Troy turn around now.
“No, no slide. Your place is fine. Relax. Don’t freak out. He said he was a neighbor. Maybe you just don’t remember him.”
She had to admit a tendency to forget names and faces because she met so many people all of the time. “I guess. Just don’t let anyone into—”
“Into your house. I got it already. Look, he was nice and nothing happened so don’t stress. How’s your leg?” she asked, probably to change the subject. Cal was good at deflecting the conversation when she wanted to.
“It’s better. Cal, be careful okay. I don’t want this nutjob going after you because you’re checking my house.”
Carrie Ann laughed. “Not going to happen. Trust me.”
“One other thing,” Julie said. “Tell Abbey there’s a stack of headshots on my entry table that need to be mailed out. I put the addresses with them.” It was the last bit of work she’d done before her mother had driven up the day of the car bomb.
“You’re way nicer than me,” Cal said. “I can’t believe you’re still signing headshots and mailing them out for anyone who asks. That’s crazy.”
“It’s called keeping my fans happy,” Julie said, popping the rest of the Kiss in her mouth.
“And it’s all about the fans, isn’t it? Hey,” she said, before Julie could comment. “I have to go. I have an audition. Call me when you get there. I hate worrying about you.”
“Then don’t.”
“Then don’t,” Call mocked her, a real sense of anger in her tone. “Sometimes I just want to smack you.”
Julie snorted. The conversation made it hard to enjoy the chocolate. “Gee, Cal. I love you too. Break a leg. I’ll talk to you later. Don’t be pissed,” she added before disconnecting the call.
“What was that all about?” Troy’s suspicious macho tone would have made her smile if the situation wasn’t so serious.
“Just a neighbor up the block who thought his backyard might’ve had a slide. Cal said everything’s fine. I trust her.”
“From the sound of it, she’s mad?” Troy asked. He looked in the rearview mirror.
Julie heard the roar of an engine and turned as a Porsche zoomed past them in the fast lane. “Apparently I can’t do anything right, and not telling where I am is at the top of the list.”
“Is she always so possessive?”
They’d known each other for over thirteen years and Cal had stuck close to her through thick and thin. Granted, the thin parts had mostly belonged to Cal because Julie’s star had been constantly rising, but Cal’d been there during both of Julie’s high-profile breakups and helped her pick up the pieces.
Julie exhaled in a rush. “Mostly. It’s not that she’s possessive per se. More like protective. She doesn’t want to see me get hurt.”
“I don’t either, you know. That’s why we’re taking this trip.”
She watched his profile, his intense focus as he concentrated on the road, the way his big hand gripped the wheel easily. She remembered how his hands felt stroking over her skin. How gentle the
y could be, how he made her shudder with a light touch or moan from an intimate caress. She’d never felt safer. “I know.”
“Can I ask you something?” he said.
“Sure.” The sun disappeared behind scattered dark clouds and Julie eased the window down a few inches. The fresh scent of rain filled her head.
“Will you tell me about your dad?”
Well, she sure as hell hadn’t seen that coming. Nothing like the mention of her father to bring her back to reality. Most people were curious about him, but she’d made sure to keep that topic off-limits in her interviews. “If you really feel the need to know. Ask away.” This required more chocolate. She reached for a handful of Kisses, put the window back up, then shifted in the seat and got comfortable.
“Obviously your parents are divorced.”
She nodded. “Obviously.”
“For how long?”
She took a second to think about it as she unwrapped chocolate. “About twenty years.”
His eyes widened. “Wow. So he left when you were really little.”
Drops of rain spotted the windshield. “I was eight. And we left. I don’t think my mom felt right about throwing him out of the house. As it was he lost the house, but he had nowhere to go and my mom knew it. We moved in with her folks until she found a job, then we moved to California.
“Can I ask...?” His brows crinkled together. He wanted to know more without overstepping any bounds and her heart opened up.
“Why we left him?” She quirked one eyebrow up because she wasn’t sure that was his question, but he nodded so she continued. “My father was a crack addict.” Saying the words still felt foreign even after all these years. She bit the tip of the chocolate. “He loved us, I know he did. At least as much as he could. But he couldn’t stay away from the stuff. He’d try. He’d go weeks, sometimes months without it, but he always went back. Then it was back to rehab. He lied and let us down over and over. A never-ending circle my mom finally decided she didn’t want to go around anymore. She didn’t want me caught in it either. So she—we—left.”
Troy rubbed his hand across her thigh and the gentle touch had her insides melting. “Did he ever get violent?” The edge in his voice mixed with the worry in his eyes.
“Not violent per se.” She shook her head. “I never felt physically threatened by him, but he used to yell if my mom caught him in a lie. He always found a way to turn it around on her. Looking back on it, I think it was amazing how he could spin one of his lies into something Mom or I did wrong. Oh he used to get royally fucked up. He managed to hide it in the beginning, but you can only hide that behavior for so long. There’s only so much covering up a person can do before their lies are unraveled.”
He was way too quiet. Did he think differently of her now?
Rain came down harder and Troy hit the wipers. They smoothed across the windshield in a muted rhythmic swoosh.
“Okay, you got my sad story. You know just about everything there is to know about me.” Not exactly true, but because much of her life had been played out in the public eye, he sure as hell had more information on her than she did on him. Hell, she still didn’t know his age. “How old are you?”
He sighed as if he had no way around her. Which he didn’t. “Thirty-six.”
She would’ve pegged him for thirty. He looked good. “Where did you grow up?” She’d asked him that in the hospital and he’d dodged her. Maybe he thought she hadn’t noticed. Wrong.
“Didn’t I answer that one already?”
She laughed. “‘All over’ doesn’t count. You were born... Now you finish the sentence.” This was like pulling out wisdom teeth with toothpicks.
“On the East Coast,” he said. “Boston.”
“See? That wasn’t so hard. You lived there for how long?”
“Until I was nine.” He’d been nine when he’d last seen his uncle, which made sense.
She scratched her nose, then unwrapped another Kiss. The soft vibration of the road hummed through her.
“Was there a reason you moved?”
“Is there a reason you need to know all this?” He glanced in her direction again.
Whoa. What was that all about? Did she really want to work this hard on a man? Though his answers had been short and sweet the past couple of days, he’d at least opened up to her little. “I’m sorry.” Her tone sounded too brisk. Even she heard it. But she was very sorry she got involved with him in the first place if this is how he reacted to friendly conversation. “Forget I asked.” She popped the whole chocolate, but no amount would fix this ache. She sat forward, feeling miles away from the man next to her. Especially after she’d just spilled something so personal and private about her life. Maybe Cal was right. She knew nothing about him. The last thing she wanted was to fall for an emotionally distant man. Life was too short to be in the dark when it came to a partnership. She wanted more than monosyllabic answers accompanied by the occasional shrug that screamed indifference, or sharp return questions that cut the inquiry.
It was his smile and his rare laughter that drew her in. She loved his dry humor, but she needed way more than that to stay interested. She needed participation. Cooperation. A partner. There was nothing she wanted more than to listen to him talk about himself. Learn the things that made him the man he was today.
But she also had a breaking point.
She had to come to terms with the idea that she’d slept with a man who had no intention of sharing the important parts of himself. Great. If she let herself, she could be half in love with him already. The care and tenderness he’d shown in bed seemed completely juxtaposed to the man behind the wheel now.
She refused to be angry with herself only because she’d had the best sex of her life with this man, and that had to be worth a little aggravation. Only she knew herself too well. If she continued to sleep with him, she’d fall hard. No way would she fall for a guy who couldn’t meet her halfway.
Suddenly the instant change of weather seemed apropos.
* * *
The warning signs were clear. Troy read her body language. She’d just written him off. He couldn’t blame her. He’d never been a big talker. Had never really confided in anyone. He didn’t have a mother or any siblings. He hadn’t talked to his father in almost two decades. He’d been a loner almost his whole life. Though he’d made some friends at the gym, he hadn’t even seen them in weeks because of his new schedule with Ari. Blake was a good kid, but their interaction was mostly business.
Frustration pounded through him. He liked her so damn much. He more than liked her. She was quick-witted, easy to smile and levelheaded. Though she was world famous, she didn’t take herself too seriously and she knew what mattered most. People. Relationships. He’d had two of the most amazing nights of his life with this woman, not to mention the great conversations and all the laughter, and as the seconds ticked by, he watched his chances with her sputter and die. Did he dare open up? Did he really think it would make a difference when it came to building something solid between them?
The Hollywood starlet and the private investigator. He shook his head, didn’t see that picture at all.
But did he want to blow the absolute best thing he’d ever had? Not if someone paid him a hundred million dollars and told him he’d never have to spy on a cheating spouse again.
“We moved because my dad and uncle had a falling out.” Troy hit the blinker, moved to the left lane and passed an old Chevy truck.
The look she gave him was loaded with interest and maybe a touch of concern. “I’m sorry. That must have been hard.”
He nodded. “I was closer to my uncle than to my own father. I didn’t see my uncle that often, but when I did, we had fun. Sometimes I wondered if that was why my dad moved us.”
She turned back into him as if sharing this information was some kind of gift. “What did you do for fun?” With her head cocked to the side and small grin playing on her lips, she looked like some kind of teenager, not a Hol
lywood icon in the making.
Troy remembered their times at the lake. The hours spent in the boat with their lines in the water. “We used to fish.” He moved back in the right lane in front of the truck.
She nodded and waited, expecting more since he’d opened up that much.
“A lot,” he added.
Her eyebrows lifted. And, more, they said.
The steady drizzle slacked off to sprinkles and Troy shut the wipers off. “He had a cabin on a lake and we used to make s’mores by the fire pit at night. Those were about the only times I had any candy. My father didn’t like sweets. His idea of dessert was smoking a stogie.”
She chuckled. “Hate the stogies, but mmm, I love s’mores. I haven’t had one of those in years.”
“Maybe we’ll do that.” He glanced at her and grinned at the sparkle in her eyes. “You do like your chocolate, don’t you?”
She lifted the last Kiss in her hand. “Ha. Understatement. But, that’s probably what saved my mom in that explosion.” The memory doused her good humor. She looked up at him, her eyes narrowing a fraction. “Is that where we’re going? This place by the lake in Massachusetts?”
She was too smart for her own good. Not that she wouldn’t have figured it out when they arrived, but all he’d mentioned was Boston and having s’mores by the lake, and she’d latched on to where he might be driving them. Like him, she was an observer. A thinker. Probably because she had to figure out characters before she played them. She wanted to know what made a person tick. He worked the same way when it came to his job.
He nodded. “Yeah. It’s my uncle’s cabin.”
“Uh oh. You spilled the secret.” She looked around the interior of the car. “Will you have to kill me now?” she whispered.
He shook his head. “Not even funny.”
She smacked his thigh, all fun and games. “Oh, sure it is. You just have a miniscule sense of humor when it comes to me getting whacked. Hey, I can understand that, but we can’t make fun of me getting killed if I’m dead, so we may as well do it when I’m alive and we can laugh about it.”
Troy searched for the logic and couldn’t find it. He shook his head. “I can’t...” Just the thought made him sick. “I can’t laugh about it.” Sure, she wanted to lighten the mood, and it was the whole reason they were thousands of miles away from home, but it wasn’t a laughing matter. He opened his mouth to tell her exactly that, but caught the new look on her face. Her smile had vanished.