by Katie McCoy
Jax handed the PA some cash in exchange for the keys, and then it was just the two of us, on the road, heading to who knew where. I didn’t even bother to ask Jax because I had a feeling he’d give me a cryptic answer before he gave me the truth. So I just sat back and enjoyed the ride, the adrenaline from our escape cooling in my veins.
“You’re good at escaping the press,” I noted.
Jax shrugged, his eyes on the road. “Hazards of the trade, I suppose.”
“Do you ever get used to it?” I wanted to know.
“Not really,” he said with a wry smile. “You just accept it.”
We stopped at the first village we came across, which was weirdly deserted. I was honestly surprised a tumbleweed didn’t blow across our path as we drove through. There were barely any people out, mostly a small crowd of teenagers hanging around what appeared to be a bus stop.
“Let me guess, you’re shooting a horror movie on the side?” I quipped, clutching my purse a little tighter.
“Sorry, I forget not everywhere’s on city time.” Jax made a rueful face. “I’m used to things being open past . . . five p.m.,” he said, checking the sign on a closed storefront.
“It’s nice,” I said, trying to be generous.
He laughed. “At least there’s food.” He pointed to the lone open store, a fish-and-chip shop.
My stomach growled, and even though the sign was flickering and the plastic tables looked like they were from the 1950s, I wasn’t about to turn down some fried food. My mouth watered as Jax ordered for us.
“First class all the way,” he joked, carrying two steaming portions of fish and chips, with grease already soaking through the brown paper bags.
“Where do you want to eat?” I asked. The shop was just a takeaway joint and the only other option was a stained-looking bench outside.
“Follow me.” Jax unlocked the back of the van and grabbed a blanket, tossing it over his shoulder. He headed off past the parking lot, in the direction of a field, and I had no option but to follow.
“We’re going to get lost,” I told him as we walked farther and farther away from the lights of the village. I had to squint not to trip on the uneven, grassy ground, and I was glad I was wearing a jacket against the chilly breeze. “Or murdered. One or the other.”
“Don’t you trust me?” Jax asked. “No, wait, don’t answer that.”
Finally, he seemed to find what he was looking for and set the food down. He spread the blanket out in the middle of the field, and gestured for me to sit. I did, still feeling a little confused as to why we were out in the middle of nowhere.
Then Jax pointed upwards. I looked at the sky. Above us were a million beautiful twinkling stars. Not the kind of view you could ever get in New York City. And it was so quiet that I could hear the gentle babble of a river nearby and the soft hooting sounds of an owl from the nearby forest. Everything felt magical and surreal. It was incredible. And deeply romantic.
And I would bet a thousand dollars there were no photographers lurking nearby for this.
I glanced over at Jax, fully expecting him to be taking all of the scenery in as well, but found that he was staring at me.
I glanced away, flushing, but when I sneaked a look back, he was still watching me.
Oh, God.
My stomach flipped 180 degrees; I couldn’t help it. It was that look, the same look from the pub, full of intensity and desire.
Suddenly I was tired of playing it safe.
Here I was, under the stars, with the world’s next Mr. Darcy. And he was looking at me like I was Elizabeth Bennet. Why was I holding back?
So, I turned off my brain, grabbed him by his shirt and pulled his mouth to mine.
If Jax was surprised by my actions, he recovered quickly. His mouth was firm against mine, letting me take the lead, but only for a second. Before I knew what was happening, he was kissing me back, his lips hot and insistent as he leaned forward. Even though I was the one who had grabbed him, within a minute, he had me on my back, his long, hard body covering mine.
I slid my hands up his chest, taking his face in my hands and angling his head so I could slip my tongue into his mouth. As I did, he groaned, the sound vibrating through me. I felt it everywhere, and my whole body began to tingle. I wanted more.
Jax did too. He tore his mouth from mine to begin a hot trail of kisses down my throat, his hands gripping my hips. He was pressed tight against me and I could feel the hard length of his cock against my stomach. He wanted me. He wanted me badly.
The knowledge made me even hotter. I thrust my hands into his thick hair as he sucked and nibbled on my neck. I had a feeling he was going to leave a mark, and I didn’t even care. His mouth felt so good. I wanted him to kiss me all over.
Gripping his hair, I pulled his head back up and kissed him deeply, thrusting my tongue into his mouth. It had never been this way before. I had never felt so wanted, so desired. And it made me bold.
Arching against him, I wrapped my legs around his waist. As he settled between my legs, his cock straining against the zipper of his jeans, I moaned as our bodies connected. Even with the thick layers of fabric between us, I could still feel him, hard and urgent against the seam of my jeans.
His tongue tangled with mine as his hand slid upward, slipping underneath my shirt. His palm found my breast, his thumb dragging across my hardened nipple. The sensation was so perfect.
“You’re so fucking hot,” Jax rasped, pulling his mouth from mine.
The sound of his voice, of his obvious desire, made me hotter. I wanted him. I wanted him so badly.
I reached for the hem of his shirt, but before I could pull it upward, I heard a noise coming from out in the dark. Immediately, I went still.
“What’s that?” I asked, Jax’s hand still on my breast.
“It’s nothing,” he said, nuzzling at my neck.
But it wasn’t nothing. The noise came again.
I leapt up. “Someone’s out there!”
My heart was pounding. “Could the photographers have followed us?” I hissed, quickly tugging my clothing back in place. All thoughts of a hot make-out with Jax were forgotten—not when the photos of him getting to second base in a field might make it on every website around.
“I don’t think so . . .” Jax got to his feet, looking cautious. “Hello?” he called. “Is anyone out there?”
I caught my breath. Jax looked too good, even in the dark. His hair was rumpled, his clothing in disarray. Had I done that? What was wrong with me? It had seemed so good and so right in the moment, but now I realized that I had made a huge mistake. I clearly couldn’t keep my wits about when I was with Jax—a few romantic gestures and a sexy look made me forget all of my rules. That was dangerous. He was dangerous.
It was clear that I needed to keep my distance.
“We should go,” I told him, taking another fearful look around.
He looked disappointed, but didn’t argue with me, gathering up the blanket and the untouched food. I was still starving, but I kept my distance.
“Penny,” Jax said from behind me, but I didn’t want to turn around, and just kept walking.
Then, all of a sudden, I heard a noise to my left again. Heart pounding, I spun around, and found myself face to face with a cow.
A big cow.
And sure, you may not think cows are scary, but just try running into one in the middle of the night.
It let out a low bellow of a moo, and I screamed and bolted in the other direction. It didn’t follow, but that didn’t slow me at all. But before I could get very far, I slipped on something soft and landed hard on the ground. Right on a cowpat.
Shit.
14
Penny
“Don’t laugh.”
“I’m not laughing.” Jax’s lips tugged at the edges, and he was clearly struggling not to smile.
“You’re laughing on the inside.” I crossed my arms and tried to ignore the pungent smell steaming up the van.
Jax was driving us back to the hotel, and me?
I was covered in manure.
Maybe it was a good thing. After all, nothing kills a mood like smelling like a stable, and I needed all the self-control in the world after nearly getting carried away back there.
What was I doing?
Jax was a movie star. And I was . . . not. I prided myself on making good decisions, but all my careful rules and boundaries went right out the window whenever I was alone with him. Logic and common sense didn’t exist around him, which is how I ended up doing dumb things like making out with him in a field, nearly running face-first into a cow, and then landing ass-first in a cow pat. It couldn’t have been more embarrassing.
This whole thing with Jax—whatever it was—was a recipe for disaster.
We got back to the hotel and slipped in the staff entrance.
“Penny—” Jax started, but I had humiliated myself enough.
“Nope!” I cut him off. “There’s a hot bath with my name on it!”
I ran to my bedroom, closing the door behind me. I needed to get clean before I could even face myself, and I didn’t even know what I’d need to be able to face Jax again.
A long, hot bath and two tiny bottles of vodka from the minibar did a lot to make me feel better, but I still stayed in my room. I felt like I owed Jax an apology; after all, it wasn’t his fault I freaked out over our bovine friend, but I just couldn’t bring myself to talk to him yet.
My phone buzzed. It was Mia.
“Oh. My. God!” she said, as a greeting. “We just got the pictures of you and Jax, and they are equal parts adorable and scorching hot.”
“Pictures?” I asked before remembering that our afternoon picnic had been interrupted by photographers. I had completely forgotten.
“You haven’t seen them?” Mia demanded. “Get your computer! I need to talk about each and every one of them.”
Even though it was the last thing I wanted to do, I knew that refusing would just make Mia suspicious, and it would be better to go along with it. I hated that I had to lie to Mia about all of this, because what I really needed was my best friend’s advice on how to deal with the situation.
Instead, I went to the website. Jax and I were the top item. And Mia was right. The pictures of the two of us sprawled out on a blanket in the English countryside were both adorable and sexy as hell. Sexy mainly because Jax was in them, and he was giving me a smolder that rivaled that one his character gave Elizabeth Bennet on screen.
But that only served to remind me that he was an actor and he had probably been acting. Except, he hadn’t seemed to be acting tonight. Nope, what I had felt straining against his zipper seemed to be 100% genuine Jax Hawthorne.
“He looks completely smitten with you,” Mia sighed. “I would be jealous, except I’m so happy. You really deserve this.”
“Thanks,” I said, once again hating that I was lying to her.
But was I? It seemed—especially after tonight—that the lines between what was real and what was pretend were becoming blurred. Did Jax really like me? If he didn’t, why would he go to all the trouble of getting us away from the cameras and the press? Why wouldn’t he just try to get our romantic rendezvous captured as well?
I had way too many questions, and not enough answers.
I paused, not sure what I believed. Or what I felt. I wanted so badly to tell Mia, but I couldn’t. So I didn’t. I changed the subject instead, and chatted to her about her latest bad date and her brother visiting town, until finally we hung up around midnight. But those unsure feelings kept me up the rest of the night, and lingered long into the morning. I waited—like a coward—for Jax to leave for set without me, and stayed in my room for a few hours working on Emmy’s business plan. The work was a good distraction, but I knew it was silly of me to hide out in the hotel all day.
I had to face the music.
At least today, it smelled like lavender bubble bath.
When I arrived on set, I headed straight to the craft table, where thankfully Morgan was there, eating like an elephant. If there was anything that was consistent, it was that.
“Hey!” she greeted me warmly. “Heard you and Jax made the papers in the States.”
“Guess so,” I said, grabbing some scones and slathering them with clotted cream.
Morgan patted my hand sympathetically. “You must have seen the other pictures too,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. The press is just full of jealous bitches.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“Other pictures?” I asked.
She winced. “Oh, you haven’t seen?” She pulled out her phone. “I shouldn’t show you,” she said, but pulled up a British tabloid site anyways. “Remember,” she told me, before handing her phone over. “Jealous bitches.”
My heart sank as I looked at what had been posted on the site. They were pictures from set, but not the pretty, flattering ones from the picnic, nope, these were the worst kind of candid shots. Me eating—mid-bite, of course, with my cheeks bulging—or standing to the side of the filming, looking bitchy and bored. There were pictures of me taken from behind—never a flattering angle—and pictures that looked like I was mid-sneeze. Underneath the worst were the headline: “What does Heartthrob Jax Hawthorne see in this Plain Jane American?”
I wanted to cry. Because following the article were hundreds of comments asking the same thing—people pointing out how flat-chested I was, how blotchy my skin was, how ugly my profile was—basically taking all my private insecurities and putting them online for everyone to read and agree with.
“I— I need to go,” I told Morgan, shoving her phone back at her.
She gave me a sympathetic look. “I shouldn’t have shown you,” she said.
“No.” I shook my head. “I’m glad you did.”
“They’ve said worse about me,” she confessed. “And I’ve found that it’s nothing that a stiff drink and multiple orgasms can’t cure.”
Despite my sadness, I laughed.
“Thanks,” I told her, and nearly ran back to the shuttle to take me back to the hotel.
The rest of the afternoon was spent imbibing half of Morgan’s cure-all. I raided the minibar and ordered a dozen chocolate-covered strawberries from room service, which I figured was about as close to multiple orgasms as I would allow myself to get at that moment. Then I took another long bubble bath and hoped that I would feel better.
I didn’t. I felt drunk and full of chocolate, which was not how I wanted to be feeling when I heard Jax return. Foolishly, I had left my bedroom door open, so he poked his head in, finding the extremely sexy sight of me surrounded by the wrappers from the chocolate-covered strawberries and empty minibar bottles. It didn’t help that I was wearing one of the few things I had brought from home that hadn’t been part of the all-expense-paid shopping trip that he had sent me on. So when he came into my room, I was wearing a ratty old Disney shirt and boxer shorts, both of which had attractive smears of chocolate on them.
“Hey,” he said cautiously.
“Hey,” I responded, trying to quickly gather up the visual representations of my shame and general sense of pathetic-ness.
“So . . .” Jax sat on the edge of the bed. “Looks like you had a rough day.”
“It’s nothing,” I told him, sweeping my trash into the garbage bin by the bedside table. “I’m fine now.”
“Uh huh,” he said, picking up a half-eaten chocolate-covered strawberry that had escaped to the end of the bed. “You seem totally fine.” He ate the strawberry.
I didn’t mean to stare, but I did. It was probably because I was kind of drunk, but man, could Jax Hawthorne eat a strawberry.
He didn’t say anything else, just sat there, staring at me as if he could will me to talk.
Annoyingly it worked.
“There are some pictures online,” I told him.
He nodded. “I saw them. Of the picnic.”
I shook my head and picked up my phon
e. I found the site and thrust the screen towards him. “These pictures,” I said.
He looked at the phone, and his eyebrows went up and then furrowed downward. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Was he realizing that the site was correct? Was he seeing what a terrible mistake he had made in asking me here?
Instead, he tossed it onto the bed.
“That’s crap,” he told me. “They don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.”
“Don’t they?” I asked, throwing up my hands. “I know what I look like, Jax!”
He gave me a long, lingering look. “Do you?”
“I know I don’t look like the models and actresses you’re usually photographed with.”
“So?” he demanded.
“So?” I laughed, and it sounded bitter, even to me. “You know what my parents used to say about me and Paige?”
He gave me a wary look, but I continued anyway.
“They used to tell me that I was the smart one and Paige was the pretty one. And it was true when we were kids, and it’s true now.”
“Bollocks,” Jax told me.
“Bollocks?” I repeated.
He moved towards me before I could do anything. Within a second, his hands were on either side of my hips, his face mere inches from mine.
“You’re fucking gorgeous,” he told me, his voice low and husky.
“Stop it,” I told him, feeling like I might cry.
“Don’t you see how much you’re driving me crazy?” he asked, his gaze darting downward towards his lap.
I followed his eyeline, finding that he was definitely feeling something. His cock was already straining at his zipper. My eyes widened.
“Your parents are wrong. The tabloids are wrong,” he told me. “You’re absolutely beautiful and I want you so much that it’s making my head spin.”
His words were intoxicating and healing at the same time, but a part of me didn’t believe him. Then, he reached up and cupped my chin. The kiss he gave me wasn’t like the others had been. It was sweet and gentle. And I believed him. Everything he said—it was real.