by Jill Sanders
She reached for JT’s hand. He dropped the handle of the cart with the groceries in it and took her hand in his.
“You can stay out here with Bo,” he suggested.
She shook her head. “No, we’ll all go in.” She glanced down at Bo, who sat down on his butt.
JT opened the door and smiled. “So far so good,” he said after looking in.
They spent the next half hour going room to room. Nothing looked out of place.
“We lucked out,” he said, and then he groaned. “My office.”
She followed him as they made their way up the hill.
When they opened the door, her heart sank seeing the destruction. Books were tossed everywhere, and his very expensive chair was twisted and broken.
Her hand went to JT’s shoulders to comfort him, but he rushed away as he headed towards his computer. As far as she could tell, it had been left untouched.
Making her way to his side while stepping over the destruction, she watched as he flipped the screen on.
“Is… everything there?”
He glanced over at her. “I save my files on a secure drive… offsite. That doesn’t mean they didn’t mess with my system.”
He moved the mouse around and nodded. “Last login was me.” He shut the system down and pulled out his cell phone. “Looks like Tom has a reason to come out now.”
She stood outside with him as he talked to the police.
“They’ll be here within the hour. We might as well head back to the house and put everything away. Our ice cream is probably starting to melt by now.”
They walked in silence, and she helped him put the groceries away, then carried her bags from Serenity’s Attic upstairs.
When she came down, there was a tall brown-haired man in police uniform standing in the living room talking to JT.
JT glanced up at her and smiled. “Emma, this is Brock. Brock, Emma Wilder.”
“Aren’t you…” Brock started to say but shook his head. “Nice to meet you.” He held out his hand, and walked over and shook it.
“Nice to meet you, and yes, I am.” She smiled. “JT was nice enough to put me up for a few days while I’m in town.”
“Lucky man.” Brock smiled. “If you’ll pardon me, I was just going to head on over and assess the damage.” He tipped his head towards her.
“We’ll be back soon. Will you be okay here?” JT asked.
“Yes.” She waved him off. “I’ll start dinner.” She nodded back to the kitchen.
Brock walked to the front door and waited for JT there. JT walked closer to her and whispered.
“This shouldn’t take long, but I’m letting Bo stay with you here.” His hand slid down her arm. “If you need anything…”
She smiled. “We’ll be fine.”
She watched them leave and made her way into the kitchen. It took her a few minutes to find everything she needed. She cleaned the potatoes and put them in the oven once it was heated. Then she started on the rest of dinner.
Deciding she could use a drink to stop herself from glancing out the window every few seconds, she pulled out a bottle of wine and sipped a glass as she worked.
Bo, for his part, lay on his bed that sat in the corner of the kitchen and watched her.
When her cell phone rang, she jumped and answered it before looking at the screen.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Emm?” Mark’s voice caused her shoulders to tense all over again.
“Mark?” She had to take a deep cleansing breath to keep herself from hanging up.
“Who did you think it was?” Mark’s tone turned accusing.
“What do you want?” she asked. It was the first time he’d called her since the fight almost a week ago.
“I called to see if I could come over. I wanted to stop by and… talk.”
“I’m not at home.” She rubbed her hand over her forehead.
“What time will you be back? I can wait.”
“I’m out of town,” she answered, reaching for her wine.
“Where are you? I can…”
“I’m out of the state. What do you want?” she asked again.
The phone was silent for a while.
“I wanted to explain… about the other night.”
“Explain?” She drank a gulp of wine and went back to rubbing her forehead.
“You caught me on a bad night. I was pretty upset that I hadn’t gotten a new part...”
She could tell he was lying, but at this point, she no longer cared. He’d done and said things that could no longer be justified. Especially since the whole deal had been caught on tape and exposed to the entire world.
“Mark, it’s over,” she said once he stopped making excuses.
“You’re just saying that because you’re upset. I’m sure if I come over… where are you? I can drive…” He broke off.
“I’m in Maine,” she blurted out. “Clear across the country. And I don’t want to see you. I think you made yourself very clear…”
“What about the premiere?” he interrupted her.
“I’ll be there and play nice, but as far as you and I are concerned… it’s done.” She pushed the button and tossed her phone down on the table.
Chapter 9
The moment JT stepped outside, Brock slugged him playfully on the shoulder.
“What was that for?” He looked over at his high school friend and frowned.
“You should have told me you had… company.” His friend sighed. “Emma Wilder.” He put his hands over his heart and pumped them a few times. “Woowee. Hollywood’s latest heart stopper is in your kitchen making you dinner, and you act like it’s an everyday occurrence.”
He shook his head as they started walking. He was about to tell him that Emma was just a friend but stopped himself.
“Did you meet her in Hollywood when you went out to shoot your movie?” Brock asked as they made their way up the steps to JT’s office.
“Yeah.”
Brock stopped outside the door. “Are you two…dating?”
Instead of answering, he opened the door. He wished his friend would stop asking so many questions about his and Emma’s relationship.
He stepped into the mess and felt his stomach turn once more. “You can see, whoever did this left a mess.”
“Did they get anything you’re working on?”
“No, it’s on a secure server, off site. They would have to know a series of passwords. The last one to log in was me,” he assured Brock.
“Could be kids trying to mess with you. When they couldn’t get into your system…” He motioned to the mess.
“What about the cup?” Something wasn’t sitting right with him.
Brock shrugged. “It’s a cup. Not a death threat. If nothing is missing…” He bent down and picked up JT’s chair. “This the only thing broken?”
JT nodded. “I just ordered that a few months back. Cost me a few grand.”
“Shit!” Brock shook his head. “For a chair?”
“If you spent all your time sitting in one, you’d spend good money to keep your ass from falling asleep too.”
“I guess if you’ve got it, spend it.” Brock set the chair down. “I’ll write this up, but for now, start locking your doors.”
JT sighed and nodded. “Yeah, Bo wasn’t any help.” He shook his head. “Damn dog probably licked them and demanded a belly rub.”
Brock chuckled. “Could always install cameras. Sarah installed a half dozen or more on the resort after all that mess out there.”
“Not a bad idea. Who’d she get to do it?”
“You might want to check with Ben. He’s the one who talked her into it.” Brock finished writing something down. “Here.” He turned his tablet around. “Is this about right?”
He glanced over the short list of items that had been broken and nodded.
“What about upstairs?”
“Haven’t been up there.” He’d forgotten about upstairs
altogether. After seeing the mess down here, he’d forgotten to check.
They headed up the stairs, dodging books that were laying on the stairs.
Upstairs was untouched.
“Lucked out there,” Brock added. “I’ll have Ava email everything to you once it’s filed.” He tucked the notepad into his pocket. “Need some help cleaning up?” Brock asked.
“Sure.” He started picking up the books and putting them back in empty places on his shelves.
By the time Brock left and he walked back to the house, he was starving.
When he opened the back door in the kitchen, Emma was on the phone and looking stressed.
“It’s done,” she said, just before hanging up and tossing the phone down. She was rubbing her forehead and he could tell she was fighting off a headache.
“What’s done?” he asked, setting his keys on the hook by the back door and flipping the lock behind him.
Emma turned towards him and visibly relaxed. “Everything okay?”
He nodded and moved over to the oven. He could smell something burning.
“Oh, no!” She rushed over and pulled out the potatoes.
“They’re okay.” He took them out and set them on the counter. “Only the outsides are burnt.” He took her shoulders and could see tears threatening to surface. “Is everything okay?”
When she only looked at him, he nodded to the phone she’d tossed down.
“Mark.” She sighed.
His eyebrows shot up. “What did he want?”
Her shoulders straightened. “To talk.” She walked over to the oven, and he followed her.
“Why don’t you sit and have some wine. I’ll take over.” He poured some more wine into her glass and handed it to her.
“You can’t always make dinner.”
“Why not?” He smiled. “I do it every night. With or without you around.”
She sighed and nodded. “How’d it go with the police?”
“Brock has a major crush on you,” he said as he pulled out the steak seasoning.
She was silent and he glanced back. “Course, he had a major crush on Tara Riley in second grade too, and she had cooties.”
He waited until he saw the smile on her lips before tossing the steaks onto the plate.
“If my back deck was finished, we could grill these outside, but…” He set the makeshift grill over his gas burners.
“You have enough on your plate. I can’t imagine rebuilding a deck on top of everything you have going on upstairs. Not to mention, writing your next major hit.”
“Who says it’ll be a hit?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes at him. “Seriously?”
“I’ve been struggling with this one for a few months.” He sighed as he flipped the steaks.
“What’s it about?”
He glanced back at her and shook his head. “I don’t want to bore you.”
“Please. Mark never talked to me.” She sipped more wine. “And he always said I was boring.”
“You?” He shook his head. “Mark is a loser,” he added for good measure.
“We can agree on that.” She held up her wine glass.
“You never did tell me what happened that made you run across the continent.”
“Oh no, you can’t sidestep that quickly. You spill what you’re working on, and I’ll fill you in on what happened.”
He flipped the steaks and peeled the burnt spots from the potatoes. She had pulled out the baby carrots, so he quickly tossed them in a skillet, adding some white cooking wine, butter, salt, herbs, and a touch of honey. He flipped them over the heat and watched the steaks as he talked about his latest project.
“It’s a new twist on parallel dimensions.”
“Are there zombies?” she asked, causing him to chuckle.
“No.”
“Aliens?”
“No.”
“Where does the threat come from?” After a moment of silence, she added. “You do always have something threatening the characters.”
He turned towards her, spoon in her hand. “I thought you said you hadn’t read anything except Crescent Creek.”
She shrugged and smiled up at him. “I didn’t want you to get a big head.”
He laughed. “From here on, how about we stick to the truth?”
“Agreed.” She held her wine glass up and took a drink.
They talked about the plot for his next book, Flip Side, over dinner. He’d managed to salvage her burnt potatoes and the carrots and steak tasted simply amazing. When the plates were empty, he leaned back and just watched her.
“What?” she finally asked. “Have I got steak sauce on my face?” She rubbed her mouth with her hands.
He chuckled. “No, I was just working up the courage to ask what really happened to you that sent you running over five thousand miles to me?”
She dropped her hands and took a deep breath.
“I don’t mean to pry.” He started to clear the dishes.
“Why don’t we take a walk and tackle those after.” She nodded to the dishes. “I think Bo wants out.”
The dog was sitting by the back door, patiently waiting for someone to open it for him.
She noticed that he pulled his keys from the hook and locked the door behind them. They walked in silence for a while until they hit a small pathway.
“I’ve been thinking of making a stone pathway all the way around the island,” he said absently.
“How big is this place?” she asked as he pulled a low tree branch out of her way.
“Almost five acres. Smaller than most of the islands down the coast, but big enough for me.”
“How long have you lived here?”
She was stalling and, by the look he gave her, he knew.
“Almost five years.” He stopped near the edge of the water. They stood on a low hill that overlooked the part of the island that faced the mainland. Off in the distance, she could make it out and wondered if she could ever live so far away from everything.
Taking a deep breath, she started her story. “The day you left, I went to brunch with Mark. He suggested that the engagement was the producer’s idea. He hinted that it would be good for the release. So, with the agreement that it would be a very long engagement, I agreed.”
She glanced over at him and waited. JT stood, his legs spread wide, as his eyes scanned the horizon. “And?”
“For the past year, Mark and I have played nice. He stopped running around, and we made sure we were seen together.” She wrapped her arms around herself and continued. “Early last month, I noticed a change in him. He started going out every night.”
“Were you living together?”
“No. One of my demands. I needed my own space. He did occasionally stay over, but other than that, we had our own separate places. I had my condo downtown and he had his house in the hills.”
“He was cheating again?” he asked.
She nodded. “At first, I believed him when he told me he was trying to wine and dine the producers for a new show he wanted to star in and direct, but at the same time, the tabloids were full of blurry images of him at night clubs, with women hanging on him.”
“Did you confront him?” He turned towards her.
She shrugged. “I didn’t see any reason to. We hadn’t been… together for months.” She avoided his eyes.
“What happened?”
“Things got worse. His latest fling posted pictures on Instagram.”
“What’s… never mind.” He shook his head.
She glanced over at him. “Seriously?” She shook her head. “It’s like Twitter and Facebook.”
He nodded. “I figured such.”
She smiled. “You really have secluded yourself, haven’t you?”
He nodded, a smile on his face. “And happier for it.”
Shaking her head, she continued. “I confronted him the night before we were supposed to go to a party to celebrate that Crescent Creek was finally out of po
st-production. We had a huge fight. He left and I thought it was clear we were over. Then, at the party, he showed up drunk or high.” She shook her head. “It was hard to tell. He pulled me aside and tried to convince me to take him back. He told me he was nothing without me and that he’d gone to counseling for his addiction.” She searched JT’s blue eyes. They were so different from Mark’s that she relaxed slightly.
“You believe him?”
She nodded. “He texted me a picture of him checking into rehab. I believed he deserved a second chance.”
“Tell me you don’t plan on getting back with him after?”
“No.” She sighed. “Whatever we had died long ago.”
“Why the escape?” he asked after a moment.
“I was bombarded with paparazzi. They were everywhere. One even broke into my building and tried to get into my condo.” She shivered visibly, and JT wrapped his arm around her and pulled her closer.
“Could someone have followed you here?” he asked as he held her close.
She stiffened and closed her eyes. She hadn’t thought it possible, but after today, she wondered if maybe someone had followed her to Maine.
Chapter 10
For the next few days, Emma enjoyed her time on JT’s island. She spent her days reading or taking long walks with Bo while JT worked in his office. Since he was on a deadline to finish his book, she brought him lunch and dinner when he remained out there until after dark.
She had a lot of time to think about her life and the direction she was heading. She’d always wanted to act and had taken drama classes the first chance she could.
She didn’t know if her future lay in California, but she wasn’t willing to throw in the towel just because of a few mistakes. She should have broken things off with Mark long ago, she knew that now.
She deserved better. Much better. Her father had always told her that no matter what she wanted out of life, she deserved the best.
She’d put her father’s words aside when going out with Mark. Now, however, they played over and over in her mind.
What did she want out of life?