Once Upon a Groom

by Karen Rose Smith

  “Anna and I were discussing something I thought you might want to help with this year.”

  “Oh, yeah. What’s that?” he asked warily.

  “It’s not another committee. Actually, we could really use another pair of hands.”

  She accompanied her words with a glance at his shoulders and arms and now he shifted as if he might be uncomfortable with her appraising him. Wasn’t he used to women staring at him?

  “I’m almost afraid to ask.”

  “Next Friday, we’re meeting at the social hall at the firehouse to fill holiday baskets for needy families, and then we’ll be delivering them. Do you think that’s something you could help us with?”

  When he was nonresponsive for a few seconds, she assumed he wanted to say no. “That’s okay,” she said, “I just thought I’d ask.” She moved to the elliptical trainer and began to study the settings.

  He moved quickly and was there beside her before she could blink. “I didn’t say no.”

  “But you want to.”

  “You’re reading me wrong, Jenny. I’m just wondering how the people in the community will like me pushing in when I’m not an insider anymore.”

  “Are you kidding me? You could never be an outsider here.”

  “You mean because of my father’s name?”

  “No. Because of your reputation. My gosh, Zack, don’t you believe the residents here would be honored to work beside you? They might ask for your autograph!”

  “Not in Miners Bluff.”

  “I’ve seen women go up to Silas in the feed store and ask for an autographed picture of you.”

  Zack laughed out loud. “And what does he say to that request?”

  “He usually tells them you’re too busy to take time to sign photographs, that you’re working on your next blockbuster. He’s proud of you, Zack, and anyone can hear it in his voice. So don’t think for a minute that you wouldn’t be accepted here. You’re Miners Bluff, born and bred, and that’s all that matters.”

  In the silence that followed, his gaze held hers. No words passed between them, but a whole history did. Finally she found her voice again, and said, “It would mean a lot to Silas if you stayed until Christmas.” She remembered she’d told him they’d talk about holidays again at the end of the day. “Didn’t you enjoy being here today?”

  She almost thought he wasn’t going to answer. But then he said, “Even if I did, staying wasn’t in my plans.”

  “I know. But can’t you think about changing them?”

  He reached out and laid his hand alongside her neck, his thumb rubbing her jaw. Although she knew she should move away from his touch, she couldn’t.

  “Do you want me to stay?”

  If she said she did, she’d be in trouble. If she said she didn’t, she might be in just as much trouble. Either way, her feelings were going to show. Could he see she wanted to be held in his arms? Could he sense the tingling awareness that tempted her to lift her lips to his? She could feel his body heat, was familiar with his scent, knew that he had a birthmark on his right upper thigh, and a scar on his right knee.

  If he kissed her now, they’d end up on the floor, tearing each other’s clothes off.

  The chirp of Zack’s cell phone was an unwanted distraction. She realized he’d hooked it to the control panel of the treadmill. He must have been expecting a call.

  “Take it,” she said breathlessly.

  When he leaned in closer, she shook her head. “Take it, Zack.”

  After hesitating one more moment to decide whether he wanted to acquiesce to her wishes or kiss her anyway, he sighed, swung away from her, and grabbed the phone. He recognized the number on the screen and he put the phone to his ear.

  “Hi, Grant. How did it go?”

  Jenny unabashedly listened. After all, Zack was right there and he wasn’t moving away, so it must not matter if she heard.

  “I thought the terms were settled.”

  He listened for a while. “Damn it, Grant, this isn’t a good time.”

  He listened again. “You’re sure we can handle this in one more meeting?” Zack frowned. “Not a conference call or a video conference? All right, let me think about it. I’ll get back to you tomorrow morning.” He ended the call and laid the phone on the treadmill control panel once more.

  “Problems?” she asked, curious.

  “Complications.” He studied her for a few very long moments.

  “What?” she asked, unnerved by his intense concentration on her.

  “You want me to stay until Christmas, so I’ll make you a deal. If you fly to California with me for a few days, I’ll stay until the holiday. What do you say? Will you go to L.A. with me?”

  Fly to L.A. with him. He’d asked her to go with him once before and she’d refused. If she refused now—

  “You have to go back now? Is it really necessary?” Or did he just want to get away from the Rocky D and Silas? Had he had enough?

  “My next project is important to me because it’s a departure from what I usually do. If I went for marketable again, funding wouldn’t be a problem. But a documentary? I have to get one particular investor to sign on the dotted line. He’s hesitant. I have to convince him by giving him my vision in person.”

  She could see how sincere he was. His work gave purpose to his life. But that still didn’t explain the deal he was proposing.

  “Why do you want me to go with you?”

  He hesitated for a few moments, then admitted, “I want you to get a glimpse of my world.”

  Of what she’d missed by refusing him so long ago? Silas needed him to stay until Christmas. They seemed to be relating to each other and a few more weeks could strengthen new bonds between them. And, to be honest, she wanted more time with Zack, too. She couldn’t refuse him this time.

  Inhaling a deep breath, both excited and a little fearful of venturing out of her realm, she agreed. “Okay. I’ll go with you to L.A. if you’ll stay until the new year.”

  When he smiled and extended his hand, she let his fingers envelop hers. Then an idea hit her with some force. She’d be staying at Zack’s house—alone with him.

  This trip to L.A. could be the biggest adventure of her life.

  Chapter Nine

  The Saturday after Thanksgiving, Jenny studied Zack’s house, part of an exclusive community near Malibu. Surrounded by coastal trees and shrubs, it was unique and surprisingly welcoming.

  “What do you think?” Zack asked as she stepped into the entrance, wondering exactly why she’d come, why she’d left Silas, why the ground beneath her feet seemed to be shifting.

  When she didn’t answer right away, he came up beside her and put his hand on her shoulder. “Are you still worried about Dad?”

  “No,” she answered honestly. “We’ll only be gone two nights. Martha said she’ll stay within shouting distance and Hank promised to stop in often, too.”

  Jenny returned to studying the architecture of Zack’s house. Its intriguing quality lured her deeper inside.

  The stone-accented and wooden-beamed exterior led into a high-vaulted, A-framed ceiling with those same accents inside. It was an open plan and she could see beyond the living room to the sunroom, deck and ocean. Taking a few steps deeper inside, she spotted another set of sliding glass doors off the kitchen with its granite counters and stainless steel appliances, its dining area with a glass table and comfortable-looking blue and green fabric-covered chairs. The colors inside the house reflected the sea, accented by natural materials mirroring hues of the outside landscape. Zack had obviously added his own preferences—dark wood bookshelves with rows and rows of videotapes and DVDs, a group of framed photos depicting various scenes from movie sets, an oil painting of a rocky cliff reflecting shadowed moonlight.

  The photos on the mantel were telling. There was one of his mother in the corral of the Rocky D, one of Dawson and Clay and Zack outside a sports arena, probably in L.A. There was also an older one of Zack and Clay and Dawson standi
ng around his first car in the parking lot of Miners Bluff High School. Jenny remembered taking that photo herself with Zack’s camera. Yet there were no pictures of Silas or of her.

  Zack came up behind her and dropped her overnight case to the sunset-colored scatter rug.

  “What do you think?” he asked again gruffly, so close to her, she could feel his body heat.

  She wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted her thoughts on. When she turned to face him, her heart thumped madly. “Your house is beautiful, Zack. It could be a retreat from the world.” She gestured to the view of the ocean. “I can imagine you sitting here, peering out there, seeing scene after scene of a new movie flashing in your mind.”

  “That’s exactly what I do. And the beach, for the most part, is private. My closest neighbors are away for months at a time.”

  A picture of the two of them on a private beach with no one around suddenly occupied her thoughts. Is that why she’d come? For intimacy with Zack? Or had she come to catch a glimpse of his lifestyle and find out whether he was simply the movie director and producer now, or still the boy she’d once known and loved?

  She’d worn espadrilles to travel, along with jeans, a T-shirt and a windbreaker. He’d told her nights at the beach could be fifty degrees in late November. She’d been surprised that Zack had worn his boots instead of Italian loafers along with his jeans and a snap-button shirt. Was this the first time he’d brought something from the ranch here with him? Were his bitterness and resentment about the way he’d left the Rocky D fading away?

  Standing there, gazing at each other, his blue eyes going darker, her own blood running faster, she might have asked him, but she didn’t get the opportunity because his cell phone buzzed.

  Grimacing, he took it from the holster on his belt. “I have to get this. It’s about my meeting.”

  “I’ll unpack,” she said easily. “Just point me to the right room.”

  “Down the hall, second door on the left. Make yourself at home.”

  This didn’t feel like home at all, because it was so different from what she knew. The ranch was dark paneling and leather, rawhide, suede and corduroy. Its rugs had Native American flair in jewel tones that were deep and dark and beautiful.

  However, she did like the ocean.

  Trailing the travel case behind her, she stopped in the kitchen and gazed out those sliding glass doors. To have the salt air and breeze and the beautiful colors right there was amazing. The sound of it must be, too. She couldn’t wait to feel the sand between her toes. Yet, she felt a little strange in this house full of light and cream walls, glass and chrome and appliances that were shiny and new. She didn’t know what to think about Zack and his life here, what he did to relax and what he did to connect.

  From what she could tell, there was a master suite and two guest bedrooms. When she opened the second door on the left, she found a beautifully decorated room anyone would have felt at home in. There was a coral reef mural on one wall, a rich coral spread on the bed, a pale yellow carpet and distressed pale green furniture. When she opened the closet, she found it empty. Apparently, he didn’t even need to store anything in it. It seemed Zack lived luxuriously but sparingly. Of course, he had a penthouse in town and a chalet in Vail. His life seemed unimaginable to her. Yet, when she watched him work with horses on the Rocky D, she knew he’d been denying a part of himself for a long time.

  Forgetting about her suitcase, she crossed to the window. When she looked at the property next door—though next door was a relative term—it was a large estate and Jenny doubted whether neighbors borrowed a cup of sugar from each other around here.

  She heard Zack coming down the hall, heard him coming into the room, but she didn’t turn around. Her Zack-radar knew when he was about a foot behind her.

  “A different view from the one at the Rocky D,” she murmured.

  “We have roses here, too,” he responded, his voice nonchalantly mellow.

  Still, she didn’t face him. “But you don’t have four seasons. Do you see Christmas trees around here? I mean, do people have them in their homes?”

  “Some do. You know, Jen, I didn’t bring you out here to make comparisons.” Something like impatience edged his tone. “I thought you might like to see beyond the boundaries of the Rocky D, beyond the boundaries of Miners Bluff. Open your eyes, Jen. There’s a whole world out here.”

  She motioned to the estate outside, to the room, and the house beyond. “And what’s in that world, Zack? I saw a few pictures out on the mantel, but nothing else that was really personal. Do you have many personal things at any one of the places where you live? Do you really belong anywhere?”

  After a few beats of silence, he asked with a bit of exasperation, “Do you want to fight?”

  Maybe she did want to rile him up. Maybe she wanted to make him feel. She took a deep breath and shook her head. “No, I don’t want to fight. I just want to know where you really live. Which place do you call home? Which place reflects who you are? Which place makes you feel warm and cuddly and makes you feel as if you don’t want to leave?”

  His eyebrows arched. “Warm and cuddly? Did you ever know me to want warm and cuddly?”

  She thought back to time spent in the barn when they’d cuddled in the straw.

  He must have been revisiting the same memory because he muttered, “Scratch that. I’m not like you. I don’t carry memories of my childhood with me to take out and look at. I don’t hang on to possessions thinking they’ll bring me good luck. I don’t store things, hoping I’ll use them one day.”

  “And why is that, Zack? Connections and bonds and dreams and memories are not bad things. I understand memories can bring pain, but they can bring happiness, too, even if it is a little nostalgic. When did you let go of needing roots? When did you stop having dreams?”

  “My dreams are just different from yours. We’re not the same. We never were.”

  “Except for one summer when we thought we belonged to each other,” she refuted quietly.

  She saw she’d hit home with that one. His eyes darkened and the corners of his lips turned down. She could see he was about to respond, maybe with a bit of temper, when his cell phone buzzed again.

  She was sorry it had because she figuratively would have liked to have duked this one out.

  He checked the screen, said, “Excuse me,” and exited the bedroom.

  While she heard the murmur of his voice down the hall, she started to unpack. A few minutes later, he reentered her room. “My driver will be here in about fifteen minutes to take you sightseeing. I have a meeting here this afternoon that will last a while.”

  “Does that mean I shouldn’t come back until your meeting’s over?”

  His lips thinned. “Of course not. You can see as much as you want to see, or as little. I thought you might like to go shopping on Rodeo Drive, see the stars’ hand-prints at Grauman’s Chinese. But if you prefer something quieter, and you just want to sit out on the deck and watch the ocean, that’s fine, too.”

  She thought about it. “When Mikala came back from a conference out here, she told me about Olvera Street. She said the leather goods there are wonderful. And I’d like to visit the Getty Museum.”

  “Just tell my driver where you want to go. When the meeting’s over, we can go out to a restaurant or have a picnic on the beach.”

  “I should think about that, too?”

  “It’s the only major decision you’ll have to make while you’re here.” Now amusement danced in his eyes, but then he sobered. “You asked a question before my telephone interrupted. You wanted to know where I felt really at home. I feel at home on the production set. I feel at home in my editing studio. I can be at home anywhere with my laptop and the right software. Home doesn’t have to be a specific place.”

  She wasn’t sure about that. She couldn’t imagine home being anywhere but on the Rocky D. “Home to me will always be the Rocky D. That’s where I learned to have self-worth. That’s where I foun
d out what I was really good at, about what I loved to do. Work for me is part of who I am. The bigger part comes from the people around me, how much I care for them and how much they care for me. My life isn’t all about work. It’s about loving your dad and caring for him, being with my friends and caring about them and even my own father, too. Your world might be bigger on the outside, but I think my world is bigger on the inside.”

  Cocking his head, Zack assessed her as if he didn’t really know her, and maybe he didn’t. Just because they’d once been intimate and in love, didn’t mean the bonds had lasted, didn’t mean they still acted and reacted like those teenagers, didn’t mean anything but sexual chemistry remained.

  “You could be right. But while you’re here, try to enjoy everything so that you can take it back to the inside with you.”

  As Zack left the room, she realized he’d missed her point. The inside for her wasn’t the Rocky D…it was her heart.

  Jenny returned to Zack’s house as two sleek, black luxury vehicles exited his driveway. After she gathered her packages, she thanked his driver and went inside.

  Zack was picking up empty old-fashioned glasses sitting around his living room. “Timed perfectly,” he noted, as he tossed her a smile and went to the kitchen.

  “I’m going to take these to my room,” she said as she passed him.

  But he’d already set the glasses in the sink and he caught her arm. “Did you enjoy yourself?”

  She would have enjoyed herself more if he’d been with her. “I did. I found great Christmas presents for Celeste, Mikala, Abby and—” she hesitated “—even my dad.”

  Zack’s fingers became more gentle. “Do you think he’ll show?”

  “I can hope.”

  Zack took a few of the bags from her arms. “Here, I’ll help you.”

  When the back of his hand grazed her breast, the contact was searing. His gaze locked to hers, and she didn’t think either of them breathed.

  Carefully, he grabbed the bags and strode down the hall. She followed him slowly, still tingling from his inadvertent touch. How would she feel if it was more purposeful? How would she feel if she let herself respond as her body wanted to…as her heart wanted to?