by Theresa Weir
“Does the movie have a title?”
“You’ll find out when you Google me.”
“So I will.” She crossed her legs then uncrossed them. She was wearing practical black slacks, but he suspected her legs might be spectacular.
“It took three years of my life to find backers, put it together, and find distributors. In the end, it turned out to be a breakout hit,” he said. “After that, I was asked by…an actress who admired my work to produce and direct a movie for her.”
He fell silent. Olivia had been the actress. He’d been immediately enamored. She was like no one he’d ever met before. So vivid, so alive. Magical and mesmerizing. One journalist had said she sucked up all the air in the room, commanding the room’s attention, like the brightest star in the sky at night. Of all the comments written about her, that was the truest.
“What other movies did you write?” Maddie asked, commanding his attention.
“None.” He spoke without inflection, as if it didn’t matter. “The stories dried up.”
“Dried up? Like a well?”
Like my soul, he thought. The juice of life squeezed out of it, leaving a shell of himself. “Call it whatever you want. My well is dry, and it needs to be replenished.”
Her eyebrows contracted. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“The screenplay I wrote that brought me to L.A. mattered to me. Not because it was brilliant or life changing, but because it was mine.” As he talked to her, he was talking to himself, too. All this was in his gut, part of his tangled emotions. Now he was untangling them out loud to both of them. “Everything I did later was something other people believed in. I helped make their dreams come true. Now it’s time for me to go back to my dreams and…”
“And do what?” She leaned toward him.
“Do you know anything about the Muses?”
“You’re testing my knowledge about Greek mythology? My major was in business, not myths. All I remember is that they’re daughters of some god, and a muse is supposed to inspire people.”
“That’s right. I need a muse, and I think you’re it.”
“Me?” Her voice squeaked.
“You.” He could see the doubt in her face, could practically read the questions racing through her mind. “In this short time we’ve been talking, I’ve already gotten a spark of an idea. The first in a long time. I don’t know if I’ll use it, but it’s a start.”
“And you think it’s from something I said?”
“I know it is. I’ll make you a deal. You and your son can stay here, but you have to tell me a story every night.”
“A story? What makes you think I have any stories to tell?”
“You said you’re your son’s storyteller. And in this short time, you’ve been telling me a lot of stories. You’ve…amused me.”
“Should I be flattered?”
“In your case, you should be grateful.”
Instead of looking at him thankfully, her lips flattened, and her eyes narrowed.
He fought an urge to laugh. “Tell me one story a night, and you and your son can stay until I leave.”
“Like the woman in The Arabian Nights? Telling the Persian king a story every night?”
“One thousand and one nights.” He lowered his voice, purposely making it seductive, and she jerked back. “Just a story. Nothing else. Are you up to it? Or would you rather pack up and leave?” He paused then added, “Go ahead, I won’t call the sheriff on you. I won’t charge you for the years you lived here. You’re free to leave with no consequences.”
“You’re serious?”
“About leaving?”
“About not making me pay you anything?”
“That’s what matters most to you?”
She lowered her gaze, frowning, and her hands curled into fists.
He gave her time to think. The money didn’t mean anything to him, but he’d been a broke college student. And then he’d been broke for years after that while making his movie. He knew what it was like to eat Ramen noodles for dinner night after night. If she’d put sixty months’ worth of rent in a bank account, she probably had enough for a down payment on a house. What meant nothing to him might mean everything to her.
She sat straight, no longer leaning back. “That’s a very strange suggestion. I have my son to consider.”
“It’s not your son you’d have to worry about around me.”
Her eyes shot up. “Are you saying I’d have to worry?”
“Not really.” The blackness was creeping up on him again. It was in his voice. Dragging and dull. “I like women, not children, but I’ve never forced myself on one. And you can leave anytime.”
“Before the one thousand one nights are up?”
“Anytime.”
“Now?”
He closed his eyes. The blackness was filling up all the spaces in him. Crowding around his bones, his organs, his heart. “Go. Right now. Pack up. Leave.”
A creak came, the sound of her getting to her feet. She touched his arm, and he slowly opened his eyes to see her frowning at him in concern.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. You can go.”
She took a deep breath. “If you really mean it, I’ll stay. At least for now. I might not have any stories. You might hate them. I might hate telling them. The main thing is that Zach is okay.”
He shrugged, even as he realized her answer had mattered to him. If she’d said no, he would’ve been disappointed.
“I’ll have to get back to work for now.” She took two steps then stopped and looked back. “I’m making chicken for dinner tonight. If you’d like to join Zach and me, I’ll have enough for you.” Not waiting for his answer, she strode away, purpose in every step.
Watching her leave, he felt…different, more alive. The blackness shrank away from his bones, his organs, his heart. Letting in a thin beam of light. The feeling was so foreign he was tempted to push the light away.
But he didn’t. He doubted it would stay. Though he’d enjoyed this exchange of dialogue with Maddie, this was a pale shadow of the way he felt whenever he saw Olivia, his dark queen. With her, he’d been more alive than he’d ever been before or since. She’d sent fire flaming through his veins. It hadn’t been comfortable, and it hadn’t been pleasant, but with her, every sense had expanded. He hadn’t needed food, he hadn’t needed drink, he’d just needed her.
Olivia had been his morphine. Since she’d left his life, not looking back, every day had been a gray day.
The most beautiful women in Hollywood and New York hadn’t been able to change that. Not even a glimmer of light.
He didn’t expect this average woman in this small Wisconsin town to change that. At the least, she could distract him for a short time. And at the most, she might amuse him.
Chapter 5
Five hours later, the kitchen smelled of roast chicken, and Maddie was introducing her son to him. As she did, he could practically see invisible armor spring up on her, hear the clank of metal, see an invisible lance in her hand. She reminded Logan of a small gladiator, ready to take down the dragon if he breathed even a small plume of fire.
The boy resembled his mother, but his eyes were pure green instead of hazel. He had her direct stare, looking him straight in the eyes, his shoulders squared. In his own way, ready for a blast of dragon fire.
“Are you going to live with us?” Zach Barrymore asked.
Logan looked at Maddie, with one eyebrow up. She had moved to the counter and was spooning roasted vegetables onto a platter. Let her make the explanations to her son.
“Zach, you know we don’t own this house. Mr. MacLeesh is the real owner. He’s going to stay upstairs, and we’re going to stay downstairs.”
A frown marred Zach’s clear forehead, and he kept his gaze on Logan. “Does this mean you’re my mom’s boyfriend?”
Maddie groaned, setting down the serving spoon. “Zach! You’re being rude. I told you—”
“Mom,
Mark’s mom telled him the same thing about her boyfriend. And now she’s got a baby in her tummy, and he bosses Mark around. I don’t want this man bossing me around.”
Ginger, the orange and white cat, sat on the floor by the back hall and stared at Logan with unblinking eyes. Logan was sure she agreed with the boy.
“As long as you don’t touch any of my stuff,” Logan said, “I won’t tell you what to do.”
“Then you have to not touch my stuff.”
“Zach!”
Humor spiked inside Logan. Before today, he’d gone weeks without anything to smile or laugh at. It felt…odd.
“It’s fine,” he said, keeping his gaze on the boy. “I understand exactly how Zach feels, and I appreciate his courage in telling me.” He lowered his head toward the boy. “You’re a dragon slayer, you know that?”
Zach’s eyes widened. “If I see a dragon, I’ll take my mom’s biggest knife.” He raised his hands over his right shoulder. “And wait until he’s sleeping—”
“Good strategy,” Logan said.
“I know. Then I’ll climb up on his body and bring the sword down on it.” He bent forward, smashing down his invisible sword. “Blood will squirt out all over, and the dragon will shake all over, and it will scream. Like this.” He opened his mouth, and a howl more suited to a wolf than a dragon came out, though Logan admitted he didn’t know what a dragon’s roar would sound like.
The cat yowled and dashed out of the kitchen.
“Zach, don’t scare Ginger.” Maddie headed toward the table, carrying the platter of cut-up chicken. “And you better not take any of my knives to kill anything, or I’ll have to take away your game playing time.”
“Mom, what if a dragon is hiding in the house?”
“Then yell at it and use your Ninja moves, okay?”
The boy stared at her, his eyebrows contracted, obviously thinking this through. “Okay,” he finally said. “I’ll scare it with my Ninja fighting moves.”
“Good boy.” She set the platter on the table. “Mr. MacLeesh isn’t my boyfriend. He’s the owner of this house. The real one.”
Zach’s forehead still puckered. “Mommy, this is our home. I don’t want to move to a new place.”
“Honey, it doesn’t matter where we live. As long as we have each other, we’ll be happy.”
“But I like this house.” His voice rose.
“I like it, too. And we’re not moving now. But if we do, I’ll find a house that we both like.” She stared down at him, radiating calmness. “Okay?”
“And Ginger?” he asked.
“And Ginger.”
He gave her a long look, as if waiting for her to back down, but that wasn’t happening. He sighed heavily, his shoulders drooped, and he nodded. She bent forward, and though she spoke in a low tone, her voice traveled. “Love you, my brave dragon slayer.”
He swept his hands around his mother’s thighs, his head against her hip. “Mommy, I won’t let any dragon kill you. Not never.”
She kissed the top of his head, hugging him back. Then she straightened, and he unhooked his arms from her. The tender moment over, she handed him sautéed vegetables and potatoes to take to the table, telling him he should thank Logan for letting him live there.
The boy frowned as he obeyed his mother, still obviously unsure whether to trust him or not. Logan admired his suspicion. Not yet five and the boy didn’t believe everything the adults said. Smart boy. In show business as in life, it was wise to doubt and smarter to distrust. Logan knew about it. Show business was just a microcosm of every area of life, where promises were broken faster than a blink, and with about the same amount of warning.
Hearts could be broken that fast, too.
Broken, smashed, stepped on, and tossed away.
Right now, the heart beating in his chest was only good for pushing blood through it. Nothing else. He could appreciate love—especially the love between a mother and her son—but was numb to the emotion himself. It left him an observer of life instead of a participant. The thought gave him a measure of peace, and he felt a stirring in him. A sense of tranquility.
Maybe this was the best thing that had happened to him.
* * *
The shed door was open, and the dog crept in. He’d wanted to stay out in the open on the grass. But other animals could find him there. The predators. He was in a place with few homes and more trees. He’d seen animal waste that did not come from a small animal, and he’d smelled something he’d never smelled before.
But he’d also smelled a tiny whiff of the familiar scent—the human scent that told him home. His home.
He remembered dreaming of that home when he was in his mother’s belly. And when he was drinking milk from her. Knowing that his human would find him.
But it hadn’t happened. Instead, the other humans had found him.
He lay down in a corner of the shed. It was still cold here but not so cold that his legs felt numb. The air wasn’t as fresh as outside, but it was better than the smell in his cage where he’d lived before this. Where some days his water wasn’t changed, and it would run out. And some days, they didn’t clean his waste. And then they yelled at him.
Those days were gone, and he was never going back.
No other animal was in the shed. He smelled that mice used to live there, but it was a long-time-ago scent.
He laid his head down, trusting that any suspicious noises or smells would wake him, and he fell asleep.
No dreams came, but the scent of his human entered his brain, and a spark went off, connecting with another spark, and another, and another, and so on and so on.
And spark by spark, as he slipped into heavy sleep, his subconscious awoke….
* * *
Maddie watched Logan from the hall. Sitting back on the recliner, his legs up, he oozed sex, reminding her of a jaded hero in a romance book.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped into the living room.
“Your son’s asleep?” Logan asked. Ginger jumped on his lap, and he petted her slowly with his long, slender fingers. Ginger purred, and her front paws kneaded his thigh.
Maddie nodded. The living room area was warmer than Zach’s bedroom, and she saw that he’d lit the fire in the fireplace. Too warm outside for her to burn wood this early, though it was supposed to reach freezing later on tonight. But freezing was nothing to her when she was inside her house with the furnace humming. His house, she reminded herself. A distasteful thought but the truth. It was also true that locals only called it really cold when it was below zero, with wind chills lower than that.
As George, the town administrator, liked to say on his biweekly office appearance, “Cold enough to freeze off a man’s balls.”
And every time he left the room after saying it, Caroline, the deputy clerk, a thin, redheaded woman in her late fifties, would say, “I wish it would freeze off his balls.”
Maddie set down her glass of wine and sat on the couch across from the recliner. She tried not to look at his caressing fingers on Ginger’s back, but the movement was mesmerizing.
A small ache started low in her belly. It had been so long since any man had touched her like that. Her choice. Plenty of men had given her signals that they wanted her. She’d turned down and discouraged more offers than she could remember. A few times, she’d been tempted, but she had her reasons to refuse.
She forced her gaze from his hands to his face. His lips curved up, as if he read her thoughts and her emotions—and her body temperature, too, aware that it had gone up a couple of degrees.
“Ready for your first story?” she asked.
“It’s dark and cold outside. The perfect night for a story.”
“Anything specific? A subject you prefer?”
“My only stipulation is that it entertains me.”
“What if I’m boring?”
“Then it will be my fault for overestimating you.”
Maybe he said that, but she didn’t believe it. To her, it was
a challenge to make sure she entertained him—and with all her clothes on.
Ginger meowed in what Maddie recognized as a complaint, and she saw his fingers had stilled on the cat’s neck. Voicing another complaint, Ginger jumped off his lap then padded over to Maddie.
Maddie took a quick sip of her wine before Ginger leaped up onto her lap then stretched out over her thighs, purring. Waiting for Maddie to do her job.
Someone else who expected something from her. But she was already setting down the glass with one hand and petting her silky-haired, spoiled cat with the other. After five years of cohabitation, she was a well-trained human. As Ginger purred louder, she relaxed.
“I’ll tell you about the liar and the maiden,” she began. Her tone was different than before, in story mode, with a rhythm she didn’t have in her normal speech. “Though to tell the truth, she wasn’t quite a maiden. Kind of a dented maiden.”
“Dented?” His mouth quirked up.
“Dented,” she said firmly. “She’d had a few encounters, though to tell the truth—again—none of them were that exciting.”
“That’s often the case.”
“You, too?”
“We’re talking fiction here, aren’t we?”
“Of course.” She raised her eyebrows before continuing. “In fact, our heroine began to question the happily-ever-after thing. She was starting to think that maybe love wasn’t in the stars for her. So she decided to become a businesswoman instead.”
“A wise choice.”
“I agree. She came from struggling families, and there was no money for college.”
“Families? Plural?”
She swallowed, but her petting never faltered, and she thought she probably looked calm on the outside, though her belly twisted sharply. “Her parents were divorced and remarried and had new families. They lived far away.”
“So our heroine had no one?”
“She had a sister, and they lived in a windy city with many other people. She worked part-time and went to the university part-time, and she was buzzing along, living her normal life, eating too many pizzas and drinking too much coffee.” She found the happy spot below Ginger’s ear, and Ginger purred louder. “Then two things happened.”