Her silly glee that this hot guy was almost certainly single vanished. “I’m so sorry.”
He raked his hand back through all that unruly hair. “Yeah. It was rough. Coco was just three at the time. They’re doing all right now, though. She and the kids moved in with Dad and me last summer. They’re all downstairs together—Karin, the kids and my father. I’ve got the second floor to myself. There’s plenty of room and my sister’s a great cook. Dad and I pitch in watching the kids. I’m one of those single guys who likes having family around, so overall, it works out pretty well.”
One of those single guys...
Yes! Inside, she fist-pumped like a crazy woman—seriously, what was she, twelve?
In some ways, yes.
She’d done a nude scene last year. Millions of people had seen her bare butt. But when it came to relationships in real life, Madison Delaney, America’s Darling, suffered from a serious case of arrested development.
It was kind of sad. And not only that she knew nothing about men, IRL. But also, well, just imagining the house next door, with Sten and the kids, Sten’s sister and his dad, too...
She envied them.
To have family. To have a brother or a sister, nieces and nephews, and to have them close. She’d always wanted that—and maybe, when she finally got up the nerve to get in contact with the Bravos, she would have what she’d always wanted.
After she got to know them all. Eventually. Over time...
Sten took a step closer. “What’s wrong? You look so sad, all of a sudden.” He lifted one of those fine, big hands. Her skin burned with the knowledge that he was going to touch her—brush a finger over her cheek, maybe smooth a loose ribbon of hair behind her ear.
Every nerve in her body had snapped to quivering alert.
But before his fingertips made contact, the glass door leading into the cottage slid open. Sten glanced over his shoulder as Dirk, her bodyguard, stuck his head out. “Everything okay?”
Sten lowered his hand.
Madison gave Dirk a tight nod with get lost written all over it. “All good.”
Dirk pulled his big head back inside and shut the door, but he didn’t go anywhere. He remained right there on the far side of the glass, legs braced wide, meaty shoulders back, watching. Madison was very fond of Dirk and Sergei and all of her bodyguards, but sometimes having round-the-clock security sucked—times like now, when she was not going to feel Sten Larson’s hand brush her cheek, after all.
“I should get going,” he said. “If you need anything, just let me know.”
She tried to think of something clever and sophisticated to say to make him stay. But she was working without a script and her mind was a witless blank.
Over on the table, her phone started spinning in a circle, the screen lighting up with a picture of Rafe in one of his bespoke suits, his dark face impossibly handsome, supremely confident. Resigned, she went to answer it as Sten headed for the stairs.
* * *
What the hell just happened?
Sten scowled as he ran down the steps. Did he get struck by lightning?
The movie star was freaking gorgeous, with those acres of streaky blond hair, that thousand-watt, dimpled smile. She was also friendly and outgoing and easy to talk to. No wonder they called her America’s Darling.
He might have just come down with a serious crush on the woman. What the hell? Like he was fourteen again, all knees and elbows, overwhelmed and tongue-tied in the presence of Sharlee Stubbleman, a senior and the prettiest girl at Valentine Bay High.
Madison Delaney.
What was the matter with him? Talk about out of his league.
She’d looked so sad, though, there for a minute, hadn’t she? Sad and a little bit lost.
And he’d wanted to pull her close, comfort her, maybe even taste those pillowy lips of hers. He might have done it, too, if not for the bodyguard shoving open the slider just as he was making his move.
She doesn’t want to be disturbed.
He needed to remember that. The woman wanted to be alone and his job was to make sure nobody bothered her or found out that she’d rented his cottage at Sweetheart Cove. Madison Delaney had paid a lot of money for her six-week stay and for the total privacy he’d promised her assistant she would have.
Sten returned to his workshop, put his tools away and shut the roll-up door, smiling to himself as he thought of Coco and her little-girl crush on the star of her favorite Disney movie.
Too bad his niece wouldn’t get to spend any more time with Madison. He would have to have a talk with Karin about how to make Coco understand that she was not allowed to pester the tenant or tell anyone else that a movie star was staying next door.
* * *
That night after she put the kids to bed, Karin joined him out on the deck. They sat in the comfy red cedar chairs he’d made a few years ago and watched the trail of the moon reflected, shimmering, on the ocean. The gulls were feeding, circling and calling and then diving for fish and just about anything else that happened to catch their eye.
There was a chilly wind blowing. Karin smoothed dark hair away from her face and wrapped her bulky sweater more tightly around her. “I’m guessing you’ll want to discuss the movie star next door.”
He grunted. “You noticed that Coco jabbered about her nonstop through dinner, then?”
“I did, yeah. What’s up?” She turned her eyes to him. They were blue, like his eyes and their dad’s and Coco’s, too. In the moonlight, they looked almost black. Black and too somber. Three years since Bud died fishing the Gulf of Alaska. Sometimes Karin still looked way too sad.
“You signed the NDA, too,” he said. “The tenant is not supposed to be disturbed and no one else can know that she’s here.”
“What? The big star got all offended because my little girl’s a fan?”
“Whoa, Mama Grizzly. Take it down a notch. Madison really liked Coco. She said Coco and Ben could come over anytime they wanted to.”
Karin leaned between their chairs and peered at him a little too closely. “Madison? So we’re on a first-name basis with America’s Darling, are we?”
“Stop.”
“You like her.” She slapped the side of his knee with the back of her hand. “Admit it.”
“She seems like a good person.”
“Right. You’re attracted to her goodness.”
In some ways Karin was still the bratty little sister he’d grown up with. Mostly, he hoped she would never change. Times like now, though? Not so much. “There really is a point to this conversation and the point is that we need to keep the kids out of her hair and make sure they don’t tell anyone she’s staying here.”
“All right. I’ll handle it.”
“How?”
“Well, Ben’s no problem. He was born responsible and reasonable. He already knows the cottage is off-limits when a tenant is living there and that the tenants have a right to their privacy. Coco is a bit of a challenge. She’s such a free spirit. But we’ve been talking about privacy and respect lately. I’ll start with that. Ben will back me. Coco will fall in line, for her beloved ‘Eliza’s’ sake, if nothing else.”
He stared at his sister, thinking that beyond loving her, he really liked her. A lot. He was just about to tell her that when she sent him a slow, knowing smile. He knew that smile. It was her give-Sten-some-grief smile.
“You like the movie star,” she said. “And not just because she’s so good.”
“Oh, come on.” He tried to look really bored. “What guy with a pulse wouldn’t like her?”
“Stennie. There’s nothing wrong with liking the girl next door.” Stennie. He used to chase her around the house with a squirt gun when she called him that. But now he was a grown-ass man and knew better than to let his sister’s teasing get to him. Much. She leaned close again and pitched
her voice low. “It’s been more than a year since Ella went back to that loser in Seattle. Good riddance. Time to move on.”
“Ella? Who’s Ella?”
“Har-har. I know you don’t like to talk about her. I don’t want to talk about her, either. I never liked her.”
“You didn’t say so at the time.”
“Because I’m a good sister who minds her own business and has sense enough not to give her big brother advice on his love life.”
“Right. Like you’re not doing now?”
“This isn’t advice. It’s a nudge. Sometimes you need a nudge.”
“She wants to be alone. I signed the NDA.”
“You’re repeating yourself. And you like her. And you really ought to just go ahead and follow up on that.”
* * *
That night and the next day, Madison started to wonder what she was even doing in Valentine Bay. She’d yet to work up the courage to reach out to Percy Valentine and the family she’d been born into.
And what was the point of getting away from LA when all she did was field calls from her agent and her manager? Myra and Rafe just never quit. They tagged-teamed her, pressuring her to sign on for this and think about that, to come back to LA for some high-priority meetings, to read a pile of scripts yesterday because time was flying by and she couldn’t afford to lose momentum.
Madison could not have cared less about momentum. She needed a life—a real life, a life like most people took for granted. A life containing a family, a special guy and some friends she got together with outside of the movie business. Too bad she seemed stuck on hold lately, unable to take the necessary steps to make her goals happen.
Coco and Benjamin waved at her when they played outside, but when she tried to signal them up, they just waved again and ran off. She was pretty sure they’d been told to keep away.
And as for Sten? More than once, she faintly heard machines whirring down in his workshop. But his roll-up door stayed shut.
On the night of her fourth day in Valentine Bay, she’d had enough. She lay in bed in the dark and stared blankly at the shadows near the ceiling thinking that something had to give. She couldn’t go on like this.
Bright and early the next morning, she called her manager and her agent and informed them in no uncertain terms that she was taking time off, having an actual vacation. And when a person took a vacation, she didn’t want to constantly be forced to think about work.
They were not to contact her. If some emergency came up and they just had to reach out to her, they were to get in touch with Rudy, who would pass the word to her.
Next, she called Rudy and told him that while she was in Valentine Bay, he would be dealing with Rafe and Myra. She also instructed him to call her security firm and inform them that she was sending Dirk back to LA.
“That’s not going to go well,” said her PA in his usual dry, unflappable tone.
“Do it. I’m serious. Dirk’s the best. Make it very clear it’s nothing against him. I just need to be on my own right now.”
Ten minutes later, Rudy called her back to pass on the dire warnings from her security people. The team had not approved when she took only one bodyguard to Oregon, and they were even more concerned when they learned that she’d been using Dirk as a driver, too; security should stay focused on the main job.
And now she was suddenly ditching Dirk, as well? Her security team predicted that big trouble would follow.
“Let me send a driver, at least,” Rudy pleaded.
“No. It’s a dinky town. I’ll find a way to get around.”
“But you don’t have a valid—”
“Rudy. I’ll figure something out.”
“I don’t know why you won’t let me send Ada. You’re going to need someone to keep the fridge stocked and make the bed.”
“I’m managing all that on my own.”
“I really think you need to—”
“Rudy. Seriously, if I need help, you’re a phone call away.”
He argued some more. He was a sweetheart and very protective of her. She loved him for that.
But she also stuck by her decision to go it alone for a while.
At two that afternoon, Dirk got in the rented Hummer they’d been using since their arrival and drove away. Once he was gone, Madison tried again to work up the nerve to call someone in the Bravo family. She’d put all their numbers in her phone, but she’d yet to make use of them.
She dialed Percy’s number twice. Both times, she hung up before it could ring. Then she tried texting her switched sister, Aislinn.
Same result. She began and then erased four texts without sending them.
For a couple of hours after that, she alternately tried to concentrate on reading a book, searched the Netflix menu for something to watch and paced the floor in exasperation at her own inability to complete a damn phone call or hit Send on a text.
At five, frustrated and fed up with herself, she did a very bad thing. It wasn’t premediated—at least, not exactly.
She entered the powder room off the kitchen innocently enough, used the toilet, flushed it and washed her hands. And it wasn’t until then, as she rinsed and dried and glared at herself in the mirror over the pedestal sink, that it occurred to her that Sten Larson’s phone number was right there on a little card by the landline in the living area.
In case she had a problem and needed him to fix it.
Carefully, she folded the towel and hung it back on the rack.
Then she took the lid off the toilet and set it on the seat. The mechanism within was simple enough. A chain pulled a rubber flapper up when you flushed. The flapper lowered to seal the water inside once the tank was full again.
That chain? It could easily be unhooked from the bar that connected it to the handle. But wouldn’t it be more realistic if the chain broke?
She stuck her fingers in there, got the chain in both hands and gave a good, strong yank.
Whoopsie.
She dried her hands again, after which she replaced the tank lid and then tried to flush. Nothing.
Madison grinned, feeling downright devilish. She was a movie star, after all, someone who pretended to be other people for a living, someone who had writers to give her words to say and staff to see to her every need, a person who couldn’t be expected to understand how a toilet worked—let alone to have any clue what to do if something in there broke.
Before she had a chance to chicken out and hook the chain back together herself, she marched into the living area, picked up the house phone and punched in the number on the card.
Chapter Two
Sten was on his way home from Larson Boatworks when the call came in from the cottage phone. His pulse did a ridiculous, jittery little dance as he answered on his quad cab’s speakerphone. “This is Sten.”
There was dead air on the other end and for a moment, he relaxed, feeling certain it was the gruff bodyguard calling to ask for thicker towels or more coffee mugs or whatever.
But then she said, “Hi. It’s Madison.”
“Hey.” He said it much too softly. Almost tenderly. Somebody just shoot me. “Everything okay?” That came out better. More brusque and businesslike.
“Well, there’s something wrong with the toilet in the half bath. It won’t flush. The handle thingy just flops around when I push it.”
As he slowed the truck and turned onto the winding side road that meandered down the cliffs and into the cove, he was thinking that he really liked her voice.
Her voice was sweet and just a little bit husky—and come on. Everyone in America liked her voice. And her gorgeous, friendly, girl-next-door face. And what about that body? She had an amazing body—a real-looking body, soft and curvy, like a woman’s body should be, with breasts that were average-size and completely natural-looking.
Stop
thinking about her breasts, jackass.
But get real.
Who could blame him? Like most of the rest of the free world, he’d seen that recent romantic comedy, including the scene where she’d been stark naked in bed with her leading man, Brock Markovic.
Then again, how did he even know that was really her body? Maybe she’d had a body double.
Not that it was any of his damn business, either way.
“Sten?”
“Right here.” And definitely not thinking about you naked.
“So, about the toilet?”
He was hugely tempted to launch into an explanation of what, exactly, might be wrong with the flushing mechanism and what he would do about it, just to show off what an expert he was on the issue of toilets—and yeah. He should face it. This girl had his brains leaking out his ears.
“Sten? Have I lost you?”
“I’ll be there in five.”
He drove the rest of the way to the main house, parked in the garage and grabbed a toolbox and the pair of sunglasses he’d found in the sand between the houses the day before. As he climbed the steps to the front door of the cottage, which faced the cliffs behind the beach, he reminded himself for the hundredth time that his job was to be happy about the enormous rent she paid and leave the beautiful creature next door alone. He would be fixing the damn toilet and getting the hell out.
She answered his knock wearing jeans and a snug shirt and looking like a couple of billion bucks. “I appreciate this.” Her smile bloomed, dimples twinkling, and he almost forgot how to talk.
He held out the sunglasses. “I’m guessing these might be yours?”
She took them. “Wow, thank you. I love this pair and I thought I would never seem them again.”
“No problem.” He cleared his throat. “Let’s have a look at that toilet.” He sounded impossibly serious to his own ears. Like a bad actor playing a doctor on some cheesy soap.
She stepped back and ushered him in. He got a whiff of her scent as he moved past her. Sweet and peppery at once. Delicious. The scent conjured memories of his childhood, of all things, sent him back to the house on Dorcas Lane where he grew up.
Switched At Birth Page 3