“What?” I asked, pressing a hand on his chest. “What is it?” How much more could we take?
He swallowed heavily. “It’s Benny. I—the press. They’re here.” Will closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “They’re all around your house, apparently.” He peered around, and already, I imagined photographers hiding in the brush and trees that covered the hill. A prickle ran down my arms. Will’s dread was palpable, especially in the heartbeat that quickened under my palm.
“It’s okay,” I said, already resigned. “Go. I’ll—I’ll manage it on my own. Callie’s probably already called the police, and they’ll clear the property in no time. You can go.”
There was still time. He could run back up to the road where Hakeem was still parked, escape the chaos that awaited both of us downstairs. Play another shell game, or even fly back to LA, virtually undetected. Without Will there, the photographers would lose interest quickly, and I’d resume the life I’d planned. Alone.
Ignoring my dread at the thought of Will leaving yet again, I tried to stand up, stumbling slightly on my bad ankle. But before I could take another step, I was swept up once more, with one of Will’s strong arms under my knees, the other supporting my back.
“Will—” I protested, but was immediately cut off with a kiss. It started out closed-mouthed, intent, meant mostly to cut off my arguments against his sudden movement. But predictably, it turned into something more, and he and I both poured out the pain, the sorrow, the anger, the confusion of the last few weeks into one kiss. By the time it was over, tears were streaming down my face, and when I pulled back, more than a few trickles fell from his.
He pressed his face against mine with closed eyes. The simple touch, skin to skin, warmed me throughout.
“Walk through fire, remember?” he whispered. “I’m not going to let you face the flames alone, Lil. Never again.”
I opened my mouth, ready to tell him it was okay. That he could go. That I could manage it all on my own.
But I couldn’t. And so, as he descended the seventy-three stairs to the deck that contained the biggest crowd of people this property had ever seen, I only buried my face in his neck. I took solace in the sweet, fresh scent of him, the solid grip of his hands under my limbs, each one of his steps that were more confident than the last.
We were spotted about halfway down and were immediately swarmed by cameras. Hakeem came jogging from the car—likely alerted by Benny once he realized his friend was entering the fray. The big man jumped ahead and cut a path for us the rest of the way down, pushing away photographers, reporters, neighbors, and anyone else who had appeared on my mother’s property.
I shut my eyes as flashes went off, though the questions penetrated nonetheless. Will walked stolidly, his head tucked, but shoulders straight as the onslaught began.
“Fitz!”
‘Maggie!”
“Where have you been?”
“Where’s Amelia?”
“Is it true she broke you up?”
“Maggie, are you hurt?”
On and on the questions, flashes, pushing and prodding as we made our final descent to the deck, where so many other people stood waiting. Lucas. Linda. Katie. Lindsay. Don. And many others I recognized from the funeral and growing up in a small town.
The paparazzi continued to shout.
“Is your mother really dead?”
“Did you kill Theo del Conte?”
“Maggie, were you and your mother running a brothel?”
“Was Theo del Conte a client?”
“Are you an alcoholic too?”
As we followed Hakeem’s hulking form toward the sliding glass entrance, the questions blended with the murmurs of the neighbors.
“Pathetic.”
“Look at her—what do you think they’re about to do?”
“I bet she’s trashed.”
“Like mother, like daughter.”
It was on the last one that Will stopped right in front of the now open door.
“Goddammit,” he muttered, shaking his head.
“Will, don’t—” I began, but he had already turned around and was setting me gently on the deck in front of him. I balanced on one foot as he wrapped his arms around my shoulders, caging me against his body. Protecting me.
“Maggie, were you cheating on Fitz with Theo?”
“Did you and Theo have a love child?”
“STOP.” Will’s voice, with its deep baritone and natural charisma that could take charge of any room he wanted, stilled the crowd immediately. Mouths clamped shut. Heads turned toward the familiar face, the voice that spoke above the rest.
Another round of flashes went off, but Will didn’t blink. He didn’t even move. Instead of shrinking, he stood taller, rendering himself a beacon in the forest.
“I won’t have it,” he said, quiet until someone shouted from the back:
“What’s that, Fitz?”
“It’s Will!” Will barked. “My full name is Fitzwilliam Michael Baker. I have never in my entire life gone by the name Fitz unless it’s in the film credits or by people who don’t fucking know me.”
There was a flurry of flashes, and I noticed more than one cell phone held up in the crowd.
“Will, come on,” I murmured, pulling on his sleeve. What did he think he was going to accomplish here?
“No,” he said brusquely. “They need to hear this.” He turned back to the crowd. “Everyone needs to hear this. So you can all listen the fuck up.”
If it was quiet before, the deck was now completely silent. Quiet enough that I could hear the rustle of the osprey flying through the trees to catch their dinner in the lake. Quiet enough that the wind swishing through the willow branches floated across the crowd. Quiet enough that the lake, lapping peacefully at the water’s edge, was louder than my own breath.
“You see this woman?” Will asked as he pulled me back against him. “Every day I have known her, she’s been the kind of person who will do more for others than she will for herself. She takes everyone’s complaints, everyone’s baggage, and bears them like a cross. She gave up a career in music for people she loved, despite the fact that she’s one of the most talented people in the world. She is more than anyone else in this life.”
I blushed as several eyes flickered to me. But Will didn’t stop there.
“This is someone who spent most of her life trying to heal people who didn’t want to be healed. Maybe couldn’t be healed. She buried one of those people today and lost another and all you can do is stand here and volley idiotic questions that question her character? Well, fuck you. All of you. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
“But, Fitz—I mean, Will—” began one of the reporters in the back, starting off yet another round of flashes.
“But nothing!” Will roared. “I swear to God, if I hear one more person—one more fucking person—treat her with anything less than respect, you’re going to have to answer to me. And I am not a particularly nice guy. Especially when it come to people mistreating the one person that makes life worth living when fucking vultures like you suck all the joy out of it. You think I’m moody now? Erratic? A loose cannon? You haven’t seen anything compared to what I’ll become if I hear even a whisper that this woman is anything less than perfect.”
Then Will turned his head slowly, casting a harsh eye across the entire group.
“Lindsay?” he asked with a voice like a drill as he caught the blonde girl standing near the side, trying and failing to hide behind Lucas, who had been watching the proceedings with a somewhat satisfied look.
Lindsay shied, but when Will didn’t look away and many others also turned to find her, she bobbed her head.
“Yeah,” she said. “Of-of course.”
“Ladies?” Will turned again toward the cluster of women near the front. I recognized them from the church—women who had always enjoyed talking about Mama behind her back, and, by extension, me.
“Oh, um, yes, sorry,” one of them an
swered quickly, and the others murmured their agreement.
Will looked around the crowd, picking out faces one by one, reporters, paparazzi, neighbors—anyone he thought had said a disparaging comment or something similar. Each one cowered under the force of his gaze.
“We good?” Will asked the crowd, watching to make sure that everyone nodded.
From up the hill, there was the sound of a siren—again breaking the silence of the strange night. Will turned back to his audience, his lips pulled to one side in a satisfied smirk.
“Good,” he said. “So now you can let us mourn in peace. That up there is our backup, and anyone left on this property after the next ten minutes without our permission is going to get arrested for trespassing.” He leveled one last glare on the crowd, and several people immediately shuffled toward the stairs. “Now get the hell out.”
32
It took several days for people to stop showing up unannounced to the house. They came to bring casseroles and good wishes, but also to get a look at the famous man chopping more wood for the winter down by the dock. To his credit, Will didn’t leave. He stayed close, working on the houses, helping me get the property ready for winter.
One man stayed, though, and came a few more times over the next few weeks: James Edelman. Though both of us were fairly certain he was my father, Will insisted on paying for a DNA test to make sure.
“You can’t be too careful,” he said after we left the doctor’s office.
I didn’t argue. I now understood all too well the way people came out of the woodwork to target someone like Will, and by extension, me. James was nice. Quiet, and kind of shy. I liked him a lot, and we immediately bonded when I showed him my Martin. He didn’t seem to care in the slightest who Will was—honest, he didn’t even seem to notice at all. Instead, we had stayed up, singing Johnny Cash songs around the fire together until I was so tired I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. We wouldn’t get the DNA results for a while, but at this point, I wasn’t sure I cared.
Fall had fully arrived on Newman Lake, seemingly overnight. The trees lining the south end—the maples, alders, and cottonwoods that stood high over the lily pads and tules, were now a rainbow of reds, oranges, and yellows. Every day, another flock of birds would disappear toward the south, and as soon as the sun set over the mountain, a needle-sharp chill would settle into our bones, the kind that required wool socks and a thick fleece once the sky turned dark.
Eventually, Callie and Benny went back to New York. Will would eventually have to return to LA for reshoots, which he’d managed to delay by a month in order to deal with the fallout of Theo’s death. Although they included parts with Amelia—according to Corbyn, their chemistry was absolute crap—Will had renegotiated that any scenes shot with her would be done with a mirror and a stunt double, to be CGI’d together in exchange for not pressing charges against her for drugging him.
Unsurprisingly, she had readily agreed to the terms.
Tricia, however, was another story. She tried more than once to contact her son through Benny, only to be stonewalled again and again. As much as I wanted Will to make peace with his mother, if only for his own sake, I could also see the plain truth. Whether it was because she had been corrupted by a world of money and fame or because she was, to the core, a terrible person, she was absolutely not someone who should be in Will’s life. I had never seen any indication that she valued her son as anything more than a commodity. And for that reason alone, I wanted her nowhere near us or our child.
Will felt the same. In fact, he felt so strongly that he wrote a letter to Vanity Fair to include with their article on him. The editor was so excited about the coup that she decided to turn it into a double feature: one on the reclusive former star (Will insisted on the word “former”), and the second on mothers of child actors, specifically Tricia Owens-Baker, who had leveraged her success with Will into an agency managing other child actors in Hollywood.
“Everyone should know what she really is,” he said as he mailed a copy of his letter to her apartment in New York. It would arrive on the following Monday, the same day the magazine landed on newsstands.
We spent the majority of the next few weeks cleaning out the house and cabins of Mama’s things, deciding which pieces I wanted to keep, store, or give away. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done. How do you clean out someone’s life? How do you do it when it’s your own mother?
More than once Will had found me crying over a random photo or an old flannel shirt. And to his credit, he never turned away or tried to help me stop. He pulled me into his chest, clasped my head to his shoulder, and rocked me, whispering nothings until the tears abated and I could keep going.
Eventually, though, the house was cleared out and ready for new tenants. The carpet had been replaced, the bathtub re-caulked, the roof completely re-shingled. I had decided to lease the property to the Forsters as an extension of the inn. Lucas and his family would be good caretakers. I couldn’t stay in that house anymore.
Meanwhile, Will and I would head back to LA for the Green Lantern reshoots. Once that was finished we had several more months until the promotional tour began. I wouldn’t be able to go on the tour—by April of next year, I’d be hugely pregnant and certainly unable to fly around the world from city to city. Will warned me I’d better keep the kid in until he was done—he wasn’t missing the birth of our child, no matter what his contract said.
I stood at the edge of the dock, staring out at the lake, and pulled my thick sweater around me and inhaled the cool evening air. I was ready to leave. And this time, it wouldn’t be in a rush.
The heavy tread of footsteps on the dock alerted me to Will’s presence. A few moments later, I was wrapped in his arms. He smelled of soap and water, like he had just gotten out of the shower.
“So, what do you think?” Will whispered as we surveyed the lake together. “Where do you want to go first after LA? Ireland? Machu Picchu? There’s a lot we can do in six months, Lil.”
A few days ago when we had come up with a plan to travel between LA and his premiere dates, I was ecstatic. The idea of traveling the world with Will sounded like the best idea ever. He insisted I didn’t need to worry about money or anything—it would be our last big hurrah before the baby came. Little no-name. Whoever it was.
But now, the idea made me pull my sweater even tighter around my stomach. Will must have felt me withdraw slightly. The arms around my shoulders tightened, but he waited for me to speak.
“I…what if we don’t go?” I wondered quietly.
Will set his chin on my shoulder. “Why not?”
I stared out at the water, wondering at its mirrored surface. In it, I saw every moment in my childhood flash before my eyes, good and bad. I saw my first swim, the first time I ever caught a fish. I saw myself seeking refuge in the waves when my mother was in a particularly bad mood. I saw Lucas, Katie, and other friends, piled in boats and listening to country music. I saw myself sitting on the end of the dock, strumming a guitar with my toes in the water.
And then, of course, I saw Will. Those memories were more recent, but no less meaningful. I saw him climbing out of the water, sun sparkling in the droplets on his body. I saw myself tangled in the lilies, only the second time we met. I saw us falling in, desperate for each other’s kiss.
I saw it all. And as I watched, I wanted more.
“I don’t want to travel,” I said. “I want to find somewhere to stay. Will, our baby needs a home. I need a home.” I tipped up my head to look at him. “Don’t you?”
His quiet was louder than words. Much like the water, it was almost as if I watched our entire emotional history pass through those green eyes, lighting up the gold sparks in the center.
Then, at last, Will stood up straight, releasing me from his embrace. “Come with me,” he said, taking my hand. “I want to show you something.”
Instead of leading me back up the dock, he gestured toward the boat tied up to one side. A week ago, Will had s
urprised me when he’d sailed a tiny catamaran with a bright white sail to the house from the boat launch. It had become his nightly ritual, taking her out in the evenings, when the speed boats were done for the night. Sometimes I went, and sometimes I didn’t. But he always took me with him: her name was Lily Pad, painted right across the stern of one of the pontoons.
We sailed across the lake as night fell and the stars came out, Will perched on the back, manning the rudder and the sails, while I stretched out on the netting between the pontoons. I rested one hand lightly on my belly, which was still only a very slight swelling, but present nonetheless. The breeze off the lake fluttered my hair around my cheeks, and I closed my eyes, content.
Will tied up the boat at a familiar dock—the one surrounded by lilies, where I had gotten tangled only four months ago. Had it only been that long? The summer felt like it had lasted a lifetime.
“Here, babe,” he said as he held out his hand, guiding me onto the wood slats.
I looked around. The dock was different. I was used to it being decrepit and wind-worn, but the wood was newly stained, the sagging ends rebuilt, with shiny new buoys tied to the sides.
I turned back to Will. “What did you do?”
A smile appeared, boyish and bright. Only for me.
“Come on,” he said. “There’s more.”
He led me onto the bank, where the boathouse that used to hold a bunch of CrossFit equipment had been repainted and fit with a new lock. I followed him up the stairs to where his house was tucked into the hillside.
“Will…” I said, taking in all the changes.
“Wait,” he said as we walked. “There’s more.”
And there was. He took me on a tour of the newly refurbished property, which apparently he’d had completely redone while we were in LA during his filming. Gone were the peeling brown exterior and weathered deck—now it was a bright, welcoming white trimmed with a deep green that matched Will’s eyes, and the deck was painted to match. The outdoor kitchen had also been completely redone, the counter replaced with granite, and a grill, table and chairs, and lounge furniture taking up the space.
Indiscreet (The Discreet Duet Book 2) Page 34