Happily Ever His Page 14

  “Tess, don’t,” I said. “Don’t tell me all the reasons why this is wrong, or why it can’t work. Don’t pretend it didn’t happen, or that you didn’t feel everything I just did. There’s something here. And if I have to do all that again to prove it to you, I’m willing.”

  That earned me a tiny smile, but then she shook her head, the dark waves spilling over the pillow in a soft blanket. “I love the idea,” she said slowly. “But the reality is what we need to look at.”

  I hated reality. I wanted to stay as far from reality as possible right now. “I don’t like where you’re headed with this.” I moved in to kiss her again, to see if maybe one more perfect kiss could move her to the mindset that was so clearly rooted in my own brain.

  Tess rolled off the bed and reached down, pulling her shirt up to cover herself as she stood. “Ryan, this was nice.” She blushed then, and my heart stuttered at how incredibly sexy she looked standing there, blushing and looking down at the floor as she tried to cover her perfect full breasts with her T-shirt. “I mean, honestly, I just had sex with Ryan McDonnell. Forget that no one would ever believe me if I told them, or that this was pretty much my ultimate sexual fantasy fulfilled.”

  My brain detached for a moment, letting itself turn over the words she’d just said as my ego soared. But the words she said next pulled it back.

  “But you’re leaving the day after tomorrow, and I’ll never see you again unless I go to the theater. And you’ll be pretending to be with Jules, and you’ll both be back to your version of regular while I’m here in the real world …” she trailed off, and looked around as if she was seeing her room for the first time. Then her voice softened, cracking and nearly breaking my heart. “And … look … Could you maybe just go? This is too much. It’s too hard.”

  I sat up, shaking my head. “It doesn’t have to be, Tess.”

  She wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t meet my eye. She picked up my clothes and handed them to me, then stepped back quickly, and I shivered. Could this really be over?

  I disposed of the condom in the little trashcan next to her desk and got dressed, watching Tess the whole time as she tried not to look at me. How could I fix this? I wasn’t sure I even knew exactly what was broken.

  “I want to stay,” I told her.

  “Just go,” she said, and her voice was so full of remorse and sorrow that I felt my heart wither and shred as I did what she asked and watched the door click shut behind me.

  I walked slowly down the hall in the quiet house, pausing when I heard Granny yell, “Gotcha, sucker!” from somewhere down below. Juliet’s door was shut, and I knew I should probably just go to sleep, but I didn’t want to be alone.

  I hadn’t come to Maryland looking for anything specific, but maybe if I was honest with myself I could admit that I’d been searching for a while. For something. And when I’d found Tess here, in this quiet life surrounded by beauty and water and simplicity and the constant lingering smell of pot, there was a big part of me that was trying to drop anchor. Because all of this felt right.

  Well, maybe not the pot part.

  For lots of years—even before Hollywood swept me up and gave me direction—I’d moved from place to place, been a stranger. When you only stay places for a year or two at a time, you start to realize there’s no point in trying to find people to care about, or to care about you. You’re just going to leave them anyway. My parents had actually taught me that lesson early on.

  And after I’d gotten my break, when I’d been in Los Angeles for a few years, and had some friends, I began to understand that friendship meant something different when you had money, when your name meant more than what was inside of you. If anything, I was more alone now than I’d ever been before, despite more people knowing me than I’d ever dreamed was possible.

  But Tess was different … she made me feel like I was part of something else, like maybe together, we were something bigger. Tess gave me a glimpse of a different kind of life, one where you stayed in one place because that was where you belonged, because that was where your heart lived and where you were loved. Because it was where you were supposed to be.

  I stood in the center of the hallway in that old house for a long moment, listening to the house creak and groan as the wind wrapped around it outside. My mind turned and twisted, working to make sense of how unexpectedly this place had infiltrated my mind, my heart—how completely Tess Manchester had taken over everything uncertain and afraid in me and lit a path that made more sense than anything in my life ever had. I stared at the gentle glow of light cast up the stairs from below. It probably wasn’t the right move, but I followed that light and Granny’s gleeful shouts down the stairs and into a small office in the back of the house.

  The old lady was wearing a headset, sitting in front of a huge monitor in the biggest swiveling chair I’d ever seen. The screen in front of her showed a huge colorful world and a group of cartoony characters gathered around carrying a wide range of weapons and wearing bright armor and robes. I recognized it immediately.

  I’d told Tess I knew the game because of my college roommate, but that had only been because I was embarrassed to admit I played it myself.

  “Playing a paladin?” I asked, stepping into the darkened room, which had a lingering cloud of pot smoke hovering in the air.

  Granny’s head whipped around, her small eyes alight. “Level sixty-eight,” she said. “You play?” Her wrinkled face pulled into a grin as she stared at me. I cringed a bit—this lady probably didn’t have a very high opinion of me, and I wasn’t sure what she thought now.

  I stepped into the room, pulling a chair up next to her. “I have played. The last movie I did was on location, so I haven’t in a long time.”

  “Ah,” she said, turning back to the group on the screen.

  “I always liked to tank, too.” The tank was the warrior in a group, the guy who drew the bad guys from everyone else, who took the brunt of the attack. It was the character I always played—in the game, on the screen.

  “Paladin?”

  “Death Knight,” I told her, which earned me another grin.

  “So there’s some substance behind that pretty face,” she said, swinging her chair around to face me. She was regarding me with a thoughtful expression, and I had the sensation of being evaluated—like Granny could see past the surface now that she was looking at me so intently. It was both uncomfortable and strangely enjoyable. As she stared at me, the group of other players on the screen moved away, leaving her standing alone.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” I said, gesturing at the screen. “I think your group is heading out.”

  “Nah,” she said, a little cackle at the end of the sound. “I got in a group with a bunch of twelve-year olds. That’s the problem with playing on the east coast. I have to stay up pretty late to play with grownups, since bedtime for those California juvenile delinquents doesn’t seem to be until midnight.”

  I laughed, knowing exactly what she meant. “I remember what that was like—kids getting in crazy fights about drops and disagreeing about everything.” I might have played a little more in college than I’d admitted to Tess.

  “It’s like babysitting sometimes,” she said, pulling the headset from her head. “But I bet you didn’t come in here to talk about Warcraft.” She gave me the sharp-eyed look again.

  I tried a smile. “I just heard you awake, and thought I’d say hello.”

  She narrowed those watery eyes at me and made a clucking sound. “I think you need some guidance.” She smiled. “Too bad the only person around is an old pothead.”

  I let out a laugh. She was charming and funny. It was a welcome relief. “I need something,” I agreed. “I just don’t know what it is. And I have a feeling I might know where Juliet got the acting gene. I think you want people to believe you’re just an old pothead. I think it’s your cover.”

  She squinted at me as she took in these words. Quietly, she said, “It’s easier to see what’s
really going on if everyone thinks you’re an idiot.”

  It wasn’t a whole lot different than being treated like the ‘talent’ and talked around in contract meetings. “I get that, actually.” I sighed, leaning back in the chair next to her. “So do you see what’s really going on here? With me?”

  “You need to decide,” she said. “You can’t have both my granddaughters.”

  I shook my head. “Yeah, I know.” Then I realized she still believed I’d come here as Juliet’s boyfriend and that Juliet had asked me not to tell her the truth. But I couldn’t have Tess’s grandmother believing I was that kind of guy. “No, I mean … it’s kind of complicated.”

  “Only because you’re a man,” she said, her voice taking on a sage old lady tone. “Your dick complicates everything where beautiful women are concerned.”

  “I’m not arguing with that,” I chuckled, enjoying her straight-shooting nature. “But there’s more to it …” I looked at her for a long minute, and I knew my assumption about her cover was on target. Where I’d first believed Tess’s granny was a crazy old pot-smoking lady, potentially senile, now I saw a sharp woman who had enough experience to live exactly the way she wanted to and made no excuses for it. There wasn’t a senile bone in her body, I realized. “I’m not really with Jules,” I told her. “That was a pretense for the press.”

  The clucking noise again, and Granny shook her head slowly. “The world you live in,” she said, trailing off.

  “I know. It’s a mess.” I sighed, and found my mouth opening again, words forcing their way out before I’d had a chance to think about it. Gran’s attention, and the atmosphere around her that just seemed to suggest she knew and understood things she didn’t always share, had me babbling. I told her about my childhood, my current career, and even my dad.

  “He’s been diagnosed with dementia. I have to take care of him, but I travel a lot for work, and I need to move him somewhere they can look after him. But it has to be a home—not just a place, does that make sense?”

  Gran’s lined face was solemn. “I do understand that. I’ve had friends in the same situation. What does your dad think?”

  “He’s scared. He knows he isn’t always tracking lately.” My chest hurt when I talked about what was happening to my dad.

  “Of course he’s scared. And so are you.” Gran’s bright eyes held mine. “There are very nice communities, though.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, trying to sound optimistic about the place Dad and I had chosen in Los Angeles. “The good ones are really expensive.”

  “No problem for a movie star, though?” Her voice suggested she might know it was going to be a leap.

  “This star hasn’t been much of a star for a while,” I said, feeling the pressure this situation was causing, the need to push my name back up the list of viable leading men. “But I’ll figure it out.”

  “There’s a very nice place here, too,” Gran said, glancing at her screen. “I visit one of my good friends there. I’d imagine such places are less expensive here than in a place like Los Angeles, but what do I know?”

  “I’m starting to think you know a lot,” I told her.

  She tilted her head then, her eyes widening as her hands folded on her lap, little wrinkled fingers working together. “You have a lot on your plate. And what about my granddaughter, Tess?”

  I dropped her gaze, staring down at my own hands. “I’d really like to be with Tess.” I risked a look back up at the old lined face. She was smiling.

  “But …?”

  “But I think my life is too complicated for her.”

  “Un-complicate it.”

  If only it was that simple. “I want to. I want it more than anything … but she … I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t believe me.”

  “Seeing is believing, Ryan. Show her you’re serious.”

  “I tried, I mean, I want to try.”

  “Do or do not. There is no try.”

  “Yoda? Seriously?” I laughed.

  “People say we look alike,” she said, pursing her lips and lowering her chin in a little pose.

  “No they don’t,” I said, grinning and relieved to feel lighter suddenly, less burdened.

  “Maybe not, but Yoda was wise,” she told me. “And he knew how to deliver the sagey oracle shit with panache.” She turned her chair back to face the computer screen, where her character stood still, waiting for her to return.

  I watched as she pulled the headset back on and leaned forward, her hand on the mouse and the other on the keyboard. Her Paladin ran forward, and for a while I just sat, watching the young strong version of Granny on the screen moving over endless green hilltops in a fantasy world where she could go wherever she pleased, do whatever she wanted. But watching made me feel tired—Warcraft was one quest after another. Each achievement was just a key to unlocking harder challenges. There was really no rest, no end.

  In some ways, wasn’t that what my life was like now? Roaming endlessly, moving from one thing to another?

  I wanted solidity and permanence. I wanted more.

  I said goodnight to Granny and went up to my room, set up my laptop and opened a browser. An idea had been brewing in my mind, and the more I thought about Granny, about Warcraft, the more exhausted I felt. I wanted something else. Something real.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Tess

  Sleep was like an old trusted friend who was on some exotic vacation texting you selfies with tropical umbrella drinks and hot dive instructors just when you needed her most.

  Bitch.

  After Ryan left the room, I lay awake and took stock. My body hummed with memories of his touch, and my muscles were soft and languid, the result of the very best orgasm I’d ever had. And while my body purred as I lay in my bed alone, my brain whizzed and jerked, trying to find some way that all of this would be okay.

  But it wouldn’t.

  Because I was an idiot. I’d let myself become completely absorbed in the dream of Ryan McDonnell. In the few days I’d actually known him, I’d gotten much too close, and I knew when he left I was going to be broken. I’d entertained a fantasy, let it wind itself around my heart, and now it was going to be very hard to release.

  How could the boring standstill world of my everyday life ever compare to the dream of having a movie star sweep me off my feet?

  But that was what this was. Just a dream. Even if Ryan was not really with Juliet, there was no chance he was going to be with me. I knew myself too well for that.

  I was Tess Manchester, largely invisible to men.

  On the plus side, that gave me a lot of time to pursue activities, and had allowed me to build a successful business and construct my life pretty much the way I wanted it.

  The down side was … well, it was pretty obvious as I looked around my room. My life often felt empty.

  When the sky outside began to lighten in infinitesimal amounts, I slipped out of bed, feeling as if I hadn’t slept at all. I couldn’t remember every single one of the dark minutes that had ticked by, but it felt like I’d been awake to mark each one’s slow passage. And I stood beside my bed now with a weight in my chest and fog in my mind. And more than one hundred guests coming tonight for Granny’s party, not to mention the press for Juliet’s article.

  Perfect.

  I slogged downstairs in my pajamas, looking for coffee, and nearly had a heart attack when I bumped into Juliet in the living room.

  “Oh, Tess!” she said, looking every bit as surprised to see me at o’dark-thirty as I felt to see her.

  “Hi,” I said. I wondered why she was wandering around the house this early in her pajamas, but then realized I was doing the same thing. Maybe she couldn’t sleep either. “Getting coffee,” I told her, my best effort at conversation still making me sound like fuzzy and dense at this hour.

  “Good, yes,” she said, following me to the kitchen. Her quick answer and the glance behind her made me think my sister was hiding something. For a split second, my suspic
ion rose again and I peered around in the darkness for Ryan—could they really be together as Gran had insinuated? Was she sneaking around down here with him? But that didn’t make a lot of sense, and it was far too early for me to worry much about it.

  While the coffee brewed, we sat across from each other at the small round table in the kitchen, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Once the pot was done, and we each had a mug between our hands, Juliet looked up at me. “You doing okay?”

  Shame crept over me, a wet rag that smothered other feelings and pushed my shoulders down into a slump. “Jules, I’m sorry about what I said last night.” I said the words, mostly because I loved my sister and wanted to mend things between us, less because I was actually sorry.

  “No, you were right.” She sipped her coffee, put the mug back down and traced the rim with her finger. “I know it isn’t easy being my sister, Tess. I know I make it hard.”

  “It’s not always you … it’s just all the things that come with you now,” I said, wishing things could go back to how they were when we were kids. Just sisters. Just life.

  “Things like Ryan?”

  I sighed. I had no idea how to sort through the feelings I had for Ryan.

  “He’s a good guy, Tess. And we’re not together, so …”

  “So now it’s okay with you?” I raised an eyebrow at her over my mug. It had been very not okay last night.

  She shrugged. “You were right. It’s not about me, and it’s not up to me. I want you to be happy, and lord knows you need to meet someone. Your life has revolved around salt water and Granny and other peoples’ adventures for way too long. You’re verging on spinsterhood.”

  “I’m twenty-five.”

  “Well.”

  I shook my head. Facts had never gotten in the way of a good story for Juliet.

  We were both silent for a while, drinking our coffee as the sun lifted to the horizon and spread rays of pink and orange across the sky, every color reflected in the surface of the water at the edge of the lawn. Juliet watched me, and finally put her mug down.