I Loved You First E-Book

Suzanne Enoch

• Herausgeber: NYLA
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 401

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Escape with three warm-hearted romantic comedy novellas about women's second chance at first love from beloved romance authors, Suzanne Enoch, Molly Harper, and Karen Hawkins. Take Two by Suzanne Enoch Eleanor Ross has it all: fame, fortune—and Brian MacCafferty, the perfect combo of bodyguard and assistant who makes every day a breeze. MacCafferty anticipates her needs, puts out her fires, and—once upon a time—nearly put a ring on her finger. And when a scandal erupts that could ruin El, it's Brian who rushes to the rescue and joins her in hiding. Will El discover there's no hiding from true love? And is she finally ready to take a second chance for her own, real life Happily Ever After? Pasties and Poor Decisions by Molly Harper Anastasia Villiers has hit rock bottom. And that rock is named Espoir Island. Abandoned by her disgraced investment banker husband who liquidated all of their assets and fled the country, Anastasia is left with nothing—except for Fishscale House, a broken-down Queen Anne in the Michigan hometown she swore she'd left for good. If Ana quickly renovates and flips the dilapidated building, she can get back to Manhattan and salvage her life. The problem? The only person on the island with historical renovation cred is Ned Fitzroy—Ana's first love—who insists she help him with the labor herself. As Ana gets reacquainted with Ned, and her hometown, she realizes home may be just what she's always wanted. The Last Chance Motel by Karen Hawkins Every big romance deserves a second chance. But Evan and Jessica Cho Graham are looking at the last chance: more specifically, The Last Chance Motel in Dove Pond, NC where Jessica has escaped to start a happily independent life, separate from her smart, sexy, but driven husband. Evan has been wildly successful in every endeavor, except keeping the heart of the one woman he loves more than anything. If he's going to repair this mess, he's going to need all the help he can get—even if it's from the crankiest handyman in B&B history—to turn his second chance with Jess into a perfect storybook happy ending.

Leseprobe

I Loved You First

Suzanne Enoch

Molly Harper

Karen Hawkins

This ebook is licensed to you for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be sold, shared, or given away.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

I LOVED YOU FIRST

Take Two by Suzanne Enoch

Pasties and Poor Decisions by Molly Harper

The Last Chance Motel by Karen Hawkins

Copyright © 2020 Suzanne Enoch, Molly Harper, Karen Hawkins

Ebook ISBN: 9781641971478

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No part of this work may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

NYLA Publishing

121 W 27th St., Suite 1201, New York, NY 10001

http://www.nyliterary.com

Contents

Take Two

Suzanne Enoch

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Pasties and Poor Decisions

Molly Harper

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

The Last Chance Motel

Karen Hawkins

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Epilogue

Discover More by Suzanne Enoch

Discover More by Molly Harper

Discover More by Karen Hawkins

About the Authors

Take Two

Suzanne Enoch

1

“Cafferty, when’s the Charlotte Maybury interview?” Eleanor Ross yelled, tapping her finger on the edge of her phone. Please let it be Thursday, she repeated to herself, eyeing her calendar’s open skies at the beginning of the week. Three days without a make-up appointment, without a fitting or a reading or a camera test or a schmooze dinner with a producer.

“Tuesday,” Cafferty returned, his voice echoing up from the office.

Shit. “Can we—”

“I think we can shift it to Thursday,” he interrupted. “That would give you a three-day break before you dive in again.”

“Yes, please.” Brian Cafferty, the magnificent beast, always anticipated her every need, even if it was only for a bit of breathing room. No wonder she’d nearly married him. And no wonder she’d changed her mind about that; what woman wanted to be married to a man who could read her like an open book?

Instead, they’d found the perfect niche for Cafferty. He could keep her schedule, book her appearances, and give her pep talks, and she could tell him to back the fuck up when she needed some space and a moment or two when her life wasn’t scheduled to the millisecond. Hell, she’d fired him six times over the past four years since they’d become un-engaged, which she couldn’t have done if they’d been married. And she’d hired him seven times, so he liked something about the arrangement too.

Eleanor tapped in next Thursday’s date for the e-news interview, leaving the time blank for the moment. That left her with a FaceTime chat in an hour with Enrique Vance so he could tell her—how had he phrased it—“the window he wanted to open into Teresa Woodward’s soul.” All directors were like that, with their own favorite method of communicating their vision to the pesky actors who had to pantomime it, but for crying out loud, some of them were pretentious little shits. She liked what she’d seen of Enrique and the fact that he wanted to make a superhero movie with soul, but that didn’t stop her from sending up a quick prayer every morning since she’d signed onto the project that she’d made the right choice.

“El,” came from the open doorway of her upstairs sitting room, and she jumped.

Cafferty leaned there, a sculptor’s wet dream of manliness hidden beneath a Star Wars T-shirt and faded jeans. Yeah, it hadn’t been just his gift for anticipation that she’d fallen for. That was past tense now—though she did still like to look. She wasn’t dead, for crying out loud. Eleanor shook herself. “Did the new pages show up?”

He straightened, bringing an envelope around from behind his back. “Yep. Figured you’d want to take a look before Vance’s call.”

“Thanks.” She pulled out the two dozen pages, flipping through them. “Huh. Teresa Woodward’s drinking problem is now a shopping addiction. Dolce and Gabbana. Can you say product tie-in?”

“You’re so cynical.” Brian leaned over her shoulder. “It’s difficult being a high-powered lawyer with a mutation that lets her detect lies. A new purse helps dull the pain.” He reached down to flip over a page of the script. “She is still a lawyer, right?”

Eleanor snorted. “Yes. And I’ve always wanted to play a superhero. Don’t make fun.”

“Uh-huh. Speaking of fun, Rod the Bod called twice while you were on the phone with the summer camp people. Something about dinner.”

“You shouldn’t call him that.”

“Sorry. Mr. Bannon, then.”

Since Roderick Bannon’s last movie had very nearly gone straight to the Walmart five-dollar DVD bin, Rod had been spending extra time at the gym, with Chris Hemsworth’s ex-trainer. Personally, she thought the movie had floundered because Rod, with his sun-bleached blond hair, eight-pack abdomen, and trademark piercing blue eyes, hadn’t made for a very convincing blind, reclusive professor of literature. Then again, she happened to have inside information that Rod detested reading, so that might have prejudiced her a little on the believability scale.

She liked Rod. He told a good joke, they shared friends, and he happened to be very pleasant to gaze upon—though in her line of work, she knew a lot of guys who fell into that very same category. Still,

they’d been dating for three months, and she hadn’t fallen out of the starry-eyed, mushy stage yet. Maybe this time she wouldn’t. It could happen; it nearly had four years ago when she’d met Brian Cafferty. The three other men in between those two kept trying to prove her wrong, but hell, if an actress couldn’t imagine a different life, she was in the wrong business.

“Am I giving him an excuse, then?” Cafferty prompted. “An early wake-up call? A production meeting first thing in the morning?”

She shook herself out of her whimsy. That was something that didn’t belong in her line of work. Whimsy led to heavy-assed costume dramas just so you could play a princess, even if the script was a bloody train wreck. Or a carriage wreck, rather. “Anticipating my every need again?” she quipped, a little too sharply.

“Not your every need.”

Now she wanted to dive into that damned whimsy again. “Boundaries,” she muttered, stacking the script pages in her lap again. Too many people clawed at her, wanted bits of her. It felt…safe, being able to tell one of them off.

“Sorry. What do you want me to do with Bannon?”

“Ask him when he wants to come by or if we’re meeting somewhere.” She stretched. “A night out will be nice.”

“And then three days of catching up on Secrets of the Zoo and finally seeing the third season of Stranger Things?”

“God, yes. I need to know what happens to Hopper and Joyce before I fly off to Brussels for four months. Why can’t Chicago be in Chicago anymore?”

“Because it’s cheaper to make Brussels look like Chicago than it is to film in actual Chicago,” he pointed out.

“Yes, I know. Just let me complain a little. I can’t do it in front of anybody else; they think spending four months away from my house while wearing spandex and hanging by my waist from a piano wire is glamorous.”

“So Teresa Woodward can fly, now?” he asked, lifting both eyebrows this time.

“Not yet. By the time I get the next rewrites, who knows?”

He grinned. “I’ll let Rod the…Mr. Bannon know you’re available tonight.”

“Thanks, Cafferty. Tell him he can call me after five, or text me before that.”

With a mock salute, he strolled out of the room. Eleanor sank back in her comfy chair and read through the script changes in more detail. It wasn’t exactly what she would call edgy, but it did look fun. Clever. And after her last gig playing a no-nonsense factory worker uncovering a flaw in car seats in Carrier, fun had a great deal of appeal. And Enrique Vance had directed the very well-regarded Last Bus to Providence last year, so she tended to think he could help her pull off being a superhero.

Before he called, she sent off a quick email to Cafferty, instructing him to double her endowment to the Wild Wind Summer Camp so they could send an additional fifty kids camping this year now that they had the permits to expand the campground facilities. City kids visiting lakes and mountains, fishing and experiencing nature for the first time—in the four years since she’d started the foundation, she’d never had a second of regret for either the time or the money spent.

Her phone vibrated and abruptly erupted with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice yelling “Get to the choppa!” She jumped, looking down at the number. “Dammit, Cafferty,” she yelled, “quit changing my text tones!”

Okay, it was a little funny, given Rod’s current obsession with being physically fit, but he was also sensitive about it. She read through the text. Rod wanted to pick her up at six sharp, and she was to dress for a fancy dinner so they could celebrate her getting the lead in Prosecutor. That was nice, since he’d just lost out to Zac Efron on his own superhero bid. As soon as she texted back her agreement, she went into the phone’s contacts and edited his text tone back to the old-fashioned car horn it had been previously.

Brian didn’t generally mess with her phone, or her private life, but he’d made it fairly clear that he wasn’t a fan of Rod Bannon. She wasn’t quite sure why; she’d gone out with a handful of guys in the four years since she’d ended their engagement, and Brian had never so much as batted an eye. Then again, Rod was the first one who’d made it past the four-date mark.

Before she could decide whether that was progress on her part or just a really sad commentary on her high-profile life, her phone rang, and she spent the next forty minutes discussing the psyche of a superhero who’d been happy with her pre super-powered life. God, she’d been after this part for so long, and even with the script changes, or perhaps because of them, the role seemed just…perfect. Or perfectly imperfect, rather. Fun, sarcastic, a bit unsure of herself—a female Tony Stark but with confidence issues and no flying. And then Enrique texted her the photo for the costume prototype, and she began to believe this might actually be her Tony Stark moment.

Yeah, she’d had some hits—some big ones—and a couple of rough patches, but this could be it. The it. The part that meshed hard work and skill and craft with fun and pure joy. As she tapped off the call, she felt nearly read to burst out singing. Her gaze on the full-length photo of her costume prototype, she uncurled from her chair and practically bounced to the top of the stairs. “Cafferty! Come look at this!”

“On my way.” Brian’s voice came from downstairs, the last syllable drowned out by her phone ringing with the theme from The Terminator. Damn it, she hadn’t checked to see if Cafferty had changed Rod’s ringtone too.

“Hey,” she said into the phone, jabbing a finger in the direction of her grinning assistant—or handler, as she generally referred to him—as he topped the stairs. “Thanks for waiting to call until after five.”

“Your voice is happy,” Rod’s melodic voice came back to her. “Good news?”

“Yep. I’ll tell you what I can at dinner.”

“I get it. Confidentiality and all.”

That was the nice thing about dating somebody in the business. She didn’t have to explain why blabbing about as silly a thing as the color of her superhero uniform could cost her the entire job and her future as an actor. “Thanks. See you in fifteen?”

“I’m on my way now. Just tell me you at least got a peek at the costume. You don’t want to get Green Lanterned.”

Eleanor snorted. “It’s an actual costume, not CGI. And it’s gorgeous.” She took a breath. “Rod, this could be it.”

“Damn. I wanna be your date to the Golden Globes, then.”

That made her laugh, the excitement in the sound audible even to her. God, she was giddy. “You’re on. I’m hanging up now. I need to get dressed.”

“’K.”

She ended the call. “Have you messed with any of my other contacts on my cell?” she asked, waggling her iPhone at Cafferty.

“Nope.”

“Good. And don’t do it again. What are you, twelve?” Turning left, she headed along the upstairs balcony to her bedroom.

“He gives me the willies,” Brian countered, following behind her.

“You’re my assistant. You help me schedule things, keep my calendar straight, and make sure I don’t miss appointments. You field phone calls for me. You assist me. You do not get to pass judgment on my boyfriends.”

His footsteps slowed. Good. She was serious, dammit. The last thing she needed was to be in a meeting and have somebody forward her something only to hear the Three Stooges theme in response. Eleanor turned to face him.

“You’re my employee, Cafferty. Stop being so…familiar.”

“So you’re being independent again?” he asked, an eyebrow lifting.

“I like being independent. Remember?”

“Yeah. Not likely to forget that. Do I get to see the costume?”

“Nope. Maybe tomorrow, when I’m not pissed at you.” Narrowing her eyes, she backed into her bedroom and shut the door.

She hoped they were going to Dillard’s for dinner. God, she loved the steak there. Together with some wine and a very handsome man saying adoring, supportive things to her, that steak would be just the thing to celebrate her becoming the anchor of her very own movie franchise, if she permitted herself a bit of whimsy for just a minute. Or an entire evening.

Brian Cafferty left Eleanor’s house when she did, making sure Rod the Bod saw him lurking beside his Jeep. At twenty-eight, a year younger than he was, El could stand on her own two feet, but it seemed to him that every single young lady should have someone standing at her side to give the evil eye to every potential boyfriend who looked her way. Eleanor had lost her dad when she was twelve, and she didn’t have any brothers. So that left him to deliver nonverbal threats as necessary.

The Bod had driven his Maserati, bright yellow and practically screaming “look at me!” Maybe that was what had attracted Eleanor to Rod Bannon—she liked the shade, and he could blind the sun with his giant personality.

It wouldn’t last. At least he hoped not. To his fans, Rod was open and charming and friendly and never too busy for a photo or two, so they all adored him. But Brian had seen him up close and for more than the space of a handshake. Rod fed off the adoration. It literally sustained him, and he had nothing else going on but being famous. Ever.

Or maybe that was just his own ego talking. Scowling, Brian climbed behind the wheel of his four-year-old blue Jeep and headed the five miles southwest to his own condo. Yeah, El paid him a good salary, and he could have afforded one of the nice houses between her mansion and his condo, but he spent so little time at home that the additional expense seemed stupid.

Five years ago, he’d been just shy of becoming a junior partner in a big-name law firm, but his life had made a serious left turn on a warm, windy day in February. That was when a truck towing a giant marquee sign advertising the new romantic comedy movie Mating Dance had overturned a hundred feet in front of him. In a weird, Hollywood-style coincidence, the star of the movie, Eleanor Ross, had been driving one of the cars right behind the sign and had subsequently found herself trapped between a forty-foot image of herself in a duck costume and a hundred surprised commuters and shoppers along Artesia Boulevard.

She’d been totally gracious and good-humored about it, too, taking pics with fans in front of the toppled-over truck, until some of them had gotten too zealous and started grabbing at her. He’d moved in between her and them before he’d even realized he’d decided to get out of his car. For a bare second he’d thought she’d believed his line that he was the driver the studio had sent over, until she sat down in the passenger seat of his BMW next to him and commented that until that moment, she’d never believed in the Blanche DuBois line about relying on the kindness of strangers—and her hands had been shaking.

It had never occurred to him that anyone in the acting profession would be personally shy or introverted, but Eleanor Ross was a classic crowd-a-phobe. He’d choked back the abrupt, idiotic desire to ask her to dinner or to drive her to some quaint ice cream parlor out of a ’50’s romantic comedy, and instead had simply asked where she wanted to go. He’d then embarked on some inane chitchat he couldn’t even recall, just something to give her time to pull herself back together. And when they’d arrived at Paramount Studios, she’d asked for his name and phone number, offered to pay him for his trouble like he’d been an Uber driver, and then with a quick smile and thanks, hurried off into the executive building.

Nobody at the firm had believed his story, though they gave him points for the creativity of his excuse at being late coming back from lunch. That night he’d pulled one of her DVDs out of his TV cabinet. As he watched her trying to avoid running out of air while staying ahead of alien-infested Chris Evans in The Fourth Day, he wondered if he hadn’t imagined the whole thing, after all.

But then the next day she’d called him. Two months later, he’d popped the question, and she’d said yes. Four weeks after that, she’d broken it off—because he’d been too “in tune” with her or some other such crap. A month after that, she’d offered him the job, and because he was an idiot, and because she’d seemed so very alone for someone so popular, he’d quit his job at the firm and gone to work for her.

And now she was on her fifth date with Rod the Bod Bannon, and he was sitting on his couch eating takeout and watching a game show. Yeah, whoever thought Hollywood was glamorous saw the tuxedos and gowns on Oscar night and didn’t consider the other three hundred sixty-four days in the year.

“You’re an idiot, Brian Cafferty,” he muttered around his burger.

A game show and a half later, TMZ came on, and he shifted to change the channel. Now that he knew a fair share of celebrities, the news rags didn’t seem so much like a peek behind the scenes as they did vultures waiting to find the damaged and then feed off them.

“—Breaking news tonight. We have some pics just coming in of the superhero costume Eleanor Ross will be wearing in her first superhero flick. I haven’t seen them yet, but apparently, they’re really something. The—”

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.” Brian grabbed for his cell phone just as it started ringing to the tune of Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head. El’s ringtone. “El, what the hell happ—”

“I’m at Almuerzo,” Eleanor’s voice came, hushed and tight. “He left me here. I’m in the kitchen. Brian, press is everywhere, and I don’t know what happened. The—”

“Sit tight,” he cut in. “I’ll text you when I get there.”

2

He was already halfway out the door as he hung up. Almuerzo was on Sunset, a swanky Mexican food place with a Michelin-star chef and a reputation for being a celebrity hangout. Not somewhere she would have chosen to eat, much less to be stranded. Wherever the hell Rod Bannon was, he needed a swift kick in his grade-A ass.

His phone rang again as he backed out of his garage. Paramount Studios this time. Fuck. If they were calling him, they were also calling Eleanor. By the time he got to Almuerzo, she would know why the press was there. For the moment, he ignored the call. Before he and her agent, John Radley, started a war with the studio, he wanted to know the whole story. John would need to know it too.

Thankfully the nine-to-five work traffic had mostly cleared out, but Sunset Boulevard teemed with cars and pedestrians twenty-four hours a day. Rod had left her there. Every molecule he possessed knew this had something to do with the costume photos getting out to TMZ, but for now that was only a suspicion. First things first. One of the most famous faces in the world had been dumped into the middle of tourist central.

Flooring it between lights like a maniac, he managed to get to Almuerzo in fifteen minutes. As he pulled within a block of the restaurant, he started counting. TV vans from three networks were already there, and the damned street was practically closed down with onlookers and jackasses with expensive-looking cameras. Parking, a joke under the most ideal of circumstances, was now impossible.

Swearing again, he swung up the closest side street then pulled halfway onto the sidewalk and stopped in front of a dress boutique. He yanked open the shop’s door, flinching at the volume of the Taylor Swift music reverberating through the small, cluttered space. “You have a back door?” he asked the stick-thin girl behind the counter.

“Not for customers,” she retorted. “And get your Jeep off the damned sidewalk before I call—”

He pulled a hundred-dollar bill from his pocket and plunked it down in front of her. “I’m performing a rescue. Nothing illegal. I need your back door propped open for a couple of minutes. When I get back, I’ll give you another four of those.” He gestured at the bill.

“Damn,” she breathed and scooped up the money to tuck it into a bra strap.

“Cameras in here?”

“Yeah.”

“Turn them off.”

“Not until I get another one of these.” She patted her chest.

Brian handed one over. “Off. Now. They don’t go on again until I say so.”

“Okay. Jeez, dude. Chill out.”

“I am chill. Go prop open the door. Just enough for me to be able to get it open.”

Turning around, he left the boutique and trotted back up the side street and onto Sunset. Then he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and charged.

“Hey, you’re with Eleanor Ross, aren’t you?” came at him from several directions at once, but he ignored it and the jostling and the flashing phones and cameras. His phone began vibrating again, and this time it didn’t stop.

Brian pushed to the front door and then inside, only to be met by a hostess shaking hard enough that she was either about to have a heart attack or an orgasm. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, wrinkling her cheeks rather than bothering with an actual smile, “we are presently not seating any guests for the dinn—”

“I’m Cafferty,” he interrupted in a low voice. “The person in your kitchen called me to come get her. I work for her.” At the same time, he lifted his phone and texted “I’m here” to her number.

“Can you prove that?”

He shifted from one foot to the other, reminding himself to be grateful that they were keeping people out, even if that included him. “Send someone to ask her. Cafferty.”

One of the waiters nodded and vanished. Just beyond the foyer, the low volume of the voices and clink of utensils on china made it clear that something unusual was up. Half the diners were probably thankful somebody else’s scandal was taking up air-time, and the other half were probably jealous of El getting headlines.

The waiter returned. “She says he’s okay,” he informed the hostess.

“Maybe he is,” the hostess responded, still keeping her voice low, “but what are we supposed to do about that?” She gestured past his shoulder. “Some of my guests are very private. They can’t leave with this going on.”

“I’m taking Ms. Ross out the back door,” he said, already moving past her. “Give it ten minutes or so, and then tell the mob she’s gone, if they haven’t figured it out by then.”

“You think they don’t know we have a back door?”

“Unless you also have a helicopter pad, I’m doing the best I can,” he retorted.

She lifted her chin. “What about the bill? They had lobster tacos. And a bottle of chardonnay. Expensive chardonnay.”

So Rod had stiffed El on the bill too? Whatever the dickweed was up to, he and Eleanor needed to have a strategy meeting about standards. He pulled out his company credit card. “Put it on here, with a good tip.”

Without waiting for her to complain about something else, he moved past her into the dining room. Tuxedos were out except for major award ceremonies, but this was a well-dressed crowd. And he was wearing a BB-8 Star Wars T-shirt and jeans. Ah, well. If they didn’t already know something was up, they were probably zombies.

He locked eyes with Julia Prentiss, the current scream queen, and she gave him the up-and-down assessment, bit her lip, and returned to her conversation. Yeah, she was pretty and all, but he’d listened to her try to have a conversation, and he wasn’t impressed.

The kitchen consisted of a lot of people in white chef’s jackets standing around. With no new customers coming in, Almuerzo was swiftly grinding to a halt. That wouldn’t earn El any sympathy, but they still parted reluctantly to allow him into the back corner where she sat on a stool and sipped at a glass of water.

“Hey,” he said, squatting in front of her.

Hazel eyes met his, and a tear rolled down one cheek. “He took my phone,” she whispered. “I showed him the costume pics, and I think he sent himself the photos. Why would he do that, Brian?”

“Because he’s a prick who hasn’t had a hit in three movies,” he returned. Straightening, he held out one hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

“I can’t. You saw what it looks like out there.”

“I’ve got it covered.” He reached out and took her hand, felt her shaking as she set aside her glass and stood. Damn Rod Bannon. Whatever the jackass thought he was getting out of this, it couldn’t possibly be worth it.

Keeping her close beside him, he pushed open the back door. Phones and cameras began flashing, and he put an arm around her shoulder, trying to protect her from the crowd and the noise. The boutique’s back door was cracked open an inch or so, and he yanked it wide to half shove El inside before he shut and locked it behind them.

The girl behind the counter gaped like a dying fish as he ushered Eleanor past her into the front of the tiny shop. “Three hundred, right?” he said, pulling more bills from his pocket and setting them in front of her.

“Um, yeah. You’re—”

“Thanks,” he cut her off. “You can turn the cameras back on as soon as we leave.”

“O…Okay. I loved you in Obsidian Nights,” she called after them.

“Thank you,” Eleanor managed, sending her a quick smile as they ran for the door.

The paparazzi would be charging out of the alley and around to the front of the shop, so he practically flung her into the passenger side of the Jeep before he continued around to hop behind the wheel. “Stay low,” he said, turning the key and jamming it into drive.

For three blocks she sat doubled over beside him, her pretty honey-colored hair curtaining her face. “I am so stupid,” her muffled voice came.

“You trusted him to be human,” Brian countered. “Which in your line of work is an iffy proposition. But it’s admirable that you do still trust people.”

“Not anymore.” Straightening, she took a breath. “I don’t want to go home. The wolves will be waiting. Paramount’s entire team of lawyers is probably on my driveway too.”

“They’ve been calling. I haven’t been answering.”

“I turned off my phone after I called you. How did everybody find out so fast, though?”

“He sent the photos to TMZ, is my guess,” Brian answered. “They started the episode with breaking news.”

What he didn’t say was that for TMZ to go live on the West Coast, they had to have known ahead of time that something big was coming. Rod hadn’t just given them the photos. He’d told them he would be getting them. What Brian couldn’t figure out was what was in it for Bannon. Why ruining Eleanor Ross equaled a payoff for Rod the Bod. Because Rod didn’t do anything that didn’t serve himself.

“I’m going to lose the part,” she said into the silence, sitting up again. “They’ll either replace me or shut down the movie altogether.”

“Maybe. We need to make some phone calls, but not while we’re fleeing the horde.” Checking his mirrors, he shifted right and then turned them up the ramp onto the northbound 110 freeway.

“Where are we going? The border and Mexico are south.”

He snorted. “It’s not fleeing-to-Mexico bad yet.”

“Says you.”

“Yes, I do say. You don’t want to go home. I know a place we can hole up and regroup.”

Eleanor closed her eyes for a moment. Regroup. This wasn’t a football game they were losing. A pep talk wouldn’t put those photos back into her phone. And all those people suddenly surrounding her, yammering and pointing and camera lights flashing—the only thing she could think of was to call Cafferty and run.

“You rescued me again,” she said aloud.

“It’s my job, this time.”

Whether he meant that to hurt or not, it did. The implication that he’d shown up because she paid him to do so… After she’d pretty much told him to stay in his lane and leave her to choose her own friends and romantic partners, she probably deserved it, but his timing sucked. “Sorry.”

She heard his intake of breath. “No, I’m sorry. You’ve got enough on your shoulders right now. I’m not going to dump on you.”

Yes, everything sucked right now and would only get worse, but in the grand scheme of things she supposed she was a great deal more fortunate than most people. “You might as well. There’ll be a line later.”

“But there isn’t one now. Keep your phone off, unroll the window, and breathe. We’ve got two or so hours before we stop.”

Wherever they were headed, it was out of Hollywood, and for the moment that was enough. God, she’d picked the wrong career. Standing in front of a couple of bored guys with cameras and lights was one thing. That was her pretending to be someone else, and she enjoyed that. She was good at it. The other part, the publicity tours and interviews and all the people picking at her like crows on a corncob, that part sucked. Literally. Just like a vampire.

Cafferty fiddled with the radio then shut it off again. He was probably worried that she would be featured on the next news break. “Did he say anything?”

“Who? Rod?”

“Yeah. Before he took off on you. Did he say anything?”

“No. He handed me back my phone, chatted for a minute or two about being up for the next James Bond villain, which I didn’t believe, then said, ‘I have to go, babe,’ and walked away. At first I thought he meant he had to go to the restroom, but then he didn’t come back. And then my phone started ringing, and the shit hit the fan.” She pounded her fist against the armrest. “Who does that? I mean, I…I liked him.”

She knew exactly why Cafferty didn’t answer that; she surrounded herself with professional liars. She was a professional liar. Evidently that didn’t mean her bullshit detector worked better than anyone else’s. But did that mean that Rod had only been looking for a way to use her all along? Or to sabotage her career? She’d slept with the guy, for God’s sake. He was exciting, bold, and everything she thought a shy, introverted woman like herself should be allying with.

Rod was the opposite of Brian Cafferty, in fact, who at the moment seemed content to let her stew in her own thoughts without a word of encouragement that her career wasn’t circling the drain even as they drove away from Hollywood. Cafferty, who’d asked her to marry him, then had stuck around to work for her even after she’d changed her mind about him.

“Why do you work for me?” she asked abruptly, the second she spoke wishing she’d kept her mouth shut.

“Nope. I’m not having that conversation right now. The only mistake you made tonight was trusting somebody you thought was trustworthy. No wallowing in self-pity. Not in my car. I don’t have waterproof cushions.”

“Oh, ha ha. Fine. I’ll be wallowing silently while you drive us God knows where.”

“I’m following orders. If you want to go home after all, just say the word.”

She thought about it. Her stuff was there. Her toothbrush, her overnight bag, her pajamas. And her house phone, laptop, the TV—three of them, actually—her doorbell, and all the other ways people would know to get to her. “Keep driving.”

“I thought so.”

Of course he knew she wouldn’t change her mind. Brian Cafferty knew everything about her, made every effort to keep her safe and cocooned and protected and unchallenged. As her handler, that was a good thing. As a lover, as a husband, it would stifle her. She knew it.

Eleanor shook herself. She was only hurt and scared right now. That was why the H-word had suddenly shown up in her brain again, when it hadn’t for four years. Oh, she needed to get ahead of all this, or at least get back on the game board. “We need to call John.”

“I texted him on my way to Almuerzo, to let him know this wasn’t your doing and that you’d be in touch as soon as you could.”

Yep, as an employee, that anticipating-her-needs-and-requests thing was pretty much priceless. “Thanks again, then, even though I’m not sure at least part of it wasn’t my doing. Or my fault, anyway.”

“Well, I think you need to get over that before we jump into the fight.”

He was right about that. If she claimed anything other than complete innocence, her next acting job would be a shoe commercial—if she was lucky. And dammit, she had trusted Rod. She would still be trusting him, if he hadn’t turned tail and run just in time for the news to break. Her first impression on meeting him, that he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the block, made her scowl now. His lack of keen insight had been part of his appeal; her work was challenging enough. She didn’t need to be challenged in a relationship. But if she’d settled, what did that really say about her? Firstly, he’d outsmarted her, and secondly, why had she told herself that a long-term relationship with someone whose intellect she didn’t respect was okay?

Oh, shut up, El. Brian was right about one thing. She needed to focus, decide on her plan of attack. No fumbling when she got on the phone with Paramount or the two executive producers. Bernie Machinak and Fiona Valenti had been big admirers of hers, but that was before she’d leaked—allowed Rod Bannon to leak—the biggest secret of the movie. Merchandisers wouldn’t like that, and merchandise was where a superhero movie made its money.

She sank down in her seat and turned to face the side window. Light and dark streaked by, broken by the side panels of trucks and the longer-lasting light of neighborhoods and storefronts. Those dropped away as they left the freeway for a succession of side roads, and then the street-lights drifted farther apart until they stopped too. “Where are you taking me, the Grand Canyon?”

“Nope. We’re almost there. If they don’t have rooms, though, it’ll be back to that Motel 6 we passed on the Interstate.”

“As long as they have a toothbrush, I don’t care.”

She felt his glance at her. “I can do better than that, I think.”

Five minutes later, he turned up a still narrower road that curved through dark trees and up a hill before the way ahead of them opened to reveal a Victorian-style house with a wraparound porch decorated with string lights, a porch swing on either side of the wide front, and a six-car parking lot to one side. If not for the parking lot, she would have thought they’d arrived at somebody’s pretty impressive private residence.

“We’re here,” he said unnecessarily, sliding into the nearest parking spot and shifting into park. “Do you want to wait here while I check to see if we can get in?”

She looked toward the front the porch, finally spying the shadowed sign that read “Starlight Bed and Breakfast Inn” in neat blue lettering. Eleanor wanted to go with him, both because she felt safer with Brian Cafferty and his lean six-foot-two well-muscled body around, and because everything so far tonight had been out of her control. But people tended to take to Twitter and Instagram when they spied her, and going anywhere private had become virtually impossible about seven years ago. “Yes, I’ll wait here.”

“I’ll be right back. Keep your phone off, and don’t turn on the radio.”

If she’d felt up to arguing that she was an adult and could make her own decisions, she would have done so. After this catastrophe, though, maybe she should be listening to somebody else’s advice. To Brian’s advice. He’d disliked Rod Bannon from the beginning, anyway.

When Brian opened his door and stepped out, the sound of crickets and frogs poured into the car, only to be silenced again when he shut her in. God, how long had it been since she’d heard frogs? Not since the Hawaii shoot for Primitive, probably. That was when she’d had the idea for the Wild Wind Summer Camp, in fact. And Brian hadn’t laughed when she’d told him about it, even though they’d just broken up. Instead he’d used his real estate attorney contacts to help her get the deal put together.

The driver’s door opened, and she jumped as Brian sat again. “Well?”

“They only have one room available,” he said, closing them in and starting the Jeep. “I’ll find us somewhere else.”

That would mean more driving, more moping, and longer without taking care of this mess. Eleanor reached over and covered his hand before he could shift into reverse. “Take it,” she said.

He cocked his head at her. “You heard me, right? One room. If anybody recognizes you, the—”

“What, I’ll be ruined? We’ve spent time together before, Cafferty, and I’m still here. I want to start pushing back against this before it’s all completely out of my hands. I’ll take the couch or rollaway or whatever they have.”

Cafferty narrowed his eyes a little then shut off the car again. “What they have, El,” he said, exiting the car and coming around to pull open her door for her, “is a king-size bed.”

3

“That’s fine,” she said, not even hesitating as she walked around the Jeep to join him. For dinner at Almuerzo she’d worn a pretty pink V-neck T-shirt with streaks of silver beading running down it like rain, black capris, and black sandals that sparkled with silver beading that matched her top.

Eleanor Ross always looked good, but even tonight with her career ready to fall down around her ears, she still made the Kardashians look gaudy. It was all about class, about being a woman who was comfortable with herself even if she didn’t trust the rest of the world. The woman to whom he’d tried to give the moon, until she’d decided she would rather fetch it for herself. Or that was the impression she’d given him, anyway. He’d spent several sleepless weeks trying to figure it—and her—out, and still wasn’t satisfied with the answers.

“Cafferty?”

Brian shook himself, realizing he’d been staring at her as she stood on the porch waiting for him to get his ass back into gear. “Right. We’ll go with the usual.”

He passed her to hold open the screened-in front door, then followed her inside. The man standing at the short counter set into the house’s foyer blinked twice, his expression going from mildly annoyed at people arriving so late in the evening and without reservations to less annoyed and intrigued.

Celebrities had stayed here before, Brian knew, because he’d heard about the Starlight Bed and Breakfast Inn from Rita Wilson’s assistant when El had played Tom Hanks’s granddaughter in Grampa Henry Likes to Bake. Under normal circumstances, he would have done more vetting, made some phone calls to make certain their reputation for discretion was legitimate. Tonight, though, wasn’t normal.

“We’ll take that room after all,” he said, pulling his personal credit card from his back pocket. “Brian and Rose Cafferty.”

“Phillip Eaton, owner and proprietor of the Starlight Bed and Breakfast Inn,” the guy behind the counter replied, nodding. “My wife Joan is cleaning up the kitchen. We have eight rooms here, walking trails, a pond for fishing, and a staff of four. We serve breakfast from seven to nine, and you can arrange for other meals if you let us know ahead of time. The fee, as I mentioned to you earlier, is four hundred per night per room, with a minimum two-night stay.”

“Sounds good,” Brian returned, handing over his Visa. He’d repay himself from her business account later, but keeping this in his name would make her harder to trace. “You wouldn’t happen to have any toothbrushes or anything, would you? Or is there somewhere close by I could get some stuff?”

Eaton’s jaw twitched, and Brian clenched his own in return. He knew what the guy was thinking—that one of those flighty actresses had run off for a one-night stand with some dude and they were in such a hurry to get naked that they hadn’t even remembered to bring luggage. Defending El’s honor against some random man’s imagination wouldn’t do any good, but he still wanted to say something. He still wanted to protect her, even after her troubles were already out in the world.

“We have spare toothbrushes in the rooms, along with soap and hand lotion, but I’m afraid we don’t stock miscellaneous clothes or deodorant or hairbrushes. There’s a CVS Pharmacy three miles down the road.”

“That’ll work,” Eleanor said, flashing her famous disarming smile. “Thank you, Phillip. I just really need some peace and quiet.”

The proprietor returned her smile; not doing so, Brian had discovered, was a physical impossibility. “You’ll find that here in spades, Mrs….” He glanced down at his computer screen. “Mrs. Cafferty. We value our guests’ privacy. We wouldn’t continue to be in business if we didn’t.”

Well, that at least sounded reassuring. “Where’s our room?” Brian asked.

Eaton picked up two key cards, inserted them into a scanner slot, then handed them over. “All our guest rooms are named after painters, so you’ll be in Renoir, up the stairs here and all the way to the back on your left. The other rooms are all occupied tonight, but we do have a parlor on the main level here just through those doors if you have need of some work space, an ethernet computer connection, a fax machine, or phone chargers.”

“Perfect. W—”

“The Wi-Fi password is on the back of your door,” the proprietor continued, clearly not about to prematurely end his recitation, “along with this week’s breakfast menu. If you have any special requests, please fill out the form hanging on the inside of the doorknob and put it outside your door before six a.m. Anything else I can do for you this evening? Your key card will also work on the front door, so you can come and go as you please. There won’t be anyone manning the desk here between eleven at night and seven in the morning.”

“I think that covers it.” Brian started to reach for Eleanor’s hand then stopped himself and clenched his fingers. They weren’t dating, they weren’t a couple, and just this afternoon she’d reminded him about boundaries and basically told him to mind his own business. Of course these days his business was her, but he wasn’t going to forget that she’d basically called him a glorified secretary. He just didn’t think it was necessary to remind her about that tonight.

“Shall we?” he said instead, gesturing her to precede him up the polished black oak stairs.

The Victorian feel of the house continued on the inside, with busy blue-and-gold floral wallpaper and oil-style table lamps, ornately carved dark furniture, and lacy window curtains. It was a little froufrou for his taste, but they weren’t there to visit the décor.

“How did you find this place?” El whispered as they topped the stairs and continued up the narrow hallway. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“I keep a file of getaway places people recommend,” he answered in the same tone, leaning around her to slip the key card into its slot and then pushing down the door handle at the corresponding click. “I figured it would be out of the way but close enough to get back into town on fairly short notice.”

“It’s perfect,” she said, stepping past him and flipping on the light. “There you go anticipating my every need again, even when crazy shit happens.”

“It’s my job,” he reminded her again, noting the burgundy couch with a thousand mismatched pillows piled on top of it, the small writing table and pair of chairs, the door to the small bathroom with its clawfoot tub and small shower, and the giant king-sized brass-framed bed with its burgundy-and-silver duvet and another million complementary pillows. “You don’t need to flatter me for doing what you pay me for.”

“I wasn’t… Oh, never mind. I’ll call John if you’ll start with Fiona. She thinks you’re gorgeous.”

“You’re okay calling?”

Eleanor shrugged, sitting on the sofa and curling one foot beneath her. “I have to be.” She held down the power button on the side of her phone and watched the screen light up again. “Wow. Thirty-one missed calls and…seventy-two messages. In what, two hours?”

“Something like that.” Brian powered up his own phone. His numbers were pretty close to hers.

“There’s no television in here.”

At El’s abrupt comment, he looked up. Paintings all over the walls, along with bookshelves and knickknacks and silk flowers everywhere, but she was right. No television. No place for it even to drop down from the ceiling or up from the floor, and no remote anywhere. “Maybe that’s good.”