Happily Ever Hers: Movie Stars in Maryland, Book Two

by Stewart, Delancey

  Here was a man who had done something real. The men I met in Hollywood tended to have done things like selling investment properties or attending law school and then never getting their licenses. People here were often constructions, flimsy and hastily built to look a certain way. Jace was real. And maybe that was why I liked him so much.

  I tucked away the file, smiling as I thought of his kind mouth and the easy laugh he'd let slip as we'd played Mastermind.

  It was probably the wrong thing to do.

  But I already knew I wanted to get closer to Jace.

  Chapter Four

  Jace

  The day after Juliet and I had played games together and polished off a bottle of wine was my day off. Since I lived in Juliet's house, that didn't mean a lot, except that my schedule that day was dictated more by my own life than hers. When I bumped into her in the kitchen, talking to Chad, who would be her in-house security in my absence, an irritating little wad of jealousy wedged itself into my gut. His blond hair—dyed, I suspected—stood straight up from his square forehead. He looked like an action figure, plastic and shiny.

  "Good morning," Juliet said, sending a shy smile my way from where she sat at the kitchen counter, a coffee cup wrapped between her small hands.

  "Good morning, Miss Manchester," I said. "Chad."

  Chad gave me his cocky adventure-hero grin and wink combination, and I nearly gave Chad my signature throat punch.

  But I restrained myself, filling my water bottle instead and reminding myself that he was a good bodyguard, a smart guy, and also had military training. Even if it was in the Air Force.

  Elvis waddled in then, and I squatted down to give him a few pats around his thick little neck. He raised his lolling grin and google eyes my way and then gave an enormous yawn and toppled over, asleep.

  "Elvis," Juliet sighed, her lips hooking up on one side.

  "Miss Manchester, your dog is officially useless," Chad informed her. Jerk. If he wasn’t so busy flirting with the client, he might have actually bothered helping her instead.

  I scooped Elvis up and deposited him into the soft little bed in the corner. This one was black and had rhinestones all around the edges. “There you go, buddy,” I said softly.

  "What are you doing with your day off?" Juliet asked as I turned back around and returned to the counter to screw the lid on my water bottle tight.

  Her eyes met mine and I felt that same pull I'd felt the night before, the same fire of recognition that something lay between us. I ducked my head. If Chad picked up on it, my job would be history. The firm had a strict no-fraternization policy, and I needed the job. My family needed me to keep it too.

  I cleared my throat, reminded myself that most guys in this situation wouldn't feel a need to tell their client all the details of their day. "Just going for a quick run, then I'm going to take care of a few personal things."

  "Getting your pubes waxed?" Chad muttered as he moved past me, too low for Juliet to hear.

  "Some family stuff," I clarified, partially for jerkwad Chad. "Hey, Chad, did that rash ever clear up, man?" I asked him as I moved toward the back door, sliding my sunglasses on and pushing my earbuds in.

  I turned back to see Juliet looking concerned and Chad's face reddening. "Hey, man, that's not cool."

  "Just wondered if it was like, you know, contagious or whatever." I kept my volume low for now so I could hear him.

  "Dude!"

  Juliet was on her feet now, moving toward the living room. "I'm going to get a workout too," she said, glancing between us. "Maybe you can just keep an eye on things down here?" she suggested to Chad.

  "Of course, Miss Manchester. Also, ma'am, I do not have a rash." I heard this last part as I slipped out the door for my run.

  The streets around Juliet's house were wide and clear, winding and tree-lined, and they lay between houses bigger than any I'd even known existed as a kid. Juliet and I had been running together weekly since I’d been working here, but we usually kept our own music going, me giving her space out of respect. Today I wished she were here, found myself longing for her company, even if it was silent. I let my mind wander, turning over the strange intimacy I'd felt the night before, even as I assured myself it was one-sided and that it was probably only natural to develop a crush on a movie star as beautiful as Juliet.

  Only it hadn't felt one-sided.

  I pushed my body harder, hoping to reconnect it to reality. My reality. This was a job, one I needed to pay for the degree that was just one course away at this point. And one I needed to keep to pay the rent on Mom’s house. Once I'd gotten the degree, I could look at jobs that didn't rely completely on my physicality, positions that might require some intellect as well. I knew I wasn't a smart guy, but I still wanted a future that might support a family, a job that would let me be home at night to enjoy that family if I ever had it.

  Being a bodyguard was temporary. But the pay was good, and for now it was all I had—all my mom had too.

  After the run, I let myself back into the house, where Chad was seated at the kitchen counter reading a tabloid magazine. We had a lot of downtime. You learned a lot about the other guys by watching how they chose to spend it.

  "Juliet's in here," he said, holding the magazine up.

  "Don't let Miss Manchester see you with that," I told him. It wasn't our business to get involved in the rumors surrounding our clients unless those rumors affected their personal security. I thought about what Juliet had confided the night before about Zac. I hoped that wouldn’t slip out any time soon.

  He made a noise, sucking his teeth. "She's stayed in her room since your little rash comment. I should thank you—probably gonna be an easy day for me now.”

  "You're welcome," I told him, taking a protein bar out of my cabinet in the kitchen and heading for my own room to shower.

  I could hear the fitness app Juliet used when she was at home through her door, and I did my best not to picture her lean fit form, glistening with sweat as she moved in the small studio attached to her bedroom. She didn't like working out at the gym, and once when Zac hadn't been home, she'd asked me for help getting a weight bench set up. Despite her small frame, Juliet was pretty strong, and her workout ethic was impressive. We went out for a run together most Mondays, once the neighbors cleared off for work. I was pretty sure she worked out six days a week.

  I sighed, left Juliet's door, and returned to my own room.

  An hour later, I was in the car, headed to Mom’s.

  Dad had been gone a long time now, but my mother and my brother shared a small house in Inglewood. They'd moved out here while I'd been serving, which was part of why I'd come West. The three of us usually hung out together for a few hours on Sundays.

  I pulled up in front of the little house, noting that the lawn needed cutting and one of the shutters on the front windows was hanging askew. I tried to push down the anger that flared in my belly. I paid for this house now, and the only reason my brother Jarred was here was because he said he'd take care of things for Mom. We’d talked about the shutter the Sunday before, and he’d promised to do better. So much for that promise.

  "Mom? Jarred? Hey guys, it's me." I let myself in with my key and stepped into the small dark entryway.

  "Jace?" Mom's voice came from the kitchen, and I strode through the living room to find her, noticing the mess of dirty dishes and newspapers strewn around as I did.

  "Hey Mom." She sat at the small round table, a cigarette in her hand and a mug of coffee in front of her. It was almost noon, but she still wore her robe and slippers, and her hair was a mess of tangles on her head. Mom looked tired, and she looked sick. But she wouldn't go to the doctor. I’d tried to take her for weeks, offering to pay, but she wouldn’t let me and there was still some of the authority structure between us. She was my mom. I couldn’t force her.

  "There's my boy," she said, putting down the cigarette to stand, but as she pushed to her feet, she began coughing. The fit overtook her, and she
leaned heavily into the table, hacking and wheezing until it passed.

  "You still sick, Mom?" I was worried about my mother. And angry that my brother didn't care enough.

  She stepped near, wrapped frail arms around my waist and looked up at me before pushing her cheek against my chest. "I'm fine, baby. How are you?"

  I kissed her cheek and let her go, and then poured a cup of coffee and sat down, trying not to notice the mess on the counter, the overflowing trash. "Mom, where's Jarred?"

  She sighed. "He's got a new girlfriend," she said. "He hasn't been home in a little while."

  "A little while." Worry swirled inside me next to a new dread. I gave her a stern look. "Translate. Days? Weeks? He was here last Sunday."

  "He left right after you did. So a week, I guess," she said. "But I understand. He's a grown man, he needs to live his own life—"

  Mom had always made excuses for my little brother. He was her baby, and he could do no wrong. Except it seemed like a lot of what he did was exactly that. Wrong.

  "If he's a grown man, he needs to get a damned job and take responsibility for himself," I said, standing to begin the work of putting the house back together. "He should be keeping this place up, taking care of things. Of you."

  I hated this. I hated that the best I could do for my mom was this rumble-down shack in a bad neighborhood. I hated that my brother was content to be a freeloader his entire life, catching whatever ride came his way and ignoring everything else. The obvious question rose in my chest and I thought about pushing it away, but I had to ask. "Is he still clean?" When Jarred was gone more than a couple days, it generally meant he was on a bender.

  She sighed, coughed, didn't answer, and the ice forming in my gut made me feel sick.

  "Shit," I muttered, washing dishes and stacking them in the drying rack. I glanced over my shoulder at Mom, who sat staring into the distance, smoking. "Mom, you need to quit smoking."

  She narrowed her eyes at me. "I'm still your mother, Jace. You don't get to tell me what to do."

  We'd been over this. Many times. Mom was sick and we all knew it. Smoking was killing her, but she refused to go get a diagnosis, preferring to wait and see how bad it got. I hated not knowing, but in a way I shared her hesitation. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing my mom, and maybe denial was better than finding out she had something we couldn’t afford to treat.

  "You get your check this month?" I asked her. She collected disability, and it was about all that kept her eating. I paid for everything else. But there had been a month when Jarred had intercepted the check. It was the first time I'd actually punched my little brother.

  "I talked to the mail carrier," she said, ducking her chin like this was something to be ashamed of. "He puts the check in a different spot. For me."

  I smiled at Mom. She might be sick and frail, she might have lost her desire to really live, but she was still sly and smart. "Nicely done."

  "I'm worried about him, Jace." The defeat in her voice told me all the things I wished weren't true.

  "I know, Mom. Me too."

  "One day, I know he just won't come home."

  I put the dishtowel over my shoulder, sank into the chair across from her again. "There's not much we can do, Mom. He's a grown man. He's making his own choices. He and I had the same opportunities—he went a different way."

  Mom reached across the table for my hand, and I took her bony fingers into my palm, a sad little place inside me flooding with a feeling I couldn't let show. My mom, the woman who had cared for me my whole life, looked like she was dying. And there was nothing I could do.

  "I thank the universe every day for you," she said. "And sometimes, when I'm not being so goddamn selfish, I wish you'd never been born."

  "What?" I half-laughed in surprise. What did that mean?

  "Because I have nothing to give a boy like you. So bright, so capable. I brought you into a family that didn't want us, a life with nothing to offer you." She paused, coughing and sputtering for a long minute before regaining herself. She looked back up at me, tears in her eyes. "But if it weren't for you, Jace, I'd be such a lonely sad old woman. I'm selfish, but I'm so happy you're here."

  I felt the flood of sadness overflow as another little part of my heart broke. "No, Mom. You're not selfish. We're family. This is what we do for each other. I just wish I could do more." I cleared my throat and tried to gather myself. "I'm going to clean up a bit, do a little laundry, okay? How about you take a shower when you're ready, and I'll take you out to dinner?"

  She shook her head. "No, you don't have to do that. Don't you have a girlfriend you'd rather take out?"

  "Mom," I said, giving her a frank look. "The day I have a girlfriend, you'll be the first to know."

  She smiled at me, and behind the drawn, wrinkled face, I saw a glimmer of my pretty mother, the woman I'd worshipped as a little boy. "Okay," she said. "I'll go get dressed."

  "Give me a couple hours," I said. "I'm gonna cut the grass, too."

  When Mom had slipped away to her bedroom, I pulled out my phone and texted my brother. As expected, there was no response. I put my phone back in my pocket and got to work as anger began to eat a little hole inside me.

  Things couldn't go on this way.

  By the time I slipped back into Juliet's house that night, I was exhausted. My days off usually went this way, filled with maintenance, cleaning, and worry.

  I was just stepping out of the shower, a towel wrapped around my waist, when I heard a gentle knock at my bedroom door and my stupid heart jolted in eager anticipation. It wasn't exactly professional to answer this way, but I wasn't really on duty either, not until the morning. Still, I pulled on a pair of shorts quickly before answering, keeping most of my bare chest behind the door as I opened it.

  "Hey," I said, wishing everything inside me didn't feel immediately lighter at the sight of Juliet standing there in a soft pink sweater and jeans, her feet bare and her hair loose.

  "Hey," she said, meeting my eyes and then dropping my gaze immediately. My stomach tightened.

  "What's up?" I asked.

  She laughed lightly, and shifted her weight. "Honestly? Nothing. I just wondered how your day was."

  This was new.

  My blood warmed at her interest, my heart picking up a quicker beat and a smile immediately coming to my face.

  But this was dangerous. And I was pretty sure we both knew it.

  Chapter Five

  Juliet

  I didn't really know what I was doing. I'd spent the day wishing Jace would return, and I hadn't left the house all day, staying mostly in my room to avoid Chad, who I wasn't fond of.

  But I was beginning to realize I was very fond of Jace. And maybe it was more than fondness.

  It was probably a terrible idea.

  But I couldn't stop myself from going to his door. I just wanted to see those dark eyes light up once before I went to sleep.

  When he answered the door shirtless, I lost my breath. Every muscle in his torso was defined and cut. He wasn't huge, but he was substantial, and I itched to run my hands over that body, to feel his big arms around me. He was inked, too. Not excessively so, but there was a tattoo on his left pec that intrigued me, an intricate symbol with a circle in the middle and three points. Celtic maybe?

  I managed to ask how his day was, and I was sure I hadn't mistaken the sadness that passed through his eyes.

  "It was okay," he said, his voice gruff, like he was covering some emotion. "Saw my mom. Took her to dinner."

  "It must be nice to have her so close," I said. Jace didn’t talk much about his family. I’d known they were local, but I didn’t know much else. “You grew up in the south, you said. When did your mom move?”

  "She moved out here after Dad died. When I got back, I got her a little house. My brother came out too."

  "I'm sorry about your dad." I knew what it was to lose parents. It was like a door that opened inside that you thought should have led somewhere, but which j
ust spilled out emptiness, an emptiness you couldn't fill. I'd been trying to shut my own door for years.

  "Nah," Jace brushed it off. "He was sick. Got into some things he shouldn't have."

  That didn't sound good. I wanted to know more—maybe everything, but I didn't ask. "I'm sorry."

  We stood there a minute more, Jace using the door as a shield between us and the silence full of something more, something inviting, promising.

  "Do you want to come in?" Jace asked, pulling the door wider.

  I hesitated, the wiser side of my mind wondering what this invitation meant. But I trusted Jace, and I knew I was safe with him—he was being polite, that was all. I was curious, too. I'd been in this room, of course, but not since he'd moved in and made it his own.

  "Sure, for a minute." I stepped in, looking around me. The bed was neatly made, a simple white duvet pulled up to navy pillows. A desk sat in one corner, a little lamp on its surface illuminating a pretty impressive collection of books, many of them open, and a laptop sat to one side. Jace was studying—he’d told me that, and I admired it.

  The rest of the room was tidy, a set of dumbbells tucked under the armchair next to the window, another chair facing it in front of the gas fireplace.

  Jace wasn't the type of guy to leave his clothes laying around, it seemed, and as I stepped in, he scooped up a towel and gave me an apologetic glance. "Make yourself comfortable. I'll just be a second."

  He disappeared into the little hallway that I knew held a closet and led to the connected bathroom. When he re-emerged, he had a South Bay Sharks shirt pulled across that impressive chest, and I felt a wash of disappointment.

  "I don't really have anything to offer you," he said, gesturing around the room. "A protein bar?" He smiled, his dark eyes framed by lashes I'd have to pay someone in a salon to get myself.

  "I'm fine," I said, happy when he sat down in the chair facing mine, making it seem like he might relax, talk a little. "I'm sorry, I'm totally intruding ..." I was starting to realize how strange this was, how potentially inappropriate.