She stared at me, her shock at my angry tone written in the wide eyes, the little round O of her mouth. "You're angry that I helped?"
"No," I said, rubbing my neck and pacing away from her. "How could I be angry at that? I'm grateful. But ... really, when you offered, what choice did I have?"
"You could have said no," she whispered. I could feel her eyes on me as I paced back and forth next to the bed.
“I think I did.”
“And I didn’t listen. But I couldn’t let you say no, not really. Did you really mean it?”
Those words stopped me. "No, that’s the point. Don't you get that? Saying no would have killed my brother. Maybe my mom too."
"So why are you angry?"
"Because it's made everything impossible between you and me," I told her.
She shook her head, the light hair sliding around her shoulders. I had a sudden vision of myself wrapping all that long hair around my fist, pushing her to her knees and her mouth taking me, me thrusting into her, spurting out all the venom and anger I felt at the world, the universe, in a hot rush of release.
"I can't even look you in the eyes now," I admitted, stopping myself pacing. "I'm supposed to be the one to help them. To save them. But I couldn't do anything, and here you were with all your money, so willing and sweet."
She made a scoffing noise of disbelief. "You're angry because I was willing and able to help."
"I'm angry that I needed you to." The words came out hard and cold. “I’m not angry because you helped. I’m angry that I couldn’t. That I couldn’t save them, I didn’t have the resources. Without you … well, my family would be in a terrible situation.”
"Why? Because you have some ridiculous idea that because you're a man, because you're a Marine—that you shouldn't ever need help? That you should always be able to handle things?"
I didn't answer as the truth settled over me like a scarf woven from stones. I believed exactly what she’d said. That I was the man, that I was the Marine, that all of that together meant I should be able to solve any problem that came my way.
"It shouldn't matter where the money came from," she said. "Just that it came."
"Right." I felt the fight leave my body and resignation take its place.
"So you can't even look at me now?" Her tone was a mix of anger and distress, and my heart twisted in response. "Jace."
I wanted to reach for her, wanted to throw her on the bed and never let her go. But I couldn't make myself move. How could I expect her to ever look at me the same way again? "Whatever was between us," I managed to say. "It won't be the same now. It won't—"
Juliet didn't let me finish. She stepped into my chest, pressing her mouth to mine and kissing me almost violently. She pulled me into her body, wrapping her arms around me and claiming my mouth, finishing the kiss with a painful bite of my lower lip. She glared up at me and then sank to her knees, her hands going to my waist.
"No," I said, my mind racing, shame and desire flooding me, confusing me.
"Shut up." She had my fly open, her hands slipping inside my pants, finding me already hard.
"Jul—" Her name got lost as she took me into her mouth, and my hands went into her hair. I wrapped the long silk around my fist, realizing this was exactly what I'd pictured just moments before, the image turning to reality and nearly sending me off right then. I stared down at her, fisting her hair and pulling her head back and forth as she licked and sucked and moaned around me. "Fuck," I whispered.
Juliet didn't say anything, and if she minded the way I was moving her head, or pushing myself into the back of her throat, her protests sounded a lot like moans of satisfaction. One of her hands gripped my base as the other cradled my balls, and every thought in my mind had scattered, lost in the dark want that was filling me as I felt the tingling begin at the base of my spine. I was angry. I was desperate. I was hurt and ashamed. And all of it was being literally sucked from me by the hot wet mouth of the woman I knew without a doubt I was in love with.
Juliet Manchester, America's sweetheart, was on her knees for me as I fucked her mouth until her eyes watered.
Her hand left my cock and slid around to grip my ass, pulling me deeper still, and that did it.
Maybe shame was the prevailing emotion when she'd come in, maybe I'd felt like something less than a man before. But having her on her knees with my cock shoved halfway down her throat did a hell of a lot for my ego. And as I erupted inside her, grunting in an effort to keep from shouting, I thought there was a chance things could still be okay.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Juliet
I was angry at Jace. Even as I took him into my mouth, my own body igniting with want and need for him as he thrust over and over into my throat and I egged him on, I was still angry.
Money was the only thing I actually had—and it couldn't replace freedom or respect, but it was mine and I'd earned it, and I wouldn't apologize for that.
And I wasn't about to apologize for helping the family of the man I loved. But it felt like the money—the help—had wound its way between us like a poisonous serpent, tainting what had been perfect and sweet.
After I'd released Jace and wiped my mouth, gotten back to my feet, he'd pulled me into his arms gently, those big dark eyes still full of pain even though the lines on his face had relaxed.
"I'm sorry, Juliet," he said in a whisper. "This is hard for me. All of it. Watching you with him. Pretending I don't care. And then having you sweep in and rescue me like I'm some helpless princess ..." he trailed off, squeezing his eyes shut.
"Princess," I repeated, the irony of this huge man calling himself a princess striking me as funny. "Put your ego aside, Princess," I told him. "If you can. Because that's the only thing screwing this up right now."
"My ego, about a million dollars, a vindictive ex-husband, a pretty-boy movie star who's gonna lose a hand next time he puts one on your tit, and the fact you're my client. That's all that's screwing this up," he said, his tone bitter.
"Is that all?" I tried to keep my voice light as I realized how many things were actually stacked between us.
Half his mouth curled up into something close to a smile as his hands rested warm and firm on my back. "Yeah. And don't call me Princess again."
I laughed, pressing my cheek to his chest and trying to memorize the way it felt to be in his arms, the scent of him. As we stood there, I heard the front door open and close outside Jace's room, and then open again a few minutes later. I was about to figure out what to do next—dinner, more pretending—when I heard the door open yet again, and then heard Ryan and Tess talking as they moved past the east wing.
"I swear," Ryan's voice said. "I told you the truth. If Juliet's got someone in her room ..." I stepped back slightly and looked up at Jace, who was clearly listening too, his dark eyes serious, focused on the door.
"Ryan," Tess's voice came, sharp and angry. "You're the only guy here."
"We're sleeping in separate rooms."
"Doesn't sound like Gran is talking about sleeping," Tess said. Gran? What had Gran said? Had Gran heard me having sex? Mortification flooded me.
"You know," Ryan said, his voice becoming fainter as they moved through the house. "There is the security team." I felt Jace stiffen.
Tess's voice was louder now, filled with mocking disbelief. "Juliet is not getting together with a bodyguard."
Jace's arms fell, leaving me cold as he stepped back. The look on his face told me that might have been the last straw, the tiny barb that made the wounds to his ego mortal, unrecoverable.
"Jace," I whispered, staring up into those pain-filled dark eyes, wishing they would dance and gleam as they had the first few nights we'd spent together in the safe bubble of my house. The tone in Tess's voice, the complete dismissal of the idea that I would get involved with someone like Jace, revealed both my sister's opinion of what was important to me in people and also the other part of what was bothering Jace—the belief that he wasn’t goo
d enough.
"She's right." He frowned down at me. "This is ridiculous. You're fucking Juliet Manchester, and I'm ... I'm a broke former Marine who can't take care of his own family, let alone a woman like you."
I gaped, my body chilling as he put a hand on the doorknob. "It doesn't matter," I said. “I don’t care about any of that.”
"That's what people tell themselves sometimes," he said. "That's how they sell books and romantic movies." He shook his head, a mirthless smile pulling his face into a painful expression that broke my heart even more. "But we live in the real world. Where I'll never be able to pay you back for what you've done, and neither one of us will ever be able to forget it."
"Jace." I stepped toward him, and he actually put up a hand to keep me back, stopping me in my tracks.
"Go find a movie star to love, Juliet. Someone like you. And one day you'll look back and you can congratulate yourself on the way you took care of that charity case that one time. That poor helpless idiot, Jace."
"What?" I felt the blood drain from my face. "Is that what you think of me?" I hated him in that instant, as he stood there self-righteous and innocent, playing the victim. The reason I'd found my way to Jace, to his arms and his bed, was because he saw me—really saw me—in a way no one else had ever been able to. He had never cast me in the role of superficial starlet, had never made me feel two-dimensional and insignificant. He'd seen the woman behind the cardboard cutout.
But clearly, I'd been wrong. He saw me exactly as everyone else did. A shallow movie star. A name.
That's all I'd ever be, I realized, wishing I could undo everything and never move away from Southern Maryland. I hadn't been happy here, but at least I'd been a human being. I moved past Jace, stepping out the door as he pulled it open and forcing myself not to look at him.
Chad was emerging from the room next door at the same moment that I stepped out of Jace's room, and for a second, we both stopped.
"I had some business to discuss with Jace," I told him.
"Right," Chad said, nodding as his lips pulled into an ugly grin.
I went to my room and stayed there, fuming and crying, until Tess called up that it was time for dinner, and then I went downstairs, girding myself. I'd still need to play Ryan's girlfriend for Gran, a task made harder by the way my heart ached for Jace. I hoped he might be outside during the meal, somewhere I could forget about him for a while.
But he wasn't. As we sat around the dining room table, Gran smiling broadly at one end, Jace hovered in the doorway, his black-clad shoulder coming into sight now and then as he shifted his weight.
The meal was a painful blur of polite conversation, and when it was over, I was relieved. Ryan stood, reaching for my plate. "I'll get these," he said.
I forced a smile at him. "So polite."
As Ryan left the room, Tess burst out, "Gran, at the table?" I looked down the length of the dinner table to find Gran industriously rolling a joint on the cherrywood top.
Gran shrugged and gave Tess a wink. "Big raid in an hour."
"Get it out of your system tonight. Tomorrow you have to dress up and be the center of attention and act like a proper old lady."
Gran sighed. "I'd kind of hoped I'd keel over before then. I guess there's still tonight. Sometimes wishes come true." I thought about that. It didn't feel like it to me. Then Gran continued, "You got to kiss your Hollywood crush, after all."
I felt my brow wrinkle in confusion. What? I swung my gaze to Tess, who was staring at me, pulling her lower lip between her teeth. "Jules," she whispered.
Ryan had just come back into the room, and I looked between them, my mind working over what I'd just heard. Had Tess been getting together with Ryan? Even though she'd believed he and I were together? Would my own sister do that? "You kissed Ryan?" I said, before I could figure things out.
Gran leaned back in her chair, watching this exchange with something that looked like pleasure.
"What? No," Tess said, too quickly. "I mean ... no, he's your boyfriend, right?" That, I knew, was for Gran's benefit. We wouldn't even be able to touch the real issue with Gran here—the issue being the fact that Tess was just one more person who saw me as something less than an actual person, someone she could just step around if I was in her way. "I mean, he was in your room last night," she went on. "Moaning huskily, right Gran?"
What was she even talking about now? I glanced toward the doorway, long enough to see that Jace had moved closer and was watching all this. The mention of Ryan being in my room had turned his expression to stone.
Gran looked stricken. "I wasn't eavesdropping," she said, her voice shrill, telling me she had probably been standing in the hallway with a glass pressed to my door as Jace and I had sex. "I couldn't help it. You were so loud. I haven't heard those noises in this house since I quit watching Erika Lust films." She shot me a look that dared me to complain, and then stood abruptly. "I'm expected elsewhere." She walked out of the room, passing Jace on her way.
"What the hell is going on?" I asked Tess. Then I shot a glance at Ryan. "Are you two hooking up?"
"No," Tess said.
"Yes," Ryan said.
For fuck's sake. I dropped my head into my hands. I couldn't accept my sister piling on at this point. Everyone in my life had assumed I was just a pretty face, just someone who could read some lines and scoop up some money. Then I was supposed to go home and be happy with my lot in life, be happy that people expected me to stick to a script, never have any genuine thoughts or emotions of my own. That allowed them to just move around me. "Seriously?" I asked her.
"Jules," Ryan said, his voice low, intimate. "I didn't plan it. It's just ... I think there's something here." He waved a hand toward my sister.
My mind rolled, anger and hurt mixing inside me. Jace, Zac, this ... I couldn't take it. "Yeah, something's here," I spit at Ryan. "My little sister's here. And she doesn't need you barreling into her life and screwing everything up, just to leave when your next movie role takes you to Timbuktu." I channeled the tiny bit of my anger that had erupted on Tess's behalf. She didn't know how Hollywood worked, she wasn't equipped to be involved with Ryan.
"What are the odds there'll be another movie in Timbuktu?" Ryan asked, grinning. "I think it was just that one—"
"No." I interrupted him, getting to my feet. I felt like I was going to explode, and seeing Jace hovering there, listening, only confused issues more. "You don't get to charm your way out of this one, you ... you ..." Words failed me as tears pricked the backs of my eyelids. I was angry at Jace. I was angry at Tess. I was angry at Chad with all his knowing looks and suggestive smiles, and I was angry at Ryan for taking advantage of my sister. "Man!" I finally found a word to hurl at someone and it wasn't even half of what I'd hoped.
Tess looked disappointed at the insult, and said, "Not much of a burn." Then she shook her head and went on. "Listen, guys. Let's just pretend none of this happened. If you're hooking up, that's perfect. That's what you want everyone to think anyway, right? And you'll be gone in a couple days, and Gran and I can go back to our regular lives. Whatever happened between me and Ryan, which was pretty much nothing, was just a lighthearted fling. It was nothing."
"Um," Ryan said, sounding hurt.
Jace's body had gone rigid in the doorway. Perfect. Now he thought maybe I was hooking up with Ryan. I stepped closer to Ryan, unable to get hold of the chaos inside my chest and head. "No. Look. You're here because I'm doing you a favor," I told him, pointing a finger at him. "I didn't bring you here to charm the pants off my naïve little sister and break her heart. That's not what this is about. This is about—"
"You." Tess said, spitting the word at me as she stood. "Everything is about you. It always has been. Right, Jules? And this, this weekend—which was supposed to be about Gran, by the way—has become a media circus so you can show the world that Juliet Manchester is just fine after her nasty divorce. And what makes a woman fine? Another man, of course! So you picked one off the man tree to hel
p you out, and we all have to play along, right?"
Shock ran through me. What? On top of everything else, Tess was calling me selfish? Hadn’t I called myself the very same thing earlier? Maybe that’s all I really was. A selfish empty-headed starlet who ran around hurting other people and not even realizing it.
"It's so hard for you to imagine that maybe someone might actually be interested in me, isn't it? It's just completely outside your realm of experience. After all, what do I have to offer? I'm the short one, the fat one, the unpopular one ... I'm Juliet Manchester's little sister, right? That's all I've ever been, and with you around, it's all I'll ever be."
Confusion washed through me, gushing over whatever logic or sense I had. I shook my head, managing to clear it slightly. Whatever was coming out of Tess's mouth didn't feel like it was about this weekend. Or about Ryan. It felt much deeper and older than that. Tess thought I was selfish, self-centered. She thought having me around made her life harder, worse. She thought I wanted the spotlight all the time, that I needed it. How could I explain how wrong she was? "No, Tess ..."
"Let's just get through tomorrow night's charade and then you can all go back where you belong," she said, turning. "You can take your fame and your angst and your enormous security guards and just go home. Both of you." Tess turned and left the room, flying past Chessy, who squawked in a chicken version of a fist bump as I sank back down at the table.
Ryan stood still for a second, his hands spread on the white tablecloth as he leaned his weight on them. "Juliet. I'm sorry," he said quietly.
I didn't know what to think. I was upset, but as I pieced through the feelings zipping around inside me, I realized I wasn't angry at him, not if he really cared about Tess. "You just met her, Ryan."
"I know. It's insane. But Juliet," he stood up and looked at me, wearing the most open and honest expression I'd ever seen. "I think I'm in love with her. I've never felt this way."
Happily Ever Hers: Movie Stars in Maryland, Book Two Page 15
