Accidental Forever: Fake Romance Box Set

by Hazel Parker

  In no time at all, however, barely even ten minutes into the movie and without having touched her coffee, Jessica began to nod off, fighting to keep her eyes open and her head up before finally succumbing to fate and resting her head on Jace’s shoulder to nap. He looked down at her, eyes closed and peaceful, and smiled. She really was beautiful, and when she wasn’t arguing with him over something or another, he had to admit that he was extremely attracted to her. Well, there was no use in resisting sleep now, he thought, so he allowed his head to rest against the top of hers and closed his eyes.

  Hours later, Jace awoke to the feeling of Jessica shifting against his shoulder, groaning awake with the same aches he was feeling that accompanied sleeping sitting upright. She stretched her arms and rubbed at her eyes before blinking tiredly at Jace.

  “I must’ve fallen asleep on you,” she said meekly, almost shyly. “Sorry about that.”

  “Don’t worry about it. What time is it?”

  She looked down at her watch and sighed. “It’s only 8:45,” she mumbled. “I feel like I barely even slept.”

  “You could get some more sleep,” Jace suggested, secretly hoping that she’d take him up on the offer. However, she shook her head.

  “I don’t think I could fall asleep again,” she replied, taking a long sip of her surely now-cold coffee.

  “Well, you don’t want to be tired when we get there, because I’ve got a lot of things planned for us.” Jessica’s eyes lit up.

  “Oh? Like what?”

  He shook his head mysteriously. “All will be revealed in time,” he said, reveling a little in her impatient pout. “Aw, don’t look at me like that. You’ve got to trust me.”

  She looked uncertain. “Do I have a choice?”

  “No,” he said with a devious smile, “but I won’t let you down, anyway.” Regardless of whether she believed him, which he doubted, she didn’t say anything. Instead, she turned her attention back to the film, which they’d obviously missed the entirety of and had changed to a new one, which had only just begun. It looked like some chick-flick.

  “Oh, I wanted to see this one,” she remarked. “Marissa and I meant to go, but she always had to work.” She untied the earbuds from the mess that wires always seemed to tie themselves into when left unattended and handed one to Jace.

  “No, thanks,” he declined distastefully. “This isn’t really my kind of movie.” Jessica actually rolled her eyes at him.

  “What, you’re too good for romantic comedies?” she taunted. “You haven’t even given it a chance!”

  Jace sighed. “Jessica, spend all my time on and around the sets of shows with plots just like these. They’re all the same: a bunch of angst leading up to a happy ending.”

  “What’s wrong with happy endings?”

  “They’re predictable.”

  “So, what, when you’re a serious actor, you’re only going to take roles without happy endings?”

  Jace sputtered. “Well, of course not.”

  “Then you just don’t like comedies?” she accused. “I could see that. Your sense of humor is a little weak.”

  “Hey, I’m funny when I want to be,” he argued.

  “But you never laugh. You’re too uptight even to sit and enjoy a comedy on a plane, even when there’s nothing else to do and no one around to see you break your cool-guy façade.”

  With a huff, Jace grabbed one of the earbuds from her hand and put it into his ear, leaning closely into her so she could use the other one. “If I don’t like it, then I don’t have to watch any movie you pick on the flight back.”

  Jessica nodded. “Deal,” she said, “but if you laugh at even one joke, I get to pick what we watch at the hotel for the whole weekend.”

  Jace extended his hand, noticing that she’d seemed to forget that she had originally planned on leaving that night, already extending her trip to include the rest of the weekend. While it wasn’t perfect and he was sure that she still wasn’t convinced, at least that was something, and he didn’t mind having to sit through a few chick-flicks if it meant Jessica would finish out the contract.

  ...Well, he didn’t mind it too much.

  Chapter Nine: Jessica

  By the time the movie was over, Jessica had long-since won the bet.

  “I knew you’d cave,” she teased. “Romantic comedies are the best, and that one was really good! I think it won a film festival in New York or something.”

  “It was better than I expected it to be,” Jace admitted. “Answer me this, though: do you always cry watching comedies?”

  Jessica’s face flushed pink. “It’s not comedies,” she admitted, “it’s romance. You might not like happy endings, but I think they’re emotional. If I could star in any movie I wanted to, I think it’d be a romantic drama. Maybe a period piece.”

  Jace raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah? How do you know you’d have chemistry with the person you co-star with?”

  “It’s just acting,” she shrugged. “You can show a lot of affection without meaning it. I mean, look at us.”

  For some reason, the flippancy felt a little like a punch in the gut. “I guess,” he replied, betraying none of the hurt in his tone. “If I could star in anything, I think I’d want to be a classic adventure hero.”

  “Really?” Jessica asked, turning her nose up. “I think those are predictable. I mean, of course the guy’s going to save his family or the world or whatever.”

  “It’s not about whether he saves the world. It’s about how that changes him. What he has to sacrifice to get what he wants in the end.”

  Jessica frowned. “Romance is like that, too,” she said. “Really, all stories are the same. People have to change to get what they really want, and then getting it changes them even more. Isn’t that why you got so bored with playing Damion?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was so two-dimensional,” she pointed out. “He was the same person at the beginning of the series that he was in the end. That’s not acting; that’s just reading lines. I figured that was why you wanted to get out of it so badly.”

  “Huh. I guess I never thought of it like that.”

  “Well, now I’ve got a lot of romantic comedies I need to show you.”

  Jace rolled his eyes. “If you choose to stay, then you’ll have all the time in the world to do it.”

  “I’m still not staying,” she maintained. Damn, he thought, maybe he shouldn’t have reminded her. Before he could press her on it, the screen of the in-flight projector shifted to another film, this one a superhero flick that had come out just last year. “Oh, I love this movie!” Jessica exclaimed, her train of thought seemingly completely derailed by the new distraction. Jace wasn’t going to complain and settled for just putting the earbud back in and trying to keep himself from dozing off through the rest of the flight.

  By the end of the second movie, the plane had landed. Someone from the studio had been sent to pick up their luggage and take it to the hotel, too, so all the two of them had to do was take a car to the hotel and get settled in before they had the rest of their day available for sightseeing. The first meeting with the producers wouldn’t be until the next morning, so they had quite a bit of time, for better or worse, to kill with one another. Their luggage beat them to the hotel and was already sitting in the lobby when they arrived, and as soon as they did, the front desk clerk jumped up.

  “You must be Jace and Jessica!” she chirped. She was a short, older woman with greying braided hair who looked like she was probably a native. “Welcome to Hawaii!”

  “Thank you so much,” Jessica greeted, reaching forward to shake her hand and ending up enveloped in a hug. The resort was enormous, but it only had a few rooms for guests to rent out. The rest of the space was used for things like pools, gyms, a movie theater, and, of course, a restaurant.

  “I’ve owned this place for forty years,” the woman explained, “so all my guests are family while they’re here. I’m Ailani, and if you need anyt
hing, please don’t hesitate to ask me, but for now, Dakota will show you to your room.” A strapping young bellboy wheeled their luggage into the elevator and motioned for them to follow.

  “Have you been to Hawaii before?” he asked casually as the elevator rose several floors to get to the one on which they were staying.

  “No,” Jessica said aloud while Jace nodded. For some reason, that surprised him. He’d been several times; a few of the Code Blue episodes were filmed on-site here, not to mention vacations he’d taken and cameos he’d done. It was almost difficult for him to believe that Jessica had never had even one job here, but he feared that if he said that aloud, she’d think he was being pretentious, so he kept it to himself.

  “There is a list of recommended spots to visit up at the front desk,” Dakota continued. “It’s got all kinds of sights to see and all the best restaurants—second to the one here in the resort, of course.” Jace smiled.

  “Of course,” he agreed. Jessica continued to chat with Dakota as he showed them their room and gave them their keys, but once he’d carried in their bags, they dismissed him. The room was gorgeous. The walls were warm tan, covered with colorful photos of local attractions and beaches. One enormous bed occupied most of the space, but it was just as furnished as a house might be, complete with a few dressers, a television, and a desk.

  “This room is amazing,” Jessica marveled, sitting on the edge of the bed and watching as Jace unpacked his bags to put his clothes in the drawers, making a point not to unpack her own and give the illusion that she was getting too comfortable.

  “Yeah,” he agreed, “too bad we’re not going to see much of it. I had Nora plan a whole day of sightseeing for us.” Her eyes lit up at that idea. “It’s not everything—I mean, you can’t fit all that much into one single day, especially since we’ve still got to eat and unpack, and we’ll have to be up early to talk to the producers tomorrow. Or,” he corrected before she could interject, “to catch your flight back to California. Let’s not worry about that today, okay? I don’t want you to think about it, because then you’ll come up with reasons to leave faster than I can show you reasons to stay. You promised you’d give it a chance, so that means you’ve got to get out of your head.”

  That, she thought, would be difficult. Getting too far inside her head was one of her best skills, alongside her gold medal in getting in her way and worrying about things that might have been but weren’t. However, Jace was clearly making an effort, which was more than she could say about him normally, so he clearly wanted her to stay. More than that, though, she felt she owed him for how easily he was offering to let her off the hook. She’d expected him to threaten to send the dogs after her scent if she dared to break the contract, but he’d been surprisingly gentle with her. He’d even been polite about the fact that she’d woken him up in the middle of the night.

  “So, what’s first on our itinerary?”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving,” Jace said. In her excitement, she’d almost forgotten that they hadn’t eaten since the small snack on the plane, and that she was hungry. “I’ve heard that the restaurant downstairs is good. Want to try it?”

  Jessica nodded emphatically. “Let me get changed,” she said, looking down at her pants and t-shirt. Jace himself was wearing dark jeans and a button-up and didn’t look like he was planning on dressing up further, so she took that as a cue that she didn’t need to be too fancy. She took her bag into the bathroom and rummaged through it, thinking how much easier it might be to find something to wear if she’d just hung her clothes in the closet, and pulled out a pink sundress and a pair of flats. In the mirror, she looked over her face—she didn’t look quite as tired as she had this morning, but it was apparent that she’d gotten ready in a hurry by the fact that her hair was tied up in a messy bun and that she hadn’t put on any makeup. After slipping into her dress, she brushed her hair and put on a little makeup, just enough to cover up some of the tiredness and give some color to her lips. After all, for the rest of the day, she was still Jace’s fiancé, so she had to look the part.

  Stepping out of the bathroom, Jessica smiled at Jace and followed him out of the hotel room and back to the elevator they’d emerged from. They took it down to the basement and followed the smell of food to the dining room, where a beautiful continental buffet was being served. Despite the resort only housing a few guests, the restaurant was bustling, full of patrons who were chatting and eating. Jessica wasted no time taking a plate and filling it with a little of everything, including fresh fish and rice and pineapple. Everything looked delicious, and as she looked around for an empty booth, Jace tapped her on the shoulder.

  “This way,” he instructed, leading the way toward the doors to the patio. “I’ve made special arrangements.” Jessica followed him to the patio and up two flights of stairs, growing more curious by the minute, and her jaw hit the floor when she saw what he’d apparently reserved—a balcony, one which was too small to house more than small couple’s table with a parasol to shield them from the sun, overlooking the beach. The view was incredible, not only encompassing a part of the beach that had a high enough tide that it was fairly unpopulated at this time of day, but also overlooking a dense tropical forest and a gorgeous pale mountain. The table was specially dressed in a red tablecloth and set with two glasses of champagne and two cups of coffee.

  “You really think of everything,” Jessica marveled as she took a seat. Jace shrugged in faux modesty.

  “Nora helps,” he said. “I just asked her to make it today as special as she could. Of course, it’s all an obvious ploy to get what I want.”

  “Of course,” she nodded, wondering in the back of her mind if it was really so clear-cut.

  After lunch, Jace told Jessica to put on a durable pair of shoes and some sunscreen because he was taking her hiking. Jace had changed into an athletic outfit, one that hugged his body a bit and showed off the muscles in his arms and chest. The shorts he had on revealed how toned his calves were, and the tattoos on his arms that he had been making so much more of an effort to downplay were now in plain view. However, with his long hair pulled into a ponytail and in his gym outfit, she could see past the edgy, tough image he was trying to shake and into the adult man he was aiming to be.

  “I’m surprised you have all this hiking energy considering how little you slept,” she noted, watching him as he finished stretching his legs in the lobby.

  He shrugged. “It’s mostly coffee. Are you too tired to do this?”

  “No,” she denied emphatically. Her energy was almost entirely from excitement. “I can’t wait.”

  Jace smiled before forcing it back into a neutral, amused expression. “Then I won’t make you,” he said. “Let’s get going.”

  Even just the trek to the hill they were to hike up was beautiful. The island was much cleaner than her hometown, and the air smelled fresh and free of the city smog she was used to. Warm air from the beach blew gently on her cheeks as she walked alongside Jace to find the entrance to the hiking trail. When she finally was able to see it, she grinned. Of the surely countless trails on the island, he’d chosen one that looked relatively flat and included no large drop-offs or other things that might make her, as a first-time hiker, nervous. It was close enough to the ocean that they’d surely be able to see it when they got to the top.

  They walked in predictable silence for the first few minutes, Jessica wondering the entire time what he was thinking about. Was this something he did often, she wondered? Clearly, he was physically fit, so even if he wasn’t an avid hiker, he spent a lot of time being athletic in some capacity. What sorts of things did Jace Oliver think about when he had time to himself? She personally was much more of an extrovert. Time alone made her antsy, and if she were made to spend more than a day by herself, she’d find that she started to feel lonely. At the very least, she needed Marissa. However, as she thought about it, Jace didn’t seem to be having the problems that she’d faced with people bein
g suspicious about the secrecy, nor did he mention being particularly close to any of his co-stars. Despite having been working with Kirk for almost decade, Jessica had noticed that they didn’t appear to know each other very well. With a sigh, Jace tugged her out of her mind.