Stone Princess

by Devney Perry

  “That’s . . .” She growled and reached into the air like she was choking an invisible neck. Then her hands balled into fists. “You’re stirring up trouble we don’t need.”

  I slowed my pace as I approached them in Presley’s driveway.

  The second she spotted me, her hands dropped and she shot me her notorious go away look.

  “Hey. You okay?”

  Her shoulders were rigid. “Fine.”

  I looked at the guy standing across from her. I’d seen him at the garage the day I’d shadowed Isaiah. His name was Leo, if I’d overheard correctly.

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Did you need something?”

  “Did you get in a fight?” I pointed to his split lip.

  His tongue darted out and licked the cut, but otherwise he didn’t move. His knuckles were red and angry, at least the ones I could see. If he’d gotten into a fight, the other guy had to look worse.

  The tension stretched long and awkward. Neither of them was going to tell me what was happening, but no way in hell was I leaving Presley alone with a guy who made her this angry.

  The seconds ticked by, the silence painful, until finally Presley broke, turning in a huff to storm inside her house. She stomped up the steps, slamming the door with a boom that rang around the block.

  “Shit.” Leo dropped his arms, shaking his head.

  “Is there something I should know?”

  “Fuck off.”

  I held up my hands. “I’m just looking out for her.”

  Leo scoffed. “No, I’m looking out for her.”

  “Is that what this is about?” I nodded to his split lip. “Who was he?”

  “Her ex. And he deserved what he got for hurting her.”

  My mind jumped straight to the extreme conclusion. “He hurt her?”

  Because whatever pain Leo had inflicted, I’d double it on the son of a bitch. Rage ignited in my veins, off to on, like the flick of a light switch.

  “He left her at the fucking altar,” Leo said. “What do you think?”

  What? I replayed his answer once. Then twice. Presley had been left at the altar? When? I’d assumed “hurt” meant cheating or abuse. But leaving her at the altar would never have occurred to me.

  What kind of dumbass left a woman like Presley Marks?

  “You took care of it?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I took care of it. She’s ours.” As in, not mine.

  Leo spat on the ground and the white blob landed dangerously close to my bare feet. Without another word, he walked to the motorcycle parked behind Presley’s Jeep, started it up and thundered away.

  I stayed in place until he was gone, then turned and walked to Presley’s door. I knocked.

  “Go away.”

  “It’s Shaw.”

  The door whipped open. “I know. I heard Leo leave. I’m not deaf.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Dandy.” The stone princess had returned.

  Maybe this attitude was supposed to scare me away, but it was having the opposite effect. I fought the urge to pull her into my arms and hold her for a solid five minutes.

  “He told you,” she whispered. “Goddamn it, Leo.”

  “I don’t think he meant—”

  “Do not defend him. I don’t need him sharing my problems and I don’t need your pity.”

  “Pity?”

  “Please.” She rolled her eyes. “That look you just gave me? That was pity. I know because I’ve been staring at looks like that for two months, and I don’t fucking want it from you.”

  Presley stepped back to slam the door in my face, but my hand shot out, slapping against it to stop it from closing. “I don’t pity you. But I can be sorry that you got hurt.”

  “Aren’t they the same thing?”

  “No.” I stepped closer.

  Presley tipped up her chin, her feet planted on the floor. Her jaw was clenched hard.

  If I cupped her cheek, would some of that strain go away? My hand lifted only to drop beside my thigh. “I feel a lot of things for you, Presley, but pity is not one of them.”

  She blinked, her eyes going wide behind her black-framed glasses. As I’d suspected, it made them bigger. The blue was brighter. Bolder.

  And they seemed truly shocked.

  She had to know I had a thing for her. She had to know the reason I kept coming to the garage was for her. So why the surprise? I wasn’t hiding my interest, but maybe I needed to make it crystal clear just how much she intrigued me. Just how desperate I was to caress her skin and taste her lips.

  My hand lifted, this time without hesitation. The apples of her cheeks bloomed as I skimmed the bottom of her chin with the pad of my thumb. I leaned in, our eyes locked, as a loud rumble filled the air.

  Presley blinked, stepping away from my still-raised hand and looked past me to the street.

  Leo came racing back, like his wheels were on fire. He parked behind her Jeep and was up her steps in a flash, stepping into Presley’s doorframe like I wasn’t standing there. He forced me aside and wrapped his arms around her. “Sorry.”

  She relaxed into his embrace, winding her hands around his waist. “You suck.”

  “Yeah.” He dropped his cheek to her hair.

  A bubble enclosed them as they stood there, holding on to one another like I wasn’t on this porch.

  I didn’t want to be on this porch.

  Without a word, I turned and walked home, shutting myself inside as my heart clawed its way into my throat. What the hell? Were they a couple?

  Presley hadn’t said anything about being with Leo. She’d turned me down for dinner but I’d kept asking. If she had told me she had a man in her life, I would have stopped. Why hadn’t she told me?

  Because we’re not friends, dumbass. I was a fleeting breeze in Clifton Forge, and once this movie was done, I’d be gone. She knew that. Hell, I knew that, but I was still jealous, and I hated that Leo had stolen the hug I’d wanted to give her.

  I waited, standing beside the door, listening for the sound of Leo’s bike to leave. It was silent. Did he still have his arms around her? My pride wouldn’t let me go to the window and check.

  The knot in my gut tightened, jealousy spreading in a wave until I was green, head to toe. There wasn’t time for this. I had work to do, a scene to shoot. Dacia was at the motel and we hadn’t spoken since she’d arrived last night in Montana. But did I leave? No, I stood there like a goddamn masochistic, waiting for the sound of a Harley.

  It never came.

  Leo was inside. Presley had welcomed him into her home, probably without him having to hold her carrots hostage.

  I scrubbed a hand over my face and unglued my feet. I walked toward the bedroom, my heart dropping with every step. Would I hear her mattress springs squeaking? My eyes snapped right to the window when I crossed the threshold.

  Her room was dark. The blinds were drawn.

  They were never drawn.

  Whenever I came home late at night, her blinds were open and the window was cracked. I did the same to mine so all that separated us was air, and I’d fall asleep with a smile on my face.

  Fuck. Time to go.

  I plucked a pair of socks from the dresser and sat on the edge of the bed to pull them on. Then I slipped my feet into the tennis shoes I’d worn running before dawn. They were still damp with sweat but they were close by. I tied them up and got out.

  Leo’s bike earned a glare as I backed my Escalade out of the driveway.

  This jealousy was pissing me off. I wasn’t a jealous guy by nature. When I was with a woman, I expected exclusivity, but if we were casual and she showed up at a party on someone else’s arm, I didn’t have this gut-twisting urge to beat the guy to a pulp for putting his hands on my woman.

  Presley wasn’t my woman. Why was that idea not sinking in? She wasn’t mine. She was an acquaintance and my temporary neighbor. If I didn’t get her out of my head, I was going to screw up this movie, and that’s why I was h
ere. The movie.

  I couldn’t afford to be twisted up in Presley today of all days.

  My part in the scene we were shooting tonight was simple enough.

  I had to kill a woman.

  Dread chased away part of the jealousy as I crossed town to the motel. The drive to the Evergreen took minutes and it was abuzz when I arrived. Even though we had hours and hours before the cameras would roll, everyone was up and moving, anxious for this shoot.

  Now that Dacia had arrived, the crew would be keyed up about her too. She had an uncanny ability to put the people around her on a razor-sharp edge.

  Dacia French was a thorn in my side, but she had the name and face to draw a crowd to this movie. We needed both. She was making a killing for playing a small role, but her name would be on the billboard. Her face would be on the poster.

  And I only had to survive her for two weeks.

  Once she was done shooting her scenes, I had no plans to see her again until the movie’s press junket.

  The motel’s lot was full so I parked along the street. The keys in one hand rattled as I walked toward the action. I checked my watch. My hands had been fretting since I’d left home. Was Leo still at Presley’s house? Didn’t she need to get ready for work?

  She left about seven thirty each morning, or at least she had on the mornings I’d been paying attention—which was nearly every morning.

  If everything went perfectly with filming today, it would be past midnight by the time I made it home, and so help me, if his bike was still there, I was moving. Again.

  I’d trade Cameron my house for his motel room. He could have my king-size bed, leather couch and spacious shower. If Cam didn’t want it, then I’d swap with Shelly. Because there was no way I was staying in my yellow house for another month if there was even the remotest chance I’d overhear Presley getting it on with another man.

  “Hi, Shaw.” One of the crew members waved as I approached a group gathered outside the room where we’d be shooting today.

  “Morning,” I said to all five bodies huddled together and reading off the same iPad. With no sign of Cameron, I continued past them toward his room.

  His face, covered in his new gray beard, was not the one that answered.

  “There you are.” Dacia cocked a hip as she held the door. “I tried to find you when I came in last night, but the crew said you weren’t staying at the motel.”

  “I’ve got my own place.” I pushed past her to enter the room. She didn’t move, forcing me to brush against her as I stepped inside. The smell of her perfume made me gag. “Hey, Cam.”

  He was sitting in the chair beside the window, watching something play on his laptop. “Morning. You’re here early.”

  “I figured you’d want to run through this one a few times.”

  “You’re right.” He shut the laptop and stood. “I do.”

  Then, like every other day working with Cameron, he consumed our attention. I didn’t have time to think about Presley and whether she was wearing her glasses to work today. I didn’t have the chance to worry that Leo had pulled them off her nose to kiss her after I’d left. I didn’t have a free minute to ponder why a woman I’d just met had me so completely unnerved.

  We were too busy trying to get Dacia to look genuinely terrified that she’d been stabbed by her lover and was about to fucking die.

  “I’m sorry, Cameron.” She sniffled after the thousandth run-through.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, the headache that had been brewing since lunch finally breaking through.

  The woman could cry on command, but Cam didn’t want fake tears. He wanted one—one real tear to leak out of the corner of her eye and fall to the floor.

  As much as Dacia frustrated me, I got why she was upset. Cameron was asking for perfection and she wasn’t delivering. Maybe no one could deliver. His expectations were . . . extreme.

  But we needed his extreme. This was the opening scene. This was the scene where we had to hook the audience. Where we had to make them fall in love with Amina so they’d care about her death and have a vested interest in watching more.

  Beginnings.

  They were always the hardest scenes for me to shoot.

  “Maybe we should take a break,” I suggested.

  “Good idea.” Cameron nodded. He was as frustrated with this as I was.

  “Come on, Dacia.” I waved for her to get off the bed and follow me.

  “Where are we going?” She walked by my side as I crossed the parking lot.

  “Let’s go get some dinner.”

  “But the caterer is that way.” Dacia pointed to the tent set up beside the motel’s office.

  The owner of the motel and his wife were making their way through the buffet line. Shelly had invited them to eat with us for the meals we hosted here. A couple cameramen were sitting at a collapsible table in folding chairs.

  “I think maybe we both need some space from the motel.” I dug my keys from my jeans pocket and clicked the fob to unlock the Cadillac’s doors. The inside was stifling from sitting outside all day in the summer sun.

  Dacia hopped into the passenger seat, hissing as the bare skin of her legs touched the black leather seat.

  I hit the ignition and cranked up the air conditioning. “How about a burger?”

  “That’s fine.” She waved a hand, not caring what we’d eat. Probably because she wouldn’t eat.

  Dacia and I had gone out three times, each to a nice LA restaurant. She’d ordered a meal. She’d held her fork and knife. She’d chewed. But when the waitstaff had come to clear the table, my plate had been empty and hers barely touched.

  Like she had on those dates, she’d watch me eat tonight, and when we returned to the motel, she’d eat the meal specially planned by her nutritionist.

  My diet was normally regulated and my exercise regimen set in stone, like hers. The lax hold I’d had on food in Clifton Forge was mostly because this part didn’t require my abs to sell tickets. I was playing an aging police officer, fit in his later years but not unrealistically so. Any extra weight on my face actually made it easier for the makeup team to turn me into a sixty-something-year-old man.

  Dacia didn’t have that luxury. She’d be mostly naked in the murder scene.

  She had an incredible body. She was long and lean, fit with curves in the right places to fill out a gown. Dacia had a certain image to uphold and this industry was unsympathetic, especially toward women.

  That was the reason I’d taken her home after that third date. The reason why I knew exactly what Dacia French looked like without a stitch of clothing.

  I’d been stupid enough to think an actress who was dealing with the same media onslaught I did might actually want a meaningful connection. A refuge from the attention. A person who knew how exhausting it was to constantly smile and gauge every move. To eat just right. To work out, day in and day out. A person who would be there in the unwind to talk about her day.

  But Dacia had been too wrapped up in her own life to bother asking about someone else’s. Dacia, to put it mildly, was a rattlesnake.

  She’d taken a picture of me the day after the two of us had hooked up. I’d been in bed, asleep on my back with an arm tucked beside my head. A white blanket had covered my groin and a leg, but the rest was all bare skin and wrinkled sheets.

  Lazy morning.

  That had been Dacia’s caption. Her face had been on one side of the picture. Mine on the other. The photo had gone viral and I’d woken up to fifteen messages from Laurelin asking me why I hadn’t bothered telling her I was in a relationship with Dacia. Managers needed to know that kind of thing.

  I’d called Dacia a cab and kicked her out of my house. She hadn’t cared. She’d gotten what she’d been after—speculation in the tabloids and an influx of social media followers.

  Dacia had been the last actress on my arm. From then on out, I took one of my sisters to movie premieres. It was usually Matine, because she liked dressing up more than A
strid or Becca. If I wanted to take a woman to dinner, I invited my mother. There hadn’t been a woman in my bed in months.

  If it had been my call, Dacia wouldn’t have been picked for this film, but Cameron thought she had the talent for the part. Was he regretting that decision after today’s rehearsals?

  “I’m trying, Shaw.” Her eyes were aimed out her window as I drove through town. “I don’t know what he wants.”

  She was trying, and as much as I hated to admit it, she had the talent. Besides, it was too late to find someone else anyway.

  “You’ll get it,” I said. “We’ll take a break. Get out of there for a while and then regroup.”

  “Yeah,” she muttered, conversation closed.

  The drive to town was silent because neither of us cared to find out what the other had been doing since we’d seen each other two years ago. I’d caught a glimpse of her at the Academy Awards last year, but we’d been going in opposite directions, each swarmed by people, so I hadn’t been forced to make small talk.

  I pulled into Stockyard’s and parked, grinning as Dacia’s lip curled. Clearly she hadn’t explored Clifton Forge much, because Stockyard’s was the quintessential Montana bar and it matched the rest of the town.

  It was rustic without any fanfare or polish. The parking lot smelled like grease and smoke. To her, I’m sure the place looked . . . dirty. Beneath her.

  But while I was on a diet reprieve, I wanted one of the Stockyard’s damn good burgers. It was worth the added hour in the guest room I’d turned into my temporary gym. It would be worth it watching Dacia squirm as she took a rickety stool, then doused herself in hand sanitizer when we left.

  Cameron had introduced us to the place when we’d come back to start shooting and I’d been five times since. I’d even bought Luke Rosen a burger here after we’d met for beers at The Betsy this past Friday.

  “Here?” Dacia asked, gulping as we walked toward the door.

  “It’s not that bad. Just relax and enjoy a break.”

  She scowled as I held the door for her, making sure not to touch it as she slipped inside. “I’m relaxed.”

  “Sure,” I deadpanned.

  The inside of the restaurant was dark and it took my eyes a moment to adjust. When they did, I scanned the tables, searching for an empty high-top.