by Stacy Travis
Forever with Him
Stacy Travis
FOREVER WITH HIM
STACY TRAVIS
Copyright © 2020 by Stacy Kravetz
All rights received.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design: Alyssa Garcia, Uplifting Author Services
Editing: Red Adept Editing
Publicity: Social Butterfly PR
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
About the Author
Acknowledgments
In Trouble with Him
Prologue
Air France Business Class – July
Nikki
Chris looked like he was moving through water, making his way toward me at a pace that seemed impossibly gluey and slow. He held his cellphone out in front of him as though it was contaminated from the conversation he’d just had.
The words he’d just uttered, “We have a problem,” continued to ring in my ears, but because it was Chris and because he really didn’t seem to have unsurmountable problems, I chose not to be overly alarmed. Maybe he’d left the script for his next project behind at his house. Maybe his neighbor had forgotten to water his plants and they’d all died. And while I didn’t relish the murder of ferns, I couldn’t help but hope for their demise over other more dire options.
The signs were not great. His eyes were glassy, and he ran a hand through his hair, which meant he was stuck in a mental gymnasium. It was clear he was concerned about something more significant than whether the in-flight meal contained dairy.
“Like, ‘Houston, we have a problem’?” I asked, not liking the look on his face and hoping to counter it with levity. “Are you searching for a parachute, or is your assistant just worried because you’re on a commercial airline? Because you might distract the pilot with your pretty face and we’ll crash? Because frankly, I’d be concerned about that too.”
“You’re funny,” he said dryly, settling into the window seat next to mine and getting out of the way of the flight attendant who was passing a tray of champagne flutes to the passengers in business class. He wasn’t smiling and he didn’t fasten his seatbelt, so I wasn’t sure if he planned on staying.
“I’m glad I can amuse you in the face of a problem. But what’s wrong?” I asked.
I wasn’t used to this. He was unflappable. I was the one who freaked out over trivial things, such as whether I’d put too much salt in my salad dressing or whether the black town car that ferried us around was eco-friendly. And then freaked out at the very existence of a black town car that ferried us around.
His expression was giving me a new thing to freak out about. Gone was the relaxed vacation visage I’d stared at for two weeks, as well as the I-might-be-in-love-with-you face I’d seen a few minutes earlier. Chris looked like he had more than just a problem. He looked concerned and confused, which made me concerned and confused.
“Chris, what’s going on?” I asked again. In his silence, my brain had time to conjure a few possibilities: he couldn’t fly to LA with me just yet, which wouldn’t be the end of the world; he’d made a mistake and decided he didn’t want a future together; or his wife just called and reminded him to be home in time for dinner. Considering anything but the first scenario was enough to make cold pinpricks break out across my skin. My carefully guarded heart had already edged open in the few minutes since he’d professed his desire to be with me beyond our time in France.
Close down! Abort mission! Just beat quietly like the organ you were meant to be.
I waited with my heart somewhere in the vicinity of my throat for him to tell me the rest of the story, which I was pretty sure I didn’t want to hear. No, that wasn’t true. I wanted to hear it. I wanted to help.
“Sir, all passengers need to fasten their seatbelts,” a flight attendant to his left said. Chris turned, glassy-eyed, to see who was talking to him, as though she could impart critical information needed to solve his current problem. I wondered if he was considering bolting.
When he fastened his seatbelt but still didn’t look at me, I fabricated new concerns. Maybe his managers or agents or whatever handlers controlled his movements got wind of the fact that he wanted to move to LA with me and freaked the hell out. Maybe they told him he would be disowned—or whatever managers, agents, and handlers did when an actor didn’t behave according to the marketing plan. Perhaps he was suddenly less marketable if he had a girlfriend, and therefore, he would be parachuting out of the plane once he came to his senses mid-flight.
At his continued silence, the pit in my stomach started growing into an immovable choking object. A sheen of sweat broke across my forehead, and my concerns grew to somewhere on the temperature scale between melting ice cream on a warm sidewalk and a bottomless pit of hellfire.
I inhaled a deep breath and tried to settle my brain into regular angst instead of full-on crippling neurosis. We had eleven hours together, I reasoned, so there was no rush for him to start talking.
I would just sit and wait. I would take a leisurely glance at my surroundings.
Having never flown business class, I noticed how much more space the rows had between them. The cup holders were larger than in coach. I wondered if larger drinks would be served. There were nice-looking headphones.
Who cares about the headphones. Why isn’t he talking? Stop freaking out.
I put a hand on his leg, needing to make some sort of contact. He put his hand on top of mine but still faced out the window.
The flight crew went through the motions of checking the plane, and his silence continued as the pilot taxied us and got the jet into the air. It was a side of him I hadn’t seen, and I was struck by the realization that with the abrupt end of our vacation time together came a different side of Chris. Whatever was happening, whatever his problem ended up being, it needed a real-world solution. It felt like an unwelcome intrusion into the way Chris and I had related to each other so far. He seemed like a different person.
Finally, I couldn’t take his silence any longer. I turned my hand so my palm faced up and curled my fingers around his. He responded, interlacing his fingers with mine. “Chris,” I said.
He turned to look at me, and the expression on his face unnerved me. He looked defeated.
I instinctively wanted to reach out to him, because he didn't seem to know how to ask for help. “Talk to me. Let me help you. What’s going on?”
He inhaled a jagged breath and let it drain out of him. “I don’t even know where to begin…” He shook his head. I was concentrating on not freaking out, really concentrating,
which meant a muscle in my cheek had started uncontrollably twitching. “A while back, I dated a woman for a month or so. It wasn’t ever going anywhere, but we had a good time…”
I didn’t like the continual pauses in his story, because they gave my brain a chance to spin into all kinds of unwelcome territory. So I was thinking about the “good time” he and I had just enjoyed over the past two weeks and wondering if their “good time” was similar. Or better.
“Chris, just tell me. What’s going on? Is she sick? Are you getting back together? Is she your baby mama? What?”
He looked surprised at the question. “What? No, I mean, yes, but no. Definitely no.”
“Um, which part? Explain?”
“No, we’re not together. Yes, apparently now, she’s pregnant. And she’s told one of the tabloids that I’m the father.” He turned to me, his eyes plaintive. I didn’t know if he was unnerved because he’d just learned he was going to be a father or if he just didn’t like having to tell me.
“Oh.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I mean, I don’t know.”
“It’s not true. There’s no way it’s true.”
“Okay. Has the tabloid printed the story?”
“No. Not yet. Hopefully not ever.”
“That’s probably wishful thinking, don’t you think?”
He closed his eyes, and I knew the answer. My first instinct was to wrap him in my arms and try to shield us both from the outside world, the way we’d been for the past two weeks.
I swallowed around the lump that was forming in my throat. Whether it was true or not, one thing was certain: we’d left our euphoric vacation bubble behind. Chris’s “problem” was a sharp reminder that we were back in his world, and his world included pregnant ex-girlfriends who went to the tabloids before they talked to anyone else. It included paparazzi and his face on magazine covers. If I wanted to be with him, I needed to figure out how to deal with all that.
I also needed to reassure him that everything would be okay, even though I had no idea that was true. I put my other hand on his. “I’m sorry she went to the tabloids before talking to you. That sucks.” That part was awful. I could be objective about it. But then there was the big steaming dinosaur pie on the runway.
“Is there a chance it’s true?” I asked.
He pinched his temples as though to keep a headache from forming and shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve been wracking my brains for the past half hour, trying to remember the timing of when we were… together. I don’t want to sound like an asshole, but it wasn’t that memorable.”
“Well, I don’t want to sound like a jealous asshole, but… okay, that’s just fine by me.”
For the first time since he’d taken the phone call, his lips twitched as if they might consider working their way into a smile. “I still don’t have all the details. I don’t know how far along she thinks she is, so I can’t look at a calendar to see if the dates even match, but she’s already given the interview, and they’re threatening to publish the story later this week. Apparently, they were reaching out to me for comment.”
“And you said nothing, I hope.” I’d been trained to think that way. Without even trying, I’d slipped into the role of public relations fixer. I’d seen a lot worse—real cases of bad behavior and wrongdoing that needed to be cleaned up before the tabloids printed anything, which turned into PR nightmares if they did.
“I haven’t talked to them yet. My assistant ran interference, and my publicist and my lawyer are getting into it with the tabloid.”
“Okay. Let them handle it.”
He nodded. “That’s what they told me.”
“Good. Listen to them.” He didn’t look at all convinced that it would be that simple. I moved my hand to his leg and rubbed circles that I hoped were soothing. “Chris, what are you thinking?”
“I just… I feel awful about this. Partly for her, I guess, if she’s knocked up and scared. But I’m pretty sure she’s full of shit, so I’m withholding my sympathy for now. And I’m here because I want to have a relationship with you, and this is not the way I planned on starting it.”
I nodded. “I know.”
“Thank you for being so… okay about it.”
My nod quickly turned to me shaking my head because he had the wrong idea. “I’m definitely not okay. I’m still processing it. but I’m… I don’t know. I’m just confused. Maybe… what should I know about her?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Not her personality or favorite flavor of ice cream. But did she seem like the type who’d fabricate a baby and go to a tabloid?”
“I don’t know. Is that a personality type?”
“You know what I mean. Did she seem genuine?”
“Nik, I barely remember her.”
“Do you remember if you were careful? Did you have a lapse in judgment?”
He looked offended. “Of course not. There’s no question about that.”
“How did it end? Could you have given her the wrong idea and maybe she wants to trap you to get you back?”
“It ended because it was casual and I left to film a movie. It was barely a relationship. I think we dated for a month.”
A knot tightened in my stomach, and a dullness spread through my chest. I looked away from him. He didn’t need me to say that a month was twice as long as he and I had been together.
“Hey,” he said, tipping my face to look at him. “We went on a few dates. Yes, I slept with her. But I didn’t feel even a glimmer of what I feel with you. You’re… it’s not even in the same universe. Please know that. I want more with you. I’ve never been able to say that to anyone before.”
His words calmed me, and I worked to shove my concerns about his old relationship aside and focus on what Chris planned to do next. And how I could help him. I knew I wanted to help, and I hated that some people tried to use celebrities like him for their own gain. I was irritated on his behalf, because I could see how kind he normally was and how much it hurt him to have someone say he wasn’t a standup guy.
“Okay, well, I’m here for you.”
“Even if I turn out to be the father?”
“Let’s cross that bridge if we need to. Honestly, the fact that she went to a tabloid before she came to you kinda screams extortion. That’s not the kind of thing you do when you want your baby to have a good relationship with his or her dad. It’s the kind of thing you do when you want money. Either money to make the story go away or money to help raise her celebrity baby.”
“I know,” he said, as though he didn’t want to say all of those things out loud. “That’s generally how these things go.”
“You mean, because this has happened before?”
“Not to me. But I know people who’ve dealt with it. The worst I’ve had is a couple of stalkers.”
“Oh, is that all?” I asked. He smiled at my sarcasm. “Anyone armed and dangerous?”
“Armed, but she’s a bad shot, so not particularly dangerous.”
He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. For the first time since he’d taken the phone call, his expression bordered on calm.
“Okay. So get on the plane’s Wi-Fi and have your publicist and lawyer reassure you that what she’s doing is a money grab. I’m surprised the tabloid hasn’t offered to bury the story for a tidy sum.”
He looked surprised by my assessment. Maybe he thought I was evil incarnate for being so comfortable with such a scheme. “You said you’re good at your job, but clearly, nonvacation Nikki is tough, savvy, and very good at her job.”
I had no doubt that my cheeks turned hot pink at the compliment. “You’re just lucky I’ve been toiling in the publicity salt mines for the past few years, so these things don’t shock me. But plenty of other stuff still does, so don’t think you’re off the hook from my hysterical reactions.”
“I don’t want to be off the hook. From any of it.” He reached his hand to my cheek and kissed my lips. His
gaze charged at me, and I was done for, as usual. I could have stared at those hypnotic, deep-brown eyes for the rest of the flight. His fake baby mama could have given birth and followed it with a lap dance, and I wouldn’t have noticed.
Chris ran the back of his hand over my cheek and brought it around until it rested against the back of my neck.
I’d stopped trying to fight the heat that lit every place he touched on fire the second I felt his hands on my skin. “It’s gonna be okay,” I told him. I had no way of knowing that, but we both needed to believe it.
“I don’t even remember what we were talking about,” he said. He bent toward me and leaned his forehead against mine.
“That’s a very good sign.”
His lips swept across mine in the same gentle way as they had many times over the past two weeks. Chris turned more squarely to face me and pulled me toward him, deepening the kiss and our connection. I felt his vulnerability and his need, and I tried to answer it with my own. It was the way we’d been with each other since we’d met, and really, it was the only way we knew how to be. As we fell back into a familiar closeness, the optimist in me hoped a smidgen of our vacation love would follow us back into the real world.
Chapter One
Nikki
Over the course of the flight, Chris had spent a good two hours firing texts and emails back and forth with his lawyer, his publicist, and his manager, all of whom agreed that his ex had contacted the tabloid because she wanted money or fame by association. She didn’t seem to want Chris himself, which made the situation more manageable. Once she learned that she couldn’t manipulate Chris, she would probably back off, his reps assured him. The first order of business was to take a paternity test to find out if he was in fact the father.
