Summer with a Star (Second Chances Book 1)

by Farmer, Merry

  “Yeah,” she answered with a distant sigh. Her wide-eyed wonder at the smell of dinner cooking deflated to something droopy that made her cheeks red. Uh-oh, what had he done now?

  She was an ass. That was all there was to it. A total, irredeemable ass. Believing she was a loser who couldn’t even hang out with a guy without ending up with a chocolate ice cream facial was one thing. Not letting him be nice to her when he wanted to be was another.

  She shook herself out of the realization and stepped over to the counter where a steaming bowl of pasta slathered in bright green pesto was waiting, tempting her.

  “Do you need any help?” she asked, as penitent as she could sound without looking like an even bigger idiot.

  Spence studied her for a second before straightening, his smile coming back full force. “You could set the table,” he suggested.

  “Which table?” She would build a new one if it would make up for the idiot she’d been since their bike ride. No, since she’d arrived at the house. How could the guy be so nice after she’d shut him out so hard?

  “We could eat out on the porch,” he suggested. “I haven’t done that yet.”

  “Sounds good.”

  As he tossed the greens in the skillet a few more times and reached for the garlic press on the counter, she bit her lip. Garlic. The man was a god among men. She’d been ready to abandon him at the pier, had told him to go away upstairs, and now he was cooking with garlic. For her. This was definitely a very good dream.

  The sting of guilt made her rush in her search to find plates and silverware to take out to the porch. As if she didn’t second-guess herself enough, a thousand pestering questions followed her out to balmy evening and the round, wicker table waiting on the south side of the porch. Was she being fair to Spence? Why was he being so nice? And when had she turned into the kind of person she would reprimand her students for being if she caught them acting like she had?

  She set the plates and silverware on the table and headed back into the house. Had she gotten this all wrong? She was on vacation. She didn’t need to bring all of her problems with her. This was her dream, dammit.

  “You haven’t seen any tablecloths since you got here, have you?” she called into the kitchen as she came inside, intent on making peace.

  “I think I ran into some in that small closet next to the phone in the hall,” he called back.

  There. A pleasant exchange between two people putting together dinner. She made herself smile as she searched through the hall closet. Spencer Ellis may be a big-shot celebrity, he may have put her in an awkward position that morning, but it was about time she stopped telling herself he’d ruined her vacation, or that he could never want to hang out with someone like her. The scent of garlic and herbs wafting from the kitchen was proof enough that she was wrong.

  She found the linens she was looking for and took them out to the porch. A few more trips, and she had the table set with a crisp white tablecloth, blue placemats and matching napkins, tall glasses of ice water, and place settings that were nicer than anything she used at home. A few flowers and candles and it might have been romantic. There wasn’t time for that, though, even with the pink roses in the garden tempting her to find a vase. Spencer brought out a steaming salmon filet on a broiler pan, his hands covered with oven mitts in the shape of lobsters.

  “Watch out, it’s fresh from the sea and the oven, and it’s hot.” He tugged a trivet out of the apron he wore and set it on the table, putting the pan on top.

  “It looks amazing,” Tasha said, following him back inside to help carry out the rest. “It all looks amazing.”

  “The internet doesn’t mention that I’m a halfway decent cook, does it?” he teased as they carried the greens and pasta outside.

  Another twinge of guilt stabbed her. “Look, I’m sorry about what I said, you know, on that first day.”

  “I don’t remember you saying anything wrong.” He smiled as they sat. At least he didn’t hold her chair out for her. That would have raised her guilt to lethal levels.

  “No, but I did say things wrong. I’ve said a lot of things wrong. I usually do.”

  He didn’t reply. Instead he carved out a large piece of salmon for her, sliding it onto her plate. The look he sent her said that he wasn’t going to argue with her. How could she have been such a jerk?

  The only way she was going to be able to deal with this like an adult was to own up to everything. The thought was almost enough to kill her appetite. Almost.

  “I’m not usually this moody,” she said, piling pasta onto her plate. “In fact, I’m usually the complete opposite of moody. Up until a couple of months ago, I was always Little Miss Perkypants to the point where anyone within five yards ended up with tooth decay.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” he said, helping himself to some greens, then adding some to her plate.

  “No, really,” she went on. “That’s my problem. I owe it to my students to be nice, sweet Miss Pike with them all day, and sometimes it’s just hard to switch out of that role.”

  His grin spread to a knowing chuckle. “Tell me about it.”

  “Right, I guess you know about playing roles.” She shook her head and poked her fork into her salmon. “I don’t even know if it’s that, really. I kind of like being a nice person, but Brad always says—” she stopped, anger blossoming in her chest.

  “Brad always says what?” Spence prompted her.

  “Nope.” She took a bite of salmon, savored it for as long as she could, then swallowed. “No, I’m not going to let him follow me out here. I’m through with him, he’s gone, he’s done. Whatever he said, it doesn’t matter.”

  Spence nodded along with her. “I admire a woman who can move ahead through a trying time.”

  Did he? It was almost too nice of him to say so. Suspicion curled around her heart, but she took a bite of garlic greens to chase it away.

  “What about you?” she changed the subject. “How do you deal with people who want to have their picture taken with you all the time?”

  He laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “That’s why I’m here, in Summerbury, Maine instead of Los Angeles, California for the summer. It’s not easy to deal with.”

  “But you’ve been in the spotlight for, what, six years now?”

  He shrugged. “About that. It takes a lot of bit parts and years of pounding the pavement to become an overnight success.”

  “I could probably look it up online,” she smirked.

  He met her eyes with a knowing look that zinged down her spine and curled somewhere around her core. She focused on her food. There was no point in wondering where a look like that could lead. Even though imagining the destination could be a heck of a lot of fun.

  “I really have no right to complain,” he went on, talking between eating. “I’ve been incredibly lucky. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of aspiring actors who are every bit as talented as I am and more, who would love to be in my position. I remind myself of that every time I’m faced with a hoard of giggling teenage girls with smartphones.”

  She snickered at the image his words painted. She had a feeling he’d faced much worse than they encountered that morning.

  “Recognition is part of the job,” he went on. “I don’t like it, I’d rather go back to being anonymous, but it comes with territory.”

  “The price of fame?”

  He winced. “Something like that, although I’ve never liked the phrase. Sometimes all I want to do is go to the grocery store without worrying if there will be paparazzi in the frozen food aisle.”

  Tasha weighed his words with a nod of her head. “But I’m sure you’ve made a ton of money. Your movies have been hits for years.”

  “My bank account is happy,” he replied with a cautious twitch of his eyebrow.

  Tasha waved her hands to ward off his suspicions. “No, all I mean is that you probably never have to work again if you don’t want to.”

  “Ah,” he answe
red. “That’s just the thing. I want to work.”

  “You do?” She nearly laughed at the prospect. Not that she didn’t love her students. It was just that sometimes she felt as though life could be…more.

  “Acting is the only thing I’ve really wanted to do,” he told her with a seriousness to his tone. “Ever since I was a kid. It’s all those cliché stories you hear about. My brother and sister and I used to put on shows for our parents. I would write, direct, and star. I had parts in school plays and community theater from as soon as mom and dad would let me audition. It’s in my blood, in my soul. I couldn’t stop acting any more than I could stop breathing.”

  “Wow.” Tasha set down her fork, mesmerized by the way his eyes glowed as he spoke.

  “The only problem is that the job I love and the world in which it takes place are more at odds with each other than I ever thought possible.”

  A thrill of curiosity danced along Tasha’s skin. It may have had something to do with the orange and coral hues of the evening light that bathed Spence’s face and arms in warmth. “How so?” she asked.

  Spence let out a long breath and stared at his plate for a moment. “Hollywood is a strange, seductive place. It’s kind of like that hot chick that you’ve always wanted to ba— I mean, that you’ve always wanted to date. She revs you up, gets you hot, makes you do wild things you never thought you’d do, and as soon as you’ve got her?”

  Tasha leaned forward. “What?”

  He spread his hands and sat back in his chair. “As soon as you’ve got her, you realize what a bitch she is. She’s high-maintenance, she has a wandering eye, and she’ll never give you a moment to yourself.”

  Tasha blinked. “I’m not sure if I’m enlightened by that analogy or offended.”

  He laughed. “I hope you’re not offended. I didn’t mean to offend. And that’s my problem.”

  “You have problems? You? A famous celebrity?” she teased.

  His impish grin was enough to make her wish she had a fan. “I do,” he said. “My problem is that I want everyone to be happy. Everyone except me.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Come on. That sounds like a line out of one of those scripts you’ve been reading.”

  “Hey now.” He pointed his fork at her. “It’s taken a lot of therapy for me to admit that I’m an unhealthy people-pleaser.”

  “Therapy, eh?” she said, as playful as she could be. Icy fingers crept down her back at the thought, though. Jenny had suggested a bout of therapy when Brad pulled his shenanigans. So had her principal. And her mom. She had insisted to all of them that she wasn’t crazy. Spencer Ellis didn’t seem to be crazy either, and yet he’d done his time on the comfy couch.

  “I’m beginning to be able to tell when you’re thinking un-vacation-like thoughts,” he said, snapping her out of her downward spiral.

  “I was thinking very vacation-like thoughts,” she lied. A playful lie was more fun than the depressing truth.

  “I’ll give you a penny for them,” he said.

  She shook her head. “Then I’d only continue to think them, and I don’t want to at the moment.” It was true. It was also liberating. “So why don’t you leave Hollywood and, I don’t know, do Broadway or something?” she steered the conversation back to him.

  He laughed, as warm as the setting summer sun. “I would love to do theater for a while. I’ve got a good friend who is a big-deal director on Broadway, Benjamin Paul.”

  Tasha wracked her brain, but had to admit, “Never heard of him.”

  “That’s sort of the point. Broadway is its own world with its own rules. It’s not as easy to just walk in and do it as you’d think.”

  “Even for Spencer Ellis?”

  He hummed and tilted his head to the side as he considered. “Possibly. I’m sure Yvonne could bully her way into getting me a part in something important. It would help if I could sing, though.”

  “What? Spencer Ellis can’t sing?”

  He answered her ribbing with a sheepish grin and a glance through his long lashes that sent butterflies all through Tasha’s important parts.

  “I can’t carry a tune in a bucket,” he confessed.

  Tasha could feel the heat in her cheeks as she tore her eyes away from his and concentrated on finishing her dinner. There was something decidedly awkward about discovering she liked him. Liked him as a person, a guy she was having dinner with. She’d assumed it would be months before she could randomly like a guy after Brad. It underscored how big of a pain she’d been for him these last few days. She hadn’t given him a chance, and that was unforgivable. Yet there he was, forgiving her. Now, if only she could forgive herself.

  “There are other big-ticket shows on Broadway besides the musicals,” Spence went on. “But I might have another direction in mind for my next project.”

  “Oh?” She dared to look up at him again. The devilish grin was gone and he was back to being a man talking about his job prospects.

  “The problem is, most big budget Hollywood films plan years in advance. I should have a whole string of projects lined up to take me through the next five years.”

  “Don’t you?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve committed to a few indie projects working with friends, but after the last movie I filmed—it’s tentatively called University City, and it’s still in post-production—I canceled a couple of the big films I was slated to shoot.”

  “Why?”

  He finished the last bite of his salmon and set his fork down. As he leaned back in his chair, he glanced off across the south beach. That beach was rockier and the waves crashed ashore rather than rolling. It reflected the emotion that filled his expression. Tasha held her breath, drawn toward whatever mystery that tense, lost look of his hid.

  “I love acting,” he said at last, facing her. “I don’t like Hollywood.” He cracked into a half laugh. “It seems so simple, but it’s not. I don’t want to leave, but I wish the whole system would change.”

  “Even I know that’s not going to happen,” she said.

  “It’s not,” he agreed. He started piling his silverware on his empty plate. “Fortunately, everyone has choices. I’ve been reading a lot of scripts lately as I try to make sense of what I want to do, but Yvonne keeps pushing me to film this TV pilot.”

  “TV?” Tasha followed his lead and started cleaning up her dinner things. “I hear a lot of movie stars are doing TV now. Better scripts or something?”

  “That’s what the buzz is.” He stood and picked up his plate and empty glass. Tasha followed suit. “Yvonne wants me to consider this pilot for a sort of medical-slash-supernatural drama called Second Chances.”

  “What’s it about?” They headed into the house to the kitchen.

  “It’s about a nursing home,” he laughed.

  “High drama then,” she teased.

  “Well, actually, yes. The supernatural element is that the residents who live there, when they reach the moment of death, are given a chance to relive what they consider the most important decision they ever had to make in their life. They’re given the chance to make a different decision and to live their life from that point over with a different outcome. They can also decide that they made the right decision and move on to heaven or whatever. Each episode is a flashback to that point in their life interspersed with the lives of the staff at the home.”

  Tasha paused as she rinsed the plates. “That actually sounds like something I might watch. Who do they want you to play?”

  His grin widened. “The Angel of Death.”

  She laughed. Spencer Ellis was the last person she would have pegged to be the Angel of Death. He was gorgeous and soft-spoken, he had a laugh that made you want to smile and eyes that made you want to get naked.

  Then again, if that was Death, she might just consider it as an option.

  “So do you want the part?”

  His grin faded. He moved some of the pots he’d used to cook closer to the sink. His brow clouded over ag
ain, and once again, Tasha’s curiosity soared.

  “I don’t know what I want,” he confessed at last, quiet and almost sullen. “I want space. I want time.”

  The wistfulness of his comment felt all too familiar to her. Space and time. For her, it was to distance herself from her miserable spring. What did he need space and time for?

  “I’ll grab the rest of the stuff from the porch,” he said, leaving before she could get a chance to ask.

  Tasha scrubbed out the pots and loaded the dishwasher. They packed away the leftovers as Spence brought them back in, and made coffee once that was taken care of. It was hard to leave such a fantastic kitchen anything but spotlessly clean, so as the coffee brewed, they wiped down counters and put away utensils. It was almost like navigating through an evening with a friend.

  “Brad never used to help me clean up after dinner,” she said when they had relocated to the second floor porch with their coffee to watch the sunset.

  “I’d really like to know what exactly happened with you and this Brad guy,” Spencer said.

  He stretched one arm across the top of the wicker sofa behind her. It was almost a ‘move.’ Spencer Ellis was putting the moves on her. She chuckled and dismissed the idea. He’d asked her a question.

  “All right. Brad, as I mentioned before, is my ex-boyfriend. I met him here when I was a kid. It turns out his family was from Portland too. That’s where I live. He went from being my boy friend to the boy I had a crush on to my first kiss, my first boyfriend, my first a lot of things. We officially dated for thirteen years, which, you will recall, you thought was ridiculous—”

  “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  “—throughout which I should have known better. He did not buy me a ring or make a promise, ever, and one day in April, I dropped by his apartment unexpectedly and found him tangled up with a red-head.”

  “Ouch.” He winced in sympathy.

  She replied with a bitter laugh. “She wasn’t the first either. I found out all sorts of stuff—stuff I should have known about, stuff my friends had been trying to tell me for ages.”