Love Me Sweet (A Bell Harbor Novel)

by Brogan, Tracy

  Her heart tumbled clumsily over itself at his words. “You do?” she asked.

  He looked at her, and all her euphoria swelled back into place. He was talking about her. He was talking about them.

  “Yes.” He chuckled then, kind of dazedly and self-consciously, and turned his face into the pillow for a few seconds before looking back at her. “Yes, I do. I’m guess what I’m trying to say here, Lane, is that I’m falling for you. I’m falling . . . all the way.”

  His smile fell away too, and he was gazing at her with such honesty that it nearly stopped her breath altogether.

  “Falling . . . all the way . . . in love?”

  “Somewhere very near there. I know it’s fast, and illogical, but I’m kind of hoping I’m not out here on this ledge all by myself.”

  It was a ledge, and once they jumped, there was no going back. But she was out there too. If he was going to jump, she would jump right next to him. He was looking at her expectantly, optimistically. Her heart felt the plunge, the sense of weightlessness before gravity took over and began its inevitable pull.

  “I’m with you, Grant. I’m falling too.”

  “You are?”

  She nodded, and nearly felt like crying because she had so much to tell him, so much to say that was important. She needed to tell him her story, but it would keep for a few more hours. Right now, she would exist in this beautiful, timeless bubble of perfection, awash in this glow.

  “Yes, I am. I’m crazy about you,” she said. She kissed him then, sealing a promise. No matter what tomorrow brought, she’d always love him.

  Chapter 21

  GRANT WALKED INTO THE HOTEL lobby with a spring in his step and a slightly sore back. The sexual gymnastics from the last two nights were taking their toll, but hot damn, it was worth it. He was in love, Elaine was in love. The world was a beautiful place. Today, they’d get her bag back from his mother, and whatever came next, they’d face it. Obviously there was shit in Miami to deal with, but it couldn’t be that bad. She was obviously close to her family, and no matter what it was, he’d help her work through it. That’s what a man did for the woman he loved. He took care of her.

  Grant had never taken care of anyone before. At least, no one except himself, but since the moment Elaine had shown up at his door, his bathroom door, he’d been striving to look after her. And he liked it. It was rewarding in a way different from any other accomplishment, and now he understood what had driven Tyler to make that commitment with Evie. It just made sense in a way that nothing else did. When you knew, you just knew.

  Grant chuckled to himself as he crossed the lobby, his feet in Memphis but his head somewhere else entirely. He could see life stretching out before him, a life with Elaine. The two of them would live in that little house in Bell Harbor for part of the time and travel the world the rest of the time. She’d left home to find adventure, so damn it, he’d show her adventure. He’d give her a lifetime of adventures. They’d make love on every continent. Now there was a goal to look forward to.

  It was sunny outside and the Memphis cold snap seemed to be over. Good news because they had to figure out how to get back to Bell Harbor, and driving through another blizzard did not appeal to him. It already felt like they’d been away for weeks, but it had only been a couple of days. Amazing how a couple of days could change a man’s life forever.

  He walked into the gift shop for coffee. He’d already showered and dressed, and since Elaine needed a little extra time, he’d been sent on a java run. A rotund woman in a pink shirt behind the counter greeted him with a big, toothy smile.

  “Good morning, sir. Can I help you find anything?”

  “I just need a couple of coffees, please.”

  “We got Krispy Kreme doughnuts too, and you know Elvis loved to have himself a Krispy Kreme doughnut now and then.”

  Grant was unaware that Elvis had an affinity for Krispy Kreme doughnuts, but it appeared this young lady had enjoyed a dozen or so. In fact, there were little pieces of glaze on the front of her shirt.

  He smiled and shook his head. “No, thanks. Just the coffee today.”

  “Sure thing. Here are the cups. You can fill them up over there.” She set two disposable cups next to the cash register and pointed to a coffee station on the other side of the store. “That’ll be two dollars, please.”

  He tugged his wallet from his pocket and pulled out some money, then watched with teenage-boy horror as a foil-wrapped condom flipped out from between two bills and landed with a slap on top of a stack of magazines next to the counter.

  The girl’s eyes widened, then she burst out with a big hearty guffaw that shook her whole body, which was no small amount of mass. Those little pieces of doughnut glaze hopped around on her breasts like hot popcorn. He guessed it was lucky she had a sense of humor but heat still suffused his face. He hadn’t carried a condom in his wallet in years but had tucked one in there as a joke for Elaine.

  He chuckled a little at his own expense. At least he and the shop girl were the only two in here. Thank God Reggie was nowhere in sight. He’d never hear the end of it if that guy was around. Grant bent over to retrieve the brightly wrapped party favor—and stopped short. The air kicked from his lungs and he reached over to grip the counter for support. Because there—right there next to the Paradise Brothers condom—was Elaine’s face on the cover of a tabloid magazine.

  WHERE IN THE WORLD IS DELANEY MASTERSON?

  That’s what the headline said in big, bold letters across the top. Delaney Masterson? Who the fuck was Delaney Masterson? The glossy image of the woman on the cover of the magazine had much lighter hair than Elaine, and gobs of makeup, but the eyes and the smile and the curve of her chin were pure Elaine. He couldn’t breathe. The air inside the little gift shop pushed down and all the muscles in his love-sore back clenched.

  “Aw, shucks, honey,” said the clerk, “you don’t need to go getting all embarrassed. I’ve seen all sorts of stuff at this hotel. One little rubber ain’t nothin’ to fret about. In fact, we sell them right here from behind this counter. You need some more?”

  “No. No, thanks.” He managed to stand upright but the room was spinning. “I’ll take this magazine though.” He slapped it down on the counter next to the cups and took more money from his wallet. He grabbed the condom and put that in his pocket.

  The woman looked at the magazine and tsk, tsk, tsked. “Now ain’t that a shame? That pretty young girl with so much going for her and then she went and did something so naughty. And now she’s missing. Her sister says she’s hiding out with some other man, not even the man from the video.”

  Jesus Christ. “What video?”

  “Oh, honey, where you been at? It’s all over the news. That girl has a sexy-sex video. I read all about it though I ain’t seen it. Apparently,” she leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially, “and I heard this from my cousin Bernice when we went to get our nails done, she said that this Delaney Masterson released the video just to boost the ratings for her TV show. Now isn’t that sad?”

  Wind from some unknown source roared in his ears so loudly he could hardly hear this girl. He had to concentrate very hard. “What TV show?”

  “Pop Rocks. That’s the show she’s from. Her daddy is Jesse Masterson. You’ve heard of him, right? Everybody has heard of him.” The girl jabbed a neon-orange fingernail against the cover of the magazine. “But anyway, nobody knows exactly why she took off, but they found her abandoned car up in Illinois and nobody has seen or heard from her since.”

  He looked down at the cover of the magazine. It was Elaine Masters. He was as certain of that as he was of his own name, but snippets of their past conversations started jumping around in his head like an old record skipping. Questions from the night they’d met screeched to the forefront. Questions he’d let her explain away without much effort. What had he missed? How was this possible? He picked up the
magazine and turned to leave.

  “Hey, mister. Here’s your change,” the girl called after him but he didn’t turn around. “What about your coffee?”

  He just kept going. He left the shop and went into the Jungle Room Lounge. It wasn’t open yet because it was only nine in the morning, so there were no overhead lights on. He walked over to a seat by the window and sat down with a thud. He was numb, except for his stomach, which was roiling like water about to boil over. He looked at the cover and tried to breathe.

  She’d lied. Clearly she had lied. But why? And to what extent? His hands nearly tore the paper as he opened the cover and flipped pages until he found the article.

  Police have canceled their search for the missing Delaney Masterson, 27, youngest daughter of ’80s rocker Jesse Masterson and supermodel Nicole Westgate after learning from relatives that she is hiding out in a super-secret love nest with a new beau. Even her closest friends and family don’t know exactly where she’s holed up, but one thing is for sure, absence only makes our hearts grow fonder for

  Pop Rocks’ favorite wild child.

  Sources close to the celebrity stylist say Delaney had grown increasingly frustrated by her limited role on the family’s increasingly popular reality show and vowed to do whatever it took to make herself a household name, even if that meant releasing a risqué video of herself with onetime boyfriend Boyd Hampton.

  “Delaney was always a good-time girl,” sources close to Hampton say. “She was up for anything, and obviously, so was Boyd.”

  He kept reading, his eyes burning at each word, until the article finished with another quote.

  “I guess dressing stars wasn’t enough for her anymore,” said one client who asked to remain anonymous. “Maybe Delaney decided it was time to be the star, instead.”

  There were pictures dotted all around the article, seven or eight of them, and every single one was of Elaine. At least, the woman he knew as Elaine, but this woman was a stranger. She was glamorous in a shimmering, backless dress in one photo, sultry in another wearing a black miniskirt cut up to there. Her hair was various shades of light brown or nearly blonde in most, but there was one picture that made his heart feel like it had pierced itself on one of his ribs. It was her with dark hair and little makeup. She was in a cheerleading outfit and had to be a teenager, but that photo looked just like his Elaine. His Elaine.

  But he didn’t have an Elaine. The woman he’d professed his love to not ten hours ago was nothing but a mirage. A propaganda machine, a master manipulator, and he’d fallen for every bit of it. How could he have been so blind? The article said she wanted attention. She’d certainly gotten his. Calling her a reality star was an understatement, though. She had real acting potential. She’d managed to convince his entire family, a busload of musicians, and him that she was just a sweet young woman trying to spread her wings. At least Miranda had been forthright about her career motives, but Elaine—Delaney—she was sly. She’d flat-out lied, and she’d used all of them.

  Especially him.

  For nothing more than publicity and fame. But he should have seen it coming.

  Delaney was nervous as hell, but the minute Grant got back with that coffee, she was going to sit him down and tell him everything. Everything. Every last detail. She’d only sent him away so she could gather her thoughts for a minute, but she couldn’t stand the subterfuge any longer. Hiccup.

  Last night she’d handed over her heart, and this morning he was probably going to drop-kick it right back to her, but full disclosure was essential. They were leaving for his aunt’s house just as soon as she was ready to go, so it was now or never.

  Although never wasn’t actually an option.

  So . . . it was just . . . now.

  He took a while getting the coffee. She paced as she waited, thinking of various openers.

  Oh, by the way, funny thing about . . . everything. I made most of it up.

  Her skin prickled. She was perspiring, and she desperately wanted to rewind, but even if she could, what would she have done differently? If she had known then what she knew now, would she make the same mistakes? She paced some more, wishing he’d hurry.

  She’d avoided having that panic attack the other morning, but now might work just as well. Hiccup. Finally, when she heard him at the hotel room door, she jumped so high she was practically a cat clinging to the ceiling with kitten-sharp claws.

  Big breath, Delaney.

  She was standing in the center of the room, right under the blue-sky-and-clouds mural, when he came inside. Empty-handed.

  “Where’s the coffee?” she asked.

  He pulled out something tucked under his arm. “No coffee, but I got you a magazine.”

  He dropped it on the floor, right at her feet, but one look at his face and she already knew. She’d hit the tabs again. Her heart skidded to a halt and left her teetering on the edge of a cliff. No, no, no. Not now. Five more minutes. Five more minutes and she would have told him herself.

  She bent over to pick up the magazine as he stalked into the room to stand by the window with his back to her, his hands jammed into his pockets. The floor tilted and the walls shook, but it wasn’t Memphis having an earthquake. It was her world that was falling apart. And maybe Grant’s. She hadn’t meant to involve other people in her charade, but she had, and the enormity of that surrounded her.

  She looked at the glossy cover and there she was. She grimaced at the headline. God only knew what lies they’d printed inside, but even if they’d only printed the truth, it was still pretty bad.

  “I was going to tell you—”

  “When?” He cut her off, twisting back in her direction, face flushed. “When were you going to tell me? Because we’ve been together nonstop for about a week now and it seems like this might have come up somewhere between, oh, I don’t know. Somewhere between hello and I love you.”

  She should have told him sooner. She should have told him sooner. Damn it. She really should have told him sooner.

  “I know. It’s just . . . it’s complicated.”

  Complicated? That sounded pathetic even to her. She was shaking, and cold and clammy, but she had to pull it together. She had to make him understand how this had started with one simple falsehood and yet had somehow exploded into this mushroom cloud of events.

  “Complicated,” he growled. “Yeah. I can see how confusing it might get trying to remember your own fucking name.” His voice rose with the last part, and she was almost glad. Glad to finally be getting this out in the open, to expose the wound she’d created so they might begin to move past it and heal. But how, she had no idea. She couldn’t undo anything. She could only try to fix it from this point forward.

  “Grant, I’m so sorry. I just—”

  He cut her off. “So where do I fit into the general spin of things?”

  “The spin?”

  “Yeah. Am I the brainless idiot who never recognized you, or the dedicated lover willing to call the cops on his own mother just to keep you entertained?” His eyes glittered with anger, and her heart, the one he’d touched just an hour earlier with the sweetest words, now splintered, cut by his sharp gaze.

  “You’re neither. That’s not what happened. Grant, the media spins things in a hundred different ways and it’s hardly ever true. I was trying to protect you from that.”

  He looked like he’d been jolted with electricity. “Protect me? Protect me by lying to me about who you are?”

  “No, protect you by keeping you out of the media storm. That’s the whole reason I was hiding out. Ever since that awful video surfaced, the paparazzi have been hounding me and I was just trying to get away.”

  “Get away. Right. Leaking that video didn’t have anything to do with boosting the ratings for your TV show and making you famous. Oh, and by the way, you didn’t think to mention you had a TV show? I’m a fucking
cinematographer, Delaney. I know a thing or two about television.”

  He said her name like it was a curse, and it stung. Agitation stuck in her throat, making her voice raspy. “Yes, you’re a cinematographer, and everything you hate about television is everything that my show represents. I admit it, Grant, that’s no excuse for me not telling you, but it is the reason I hesitated. But you have to believe I never leaked that video. I didn’t even know it existed until a few weeks ago. I’m not a fame-seeker. I’m the opposite of that, and I just wanted you to get to know the real me before you made any judgments.”

  His bark of laughter was harsh, without an ounce of humor in it. “Oh, OK. In that case, I’ll just make my judgments based on what you’ve shown me yourself. No cameras, no crew. Just me and the real you. Oh, and look. You still lied. Even when it was just the two of us. You had a dozen chances to come clean, and you chose not to.”

  They were standing feet apart, facing each other, but it may as well have been an ocean between them. Or a pit of fiery lava. At least if it was lava, Delaney could fling herself into it and have this all be over with. What a hot mess she’d created.

  “You’re right. I should have told you sooner. I should have told you right away, but I didn’t know you at first. I didn’t expect you to be in that house and I had no idea if I could trust you. Then, once I did, I couldn’t figure out when or how to explain. I just . . .”

  Her voice dwindled away, the excuses and explanations dying on her lips. How could she defend herself when she basically agreed with him?

  “This was all just a little elaborate, wasn’t it?” he said, finally moving, stalking to the other side of the room. “The whole running away scam? The hiding out? The bag of money? My mother taking it must have made your day! That’s why you’ve been such a good sport about all this, isn’t it? You couldn’t have scripted a better drama. Did you rent that house from her on purpose just hoping she’d take that money?”