“Uh, that you liked to gamble and, um . . . that you stole money from your parents.” Her gaze fixates on the patio pavers. She’s disappointed in me. And she has every right to be. I fucked up so many times in so many ways.
I nod, taking responsibility for my sheer stupidity. “You must think I’m a terrible person. I guess I was afraid to tell you.”
“Don’t be,” she says, reaching over to put her hand on mine. “You can tell me anything, Chad. I know it’s all history, but I’d rather hear it from you than find out from anyone else. And I don’t think you are a terrible person. You’ve proven to be quite the opposite.”
Words collect on the tip of my tongue, begging to come out. She’s given me an opening. I should put it all out there once and for all. Rip off the Band-Aid. She’s here in L.A. in my house. She couldn’t exactly run away. Well, not easily. I should do it now. “Mal,” I thread my fingers through hers at the very second her phone starts ringing.
She glances at it and says, “Oh, shoot, I forgot to call my dad when I arrived last night. He’ll be livid. I’ll just be a sec.” She glides her finger across the phone. “Hi, Daddy.”
I point to the house and hold up my finger so she knows I’ll only be gone a minute. I want to give her privacy. I also want to kick myself for being a damn coward, because all I feel is relief that her phone call robbed me of the perfect chance to tell her the things I know I should.
Chapter Twenty
Mallory
I throw an arm over my head after I see the entertainment news on TMZ, frustrated over being tabloid fodder for the second time since I arrived three days ago. I hop off the bed, open the bathroom door and shout, “Chad, it happened again!”
“What is it now?” he asks, peeking around the side of the glass block shower.
Wow. My eyes quickly rake over his wet body, dripping with soapy suds. He looks good enough to eat. If I weren’t so upset about the story, I might jump in with him. But I am upset, and he’s got a meeting to get to, so I don’t.
“They stood outside the gates of my school until they found someone who would talk,” I tell him.
On Saturday, the story of the mystery woman broke and my name was plastered all over the tabloids and social media. I’m glad I was out here when it happened, cocooned away with Chad in our private little world.
“Is anyone even there? It’s spring break,” he says, his voice echoing off the shower walls.
“It was one of our janitors,” I say. “He told reporters that it was my second year teaching fourth grade. And . . .”
When my voice trails off, Chad sticks his head out of the shower again. “And what, Mal?”
“And he said he can’t understand why a celebrity like you would choose such a tawdry hometown girl like me.”
“Tawdry?” he scoffs. “Did he actually call you that?”
I nod.
“He’s an asshole, babe. You are the opposite of tawdry.”
“He asked me out once,” I tell him.
Chad turns off the shower and I hand him his towel. “The janitor asked you out? How old is he?”
“Not as old as you’d picture an elementary school janitor. I’d say he’s in his thirties. He thought I turned him down because he’s a janitor.”
“But you didn’t,” he says. “That’s not you. But why did you turn him down?”
I close the lid on the toilet and sit down. “Because he wasn’t you.”
Chad’s mouth opens and closes as he tries to form words. “But . . . you’ve dated plenty of guys,” he says, wrapping the towel around his waist before he leans against the vanity.
“Not in the last few years,” I tell him. “I tried to date. After Julian, and when I went to college. I dated several guys, but none of them ever felt right. I didn’t feel right dating them. So it just kind of got to the point where I swore off men.”
“Swore off men?” He smiles. Maybe a little too big. “You said it had been a long time since you slept with anyone. Exactly how long are we talking, Mal?”
I roll my eyes at him.
He takes two steps over and lifts my chin. “How long?”
“I don’t know. Close to three years maybe.” I see the joy behind his eyes, so I add, “You don’t have to look so darn happy about it.”
He pulls me up so I’m standing before him. He cups my face in his hands. “Nobody else ever felt right for me either.”
He kisses me until I forget my own name. Then he teases me by removing his towel and hanging it up, freeing his burgeoning erection. My mouth actually waters as I watch him walk across the bedroom to his closet.
He glances back at me, chuckling at my reaction. After he dresses, he turns off the TV. “No more television for you.” He sits next to me on the bed. “I’m serious, Mal. You don’t need to be actively seeking that shit out. It’s out there now and we just have to let Kendra deal with it as she knows how.”
I nod thinking of the statement she issued the other day when my name went public. The statement that branded me as ‘a childhood friend and nothing more.’
“Sit by the pool. Work on your tan. I’ll be back by four o’clock and then I’ll join you.” He winks. “This time in full daylight,” he whispers in my ear, sending a shiver down my spine.
Oh! He wants a repeat of last night. When we were under the stars. In the pool. Naked.
He checks his phone. “Cole’s here.” He leans down to kiss me. “Don’t answer the door. Call me if you need me and if I can’t answer, Cole will.”
“Yes, Dad,” I tease.
“There is no way your dad would ever do to you the things I did to you last night.” He laughs.
“Gross,” I say, making a face.
“I’ll see you later,” he says. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I say, almost like it’s an exchange we’ve shared for years. Maybe it has been. Maybe we just never said it out loud.
He stops in the doorway. “I think I like this,” he says looking around his bedroom before his eyes fall back on me. “I think I like this a lot.”
~ ~ ~
After floating around in the pool for an hour and then making a light lunch, I check my phone, replying to a dozen messages from friends asking if I’m Thad Stone’s girlfriend. Friends. I use the term loosely. Some of these people are mere acquaintances who came out of the woodwork when the story broke. I’m beginning to realize why Chad doesn’t have many true friends of his own. You just never know what some people’s intentions are.
Other than his family, Hayden Keys and Ana Garner seem to be the only real friends he has here. We went out to lunch with them on Sunday. Ana is his co-star from Blind Shot and Hayden from Defcon One. But I guess they know each other because they travel in the same circles. Hayden brought Noreen Watkins, who played Chad’s sister in his latest movie. She and Hayden are dating now.
Ana is having a party on Friday, but Chad wanted me to meet them beforehand. We hit it off. Ana is a relative newcomer to show business. Maybe that’s why she seems like just a regular girl. She’s someone I could see Mel and me hanging out with. I even had a thought that Julian might like her. Chad was all over that idea, even going so far as to show Ana a picture of Julian. All in all, it felt like a normal lunch with the exception of the fifteen paparazzi camped outside the restaurant. It’s no surprise how the lunch spurred rumors of Chad dating either or both Ana and me, jilting Courtney once again.
My phone rings and I smile when I see it’s Chad’s mother. “Hi, Jackie,” I answer, still a little uncomfortable using her first name. But she insisted on it when we were there for dinner Monday night.
“Hello, dear. Chad told me the other day how bad he felt knowing you’d be alone most of the day today.”
“Oh, it’s fine. I took a swim. He won’t be gone that long,” I tell her.
“Well, as luck would have it, my afternoon surgery got canceled. I thought I’d swing by and take you shopping. Maybe buy you a dress for Ana’s party on
Friday?”
It would be nice to have a new dress. After all, I’ll be mingling with movie stars. “That would be wonderful,” I say. “But you’re not buying my dress, Jackie.”
“I’m already on my way,” she says, ignoring my statement. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
An hour later, I find myself in another world, being catered to by not one, but two sales ladies as we drink champagne while they present me with dress options. I gulp down a swallow. I shudder to even look at the prices. Actually, I don’t think the dresses even have price tags. Maybe they charge based on what they think you can afford. I wonder if it would be in poor taste to mention I’m just a school teacher.
Jackie really wants me to pick a dark green dress to match my eyes. They show me several and I end up trying on a skin-tight, cleavage-enhancing one and a flowy just-above-the-knee, conservative-yet-alluring one. I model both for Jackie as the sales ladies fawn over me. I break out into a sweat wondering if one of these dresses will breach the limit on my Visa card.
“You look stunning in both of them, Mallory,” Jackie says when I come out wearing the conservative one. “Chad will simply drop dead when he sees you.”
I smile, looking in the mirror thinking about his reaction. I have to admit; I look and feel great wearing it. I twirl around, watching the skirt show off a little more leg.
One of the ladies brings me a pair of black heels with matching green bows on the back that look amazing with the dress. Oh, screw it, I may have to work summer school to pay this off, but it will be worth it. I smile at Jackie. “This is the one,” I say.
She sighs with relief. “Oh, thank God,” she says, leaning back into the leather dressing room sofa. “I know you young girls like those tight dresses, but I still think you should leave something to the imagination.”
I laugh. “I thought you liked the other one.”
“I thought you liked the other one.” She giggles.
“Oh, no. I only tried it on because your eyes lit up when you saw it,” I tell her.
“Wishful thinking, dear. If only I could still fit into something like that. Actually, I’m not sure I ever could.”
“You are gorgeous, Jackie. And you have a lovely figure,” I say. “Chad’s father is very lucky.”
She pulls me in for a hug. “Thank you, dear. I think I’ll keep you.” Then she whispers in my ear so the ladies can’t hear her. “Courtney Benson has nothing on you.”
“You know her?” I ask, a little disappointed that he’s brought other girls to their home for dinner.
“Oh, no. Not really,” she says. “We met one time at his L.A. premiere. That dress you tried on? Hers was barely half of the material.” She shakes her head disapprovingly. “Not to mention she spreads false rumors about my son. She better pray she doesn’t use any of my friends for a nose job—which she needs, by the way—because I might just make sure they don’t have steady hands during her procedure.” She snorts at her own joke. “And just so you know, my son has never brought another woman home to meet us. You’re the one and only.”
I sigh with relief and then I smile. “He’s my one and only, Jackie. I think he always has been.”
“It’s as it should be, Mallory. My son loves you very much. I can tell by the way he talks about you. By the way he looks at you across the room. You are the real thing for him, you know. Trust in that. And don’t let all the hoopla distract you from it.” She holds my arms out by my sides and looks at the dress again. “I hope you know CPR, dear, because his heart will stop for sure. Now go get changed so I can get you home before he even knows you were gone.”
When I’m changing back into my clothes, Chad texts me, telling me he’s going to be about a half hour late but that he’ll make it up to me later, followed by a winky face. I smile as I exit the dressing room. One of the sales ladies puts the dress in a garment bag. The shoes go in their own bag that hangs along the side. “Let me give you my card,” I say.
She waves me off. “It’s been paid for, young lady. Have a good day.”
I shoot a glance to Jackie, who’s waiting for me by the front door with a big Cheshire cat smile. She shrugs. “Get used to it, dear. We Stones take care of our own.”
“Jackie, it’s too much.”
“Hush now,” she says. “You are worth every bit, Mallory Schaffer.”
I smile at her, biting back tears. “I never really got to go shopping with my mom,” I say. “I was always too busy to be bothered with it. But I imagine it would have been a lot like this. Minus the champagne.”
She puts her arm around me. “You were the apple of that woman’s eye, dear. She knew you loved her. You were a teenager. You were supposed to be out gallivanting with your friends. She would have been so proud of the woman you’ve become. Trust me.”
“Thank you,” I say, swallowing the lump in my throat. “And thank you for this.” I hold the bag up. “So, so much.”
“You’re very welcome. Come, let’s get you home.”
~ ~ ~
I stuff the garment bag in the back of his closet, hoping Chad won’t notice it before Friday. Then I realize I still have an hour to kill before he gets home. I pick up my phone and check social media. In hindsight, it probably wasn’t a good idea to do that. I’m bombarded by tons of messages, posts, and tweets—by my supposed friends; the same ones who have recently come out of the woodwork—showing me pictures of Chad and Courtney together. They follow the pictures with sad faces and notes of condolences. I proceed to clean house, blocking, unfriending and unfollowing anyone who chooses to participate in the tabloid heyday. Part of me wants to post the picture I took of us cuddling on the couch yesterday. I want to scream at these people and tell them to mind their own business and quit assuming things are real just because they see a stupid picture.
But I realize I’m probably just taking my frustration out on them. Maybe if I weren’t on the inside, I would believe everything I read, too. I mean, didn’t I for all those years Chad was gone? Granted, he did do a lot of what was printed, but it was made to seem so much worse.
The upsetting thing is that the pictures they’re posting were taken today. I know because Chad is wearing the same light-blue shirt he put on this morning. The pictures show two ‘love birds’ eating lunch together. It’s clear to me they aren’t alone, the table is too big for that, but the picture is cropped to make it look like they are sharing an intimate lunch for two.
He’s working, I know that. But deep down, I can’t help but feel like I’m the dirty little secret hidden away in his house while he’s out living his real life.
I can’t help myself. I do a search of Thad Stone pictures.
Also a monumentally bad idea.
There are hundreds of them. Thousands maybe. Most of them pair him with Courtney or Heather. Although he looks quite a bit younger in the ones with Heather. Wow—Kyle was right, she really does look like me; I never saw that until just now. Chad also is clearly thinner and spaced out in those photos. I’m glad we weren’t close then. It would have broken my heart to see him that way. There are some pictures with a girl named Nikki. My jealously radar peaks at full tilt. Nikki is the last girl he slept with before me. And she lives in New York City. She’s gorgeous. Splendid.
There’s another girl who shows up in several pictures, but there isn’t a name. She’s not insanely thin and beautiful like the others. She cute, with a long blonde ponytail in most of the photos, and I’d say quite a bit younger than he is. She doesn’t even look to be out of her teens. The pictures with her are different than the others. They aren’t so posed. They are more like the pictures I have of me and Chad. Fun. Spontaneous. Casual.
And that’s what scares the hell out of me. That and the fact that it looks like she’s been in his life for a while, at least a few years based on the ages Chad looks in them.
I throw my phone down on the couch. This is not helping. I go to the bedroom and pull a book out of my suitcase and lay down on Chad’s bed to star
t reading.
The next thing I know, I’m being kissed awake by the man who I was just dreaming about. I smile before I even open my eyes. I could get used to this—him coming home to me.
“God, I missed you today,” he says. “Do you know how hard it was to sit in meetings all day knowing you were back here? In my pool. On my bed.” He kisses me again, hovering over me, but not leaning down to put any weight on me. “I’m going to make good on that promise to join you in the pool. I just want to take a quick shower first.”
I draw my brows at him. “You need to shower before going in the pool?”
“Yeah. I was in conference rooms all day. I probably smell like Courtney’s hideous perfume. And some of the producers were smoking.” He kisses my nose and then empties his pockets onto the nightstand. “I’ll only be a few minutes. Why don’t you put on that green bikini of yours? Or better yet—just strip naked and save me the trouble of taking it off you.” He winks on his way to the bathroom.
My body is humming knowing what he has in store for me. How did I ever get so lucky?
I’m trying to decide between nakedness or bikini when Chad’s phone pings with a text. Then it pings again right after. I grab his phone and follow him. “Chad, your phone—” But the toilet flushes followed by the shower turning on. It’ll have to wait.
I go to put his phone down on the nightstand but catch a glimpse of the text. And then my stomach becomes lodged in the vicinity of my throat. The picture of the person who sent the text is the same young blonde ponytail girl from the internet pictures. And her name is Megan. The Megan from his favorites list. The one he said he hadn’t cleared out yet. I know it’s horribly wrong and an invasion of his privacy, however, I can’t help but tap on it and read the conversation as far back as it shows up on the screen.
Megan: I need you, Chad. Please?
The Stone Brothers: A Complete Romance Series (3-Book Box Set) Page 49
