“And you got to make out with her, and thus the acting bug bit,” she summarized, her fingertips absently tracing patterns on his chest and stomach, light and fluttery.
“Actually, no,” he said. “She wound up hooking up with the lead, who knew quite a bit more than I did. And I’d committed to being Mercutio, which had a lot of talking and was really hard. But I liked it. Which was weird.”
She lifted her head, looking into his eyes. “Then what?”
“I told my mom. I wanted her to come see me,” he said. “She used to be a makeup artist in Hollywood, working with actors. That was before I was born, and before she’d moved to San Diego. Anyway, I thought she’d be proud.”
“Was she?”
“She slapped me.”
“She what?” Hailey’s hand jerked against him. “Why?”
“You have to keep in mind: I didn’t know who my father was,” Jake said. “That’s why I don’t go by Jake Windlass. She was still pretty pissed at him. He’d been having an affair with her while he was married to his last wife, and having affairs with a bunch of other people, as well. She didn’t even put his name on the birth certificate.”
Hailey was quiet, thoughtful. The tracing fingers continued.
He sighed. “Anyway, after all that, she moved out of L.A., even though she was a decent makeup artist and was building up a clientele and a solid reputation. She told me that she didn’t want that life for me. She apologized for slapping me, though,” he added. “She never hit me otherwise.”
“So you did the play,” Hailey prompted.
He took a deep breath, feeling almost high on her scent—spice, night-blooming jasmine, the sexy scent that was pure Hailey. “I did the play,” he echoed. “And yeah, I was bit by the acting bug. I wound up joining the drama club, and working with my high school teacher on monologues and stuff. Then I turned sixteen. I was working out a little more—that was for girls, not acting—and eating everything that wasn’t nailed down. And then I turned into . . .” He gestured at himself.
Hailey rolled over, resting her chin on his chest so she could grin at him. “Bet Juliet regretted not making out with you then, huh?”
“Don’t worry. We made up for it,” he said, grinning back. “For a while, girls eclipsed any acting aspirations. But I still wanted to give it a try. My mom was still leery, so I took a ride with a friend and went to an audition in LA. The casting director took one look at me, and freaked. Then, apparently, called my father, saying that I was a dead ringer.” He was quiet a minute, remembering. “Dad called me that week, came down to San Diego and visited. From there, he started . . . well, butting into my acting life.”
She looked somber. “What about the rest of your life?”
“There is no non-acting life when it comes to Kurt Windlass,” Jake said. “I’m not . . . bitter, or at least I’m trying not to be. But my dad’s whole life is acting, being a successful actor. When he found out about me . . .”
“He didn’t know about you?”
“My mom never told him.”
He’d never told anybody about this. Not his friends, not girlfriends . . . nobody. Why he was telling Hailey—a professed con artist, for God’s sake, somebody he might not even see again after this week—baffled him. Maybe it was the anonymity. Maybe it was just stupidity.
Whatever it was, it felt right.
“Anyway, from then on, he took an interest. He immediately claimed me, and strongly condemned my mother for not letting him know. I would’ve kicked his ass for it,” he said, “but he gave her a ton of money to keep quiet, and he explained: it was for publicity. Otherwise, it would lash back on my career. My mom told me to go along with it.”
“That’s why you hate lying,” Hailey said softly. “Why you hate publicity that’s set up.”
He nodded. “Probably. It definitely factored in. For the past nine years, he’s tried pulling strings. He’s the one who got me my agent. He hired the publicist—the one I mentioned before.”
“Sounds like he’s genuinely interested in making your career a success,” she said, but her tone was careful—like she wanted to say something else. Her eyes were a little bit suspicious.
Jake stroked her petal-soft cheek. “He only has daughters.”
“Sorry?”
“I have six half sisters,” Jake said. “And I’m his doppelganger. That was the thing that got the casting agent’s attention, all those years ago. I was the spitting image of my dad.”
“Oh.” Hailey nodded. “Hence the interest. You’re Mini-Kurt.”
Jake blew out a breath. “Basically, I guess.”
“Sorry,” Hailey repeated. “It sucks. But at least he cares, in maybe a narcissistic way.”
“He plays the part,” Jake said, and it was like the floodgates of bitterness opened. “He plays the caring, gruff, hardass father, the one who knows what’s best for me. When he was with my mom, he played the attentive lover. He plays for the paparazzi. He plays for studio heads. I don’t even know if there’s a real person behind all the angles anymore. And that’s what he wants me to turn into.”
Hailey watched him, thoughtfully. She pressed a kiss against his chin. “He doesn’t know what he’s missing,” she said softly.
It warmed him, more than anything else she could’ve said. “Sometimes, he accuses me of picking the sci-fi projects and TV shows just to rebel against him, to choose a different way. Hell, I don’t even think he’s wrong. I don’t want to pick movie roles because they’re going to move me up the ladder. I don’t need a ton of money, I do fine. I just want to do stuff I enjoy, and still have time for a life of my own, you know? I don’t want to become fake.”
“Like him.”
“Like him,” Jake agreed. “He’s whored himself to Hollywood, and now, it’s all he cares about. The next acting gig. Moving up to director. Staying on the list of the most powerful people in Hollywood. I don’t want to be like that.”
He stroked her back, hugging her, snuggling her to him. Just taking comfort in her warmth and her presence and her listening.
“So . . . what were you doing when you were fifteen?” he joked, trying to shift the conversation.
“Going to juvie.”
He dropped his smirk immediately. She’d mentioned juvie before. He held his breath, not wanting to do anything that might distract her or have her pull back self-consciously.
“My mom died when I was seven,” she said, almost like she was bored—something that the almost anxious look in her eyes belied. “I got popped into the foster system, because nobody knew if she had any family anywhere. I didn’t even know I had any living relatives. I was lucky enough to get placed with a couple on the grift. That’s where I learned conning.”
She gave him a little wobbling smile. He put both arms around her, stroking her back.
“They’d been really good, once upon a time. They were in their fifties. Frank was a big deal in the eighties, running long cons on coked-up businessmen. Abigail was this hourglass Amazon who used to be the best pickpocket on the West Coast. But after years of hard partying, and the recession in the nineties, then Abigail started getting arthritis . . . they were in a bad patch. So they got me.”
Jake felt his stomach turn to frozen lead. “To . . . sell?”
“What? No. God, no,” she said, and he started breathing again, warmth slowly seeping back into his system. “I was their distraction. Lost kid, giving her a chance to pick purses. That kind of thing. When I turned out to be good with cards, they would sometimes take me to poker games to show off—again, while Abigail cleaned them out while they were busy watching me.” She paused. “You know, she’s the one that got me into dressing the way I do. That’s how she dressed when we worked a con. I always thought she looked like a badass.”
“She dressed like that?” he asked, surprised enough to interrupt. “But it’s so . . . obvious!”
She grinned. “That’s the idea. Memorable. But a character,” she pointed out. “When we wen
t out as normal people, she looked completely different. Nobody knew what she really looked like, and they certainly didn’t connect her with police descriptions.”
“So it was a disguise,” he mused.
Suddenly, it occurred to him: that’s why she wore it. It was distraction. No one knew who the real Hailey was. And it made her feel like a badass: strong, undefeatable.
It was armor.
“They sound like they cared about you,” he said instead.
“In their own way,” she acknowledged. “But I knew the score, too. I was there till I turned eleven. Frank had tried this check scheme that went bad, so they had to run. They left me behind, so I got popped back into the system.”
He must’ve made a sound, because she looked at him, shaking her head.
“I still ran a few things as I got shuffled to more houses, more families, even a group home at one point.”
“Why did you keep moving?”
“The usual. I’d run away if things looked too sketchy, or they were too restrictive,” she said, her voice casual . . . at odds with the bleakness she was painting. “One family actually put a lock on the fridge, so we couldn’t eat without permission. We were hungry all the time, and they had like four fosters. It was insane. They kicked me out when I got picked up by the cops—I was trying to run the ‘I need money to get home’ grift, but I was still too young, and I couldn’t get away before some concerned Samaritan called child protective services. Anyway, when I was fourteen, I met Cressida. We were both fostered in the same house, with the same monster.”
Jake felt his blood run cold. Hailey’s expression didn’t change. She might’ve been telling him about a TV show she’d watched.
“Anyway—he hit us. Locked Cress in a closet, which was ironic, since small spaces are the only places she felt safe,” Hailey said. “Cressida was supposed to be homeschooled because of the agoraphobia. I can’t tell you her story, but actually, as fucked up as it got, the guy was actually a step up from when she was a kid. It became pretty obvious that he wanted to keep Cressida—like, past when she turned eighteen. He saw her as a cross between a slave and a pet. Cressida was the first person I trusted without reservation. She was my sister in all the ways that counted. And when I saw what was going to happen to her . . .”
Now, Hailey’s eyes blazed like a butane torch.
“I wasn’t going to let it.”
Jake clutched her involuntarily. “That was what you were talking about, at the hotel. Facing somebody with a weapon.”
“One night, he was drunk. Angry, because Cressida had dropped a fifth of bourbon and he was out. He came at her with the broken bottle. I got between them.”
Jake held his breath.
“He passed out drunk before he could do anything worse. But it cemented it—we had to get out. We needed a lot of money in a hurry, so we could not only get out, but stay out of the system altogether. So I tried doing a big con.”
“And you got busted?”
She nodded, then rubbed her cheek against him. “It was bad. I was a mess. Turns out the rich people I tried to fleece did a full background search on me. They knew more about me than I did.” She chuckled mirthlessly. “But something happened. They found my grandmother—and she found me.”
“Was Grandma Frost your real grandmother?” he asked.
She smiled. “Yes. The first adult that really looked out for me,” she said. “She took me in, no questions. Got the lawyer that helped reduce my sentence and get my record sealed. And when I freaked out and told her I couldn’t leave Cressida, she figured out how to take Cressida with us.”
He pressed a tiny kiss against her temple, grateful for her grandmother—and for the stroke of luck that brought her, and her sister, to this place.
“And the rest is history,” Hailey finished. “This is home.”
She yawned again, her voice turning to a whisper.
“I’ll do whatever I have to, to keep her here. To stay here.”
And just like that, she was asleep.
He sighed, pushing another rogue curl away from her face. In sleep, without the harsh edge of her attitude animating it, her face was unguarded, gentle . . . tired.
How long had she been exhausted, working two jobs? Worrying about the bookstore, and her sisters?
He pulled the blanket out from under him, folding it over her like a taco. Then he threw on sweatpants and stretched out next to her.
She turned him on, but there was just so much more to her. He wanted to know all of it.
If she’ll let me.
He ought to be more focused on the contract. Susie was emailing PDFs of scripts for movies and shows he should audition for. She was pushing, telling him to focus on his career. It made no sense that he was sticking with this one series, pulling out all the stops. And it definitely made no sense that he was fixating on a coffee shop waitress/blackjack dealer that he probably wouldn’t see again once he left the convention.
His chest hurt.
It didn’t have to make sense, he thought, stretching out next to Hailey and putting a gentle arm around her waist, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead. He was here, now, and he’d make the most of it.
Chapter 8
Hailey woke up in a rush. Light was coming in—she’d pulled the blinds, but hadn’t closed the black-out curtains, she realized. Beyond that, though, something was just wrong. It took her a minute to figure out what, though.
She was in her room. That wasn’t unusual. But she realized she should not have been in her room. She was supposed to be in Cressida’s room, on Cressida’s floor. Not . . .
Oh, fuck. She’d fallen asleep. Here. With him.
Jake.
Which brought up wrong, number two: Where the hell was Jake?
She bolted up out of bed and headed out the door. The bathroom was empty. What the hell time was it? And where the hell was he? Had he left?
It might be better if he left, actually. She couldn’t remember anything about actually falling asleep with him the night before. They’d been talking about things she never talked about with anyone outside of her family, not even the close friends she’d made. It was strangely intimate. Most of the guys she hooked up with . . . well, it wasn’t like there was a lot of conversation going on there, beyond logistics and things like “more,” “harder,” or “my leg is cramping, switch positions.”
Last night, she may have snuggled with Jake, just a little, smelling his clean, masculine scent, enjoying his body heat, listening to the low rumble of his voice. Was it any wonder she’d fallen asleep, surrounded by that kind of hypnotic comfort?
She heard voices coming from downstairs. Male voices. Jake was still here. Must be talking to the bodyguard.
She knocked on Cressida’s door, thinking to warn her that their guests were up. Also, she wanted to explain about not showing up the night before.
And that she hadn’t slept with Jake.
Well, she had, but it was only sleep.
God, Hailey, you are a mess. Get it together!
“Cress?” she said quietly, knocking again. She realized Cress might’ve had a hard time sleeping with strangers in the house—she might still be asleep, with headphones on. Better to let her sleep.
She headed downstairs, peeking. Nobody in the store. There were sheets neatly folded on the couch. She thought she heard argumentative voices. Was that Jake’s voice rising? And . . . Cressida?
She bolted before she even thought about it.
“Are you kidding?” Jake said, hooting. “That movie is terrible. Seriously. It’s like one of the worst movies in the history of bad movies.”
“That’s what makes it so good!” Cressida said. She wasn’t angry, Hailey realized. She was giving as good as she got—and they were talking about entertainment. “Back me up, Hales. Tell this heathen that Buckaroo Banzai is a classic for a reason.”
“John Parker, baby,” Hailey responded immediately. “And Yoyodyne.”
“But it sucks,” J
ake said, with baffled laughter.
Hailey rolled her eyes. “See? This is why you have no geek cred.” She high-fived Cressida, feeling relief flood through her.
The bodyguard was sitting there, looking long-suffering but vigilant. He had an unnerving intensity. Probably why he was a bodyguard, she thought. Then she realized her own state of dishevelment. “I, um, ought to go get changed.”
“Yeah, maybe you should,” Jake said, although he didn’t really look like he minded, either. His gaze on her was warm.
She motioned to Cressida, who followed her. “Sorry about last night,” Hailey said, feeling embarrassed.
Cressida just looked amused. “What happened?”
“We were talking, and I guess I just fell asleep.”
Cressida’s eyes widened. “Really? That’s it?”
“Yeah.”
“You just . . . slept with him,” Cressida repeated slowly.
“I guess I was more tired than I thought.”
“And you were okay with that.”
“I don’t always have to have sex with a guy, you know,” Hailey said, feeling a little stung. “I mean, he’s hot, but I don’t bring sex home. There was no way I was getting my freak on in Grandma Frost’s house.”
“No, I didn’t think you would,” Cressida said, worrying at her lip with her teeth. “But you kind of trust this guy, huh?”
“What? No!” That hit Hailey like a slap out of nowhere. “I don’t even . . . I barely know him.”
“You brought him home,” Cressida pointed out.
“He didn’t have anywhere else to go,” Hailey argued, even though some part of her thought that they could’ve figured something else out.
“You trust him,” Cressida repeated. “That’s not a bad thing, trusting people. Trusting men.”
Now Hailey goggled. Cressida, who trusted nearly no one? Really?
“I want you to be happy,” Cressida said, connecting the dots for her. “I just . . . I don’t want you to get hurt, is all.”
Hailey’s jaw dropped. “I’m not falling in love with the guy, for God’s sake,” she said. “I don’t believe in instalove in books, movies, and certainly not in my own damned personal life. This is . . . it’s a business transaction, basically.”
One True Pairing: A Geek Girl Rom Com (Fandom Hearts) Page 16
