by Kelly Oram
“When you and I first started talking, I’d done a few TV shows and a Disney movie. I was pretty unknown. When I made the jump to teen comedies, everything changed. The fame was crazy. Landing The Druid Prince took my star status from crazy to insane. I can’t go anywhere without being mauled. I don’t have any real friends. Nobody knows how to treat me like a regular person anymore, and I hate it.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before continuing. “You disappeared right as my life started to spin out of control. I didn’t handle it well. Suddenly I had a whole world of friends, but not a single relationship that mattered. I shut down. Stopped caring. By the time you contacted me again, my entire life was superficial. I was basically dead inside—the world’s biggest asshole. That first night we talked again felt like waking up from a foggy dream. You took away the numbness. You made me remember how to feel, how to care about someone other than myself.”
His speech took my breath away. The thought that I could mean so much to somebody, that I could affect someone in such a way, wasn’t just shocking, but overwhelming. My heart pounded in my chest, and butterflies bounced around in my stomach like lottery balls. I had to look away from him before I could regain the ability to speak. “Are all actors so…passionate all the time?” I focused on my water glass as my face heated from embarrassment.
I expected him to laugh at me, but he didn’t. His voice sounded as serious as ever. “When it comes to the things we love, we are.”
Startled, I looked up into his eyes again. The emotion I saw there was indescribable.
“Aside from my mother, you are the only person in my life that matters to me,” he insisted, attempting to penetrate my soul with his gaze. “When I found out you were still alive, I tried to call everything with Kaylee off. I told her I wasn’t going to go through with it. I was going to fly to Boston and tell you who I really was.”
“Seriously?”
Brian nodded. “But Kaylee already had the ring, and she caused this huge scene, acting like I just asked her to marry me. There were people everywhere, people I have to work with and reporters. I was stuck. After that, she blackmailed me into playing along. She threatened to ruin my career and get my father fired from the Cinder Chronicles sequels. She’s evil, Ella, ruthless, and she especially hated the idea of you. I didn’t want to get you involved, but I always planned on explaining everything as soon as I could. We were supposed to ‘break up’ after the awards season was over. I was just trying to wait until then to keep you out of the insanity and away from Kaylee. I didn’t want you to get hurt.”
“Um…” I didn’t even bother to hide how flustered I was. “I suppose you’re forgiven, then.”
Cinder let out a breath. His entire body sagged as relief flooded him from head to toe. He reached his hands out to me again, curling his fingers in a clear “give me” gesture. There was something so vulnerable about him that I couldn’t refuse this time. I gave him only my left hand, knowing I wouldn’t be able to extend my right far enough to reach him. He didn’t seem to notice. He simply took my one offered hand in both of his. His touch felt like fire, even through the satin of my glove.
“I am glad that we met,” he promised. “I’m glad fate stepped in and did what I wasn’t brave enough to do.”
Again, I had no idea how to respond to him. Had it really been fate? Did he actually believe in fate? And the way he was looking at me…
He let go of my hand and sat back when he realized how much he was overwhelming me. In the blink of an eye, he reverted to his calm, casual, playful self. “I have something for you.”
It took a minute for my brain to switch gears with him. By the time I caught up, he was pushing a book across the table to me. I gasped, recognizing it instantly even though I’d never seen it before. It was a first-edition copy of The Druid Prince.
Taking the book with caution, I reverently ran my hand over the cover. It was in good condition yet well worn at the same time, as if its previous owner had cherished it—read it over and over again while taking care not to damage it. I knew that if I opened the front cover I would find it signed to me by L.P. Morgan. It was perfect.
“As soon as I met you earlier, I had my assistant drive to my house to pick this up,” Cinder said as I studied my new treasure. “That’s why I was late. I was waiting for him to get back.”
I pulled the open book to my face and breathed in its rich scent, not caring if the action made me look like a freak. I’d always loved the smell of books.
“Do you remember that day?” Cinder’s voice, nothing more than a whisper now, sounded haunted.
I couldn’t speak above a whisper, either. “Just bits and pieces, but I remember this.”
I flipped to the inside cover and touched the inscription. Even though I’d just met L.P. Morgan for myself this afternoon and had another book with his signature in it, this was different. It was infinitely more special. I swallowed back the emotions that were suddenly threatening to explode from me.
“I was worried giving it to you would remind you of that day, but I really want you to have it.”
I met his solemn gaze with glistening eyes. “I love it. Thank you.”
The moment was broken between us when a young waitress appeared with our food. As she set our plates down, she noticed who was sitting there, hiding beneath his Elven cloak of invisibility. She gasped and nearly dropped Cinder’s plate in his lap. It slipped to the table with a loud clang—embarrassing, but luckily harmless since nothing spilled. The girl was mortified. “I am so sorry, Mr. Oliver! Are you all right?”
Cinder didn’t miss a beat. He flashed her a smile she was likely to dream about for the rest of her life and said, “Ah, no worries. If a girl as pretty as you had taken me by surprise, I’d have done the same thing.”
I suppressed a groan for our waitress’s sake. She ate up the attention like a starving child, and blushed an attractive pink. “Th-thank you, Mr. Oliver. Is there anything else I can get you?”
How strange would it be to have everyone know your name and reduce people to such clumsy, stuttering messes all the time? I could understand why he’d always liked the anonymity of our relationship so much if this was how everyone treated him. I’d only been with him for fifteen minutes, and I already knew I would hate fame.
Cinder glanced at the food on the table and started to shake his head, but then looked at me and changed his mind. “Actually, would you mind taking a picture for us?”
The way the girl’s face lit up, you’d think he just offered to take her home in his Ferrari. “Sure!”
I tried not to smile at how the girl’s hands shook as she accepted the phone. I must have failed to hide my amusement because Cinder gave me a subtle wink. It was no wonder the guy had an ego bigger than the moon.
The girl stepped back to get both Cinder and me in the shot, but before she could take the picture, Cinder got up from his seat and slid into the booth next to me. He threw his arm around me and tucked me snugly into his side.
I stopped breathing.
No, I came completely unglued.
Geez! I was worse than the waitress!
Everything about him flooded my senses. The smell of his cologne—a spicy, musky scent that was one hundred percent yummy, sexy, male—led the assault, followed by the feel of him. He was no longer just an Internet persona. He wasn’t just a face from a movie anymore, either. He was real. He was warm, and strong, and very, very touchable. I clasped my hands together in my lap so that they couldn’t betray me in any embarrassing way.
“Hang on.” Cinder pulled the hood from his head, then eyed mine. “Do you mind if I just…” He didn’t finish his sentence before reaching up to push the cloak off my head. “Don’t want that beautiful face of yours hidden in the picture.”
He fussed with my hair for a minute, smoothing it down. His fingertips grazed my cheek as he tucked a random lock of hair behind my ear. It took everything I had in me not to gasp. “There.” I could hear the pr
ide in his voice. “You’re ready for your close-up, Miss DeMille.”
The play on the famous Gloria Swanson line barely registered with me. My skin was still tingling where he’d touched me. I looked up at him in a daze.
He smiled arrogantly, as though he knew exactly what he was doing to me and liked the effect he had on me. “You didn’t seem so scared of me earlier when you were busy making fun of my pick-up lines and calling my character a coward.”
“You were just Brian Oliver then, and there was a table of space between us,” I murmured, blinking over and over again as if doing so might magically clear the fog from my brain. No such luck.
“I was just Brian Oliver?” With a shake of his head, Cinder laughed—a deep, throaty chuckle that promised trouble. “Only you, Ella.”
Suddenly he ducked his head and put his lips to my ear. When he spoke, his breath blanketed my neck, warm and sensual. It sent a chill through me that raised goose bumps on my arms. “Smile for the camera, Ellamara,” he whispered. “I promise I won’t bite.” But even as he promised this, his teeth gently nipped my ear.
Now I did gasp, and he laughed again. “Not hard, anyway,” he amended.
He leaned back up and winked at me before turning his glowing smile to the girl waiting to take our picture. Her eyes were as big as saucers. I’m not sure whose face was a deeper red—hers or mine.
“Um, are you guys ready, then?”
“Smile pretty, Ella,” Cinder chirped, giving me a gentle squeeze. “This is going to be my new desktop for my computer.”
The waitress kindly waited to take our photo until I broke from my stupor enough to manage a smile. Then she handed the phone back to Cinder and hurried off to the kitchen to relay the story to the rest of the restaurant staff. Her cheeks were still flushed as she disappeared from our sight.
As soon as our waitress was gone, I elbowed Cinder. Hard. “You jerk! I can’t believe you just did that!”
He doubled over, but only because he was laughing so hard.
“I’m not one of your little playthings, you perve! Quit invading my personal space and go back to your side of the table. Your dinner’s getting cold.”
I shoved him and he laughed even harder. He reached across the table and pulled his plate to him—not going anywhere. If anything, his grip on me tightened.
“I didn’t peg you for shy, but I like it. You’re absolutely irresistible when you blush. See?” Grinning, he held his phone up so that we could study the picture. Sure enough, I resembled a tomato. “Look how adorable we are together. It’s the perfect picture for your first Cinder and Ella feature.”
“My what?”
“On your blog.” Cinder took a big, sobering breath. “Remember how you used to do those ‘Up Close and Personal’ posts on your blog whenever you and your mom met a new author?”
For a brief moment my lungs seized up at the memories, but Cinder pulled me tightly into him, and I found I could breathe. His voice turned soft, shifting with our moods. “I had an idea a while ago. I thought that if we ever did meet in person, we could start a new feature on your blog. It would sort of be like your old one, except instead of collecting authors’ autographs in books, we could collect photographs of us with different celebrities.”
Shocked by the thoughtfulness of his idea, I stared up at him. He met my gaze with a sad smile. “I know it wouldn’t replace all the books you lost—nothing could replace those, and I wouldn’t want to try—but I thought maybe you could start a new collection.” He swallowed nervously and added, “With me.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“I could whisk you off to different events or movie sets all over the world and introduce you to the actors of the movies you review. We could call it ‘The Adventures of Cinder & Ella.’ We could even get an artist to draw us as characters for it, like our own comic. That would be so awesome.”
When I didn’t respond, he shifted in his seat and ran his hand through his dark locks. I felt bad for making him nervous, but I was so shocked all I could do was gape at him.
“What do you think?”
“You’re serious?”
“Of course.”
I let out a nervous bark of laughter. “Don’t be ridiculous. That sounds amazing, but I couldn’t let you do all that for me.”
For some reason, his nerves disappeared. His expression softened into something that made my heart flip in my chest. The smile on his face wasn’t one of amusement or even happiness; it was so much more than that. It was as if somehow, by saying no, I’d just made all of his dreams come true. “But that’s just it,” he said. “You can let me do that for you. Any other girl would let me. Hell, most of them would expect me to. But for you, I want to.”
He released his hold on me so that he could turn and face me fully. He took both of my hands in his. “Do you have any idea how much I care for you?”
My stomach lurched up into my chest as he pulled my hands to his lips and kissed my gloved knuckles. “I would take you anywhere, Ella, give you anything you wanted. All you’d have to do is let me.”
It was my wildest fantasy come true. No, it was every girl in the world’s wildest fantasy. Except it was too good to be real. I knew it was. He made it sound so easy, but nothing about either of our lives was that simple.
I pulled my hands from his grip and put a few precious inches of space between us. “What about Kaylee? Need I remind you that, real or not, you have a fiancée right now?”
He shook his head. “That’s done. I ended it the second the meet-and-greet was over. I mean, the media doesn’t know yet, but Kaylee definitely does.” He smirked at a memory. “She was DEFCON 1 level pissed.”
I couldn’t believe it. He’d dumped his supermodel girlfriend for me. My heart was ready to give in, but my brain was screaming all kinds of warnings at me. Talk about DEFCON 1. I was on such high alert the hairs on the back of my neck were standing at attention. I had to keep this logical. “What about your career? You said Kaylee threatened to ruin you.”
Cinder shrugged. “She’ll try her best. She might do a little damage, but nothing I can’t recover from. Nothing that wouldn’t be worth being with you.”
My heart fluttered again. It was winning the wrestling match against my head at the moment. My resolve was crumbling to bits. “And the bosses you talked about?”
“Agents, managers, publicists, lawyers… There’s a whole list of people who control my life.”
That’s what I thought. “You think all those people are going to be happy about you breaking up with your co-star for me?”
Cinder hesitated long enough for me to see the truth he was trying to deny. He glared down at his plate. “We’d be fine.” He sounded as if he were trying to convince himself. “They only wanted Kaylee and me to hook up because it would generate some free press for us and douse some of the flames on my reputation.”
I raised a brow at Cinder and he grinned sheepishly. “In my defense, I only went through so many girls because none of them ever came anywhere close to the only one I really wanted.” He kissed my hand again. “As the world will soon discover.”
Talk about needing to douse some flames, I was tempted to dump my ice water on my face to cool the heat rising from it.
Brian chuckled. “The breakup will be bad news because Kaylee won’t be classy about it, but the public will like the idea of me dating a normal, non-famous girl. The fans will go crazy over it. Our story would get a ton of press. My management team will have to be okay with it.”
Aside from the panic the idea of “getting a ton of press” gave me, I knew his team of people—the ominous They—would never approve of me. The kind of press I’d give Cinder would only hurt him. I didn’t want to harm his career any more than I wanted to expose myself to the world. I was the last person that should ever be in the spotlight.
Cinder started to look excited, but I couldn’t share his optimism. “I don’t think so, Cinder—er, Brian. I’m the last person your people�
��especially your fans—would ever accept.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but I didn’t let him get a word out. I had to say this before I lost the nerve, because he needed to know. He deserved to know. “There are things you don’t know about me, too. Things I never told you, because, like you with your fame, I was afraid of you treating me differently.”
Wariness and determination battled it out on his face as he waited for me to elaborate. I really, really didn’t want to. After having him this close, saying all the things I always dreamed he’d tell me, it was going to kill me when he decided he didn’t want me anymore. And I was under no illusion that he would. How could he—at least, not in the kissing-my-knuckles-and-nibbling-my-ear kind of way?
“Ever since my accident, everyone treats me differently, too. Suddenly I’m that girl. The one everyone stares at and whispers about. I’m the girl with all the baggage. The one whose mom died. The crippled girl with the scars.”
“Crippled?” Cinder jerked in surprise. His eyes swept the length of me and he frowned. He couldn’t see anything wrong.
“Didn’t you notice when I walked away from you after we met at the meet-and-greet?”
His brows scrunched up on his forehead as he tried to remember our earlier encounter. “Things were a little hectic then. I was thrown from having met you at all, and I was trying to pay attention to you and my fans at the same time. Besides, how was I supposed to notice anything except how that guy you were with was all over you?”
I almost snorted. If I weren’t in the middle of something as painful as revealing the truth about myself, I’d have lectured him on the idiocy of jealous, testosterone-filled guys. Instead, I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. “My staff isn’t just a costume prop. Today, it’s doubling as my cane. My friend had it specially made so that I could leave my regular cane at home.”
“You use a cane when you walk?”
I nodded. “The doctors told me it was a miracle when I learned to walk again after my accident. I’m grateful that I can do it, but the action isn’t pretty. My limp is very pronounced and causes me a fair amount of pain. And I’m slow. That’s why I was almost as late as you tonight. It took me that long to walk here from the meet-and-greet. I’m handicapped, Brian.”
