by Lizzie Shane
Hello, PG-13.
She went up on her toes, trying to get closer, leaning her body into his, feeling the lean, wiry length of him against her. She wrapped her arms around shoulders that were surprisingly muscular for someone with such a narrow frame—but then he’d have to be strong if he was Jack’s bodyguard.
Jack’s bodyguard.
Ginny jerked back, her breath coming fast. “Jude.”
He went still at the sound of his name, but didn’t speak. She could feel the tension in him—the same tension that wound her tight and made her want more. So much more. But this was a bad idea and she didn’t live her life by impulse anymore. She wasn’t the wild child who threw herself into life, open to the possibilities. She was the girl trying to pick up the pieces—and he was a guy she’d told far too much on a night when she’d felt far too vulnerable.
“I can’t,” she whispered. As soon as she started to lean away, his arms around her went slack. He kept a hand on her to steady her on the dark, uneven path, but didn’t try to reel her back in. As if he knew as well as she did that this wasn’t anything. Couldn’t be anything. No matter how much she liked him. Or how he kissed.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
She shook her head, then realized he probably couldn’t see it in the dark. “No. That wasn’t something to be sorry for.”
“Ginny… I should tell you…”
Crap. He probably had a girlfriend. Or a wife. Could she pick ‘em or what? “Don’t,” she said quickly, cutting him off when he would have confessed and ruined the lovely little interlude. And it had been lovely. Maybe all the more lovely because it couldn’t follow them into the light. “This was just a moment. Two people on a hill. Let’s not make it anything else.”
She felt more than saw him nod, and then she was moving down the path again, his hand soft on her arm to steady her. She didn’t know how he could see. He was surefooted as a mountain goat, while she felt like she was going to face plant onto a rock and delay filming with a broken nose.
They reached the bottom of the hill and she thought he would drop her arm, but the slightest flex of his fingers pulled her to a stop. There was more light here. Between the street light down the block and the moonlight filtering through the clouds, she could see his face, read his expression and the curious intensity there.
He was looking at her lips.
She knew her line, knew she should say his name, make it a question, but the sound caught in her throat.
He gently touched her face. “Just two people on a hill,” he murmured—and then he was kissing her again.
She’d known he would. Known it would be different than the first kiss. Known it would creep into her, pressing inside to filter into her soul like the moonlight through the clouds. Known it would be sweet and aching and perfect. But somehow the knowing didn’t help her resist the sensation.
She’d never been kissed like this before. Like the entire world had ceased to matter and the only thing that was real anymore was them. This. It was too much.
She pulled away, shaking from a kiss that hadn’t even gotten to second base, and he let her go, putting distance between them. She still hadn’t opened her eyes and she shook her head, trying to dispel the lingering feeling before she looked up—and found him watching her, his gaze making her mouth go dry. How did he do that? Give her goosebumps from a look? He was three feet away and she could feel that look like a touch.
She cleared her throat, trying to find her voice again. “I have to…”
She didn’t know what she had to do, but he nodded as if he understood and half-turned back toward the hotel, waiting for her to join him. She did, without another word, the two of them walking through the quiet night, each lost in their own thoughts.
Or in Ginny’s case, lost in her own feelings. For once not fantasizing about another romance or pretending to be in someone else’s emotions, but lost in her own.
She didn’t know what this was. She didn’t know what it could be. She only knew the man at her side made everything feel real and alive and possible in ways it hadn’t for months. If ever.
They arrived back at the hotel in silence and he walked her to the elevator. They didn’t touch, didn’t speak as they waited for it to arrive, nor when they stepped inside and she pushed the button for her floor. He reached across her to push his own floor number and Ginny held her breath as the doors closed.
She could invite him to her room. Or he could invite her to his. Things didn’t have to end here, with heated awareness crowding into the elevator with them. It could still be just a moment on a hill, but a moment that stretched. She could have this night, take this one thing for herself as she hadn’t dared in months.
The door opened on his floor first and he stepped into the hallway beyond.
“Jude—”
He turned. Their gazes connected. Her breath caught.
Then something resigned flickered over his face. “Good night, Ginny.”
The elevator doors closed before she could figure out what had happened, the box pushing into motion before she could slap the button to open them again. “Damn it,” Ginny snapped, punching the button to return to his floor—but it was too late, the elevator was already rising.
That wasn’t how it was supposed to end, was it?
The doors opened at her floor, but she pushed the number for his repeatedly until they closed again and the elevator began to lumber back down, taking forever to cover two floors, groaning and slow. “Damn it, damn it, damn it. Come on.” Ginny jittered her legs, suddenly filled with wild, pent up energy.
He would still be there. He’d have pushed the button as soon as she left to call the elevator back so he could get to her floor. When the doors opened, he would be there and as soon as he saw her he would reach for her, crowding inside the elevator with her. They wouldn’t even make it to one of their rooms.
She could see the entire thing playing out in cinematic detail. His strong hands, the way he would lift her and she would wrap her legs around his waist as he pinned her to the wall of the elevator and they gave whoever was monitoring the security feeds a show.
The elevator binged. The doors opened.
And the hallway was empty.
“No,” Ginny whispered, stepping out into the hall, looking both ways, in case he hadn’t disappeared inside his room yet, but he was gone. And with him any chance of recapturing that feeling from the hill.
“Damn it.” The words were soft this time, laced with regret.
Ginny stepped back into the elevator and ascended to her floor, part of her hoping he’d run up the stairs and was waiting outside her room—but her hall was empty as well. The brief flicker of a dream was over.
It wouldn’t be the same in the morning. This had been their moment and it was gone.
She unlocked her room and stepped inside, trying to focus on the positive.
At least she hadn’t destroyed her career again today. At least her disappointment was private this time. She’d take her victories where she could get them.
And tomorrow, she’d reconcile with Jack.
Chapter Seven
“Are you sure we shouldn’t warn her? Give her time to prepare something to say?” Jude asked—as he’d been asking in one way or another all morning.
Jack gave him the same response he’d been giving all morning. “Trust me. It’s better if it’s a surprise.”
Better for her or better for the video footage? Jude bit his lip on the urge to ask that as Ruth moved around the suite, setting up the additional cameras they’d brought in to catch every angle of Ginny and Dame Agatha’s reunion.
“Reconciliation doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that should be sprung on someone,” Jude argued.
“This way she doesn’t have the chance to worry about it or make herself nervous,” Jack argued as he moved around the room, pacing behind the publicist as she set everything up.
“Ginny strikes me as the kind of person who would rather b
e prepared.” And she’d flat out said yesterday that she didn’t like surprises.
“Trust me. I know her.”
Do you? Jude barely stopped himself from asking another question that would be all too revealing.
“She’s not a planner, she’s a feeler,” Jack explained. “She’ll love this. It’s cinematic. She loves this stuff.”
Was that who Jack had thought he was dating? Had he been fooled by the red hair? Because Ginny may be impulsive—she definitely had a natural flair for spontaneity—but she was also trying to control her life, trying to be good and restrained and get back on track.
He’d seen all of that last night when she’d pulled away from their last kiss, seen how badly she wanted to bring her impulsive side under control and be the good girl again. Knowing she needed that had been the only thing that had let him walk away.
Well, that and his guilt that she still didn’t know who he was.
“I just think—” Jude began again, but an imperious knock at the door cut him off.
“That’ll be Agatha.” Jack practically rubbed his hands together in his excitement, but Jude couldn’t share his enthusiasm. He didn’t think Ginny would be as delighted by the ambush reconciliation as Jack seemed to believe.
Jack opened the door, ushering in Jude’s father’s eldest sister, the woman who had been an icon of the stage and screen for forty years.
“Agatha.”
“Jack, darling.”
Jack and Agatha greeted one another with Hollywood effusiveness as the publicist circled to get a better shot, careful to stay out of the line of the other cameras she’d set up. Jude waited until his aunt had finished doing the obligatory gushing before stepping forward to greet her.
“Agatha.”
“Jude.” She smiled. Reviewers described her as regal. Commanding. With a presence that was as powerful as it was feminine. The matriarch of the silver screen. But Jude had always seen the other side too—the woman who worked herself to exhaustion to deliver that commanding image. The woman who let so few people in and worried about losing her place in the world, even as she always seemed so poised and confident. “It’s been too long. You’ve been spending too much time in Los Angeles.”
He bent down to hug her. “I can’t keep up with you—filming in Mumbai one day and Budapest the next. Besides, L.A. is where the stories are.”
“Except when they’re here, apparently.” Her brow arched as she released him. “Libertyville.”
“Thank you so much for coming all this way,” Jack interjected. “This will mean the world to Ginny.”
“Agatha, about that,” Jude began, “Ginny doesn’t know what…”
He trailed off as he realized no one was paying attention to him. All eyes were fixed behind him. Jude turned—and saw that the door hadn’t closed after Agatha came in. The guest of honor stood frozen in the doorway, a look of blank horror on her face.
Agatha was the first to speak into the silence. “Hello, Genevieve.”
She should have expected this. It was exactly the kind of thing Jack would do. He’d probably pictured them hugging and making up—on camera, no less. Jack waved his magic wand and Ginny’s career was restored—like people had been waving their magic wands for him his entire life. It had probably never occurred to him that things could possibly go any other way. That Dame Agatha might not want to forgive her. That this might only make things worse.
Ginny was dimly aware of the cameras filming her reaction from every angle. She knew she should speak. Agatha had said hello to her. She should say something back, but her throat was closing off and all she could hear was the dull ringing in her ears.
This wasn’t how this was supposed to happen. She was supposed to have a speech prepared. And maybe a gift. A peace offering. She’d tried sending flowers immediately after The Tape. She’d written a beautiful apology on the card. Dame Agatha had never replied, her silence saying everything that needed to be said.
She had to say something. Anything. But instead Ginny felt her body turning, as if it belonged to someone else, and then she was running down the hall.
“Ginny!”
It was Jude’s voice. Jude’s footsteps chasing her down the hall.
“Ginny, wait.” He caught her before she reached the elevator, stopping her with a hand on her arm. “Let me explain.”
She spun to face him. “Explain? Do you have any idea how shitty I’ve felt for the last six months? She was my idol. And you guys just, what? Brought her here so she could even the scales and tell me off to my face—”
“That isn’t what this is,” he interrupted before she could get going. A couple stepped out of a room down the hall and Jude tugged her into an alcove, lowering his voice so they had the illusion of privacy. “Come back. Give this a chance. I promise she isn’t a bad person. I sincerely doubt she wants to even the score.”
“Because you know Dame Agatha Kelly so well?”
He winced. “Actually, she’s my aunt.”
“Your…” It wasn’t computing. Nothing was computing.
“I asked her to come, but not so we could blindside you. That was Jack. I think he thought it would be some dramatic movie moment. That you would love it.”
It made sense. She’d told him that. Back when they were dating. That she loved those moments. The juicy drama.
Her brain slowly chugged through the rest of his revelations, trying to fit the pieces together. “That’s why you’re here. You aren’t a bodyguard.”
He cringed again. “I’m not. In fact—”
“Mr. Law?” A female voice called from the hallway.
Jude’s head turned toward the sound, but he didn’t step out of the alcove and reveal them.
“Law? Your name is Jude Law?” He was younger than the actor by at least a decade. He’d probably been chased around by that comparison his entire life. He couldn’t possibly publish under his own name…
She felt the blood draining away from her face. “No…”
“Ginny…” It was the miserable expression on his face, as much as anything, that clued her in.
“You’re him. You’re J. Harrison Law.” He lowered his gaze, not denying it, and Ginny felt something sick shudder through her. “Oh my God.”
“Ginny…”
“Mr. Law?” The girl—Jack’s assistant, the one with the cameras—appeared suddenly at the mouth of the alcove, freezing when she saw them. “Oh. I’m sorry.”
It wasn’t until the girl blushed that Ginny realized Jude—J. Harrison Law—was still holding her arms, the two of them as close as lovers.
She shoved him back, hard enough that they both stumbled. She pushed past the gaping assistant to flee down the hall again, determined to make it to the elevator this time, but Jude’s hand closed on her arm again—the same arm he’d held so carefully last night as they were picking their way down that hill.
She whirled on him, flinging him off. “Don’t touch me!”
He lifted both hands, palm up—still so close, his face so earnest… and suddenly Ginny didn’t want to escape anymore. She wanted to scream.
“Was that on the record last night?” she snapped. “Is that how you get your stories?”
“Of course not. Last night wasn’t about a story—”
“Wasn’t it?”
Suddenly everything she’d said to him, everything she’d said around him, took on new meaning. The things she’d told him… about Jack. About her mother. Her stomach roiled. God, what all had she said? She couldn’t remember. From the first moment, when she’d bumped into him outside her dressing room—why had he been so close? Had he been eavesdropping even then?
“Is that what you do?” she demanded. “You make people feel like they can trust you and then expose their deepest darkest secrets? I always thought it was Lindsey who approached you to sell the tape, but did you teach her how to do it? How to get me to trust her?”
“I had nothing to do with the tape being recorded. If my source gathere
d the audio without your knowledge, I had no way of knowing—”
“Oh please. You had to know I didn’t know I was being recorded. You aren’t an idiot. You could tell I was just venting in a trailer. You knew and you posted it anyway—”
“It was all legal—”
“Oh, I know. My lawyer explained that I didn’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy given the fact that it was a public make-up trailer and not my dressing room. Does that help you sleep at night?”
His expression was miserable, but that only made her angrier. What right did he have to be upset? “I thought I was defending Agatha—”
“And last night? Was that about defending your aunt too?”
He cringed, reaching for her. “Ginny…”
“Stay away from me.” She slapped his hands away. “I can’t believe this. Mr. Connor. God, he even worked for Spy magazine in the movie, didn’t he? I can’t believe I fell for that.” She couldn’t believe she’d fallen for him. What a fool she’d been.
“I should have said something last night—”
“Oh? You think?”
“That wasn’t about the tape—”
“It was for me.” She could barely breathe through the anger blinding her. Last night had been the first night in forever that she’d felt like herself. He’d done that. And then he’d ruined it. “I’m constantly censoring myself. Constantly questioning myself. Did you know that? Ever since the tape. I don’t trust myself to say anything because the one time I let loose and bitched, the entire world heard me. And they hated me for it. I know I shouldn’t have said it in the first place. I was petty and ugly and hurtful and I know I made a mistake, but can you say the same? Do you even know what you did when you posted that tape?”
“I didn’t,” he admitted. “But then I met you. Ginny…”
“Stop. Just stop. We’re done here.”
“Ginny, please.”
