by Zoe York
I crossed the yard and calmed myself during the course of the long walk. I was being ridiculous. Ryan was just being helpful and friendly, and my years-long movie-star crush was clouding my brain and making me believe there was something more to it. It had been months since I’d dated, and longer since I’d actually done anything more than kiss someone—if that ridiculous desperate kiss I’d let Tony get one night at the local bar counted.
As far as I was concerned, it didn’t.
And kissing Tony, a guy I’d known as long as I’d known myself basically, was not anything that should be put in the same realm as kissing Ryan. Not that I’d kissed Ryan.
My sister’s new boyfriend.
Oh God.
My body was clearly just going haywire after abstaining from sex for so long. I took some deep cleansing breaths as I pushed open the barn door and pulled the utility cart from where it leaned against the wall. As I attached it to the back of the small John Deere tractor, I was feeling better.
Work. I just needed to do some work.
This was my life. Work and home, me and Gran. There was nothing else—
“What can I do?” Ryan’s deep voice rolled through the dusky interior of the old barn, and my stomach tightened again, my blood heating immediately. So much for my newfound calm. He’d changed into loose-fitting shorts and a T-shirt, and had running shoes on and a cap on his head. He looked sporty and athletic, and I had an irrational urge to climb him and wrap myself around those broad strong shoulders.
I cleared my throat and stood, “Hi.”
He grinned and my heart shot off in a crazy double-time rhythm as my palms slicked with sweat suddenly.
Fucking chemistry.
“Um. Yeah. So.” Since words were not working for me, I pointed across the space to where the tables and chairs were all stacked and hung on pegs against the wall. We’d once rented the property’s grounds out for weddings, and we still had all the tables and chairs in here, so I’d planned to use them for Gran’s party. But maybe I should have let the catering company get this all set up, as Juliet suggested. It was going to be a big job.
Ryan crossed the space and pulled a half-round table from the front of the stack. His muscles bulged and strained with the effort, and I was having a tough time breathing, even though I was only watching.
“Crap,” I muttered under my breath, angry at my traitorous brain, which wouldn’t stop suggesting ways I might get just a bit closer, maybe run my hand along one of those muscly muscles.
Juliet’s, I reminded myself. He is Juliet’s.
“Here,” Ryan dropped the table into the cart attached to the tractor and grinned at me. I could watch this all day, I thought, my breath shallow and all the blood rushing through me heading directly for the places I wished I could rub up against this man.
“Good, thanks.” I swallowed hard and forced my feet to move toward him while I kept my inappropriate impulses under control. I’d agreed Ryan could help me; he hadn’t volunteered to move all the furniture himself while I stood nearby drooling and panting. I went to help, and together we hoisted six tables into the cart, filling it completely.
“You drive this thing?” Ryan asked, running a hand over the tractor’s steering wheel.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s the easiest way to move things around the property.”
“I’ve always wanted to drive a tractor,” he said, looking impressed.
“You can drive if you want. It’s not hard.” I showed him how to get the engine going with his foot on the brake, and which pedal would move him forward.
He gunned it toward the door of the barn and hooted. “You coming?” He called over the noise of the engine. Ryan McDonnell was full of surprises. I’d never seen anyone excited over driving a tractor, but the guy looked like he was getting to take the best rollercoaster at the amusement park.
“I’ll walk and meet you over there.” I shot him a questioning look. There was only room for one on the seat.
“Get in back!”
It wasn’t a good idea—the tables could shift around and there was barely anything to hold on to, but his smile had me making questionable decisions. I climbed on top of the tables in the cart and grabbed the sides as Ryan gunned the tractor again, pulling us out of the barn and across the wide expanse of lawn to the huge white tent the catering company had erected the day before. A silly smile covered my face as we bumped across the yard, and giggles flew from me as Ryan swerved around, clearly enjoying the drive. I felt like a little kid again, holding on for dear life.
He was hollering and laughing, and I was reminded of the way I’d felt suddenly when he’d asked for milk the night before. Like he was a guy who didn’t feel he had to be a grownup all the time. Like he knew how to have fun. When he switched off the engine in front of the tent, I was still laughing, and it helped ease some of the strange tension I’d been feeling around this man.
This movie star.
This hot new boyfriend of my sister’s.
We unloaded the tables and popped them up, not worrying too much about where they got placed. The caterers would arrange things. I headed back to the door of the tent when we were done. Ryan had gone out a second before, and I shot a final glance over my shoulder at the space to make sure it was all still intact after sitting out here all night. I should have been looking where I was going, because I bumped into a solid form in the doorway. Ryan had been standing there, watching me.
“Woah,” he laughed, his hands catching me by the arms, steadying me.
Walking while looking in the other direction was not one of my advanced-level skills, evidently.
I spun, and suddenly I was two inches away from him, his hands on my arms and our faces close enough that I could feel his breath on my forehead. All the rushing blood and butterflies I’d managed to banish while we’d been setting up tables came slamming back into me, making me feel giddy and warm.
“Sorry. Thanks,” I breathed. My mind spun deliriously, but at the same time, a calm overtook me—a focused calm that had me staring at Ryan’s lips, feeling them pull me near despite my best intentions.
He stared at me, his blue eyes darkening and something in his face changing from a question to an answer.
His hands slid from my arms to my waist, his big fingers wrapping around me, his thumbs slipping low over my belly. Warmth spread through me at his touch, and those intense blue eyes burned as they stared into mine.
As if in a dream, he angled his head down slowly until our lips were centimeters apart.
I didn’t breathe. I didn’t move. I didn’t think.
Until I did.
I took a step back, forcing my body out of his reach, away from the magnetic pull of his orbit. This was not some fantasy. Ryan was my sister’s boyfriend, and my sister had been hurt enough. Plus, I was about as far from my sister as a guy could get. No one was interested in us both. It didn’t happen. Which meant I was definitely losing my mind.
I narrowed my eyes at Ryan. He hadn’t been about to kiss me, clearly. Had he? What the hell was happening?
I took a deep breath. “I’m uh …” I could barely form words. I shook my head. “Okay, well. Thanks,” I pushed past him out the door and seated myself on the tractor. I needed to escape, get some space to think and regain control of my traitorous body. I’d just started the engine when I felt the whole machine jolt beneath me. Ryan had jumped into the cart and he was grinning again.
With no idea what the hell had just happened, I engaged the gas and drove us back to the barn. We spent the next hour loading chairs and running them across the lawn in the tractor. Neither of us mentioned the strange moment in the doorway or said anything else, and I pointedly kept my eyes and body focused in one direction to keep from crashing into him again.
By the time we finished up and Ryan told me he’d meet me in the kitchen to bake the cake after he took a quick run, I had almost convinced myself I’d imagined the whole thing.
And I hoped I had, because if I
hadn’t imagined it, that meant I’d almost kissed my sister’s boyfriend, and my sister didn’t need anyone else in her life being shitty at the moment. It would also mean her boyfriend had almost kissed me.
And that was pretty shitty too.
Chapter 7
Ryan
I ran along the road leading back out of the Manchester property, my mind reeling. On one hand—the primal side of me that had just been close to kissing a woman I had a very chemical attraction to—I was stoked.
Being close to Tess was heady and exciting, and imagining her body beneath my hands, her sharp wit and sparkling eyes close to me, it only made me want so much more of her. There was something intense and old and complicated in the air around me and Tess, something demanding to be explored.
But on the other hand, I’d made a commitment to her sister. And while the relationship was fake, my promise was not. I was a man of my word in a world where those seemed pretty rare. I wanted to be a man of honor, even if everyone else in the world thought that was old fashioned.
Even if our game of pretend was stupid, there was something in it for me. And blowing this would mean potentially blowing my chance at reinvigorating my flagging career, and gaining the financial security I needed to take care of my father. And exposing Juliet to the ugly rumors and speculation that had surrounded her since her sudden divorce. That didn’t seem very honorable.
My feet beat a steady rhythm down the unfamiliar road as my heart and lungs pounded along. Lush greenery arched overhead, and a surprising variety of critters scattered as I passed—fat little groundhogs nosing at the edges of the road, more birds than I’d ever be interested in identifying, rabbits hopping beneath the towering trees, and a few deer who paused in the road to watch me approach before loping gracefully into the protection of the dense woods beyond. I was completely charmed by Maryland. I’d thought this backwoods location might be boring, but instead it was full of surprises.
Not the least of which was Tess Manchester.
I continued down the road, picking up my pace until my mind could do little but focus on the run. Sweat trickled over my skin and my lungs screamed, and finally I reached more water—by way of a wooded property that led to a sloping sandy beach at the end of the road. I stood for a time on the beach, watching the water lap at the shore as the sun reflected off the liquid surface in flashing diamonds.
By the time I’d returned to the big house, I’d settled with myself. I had to behave myself while we were here, and that meant being true to Juliet and our arrangement. But I also planned to get to know Tess—through conversation only—in an effort to see what this thing was that was undeniably between us. I’d follow the rules, which would mean ignoring the driving demands of instinct every time I was near Tess, but I could do that. I might have decided this once before, but this time I meant it.
I could absolutely do that. Besides, I was not about to break a promise. I knew too well what it felt like to have promises broken, and I wasn’t going to do that to anyone else.
I let myself back into the big house, nodding at the security guards stationed by the door.
“Hey,” one of them said, stopping me from walking right by.
“Hey,” I replied, turning to smile at the guy. He looked a bit like a regular guy until you noticed the muscles bulging beneath the dark T-shirt he wore. “It’s Jace, right?”
He nodded, and leaned his head toward the other guy. “That’s Chad.”
“Thanks for being here, guys. Looking out for us.” I wasn’t used to round-the-clock security, but it felt weird to just accept their presence and not acknowledge it.
“We’re here for Juliet,” Jace said, his voice deep and a little bit terrifying.
“Right, yeah,” I said, feeling sheepish now. I hadn’t been implying that I was so important they were here for me. But I wasn’t surprised these goons thought I was just another entitled Hollywood asshole. “Just… thanks.”
Jace sighed, and Chad muttered, “any time.” Then Jace said, “Juliet was looking for you a while ago.”
Worry pricked inside me that I might be messing up on my promise already, and I thanked Jace and hurried through the door.
I went upstairs to shower and to find Juliet. She was in the room across the hall, pacing and talking into her phone. I waved and pantomimed that I was going to shower. And I should say here, that while I am an excellent actor, a shower pantomime is particularly difficult.
She wrinkled her nose at me, her eyebrows dipping over those gray-blue eyes. “What?” she mouthed.
I upped my shower-acting game, picking up an imaginary bottle of shampoo, squeezing a bit into my hand and then washing my hair, whistling all the while.
See? I can act, no matter what the critics say.
Her eyes cleared in understanding and she smiled, mouthing, “got it.”
When I was done, I went back to her room to see what she’d needed while I’d been out running, but her door was closed. I considered knocking—we were definitely nowhere near the just-barge-in stage. But I wasn’t sure a closed door was really an invitation. I raised my hand to rap my knuckles on the wood, but I thought I heard her moan softly in the room beyond, and my heart went out to her. Was she crying? She’d had a rough time lately. If she was taking a nap, or even having a cry, she definitely deserved it, and I wasn’t going to interrupt.
I wandered down to the kitchen, and I felt the smile cover my face and work its way through the rest of me when I spotted Tess at the counter, wrapped in a pink apron and leaning on her forearms on the counter watching a YouTube video about making big cakes.
She had gotten out a few oversized pans, and they were lined up on the counter.
“We better prepare these bad boys,” I told her.
I saw her shoulders stiffen as she pressed pause on the video and straighten up. She turned to me with a grin that actually made my knees wobble, then looked back at the lined-up pans, lifting a finger to shake at them. “Okay, pans. Here’s what’s going to happen. First, we’re putting cake batter in you and you’ll need to hold it all inside, okay? Then we’ll be sticking you in a hot oven and hoping for the best. This is going to be an important cake, so don’t mess it up.”
I stifled the laugh that wanted to come out, along with the urge to take her in my arms, to push my nose into the hair at the back of her neck. I chuckled, waiting until she looked up at me for approval.
“Not exactly what I meant, but that was a good first step.”
She raised her palms as if to say, “I did my best. They’re as prepared as they can be.”
“I meant by greasing them. Or better yet, lining them with parchment paper.”
“I don’t think we have any papyrus around here,” she said.
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Seriously?”
“Okay, fine. I know what parchment paper is.” She went to the pantry and came back with a big roll of it. “I use it for baking fish.”
“That sounds interesting,” I said, taking it from her. “Maybe you can teach me that sometime.”
I refrained from slapping myself. I shouldn’t be making future plans or trying to give her the idea I wanted to make plans with her. I could spend some time with her, ask some questions, get to know her. Not make plans.
“Sure,” she said, and I heard the hesitation in her voice too.
We prepared the pans, buttering, flouring and lining them, and there was a quiet companionship between us that I found myself trying to soak up and savor.
It was an odd thing, I realized. Being a celebrity meant there were millions of people in the world who “knew” me—but I spent much of my time alone, and even more of it feeling lonely. It was rare to have a quiet moment shared with another person, to be able to enjoy something simple, something pure.
Tess didn’t push me to talk, and together we measured, mixed and poured, and before long, we had the first of the pans in the oven.
“Where did you learn to bake?” she asked as we clean
ed up.
I sighed. Every story about my past was lined with landmines. How much did I want to share with her? I started off slowly. “I didn’t. I just started doing it after my mom left. It reminded me of her, I think. She used to bake. Kind of taught myself.”
Tess’s face changed, her lips pressing slightly into a frown. “Did you bake with her? Before?” Her tone showed that she wasn’t going to press, wasn’t going to ask why Mom had left. Relief wound its way through me, but so did a vague disappointment. Why did I want to tell Tess everything?
“We baked a little. Cooked, too.” We sat down, neither of us verbalizing our intention to do so. But as with all things with Tess, I was finding we seemed to agree naturally, to be in the same mental space, maybe. “She wasn’t a very happy person, I guess. So I don’t have a lot of memories of doing things together. A few.”
“And cooking is one of them? So maybe that’s why you like to do it?”
I took a deep breath, let it out. This wasn’t stuff I was used to talking about. The facts, maybe. But not my feelings about those facts. “Maybe. I never really thought about it.”
She nodded. I wondered if she was contemplating what we had in common—we’d both lost mothers. Though I thought Juliet had told me they’d lost both their parents.
“What about you?” I asked her, realizing she might stand up and walk away. I was asking a very personal question of a woman I barely knew. “Do you have happy memories? Of your parents?”
Her eyes met mine then, and I felt myself leaning toward her. I wanted something I couldn’t define, something she made me feel. A sensation ran through me I could only classify as yearning, and I wondered if I’d ever actually felt it before.
“I do,” she said, and a little smile crossed her lips, brightening the golden eyes. “A lot. Me, Juliet, my parents. We were happy,” she said. She didn’t volunteer more, and I didn’t push, and for a while we sat silently. I thought about my mom, and imagined maybe Tess was thinking of her own childhood.
