Lost on the Road to Love

by Kay Harris

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  Lost on the Road to Love

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  A word about the author…

  Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  I rested my hand on my hip.

  “Are you saying you find me irresistibly attractive?”

  “Yes.” He gave a firm nod. There was no mirth in his eyes or in the set of his mouth.

  I narrowed my gaze and scrutinized him. “I thought it was because we’re so close, remember.”

  “Yes. And you’re insanely hot.”

  “Am not!”

  “Are too!”

  I shook my head.

  “Wanna make a bet on it?” he challenged.

  “What?”

  “You get naked for me. And if I am disappointed, you win the bet. If you’re as hot as I think you are under those clothes, I win. In fact, I already know what I want if I win. I want to see one of the films you’ve made.”

  I stared at him, my mouth agape.

  “What do you want if you win, Chels? Not that it matters. Because you won’t win.”

  I finally found my voice. Because I couldn’t turn down this opportunity. “If I win, you sing for me.”

  “Done.” He settled farther into the couch. “I’m ready when you are.”

  Lost on the

  Road to Love

  by

  Kay Harris

  I Want Morrison, Book Two

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Lost on the Road to Love

  COPYRIGHT © 2018 by Kay Harris

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: info@thewildrosepress.com

  Cover Art by Kristian Norris

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Champagne Rose Edition, 2018

  Print ISBN 978-1-5092-1995-7

  Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-1996-4

  I Want Morrison, Book Two

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  For Jim.

  You are my travel companion,

  my adventure partner,

  and my heart.

  Chapter 1

  Present Day—San Francisco, California

  Chelsea

  I bounce up and down on my toes trying to warm up. The late October wind has me chilled. I feel like a complete ass as I knock on the door. And when my brother opens it and I see his face, the tear hovering at the edge of my eye falls. It creates a damp track down my cheek.

  “Chels, what’s going on?” Jack asks me as soon as he takes in my disheveled appearance on his doorstep.

  I don’t really answer. I’m too busy swallowing back the pain in my chest. So Jack pulls me into the apartment and shuts the door behind us. He puts his arm around my waist and walks me to the couch. “Hey, Candie. Baby, can you come in here?” he calls toward the back of the apartment as he settles on the couch with me and wraps me up in his arms.

  I tuck my head into Jack’s chest and take a couple of deep breaths. The soft padding of Candace’s feet sounds across the hardwood floor.

  “What’s going on?” my sister-in-law asks from the other side of the couch.

  “I don’t know yet,” Jack tells her.

  “I’ll make some tea.” Candace walks away from us, toward the kitchen.

  My brother rubs my upper arm gently and kisses the top of my head. And I know I’ve come to the right place. I couldn’t be alone with my hurt anymore, and since I couldn’t turn to my best friend, Jack had been the first one to come to mind. And even though I’m still in a lot of pain, I feel better already. Because Jack will know how to fix this, how to fix me.

  Candace returns to the living room and sets a steaming mug on the coffee table in front of me. Then she sits on the edge of the chair across from us and folds her hands together, her forearms resting on her knees, her eyes filled with concern.

  I take in her perfectly curvy figure, her creamy dark skin, and her magnificent face. If I looked like Candace, things might be very different for me. But I don’t. I look like my brother Jack, except instead of being filled out and graceful, I am slim and awkward. Where the light skin and blue eyes are amazing on Jack, they make me look like a refugee from a northern island with no sun. And where Jack’s height makes him seem regal, mine makes me look a Gumby doll.

  But I don’t envy them their appearance. I’m happy with who I am, most of the time. What I envy is their happiness.

  Candace gives me a sad smile. “Are you all right, sweetie?”

  Her concern is genuine, her compassion like a warm blanket over my shoulders. “I’m so glad you married my brother,” I tell her.

  She smiles at me. She knows I think the world of her. “Me too,” she says, her eyes glancing up at Jack for just a split second before looking back at me. “That’s how I got you as a sister.”

  Jack squeezes my arm gently. These two people love me intensely, and that is exactly why I came to them with my broken heart.

  I wipe at my eyes and sit up, reaching for the mug in front of me. “I suppose you guys are wondering what I’m doing here.”

  “Yeah, actually, we thought you were supposed to be headed to LA this weekend,” Jack says.

  I nod. “I’m supposed to be there right now. In fact, I’m probably going to get fired over this.”

  There is deep silence in the room for a moment. Then Jack does what he always does; he finds the silver lining. “Well, that’s okay. I mean, the show was going to be done anyway, right?”

  “Yeah, but it was a hit, and I guess I can kiss next season goodbye.”

  “What happened to make you leave your job?” Jack asks.

  “I can guess,” Candace says. We both look up at her expectantly. “The same thing that made me leave mine once. A man. Am I right?”

  I nod.

  “Oh shit.” Jack flops back in the couch. “Not—”

  “Yes, him,” I say.

  “I thought you were just friends.”

  “You are so naïve,” Candace tells her husband.

  “Well, what happened?” Jack asks me.

  I let out a heavy sigh. “It’s a long story.”

  Candace tucks one foot beneath her butt and leans back, her mug of hot tea cradled in her hands. “I think you better start from the beginning.”

  ****

  Eight months ago—Los Angeles, California

  He walked into the room. The scene unfolded in slow motion. He moved fluidly. Long legs clad in worn jeans carried him through the doorway. His T-shirt, which sported a faded band logo f
or the rock group Chrome, molded itself to a muscular chest and sculpted biceps. His strong chin was covered in a dark five o’clock shadow that matched the eyebrows above his chocolate brown eyes. His face was framed by long, perfectly straight, glossy black hair that tucked behind his ears and hung down below his wide shoulders.

  My mouth went dry, my eyes involuntarily widened, and my body became completely still. He was even better looking in person than I’d imagined.

  “Henry, good to see you,” my boss, whom I referred to as Snarky Steve, said in a surprisingly generous tone. He even rose from his seat to shake the man’s hand. “Please have a seat.”

  Henry Rushton folded all six foot four inches of his lean, muscular build into the chair next to Steve, which put him directly across from me. I tensed as his eyes swept the room and landed briefly on me before continuing to my right. I watched closely as he took in his new companions, his face perfectly smooth, never betraying a single emotion.

  “Let me introduce you to your crew,” Steve said. “They’ll be with you every step of the way. This is Rodney, your director, and his assistant, Gerry.” He gestured to the stern, balding chauvinist I’d had the misfortune of working with in the past and his boney, pasty assistant. “And this is Chelsea. She’ll be working the primary camera, and Tom will be doing secondary shots, sound, and editing,” he said, quickly motioning to me and the one person in this entire working group I actually liked, the near-retirement malcontent sitting beside me. Henry’s eyes landed on me again, only this time they lingered. I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks.

  This sensation of helplessness in the face of such an all-consuming attraction was the ultimate result of one fateful day ten years ago. I’d been a geeky, underdeveloped teenager with frizzy hair and unfashionable glasses. Boys paid absolutely no attention to me unless it was to tease the crap out of me. And up until then, I’d had no interest in them. But then I’d picked up my brother Hayden’s music magazine on a Sunday afternoon, and I’d instantly suffered my very first crush right then and there.

  It was the first picture anyone had seen of Henry since he was just a baby. The caption read, “Henry Rush caught coming out of a concert with his famous father.” I’d been immediately intrigued by the tall, thin teenager with strong features and mahogany eyes.

  I learned his name was actually Henry Michael Rushton. His father was a famous rock star who went by Sean Rush, but whose real name was Sean Rushton. As a result, he’d passed his real name onto Henry, but the media never did catch on to it, and they always referred to the prodigal son as Henry Rush. Furthermore, I’d found out that Henry was named after another rock star, his dad’s best friend Henry “Hank” Tolk.

  Despite the fame surrounding him, it was the fifteen-year-old boy I’d seen in that magazine that I was truly interested in. But there was very little information available about him other than his name and age because his parents had guarded him heavily from the media his entire life. So I’d followed his father’s long and storied career instead.

  “We’ve given you the best of the two crews, Henry,” Steve was saying. “They will shoot all your scenes as well as the ones that you do jointly with Tyressa.”

  “Hmmm” was Henry’s only response.

  “I thought we’d go over the tentative schedule. We’ve left some wiggle room in it so we can make changes as the season progresses. Since the show will start airing before we’re done with the entire season, we can stay on our toes and respond to audience reaction,” Steve said.

  Henry looked skeptical about the schedule as he watched Steve pull it out of a folder. In fact, he looked skeptical about everything. I couldn’t blame him. This really was a bit of a hair-brained scheme, even for our fledgling cable channel staffed almost entirely by multiple-failure second-rate show execs and the starry-eyed millennials they’d talked into taking low-paying jobs for them—like me.

  I’d taken the job with Trek straight out of college. The director I’d done my internship under had gotten me the gig, and I was grateful. Really, I was. Because I worked for a travel channel, I could live in my hometown of San Francisco instead of having to move to LA, since almost all of my work was done in offsite locations anyway.

  I liked the work. While my ultimate goal was to direct films or produce shorts, I was young and learning, so running the camera was a good start. And I enjoyed the travel. Thanks to my job, in the last four years I’d been all over the world.

  So when I got called about working on this show, I figured it would last at least a few months before it got scrapped, but I could rack up a few more killer locations. The premise, to have the children of famous people show off different sides of various vacation destinations, was almost as stupid as the name, Next Gen Adventure. They planned to get a male and female counterpart of famous brats for each new season. As if there would be more than one.

  It was dumb, but a job was a job, right?

  And then I’d heard about who’d they’d gotten to do the first season of the show. Henry Rushton was to be the male side of the kid fame duo. His partner would be Tyressa James, the daughter of actor Roger James, who was known for a series of action films he made after first becoming famous on a television series where he played opposite Henry’s aunt, Stacey Rush.

  “So we won’t stay in LA long. We’ll be leaving tomorrow for New Orleans,” Steve was saying. “But we will be returning. And since both you and Tyressa are from LA, we’ll be doing, at the very least, a homecoming episode here.”

  Henry nodded.

  “So, um, is the hotel we’ve put you up in okay? I understand you flew in from San Francisco last night?” Steve asked.

  My ears perked up. Henry lived in San Francisco? I wondered how long that had been going on. I knew he’d grown up in Malibu and he’d gone to college at UCLA. But now he was living in my town?

  “I didn’t stay in the hotel,” Henry told him. “My mom would have thrown a fit.”

  Steve flinched from the effort of suppressing the snarky curl of his lip. He truly believed everyone under the age of thirty was a loser who lived in their mom’s basement. So I’m sure Steve didn’t think much of Henry crashing with his parents while he stayed in his hometown. I, however, thought it was both perfectly normal and highly adorable.

  “Okay, well…” Steve rubbed his hands together. “We’ll start with a brief scene at the Biltmore in the morning before getting on the plane. Tyressa and her crew will be there as well. You’ve met Tyressa, yes?”

  Henry let out a breath. His cheeks puffed up, and his lips separated. “Yeah, I’ve known her since we were kids.”

  “Of course, of course,” Steve said, nodding his head.

  Steve had not done his homework about the costars. But I wasn’t surprised. He hated this gig. It wasn’t his idea at all. It was his boss’s idea. And he could have given two shits about these coattail kids, as he’d referred to them last night when we first met as a team. So, of course, he didn’t realize Henry and Tyressa would have known each other nearly all their lives.

  Steve also didn’t buy into the concept for this show at all. But the channel’s vice president, Ken Atlas, was over the moon with this idea. He was convinced the show could bring a younger audience to the channel. And he figured by starting the show’s first season with the son of a legendary rocker and the hot daughter of a notorious actor, he had gold.

  What I wondered was how the hell Ken had talked Henry into doing it. This guy had stayed out of the spotlight his entire life, and he’d shown no inclination to change that as an adult. He’d kept his head down all through college and after. I was sure of that because if Henry had been out in the public before now, I would have noticed.

  Or maybe not. After all, my childhood crush had gone dormant when I couldn’t fulfill it with more pictures and news. And I’d eventually learned real men could be a lot of fun. I was a geek all through college, but I wasn’t alone. It wasn’t socially crippling like it had been in high school. So I’d had my fair
share of boyfriends, flings, and friends with benefits. In fact, the phantom crush might never have reared its head again if I hadn’t come face to face with the man himself that very afternoon.

  “Well, Tyressa said she was very happy to be working with you. I have no doubt that this show will be a big hit,” Steve said, big salesman-grin in place.

  Henry nodded stoically. And I could see Steve getting nervous. If Henry was as quiet as his famous father was known for being, getting him to be a vibrant on-screen star was going to be like pulling teeth.

  “Okay, then. I guess we’ll meet up in the morning.” Steve clapped his hands together.

  Henry stood. Tom and I followed suit. As Henry turned toward the door, I moved around the table, trying to get closer to him. I wasn’t sure exactly what my plan was, I just didn’t want to see him go without saying something to him.

  My anxious feet moved across the carpet until I was right behind Henry. He moved through the door, and I managed to slip out behind him. Then, speeding up, I got right beside him as he made his way to the elevator.

  I still didn’t know what to say, and when he stopped in front of the elevator and hit the button, I stood mute beside him. Then he turned and looked right at me.

  I was a tall woman, but I was still about six inches shorter than Henry. His head tipped down slightly as he looked at me. It gave me a great view of those dark brown eyes, and I was instantly lost in them, just as I’d been at fifteen.

  “Chelsea…Chelsea Morrison?”

  Chapter 2

  I blinked. My mind went from blank to whirring in seconds flat. Henry Rushton had heard of me? I mean, yes, most people in California knew of my family and by default, me. But Henry Rushton knew me.

  “She is,” Tom said, his voice coming from somewhere to my right. I wasn’t entirely sure where because I wasn’t capable of actually ripping my eyes off Henry to find out. “And she’s the best damn camera operator this two-bit channel has ever seen.”