Between the Lies (Between the Raindrops #2)

by Susan Schussler

  Jon picked up the bottle of champagne and filled their glasses to the brim. There it was. A helicopter hovering about five hundred feet from them with a long camera lens, poking out the side that was pointed right at them.

  Jon glanced at Sarah. She rose, picked up her goblet, and shadowed him below the deck. He held the estate room door open for her to enter first. The room was elegant with glossy wood and brass accents and definitely worth the money he was paying for it. As she jumped onto the large bed, some of her champagne slopped onto the comforter, so she reached for a tissue sitting on the shelf above the bed. He slumped down across the end of the bed as she dabbed at the Moroccan blue comforter with the tissue. Why couldn’t the press just leave them alone? He looked over at her with a defeated expression. The helicopter was still circling.

  “Why are we here, Jon? I know if you wanted alone time on a boat you wouldn’t have brought Leslie and Nak. What’s going on? I feel like you’re hiding something from me again.”

  He closed his eyes in frustration and took a deep breath, not knowing what to say.

  “You’re acting weird,” she stated as she crawled to the end of the bed and hovered above his face.

  He opened his lids and stared into her beautiful green eyes. “Will you marry me, Sarah?”

  “You already asked me and I said yes, remember?” She smiled at him and held up her left hand.

  “I mean tonight…on the boat. I want to be married to you, right now,” he said with desperation. He needed this. He wasn’t sure if it would solve any of his problems, but feeling more bound to Sarah would definitely ease some of them.

  “You are so sexy when you talk like that,” she said, leaning down to kiss him.

  Jon pulled back, and Sarah paused with a surprised look. “I mean it. I want to get married tonight on the boat. Leslie and Nak can be our witnesses.”

  Sarah sat up and questioned, “But I’ve been planning the wedding for months. All the plans are cemented. Don’t you want all of our friends and family at the wedding?”

  “That doesn’t matter to me. I just need you,” he smiled, trying to exude charm.

  She examined him skeptically and questioned, “You have me. Why does it matter when we get married? What happened with the press today?”

  “Why do you think something happened with the press?”

  “Because we were supposed to go to that party with Isaac and Remi tonight and you whisked me away, completely avoiding the press. This wasn’t planned. Did you tell everyone about our wedding plans in your interviews or something?”

  “I would never do that.”

  “So why the rush then?”

  Jon got up and lifted the window blind. It sounded like the helicopter was leaving. The thrumping was getting softer, and he didn’t see it hovering. He picked up his flute and downed about half of its liquid before glancing back at Sarah. Why was she so suspicious? Was it that obvious? He settled on the arm of the club chair that sat across the small room from her and confessed, “The news about Mia’s pregnancy broke. Her publicist confirmed it and she didn’t identify the daddy. One of the journalists asked me during our interview if I was the father. He just blatantly came out with it. Then Remi stepped in and told him I wasn’t going to answer the question. That just made it worse. I could see the speculation spread on the people’s faces in the room. I didn’t want you to have to deal with that.”

  Sarah

  There it was—the moment of truth. She sat up and leaned against the headboard, folding her legs in front of her. “You’re not the father, are you?” She watched him expectantly.

  He cocked his head and scowled at her. “How could you even ask that?”

  “You didn’t answer my question.” She stared wide-eyed. He always avoided what he didn’t want to talk about by asking another question. She wanted an answer. She deserved an answer. “You were with her the night before my accident back in December. I saw the pictures online. You never told me she was out with you. Why did you keep that from me, if you weren’t hiding it?”

  Jon looked down, shaking his head in frustration, and Sarah wasn’t sure if he was irritated that he’d been caught or if he couldn’t believe she didn’t trust him.

  “Are you kidding, Sarah? I barely talked to her that night. She ran into Liam and he mentioned where we were going. She just showed up. I wasn’t hiding it from you. You just get so crazy about her that I didn’t think—. Then you had the accident and I didn’t even know what end was up. I totally forgot about her being there.”

  “Could the baby be yours, Jon?” Her voice was soft. She waited impatiently. He needed to answer her.

  “You are really asking me this question?” He grunted and pinched his eyes together. When he opened them again, he turned and looked her squarely in the face. “No…It is not my baby. Is that clear enough?” His bitter voice penetrated her as he emphasized his point with wide eyes. “I haven’t been with anyone else since I met you. I thought you knew that.” A hurt expression seized his face.

  Whoa. Her heart thundered. She shouldn’t have asked. She wilted and stared at him. She knew it would hurt him, and she didn’t want that, but she had to know.

  “I just needed to hear it from your mouth. I do trust you, but you’ve been acting so peculiar this trip…and Mia seems to have some strange hold on you. You’re keeping something from me. What’s changed? Why do you want to get married so badly?”

  They sat in silence for almost a minute before he spoke. “I don’t know…I guess it’s just this pregnancy rumor…and then seeing Amy again.” Sarah could see that Amy Richardson had really thrown him off. She knew something was wrong at the premiere. Jon usually kissed his female costars on the cheek and held friendly conversations with them, even the ones he had dated. He barely acknowledged Amy, which was out of character for Jon. He didn’t even stand next to her on the red carpet.

  “I could tell you guys dated. Did it end badly?”

  “You could say that.” He glanced at his feet with apprehension. “We started filming the movie together about six months after Jack’s death. I was a mess then. I knew I killed my brother and I was bent on self-destruction. I was out drinking every night at the clubs.” He took a deep breath. “Then there were the women. There were a lot. Amy was just one of them. I pretty much did what felt good—to numb the pain. I hooked up with Amy, and she ended up getting pregnant,” he confessed, looking at Sarah apologetically.

  Holy what? Sarah stared at him for a moment, unsure what to say. They had been together a year, and he hadn’t told her he had a kid. Really? She was pissed, or she would have been if he didn’t look so distraught. OK. That would be a hard one to confess, but they were getting married.

  “So…you have a kid you never told me about?”

  “No…” He shook his head and looked down. “Amy ended the pregnancy. She never even asked me what I wanted—never gave me a choice. We were so young, and she was supposed to start filming another movie in six months. A pregnancy would have ruined her career. It’s not like we were in love. With the way I was then, what woman would have wanted to share a kid with me? I was such a wreck.” He paused. “She said it was her body, her choice. I’ve always resented her for not even asking me, though. It was my kid, too. So here I am, almost five years later, forced to face her again, and then the press accuses me of fathering Mia’s baby. It just brought up all those feelings again. I don’t know…”

  “Did you want the baby?” Sarah asked, still searching for logic in his words.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Jonathan

  JON REMEMBERED BACK to that year he had tried so hard to push out of his head. He and Amy weren’t just hooking up, but they weren’t serious either. Like on many films, they had chemistry on set and it spilled over into their personal lives. They partied together and spent most of their time together for three months on and off set. Jon didn’t know what to think the night Amy told him about the baby. She said it so casually over dinner that h
e thought she was joking. When he realized she was serious, he questioned, “Is it mine?” It was kind of a douche thing to say, but he wasn’t even sure they were exclusive.

  “Yes, asshole!” she answered without batting an eye.

  He was confused. He always used a condom. How could she get pregnant? He thought he had always used a condom, but there were entire nights that alcohol erased from his memory. How could he know for sure?

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do about it yet, but I just thought you should know,” Amy continued. They finished filming for the day without talking about it again. Then Amy disappeared for the weekend to her parent’s house in New York and didn’t answer his texts the whole filming break. He figured she just needed time to think, so he didn’t call.

  Meanwhile, Jon spent two days pondering fatherhood. It evoked some sort of change in him, as if there was hope for something more out of life—more than drinking, more than just hooking up. By Monday morning on set, he knew what he had to say to her. He didn’t think he and Amy would ever last, but he was willing to try. He offered to marry her over a turkey sandwich at craft services. No matter how hard he tried to expunge Amy’s response from his memory, he couldn’t.

  “Oh my god. Are you for real?”

  It was a slap in the face that he hadn’t expected.

  “I’m only twenty years old, and you are not marriage material. You don’t have to worry about it anymore. I took care of it. No more baby.”

  “What?” He couldn’t believe she would just end the pregnancy without even talking to him about it. “But, it was my baby, too.” The baby would have been a bright spot, someone to love him unconditionally, without judgment for what he had done to Jack. He couldn’t believe it was gone.

  Amy rolled her eyes. “I didn’t have to think about it, Jonathan. I know I told you I did, but I’m not going to let some parasite spawn ruin my career. My career would end, not yours. You don’t get a choice.”

  ***

  Jon looked up to meet Sarah’s eyes. “Did I want the baby? I…I don’t know. I think I was just searching for a replacement for Jack at the time—something to distract from the agony. When Jack died, I knew it was my fault, and I would have done anything to trade places with him. He was the one with the bright future. He was the one with all the talent—the A squad, the one who was going to do great things. I was second string. It should have been me that died—nobody would have cared. I did all I could to show God he had picked the wrong brother. I drank, popped pills, slept with as many women as I could. I was angry at the world, at myself, and I was going to punish God for taking my brother. Then when I found out I was going to be a father, I found hope. Hope that I could be more than a screw-up, motivation to be better, and then that was gone as quickly as it came.”

  “So why didn’t you tell me until now, and why get married now?”

  Jon shrugged. “It’s not my proudest moment.” He collapsed into the seat of the club chair and dragged his fingers through his hair across the top of his head before continuing, “I thought I was over my issues with Amy. I’ve grown up a lot since then. Honestly…I never thought Third Rung would be released. No one was interested in it for so long. I thought it would just disappear, like so many movies do, and I wouldn’t have to see her again. Then there are the Mia rumors. I can see how much they bother you. I just thought if we got married, we could forget about everything else, everyone else.”

  “I don’t want to get married because of Mia or some other ghost from your past. I want it to be about us. Can you understand that?” she said, scrunching half of her face.

  Jon climbed onto the bed next to her. He stared at her with guilt smeared on his face. He paused. “I want our wedding day to be your perfect day.”

  “We can enjoy ourselves on the boat,” added Sarah.

  “Yeah,” he muttered again without enthusiasm.

  “You need to stop feeling guilty about the things you can’t control. I don’t care about your former life. You’re a good person. The past is past and you can’t change it. You have to let it go. There’s no other choice.” Sarah leaned her head against his shoulder and whispered, “I love you, Will.”

  She hardly ever called him Will anymore, and it made the corners of his lips turn up slightly. He wondered how he could be so lucky. How could he have finally found someone that accepted him with all his flaws? She put up with his cracked life and hardly ever complained. He didn’t think he deserved her. He knew he didn’t. He wrapped his arm around Sarah and sat without speaking, contemplating his life since he met her. It had changed so much. She made him a better person. “I feel like we’re already married. That’s why I said you were my wife when I punched the paparazzo. It’s just a ceremony, right? You’re the best part of my life, Sarah.”

  Sarah softly kissed his cheek and snuggled into the crook of his arm. They lay in silence staring at the ceiling for several minutes until Sarah admitted with a sigh, “I hope our kids have your eyes.” She ran her finger over his cheek until his dimple appeared. “And your dimple.”

  Jon turned to kiss her finger. That was the sexiest thing she had ever said.

  He rolled on top of her, his knees straddling her hips as he ripped the Velcro cast apart and tossed it on the floor. His hand didn’t even hurt anymore. Why was he still wearing it? Then he pinned her hands to the bed next to her head. She was adorable. He bent down and ran his tongue across her lower lip until she opened her mouth with a moan to accept it deeper. His lips covered her soft and supple ones.

  When he sat up, breaking the kiss, he smiled and said. “I want a daughter with your eyes, your flawless skin, and your perfect little nose.” He bent down and kissed her nose, her hands still pinned. “I’ll be putty in her hands, though. She’ll be so spoiled.” He gathered her hands into one of his. His other hand trailed down her cheek and she smiled. Then he trailed a finger down her beautiful supple neck to her breasts. He drew a circle slowly and methodically over each one. “She will never be allowed to have these. They drive boys crazy. They’ll do anything just to touch them.” He kissed her where his finger had traced as his free hand found the hem of her sundress.

  Sarah laughed. “You can’t stop our daughter from growing boobs.”

  “We can’t have any girls, then,” he gasped as he leaned back and pulled her into a sitting position. He maneuvered her dress out from under her, and she lifted her hips to help. “Because boys are filthy…filthy animals,” he declared as he pulled her dress over her head.

  “Yeah, I’ve noticed.” She chuckled as her now-freed hands slid under his shirt and ran over the ridges of his abdomen. Her pale pink bra dropped to the valley where their bodies met, and she looked up at him. “Did you do that? You’re good.”

  “Why thank you,” he accepted with a grin. “There’s more.” He flicked up one eyebrow and stared devilishly at her as he pressed her against the mattress. Her arms wrapped around his back, drawing him closer. His mouth focused on her neck right below her ear for several seconds, before he rolled off her, pulling his shirt off over his head as he moved. He lay down on his side next to her—her naked, and him in his cotton slacks. “What am I going to do with you?” he asked as he grazed his finger down her body with feather-like softness. He watched as her whole body quivered under his touch.

  “I’m all yours. Do what you like,” Sarah said with a not-so-innocent grin.

  He ran his finger over her flat stomach as he envisioned her with a small baby bump. His baby. The thought of Sarah with his baby ignited his desire. “Anything I like?” he asked.

  “Anything,” she crooned, closing her eyes. She seemed to relax with each brush of his hand.

  She pulled at his pants, and he kicked them off with his boxer briefs. As his pants hit the floor, he visualized nothing between them. She said “anything” after all. He wanted kids so badly. He knew all her weaknesses. He could get her so revved she wouldn’t even notice. He was confident in his skills with her. She seemed to be
made just for him. He positioned himself above her. Cupping her breast with one hand, he pressed his lips to her skin. He sucked and licked and teased before moving to the other. Her fingers entangled in his hair as he kissed down to her navel. She wriggled beneath him when his hand and lips moved lower. She responded with a soft moan to each tormenting move he made. God, he loved this woman. He could slide right into her and they could make a baby—his and Sarah’s baby. Their love needed to be shared. He wanted so much to have children with her. He hoped their children would look just like her. She was so perfect. They would have her inner beauty, her innocence, and her optimism. He kissed his way back up her body and stared at her face.

  He paused as he watched her breathing calm. She was so trusting. He wouldn’t be giving her a choice. He was as bad as Amy. He reached for Sarah’s champagne glass next to the bed and downed a large swig, trying to collect his thoughts. Her green eyes fluttered open, and she smiled when she saw him staring down at her. She opened her mouth as he drizzled the bubbly in until it started to splash over her lips. Then he kissed the sweet excess from her mouth and almost changed his mind. He set the glass back on the bedside table and reached for the box he had stashed there earlier. He found a foil square and held it up for her to see as he spoke. “I love you, Sarah. And my anything would be to not use one of these.”

  A small gasp escaped Sarah’s throat as her muscles tensed under him. It told him all he needed to know. He brushed his fingers through her hair on the side of her face and then smoothed his thumb over the line that had formed on her brow. “I know you’re not ready, so we’ll use this today.” He set the condom on the bed and felt Sarah’s muscles relax beneath him.