Just as I was about to give up on the idea that I could communicate to her the way I saw her, I remembered something that my battalion leader always had a habit of doing. I wasn’t sure if they were called metaphors or what, but he’d always prepared us for missions by comparing the situation to something we could relate to. I didn’t know about the other guys, but when he did that, I understood the point he was trying to make.
I figured that maybe I should give it a try.
“Do you know what opals are? Have you seen them?” I asked.
Her brow knitted, causing the adorable wrinkle just above her nose. Every time it made an appearance, I had the urge to kiss it. She nodded as her eyes narrowed and her head tilted. Her face said that she had no clue where that question had come from but was interested to see where I might go with it.
“Well, I saw these white opals in a jewelry store once, and I remembered being mesmerized by them. They’re pretty from a distance. Shiny, white, and smooth. But then you get closer, and when you really look at them, you see all of this fire and color inside. All of this depth. There’s so much more going on under the pretty surface than you ever could’ve guessed, but they don’t let just anybody see it. You have to get close.
“But when you do get close, you realize that they aren’t just pretty. They’re actually the most beautiful, unique thing in the entire store. You just didn’t know it when you first saw them.”
Cat nodded, but I could tell that she still wasn’t getting the connection.
“You’re like that,” I said emphatically. “The way that you’re shy and you don’t show everything to everyone right away, it can make people get the wrong idea about you. It can make people think that there’s not actually much more there to see than a pretty face. But that’s not the truth. The truth is that there are so many depths and colors, so many layers, so much fire, going on below the surface. It’s just… It’s actually even more special because only a few of us get to see it, you know? Not less.”
I watched her face go from confused to upset in under three seconds. Her bottom lip quivered and large tears filled her eyelids then began rolling down her cheeks. Shit. I hadn’t meant to make her cry, I had meant to make her feel better. I should have just kept my mouth shut.
“Damn, Cat. I’m sorry. I meant it as a good thing—”
She interrupted my apology by shaking her head as a huge smile spread on her beautiful face. “I know. These are happy tears!”
Relief crashed over me. I raked my hands through my hair and let out a breath. “Oh, thank God. I thought I had just royally fucked up.”
Reaching up she cupped my face in her hands and stared straight into my eyes. Her voice was thick with emotion when she said, “You didn’t. You didn’t eff it up at all. It was perfect. You’re perfect.”
Then she kissed me, and I put my arms around her, letting my hands roam over her beautiful, soft body. I reveled in the sensuous feel of her skin and the heat of her lips on mine. I wasn’t perfect, of course. Not even close. But I certainly wasn’t going to argue with her about that right now.
And pulling over to find spots to park with Cat was quickly becoming my favorite thing in the world to do.
Chapter 9
Jace
“We’re late,” A voice sounded like it was calling out from far away.
I tried to reason in my half-asleep state. Whose voice was that? Is this a dream? That’s it. Must be a dream. Yeah. That must be it.
Rolling over I pulled Cat against me. A low, contented sound escaped my throat. God, there was nothing better in this world than being under the covers with this woman. Her smell, her body, the sensation of her silky-smooth hair brushing against my skin. Mmmm…
I felt myself growing hard, and I ran my hand up her side under the blanket, loving the silky heat of her skin under my fingertips.
Floating in half-awake-half-asleep limbo, I realized that, even semiconscious, I couldn’t get enough of Cat. Her power over me was intense. This gave a whole new dimension to the concept of morning wood and what could be done with it. There was nothing but extraordinary possibilities there, and we had nothing but endless mornings to explore them.
Damn, I could get used to this.
“Slow your roll, Romeo. Like I said, we’re late.”
What the fuck?
My eyes snapped open, and all of a sudden, I wasn’t asleep at all anymore. I was wide fucking awake, in fact.
Even though my eyes were now open, they were still a little fuzzy. I could make out the shape of a man standing in the middle of the room. I started to get out of bed and kick his ass when I felt Cat’s hands grab my arm and pull me towards her.
“It’s okay,” she yawned, shaking her head. “It’s just Jerry.”
I knew my brain was not firing on all cylinders yet, but no way in hell was it okay that any man, “just Jerry,” or not was in Cat’s room. As if reading my mind, or maybe it was the fact that my entire body was strung tight like a Cobra ready to strike, Cat squeezed her fingers around my arm, “Hey,” she said drawing my attention before she repeated, “It’s okay.”
“We’re late,” Jerry repeated in the same clipped tone of voice without ever glancing up. “Get ready. We’re out in twenty.”
My heart was still pounding furiously as I watched Just Jerry texting on his phone, paying absolutely zero attention to mine and Cat’s exchange. Or the fact that we were both practically naked under these covers.
“Get ready for what?” Cat asked.
Jerry continued typing as he explained, “Press. I had the stylist send over some options. Don’t deviate.”
Then he looked directly in Cat’s eyes as he delivered the last line. It was perhaps an indication of how much impact he wanted it to have that he took time out from his busy texting schedule to make eye contact as he spoke. “Follow my directions to the tee. Behave, smile and keep your mouth shut. If you do that you can get back to your life as quickly as possible, and we can get back to ours.”
Jerry’s beady eyes held Cat’s gaze for a moment, and the tension in the room mounted. I started to sit up and say something. I wasn’t sure what, but I did not like how this asshole was treating, talking to, or looking at her. But Cat’s fingers once again squeezed my arm and I knew that it was her way of telling me to stand down.
She nodded curtly, and he did the same, immediately spinning on his heel and exiting before shutting the door firmly behind him.
The second he was gone, I pulled Cat into my arms. Her world was so bizarre that I wasn’t sure I would ever understand the rules or the game, but I knew I wanted to be here for her. Protect her. I just wasn’t sure how to do that.
I kissed the top of Cat’s head and, at a loss of what to say, just said, “Jesus, does anyone knock? I thought we locked the door.”
She let out a forced laugh as she shook her head. Her soft, silky hair brushed against my chest and my dick took notice. It grew rock hard in less than a millisecond.
“No, and we did. As you can see, my privacy is not a priority. My mother had keys made for my room.” With that explanation, Cat stood and walked over to the clothes hanging on a rolling steel bar that hadn’t been there when we’d gone to sleep. “We probably have fifteen minutes, at the most, to get ready and downstairs before Jerry or someone else will be up here.”
Okay, so I guessed I was the one who needed to tell myself to ‘stand down.’ Honestly, I couldn’t believe I was so hard. Cat and I had not only had sex in the shower, truck, and room yesterday, but we’d also made love twice since we’d gone to bed. I had always enjoyed having sex on a regular basis, but this was even record setting for me. The more I was with Cat, the more I wanted Cat. That was also a new experience for me. Usually, after I’d been with a girl a handful of times, I was less interested in her. Ready to move on. But damn, I didn’t think I could ever get enough of Cat.
Cat and I silently moved around each other as we got ready like a couple that had been together for years,
anticipating each other’s routine. Cat always amazed me with the proficiency with which she was able to go through all of the girly requirements of getting ready in the morning or for a special night out. Of course, she didn’t go crazy with the makeup and the complicated hair like a lot of girls did. But still, in ten minutes flat, she looked more gorgeous and put together than most girls did when they spent an hour and a half in the mirror messing with their appearance.
Although Cat was not a girl anyone in their right mind would describe as “chatty”—unless she was nervous—I did notice that she was unusually quiet this morning. I asked her what was wrong, several times, and she always said that it was nothing—but I didn’t quite believe her. Something about her demeanor was more reticent than it usually was, more nervous—and that was even counting all of the nerve-racking things she had been through in the past couple of days.
Shit, I thought. I wonder if she is nervous to bring me along today. I mean, the press and all the entertainment industry people that are going to be around—maybe I’m a little too rough around the edges for her to feel comfortable having me in that environment.
Still, the reality was even if that was the case—which would hurt like a son of a bitch—I realized that I was here in Los Angeles for one reason and one reason only—to support Cat. I needed to do whatever it would take to make her comfortable, even if that meant removing myself from the equation.
“Hey, babe,” I started as I wrapped my arms around her from behind. “You know, I don’t have to go along on all this stuff today. If you’d rather just go by yourself, you don’t need to worry about my feelings. I’m fine.”
Her head snapped around to look at me with true panic in her eyes. “You don’t want to go?” Her voice was tight and scared.
I was quick to correct her. “No, I want to go. Are you kidding? I want to be by your side every second of every minute of every day, especially down here. But I thought you might be a little uncomfortable with me tagging along. I know that these aren’t exactly my kind of people. I wanted to let you off the hook if that was what was going on.”
She shook her head as she let out an exasperated sigh. “Believe me. They aren’t my kind of people either. Sorry if I’ve been quiet this morning, it has nothing to do with you, I promise. I’m just really nervous about today. Press and I are like oil and water. You know how I hate being the center of attention or having any attention on me. Really. I’m just trying to get my mindset strong so that I can get through it. And I honestly don’t know if I could do it without you by my side. Seriously. Don’t scare me like that.”
I smiled and tightened my arms around her. “Where you want me, that’s where I’m gonna be. That’s my job for the next few days. Just think of me as your personal bouncer. Your bodyguard.”
She laughed and her expression brightened. “You’re my emotional bodyguard. You’re protecting me from metaphorical bullets instead of literal ones.”
I pulled her even closer to me. “Whatever kind of bodyguard I am, I just know that I’m gonna protect you. Nothing could stop me from doing that.”
I heard the door open behind us and turned to see who it was. It was Jerry, back again to usher us down to the car. Damn, Cat was right. Fifteen minutes on the dot. I looked at Cat. Her face was tight, but her eyes were determined. So I took her hand and squeezed it to remind her that I was right there beside her and would be all day.
Chapter 10
Cat
In a zoo
Caged
Lovely gilded
Bars
I can always feel
Eyes of strangers boring into me
Judging
Looking at my life and
Wishing they were me
If they knew
If they only knew
The untold story, the real deal
Sometimes, I want to blurt out my truth
But then they would judge me more
Not jealous, but harsh, thinking I am
Ungrateful
Cat Nichols, Age 15
I sat in the green room backstage with Jace and fidgeted nervously. I was so uncomfortable in this environment. Talk shows were all about…well…talking to people, and that wasn’t my forte. If the whole talking thing had been limited to the participants in the show, that would have been one thing, but it certainly wasn’t. Daytime talk shows, in my experience, were the worst of the bunch.
Everyone, from the host to the studio audience to the guests and (most applicable to me) the members of the guest’s entourage, was expected to maintain this super-upbeat, fakey-happy, high-energy demeanor I just did not have the capability to pull off. Or the willingness, really, but that was a moot point since I wouldn’t have known how to do it even if I had wanted to.
Jace took my hand and intertwined his fingers in mine. I looked over at him, gratefully, drawing strength from the subtle but encouraging squeeze he gave me. He had been holding up his promise of serving as my emotional bodyguard very well over the course of the morning.
He leaned forward and kissed me on my forehead, which was #26 on the new and improved list. “How you doing?” he asked in a low, even voice.
I sighed and closed my eyes, letting the sound of his voice wash over me like a cool breeze on a hot day.
When I opened my mouth to respond, I was interrupted by Jerry, who was sitting on the opposite couch, typing into his iPhone as usual. “She’ll be fine,” he barked.
I lifted my gaze to Jace and smiled weakly. His aqua-blue eyes stared back at mine and I knew that he saw me—really saw me. Every second I spent in LA, I felt like I was losing myself just a little bit more. Clarity hit me and I knew that I just needed to hang on to Jace. He was the thing that could anchor me. He was the little piece of Arcata, of the new-and-improved Cat Nichols, that I could carry with me while we were here.
“Okay, we’re ready for you,” a brusque voice sounded from the doorway.
I looked up to see one of the associate producers, a tall and imposing woman who had introduced herself not long after we had arrived. I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. She just stood holding her clipboard. Finally, she forced a very tight smile that was clearly a struggle. When she spoke again, her voice was still cheerful, but it bore the weight of the same tightness that was coming through in her smile as she stared directly at me.
“Do you want a written invitation? I said we’re ready for you.”
I glanced back over my shoulder to make sure that I was, in fact, the one that she was speaking to. Just as I’d feared, no one was at the buffet table behind me. It was only Jace, Jerry, and me in the room.
“Me?” I turned back around. “Do you mean me?”
The smile tightened further. “Unless Angelica James has another daughter that’s in this room. I certainly wasn’t talking about the potted plant.”
Oh, God. When people got angry or frustrated with me—or condescending or impatient—it just makes me freeze up more. My cheeks started to burn. I felt like I had to say something, but I knew that, as soon as I opened my mouth, nothing intelligent was going to come out of it.
“But…I…I…was just supposed to… I’m not… You know…”
“No. I don’t, actually. All I know is that the show starts in five and I need you in your seat in the studio audience.”
“I’m not… I can’t…”
“Yes, you can,” came Jerry’s hard voice, “and you will, because it’s what you’re here for.”
I felt Jace stiffen beside me and I quickly turned towards him. I could see from his intense posturing that he was getting ready to get into an argument with Jerry to defend my right to not have to go into the studio audience if I didn’t want to, and I certainly didn’t want that to happen. The last thing I wanted was for there to be a scene. I needed Jace in my corner, as my “emotional bodyguard” in the sense that his very presence protected me internally from being as stressed out as I normally would have been in these situations, but I cer
tainly didn’t want him getting into actual arguments on my behalf. That would just make everything worse and draw more attention, which would be my own living nightmare.
Placing my hand over Jace’s, I pasted on my best fake smile. “It’s fine,” I said brightly. I focused on making my voice extremely cheerful. I really needed to sell this in order to calm Jace down and get out of here in time to avoid what could quickly spiral into a nasty confrontation. “I promise. I just didn’t realize I was going out in the audience for this one. But Jerry is right. This is what I came here for. I’ll be fine. Really, baby. It’ll be fine.”
Jace seemed far from convinced, but he didn’t protest as I stood up and followed the clipboard-carrying woman down the hall. She walked at a brisk clip, and with the disparity between the lengths of our legs, I actually had to trot a little bit to keep up with her. If she noticed, she didn’t show it. She certainly didn’t slow down.
Entering the studio, I noticed an immediate drop in temperature. It was probably around fifty degrees in here. I shivered as I took the seat that clipboard woman indicated, smiling politely at the middle-aged women in matching T-shirts that surrounded it. They were clearly from somewhere far away from Los Angeles and here on vacation as evidenced by their excited chattering and how amazed and impressed they were by all of the behind-the-scenes goings-on that were happening around us as the show was prepared. Everything from the cameras to the lights and the omnipresent wires and cords that were never shown on the television screen but dominated a television set—each and every one of these novelties was amazing to them.
The ‘old me’ would have shrunk from their enthusiasm, fearing that I would be dragged into a conversation, which would then lead to a situation where I should know the right thing to say but didn’t. The ‘new me’ was drawn to their enthusiasm and thought that they seemed like nice ladies, so I took the very big (for me) social step of smiling at them, which I knew created the possibility of being included in their conversation. I was right.
One Day His (The Someday Series Book 2) Page 8
