by Natasha Boyd
My Star, My Love
Copyright © 2015 by Natasha Boyd
Edition 2015
Interior Design by Angela McLaurin, Fictional Formats
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All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real person, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
My Star, My Love
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Thank You
“OH MY GOD, I can’t do this,” I choked out as the car neared the airport turn off. Panic had me by the throat. It was also hanging on my limbs and doing an ice bucket challenge in my gut. “Seriously, I can’t.”
Jack’s green eyes were fixed on me, luminous in spite of the dim interior of the town car we’d taken to the airport. His brow furrowed. “Okay, just breathe, baby. Keri Ann, just breathe.”
Damn, I thought I was over this. My anxiety about the fact I was about to embark on a twelve-hour flight over a rather large and deep body of water known as the Atlantic wasn’t helped by present circumstances. I was still not okay with the odd photographer trying desperately to get a picture of us together, but now there were three of them standing impatiently by curbside check-in at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. How were they always one step ahead of us?
Kill. Me. Now.
“I’m sorry I’m such a head case,” I managed and dropped my eyes to his firm Rag and Bone-clad thighs as he instructed our driver to do a circuit of the airport terminals. “I swear, I must have been a kamikaze bomber in World War Two or something. It always feels like a one-way trip where landing gear will never be used. Why am I so afraid of flying?”
Jack chuckled, the smooth rasp and rumble was like popping an antianxiety med; it was instantly calming. I closed my eyes to let his sound wash over me. He’d been so distracted the last few weeks.
I’d been driven instead of flying on my own to meet Jack for our connecting flight to England. To meet his mother! Even when we met today, he’d seemed preoccupied. Hearing him laugh though, and at least try and calm my nerves, helped.
We hadn’t seen each other in two weeks, him having to be back in Los Angeles for meetings, and me finishing up my semester at the Savannah College of Art and Design. The car he’d ordered to drive me the five hours to Atlanta had met him at a private airfield north of the city, and we hadn’t had a chance to be alone yet.
“Are you sure it’s not because you’re meeting my mother?” Jack teased.
I sighed, the breath catching over my tension.
As soon as we were moving again, he leaned over, dosing me with his piney scent and bringing his gorgeous lips so close to mine my heart tripped. He unsnapped my seatbelt. “Come here,” he said and hauled me roughly onto his lap. He worked my knee over him, his hand feeling hot through my linen cargo pants, until I sat astride him on the back seat. His arm pulled me tight against his body, our foreheads touching.
This was a good way to distract myself from impending doom. I’d pick death by Jack any day of the week.
I curled my fingers into the soft hair at his nape and scraped my nails up into his hairline like I knew he liked.
“Careful,” he whispered with a sexy smirk, eyes glittering. “I’ve missed you far too much.” Then his arms left me to mess with his seatbelt and stretch it around us both.
I laughed quietly as he grimaced and grunted and finally clicked it into place, locking me tight against him.
“Safety first. Damn, we should always travel like this with you strapped against me.”
I was saved answering as the car took a speed bump a little too fast and bounced us.
Holy hell.
“You’re hard,” I squeaked, and my insides did a zipline over hot boiling lava, the heat wafting through me. “Did the driver hear that?” I whispered with a cringe of embarrassment. What was I saying? Of course he did.
“You sound surprised. Has it not been apparently obvious that I have no control of my body when you’re around?” Jack’s laughing tone slid back into a whisper as he dropped my gaze and angled his lips for my ear.
I shivered. Me neither I answered mentally.
“Let alone when you’re pretty much wrapped around me. And sitting right on my—”
“Sir?” the driver’s voice cut in, his tone vapidly neutral as his training required. “We’re approaching the terminal again. Are we stopping this time?”
I sighed and pulled back reluctantly, resting my forefinger over Jack’s soft lips. Such a contrast to the rough surrounding skin that was already sprouting its shadow. “Yes, we’re getting out. Sorry,” I said, feeling it was my place to assert that I was pulling myself together. And Jack had successfully refocused my mind. As he always did.
We adjusted the seatbelt and I slid back over to my side. “Are you okay that I’m meeting your mother?” I asked. Oh why did I ask that?
Jack smiled tightly as the car approached the curb again, and the driver hopped out. “Of course.” Then glancing out the window as he mashed his maroon ball cap on his head, he muttered, “Showtime.” His street side door opened, letting in the whine of jet engines and chattering people.
“Jack!” A male voice called his name.
He slid out and the driver closed the door behind him, leaving me a blessed moment’s peace before he came round to get me. I had seconds to slide on my large sunglasses and steel my nerves. I did a quick scan of my wardrobe choice: my Snapper Grill T-shirt worn for nostalgia and my festive red Chuck Taylors, and looked for stray toilet paper or anything that might embarrass me. All good.
God, my life. The last eight months since Jack and I had hit the tabloids with Audrey Lane’s awful story, claiming that Jack’s cheating had caused her to miscarry their baby, had been awful. Spectacularly happy because Jack and I were together, but trying to start studying for a degree while essentially living under a microscope, was tough. But Jack had been right. The tabloid fever had only lasted so long, and then they were bored when Jack wasn’t around. I wasn’t quite as interesting to them on my own. Thank goodness. But when we were together? Different story.
It had been tough to make friends at college because everyone whispered about me. But when the tabloid furor finally died down, and after I was assigned a study group and got to know some of my fellow students one on one, it was better.
The door opened and Jack held out his hand. We moved hastily, pausing side by side for just a moment with big smiles to have our picture taken. Our driver, after handing off our luggage to the airport porter, walked ahead of us, clearing a path and leaving the small group of photographers behind. It was comforting to know he had bodyguard training. Inside the terminal, we were led directly to the crew check-in and met with a personal assistant from the airline. Jack and I shook our driver’s hand, thanking him, and then we were hurried down a quiet hallway of the airport, leaving our luggage to be privately screened and checked. It was ironic that I’d never taken a regular flight like most people. My first airplane experience was a private jet with Jack, and now we were “going commercial” as Jack termed it, and I knew it was hardly the procedure most people went through.
He wrapped a hand around my waist, hauling me close as we walked. Before long we came to double security doors where a middle-aged
and efficient looking woman in the navy airline uniform met us and handed me my purse and our passports. The doors led out to a public area where a crowd of harried travelers walked, marched, or flat out ran in all different directions. “I guess we skipped the security line,” I murmured to Jack.
There was a golf cart looking thing we jumped on. It beeped, letting people know to move, earning a few curious glances. Jack pretended to study the inside of his passport to keep from looking up, and the bill of his cap kept his face mostly hidden. He was a pro at this.
We sped past people, gates, and a newsstand I would have loved to stop at and buy a book. Finally, we pulled down a carpeted side hall. Here two large frosted glass double doors indicated a First Class Lounge. But we didn’t stop. We went ten feet beyond that to a smaller innocuous white door. I raised my eyebrow at Jack in a silent question.
“VIP room. More privacy,” he whispered.
More VIP than first class. Alrighty, then.
JACK HANDED ME a package shaped like a large brick that he withdrew from his backpack. Not quite long enough to be a shoebox and heavier than that. It was wrapped in red paper, the folded ends, messy and irregular, puffy from being folded over itself so many times, and taped closed with far too much tape. “Did Katie wrap this for you?” I asked, just to see his reaction.
We were sitting in two club chairs in a corner of the lounge partially obscured from the entrance by a frosted screen. I’d just eaten smoked salmon on tiny little miniature toasts and was nursing my second glass of champagne from the ice bucket in the corner Jack insisted I have to calm my nerves. And no one had bothered us since we’d been offered refreshments, which in and of itself was a miracle. We’d been apart for weeks, but I didn’t feel we were quite alone enough to start making up for lost time.
“What? The perfect angles and lack of excess paper gave it away?” He snorted and rolled his eyes, his dimple making an appearance.
I laughed softly. “Anyway, it’s nine days until Christmas. What are you doing giving me my present this early?”
“This isn’t your present. This is the twelve days of Christmas. Days one through three since I haven’t seen you until today.”
I furrowed my brow. Intriguing. Three gifts in one.
“Hurry up,” Jack said, impatiently.
I grinned at him, amused by his boyish attitude. “I think you’re more excited about this gift than—”
“Open it!”
“Okay, okay.” I laughed and tore open one end to reveal what looked like three hardbacks stacked together and quickly pulled at the rest of the paper. Surprise and wonder stopped my hands as I stared down at the cover of the first hardback. Warriors of Erath: Dream Warrior. The cover was the original. Wait. I quickly glanced up at Jack to see his face broken out into a massive heart-stopping and self-satisfied grin. He was seemingly relaxed, slouching in his black T-shirt, his strong forearms resting along each chair arm, but his long fingers drummed incessantly, belying his impatience. Looking down again, I flipped the book open and thumbed through the first few pages until I found what I was looking for.
First Edition. 10-1
I let out a sharp breath. “Wow,” I said in shock. I’d wanted this forever and constantly stalked eBay to that end. A first printing of a first edition. I swallowed hard, suddenly overwhelmed. “Thank you. How on earth did you—”
“Wait, keep going. Turn the page,” he said as I went to put them aside and thank him properly before even looking at the next in the stack.
I paused and reopened the book, heading to the title page.
To Keri Ann, the girl who captured the heart of the real dream warrior:
Keep believing in your dreams. Your dreams believe in you.
Warmest regards,
JM Burke
The message blurred as my eyes filled with tears.
“Oh God, don’t cry,” Jack whispered earnestly and pulled the books out of my hands, laying them on the floor. He hauled me onto his lap, where I went willingly.
Burying my wet face in his delicious neck, I curled into a ball, hiking up my knees too and cursed my ridiculous and sentimental heart. “Sorry, they’re happy tears,” I murmured against his warm skin and followed it with a kiss to the soft spot under his ear. I held him tightly, his body hard and hot beneath my hands, and focused on his heartbeat. The pulse in his throat. “I love you so much,” I whispered. Understatement. I adored this guy. I loved him with my entire being. My heart swelled so huge when I let myself think of him, of us; it was physically painful. In the best way.
A small shudder went through him, and his hands tightened on me, his head dropping forward. “I can’t wait to be truly alone with you, to hold you all night.”
“Me too. And I can show you how much I love my presents,” I whispered in his ear, biting back a grin because I knew what was coming.
Jack let out a low vibrating growl and shifted beneath me. “Wench,” he said.
I pulled back with a giggle and took his face in my hands.
His eyes stared into mine.
We said nothing and everything.
FOR SOME REASON, I’d been lulled into the feeling we were escaping madness when we left America. And in the quiet cocoon of first class, each of us with our own flat bed, although Jack came and spooned with me while we watched a movie, I’d gotten over the fact we were flying in a steel tube thirty thousand feet above the ocean. I’d succumbed to the mindless drone of the engines and warm curve of Jack at my back and fallen asleep. It was only when he gently shook me awake an hour before landing that he spilled the beans about the paparazzi in England.
“Hey Keri Ann, baby, wake up. They’re going to ask us to sit upright for landing. Have some breakfast.”
“I can’t eat right now, it’s,” I grumbled and looked at my watch through bleary eyes, “two thirty in the morning.” I pulled the small but cozy white airline duvet over my head and felt Jack laughing next to me as he climbed onto my bed.
“It’s seven thirty, we need to change the time on your watch.” He lifted the cover so he could slide his hand over my belly, making me sigh with sleepy pleasure. “Tomorrow,” he whispered in my ear, “I’ll be able to wake you up with more incentive.”
“What? With a real almond croissant from Pret A Manger?” I joked, deliberately ignoring his sensual undertone. I’d had one back in October when Jack and I had spent a weekend in New York. Knowing it was an import from London had put me on a mission to have an original pretty much as soon as we landed.
Jack stroked my hair back from my face. “We’ll get you one of those as soon as possible, I promise. Right now you gotta wake up, and we have to talk about what we may face out there when we get off the plane.”
I groaned. “You go. I’ll just come off the plane incognito later, and you can pick me up.”
He was quiet so long, I finally flicked my eyes open and rolled over toward him.
Resting his head on his hand, his elbow propped, Jack gazed down at me with his eyes grey green in the odd, bright airplane light. His hair was messy, and I reached up to smooth it down. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean that. I’ll be by your side.”
“I know it’s hard for you. It’s fine if you want to do that.”
“No. What is the plan? I have a feeling I’ll screw it up if we don’t go together.”
“Come on, get up. I’ll have them bring you some breakfast while you freshen up, bathrooms free, then I’ll fill you in.”
He dropped a lingering kiss on my lips and a short one on the tip of my nose, then uncurled himself from me.
WE WERE HUSTLED off the plane first, and like our departure, we were met by an airline rep who escorted us through the crew and diplomatic passport line. Our bags were handled for us and would be delivered later in the day. Jack kept his ball cap and glasses on, but they were so trademark, everyone stared at him anyway.
The hard part was entering the arrivals hall. Yep. Photographers. Lots of them, and lots of
flashes. And lewd and crude questions.
One voice, a loud, guttural British accent, maybe Cockney, though I wasn’t familiar with the different dialects, was an incessant stream of questions about Jack’s shenanigans the last time he was here and if I would mind if he looked up a few old girlfriends.
Jack vibrated with tension next to me as we walked swiftly, heads down, following the rep who was now joined by a stocky guy in a suit who Jack seemed to know. I assumed he was our driver, and a security guard. They were on either side, guiding us. It was when that awful guy yelled something after us about the waitress having a magic something too crude to mention, that I felt Jack almost snap. He hissed and pulled me tight against him and stopped.
It was so abrupt I stumbled and we all came to an awkward pause, the general throng also quieting down. “Take a deep breath,” I whispered. “Please get us out of here.” Jack’s mouth was tight, but a split second later he nodded, and we kept moving.
We finally got outside into a bitingly cold early morning wind and dived into the warm leather interior of a black Range Rover.
“Okay, so that car behind us will stop anyone following us, and we’re trading cars in the parking garage. Or so they think,” Jack informed me as I craned my neck back to look. Sure enough a black sedan pulled out behind us and followed us to a parking entrance where it came to a stop sideways, blocking anyone from following. We drove in and parked next to a silver version of our same car also with tinted windows. The driver got out and headed around to make like he was opening back doors. “We just stay here.”
I could tell it probably looked like we were trading cars if anyone was able to see in from the entrance, which I’m sure they were. “I don’t understand why we don’t actually do it. Surely most of them still think we left in a black car? Won’t they still follow this one?”
“They are all talking to each other. They coordinate for the most part, even though they are competition. It’s a total sport here, worse than any other country. They’ll work together, and then get cutthroat about the pictures. At this point they are just trying to find out where we’re headed by sending a single ‘follow car’ so they can get pictures later. It’s the follow car I want to avoid.”
