by Edie Harris
He didn’t deserve her, he told himself, and not because he was a masochist. No, he didn’t deserve Sadie Bower because it was only recently that he’d figured out she wasn’t some sort of one-dimensional fantasy ideal, but an actual person with depth and layers and feelings.
In London, she’d been a dream, his rescuer from a night of misery. Then, when he had gone to see her first feature film a year later, knowing that he’d been with her once—kissed, touched, loved by her—was a point of masculine pride, though he had never said a word to anyone about it, not even Jon. Eventually, as her name appeared more and more often on marquees and magazine covers, that chest-puffing pride shifted into an impossible sort of longing because she had become the bona-fide movie star he’d predicted she would be, meaning she belonged to everyone.
Sadie Bower was public domain.
He’d stopped thinking of her as an individual. Without meaning to, he had made her a Thing in his mind. Their night together still felt unreal, terrifyingly so. Seeing her again, live and in person, had made him…uncomfortable. Repeated exposure to his fantasy made it more and more tangible, and also less, because she had turned out to be both nothing and everything like he remembered.
The sunshine was there. The smile, the softness, the brilliant laugh that sizzled and popped along his nerve endings. But she had sometimes appeared sad on set, usually when she looked at him. He’d seen her mad, too, going toe-to-toe with Wes Jackson, the director, when the Texan had demanded she step aside and let her stunt double do the forty-foot drop off the wall of an Italian palace into a murky moat. Jackson had quoted some gibberish about rules and contracts and hospital bills, and Sadie had stormed off the soundstage for thirteen minutes, a tiny tornado of righteous fury, before storming right back in, punching Jackson in one brawny arm, and allowing the stuntwoman to do her job.
Ryan had spent those months working on Vendetta and witnessing his preconceived notions of who Sadie Bower was fall away to reveal the real woman underneath. The one who was neither perfect nor polished.
It was that woman who scared Ryan the most. That woman didn’t live on a pedestal or in his dreams, or even in a palatial old house with servants and a bloodline that traced back to royalty, both British and Japanese. Instead, she was a woman he had suddenly been able to imagine offering a back rub at the end of a long day of filming. A woman who grumbled at the prospect of taking her car in for an oil change, and who bargained chore duty, preferring grocery shopping to folding laundry. He could imagine family holidays, him and Sadie and Jon and her parents and maybe the mysterious older brother Kai he hadn’t met, and, when he had seen her holding hands with a five-year-old extra on set, someday having their very own family.
The moment that tenuous hope had popped into his head, he’d squashed it. Because he had no right to force his fantasies on her without either her knowledge or consent, as he already had done for a decade.
“Did you love her?”
It took him a moment to parse out that she was asking about his former fiancée. He thought of Cass, the tall, blond accountant from Minneapolis he hadn’t seen in over five years. “Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you marry her?”
“Because I didn’t love her enough.” His ex’s wholesome features were slightly blurred in his mind’s eye, no clear snapshot, but he could remember very well how she hadn’t cried when he broke their engagement. How she’d been out of their shared apartment the very next day. He had no idea where she was or what she was up to, and, though it probably made him a jerk, he really didn’t care. Their lives were their own, and he hoped Cass didn’t wonder about him, either. “Why does it—”
Sadie cut him off with a slashing motion of one hand, her brow sharply furrowed. “Don’t ask me that. You already know why it matters.”
Yeah, he knew, because it mattered to him, too. Cass had never been right for him. He’d met her while visiting his brother at his Chicago law firm, liked her smile and her laugh, even if neither had lit him up inside quite like Sadie’s. They had been together six months when they moved in together, a year when he proposed. And three months after that, when Cass had been seated at the kitchen table putting cheerful stamps on save-the-date postcards, he’d sat down across from her, put his hand over the stack of cards, and said, “This isn’t going to work.”
He was thankful that he’d listened to that inner voice, telling him he was heading down the wrong path. It was the same inner voice that had shortly thereafter grabbed him by the balls and told him to get the heck out of Boston and the corporate world before he grew any more miserable than he already was, the same voice that had him e-mailing an old college pal who worked as a sound engineer in the film industry and asking how to break into that business.
Move to Los Angeles, had been his friend’s response.
So Ryan had moved to Los Angeles, and here he was in a projection booth, a movie he’d helped create about to play for public audiences for the first time on the screen below, and he didn’t care. He didn’t care one bit about the movie or the journey or Boston or Cass or Jon or any of it, not when he could feel himself messing up what—who—he’d always prayed would be his final destination: Sadie.
Why could he never seem to get this right?
Clouds shadowed more and more of her sunlight with each passing moment, and he watched her eyes on him grow colder. Her voice carried a distinct chill when she finally spoke. “I want to say that I don’t want to hear from you again. I want to say that I’m done holding back a piece of my heart for you. I want to say that I hope this is the last time we see each other.”
He felt his own face grow pale. “Are you saying those things, Sadie?”
“No.” She smoothed a hand over her elegant sweep of ebony hair before straightening. With her shoulders back and her chin lifted, she commanded the space, charging every molecule in the projection booth with her power.
Here was the movie star, the actress at the top of her craft, and the transformation shook him. His former fantasy stood before him, but he didn’t want that woman anymore. He knew now he’d never wanted that woman. No, he wanted the Sadie who had planned to hook herself into a harness and jump into a castle moat, who bit his shoulder as she came, and who believed there was some sort of magic in their first kiss.
Ryan wanted to deserve her sunshine. “So we’re back to where we started. Figuring out where we stand.”
“For a man so smart, you are incredibly slow on the uptake here.” She shook her head. “I already know where I stand. I’ve known all along. You are the one who needs to come to a decision.” Grasping her clutch, she moved gracefully toward the door, no worse for wear for having spent the evening in a stuffy closet. “Do you know what else I want to say?”
A phantom hand wrapped icy fingers around his heart, squeezed. “Tell me.”
Dark, depthless eyes found his as she glanced over her shoulder, flicking over his features as if weighing him, measuring him, and, ultimately, finding him lacking. “Find me to find out. I’m done chasing after you, Ryan Young.”
SIX
Christmas Eve
Ryan’s finger hovered over the doorbell. This was, in all likelihood, a terrible idea, but he had decided, as he stood in the projection booth two nights ago, that he was sick and tired of ignoring his heart. If the stupid thing was going to be so dang insistent, he owed it to himself to find out why; the real why, not the clung-to fantasy.
So he rang the doorbell and held his breath.
“I want to know,” he said in a rush when she opened the door. “The last thing you were going to say. I want to know.”
He had the pleasure of seeing her beautiful dark eyes go wide, watching her perfect pink mouth soften momentarily as she stared up at him before donning the mask he was growing to hate—the one worn by Sadie Bower, award-winning and internationally acclaimed actress. Elegant, cool, the picture of aristocratic discipline, and nothing at all like the woman who’d sunk her teeth into his shoulder when
she orgasmed with him in a storage room, vibrant and alive in the multicolored lights of a fake Christmas tree.
Anger sparked within him. He’d spent far too long wrapped up in thoughts of the woman in the mask, and not the one behind it, and he needed her unmasked with him for what he planned to say. “Can I come in?”
Silently, she stepped back from the door, waving him into the front hall of her luxurious house. The ceiling stretched two stories over their heads, constructed of sheets of glass and clean white beams. In daylight, sunlight would brighten the space, the white walls glowing brilliant and warm. His throat tightened, gladdened to know she had sunshine like that in her life every single day.
After closing the door behind him, she turned her careful gaze on him, taking in his appearance from his Chuck Taylors, over his favorite pair of jeans to the well-worn chambray shirt unbuttoned at his throat, sleeves rolled to his elbows. He hadn’t shaved since the premiere, and he hadn’t bothered trying to tame the wildness that was his hair.
Sadie, on the other hand, looked pristine and edible at the same time. Barefoot and seemingly casual, she’d paired sleek black pants with an oversized creamy sweater, the neckline of which drooped artfully over one bare shoulder to reveal the lacy, wine-colored strap of her bra. Her straight hair, which had hung halfway down her back during filming for Vendetta, now brushed her collarbone in a fall of soft black.
She didn’t wear a speck of makeup. She didn’t need to.
It was the lack of cosmetics that jarred him, and he realized that for the first time since their night together in London a decade ago, he was seeing her, Sadie. Sadako. It didn’t matter that her expression was guarded, her posture tense—the physical mask had disappeared.
The intimacy she allowed him simply by inviting him into her home sparked a flicker of hope inside him. “Shouldn’t you be spending Christmas with your family?” he asked, chest tight, heart racing.
“Shouldn’t you?” she countered sharply before pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Seeing that she wasn’t any closer to relaxing in his presence, nor inclined to lead him further into the house, he strove for a casual tone. “Jon is flying out to visit over New Year’s. He’s swamped with work right now.”
“Oh?”
Ryan shrugged, as if he wasn’t blindingly proud of his twin’s accomplishments. “That’s what happens when you’re the youngest U.S. senator from the state of Illinois since the early nineteenth century.” Though the session had dismissed for the holidays, he knew Jon would spend tonight cooped up in his fancy apartment in Washington, D.C., poring over paperwork like the overachieving pain in the butt he’d always been. “I called him on my way over here.”
“Did you tell him what you were doing?”
“I told him what I hoped to be doing.”
“If the answer to that is me, then—”
“I said I was going to go tell the woman I fell in love with ten years ago that I loved her.” Panic buzzed in his ears, but he could hear how calm he sounded, how steady. “You smiled at me on that train and stole my heart, and I’ve never gotten it back from you.”
Her lips parted, breath catching audibly as she stared up at him. “Do you want your heart back, Ryan?”
“No.” He stood tall, shoulders back and spine straight, and felt everything click into place inside him. Finally, he listened to what his masochistic heart had been trying to tell him since the moment he’d met Sadie, so he handed it over into her keeping, permanently. “I think you’ll do a much better job of looking after it than I ever could.”
“You love me.” She looked shocked.
“I love you,” he confirmed. “I’ve loved you my entire adult life, whether I knew it or not.” There wasn’t a single part of him anymore untouched by the loving of her, and it was a terrible power she held in those delicate hands of hers. He scrubbed his palm over his sternum, where the worst of the aching in his chest centered, and heard himself laugh, but without humor. “Is love at first sight even a thing?” Except it had been more than that between them, and he knew it. “I’ll admit, I still don’t know why you looked at me like I looked at you.” He might not know, but he was intensely grateful for it.
“That’s….” Her gaze dropped to her feet. “That’s an excellent question.”
“What—why you looked at me?” Dread curdled low in his gut when she nodded. “So tell me why. Why me, on that train on Christmas Eve? You have to know, after ten years.” After all her pursuit during filming, the fervent earnestness with which she had continued to put herself out there in the face of his standoffishness, his hesitancy, she must know why she had chosen him.
Uncertainty clogged his throat. There had to be a reason, or how could this be real? How could it be anything more than a fantasy, this time one she clung to, instead of one of his making? He had faced facts the moment she had come back into his life last April, and he had changed. He’d learned who the girl on the train had grown into, and he had found he far and away preferred that woman than the false idol his imagination and ten years apart had created to focus his drive. He’d spent the past months paying a penance of his own making, but now he had come out the other side, ready to be the man for her. The right man.
“I don’t know.” His heart sank as she shook her head. “I don’t know why you.”
Pain sliced through him. “God damn it, Sadie.”
She froze, eyes wide with shock. “You…you just swore.”
“Yeah, so?” Shoving a frustrated hand through his hair, he stalked past her out the hall and into her kitchen. Water. He needed a glass of water, he thought, slamming cabinet doors and glaring at the faucet over the sink. The woman was nothing less than a wrecking ball to his life, her destruction spanning ten years and whole freaking continents, torpedoing relationships and changing the entire course of his career and, therefore, his future.
And he loved her for it. For all of it.
“I’ve never heard you curse. Not once.”
He paused with the glass halfway to his lips. “My mother—” A bracing swallow of water. “Mom didn’t like it when we used bad language.” Not willing to say more, he set the glass down, braced both hands on the island countertop, and watched her warily.
The caution in his green eyes made her chest hurt. “Do you realize I didn’t learn your full name until Wes introduced us during screen tests for Vendetta?”
“No. But I wondered.”
Her throat felt thick, her mouth dry. “Not knowing your name didn’t stop me from looking for you back then.”
He stilled. “What do you mean?”
“I called my brother, asked him if he knew an American named Jon at Cambridge. He asked around for weeks for me, even though he thought I was silly. I tried to find information about your parents’ car crash and track you down that way, but I didn’t know what town you were from to even search for an obituary notice.” Her shoulders drooped as he paled in front of her. “It was why I came to the United States, actually.” When he said nothing, she gestured, helplessly. “I told myself it was to audition—and I did, by the way, and got the role that started my career in Hollywood—but, really, it was because I thought…I thought perhaps I might stand a better chance at finding you if we were on the same continent.” She tried to laugh and failed, the sound akin to a broken wheeze. “So no, I can’t tell you why you on the train, because I don’t know how to explain something like that. Luck or coincidence or holiday magic, I don’t know. I don’t know, Ryan, but I didn’t need to know, because not knowing didn’t stop me from recognizing all the possibilities suddenly spread out before me when I saw you standing there. It’s a shame you didn’t see the same p-possibilities.”
A sob escaped before she could reel it back, and then he was circling the counter and wrapping her in long, strong arms. The curves of her body molded to the lean lines of his, and the explicit warmth of homecoming enveloped her—completely, utterly, finall
y.
“I don’t have an excuse,” he murmured, his lips pressed to the crown of her head, “except that it was easier not to find you, for a while. But it didn’t stay easy. Every time I saw one of your films, or walked by a magazine with you on the cover, or tortured myself by watching interviews you’d done on YouTube, it got less easy to stay away.” His arms squeezed her tight, so tight she could barely breathe, but she refused to move away. “I quit my job and moved to L.A., because…”
“Because?” Tilting her head back, she gazed into gleaming green eyes, their expression so tender, so hopeful.
His mouth quirked, as if he wanted to smile but had momentarily forgotten how. “Because maybe I thought this would happen, if I waited, and worked, and placed myself in your orbit somehow. If I wanted it badly enough.” His breath shuddered from him. “And then Vendetta happened, and I had my come-to-Jesus moment.”
She frowned. “What moment was that?”
Lifting his hands to cup her face, he used the pads of his thumbs to swipe at the wetness that had collected below her lashes. “I had this idea in my head of who you were: Sadie Bower, the movie star I had a magical night with when we were basically kids. That version of you was who I’d spent all these years fixated on. But I’d forgotten that I had fallen in love with the real Sadie, the girl on the train, whose smile was sunlight on one of the darkest moments in my life—when I was afraid I’d just lost my brother forever. When I was alone, and you looked at me, and—” He broke off abruptly, jaw clenched and throat working against the strong emotion obviously gripping him. “It took me a while to find my way back to you, Sadie, because I had to find myself first. Thank you for being so patient.”
Her heart burst. “Ryan.”
He lifted her suddenly, setting her on the island counter and stepping between her legs. His hands tangled in her hair, forcing her face to his, and then he took her mouth with a groan that melted her to her bones.
