Kiss Across Chaos

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  “Brody put up a wall, too,” Veris added softly. “It took a couple of years, but the press got it eventually.”

  “A couple of years?” Jesse breathed, alarmed.

  “Back off and take your foot out of your mouth, Far,” Aran said as Brody rolled his eyes.

  Andy held up his hand. “It won’t take near that long for you, Jesse. Brody was a rock star and the media hounds them because they provide colorful copy. You’re just…well, forgive me, but you’re an introvert writer. Once the sensation about who you really are dies down because you’re not giving them anything else to write about, they’ll back off. And if they don’t, I’ll explain it to them, okay?”

  Jesse looked into his eyes and relief touched her. She believed him. She trusted him. His experience showed in his calm demeanor and his happy disposition. He wasn’t stressed by this at all. He didn’t even look challenged. She had to be boring compared to the truly famous people he’d apparently worked with.

  She was just a writer.

  Jesse drew in a deep breath and let it out. “Okay.”

  Andy nodded and took out a cellphone. “Give me your number.”

  “I took out the SIM card,” Jesse said.

  Andy lowered his phone. “You’ll have to change your number,” he said simply. “Then make sure that number is delisted, private and not on any databases anywhere.”

  Jesse swallowed and nodded.

  “Don’t go to the phone company to arrange that,” Andy added. “Get a friend to do it for you. Know someone you trust absolutely, with your money and your personal log ins?”

  Jesse didn’t hesitate. She nodded and fought not to let her gaze shift to Aran.

  “Get them to do it for you, at least until the initial heat blows away,” Andy continued. “Where are you living at the moment?”

  Jesse’s throat closed over. “I…ah…”

  “Take the house on the Vineyard, Jesse,” Veris said. “You can’t house-sit anymore.”

  Jesse frowned. “I can’t do that.”

  “That’s where the media are looking for her, ain’t they?” Andy said. “Probably not a good idea.”

  “I can find somewhere myself,” Jesse said, trying to inject firmness into her voice.

  “Let me know where it is, when you have that figured out,” Andy told her. He didn’t seem to be flummoxed by someone not having a permanent address. “And let me have your phone number, when you get one. This here is mine.” He pulled a card out of his casual suede jacket and held it out to her.

  Jesse took it. Andy G. 310-555-9873. 24/7.

  She looked up at him. He had these non-descriptive cards ready to go, which meant he used them. A lot. “Okay,” she said heavily.

  Andy pointed at the card. “There’ll come a time when you need me. Don’t hesitate, ‘kay? Call. No matter where or when.” One eye almost closed in a nearly-not-there wink. “Thanks to these dudes, I can be there inside three minutes, no matter where you are. Which is why I can back off and let you walk around and breathe free air as long as the jackals let you.”

  “Veris, what about the cottage in France?” Brody said.

  “Or Tuscany,” Veris said thoughtfully.

  “Okay, you two,” Aran said. He put his hand on their shoulders. “Let it go. Jesse can find a place to live all by herself.”

  “Besides, those two places are probably back in time somewhere, right?” Andy added.

  Brody scratched at the back of his head. “Yeah.”

  “She’s gotta be in the here and now,” Andy said. “She’s gotta control this mess—as much as she can, so they get it good and proper. Once they’ve moved onto the next poor bastard, she can dive down any time hole she wants.”

  “You know about…?” Jesse said delicately.

  Andy rolled his eyes. “They left me guessing for fucking years. ‘scuse my French.”

  “He figured it out, anyway,” Brody said.

  “Guess you’re one of the not-stupid,” Jesse murmured, for Brody and Veris and their family and friends didn’t tolerate deliberate stupidity or laziness of thought.

  Andy blinked. Then he laughed. “Hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “Enough,” Aran said firmly. “Jesse has been drinking Far’s coffee and eating Sydney’s cooking. I’m going to take her to Paris for a decent breakfast and good sludge. Then she’ll find somewhere to live. Then you can regale her with days-gone-by. Out of the way.” He pushed between Veris’ and Brody’s shoulders and moved over to Jesse. “If that’s okay with you?” he added softly.

  She nodded, relief touching her. “I’ll get my coat.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was almost a relief to arrive in Paris and sniff the mild warmth of February. There was no snow, just the stirring of air that smelled slightly moldy because of the dead leaves the melting snow had uncovered.

  They were in the usual lane. Jesse followed Aran wordlessly onto the sidewalk and up to the café, where the smell of fresh bread was still strong despite it being past midday.

  Bertrand was not behind the counter, today. The woman with the neat apron with her hair pinned up in a messy bun preened at Aran as they chatted in very fast French that Jesse could barely follow.

  It left her to her own thoughts, which swirled unhappily. It was only now she was away from the big house that she remembered the last words she and Aran had exchanged, before the shit had hit the fan and they’d jumped to Canada.

  They had not been happy words.

  Instead of settling at the little table they had used before, Aran picked up the brown paper bag and the two paper cups of coffee and led her outside and across the street. There was a park there, small and almost deserted, with brown grass and patches of mud where the snow had been churned by passing feet. The pathways running across the park at different angles were all mud-smeared and tracked with footprints.

  A deserted bench hunched just inside the border of the park. They settled there. Aran handed her one of the coffee cups and opened the bag.

  Jesse knew she couldn’t eat a thing. She sipped the coffee, her heart running too hard for sitting still.

  Aran held out one of the croissants to her. She took it automatically, tore off the end and ate it before she realized what she was doing. The taste of the croissant made her mouth flood and she quickly ate the rest of it, then licked her fingers and went back to sipping her coffee.

  The food helped. A bit.

  Aran crumpled the bag in his fist, his coffee in the other hand. He was staring into middle-distance.

  “I’m sorry about all this,” Jesse said.

  He shook his head.

  She held her jaws together and went back to sipping coffee, even though now it was tasteless.

  “Where do you want to live, Jesse?”

  Her heart squeezed. “I don’t know,” she said truthfully.

  “No bucket list cities?”

  “I’ve been virtually living at your place,” Jesse pointed out. “The Cotswold were on my list.” Which was true. The pretty, dainty lanes and rose-covered cottages were one-hundred-and-eighty degrees away from every base she had ever lived on.

  Aran grew still. “Are you saying you want to stay on there?” His voice was emotionless.

  Caution flooded her. “I wouldn’t presume to think that is an option,” she said quickly. “I’m just…I don’t know! You just handed me the entire fucking world, Aran, and said ‘pick!’ How am I supposed to do that?”

  “Pins work, I’m told.” His tone was flat.

  “Ha ha.” She relaxed her grip on the coffee cup as the sides dented inward and threatened to slosh hot black juice on her ungloved hand.

  “It doesn’t matter where you choose,” Aran said. “You can always change your mind, later. You live out of a duffel bag. Switching addresses won’t be an issue for you.”

  “Why do I have to choose now? My whole life just got inverted! I’ve got the private phone number of a bodyguard in my pocket, and the media beati
ng down my door. Can’t I just draw a breath, first?”

  Aran stood and tossed his undrunk coffee and the bag into the trashcan next to the tree and sat again, only this time, he turned to face her. His black eyes were shielded. She couldn’t guess any of his thoughts at all.

  “Thank you for not telling them.” His voice was low.

  She let out her breath, startled. That was not what she had thought he was about to say. “You didn’t want to go there for Christmas because of the hard questions they might ask.” She couldn’t meet his eye, though. Had he not seen that everyone had guessed? The shape of it, at least, as Veris had said.

  They had all very carefully let Aran and her have their privacy. They had given Jesse back the thing that had been stripped away from her in the last twenty-four hours, and that which Aran had fought to preserve for himself inside the big, close family.

  Aran rested his arm on the back of the bench and threaded his fingers together as he studied her. “What makes you think staying with me isn’t an option?”

  Her breath escaped her in another hard rush. “It isn’t? I mean, it is?”

  His gaze wouldn’t let her go. “You want breathing room, yes? Time to think about what happens next. So, stay with me some more. Transition time—that’s what you were doing, anyway, only this time won’t be for you to look for the next housesitting job. This time, it’s to figure out what you do next.”

  Jesse pressed her lips together. “I don’t feel as though I should.”

  Aran sat back. “Why not?”

  “You were upset about me not telling you about the book.”

  He shook his head. “Peeved, maybe. But I know why you didn’t tell me. I even know why you told Veris and Brody—they’re implacable when they’re joined at the hip.” He paused. “Stay with me and let’s both figure out what happens next.”

  Jesse got up and tossed her coffee, too. She’d lost all desire to finish it. “I’m glad you know why I didn’t tell you,” she muttered, sitting down again. “I’d forgotten. About you losing your job. It seems like such a long time ago, now.”

  He nodded. “I have a human life I have to go through the motions of living, so that the correct documentation is archived and no one asks the wrong questions.”

  “Like having the fake address in Georgetown?”

  “Exactly like that. I didn’t say anything back at the house, but mine would be the perfect set up for you right now, Jesse. A public address with a closed front door the media can pummel on all they like, and a private life a long way from there.”

  “Only, Andy said I need to…to shape their expectations.”

  “He meant by ignoring them. Moving through them with your nose up in the air and ‘no-commenting’ them to death.”

  “But that would mean…” Her skin prickled. “I would be completely reliant upon you to jump me back and forth.”

  His face didn’t shift. His gaze remained steady. “I don’t mind.”

  “But I do!” she cried. “I can’t ask you to do that. To be some sort of…of family car!” She thumped her fist on her knee. “Oh, how I wish I could jump, like you!”

  Aran picked up her wrist and eased her fingers open. “No, you don’t. Not really. It’s not a gift, Jesse. You know that. Shh…” He massaged her palm with his thumb. His gaze met hers once more, while little shockwaves ran along her arm and made her nerves fizz. “You like my idea though.”

  “Yes,” she admitted dully. Then it burst from her, taking even her by surprise. “I hate all that fame stuff, Aran. I really, really hate it. People staring at me, at my image online, even. It gives me the creeps.”

  He nodded. “The public arena is a dangerous place for all of us.”

  “That’s your father talking.”

  He didn’t ask which one. Brody would have said the same thing, too. Jesse knew that with utter certainty.

  “It’s me saying it, too,” Aran said quietly. There was something in his eyes. His face. His jaw worked.

  Jesse turned to study him closely. “Something happened…” she breathed. Then it clicked. “New Orleans. That’s why you went back there and got comprehensively drunk, isn’t it?”

  His gaze shifted from her. He looked down at the muddy ground around their feet. “I played with fire and got burned. Having facts put out into public…it can wound people. It destroys lives….” There was pain in his eyes.

  Jesse caught his hand in hers. “Kyle…I can’t remember his last name. He was a journalist.” She let out a breath. “Journalists deal with public facts,” she added. “He was with you and then he wasn’t. What did he do to you, Aran?”

  Aran’s gaze shifted to her and away. “If you ask Kyle, he’ll tell you I’m the one who handed out all the damage. Yet I’m the one who lost his job.”

  Jesse cupped his jaw. “I’m sorry.”

  Aran shook his head. A tiny movement. “I’m not. I needed the reminder.”

  Jesse stared at him. Aran was talking about being exposed in public, about privacy and keeping secrets. Yet the pain in his eyes told a different story. Of broken trust and hurt and withdrawal behind a shell, so the world couldn’t reach him…

  She didn’t realize she was going to kiss him until her mouth pressed against his.

  The kiss was explosive, an expression of everything she couldn’t say, didn’t dare show in any way but this, when meaning was lost behind want and touch.

  Aran drew her up against him, with a deep groan, which only made it better. It made her nerves sizzle. It made her want him even more. She lost track of where she was, their public location. She cared for nothing but his mouth against hers, and what his hands were doing to her.

  He’d pushed them under her coat and slid them over her sweater, then under it. She shivered at his hot touch, then drew in a sharp breath as his hand cupped her breast and his fingers stroked her nipple.

  Jesse tore her mouth from his. “Your place.” Her voice was hoarse.

  “Yes.” So was his voice rough and low.

  They got to their feet, while Aran tugged her sweater down and pulled her coat back into place. Then he gripped her hand and walked back to the lane in long strides. Jesse didn’t protest at having to break into a run every few steps to keep up with him. The faster the better.

  In the lane, he drew her to him with another long, deep, slow kiss. Time enveloped them. Then released them.

  Aran had brought them right to his bed again.

  Jesse sighed and happily removed his clothes in between helping him strip hers away. He moved over the top of her as soon as she had finished with both. His cock was rigid, more than ready and he slid into her and it felt so…right.

  They moved together, while the rest of the world and all their concerns fell away from them and left them free to wallow in the melding of minds and bodies.

  Jesse cried out her pleasure as she climaxed, while Aran drove himself into her with hard thrusts, every tendon straining, until he came with a hard, heavy groan.

  Afterwards, he pulled her up against him, while rain pattered against the window over their heads and the day turned to night. Jesse let herself be held because it meant she could delay making hard decisions just for a little longer.

  She was nearly asleep when Aran spoke, his voice rumbling in his chest, which was just under her ear. “Stay here. Just for a while.”

  Jesse sighed. “Okay.”

  His arm tightened.

  It had been the easiest decision in the world to make, because it was the equivalent of doing nothing.

  Nothing changed.

  Jesse wrote during the morning, while Aran did his mysterious things, and after lunch, she worked on administration.

  Neither of them looked at news feeds. Neither of them suggested going anywhere outside the house. Jesse didn’t rush to replace her phone card. She didn’t want a working phone. Not right now. And as far as she knew, Aran had turned his off. She never heard it buzz.

  They stayed in and streamed movies and T
V shows or read. Or made love. Or cooked. Aran had groceries delivered, so they didn’t need to go out for food, either.

  It was as if the whole best seller mess had blown away like the dandelion seed heads that were already growing in the garden. Spring was coming.

  Three days slid by, while Jesse held her breath and said nothing that might destroy the fragile peace and silence.

  On the third day, she came down the stairs after sprinting up them because she had waited too long to go to the bathroom. She was into the last twenty thousand words of the current novel, and that was always when she grew completely obsessed about the story, spending all day writing it, if she could. Breaking off from writing to do ordinary things like bathroom breaks, sleeping and eating she left until she absolutely had to.

  At the third to last step from the bottom, she paused. From here, she could see the hearth end of the living room, and the wing chair Aran had turned so his back was to the fireplace and away from the sun shining through the front door, which shielded the screen of his tablet.

  He did that nearly every morning he sat there to read.

  He was still reading now. One hand held the tablet propped up on his knee, the other hand hung over the side of the armchair. His long legs were thrust out and his ankles crossed, which made them look even longer.

  Such a beautiful man… The words whispered through her mind.

  Jesse sank onto the step and hugged her knees, studying Aran. His dark, curly hair. The impossibly long black lashes over black eyes. His chin, dark with growth and the pale cheeks above the scruff.

  His throat and the wide shoulders. The long lean lines that disguised a strength that always surprised her and humbled her.

  I don’t want this to end, the same voice whispered.

  Only, it would. Things always ended. Always. In blood and defeat, or in victory, they did end.

  And this was not her place, anyway. She shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be stealing Aran’s attention the way she had been. He was made for greater things and better people than her…