But who would have? Not Ben. He was probably celebrating the return to his old theater life right now with that bimbo, Pamela what’s-her-name.
No. That wasn’t fair. Pamela the bimbo had backed off as soon as Jo entered the apartment.
Not that she’d been replaying the scene over and over and over for the entire seven hour drive or anything.
“What are you all doing here?” she dragged herself out of her thoughts long enough to ask.
“I asked Adelaide over to take a look at the shots I took in Arizona,” Nick explained, leaving his laptop on the living room coffee table and practically climbing over everyone else and half the furniture to reach her. “She was hanging out with Jenny and Tasha, so I invited them to come along.”
He reached her and closed his arms around her in a bear hug.
“Likely story,” she muttered against his shoulder, feeling like she might cry again.
“I’ll kill him for you if you want,” Nick replied, equally quiet.
She shook her head, gave him a squeeze, then backed off. Nick stepped to the side and faced the others. “Okay, so who told you Ben and I had a major fight?”
“Yvonne,” the three women answered simultaneously.
In spite of the gaping ache in her heart, Jo laughed. “Figures.” Moments later, she burst into tears.
Nick’s arm was around her, leading her into the living room with the other girls and the babies so fast that it made her dizzy. He took her coat and purse as Adelaide jumped up and guided her to the sofa. Three seconds later, Tasha thrust baby Hazel into her arms. That simple, poignant gesture made Jo laugh and cry even more, but at the same time, holding the startled, innocent baby made her feel good.
“I have no idea if I should stay here and help right now because Jo is my sister,” Nick said from behind the sofa, “or if I should clear out because you need to do girl things.”
“Stay, stay,” Jenny, Tasha, and Adelaide all urged him at the same time.
“Right.” Nick nodded. “I’m going. But I’m only going into the other room.”
Jo sent him a grateful smile as he turned and fled to the hall with her coat.
“You’re really lucky to have him as a brother,” Adelaide said, watching him go.
The momentary shock of having a cover-model-beautiful television star who Jo barely knew making eyes at her brother snapped her out of her funk. “Don’t do it,” she warned Adelaide. “Men aren’t worth it. They aren’t as great as they seem in novels.”
All three of the other women looked at her.
“Actually, that’s bullshit,” Jenny said. A second later, she glanced at little Daniel—who was playing with blocks in the center of the living room, and said, “Don’t tell Daddy that Mommy said the word she’s not supposed to say.”
“Okay,” Daniel said, banging away with his blocks.
“All right,” Jo conceded. “Maybe there’s hope for Daniel. If you train him while he’s young.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Jenny said.
“So what exactly happened with you and Ben?” Tasha came right out and asked.
Jo sighed, going as limp as she could with Hazel in her arms. “I walked in on him with another woman.”
“Whoa,” Jenny exclaimed as Tasha hummed in disapproval and Adelaide frowned. “How much with another woman?” Jenny went on.
“Well, he’d obviously kissed her, because he had lipstick on his mouth. And she was wrapped around him.”
“Do you know who it was?” Adelaide asked.
“Pamela someone,” Jo admitted, focusing on Hazel to stop the scene from replaying again. It got worse every time she saw it.
“Pamela Parsons?”
Jo glanced up at Adelaide. Jenny and Tasha were staring at her too. “Yeah, that’s her.”
Adelaide rolled her eyes and waved her hands as if calling a time-out. “Okay, what you have to know about Pamela is that she’d kiss me if she thought it would get her what she wanted. I’m a hundred percent sure nothing fishy was going on between her and Ben.”
Jo frowned, torn between admitting that Adelaide might have a point, based on how quick Pamela was to introduce herself and then leave, and the gnawing acid of everything else Ben had told her. She opted for the acid. “How can it be nothing when Ben pretty much came right out and said that he’s slept with everyone in New York and that it was just the way theater operates?”
Jenny and Tasha were silent, their faces falling with disappointment. Only Adelaide remained unmoved.
“Well, it is how some aspects of theater business work,” she admitted.
“Is that entirely helpful?” Jenny snapped.
Adelaide shook her head, brushing away Jenny’s ire with a sweep of her perfectly-manicured hand. “I don’t mean it like that. All I mean is that as far back as I can remember, even when I was in college, the theater people were a whole lot more experimental than everyone else. We dressed weird, we accepted everyone, and, yeah, we were a whole lot more willing to jump into bed with anyone we felt like.”
“Still not particularly helpful,” Jenny said, louder this time.
Adelaide huffed out a breath. “What I’m saying is that everyone has a different standard for what normal behavior is. I worked with Ben on a Broadway show years ago, before Second Chances was even an idea.”
“You did?” Jo perked up.
“Mmm hmm. Not gonna lie. We all wanted him. Every woman in that cast, and half the men too.”
Jo’s brow darkened. “Don’t tell me you slept with him too.”
“Nope,” she answered quickly. “And none of us knew who else did or didn’t either. Which is saying something. Every workplace has its gossip, and theater is no exception. But Ben was one of the few guys out there who didn’t kiss and tell. You knew you were safe with him, no matter what.” She turned to Jenny, brow arched, and said, “Is that helpful now?”
Jenny had the good grace to look repentant. “Okay, maybe.”
Adelaide shifted back to Jo. “When I saw the two of you together when I came over here for the reading, I knew that at long last, Benjamin Paul was off the market. You got him, girl.”
“Had him,” Jo admitted with a sigh. “I think it’s over. I yelled at him pretty hard.”
“I don’t hear any fat ladies singing,” Adelaide replied. Her grin was downright victorious. She stood, giving Jo’s arm a squeeze. “I’m going to go see if your brother has any more of that stew he made us earlier. You look hungry.” She stepped around Jenny, and headed into the kitchen.
“Please don’t tell her I like her,” Jenny whispered. “She’s a cocky little—” she glanced over her shoulder at Daniel playing, “—you-know-what, but I could seriously throw back some shots with her.”
Tasha laughed, shaking her head. “I always knew I was too tame to be your best friend.”
Jenny straightened, brow shooting up. “Tash, you’ll always be my best friend. But the world is a better place when you have a bunch of girlfriends to rely on.” She winked at Jo to prove her point.
Jo blinked in amazement, staring from Jenny to Tasha, then down at Hazel. When had she gained so many friends? She was the hermit writer, the one who had lists of online friends as long as her arms, but few she could count on in real life. And not just the ones in her house right now. Yvonne deserved the title of friend as much as any of the younger women. If it weren’t for her, who knows whether she would be with Ben. Not that she knew now, but—
The idea hit her so fast and so hard that it took her breath away. A contemporary series about friends helping each other out on the road back from heartbreak. It would be about romance, strong heroes who helped the friends see what love was truly about, but it would be as much about those friendships as well. And it would start with a hero whose past was so dark he didn’t think he could get over it. But he could. With love, he could make himself a new man.
“Oh my gosh, I have to write this down,” she gasped, handing Hazel back over to Tasha
.
“What? Write what down?” Tasha asked, shuffling her baby back into her arms.
Jo stood, searching the room. “A pen, a pen. I need a pen.”
“Here’s one.” Jenny leaned back and grabbed one of the pens the Second Chances production crew had left on a side table.
“And paper. I’ve got an idea.”
“A story idea?” Tasha asked. She and Jenny both were excited now. Because that’s what friends did. They got excited for each other’s triumphs, even if that triumph was as simple as busting through writer’s block.
Only, there was nothing simple about kicking down the wall that had kept Jo from her work. This meant everything. This would mean she had books to sell, income to save the house, direction when she thought she’d lost it. She sat on the floor, scribbling notes on characters and setting, scenes, and even lines of dialog. As soon as Jenny and Tasha caught on, they started suggesting names, situations the characters could find themselves in, bits of backstory. Jo had never collaborated with anyone before, but the more the three of them—and then Adelaide when she rejoined them with a reheated bowl of soup—threw out ideas, the faster the ball started rolling.
Jo was so intent on capturing all of the ideas, she only barely heard the doorbell ring.
“I’ll get it.” Jenny jumped up and rushed for the front hall.
“I’m out of paper. I’ve got a notebook in my study,” Jo said aloud to no one in particular, hopping up and leaving the pile of loose paper and scribbles on the coffee table.
She dashed down the hall, turning first into the library. The two chairs where she and Ben had sat a week ago, silently holding hands as the storm of their emotions played itself out, caught her attention. He’d told her then that she was all he had. No mention of Pamela or anyone else from the crazy, mixed up life of his that she only barely understood.
She turned away from the thought and the itching guilt and uncertainty that came with it. She had been fair with him in New York, hadn’t she? As fair as you could be when you walked in and found the man you loved in someone else’s arms.
Across the hall, in the room that she and Ben had converted into her temporary workspace during filming, she found an entire stack of notebooks. She grabbed the top one and hugged it. Just because she didn’t have anything particularly interesting in her past didn’t mean she should instantly hold everything in Ben’s life before that day at the coffee shop against him. Or should she? There was a flood of water under that bridge.
It was too much to think about. She shook her head and marched out of the room, heading back toward the living room.
She stopped dead at the sight of Ben standing in the entryway to the front hall, Spence a few feet behind him. Their eyes met, and her heart exploded.
Chapter Nineteen
“I’m sorry,” he said. “And look, I’m not even drunk this time.”
Jo’s throat squeezed tight. Her lip quivered in spite of her effort to control it. He wore the same coat he’d worn that night, the same scarf. His face was pink with winter cold, but instead of staring, unfocused, in her direction, he met her eyes with simple, clear honesty.
She’d only been home for an hour, if that. Ben must have left the city, headed for Maine, minutes after she had. He’d chased after her, driving seven hours, to apologize. Like a hero in a novel.
“I could grovel a little more, if you’d like,” he went on. “Tell you I’m really, really sorry.”
Jo blinked. She hadn’t moved since she walked out into the hall and saw him. She still couldn’t believe he was there.
“Hey, is that Nick calling us in the other room?” Jenny said, cutting across the living room to scoop Daniel into her arms.
“I’m pretty sure it is,” Tasha said. She grabbed Spence’s sleeve and tugged him down the hall, into the dining room, and around the corner into the kitchen, Jenny and Daniel and Adelaide behind her.
Ben watched them go, then glanced back to Jo. He waited a beat, then headed down the hall to her, taking her hand and leading her into the library.
“Can you give me an idea just how angry you are with me?” he asked once they were in the room with the door shut. He let go of her hand when they reached the center of the room, then walked on to sit against the arm of one of the leather chairs. “Because I’m not sure how best to apologize unless I know the worst of it.”
Sense rushed back on Jo all at once. She snapped from holding her breath to breathing heavily. “What is the worst of it?” she asked, setting her pen and notebook aside, then moving to stand in front of him, arms crossed. “Am I dealing with a chronic cheater who is always going to sleep with people to get what he wants?”
“No.” His answer was quiet and steady, but he wasn’t congratulating himself for giving the right answer either. “I’ve never cheated on anyone because I’ve never been in a real relationship before.”
Jo frowned. “Never?”
“I’ve never wanted to.” He held her gaze, his posture open, his expression unmasked. “I want to now.”
Jo’s mouth went dry. Her heart thudded against her ribs, screaming kiss him, kiss him, but good sense kept her rooted to her spot. “You want to be in a relationship with me now?”
“Yes.” Again, total honestly. It fit him so well, better than any of the masks she’d seen him wear or the parts he’d tried to play. This wasn’t Benjamin Paul, the famous theater director, master of all he surveyed, or even the mysterious, suave, sexy stranger in the coffee shop. This was a whole new Ben. “I want to see if I can have something real with you,” he said.
She swallowed and shook her head. “But you don’t deal in reality. Neither do I, for that matter. Everything we do is made up. It’s just how we are.”
“Pretending is our job,” he corrected her. “But I want more than that.” He let out a breath, glancing down with the faintest hint of an ironic smile. “It took me far too long to figure this out, but do you know why we get along so well together? In and out of bed?”
The mention of bed shot suspicion through her. “Why?”
He glanced up, grinning, the crinkles around his eyes that she’d first noticed about him back. “Because you saw straight through the act to figure out who I really am right from the beginning. You figured it out, and I’d lost track of who that was.”
“I did? You had?” She could feel it already, something warm and trembling in the pit of her stomach. She did see who Ben was, and it wasn’t that loser she’d walked in on kissing some chick named Pamela.
“I mentioned I’m a terrible actor, right?” He stood and took a step closer to her.
She wasn’t ready to be that close to him yet and sidestepped him. “You might have said something.”
He stopped where he was, respecting the distance between them. “I’d forgotten how bad I was until I had the chance to stop acting for a while. You gave me this chance.”
He was so calm as he spoke, far from the way he’d poured his heart out in New York. It was almost as if he was too tired and beaten to be anything other than dead honest now. And that made him ridiculously handsome. Artless beauty and candid emotion. She should have seen it all along.
“I’m a writer, Ben,” she said, sorting her feelings into place as she spoke. “That’s all I know. I’ve never been the life of the party or everybody’s best friend. I never would have brought all these people that keep showing up at my house into my life if it were up to me.” She gestured to the door, a quick smile pulling at her lips. “I never, ever would have jumped your bones that day at the coffee shop unless….” She finished on a sigh. She still didn’t know why she’d accepted his wild offer, only that it felt right.
He stood where he was, studying her, his eyes alight with a thousand thoughts and emotions. Jo didn’t know what to do but stand there and watch him watching her. Dammit, but she was still head-over-heels in love with him. She had the feeling that she always would be, no matter what kind of crap he pulled on her. It was a major defeat to h
er pride as an independent woman…and it was a comfort to know that she wasn’t so closed off from the world that she couldn’t open her heart and let him have a second chance.
At length, he drew in a breath, then unbuttoned his coat. “I have something I want to show you.”
Her lips twitched to a teasing grin before she could stop them. “If it’s your killer body, I’ve already seen it.”
He paused halfway through his buttons and blinked. Then he laughed. The joy of it changed his whole appearance from stoic to every bit as sexy as he was when making love to her. “No, not that.” He finished with his buttons and shrugged off his coat, taking a roll of paper from the inside pocket. “Although if that would help the situation along at all, I’d be happy to strip naked.”
Jo held up her hands, laughter welling through her, even though she tried not to smile. “We’ll hold off on that until everything else gets figured out.”
“You realize, it could take a lifetime for the two of us to figure everything out,” he said.
A lifetime with Ben. Her heart caught in her chest at the idea. He wasn’t suggesting that, was he?
He held the roll of paper out to her. “Here. In the interest of full disclosure, I want you to take a look at that.”
Jo’s giddiness vanished when his did. She took the papers from him, unrolling them and reading. “It’s a contract.” She blinked, scanning more lines. “It’s the contract from the Pollard brothers about turning one of my plays into a musical. Diane kept insisting that you had this.”
“Read it,” Ben said, nodding at the papers.
Jo scanned the first page. The feeling of being a mouse up against a dinosaur that legal documents always gave her pressed down. Lots of legalese, expectations, rights, agendas. “What am I looking for?”
“Page three,” he said.
She flipped to page three. Jo might not have been a rocket scientist, but as the scanned the lines, even she could see what was going on. The Pollards had planned to pay Ben a staggering amount, and for no apparent reason. Beyond that, there was a little too much text about fiscal liability and write-offs in case the production was a failure. She’d need to see what a standard operating contract for anything in the theater world looked like, but from what she knew of literary contracts and things she’d signed for publishers, the deal the Pollards had offered was bad news on every level.
Catch a Falling Star (Second Chances Book 3) Page 25
