Changing Tides (Kill Devil Hills Book 2) (4 page)

He pulled on his shirt and his sweatshirt. Then we stepped out of the bathroom together.

“Is your eye better?” the woman asked, arms crossed and staring at me impatiently. She had a second flight attendant standing behind her and they both were looking at us like we were a pair of unholy fornicators.

“Yes. Nate here fixed me up,” I told them, letting out a long exhale as I fanned myself. I pretended like I was hot and bothered from some post-orgasmic bliss. “Don’t you wish your contact was stuck in your eye now too?”

Sherrie groaned, looking at me in disgust. “Return to your seat.”

“Thanks for the good time, Mr. West,” I threw over my shoulder, smiling as vibrantly as I could. I even winked at him. Then I walked down the aisle, toward the back of the plane. The moment I made it safely past the curtain, with the reassurance of my friends in view—the smile on my face fell away and the worst sinking feeling imaginable filled my chest. It took everything in me just to walk the last few steps to my seat.

CHAPTER 4:

NATHANIAL

W
hat just happened? It felt a lot like whiplash.

Ellie had left me high and dry, in two seconds flat, like she needed to be rid of me as fast as possible. That hadn’t been pleasant. And neither was the churning now lingering in my gut. Maybe on any other day, with any other person, I could have sat back down in my seat and continued on like nothing had happened. Fuck. I would move on. She would move on. And in twenty-four hours’ time we’d both forget one another existed. But as I sat back down, staring at the blur of clouds out my window, I decided that simply forgetting her wasn’t what I wanted at all.

The real issue was…I genuinely liked this girl. And I didn’t want to part ways with a big “
what if
” hanging over my head.

Sometimes in life—very rarely, I might add—you meet someone and you know instantly they’re going to mean something special to you.

Her words knocked around in my head. I’d wanted to use her as a memory eraser for another girl and now she was stuck up there too. The whole lesbian thing was a mystery I wanted to unravel. Because I swear to God—judging by the way her mouth had felt against mine and by the way her eyes had devoured me alive—I seriously doubted she was as into women as she thought she was. And fuck if I didn’t want to be the one to prove that to her.

Digging in my bag, I searched for a pen.

The moment I’d slipped down my jeans, I knew she hadn’t been bullshitting me about the never being with a man thing. Because she’d stared at my dick like she’d never seen a naked man before. And I liked that about her. I also liked her overly-confident way and her foul little mouth. I’d meant it when I’d told her she was unique. She was.

So I jotted my phone number on the back of my plane ticket with every intention of giving it to her when we landed. Maybe she lived in LA too. Maybe we’d have a chance to finish what we’d started. Maybe it could even happen more than once.

Lots of maybes…but I wanted to take a chance on her. Or at the very least, finish what we’d started.

Clutching my ticket in my hand, I rested my head against the side of the plane. Four more hours until we would land. Ellie was trapped with me on this plane. She’d have to pass by my seat when she exited. So I closed my eyes, desperate for a few hours of rest, and drifted off to sleep almost immediately.

* * *

“Excuse me. Sir? Mr. West?”

My internal clock was a mess. I’d been on set in the middle of butt-fuck-Egypt. Not kidding. Actually, Morocco. But it was so far from home that I couldn’t tell the difference. Our director for
Dragon Wars
loved to pick the most obscure, remote locations he could find. Last year we’d been in Croatia. And if he told me we’d be filming in Antarctica next year then it wouldn’t even surprise me.

I peeled open my eyes to find no clouds out my window and instead cement. Sherrie the flight attendant stood hovering over me. And my heart dropped because of it.

“We’ve landed, sir,” she informed me. “You’re the last one on the plane.”

Yeah, no shit.

Unbuckling my seatbelt, I stood to my feet. I’d shipped most of my belongings home last week, so I had relatively few things to collect—just my backpack, headphones, and hat off the floor.

I was pissed at myself for oversleeping. But I was also pissed at Ellie. She was long gone and the least she could have given me was a simple goodbye. I guess our twenty minutes in the bathroom hadn’t meant as much to her as it had meant to me.

Hurrying off the plane, I rushed for baggage claim because that was the only place I figured I had a chance at finding her. My feelings were mixed. If I caught up with this girl would I simply hand over my phone number, asking her to call, or would I tell her off for being somewhat of a bitch to me?
Damn this day!
I should have just kept my headphones on and ignored her when she came trespassing into first class.

I’d almost made it all the way to baggage claim when a fan nearly tackled me. “You’re that guy, right? You’re Lucian Kale. You’re him. You’re Nate West.” The man questioning me looked like he was in his forties but actually was probably around twenty-five. He was overweight, sweating, and staring at me like he’d just won the lottery. This was my typical fan. Sure, plenty of women wrote me on daily basis asking to have my children. But I also had many men as fans too. They were the obsessive-compulsive types who read every book in the
Dragon Wars
series, watched every episode of the show, and even played all the video games. So I had to slow down and stop. Because people like this man were the real reason I had such a high-paying job.

“Yes, I’m him.”

He shook my hand, took a photo, and then proceeded to ask me a million and one questions. Questions he probably could answer much better than I could. I smiled and told him as much as I could. But every moment I spent with him was another moment I grew further away from catching Ellie.

And then, as soon as Super Fan left me, another person recognized me. Then another. And another. By the time I had a break, thirty minutes had passed and so had my window.

Goodbye, Ellie.

A driver meet me out front. He took me on the PCH, the Pacific Coast Highway, toward Malibu. They say everywhere in LA takes twenty minutes, but that is a bold-faced lie. Nowhere takes less than an hour and that’s without traffic. But today, miraculously enough, it only took twenty minutes from LAX to my house in Malibu. The shred had to be flat today. Nothing else could explain this wonderful traffic.

Traffic or no traffic, being back in LA was like a warmth washing over me. The familiar sights and sounds put my scattered mind at ease. I loved this city and I’d been gone far too long. But when I stepped into my empty house that feeling vanished. It had been four long months since I’d been home and everything felt wrong. I guess I’d grown accustomed to my two bedroom in Morocco. Or maybe the problem was that Kelly’s assistants had come to collect her furniture and clothes a few weeks ago, leaving it bare and cold inside my home. Like a shattered relic of an old memory. Dammit, she even took the bed out of my bedroom. I guess the first thing on my agenda this week would be buying some shit to fill the empty spaces.

Now if only I could buy some shit to fill the empty spaces inside me.

Telling myself to stop thinking so much, I glanced out the floor to ceiling windows that displayed the ocean. My view was superb and it was a beautiful day, but I still felt like hell. And I’m pretty sure it was all Ellie’s fault. Our brief encounter and her quick departure from my life bothered me for some random reason. Mostly, I hated that she was on my mind at all. After Kelly, I’d vowed to never let a woman have any control over me again, and I was doing just that with a complete stranger.

I had friends I could call, but it had been months and I didn’t feel up for the usual parties. Besides, I’d sworn off alcohol for a while. So, I dropped my backpack on the floor and decided to go rescue Holly from Mrs. Stone. The old woman had my cat and I wanted it back.

The walk to her house wasn’t far—only two houses down the beach from mine. Her late husband had been a director for several movies back in the seventies. He’d even won an Oscar for one of his films. Then he’d overdosed on heroine in the early nineties, which left Mrs. Stone a
very
rich widow. She kept to herself mostly, but was always asking me to come help when she needed a light bulb changed or something simple replaced. And in return, she’d watch my cat while I was on location.

I walked up the spiral staircase that led to her deck. Unlike my house that was set more inland, the back end of her house was on stilts and much closer to the water. She loved plants, especially anything tropical, and her back deck was covered in green.

It surprised me when I reached the top of the stairs and found Mrs. Stone sitting outside, soaking up some sun, in some sort of granny bathing suit. She had a young man sitting in a lounge chair opposite her.

“Hi, Mrs. Stone,” I said, announcing my presence.

She gasped and placed her hand on her chest. “Good heavens, Nathanial. You scared me. Well, don’t just stand there—please, come in.”

“Sorry,” I said, unlocking the back gate and entering. “I just got home from Africa and figured I’d come pick up Holly.” I had a key. She’d given it to me about six months ago. I always came in through the back, but this was the first time I’d ever found her outside on the deck. Someone had to tend to all her plants I suppose, I’d just never seen her outside.

The young man with her was her nephew. Or at least I think he was her nephew. He rose to his feet, his dark shaggy hair falling in his blue eyes, and reached over to shake my hand. We’d meet once before. I guess he was still living here. Or maybe he was a permanent fixture. Maybe the family had sent him out to California, from wherever they were from, to take care of grandma.

I didn’t ask personal questions. I preferred to keep the personal stuff to a minimum. “How’s Holly?” I asked instead.

“She’s fine,” the nephew said. “Carrie walks her daily now.” He reached for a pitcher of water sitting on a side table. Then he refilled Mrs. Stone’s drink like he was her waiter.

“Walks?” I questioned. “How does on
e
wal
k
a cat?” And Carrie? He’d called her Carrie. That was just weird.

“Oh, Nathanial,” Mrs. Stone gushed. “You have to see how adorable it is!”

Nephew eyed me, nodding toward the house. He wanted me to follow him and so I did. He opened the sliding glass door and there was my cat—strapped in a fucking baby stroller, fast asleep
.
Holy Bat Shit Crazy
!
What had these people done to my cat? Dropping to my knees, I started unbuckling her immediately. Holly woke up, screeched, and then took off running into the house…probably to hide under a bed somewhere so she could get away from these whack-jobs.

“I know,” the guy said, shaking his head. I stood to my feet. “And I’m sorry. Carrie gets these weird ideas in her head and I can’t do anything to shake them. But the cat has been very helpful in getting her out of the house. She hardly needs her walker anymore either. The neighbors think she’s nuts, but—”

I was staring at him with my mouth hanging open when Mrs. Stone came shuffling into the house. Her nephew had been right. She wasn’t using her walker. Plus, she seemed happier than I’d ever seen her. But maybe that was more his influence and less the influence of my cat in a stroller.

“Nathanial, can you come for dinner tomorrow?” Mrs. Stone asked, pushing the pair of heart-shaped sunglasses she was wearing back on her head.

Um? My mind started brewing up an excuse.

“I insist,” Mrs. Stone continued. “Ben’s sister is in town. She’s come all the way across the country. They’re a bit estranged. We could use a buffer.”

“A buffer?” I asked. “Yeah…I don’t know about that.”

“Yes, you would make the perfect buffer. You’re famous and handsome. You can distract her with your smile. You can tell her all about your dragon show. It might make the reunion go a bit more smoothly. You’re such a charmer with the ladies. Maybe she’ll be a looker, since Ben here is so handsome too, and it will be a mutual attraction.”

So…she was trying to set me up on a blind date with her nephew’s sister? Wouldn’t that make the sister her niece? The way she spoke it made me wonder if Mrs. Stone and Ben were actually related. Perhaps he was hired help. I glanced at Ben. He was giving Mrs. Stone a death stare. I could tell I was the last person he wanted at his ‘family dinner’ with the estranged sister.

“I told you before, Carrie,” Ben muttered. “Ellie is gay. And you can’t set her up. She’d flip out.”

My body froze and I caught my breath
.
No. Fucking. Way. Ellie
?
Was this a coincidence or God trying to torture me? What were the odds that his Ellie was my Ellie? It had to be just a coincidence in names. Right?

“And trust me,” Ben went on to say, “After everything I’ve put Ellie through, I highly doubt she’ll care about Nate West being at dinner.” He glanced at me. “No offense, man. You’re welcome, of course, but I totally understand if you already have plans.”

He was giving me an out.

But as I studied his face, trying to make a connection, I realized that the person in front of me
was
related to my plane girl. Ben had Ellie’s same dark hair and same vibrant blue eyes…even her same slight southern drawl. Someway, somehow, I was being given a second chance with Ellie. And I wasn’t going to skip out on it.

“I have no plans,” I told him. “I’ll be there. I’ll be your buffer.”

“Great,” Ben muttered.