Lucky Star: A Hollywood Love Story (25 page)

While Cameron snoozed next to me, I’d spent the last half hour reading the same paragraph over and over again. I was in the middle of a book about a couple experiencing problems in their relationship because the man’s political ambitions cast the woman’s role in his life in a negative light. Some of the themes the author touched on had hit a little too close to home and I knew I should give up on the story, but with my own similar situation playing out daily I wanted so badly to get through their drama to the happily ever after all romances promised at the end of the book. If a politician could successfully manage his career with a woman who was bad for him, surely an up-and-coming actor could do the same? That their story was fiction didn’t seem to matter; I’d take any kernel of hope I could get.

As the wheels of our plane bounced and skidded on the wet runway, Cameron jolted awake with a start.

“Good morning sleepyhead.” I closed my Kindle and stowed it in my purse. “Good nap?”

“The best,” he remarked. “I dreamed I was going on a romantic vacation with the love of my life.”

“That
does
sound good. Anyone I know?”

“Only the most beautiful woman in the entire world. Her name’s Sarah. I think you’ve met her – gorgeous auburn red hair, captivating green eyes, the most sinfully decadent lips you’ve ever seen.” He leaned over and placed a quick kiss on said lips before glancing around the cabin to make sure no one had witnessed the exchange. “God, I hate all this sneaking around. I can’t wait to have you all to myself.”

“You might have mentioned that,” I smirked.

“Yeah, well. I mean it now more than I did even two hours ago.”

After what felt like the longest taxiing in the history of flights, our plane finally came to a stop at the gate. We unbuckled our seatbelts and Cameron stood to grab our carry-on luggage from the overhead bin. As he reached to pull down my bag, the faded blue Henley he wore slid up his torso, revealing the smooth hardness of his six pack beneath it. My mouth watered at the sight I’d been denied for far too long and I had to sit on my hands to keep from reaching out and running my fingers up the muscled expanse of skin.

That’s when I noticed the flight attendant looking at him with the same hunger I was sure were in my own eyes. It seemed I’d developed a habit of doing Very Bad Things at Very Bad Times because even though I knew what I was about to do was a Very Bad Idea, something inside of me snapped. I was so tired of having to share him with the world that no amount of logical thinking could have stopped me. I scooted over and before he could drop my bag down, I
did
reach up under his shirt and run my fingers over his warm, delectable skin.

The firm muscles of his abdomen jerked in response as he sucked in a startled breath at my touch. “Jesus Christ that tickles!” he laughed out, smiling down at me with a mischievous gleam in his eye. “You’re
so
getting it later.”

Surreptitiously, I flicked my eyes toward the flight attendant to make sure she was watching and then dragged them back up to Cameron’s face. “You promise?” I asked, dropping my voice to a husky whisper I knew made his balls ache with need. Seductively, I licked my lips and pulled my bottom lip through my teeth, keeping my eyes locked on his. When his pupils dilated to black orbs, a sexy, knowing smile spread across my face. As Cameron’s muscles flexed and bunched beneath my hand, I dragged my fingers slowly back down his stomach to linger at the button of his jeans. “What do are you going to do to me?” I asked, letting my eyes roam his body, going from his face down to his groin where his jeans had tightened around the thick heaviness of his erection.

“You’re going to be the death of me,” he groaned out before grabbing my hand and pulling me into the aisle to follow behind him in a slow zombie walk off the plane.

As we made our way toward the exit, I caught the eye of the envious flight attendant. When I was sure she was looking at me I silently mouthed “mine” and walked past her onto the gangway. I didn’t look back to see her reaction.

Once we made our way through customs, we ran through the airport – me laughing hysterically as I hollered for Cameron, who trailed behind with our luggage, to hurry up – only barely catching our shuttle to a smaller south terminal for the forty-minute flight to Eagle Harbour.

By the time we stood in line at the Steelhead Airways desk, the the woman behind the counter was already processing other passengers’ tickets. When it was our turn to check in she explained the flight and processed our reservations, I still felt exuberant – powerful, even – from my small but marked show of defiance on the plane and those emotions fueled behavior I knew was unwise. And yet I couldn’t bring myself to care. I was on a much-needed vacation with my fiancé and as Cameron had remarked earlier, I wanted to shout from the rooftops that he was mine. It was immature and would likely prove unwise, but I was feeling possessive and eager, and more than anything, like a woman who was madly, deeply in love with the most spectacular man in the world.

As the clerk continued informing us about the boarding process, I leaned my body into Cameron’s and rested my head on his shoulder. I could tell the gesture startled him when quickly he glanced down at me and then back up at the woman in front of us. His strong body shifted and then he pulled his arm out from under me, setting me off balance. At first I worried he was trying to shake me off, but then he wrapped his arm around me and pulled me in tight against him. The woman’s eyes widened in surprise and she sucked in a quick breath before looking at me and then back to Cameron. Based on her reaction, I surmised she had recognized Cameron. Worse yet, she recognized me as not being his elegant co-star and supposed girlfriend. Her eyes darkened before turning back to me. When she found me staring at her defiantly, she quickly looked away and finalized our check in. With the side of my face flush against Cameron’s side, I couldn’t get a good look at him to see if he’d clocked her recognition but nothing in his body – no slight flinch or change in his stance – indicated he’d noticed. But as I’d recently learned, he could be very good at guarding his reactions when it was called for.

Concluding the check-in process, Cameron took our passports from the woman and, removing his arm from around me, slid the blue packets into the interior pocket of his puffy down jacket and grabbed our carry-on bags in each of his hands. I smiled at the clerk and she blushed an angry red before thanking me for flying the airline and turning away to file some paperwork. Laughing to myself, I followed Cameron to the waiting area where he waited, watching.

“You’re bad,” he whispered, without a trace of real condemnation.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself. It’s like the second we left Southern California air space I had this overwhelming desire to behave like a normal couple, be a regular woman in love with her regular, albeit amazing, handsome, wonderful, intelligent fiancé, who is
not
a gorgeously charismatic actor on the cusp of major stardom. I know my behavior’s not the least bit responsible, especially as she had our passports in front of her and could clearly see who you are, but …” I trailed off. The truth was there was no excuse for my behavior. I had signed on to play my role and needed to stick to the plan. After all, hadn’t I
just
told Cameron I could do it for the sake of us?

“It’s fine Sarah,” Cameron responded soothingly as he threaded our fingers together. “Worst case scenario is she thinks I’m a cheater,” he shrugged and tugged me forward for a quick kiss.

While that was a very bad case indeed, it wasn’t the
worst
case and we both knew it. That would be her emailing TMZ to share that she’d just helped Cameron Scott, star of
The Ties That Bind
, check in for flight to a secluded spot with a woman who wasn’t his co-star and girlfriend. I looked toward the airline’s desk and watched her go about her business. Try as I might, I couldn’t summon any shame over the very public claim I’d made on Cameron in front of both her and the United Airlines stewardess. I simply couldn’t.

She must have felt my scrutiny because she glanced up from her paperwork and our eyes locked. A look of stern recrimination crossed her face before she dropped her head down and went back to work, shaking her head in the process. It pissed me off that she thought
I
was the other woman, that Cameron was cheating on Jillian with his own goddamn fiancé. What could I do about it though? There was no way I could tell her any of that, explain what was
really
going on.

Before I could linger over the futile nature of the situation, the boarding announcement for our flight chimed over the loud speaker and we made our way, hand-in-hand, to the tarmac to board the blue and white Piper Navajo Chieftain that would fly us over the Straight of Georgia, across Vancouver Island, and down into Eagle Harbour. While we marched single file along the white line that led to our plane, tiny snowflakes began to fall from the sky. I grabbed Cameron’s large hand and tilted my head to the steel gray sky as snowflakes fluttered onto my face and melted from the warmth of my skin. The moment chased away the woman’s recrimination in an instant.

The snow that had begun falling in Vancouver hadn’t followed us to Eagle Harbour. Sarah’s hopes for a snowy getaway weren’t entirely dashed however as the lady at the rental car agency explained the highway that cut across the island was currently closed due to severe snow squalls and it was a good thing we’d flown since no one was getting here by car any time soon. The snow might make its way here, or it might not. “You can’t plan around the weather on the peninsula,” she’d said as she handed us our keys.

It finally hit me that we’d done it. The hustle and bustle of our jobs and the world as we knew it was far away back in L.A. while we were together at what felt like the edge of the world. As we zipped down the highway past the national park toward our private cabin, I had a hard time taking it all in and I could tell Sarah felt the same. The majority of our drive was made in silence. While I kept my eyes on the road, her eyes jumped from side to side as she absorbed the beauty surrounding us as far as the eye could see. With the empty road stretching out before us, I couldn’t help but feel small and insignificant in the face of Mother Nature’s bounty.

“Can you believe this place?”

Sarah’s answer was a soft, bubbling laugh filled with wonder and awe. “I know, right? It’s like we’ve found a whole other world. The pictures that blogger shared made it look heavenly but they’re nothing compared to the reality. It’s almost like …” her voice trailed off as if she was embarrassed.

“Like what?” I never wanted her to feel uncomfortable sharing her innermost thoughts with me since her subtle insights and canny observations were one of the things I loved most about her.

“It’s like … I mean … you can smell the green, can’t you? Obviously Christmas trees have great scents, but I’ve never really given any thought to the way other trees smell. But here though? The air is perfumed with it. It’s like … spice and earth and … I dunno, something else. Like you could just walk into the woods and disappear into the embrace of the trees.” Her cheeks turned a lovely, dusky pink as she finished.

I laughed. “Yeah, and probably get eaten by a mountain lion or a wolf.”

Her face turned absolute red. “Shut up, you know what I mean.” She stuck out her tongue and I laughed even more.

“No, I know
exactly
what you mean. We don’t have
anything
like this in Ohio and I’ve been in L.A. so long that I’ve almost forgotten what real nature actually looks like. This place is on a whole other level. It’s … untouched, unspoiled.”

“That’s what I’m counting on,” she said, twisting her body in her seat to face me. “There are only about sixteen hundred people who live here full time. I’m kind of expecting a ton of privacy up here.” She waggled her eyebrows, causing me to chuckle again.

I glanced over at her before bringing my eyes back to the road. “I like private.”

I could imagine what she was picturing because lord knew I’d done some imagining of my own since she’d pulled that stunt with the ab rubbing and button touching back on the plane from L.A. I’d been shocked by how openly (and recklessly) she’d caressed me, but I couldn’t say I’d minded much. The words “be careful” had been on the tip of my tongue until she’d licked her lips and then all bets were off as I’d envisioned specifically where I wanted her to trail that wicked tongue.

Her behavior back at the second terminal had been even bolder, albeit less sexually overt, and I got the impression she’d been testing me to see how far I’d let her go. When I’d told her the worst that could happen was people thinking I was a cheater and then pulled her in for a kiss, her jaw had gone slack for a moment and her face had lit with joy. Not for all the roles in the world would I have taken away that look. It was the first truly delighted one I’d seen in months.

When I glanced back across the SUV, Sarah was worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. I knew she didn’t mean for it to be seductive – it wasn’t an affectation designed to turn me on; she’d always bitten her lip like that when deep in thought – but even so the sight made my cock twitch in my jeans. With her lush curves and tits for days, from the very first second I’d laid eyes on her, she’d set my blood pumping. Her package perfectly captured all my biggest turn-ons, but what I really loved was she was completely unaware of her sex appeal.

I’d been so lost in thought cataloguing every square inch of her body in my head that I’d missed when her mood shifted and she’d gone from quietly contemplative to excitedly eager. So when she blurted out the idea she’d been wrestling with, it caught me off guard. “I want us to be public.”

Her hand shot to her mouth and covered the “O” her lips had formed and I wonder if that’s what she’d meant to say. But then I felt her watching for my reaction. I wondered if it was necessary to keep up the charade any longer. We’d gotten press ahead of the movie which
had
been really good for my reputation. But now that I knew Jillian had ulterior motives that had nothing to do with the advancement of our careers, did I really owe it to her – or anyone, for that matter – to stay the course? I’d signed my contract before they’d hatched this scheme and nowhere in that document was my fauxmance with Jillian a required stipulation of my employment. Everything we’d agreed to had been verbal. Fuck, I hadn’t even shaken on it. I’d have to ask my lawyer to read through the fine print but I was pretty sure the only thing they could fire me for was failing to show up on time, ready to roll. 

My hesitancy triggered her panic and she added in a small, wounded voice, “Only while we’re here, I mean.”

“I kind of got that when you started rubbing my back in front of that poor woman,” I answered with a small chuckle.

“It’s just that with so few people at this time of year and with Eagle Harbour being so remote, I don’t think we need to worry about being found out. Sarah McLachlan used to live here and the locals never ratted her out to the press.”

“We’re not from here, Sarah. We’re not one of their own the locals will want to protect,” I reminded her, feeling bad for squashing her hope, but we needed to be realistic.

“No, I know. I just meant this doesn’t seem like the type of place where you have to worry about getting papped when you’re at the store or going out to dinner.” She rested her head against the window and closed her eyes. “I just want to be with you, like we’re supposed to be. I want to know what it’s like to hold your hand when we’re walking down the street, or to stare into your eyes across the dinner table.”

I wanted all of that too but I didn’t want to put our future at risk. As soon as I got word from my lawyer I’d hire a skywriter to tell the world that Sarah and I were together, but I still wasn’t convinced we could get away with going public on our own without any severe repercussions. I was gearing up to tell her all of this when I spied the smaller residential street we were supposed to take from the main highway. Turning the SUV down a lane lined with driveways that led into deep, lush greenery that hid the houses from the road, I started to share my thoughts with her when she bounced in her seat and pointed excitedly.

“Oh look, there it is,” she exclaimed, drawing my attention to the yellow starfish that had been nailed into a tree, the signal we’d reached the driveway for our house. It hung well above a person’s regular line of sight and was obscured by moss so it was lucky she’d seen it at all. If she hadn’t, I don’t know how we ever would have found this place. The only indication there were houses on the road were thin cutouts in the fern-lined street, and some of them were barely wide enough for a car as large as ours to fit through.

Inching toward the cabin, when it came into view I sucked in a quick breath. It was
much
larger and nicer than I’d thought from Sarah’s description last night. “Are you sure this is the right place?” I leaned forward in my seat to get a better look at the building through the windshield. I craned my neck further to take in the large façade and still couldn’t see the whole thing from my vantage point. “It’s massive.”

Sarah was out of her seat and walking toward the house almost before I could draw the SUV to a full and complete stop. Standing in a wide, open clearing that could easily fit twenty parked cars, she threw her hands out and twirled around in tight little circles. When she laughed out loud I had to join her with a chuckle of my own. Coming to rest, a little wobbly from her spinning, she sighed. “It’s perfect.” Her smile was as wide as I’d ever seen it.

At her side, I could see the house was even bigger than I’d initially thought. From the front it looked utterly massive, but it extended far back into the lot toward the ocean. It was way too big for two people. “Do I even want to know how much did this place cost?”

“Honestly?” she asked, peering up at me. “I’m not sure exactly. On VRBO it’s listed for four thousand a week but we got special winter rates since it’s low season.”

“It still had to cost a fortune. Are you sure we can afford it?”

She dropped her face to stare at the ground, brushing her foot back and forth through fallen pine needles. “Um … so, about that.”

I raised her chin with my knuckle and pressed a soft kiss to her lips. “Spit it out.”

She exhaled and scrunched her face up. “Broderick paid for it,” she muttered sheepishly.

“Sarah …” I didn’t want to be in any more debt to that man than I already felt.

“It’s not what you think.” Squaring her shoulders, she took my hand and I trailed after her. Finding the steps that led to the side door, she sat down and motioned for me to join her.

“I didn’t tell you about it because I knew how bad it looked and you were already so angry at me. I should have said something, but by the time I worked up the courage to tell you, you’d already …”

She didn’t have to say what I’d “already” done. I’d abandoned her. Again.

She peered up at me, her face nervous and her eyes pinched.

“I promise, whatever you say, I will listen to you and won’t jump to any conclusions.”

“Okay,” she sighed, and dropped her eyes down to her knees. Taking in a lungful of crisp ocean air into her lungs, she said, “When I got promoted, I got a raise.”

I squeezed her knee. “I’m sorry I wasn’t more supportive.”

She gave me a regret-tinged smile. “Anyhow, when I went to Broderick’s office to talk over my new job, something seemed off about the whole thing. During the meeting with Aerin he said he’d been planning to promote me and I don’t think he was lying, but I also don’t think he was doing so because I was as invaluable as he’d made out.”

“Of course you are. You do the work of three people.”

“Thanks, but I know my worth and there’s no way I earned an Associate Producer title with what I’ve done for him. I’ve asked around, checked with other studios and that’s way above my experience.” She shrugged. “But what’s done is done … Anyhow, as I sat there I realized my promotion wasn’t about my work but rather Broderick was trying to bribe me. I’d already said I’d go along with the plan, but I think after the surprise announcement of just how much the plan had changed, he knew he needed to sweeten the deal.”

“Go on …” I could see where her story was going and I had to fight my suspicions. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe her version of events, but I’d spent the last few months second guessing everything she did and wondering at her ulterior motives that now I had to consciously stifle that reaction when I knew it was completely undeserved.