Summer with a Star (Second Chances Book 1) (23 page)

At last, something concrete that he could latch onto.

“It doesn’t have to be,” he said. He reached for her, tugging her into his arms. “I don’t want it to be over, and nothing says that it has to be. I love you, Tasha. I’ve loved you for almost as long as I’ve known you.”

“Spence.”

“And I know that you have feelings for me. That should be all that matters.”

She wriggled to loosen his hold on her. He let her go. A wave swept to within inches of their feet.

“Maybe it should be all that matters,” she said, “but right now, I don’t see how. You’re right,” she went on before he could get anything in, “I do love you. It’s crazy, but I do. It’s new, it’s unformed, but I’m sure it’s love.”

“Then let’s just be together,” he said, reaching for her again. He wanted to hold her close, let his body warm hers, give her his strength and his heart.

“I would if I could,” she said. “If I thought for half a second that it would work, then I would move heaven and earth to be with you.”

“Then we can make it work,” he argued. His heart continued to pound as if he was still jogging.

“How?” she insisted. “How do you make a relationship work when the people involved live such different lives so far apart?”

“What if we weren’t far apart?” he asked. If Yvonne was holding up her end of the bargain, he might just have a chance. “What if I told you that my condition for filming Second Chances is that they choose a location here in Maine? What if I told you that I want to buy this house from the Cavanaros, if they’re ready to sell?”

“You….” Her mouth hung open. She stared at him, hope sparkling in her eyes, but only for a moment. She closed those eyes and shook her head. “Filming in Maine is one thing, but it’s just a pilot. I know you said there was a strong chance it would be picked up for a whole series, but what if it only lasts a few episodes? What if it gets canceled, or what if there’s a huge lag between filming the pilot and filming the rest of the show and you jet off to Serbia or someplace for a movie? What would we do then?”

“What if your school district transferred you to Texas? Or what if you were hit by a bus and ended up in a wheelchair?”

She folded her arms and fixed him with a flat stare. “Those are not real life scenarios. Neither is this.” She turned and started walking back to the house. “It’s best if we just break things off now, before anyone gets hurt.”

“It’s too late for that,” he said, charging after her, wanting to kiss her and shake her at the same time.

“Then I’m sorry,” she said. At least she matched her pace to his as they walked together. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to break up with you.”

“In spite of the fact that you love me?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“Tasha.” He stopped and heaved out a breath. How could she be so cruel?

At least she stopped and turned back to him. “I don’t know what else to do, Spence. I can’t live your life and I don’t think you’d be able to live mine.”

“What do you mean, my life and your life?” Either way, he didn’t think he would like the answer.

She gave him another one of those stares that sent a spear of helplessness straight through his gut. “Love only lasts if the two people in love have anything in common. You live a fancy, fast-paced life, I teach children.”

“And I told you, I admire you for it. I think what you do is wonderful.”

“And I like your work,” she argued. “But what about the rest of it? Do you really want to be seen out at important Hollywood events with a woman who doesn’t know her Minolta Blancs from her Hush Puppies?”

“Manolo Blahniks,” he corrected her. An instant later, he registered his mistake and winced. “Those sorts of things don’t matter,” he insisted as she walked on down the beach.

“Don’t they?” She shook her head. “They do, Spence, and you know it. Can’t you imagine all the things that people will say about me if I go out in public anywhere fancier than Summerbury with you? Can you imagine the snide comments about how fat Spencer Ellis’s nobody girlfriend is and how Spencer Ellis’s girlfriend doesn’t know how to dress and Spencer Ellis scraped the bottom of the barrel for that one. It would make the things that Brad said to me look like greeting cards.”

Spence stopped, dumbstruck. “Is that what you think people would say about you?”

She spun to face him, a wave rushing over her toes. “Isn’t it, though? Isn’t that the kind of thing you people say about anyone who hasn’t reached your same A-list status?”

Bam. Like a bullet in his heart. There it was.

“You haven’t changed at all,” he said, well aware of how cold he sounded.

“What?”

He ran a hand through his hair, huffing out a mirthless laugh. “You haven’t changed the way you see me one bit.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She crossed her arms.

Exactly the way she had on the day that they’d met. The day that Jenny had shouted at him about celebrity entitlement and she had fallen to pieces because he ruined her vacation.

“All this time, I thought that you saw me as an actual person. I thought that you could see past the image and the roles to the real me. I thought that’s who you loved.” He was a fool.

“No,” she groaned, rubbing her face. “No, you’re misunderstanding me.”

“Am I?” The words were bitter on his lips.

“I know who you are, Spence,” she argued. “You’re a great guy. You’re warm and affectionate, and you’re really good with kids. But your job is what it is.”

“Right.” He rested his hand on his hips and stared out into the ocean. “My job is being a shiny, fabulous dickhead who cares about things like status and popularity.”

“That’s not what I mean either,” she sighed, then growled. “Why can’t I get this out right?”

“Because what you’re trying to tell me is bullshit,” he answered. “You can try to sound all noble and pretend that you’re breaking up with me so that neither of us get hurt, when what you’re really doing is running away from taking any kind of chance.”

“I am not.”

“Yes, you are,” he argued. “You just said it yourself. The insults you imagine that people in my profession would hurl at you would be worse than anything that Brad ever said to you.”

She hesitated, dancing from one foot to another as a wave slid close to her. “That doesn’t mean….” She stopped and frowned.

“Tasha, I’m sorry that you’ve been hurt, but I was not the one who hurt you,” he said, taking a half step closer to her. “Don’t use what I do for a living as an excuse to walk away from what could be a good thing, what could be the best thing either of us have ever had in our lives.”

“I’m not—”

“And don’t, for one second, let that douche Brad hold your heart hostage any longer. You’ve held onto that for long enough. Let go.”

“Don’t you tell me to let go, Spencer Ellis,” she hurled at him as he marched right past her, eyes on the house.

“Why not?” he tossed over his shoulder. “Afraid of what will happen if you do?”

“No,” she protested, but he could hear the uncertainty in that single word.

He kept walking, too frustrated to look back, though he could hear her footfalls crunching in the sand right behind him. It all came back to the same things, every time. Someone got hurt, and so for the rest of their lives they blamed the next person to come along who put them in the same position of vulnerability. He could see clear as day what was going on with her, he just couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

“I don’t want to fight,” she said, several feet behind him.

“Neither do I,” he answered without looking back. He didn’t want to fight the ghost of Brad either.

“I’m sorry,” she went on.

“So am I,” he replied. Sorry that anyone had ever hurt her or made her feel like the things she loved and was good at made her less of a woman. She was wrong, plain and simple.

So where did that leave him?

The answer smacked into him like one of the waves rolling out in the sea. It left him exactly where he was when he began. He loved her. Loved her so much he was furious at her for not letting herself love him back.

Well, he wouldn’t take no for an answer, not when Tasha’s heart was on the line. One man may have done a number on her, but he was damn sure it would never happen again. All he needed to do was prove to her that his love was true, that he wasn’t going to step all over her like Brad had, and that he would never, ever let anyone talk down to or about her. And he would do it the best way he knew how—like a star.

Chapter Eighteen

“You’re up to something.” Yvonne confronted Spence a couple days later as he got off the phone with Sam Echols, who owned the ice cream stand on the pier.

She came across him in a less-traveled corner on the south side of the porch. With Tasha sitting on the second floor porch reading—or possibly just staring out at the ocean thinking, like she’d been doing last time he checked on her—he’d had to find a secluded spot to make the calls and do the work to carry out his plan.

“Of course, I’m up to something,” he told Yvonne. “I can’t just sit around and do nothing.”

Yvonne crossed her arms and leaned her hip against the porch railing. He had given her his answer about Second Chances, she had made the call to the producers and given them his terms, the producers had reacted favorably to those terms. And yet, Yvonne was still here.

“All right, let’s hear it,” she said.

Spence shook his head and slipped his phone into the back pocket of his shorts. “Oh no. I’m not telling you anything.”

“Sweetheart, I’m hurt,” she replied. She might have been, a little, too.

Still Spence kept his mouth shut. He moved to lean against the railing beside her. “All I’ll say it that I was never one to go down without a fight.”

Yvonne arched an eyebrow. “This is about Tasha, isn’t it?”

He nodded, lips pressed in a tight line. “And it’s none of your business.”

She shifted to rest her backside against the rail, staring into the house through one of the open living room windows. “You know, I found and rented this house for you because I trusted you when you said you needed to get away from the game for a while. I trusted that you knew what you were doing, and that if you had a little time, the clouds would lift and you would find a way to be happy.”

“And now?” he teased. “Now you think I’ve gone and screwed my entire life up?”

She turned her head to stare at him in surprise. “No, honey, I think you’ve done everything you said you would do.”

Spence blinked, loosened his stance and rested his arms against the porch rail. “Really?”

“Don’t act so shocked,” she said. “You needed some time away, you got it, and now you’re glowing.”

“Thanks.” Suddenly, he wasn’t so certain he knew where Yvonne stood, or where he stood with her.

“I haven’t seen you so motivated in years. There’s a light in your eyes that wasn’t there in June. All of these are good things,” she went on. “I’d like to remind you that I trusted you to make the right decision at the beginning of all this. I’d trust you now, if you wouldn’t keep me in the dark.”

Spence let out a breath and rubbed his hand over his face. Leave it to him to be a jerk the second he felt insecure. He drew in a breath of salt air, and faced Yvonne.

“I’m going to propose to Tasha tonight,” he said.

Yvonne’s brow flew up. “I thought the two of you broke up, that you weren’t talking.”

He shook his head. “Tasha is just upset because she can’t see how this will work between us.”

Yvonne kept her mouth shut, but he was sure he heard her telling herself that it wouldn’t work out either.

“I am going to prove to her that it will work, that I will move heaven and earth to make sure it does. I think the problem is not me, not my job, not her job. I think the problem is that that she’d lost her confidence.”

“I see,” Yvonne answered, head tilted in thought.

“I’ve got the proposal to end all proposals planned for tonight,” he finished.

“And you think that will help her get her confidence back? Help her to see that you mean business?” Yvonne asked.

“Yes.” It would work. It had to work. Time was running out on the summer. He couldn’t let Tasha give up and go home without giving him a chance.

Yvonne let out a breath and stood straight. “Well, honey, at least I know you’ll give it everything you’ve got.” She stepped toward him and lifted up on her toes to kiss his cheek. The gesture was as sweet as it was shocking. “Just remember, the power of a woman’s crushed self-esteem is far more of a challenge than any grand gesture can break through. She needs to want to feel good.”

“Of course she wants to feel good.” Wouldn’t anyone?

Yvonne spread her hands in a gesture of uncertainty. “If anyone can win a girl, it’s you, Spence. Just makes sure she’s ready and willing to fight.”

He didn’t want Yvonne’s words to have as much space in his brain as they did. He wanted to have complete confidence in what he was trying to do. Really, he did. He spent the greater part of the rest of the afternoon on the phone, coordinating flowers and musicians as if he was staging a wedding. He popped down to the pier while Tasha was having an afternoon nap to see how the decorating was coming along.

As soon as he’d enlisted the help of Sam at the ice cream stand, everyone else with businesses or yachts at the pier got word of his plan. They all wanted in. Before he knew it, neighbors were offering Christmas lights, businesses were donating food—although for a proposal, he had no idea why—and every other person he came across thumped him on the back and wished him well. It was almost like he belonged to them, like he was a part of their community. That alone was enough reason to give him hope.

The hard part was getting Tasha to go along with his plan.

“That was a lovely dinner, Yvonne,” he announced as they were all pushing back their plates and setting down their napkins. They were eating inside, at one end of the dining room table. The finished puzzle took up the other half of the table. He only hoped he could finish his own puzzle tonight. “Tasha, what do you say we go for a walk to let it all digest.”

Tasha glanced up from where she had been staring at her plate, a glum, far-away look in her eyes. “What? Oh. No, I don’t think so.”

A twist of panic shot through Spence’s full stomach. She couldn’t be that determined to keep her distance from him, could she?

“It’s a beautiful night,” he said. “The temperature is perfect. Besides, there’s something going on at the pier that I wanted to check out.” He prayed that his scheme wasn’t written all over his face.

Tasha seemed interested. “What’s going on at the pier?”

“I don’t know, but they have lights and music. Wanna go check it out?”

She hesitated, pushing back in her chair and staring at the table.

“Oh, go on, sweetie,” Yvonne said, standing. “I made supper, I’ll clean it up. I’m a woman of many talents.”

“You made it, so I should clean up,” Tasha argued.

“Nonsense.” Yvonne took her plate from her. “Besides, when I say I’ll clean up, I mean I’ll get Duke and Mitch to clean up.”

Tasha cracked into a smile. Spence’s heart sped up. He beamed. This was going to work. It was all going to work.

He stood. “So what do you say? A little after-dinner walk?”

Tasha rose slowly and sighed. “All right.”

A pulse of victory pumped through him. All he needed to do was get her up to the pier and say what he needed to say to her, from his heart.

He fought to keep the doubt at bay as they headed down the stairs to the sand and started the long stroll up the beach as the tide came in. Neither of them said anything. Tasha hadn’t said much to him at all in the last couple of days, other than what she had to to get by. He could tell she was fighting her feelings, forcing herself to keep her distance. He could use that in his favor. If he held onto the hope that she didn’t really want to break things off, that a part of her loved him enough to try, he could get through this.

As they approached the pier, the soft strains of a string quartet rose over the gentle lapping of the waves. Someone must have seen them coming and told the quartet to start.

“A string concert?” Tasha’s expression was all curiosity at the rows and rows of white Christmas lights decorating the buildings and boardwalk of the pier. “I don’t remember seeing anything about a string concert. And where is everybody?”

He didn’t trust himself to speak, and shrugged instead. He thrust his hands into his pocket. There hadn’t been time to get a proper ring, but he had snuck out to the small jewelry store in town to get one that would work for the time being.

Tasha craned her neck to search around the pier for the source of the music. She scurried a few steps ahead of them when they reached the concrete steps leading onto the pier.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “Shouldn’t there be a ton of people around if there’s a concert?”

His heart beat fast and hard in his throat. “See. Celebrities aren’t always surrounded by fans.”

She sent him a questioning look as he reached her side at the base of the pier. The cluster of buildings at the shore end were all festooned with white lights and flowers. Strands of lights were strung between the buildings too, creating a canopy of sparkles. The business owners who he’d shared his plans with had been only too willing to help put this together. The pier was long and wide, but the whole thing had been swept and the trash cans that were usually in place for tourists had been moved out of sight. Lights lined the edges of the boards all the way out to the water. Even the boats that were moored nearby were decorated with lights. The string quartet played about halfway out toward the water. The only effect he hadn’t been able to buy, orchestrate, or borrow was moonlight. They were plumb out of that as clouds had rolled in later in the day, but the light in Tasha’s eyes as she stared at the scene was brilliant enough.

“What’s going on?” she asked in a breathless voice.

“Here,” he said, taking her hand. “Let me show you.”

Spence did his best to keep his emotions in check as he walked Tasha down the length of the magical pier. Contrary to what Tasha thought, there were a few people there, watching from their closed shops or discreet corners. They were hardly noticeable against the lights and the soft strains of music and the sea. The light wasn’t as bright at the far end of the pier, but the cool breeze blowing in off the ocean and the scent of fresh, salty air was just as beautiful.

By the time they reached the last few feet of the pier, Tasha’s expression had pinched into a confused frown.

“I don’t understand. What is all this?” She turned to Spence for answers.

He faced her, taking both her hands, ready to dive in.

“This is what you deserve,” he said. “I wanted to show you what a beautiful, kind, amazing woman like you really deserves.”

She blinked several times and let out a breath. “All this? For what?”

She tried to tug her hands out of his, but he held them tight.

“Tasha, my life may have seemed exciting and glamorous before this summer, before I met you, but the truth is that it was empty. I’ve been missing something, something vital and soul-deep, for so long. It may have been a mistake that we ended up here together, but it’s a mistake that has changed my life and made everything come clear.”

He took a breath and shifted closer to her as she stared up at him, eyes round.

“We belong together, Tasha. I can’t imagine my life without you. You’ve brought me purpose and heart. You’ve helped me to see the man I want to be and the direction I want to go. Without you, I’m just a guy playing a part. With you, my life makes sense. I’m me.”

“Spence,” she began, soft and stunned.

He shook his head. “I know you don’t think our lives are compatible, but believe me, our souls are. External factors are temporary and can change. And I know you think that people will talk or somehow look down on you, but how could they? You’re a beautiful human being, and whether you were a queen or a beggar, the world will see that. You will sweep them off their feet the way you’ve swept me off mine. If anyone tries to tell you otherwise, I will fight them, fight for you, to prove them wrong.”

Tears made her eyes glassy, and even in the dim light, he could make out the color on her face. She swayed into him, but pushed herself to stand tall.

“Spence, I don’t know what to say to this. It’s all so….” She looked around, swallowed.

The strings reached a point in their song where the music swelled to full emotional intensity. This was it. He reached into his pocket and took out the temporary ring, a simple, gold band carved with a glittering sand dollar instead of a gem. He sank to one knee. Tasha gasped.

“Words can’t prove to you how much I love you and how willing I am to devote my life to keeping you safe and happy,” he said, taking her left hand. “The best writer couldn’t write lines full enough to tell you how happy you’ve made me or how happy we could make each other. Please say that you’ll marry me. Please say that you’ll be my wife and fill my days with joy and purpose.”

He waited. She stared at him, mouth agape. Tears ran rivulets down her cheeks and the sea breeze ruffled her short hair. Her hand trembled as he brought the ring to her finger to slide it on. Yes, he thought to himself. Say yes. Say yes.

“No.” She pulled her hand away from his and took a step back, knocking the wind right out of him. “No, Spence, I can’t.”

“You…can’t?” Hurt and something worse, embarrassment, thundered through him. He stood. “I don’t believe that. You can rise past the way that Brad made you feel, Tasha. You deserve so much more than that.”