A Christmas at Gingerbread Falls, page 11
“I do worry, though. It’s late, and there’s no one out here. No one would hear you scream.”
“We’ve been over this.”
He stopped and turned her so she had to look at him. “I know we have, but you aren’t listening, so I’m repeating it. Regardless of all of that, I want to know why you ran out of my trailer.”
Carrie twisted her shoulder free of his grasp and started walking again. “I didn’t run out of your trailer. Dinner was over, and I left.” Brax walked alongside her lazily, and she hated that he took one step for every two of hers.
“I got the vibe you were angry about something and left rather than get into it with me.”
Carrie stared straight ahead and said nothing more until they were back at the hangar. Braxton grabbed her hand and dragged her to a side door and helped her over the high step. Once inside, she recognized the spot immediately. Brax tugged her up the flight of stairs, and when they were in the small room that made up Noelle’s apartment, Carrie threw her arms out in a huff. “I’m not playing Christmas with you again, Braxton.”
“I don’t want to play Christmas,” he assured her, using air quotes. “I want you to sit down and listen.” Brax led her to the dated but comfortable looking tweed couch. “I think we need to talk.”
“We did all the talking we needed to do earlier, Braxton. What we need to do is finish taping this movie and move on.”
“Funny how you’ve started calling me Braxton again. I was Brax before you misread what I said at dinner.” He held up his finger. “And let the record show that we didn’t talk earlier. You got upset about something I said and left. I would call that avoidance rather than talking.”
Carrie tossed her gloves on the couch and shrugged out of her heavy coat. “I didn’t misread anything. This is an arrangement,” she said, using heavy air quotes just like he did. “I get it.”
Brax swiped her gloves off the couch onto the floor and sat. “I don’t think you do. You heard arrangement and payment and decided it was a good excuse to run. By making me the bad guy, you justified not having to face whatever this,” he said with a finger waving back and forth between them, “is. I’m not the bad guy. There is business, and there is pleasure, and those are two different things.”
“Apparently not. Not in the business that is Hollywood.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong. When I said we had an arrangement, I was speaking strictly business, Carrie. We do have an arrangement and a legally binding contract. That has nothing to do with how I feel about you as someone other than the co-star and producer of this film. It has nothing to do with how I feel about you as a man. Hell, if you wanted to walk away right now, tonight, I’d let you out of the contract.”
She sat up a bit straighter and stared at him long and hard. What she saw in his eyes told her his lips spoke the truth. “Why would you do that? You’d lose a massive amount of money if you let me walk away tonight.”
“Money doesn’t matter. Honor and integrity matter. If you’re unhappy here, then I would never make you stay and suffer through it. You can’t hide unhappiness like that on the set, and it would lower morale for the whole crew. What would be the point then? Do you want to walk away? I’ll call for a plane right now if you do.”
Carrie sat in stunned silence and gazed at him, her lower lip trembling until she bit it. “Are you firing me?” she finally asked in a whisper.
He shook his head slowly and reached for her hand, holding it in his. “No, I’m giving you a choice, Carrie. Has no one ever given you a choice before?”
She pushed the tears back that were gathering at her lashes and cleared her throat before she spoke. “Not many, no.”
“Well, that has to change now, sweetheart. You are your own woman. You get to make your own choices in life. They might be hard choices, and there might be consequences, but you still get to make them.”
“What are the consequences of leaving tonight?” She asked the question more out of curiosity than anything.
“You wouldn’t see the movie on The Christmas Channel next year.”
“That’s it? That’s the only consequence? I can think of about fifty more.”
“As far as I’m concerned, that’s the only consequence. I’d pay out the people for their work and head back to Hollywood. That doesn’t mean I’d stop wanting to see you or be with you, though. I would show up at your door every day until you talked to me.”
“Why? Why do you want to be part of my life so much?” she asked desperately. “I’m hardly worth what you would lose here, Brax.”
He shook his head back and forth but held her gaze with his deep, dark green orbs. “You’re wrong. You’re worth everything I have to lose, both here and at home. If you don’t believe that, then no one has ever shown you your worth before.”
Carrie’s brow lifted in surprise, and she clicked her tongue. “You finally said something that makes sense to me.”
“I can make more things make sense if you give me a chance. There was nothing personal in that conversation at dinner tonight. Do you understand me? The arrangement I spoke of was only as the producer of the film.”
Carrie was silent again and leaned back on the couch. She didn’t shake off his hand or force a conversation between them that she wasn’t ready to have. He stood and plugged the lights in on the tree, and she stared at them, her tears making them blur until she blinked the water away. His thumb came up and caught a tear as it fell down her cheek, and a frown marred his handsome face.
“I’m freaking out a little bit here, Brax,” she finally whispered.
“I can tell,” he said as his thumb caught another tear. “I don’t mean to freak you out. I don’t even think it’s me as much as it’s you, right?”
Her shoulders sank further as she tried to make herself as small as possible. “It’s definitely me. The moment I heard your name was tied to this movie I had a sense it was a bad idea to sign on the dotted line. Something inside me said I was risking everything if I agreed to shoot this film with you.”
“I don’t understand. I want to, but I don’t.”
Carrie held her fist in front of her chest and pressed it into her sternum. “My sixth sense said you would change my life. It said you were going to strip away everything I believed about myself and leave me naked, vulnerable, and defenseless.”
He shifted and rested one knee on the couch so he could see her better. “What would happen after that?”
She shook her head and fought back the tears until she could speak. “Then you’d redress me, teach me to be resilient, and give me something to use as a defense against the pain in this world. It was the reason I turned down the role the first time. I was afraid to open myself up to that. To you. I couldn’t let that happen, Brax. You don’t understand why, but that was too big of a risk to take. I promised I’d keep you at arm’s length just like I do with everyone else. Then I met you, and I realized how impossible that would be.”
He chuckled and winked at her, a smile tipping his lips and making his eyes spark in the light of the room. “I pride myself on my tenacity. It’s gotten me where I am today.”
“If that’s so, why are you still single? Or are you only tenacious in your work?”
He ran a finger down her jaw to her lips where she unconsciously kissed it. His skin was soft, gentle, and smooth against her lips. “Up until last week, I hadn’t met the right woman.”
“The right woman,” she repeated, and he nodded once.
“The woman who brought out the tenacity in me as a man, not as an actor. The woman who made me work for every little tidbit of information or glimpse into her world. You can’t be tenacious if everything is handed to you. When it comes to my personal life, at least since I made it big in films, everything has been handed to me. I’ve never had to work hard to get a woman to go out with me. You taught me that tenacity only rises when something or someone demands that you work for it.”
“And I bring that out in you?”
“Scary, right?” Brax asked, as they nodded in unison. “I’m scared. I’ve never felt like this before. I’ve never been stupid happy just to catch a glimpse of someone in passing before. I’ve never made spaghetti for a woman and prayed she’d agree to eat it with me, for the simple reason that I didn’t know she absolutely would. This week has brought a lot of firsts for me. While I might act confident when it comes to women and work, when it comes to you, I’m not confident in either.”
Carrie cleared her throat and licked her lips, eliciting a moan from him that if she was honest with herself, made those grasshoppers jump around in her belly. “You’re an accomplished actor. You certainly can be confident in that.”
He nodded and leaned back on the couch with his shoulder pressed into the cushion so he could hold her gaze. “I used to think I was one of the best actors in Hollywood. Then I met you. You showed me that I’m good at what I do, in one genre or one particular type of movie. But all of this,” he said, motioning around them, “is your world. It’s all new to me.”
She took his hand and held it against her thigh. “It is new, but you’re not a romance movie star. You’re an action movie star. I couldn’t jump into an action flick and be the best actress on the set either. You can’t compare them.”
Brax shook his head and smiled. He hooked his finger under her chin and held it while he spoke. “The difference is, I’m not comparing genres. I’m comparing our skills. You’re a natural at acting. It doesn’t matter what type of scene you’re thrown into, you handle it with ease. I’m not that way. I had to watch hundreds of Christmas movies just to get a feel for how to approach the acting in a film like this. I demanded you as the co-star so you could teach me.”
Her chest rose and fell with his words. Was he sincere? Did he want to be part of her life outside of the movie set? She knew one way to find out. It might kill her to tell him, but his response would be an undeniable answer to all her questions.
“The way my life has gone, I haven’t had a choice but to adjust to any situation I’m thrown into. A kid doesn’t go through what I went through and not know how to handle themselves. I’m a natural at acting because I spent the first thirteen years of my life doing it. It took the next thirteen for me to decide who I wanted to be. The only way I could figure out how to do that was to choose a new name.”
“Choose a new name? What are you saying, Carrie? What did you go through as a kid? Did someone abuse you?”
Brax’s voice was desperate, so her laughter was probably surprising, but there was a waver to the sound that said more than her words did. “Someone did, yes. She claimed to be my mother, but she wasn’t. Her name was Luwanda Christianson, and she was a psychopath. My real name isn’t Carrie Murray,” she whispered. “I mean, it is now, but it’s not my birth name. My birth name was Alibeth Robinson. I was missing. Now I am found.”
Braxton stood on the other side of the tree with his hand in his hair. He saw the woman in front of him in a whole new light. Alibeth Robinson was a name that had filled most of his childhood. It was a name he’d heard from the time he was in kindergarten until he was twenty years old. She was a missing child whose case went cold. Then, one day, he heard that she’d been found. His little kindergarten heart had soared at the news, even if his grown-up heart had already been broken by the events of his life.
Brax walked back to her and lowered himself to the cushion, his hand grasping her chin tenderly. “You’re serious right now, aren’t you?”
Carrie tipped her head to the side but couldn’t shake the hold he had on her chin. “No one in our business knows. I hope I can trust you with this.”
He nodded without saying a word. All Brax could do was gaze at Carrie. Finally, her personality had come together to make sense for him. “I can hardly breathe right now. I think I’m in shock, but I’m not going to tell anyone. Your secret is safe with me.” He refused to break eye contact with her even as his body hummed with confusion and wonderment. “Wow.” He sighed the word more than he said it. “All of you makes a lot more sense now.”
“All of me?”
Brax winked and leaned in, placing a kiss on her lips that he hoped didn’t end in a slap across his face. She stilled, but she didn’t smack him, so he left her with the gentle kiss and nothing more. When he leaned back, he smiled what he hoped was an accepting smile. “All of you. The way you are on set, the way you are when we’re alone, and your desire to take roles you know will keep you off the big screen. Your lack of trust. The strong look of desire in your eyes that you tamp down as though you don’t deserve love.”
“That’s all true,” she agreed. “It’s why I overreact, underreact, don’t know how to react, don’t trust my feelings, and feel safer being alone than trusting someone else.”
“I can understand all of those feelings. You earned the right to feel that way, right?”
“That’s what the psychiatrists say.” Her words were whispered and shameful in a way that broke his heart forever. That part of his heart would never be whole again. He accepted it because, he suspected, her entire heart was shattered. Sure, maybe someday someone would come along who could put parts of it back together, but an unkind word or action would rebreak it just as quickly. Whoever was blessed to take care of this woman for the rest of his life was going to have to accept that.
Brax cupped her cheek and stared into the fountain of chocolate in her eyes. “I wonder if I had known . . . ”
He said nothing more, just sat there stroking her cheek with his thumb.
“If you had known what, Brax?” Carrie asked, her voice breathy to his ears. It had lost the shamefulness, but the tentativeness remained.
He smiled and leaned in for another kiss, but this time he left it on her forehead and inhaled deeply before he answered. “When I was six and sitting in my living room when I heard that name for the first time, did I know you’d be my destiny?”
She shook her head, her eyes wide with fear. “I’m not your destiny. I’m not even Alibeth Robinson. That girl never existed. Carrie Murray is someone completely different than the baby girl stolen from a hospital on a cold March night.”
Brax held her chin again lightly until she quieted. “Names mean nothing, Carrie. I’m not talking about your name. I’m talking about you, no matter what name you use. I’m talking about who you are, what your dreams are, and who you want to be in the future. Those are the things that make you my destiny.”
“I’m so confused by all of this, Brax. You’re not supposed to be like this.”
“Be like what?”
“Understanding. Kind. Open. Accepting. Determined.”
“I’m supposed to be Hollywood superficial who gives up on the girl who’s hard because there are enough girls out there that are easy, right?” She nodded but didn’t defend her opinion of him. “I’m none of those things, Carrie, just like you’re none of the things you let people believe about you. Tell me what’s going on behind those worried eyes of yours.”
“I’m scared.” She held up a finger. “Correction. I’m petrified. I just told someone in the industry my deepest, darkest secret. Even Ari’s fiancé doesn’t know. If it gets out, I’m done. I’ll never work again.” She rested her forehead in her palm. “What was I thinking?”
“You were thinking you wanted to trust me, but you didn’t know if you could.”
When she lifted her head, the emotions in her eyes told him he was right. She was testing him, and he knew it. He knew it the moment the words left her lips in a defiant tell me I’m crazy kind of way. He couldn’t be angry about it. Not in this situation. Carrie didn’t know if she could trust him when his past didn’t lend itself to being trustworthy. He’d spent a lifetime being flippant and materialistic about life. With clarity, Braxton understood why that had all started to change over the last few years. He was preparing to meet her. He was growing up, so he stood a sliver of a chance with the woman who was too grown up for her own good.
“I still don’t know if I can.”
Brax ran his finger down her cheek again and braced it against her lips. “You can. I swear to you right here that your secret is safe with me.”
She shrugged and her gaze drifted over his shoulder to look at the tree. “It’s not so much a secret as something I just don’t talk about with other people. The information is out there to be found, I’m sure. I don’t want it to be common knowledge because you know what would happen if it was.”
“Your career would be about being Alibeth Robinson instead of Carrie Murray.”
She pointed at him and nodded grimly. “I was never that girl, Brax. I don’t want to be Kennedy Christianson either. That’s a name I never want to hear again, much less see it splashed across the tabloids.”
Braxton remembered the name from the newscasts he’d heard when she was found. The woman who had kidnapped her had named her Kennedy Christianson. He couldn’t blame her for wanting that name to disappear forever.
“You’ve earned the right to be Carrie Murray.” He took her hand and held it loosely in his. “I don’t know what you’ve been through in life, Carrie. I can only begin to imagine after reading a few of the news stories. It’s up to you if you want to share more about your life with me. If you don’t, I completely understand that too. You’ve put it behind you and built a life for yourself. That alone shows me your true character more than any words could. If you think you can trust me, then I want to get to know you better. I don’t want to push you into anything or convince you to believe something you can’t, though. Do you want to keep filming this movie with me?”
Carrie fidgeted with the zipper on her coat, and he finally took her hand in his to quell her nervousness. “I should run down those stairs and out the door right now, but I can’t. You passed the test, and it wouldn’t be fair of me to cut and run just because I’m scared.”
