All the Feels, page 15
Then her Santa Ana voice made its dry-as-fuck return. “When you said you were getting your hair cut, I didn’t realize you meant that literally. As in, one hair.”
“It was more a shaping than a cut, you follicular philistine.” He stroked his beard fondly, then ran a caressing hand through his hair. “Now I’m the best-coiffed and -bearded Viking in the village. Peasants will be lining up to be plundered by me.”
Her extraordinary eyes flew to his. “Please tell me you didn’t make your haircut decisions based on my input.”
Having been told mere hours earlier that he too was a terrible liar, he didn’t answer. Instead, he merely opened the door and waved her ahead.
Once the valet brought his car around, they climbed inside, and he paused before putting it in drive. “Anywhere else you want to stop?”
“I think we’ve had enough excitement for the day.” Her lips were tight again. Pinched. “Let’s go home.”
From that expression, he could only assume her patience had run out.
Sure enough, she was silent only a minute before stating firmly, “I’d like to talk about what happened outside the salon now, if that’s acceptable to you.”
Fortunately for them both, the scalp massage during the shampoo had lowered his blood pressure to a nearly normal level again.
“If it weren’t”—he slipped on sunglasses to combat the glare—“how exactly would I stop you?” When he contemplated the issue, only one good solution came to mind. “By kissing you?”
Her silence seemed to expand, filling the entire car.
When he chanced a glance over, she was staring at him, openmouthed, cheeks pink.
“You could stop me by asking me to stop,” she said slowly, pronouncing every word with crystalline clarity.
Oh. Right.
With an especially casual shrug, he turned his eyes back to the traffic. “Fair enough. Anyway, it’s fine. Chastise away, Nanny Clegg.”
The roads seemed particularly clogged today, even for L.A., and he resigned himself to a long, boring lecture about professional conduct and legal consequences. Nothing he hadn’t heard a thousand times before, but for Wren, he’d at least pretend to listen.
She didn’t say what he expected, though.
What she said was worse. Much, much worse.
“People say terrible things to me all the time.” Her voice was entirely matter-of-fact, free of both anger and self-pity. “They have since I was a child. At some point, I just stopped telling my parents or anyone else, because it upset them so much, and there was no point.”
No point to telling her parents she’d been hurt and insulted? No point?
Because her feelings were less important than protecting theirs?
She was still talking, even as his pulse rocketed back to near-stroke territory. “It’s not right, but it’s also not important, as I’ve told you before. Reacting to insults directed my way isn’t worth your time or energy, and it’s certainly not worth your job or professional reputation. I appreciate your instinct to defend me, more than you know, but you have to learn to let it go, Alex, the same way I have.”
By all rights, the car should be festooned with the exploded remains of his head.
“What?” Somehow, that was all he could articulate. “What?”
“Thank you for caring about me.” She cleared her throat. “But retaliating against people who insult me isn’t necessary or wise, and you shouldn’t do it again.”
For some reason, his poor, exploded brain filled with her expression the night he’d returned from visiting Marcus and April.
He and Wren had been standing just inside the doorway of the guesthouse, where he’d escorted her after their late dinner together. Before they parted, he’d offered her the huge plastic bag he’d kept protectively tucked in the carry-on bin the entire flight.
For some reason, he was nervous, his hands not entirely steady.
She’d blinked at him, confused, her own small hands motionless at her sides.
“This is for you,” he’d finally told her, impatient and uncomfortable. “Take it, you impossible dolt of a woman.”
Slowly, her face filled with befuddlement, she’d accepted the bag’s handles, then looked inside. Her brow furrowed even further, and she stumbled toward the nearest table.
When she removed the blanket from the bag, those ludicrously short fingers stroked the fabric. Once. Again. Again.
“Is this—” She spread the silk out over the table, still caressing. “Is this a . . . blanket?”
He’d planned to say, When it gets wet, it’s just like you! Only—first of all, the phrasing raised images of Wren, uh, wet. In various ways. Which was . . .
Disturbing. Yes, that was the word. Disturbing.
Second, this particular blanket was dry-clean only. He’d already taken care of that overnight, in a rush job.
And third, he didn’t feel like mocking her anymore.
No, he kind of felt like his sinuses were burning with some odd mixture of rage and pain, because she looked so stunned to receive a gift. So bewildered at the thought that someone else had thought about her and procured something for her, even as a stupid, stupid joke about how she was a wet blanket, ha ha, so funny.
So instead of making fun of her, Alex simply told her the bare facts. “Yes. It’s a blanket. It’s made from charmeuse silk. Dry-clean only, but Dina can take care of that periodically, when she brings in some of my clothing for cleaning and pressing.”
“It’s silk?” She licked her lips and bowed her head, hiding her face from him, her hand still slowly moving over the shiny charmeuse. “I . . . I don’t know what to say.”
He forced himself to heave an exaggerated sigh, despite those prickling sinuses. “Just say thank you, Wren. Were you raised in a barn? Or is the Killjoy Guild unfamiliar with standard expressions of gratitude upon receiving a gift?”
She’d haltingly thanked him, the blanket clutched close, those beautiful eyes big and confused and . . . lost.
As lost as he’d felt then, and as lost as he felt now too, because what the actual, ever-loving fuck?
Stomping on the brakes, he abruptly turned the car into a fast-food parking lot.
“Let me get this straight.” Swinging into a space, he brought the car to a jolting halt and cut the engine. “You’re not important enough to defend? Even when someone insults you to your fucking face, literally two feet away from me? I’m not supposed to react to that in any way?”
“I know how loyal you are, Alex, and I know it goes against your instincts to let those sorts of incidents go,” she said soothingly, and once more, he was very definitely not fucking soothed. “But they’re not worth your career. I’m not worth your career.”
If his head had already regrown, it would have detonated a second time.
“That is not—I repeat, not”—for emphasis, he stabbed a finger into the air—“your fucking decision, Lauren. I am the only fucking person in this car and on this planet who can decide what my career is worth, and it’s not worth my fucking soul.”
He wished like hell he’d come to the same conclusion a year ago, before the final season’s filming began, but it was much too late to right that particular wrong.
“Do you think you’re the only one here who wants to act based on what’s right, rather than what’s convenient?” Behind his eyes, that prickling began again. Hurt and rage. “What exactly do you think of me, Lauren? Just how callous and selfish do you fucking think I am?”
“I don’t . . .” She put a hand on his arm, her fingers gentle and trembling. “I don’t think you’re callous or selfish.”
“Then don’t ask me to act like I am,” he snapped, as pinpoints of heat flashed to life on his skin everywhere she made contact. “I don’t know what sort of people you’ve had in your life before now, but I am not them. And if that makes you too uncomfortable, you have your asshole cousin’s number. Feel free to fucking use it.”
Silence. Then she removed her hand, and he was floating in space, untethered and alone and disoriented.
The haze in his vision, in his head, took a moment to clear, and then—
Aw, fuck.
Closing his eyes, he gripped the steering wheel and rested his forehead against its leather surface, doing his damnedest not to ram his skull into it again and again. As always, his wounded rage had driven him too far, and now she was going to call Ron, and he’d never fucking see her again, ever, not even—
Her cool palm rested lightly on the nape of his neck. She gave him a gentle squeeze there.
“Alex.” Her voice was warm. Tender. “Tell me what happened at that Spanish bar. Who were you defending?”
The question took a moment to register.
Then he heaved out a near-sob. Relief. Gratitude.
Because she wasn’t leaving him. Because she’d asked. She was the only one who’d asked, in all this time. Even Marcus, amidst his preoccupation with April, hadn’t asked what happened, hadn’t questioned the version of events offered by the tabloids and Ron.
Marcus had sympathized and worried for his best friend, but he’d assumed. That Alex had been drunk. That Alex, bless his reckless goddamn heart, had made another stupid fucking spur-of-the-moment decision.
And maybe it was spur of the moment, but it wasn’t stupid, and he didn’t regret it.
“I went to the bar for one drink. A beer, because I—because I was lonely,” he told the steering wheel, his voice thick. “It was crowded, and there were no empty stools or tables. So when I got my drink, I propped myself against the wall and started watching people. And after about two sips of my beer, I noticed this beefy, sunburned Brit at a nearby table hitting on a redheaded server. She was almost as short as you, and a few years younger than him. Maybe early twenties. Pretty. Irish accent.”
Lauren’s fingers on his neck felt like a benediction, and he sighed in appreciation.
“She wasn’t into it. She kept edging away from him, and she looked nervous, and when she raised her arm to get someone’s attention, maybe a bouncer or the manager, I saw faded bruises around her wrist.” In that moment, despite the bar’s dimness, those bruises had seemed illuminated by spotlight to him. Unmistakable. Unendurable. “He yanked her arm down and told her he wasn’t done talking to her yet, and she yelped in pain.”
Lauren’s slow exhalation tickled the side of his arm. “So you intervened.”
At that point, his blood had been pounding in his temples, and the cacophony in his head had drowned out everything but one imperative: Fix this. Now.
“I removed his hand from her arm. Not gently. Then he took a swing at me, and I swung back, and all hell broke loose.” He didn’t know who’d given him the shiner. Not the Brit, anyway, since that fucker had gone down with the first punch. “Right before the police came, she managed to pull me aside and begged me not to mention or describe her, because she was on the run.”
Thus the bruises and the fear in her expression, in her every movement.
“I tried to offer help.” In fact, he’d done his own begging, but she’d been terrified out of her fucking mind, too terrified to do anything but flee. “Then the cops arrived, and she sprinted toward the employee area and disappeared into the back, and I never saw her again.”
He hoped to fuck she’d found somewhere safe to hole up and gotten help. Real help. The sort of help that would let her stop hiding and rebuild a life free from fear and violence.
Lauren made a sort of humming sound. “Then the police questioned you, and you didn’t say a word about her.”
“I kept my promise,” he said simply.
Another squeeze of his nape. “And I take it the Brit didn’t mention his own transgressions when describing yours.”
“According to him, I punched him unprovoked, in a drunken rage. It was like she’d never existed.” Which was what she’d wanted, but horrifying in its own way. “I didn’t argue. I just called my lawyer, who called other people. They sprang me from jail and got the charges dropped.”
And then, only an hour or so later, a stranger had appeared on a shoreline battlefield.
Lauren Clegg. His nanny. His friend. His obsession. His confessor.
And if she was playing priest to his unrepentant sinner, he might as well scour his soul entirely clean, right?
“Before we end this game of True Confessions, you should know: Bruno Keene is a fucking abusive asshole, and I was telling the truth when I said that. The crew and other actors on the All Good Men set didn’t want to risk their reputations by backing me up, and I get that”—mostly—“but I was telling the truth.”
“Okay,” she said quietly. “Okay. I believe you.”
She was stroking his neck now, gently playing with the ends of his hair there, and it was so soothing, he wanted to cry. With each moment, his skull’s throbbing waned, and his pulse calmed, and his head felt—he didn’t know. Lighter?
And then—and then . . .
Those caresses, those slight tugs of his hair, weren’t so soothing. His scalp was tingling, afire with the tease of sensation, and he didn’t want to cry anymore.
He wanted to kiss her.
Her. Nanny Clegg. Harpy-in-Training. Killjoy Extraordinaire.
His friend, who had the warmest, loveliest eyes he’d ever seen, sharp, fascinating features, and a round, soft body that he sometimes found himself staring at for no good reason.
And she was touching him, stroking his neck, and—
He raised his head and looked down at her.
The concern in her gaze touched his heart, but he didn’t want concern right now.
He wanted heat.
Her fingers remained threaded through his hair, and the weight of her palm on his nape seemed to drag his head lower, lower, lower. Her soft chin trembled, and her lips parted, and shit, he wanted to taste that mouth and discover if it was exactly as tart-sweet as she was.
But—fucking hell. He couldn’t.
As far as he could tell, she tolerated him with grudging fondness. He certainly hadn’t noticed any signs of attraction. Even if he had, he was her job, and he wasn’t fucking harassing her at work.
Reluctantly, he shifted away from her. Her hand fell from his nape, and he bit back a needy sound in favor of his usual nonsense. “Now that I’ve bared my very soul to you, Sister Clegg, stop trying to distract me from the matter at hand.”
He shook a chiding finger at her, but she didn’t take the bait. Instead, her gaze was still warm and tender on him, and he allowed that look to soak into his heart like rain on parched, cracked earth.
Then he made his position clear. “If you don’t want me to defend you because it embarrasses you or makes you uncomfortable, then okay. I won’t like it—I’ll fucking hate it—but I’ll accept your decision and try my best to do what you’re asking. But if you don’t want me to defend you because you don’t think you’re worth the risk to my career, then that’s a different matter entirely, and no. I refuse to abide by your wishes.”
Fretfully, she rubbed at her temples, but he didn’t let her off the hook.
“So what is it, Wren?” With his forefinger, he tipped up her chin until she met his eyes again. “Do I follow your advice or my own instincts?”
Her face puckered in thought, and it was fucking adorable, and he hoped like hell she gave him the answer he wanted. Because a woman who’d spent her life serving and protecting others at the cost of her own safety and emotional well-being deserved a champion.
A better one than him, obviously. But he was what she had right now, poor woman, and he wanted her to accept his entirely inadequate fealty.
He wanted her to accept him.
After a long, fraught minute, she exhaled slowly.
“Your instincts,” she said. “God help us both.”
16
POOR MARCUS. WHEN HE CLIMBED INTO LAUREN’S HYBRID that Friday morning, he had no idea what awaited him. But she did, and she didn’t envy the man.
On their way to Marcus’s house, Alex had shared his plan with her. “I can’t fucking take any more anguished puppy-dog eyes, Wren. And since he wants us to room together at the hotel during Con of the Gates, I’m giving him the Full Alexander Woodroe Treatment.”
She made her voice as arid as humanly possible. “I hesitate to ask.”
But he knew by now that she’d be curious, no matter how much she might deny it. So instead of badgering her, he merely turned up the Tom Petty song piping through her speakers and shouted along to “You Wreck Me” until she gave in.
She stabbed at the volume controls. “Fine. You’ve defeated me with your atonal wailing. Tell me what the Full Alexander Woodroe Treatment is.”
As obnoxious in victory as always, he pumped both fists in the air—accidentally hitting her roof, to her poorly hidden amusement—before explaining.
“Through my sparkling wit and cunning repartee, I intend to capture his attention and keep it from straying to his lovelorn state.” He’d rubbed his hands together, satisfaction with his plan radiating from every perfect pore on his stupidly handsome face. “Essentially, I won’t give him the time or mental space to be a wretched, blubbering heap of a human being.”
If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought him unsympathetic to Marcus, who’d sunk into abject misery after breaking up with his girlfriend. But she’d witnessed Alex rushing to his friend’s side at the slightest hint of trouble, and noted how he checked on Marcus’s mental state with nigh-alarming frequency via texts and FaceTime calls.
So yes, he was sympathetic. This was his way of helping, but doing so in the most annoying manner possible, because Alex was . . . Alex.
Thus far, he’d followed through on his plan, and it was a novelty not to have his barrage of words entirely directed at her, for once. Certainly, Lauren got her share along the way—as they drove to pick up Marcus at his home, and as the three of them headed to the airport, flew to San Francisco, and rode to the convention hotel—but Marcus received the bulk of the verbiage.
“—really pleased with the reception of my most recent fic,” Alex told his friend as they neared the hotel. “The one I wrote with Cupid as an actor, starring in a popular television show. You beta-read it for me a few weeks ago. Remember?”
