chapter Three
“What were you thinking?”
On the digital screen of Ellen’s iPad, Jamie yawned and wiped one hand over his face. It was only six a.m. in L.A. She’d woken him up—a petty victory. In exchange for siccing Caleb Clark on her, he deserved whatever transcontinental forms of punishment she could inflict.
“What was I thinking about what?” he asked.
“The bodyguard. You know how I feel about security.”
Jamie frowned, and then his face disappeared, and she got random, jerky views of wall, ceiling, and a blurry blue blob that was probably his comforter. He came back into view, headboard behind him. Sitting up now. “I know how you feel about everything.”
“So what made you think this was a good idea?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe all those visits you got from the cops already this week? Come on, Ellen. You and Henry obviously need some kind of protection, and so does Carly. I had my guy at Breckenridge call up the Mount Pleasant Police Department, and they told him they don’t even have the resources to put a car on your house. I do.”
“Did you consider asking me first?”
Ellen walked to the window and checked the yard. Empty. She had to admit, it was a relief to see it that way.
“If I’d asked you, you’d have shot me down, right?”
“Of course.”
Jamie ran a hand through his curly blond hair, taming the sleep-mussed mess into something approaching his usual style. Even minimally groomed, he had the sort of masculine beauty millions of screaming fans went crazy for.
Growing up, she’d often wished for Jamie’s golden curls instead of her own flyaway white-blonde hair, his blue eyes to replace her hazel ones. She’d thought that if she were more beautiful, more talented, their mother might have given her an equal share of attention. Instead, Mom had raised her to watch out for her brother, to make sure he never got too tired or stressed out. She and her mother had specialized in spoiling Jamie, focusing all their collective energy on the more talented twin.
Ellen had always loved Jamie too much to hold the maternal favoritism against him. Only one person in a thousand got to be as gorgeous as her brother, and nobody got to choose their parents.
“I thought you might be more receptive to a stranger,” he said. “But I didn’t hire him, Breckenridge did. My head security guy suggested it would be a good idea to put some guys on you and Carly until this thing blows over. Apparently they don’t have their own people in the Midwest, so they contracted it out. Could you please stop pacing around? You’re making me motion-sick.”
Ellen propped the tablet against her salt-and-pepper shakers and sat down at the kitchen table. “Better?”
“Much. You were all nose hair from that angle.”
“Gee, thanks.”
She pulled a basket of laundry closer, spilled the warm contents onto the table, and started picking out and matching Henry’s socks.
Really, she ought to have called on her cell. Then she could have berated Jamie hands-free while she picked up the toy cars off the floor and unloaded the dishwasher. She and her brother had fallen into the habit of doing the video chat thing for Henry’s sake. He wasn’t quite old enough yet to know what to make of the phone, but he loved to talk to his uncle on-screen.
“So I’m guessing a guy showed up, and you sent him packing?” Jamie asked.
Was that the best way to summarize the morning’s events? It left out Weasel Face, the assault-by-tea, Caleb’s arrival, Caleb’s smile, Caleb’s biceps . . . “More or less. There was another photographer out there.”
His eyebrows drew together. “Sorry, Ellen.”
“Not your fault.”
It was, but she had a hard time holding the press against Jamie for more than a couple of minutes at a time. He’d only ever wanted to sing. The rest of this had come to him accidentally, all part of the celebrity package.
Plus, he couldn’t help it that somebody local had sold a cell-phone shot of him and Carly to the tabloids. He’d been far more upset about that than Ellen had. After the picture hit the Internet, he’d picked a pointless fight with Carly that ended in their breakup and his retreat to California. A few hours after his plane lifted off, the first photographer had landed on Ellen’s lawn.
“Anyway,” she said, “this security guy showed up and ran off the photographer, and he talked me into letting him put a car out on the cul-de-sac. So you got your wish.”
“Good. I thought for sure you’d fire him on the spot.”
I tried that. But it hadn’t worked, and she still wasn’t quite sure why. The whoa thing had distracted her. That, and the appeal of not having to worry about keeping one eye out the window at all times. “I still could.”
“Don’t, okay? It’s bad enough that I can’t be there. I feel better knowing somebody’s watching out for you guys and Carly.”
“I’m not letting him within ten feet of my house.”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Just work with him as much as you can stand to. And be nice, huh? It’s not his fault you’re insanely touchy about that house.”
“I’m not—”
Jamie raised an eyebrow, and she gave it up without even finishing the sentence. She was insanely touchy about her house. But it wasn’t as though she hadn’t earned the right to be.
This house was the prize she’d rescued from the wreckage of her marriage. It was where she’d learned independence, where she raised her son, and she refused to cower behind her own doors, locked down for fear of a few lowlifes with cameras. She couldn’t stand the idea of bodyguards and alarm codes, gates and barricades messing with her peace. Not when it had taken her so long to find it.
“‘Insane’ is a strong word,” she said. “And I’m almost always nice.”
“You’re always nice to me and Henry, but you’re basically a bitch for a living.”
“That’s different. That’s professional bitchiness, and I get paid good money for it.” Entertainment law rewarded bitchiness, especially when you were an advocate for artists who lacked any real power over the giant corporations that exploited them.
“Speaking of which, when are you going to look at that contract I sent you?”
“Soon. Henry woke up early, and I didn’t get through it this morning.”
“Where is he?”
“With his grandma.”
She finished up with the socks and began folding Henry’s T-shirts. There were no shorts or pants in the basket, because on Monday he’d flat-out refused to wear pants, and by this morning pantslessness had become the new reality. She’d put him in Maureen’s car wearing a tank top, a diaper, and a pair of sandals. As far as she knew, there were no obscenity laws governing what two-year-olds wore.
Jamie rubbed his face. “It’s only Wednesday, isn’t it? She’s early.”
Maureen usually had Henry from Thursday afternoon through Saturday morning, a sort of substitute custody, since her son wasn’t allowed to co-parent. “Yeah, but she offered to take him to the zoo in Columbus today. She said it was ‘because of all the stress.’ I’m pretty sure that’s code for ‘because of what your brother did.’”
“No way. Maureen likes me.”
“Whatever you say.”
“I’m eminently likable.”
“You know who really seemed to like you?” she asked. “Carly. Maybe you ought to give her a call.”
Jamie’s sunny expression dimmed. “Fair warning, if you’re going to make me talk about Carly again, we’ll be talking about your love life, too.”
“I don’t have a love life.”
“Exactly.”
Ellen ignored the jab, as well as the way the words love life had catapulted Caleb Clark’s face into her brain again. That smirk. Those happy brown eyes. “See, the key difference between your love life and mine is that you’re making a big mistake, which makes yours worth discussing—”
“There’s nothing new to discuss.”
“—whereas I’ve mastered the art of not making mistakes.”
“You haven’t mastered anything. You’re just refusing to play the game at all.”
“Who’s refusing? It’s not as if men are lining up to worship me.” She stacked a neat pile of tiny T-shirts in the basket and moved on to the towels.
The truth was, she didn’t have room in her life for a man—didn’t have room in her life for a life, really. On the days when Maureen took care of Henry, Ellen took care of her clients. The rest of the week, she had to mother and clean, cook and organize, fitting her income-producing activities in at the margins.
“If they were beating down your door with bouquets, you’d still give them the boot. You’re totally closed off, Ellen. All work and no play.”
“I play with Henry. And quit trying to distract me by taking the offensive. You have something good going with Carly. You should be here trying to fix it.”
He huffed an exhale, a resigned sound. “You know she told me to take a hike.”
“So? She probably didn’t mean it. Carly is impetuous. That’s one of the reasons you love her.”
“Nobody said anything about love.”
“I did. I’m saying it.”
“It was a fling. Now it’s over.”
Ellen didn’t believe him. She’d never had a meaningless fling, but she’d been watching Jamie have them since puberty, and she knew what they looked like. His affair with Carly was different. He didn’t see it, but that was only because he was kind of an idiot.
“I don’t buy that.”
“You should. Carly doesn’t love me. She thought I was cute, and now she thinks I’m a hassle. But if you’re seeing love everywhere you look, maybe you’ve got more romance left in you than I thought.”
“No, don’t worry, I had my romance gland removed.”
More like assassinated. Marriage to an adulterous alcoholic poet would do that to you. On the plus side, it turned out to be full of useful life lessons. Downsides of Codependency 101. By the time Ellen had filed for divorce, she’d been more than ready to try her hand at self-reliance. Her life was finally hers, and that was the way she liked it.
“I want you to be happy,” she said. “You deserve it.”
Jamie looked at her with the earnest intensity he usually reserved for head shots and turned the statement around. “What about what you deserve?”
“I’m all right.”
He made a derisive noise, half laugh, half exhale. “When did you last do something self-indulgent? Like, say, get a massage?”
In fact, she planned to be self-indulgent today. A red envelope containing the best movie Bogart and Bacall had ever made was gathering dust on top of her DVD player. Ellen had promised herself that if she got through all her client e-mails and returned her calls, she could sit in her bedroom in the dark and eat Nutter Butters dipped in a big glass of milk while she watched elegant people snipe at each other.
Just the thought of ducking her responsibilities made her feel like tap dancing. It would be her first treat in . . . God, she didn’t even want to think about it. It made her go all martyr mommy, and then even she got bored with herself.
But she knew better than to tell Jamie about her plan. He wouldn’t understand that knocking off work after six or seven hours counted as spoiling herself rotten.
“Normal people don’t get massages. That’s a rich-people thing.”
“Okay,” Jamie countered, “when did you last kick back on the couch for an hour with a beer and a good book?”
“I do that every night.” This was true only if you substituted the word wine for beer and the word contract for book.
“Bullshit. All you do is play with Henry and rescue artists from their mistakes and mow the lawn and cook. It makes me tired just being around you. You’re going to burn out soon, and then I’ll have to pay to have you sent to one of those really cushy spas where you can get facials and sleep in late and drink smoothies all day long.”
“If you sent me to a spa, you’d have to come out here and live with Henry.”
“I could handle Henry for a few weeks.”
“Please. The two of you would sit around in your underpants watching cartoons all day, and you’d feed him candy and juice boxes until he puked.”
“Ouch.” Jamie grinned, and she smiled back at him. Her wonderful, adorable, irresponsible brother. The biggest fan she’d ever had.
“Seriously, though, you need to take it easy,” he said. “I worry about you there all alone. If you guys aren’t going to move out here and live with me—”
“We’re not.”
“—then you need to at least hire a housekeeper or a nanny or something. I’ll pay for it if you’ll get off your high horse and let me. Just take a night off now and then. Find yourself a boyfriend who will squire you around to all the finest dining establishments Camelot has to offer.”
For the second time in two minutes, she saw Caleb’s face in her head. Posttraumatic shock, no doubt. Adrenaline had imprinted him on her brain.
Except that dumping tea on the photographer hadn’t been traumatic, it had been pleasurable. And so had talking to Caleb, right up until she found out he intended to turn her life upside down in the guise of keeping her safe.
“There’s only the two dining establishments.”
Jamie’s lip curled, but it was jokey disdain. Her adopted hometown had grown on both of them since she’d moved here six years ago. Back when Camelot College had hired Richard to teach creative writing, the village had seemed too slow and isolated to Ellen, accustomed as she’d been to Chicago. When Maureen had been so charmed by the town that she’d decided to relocate and spend her retirement closer to Richard, the decision had astonished Ellen. Why would anyone voluntarily give up Michigan Avenue for the cornfields of central Ohio?
But Ohio had charmed Ellen when she wasn’t paying attention. Something about the quiet, and about the way she noticed every seasonal change in the trees and the plants instead of the presence or absence of sewage smells.
The roots of small-town life had twined around her feet gradually, until one morning in the bleary early months of Henry’s life, she’d woken up and looked out her bedroom window and thought, I’m never going to leave. And then astonished herself by smiling.
“All I’m saying is you should give yourself a break,” Jamie said. “Do something fun.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re pigheaded.”
“No, that’s you.”
He closed his hands around an imaginary neck and throttled her. She stuck out her tongue.
Last towel folded, she transferred the pile to the basket and stood, picking up her iPad. “I’m going to work now. Some of us have real jobs.”
“I have a real job,” he protested. “I have to rehearse with the dancers this morning, and then I’m flying somewhere for a thing.”
“A thing?”
“I don’t know. A couple appearances, an interview, whatever. And then two shows this weekend. I’m very busy, very important.”
“Yeah, yeah. You keep telling yourself that, Tiger Beat.”