Not a Fairy Tale: HarperImpulse Contemporary Romance (15 page)

He turned the stool she sat on so she faced him. “You’re not bigger than most actresses. You’re bigger than most anorexics. And unbelievably, there is a difference.” His hand slid up her thigh again, and this time she didn’t push it away. “And as far as I’m concerned, you’re also far prettier than either of those actresses.” His fingers brushed over the apex between her thighs. “And definitely sexier.”

His kiss almost had her a believer. There was no doubting what women saw in him when his kiss could make any women feel like a goddess.

He broke the kiss and stepped away, flashing her a quick grin. “In comparison with most women – even here in LA where people’s body images are skewed – you have a really terrific figure.” He winked. “Take it from an expert in women’s bodies.”

Okay, so that last comment deflated a little of the heady rush, but she was pretty sure she was still glowing as she ate up everything he’d dished on her plate. He thought she had a terrific figure? Not just good, not even great, but terrific?

She lifted a bite of flapjack to her mouth. And closed her eyes to savor the taste. When last had she tasted a flapjack? It made a wonderful change from her usual bran and fresh fruit.

Dom laughed, a throaty, seductive sound. “That’s how you looked on the beach at Point Dume. As if you were about to have an orgasm from eating a burger.”

“That was my first burger in over a year. It almost was as good as an orgasm.” At that time she hadn’t had an orgasm in over a year either. She’d lost count how many she’d had in this past week. She licked a drop of syrup from the corner of her mouth.

If only she could retain Dom as her personal trainer, maybe she could indulge like this more often.

Who was she kidding? He’d soon grow bored. Dom liked to stay active and on the move. There was no way he’d sit around waiting for her through the long hours she was on set. Dom needed new challenges like other people needed air to breathe.

If only she could keep him around as her boyfriend…

She shook her head so vehemently she nearly choked on the next piece of flapjack. Dom needed new challenges there, too. There was no way he’d stick with just one woman.

She thrust the half-full plate away, unable to eat another mouthful. The food suddenly tasted like charcoal in her mouth.

She moved to stack the dishwasher and start cleaning the kitchen. “So what are our plans for today? After Vicki has beaten me black and blue, that is?”

“Nothing special. You don’t have any friends you want to meet up with?”

She shook her head and didn’t look at him. She didn’t have friends. Her friends from before she was famous resented the attention she attracted and didn’t want to know her anymore. The people she’d met since… “No one I’d ring up on a Sunday morning and say ‘let’s hang out together’.”

“So what do you like to do in your spare time, then? Go out for a movie? Or I know a great pizzeria…”

“No more food! And movies aren’t an option unless it’s a premiere or a private cinema. Besides, I don’t feel up to going out in public today.”

Fame was fun. It was a high unlike any other. But it was a double-edged sword. She could only face the outside world if she felt good about herself. And if she had the energy. The constant interruptions and being nice to everyone she met, the strain of filtering everything she said and did to ensure it fitted with her public image, required a level of mental stamina she didn’t possess today. She sighed. “But don’t let me hold you back if you want to go out. You must be bored stiff doing nothing but supervising my training and going to your local pub once a week.”

He took her hand. “I’m not bored. You’re very entertaining to have around.”

She raised a skeptical eyebrow.

Dom grinned. “I’m always wondering which personality you’ll be wearing today.”

“Are you suggesting I have a split personality?” She reached out to smack him playfully and he caught her hand, kissing her wrist.

“Multiple personality disorder might be more accurate. It’s one of the things I love about you.”

Her heart did a complete backward flip in her chest. He hadn’t really used the L word, had he? Because if he had, then this had to end. Now. And she wasn’t ready for it to end yet.

But he didn’t mean it. He’d said the word ‘love’ as flippantly as he’d said ‘flapjack’ or ‘movies’.

His lips had moved from her wrist to the palm of her hand when they heard the tentative knock at the door.

Nina wrenched her hand away and sat straighter. She was still dressed in her rumpled sleep shorts and shirt. She hadn’t even brushed her hair.

“Only me,” Juliet’s voice called through the kitchen door, and with a sigh Dom rose to unlock it. Nina scraped her fingers through her tangled hair and pricked her cheeks to sting color to them.

Juliet bounced into the room. “I’m so glad I caught you home. I wanted to check on my baby bro. And also to remind you that we’re having a barbecue at the folks’ place this afternoon and thought you might like to join us. For a change,” she added, with a pointed look at him. “We haven’t seen you in a while.”

Dom shrugged and looked away.

“Don’t stay home on my account,” Nina said. “Go have fun with your family. I’ll be quite happy to spend the afternoon curled up with a book.”

And after Vicki was through with her, that might be all she was able to do.

“You’re invited too, of course.” Juliet sounded offhand, but tension prickled through Nina. She’d heard that tone often enough. Was this a set-up? Was she going to be paraded before all their friends and family, like a giraffe in the zoo, the celebrity attraction? No thanks.

“It’ll just be family,” Dom said, his voice quiet. He was doing that reading-her-mind thing again. How did he do that when she’d been so careful to keep her expression neutral?

“Maybe she thinks we’re not good enough for her?” Juliet said, and the bite in her tone was now unmistakable.

“Jules…” Dom’s voice was heavy with warning.

“I’m sorry,” Juliet said. She even sounded sorry. But the look in her eyes was anything but.

Nina hadn’t seen that look in years. Not since she’d been a plump teenager in glasses and braces who’d been forced to make friends in a new town. She’d turned that look around. She’d reinvented herself, lost the glasses and the braces and a ton of weight. When the boys started swarming around her, like the proverbial flies, those same girls had practically begged her to try out for their precious cheerleading squad.

She’d turned it around then, and she’d turn it around now.

Nina’s chin rose in defiance, but her smile was sweet. “I’d love to come, and I’d love to meet your family. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment to take a beating.” Holding her back straight and her head high, she exited the room.

Dom turned to his sister, eyes flashing. “What’s got into you, Jules? When did you turn into such a bitch?”

She had the decency to look ashamed. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what gets into me. She’s just so…uppity. As if she doesn’t trust anyone.”

“She doesn’t. It’s a defense mechanism and most famous people are like that. It’s nothing personal.”

He scrubbed his face. He needed to remember that too. No matter how intimate he and Nina got, no matter how many nights they slept in the same bed, it still felt like she wasn’t really there. As if there was a chasm between them. Like last night, when she’d left him in the supply closet and gone to party with his friends as if nothing had happened. The sting was still sharp.

What did he need to do to break through that wall, to earn Nina’s trust?

“Christian isn’t like that,” Jules said. “He doesn’t disappear whenever we come to visit.”

“Christian’s different. He loves the attention. Nina does too, but she’s been isolated by it.” He sighed. “She’s been a celebrity long enough to have been burned by people using her, but not long enough yet to learn to separate the people who only want to know her for what she does from the people who want to know her for who she is.”

Some celebrities never learned. They either became so distrusting they closed themselves off from everyone, or they became like Paul de Angelo – so sucked into their own hype that they believed themselves better than everyone else.

Paul. Just the name in his head made his fists clench. He was one of those who had used Nina and hurt her. He hadn’t cared to get to know Nina, had he? He’d wanted her only for what she could do for his image.

“Just give her a chance to get to know you, okay? Without being a bitch.”

Juliet leaned on the counter and helped herself to one of the sausages Nina had left untouched. “You like her. This is getting serious, isn’t it?”

Dom scowled. “Of course I like her. She’s a hard worker, very committed to everything she does, and she’s a nice person on top of that. But don’t make it more than what it is.” He turned away to feed the last of the leftover sausages to Sandy. “I need to get Nina to the dojo for her Krav Maga lesson with Vicki. You can show yourself out.”

Dominic’s parents lived in a sprawling, modern single-storey ranch house in the Valley. Out back was a big yard with a swimming pool and camp chairs set in the shade of a wide-spreading elm. At first glance, the yard seemed full of people, most of them congregated around an oversized barbecue grill. It reminded Nina of her own childhood home. Different trees, different pool, but the same comfortable homeliness and happy voices.

She squashed the memory. It didn’t help to dwell on things that were gone.

There were kids splashing in the pool, at least four that Nina could count. Eric spotted her and grinned, and she waved back. She wished she could join them. Entertaining the kids would be infinitely easier than dealing with Dom’s phalanx of sisters. Sisters who didn’t seem to like her much. She’d almost forgotten how it felt not to be liked. These days most people pretended to be her best friends, even if they didn’t know her.

“Just be yourself,” Dom said, “and they’ll love you.”

She’d much rather channel the fearless Sonia than be herself. Sonia wouldn’t care what anyone thought of her.

She hung back as Dom hugged his sisters, then wrapped his arms around his mother and lifted her off the ground. She squealed.

“You must be Nina.” Dom’s father reached around them to extend a hand to her. The resemblance between father and son was overwhelming; the same laughing green eyes, the same rugged good looks. If this was Dom in another thirty years, he was still going to be fighting off adoring women.

“Hello,” Nina responded, shaking the outstretched hand.

“No need to be so formal with us,” his mother said, engulfing Nina in a hug. For a second, Nina froze, awkward. She couldn’t remember when last she’d hugged anyone – even her sister. In her world, people didn’t hug. They air-kissed or cheek-pressed for the cameras.

Dom’s mother’s eyes crinkled as she grinned, and now Nina knew where he’d inherited his smile. “After all, you’re the first girl Dom’s ever brought home.”

“Nina’s my boss, Mom,” he warned. “She’s hired me to train her.”

“If you say so.” With a wink at Nina, she turned away, and a little of the knot in Nina’s stomach unraveled. She liked Dom’s parents. They seemed like warm, genuine people.

Then Dom introduced her to the family she hadn’t yet met: Moira, his eldest sister, and Laura, with a baby on her hip. “My third,” she said proudly once Nina had done the obligatory cooing over the dribbling child.

Then Laura’s husband, who worked with his wife and Dom’s father in the family construction business.

“Would you like a beer?” Juliet asked, once the introductions were done. She held out a bottle misted with icy droplets to Nina. “Or would you prefer wine?”

The lack of barb in Juliet’s voice almost made Nina do a double-take. “Just water, thanks.” Nina glanced at Dom. “I’m in training.”

And on a diet, though that hardly needed to be said. She’d been on a diet since 2005.

“Nina very rarely drinks alcohol,” Dom said.

“That must be a novel experience for you.” Moira tangled her arm in her brother’s. “Aren’t most of the women you ‘date’ usually drunk when you meet them?”

“Low blow, Sis.” But he laughed, not denying it.

They sat beneath the shade of the large tree making conversation as they watched the children play in the pool. Dom’s mother and sisters plied her with so many questions it would have felt like an interrogation if they hadn’t been delivered with such friendly curiosity. Nina had done enough interviews to know how to play this. She answered them as if she were on a talk show, regaling them with fun anecdotes from her film shoots, drawing laughter, watching their eyes grow big as she mentioned some of the major names she’d worked with and met.

“Dom never tells us fun stories like this,” Laura said, bouncing her baby on her knee. “And we’ve missed having Christian around to entertain us.”

This was why she avoided hanging out with non-celebrities. Easy for Dom to tell her to be “herself”. Being herself was exhausting when she was the performing seal, having to be “on” all the time.

“Where is Christian, anyway?” Kathy asked. “We’ve hardly seen him since he got married.”

Dom shrugged. “Working on this new project of his.” He turned to Nina. “You’re not the only one reinventing yourself at the moment.”

Then the barbecue food was set out on a table on the patio and Nina helped to lay out the crockery and cutlery. The mouthwatering display of foods was enough to make her stomach groan. She couldn’t touch at least half the foods on display, not without gaining at least five extra pounds, but the temptation was harder than usual.

“This looks amazing,” Nina commented to Dom’s mother. “Now I can see where Dom gets his cooking skills.”

Juliet coughed and both Dom and his father looked away, stifling grins.

“Mom’s a terrible cook. We don’t allow her anywhere near the kitchen,” Laura explained.

“I’m sorry.” Nina stuttered as unaccustomed heat flooded her face. So much for making them like her.

“Don’t be.” Dom’s mother patted her arm. “It’s because I can screw up even a boiled egg that my children have all emerged such excellent cooks.” She leaned close and stage-whispered. “It was all part of my diabolical master plan.”

Dom laughed and placed a reassuring hand on Nina’s waist. “I’ll show you the hole in the kitchen floor from what we call the Exploding Turkey Incident.”

His touch steadied her. It was that night at the
Vanity Fair
party all over again, and Dom was her lifeline, her anchor in treacherous waters.

Then she caught Moira’s raised eyebrow and slight smile, her gaze on Dom’s hand at Nina’s waist, and she flinched away from his touch.

She did not need Dom’s family getting any ideas that this was going anywhere. It meant nothing. Meeting his family meant nothing. The way that meeting his friends had meant nothing. The way the intimacy they shared when they were alone meant nothing.

She swallowed the lump in her throat and kept her smile bright. Sonia wouldn’t get a lump in her throat over things she couldn’t change either.

“Here, Dom, have another kebab.” Laura placed a skewer of roasted lamb and peppers on his plate, beside all the other offerings piled on it.

He frowned, trying to duck his plate away. “I’m a grown man, for heaven’s sake. I can get my own food if I’m hungry.”

When no one was paying them any attention she whispered in his ear: “Now I get it.”

“Get what?”

“Your need to jump in to help every damsel in distress you meet. You’re surrounded by women who dote on you and baby you, so with every other woman you need to be The Man.”

His frown cleared and he laughed. “I
am
The Man. And I’ll prove it to you later.”

His hand snuck to her ass and she giggled. “Oh goodie.”

After lunch, Nina helped clear away the empty plates.

“The coffee mugs are in there,” Juliet said, pointing to a cupboard as she started making a pot of coffee. “You’ll need to start learning where everything is.”

Nina stopped in her tracks. “What do you mean?”

“This is a ‘help yourself’ kind of household, so next time you’ll be expected to look after yourself.”

Next time?
There wouldn’t be a next time.

Blinking against the sudden rush of emotions assaulting her, Nina fetched the mugs, set them down beside Juliet and leaned against the counter.

The hole in the laminate kitchen floor was unmistakable.

“Thanksgiving 2005,” Juliet explained with a laugh. “The last time Mom attempted cooking a turkey.”

An electric shock shot through Nina. She remembered that year’s Thanksgiving only too well. But while Dom and his family had been laughing over a spoiled turkey dinner, she’d stood beside her father’s empty casket. They still hadn’t found his body.

And then her mother had left too.

“What’s wrong?” Juliet asked, grabbing her arm. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”

Nina shook her head. “I’m okay.” The dizzying feeling passed, the prickle of tears subsided. “It’s nothing.”

She tried to move away, but Juliet still held her arm. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch. I’m a little over-protective of my little brother. It’s something I need to work on, I know. Even though he’s a grown man, I still remember when he was a kid and he wanted to be Superman and he tried to fly off the roof. I still don’t want to see him hurt.”

He wasn’t the one likely to get hurt this time. It was more likely to be the other way around. Because that’s what happened every time Nina let someone into her heart. They left and she got hurt.

She couldn’t go through that again. Never again would she open her heart to someone. She hadn’t wanted to marry Paul, but she’d been safe with him. There was no risk of losing her heart to him.

But Dominic Kelly was a risk. If he weren’t, then she wouldn’t be the blubbering mess she was right now. Grief she’d kept at bay for years crept in through the crack he’d opened in the wall she’d built around herself.

Grief intermingled with loneliness and with fear. Fear of losing him the way she’d lost everyone else she’d ever loved. She needed to get real and quickly. Before the inevitable hurt turned into full-on heartbreak.

She needed to remember that at any moment a big wave could roll in off the sea and sweep everything away. Things like that happened all the time.

As long as she remembered that, the crack wouldn’t get any wider.

She shook her head, swallowed the lump in her throat, and smiled at Juliet. “I understand. I won’t hurt him.”

“Friends, then?”

She nodded. Though that was hardly likely either. In a few weeks her training would be over and they’d never see each other again.

Returning to the yard, they were confronted with screams and tears. One of Laura’s little children had been hurt in a boisterous game and blood streamed from her knee.

“It was an accident!” wailed Eric’s sister, an older child on the cusp of teenagehood.

“Take Liam,” Laura said, thrusting her baby at Nina as she and Juliet ran to attend to the drama.

Given no choice, Nina took the baby, holding him awkwardly in the crook of an arm. What was one supposed to do with a baby? She bounced him on her hip and resisted the urge to swear as sticky fingers covered in soggy cookie crumbs twisted in her hair.

And her sister wanted one of these things so badly she’d practically taken out a second mortgage?

She looked at the baby’s downy head. So soft, smelling of warm, sweet baby smell. Her hands started to shake as a long-suppressed memory grasped hold of her.

She sighed in audible relief as Moira arrived and took the baby from her.

“You don’t have much experience with babies, do you?” Moira asked, grinning.

Nina shuddered. “No, and I don’t plan to either.”

“You don’t want to have a family of your own?” Moira’s eyes widened, her voice hushed as if Nina had spoken some kind of sacrilege.

Nina shrugged and looked away. “Babies don’t exactly fit in very well with my chosen career.”

“You’ll feel different when you’re older.” The words were spoken with that sort of smug authority that mothers got.

Nina shook her head. The long hours she worked on set weren’t conducive to raising children. And why bother having them at all if you were just going to pay someone else to raise them?

“But family is everything,” Moira persisted.

To the Kelly clan, family obviously was everything. They were a big, noisy family, who lived in each other’s pockets. But the Alexanders had never been like that. Service to others always came before family. After Dad died and first mom then Jess had gone off to save the world, it had just been her and Gran left in that empty, echoing house in Cedar Falls. Much as she loved her grandmother, family for her was nothing like the one she was in right now.

Nina shivered. “Not wondering how I’m going to pay my bills every month is much more important to me.”

Moira laughed, but it sounded strained. “Surely you’re rich enough you don’t need to worry about paying bills?”

It hadn’t always been that way, but that was exactly how Nina planned to keep it. She had a condo she owned outright and no one was ever taking it from her.

She plastered on a smile. “Besides, I love being famous. Living inside a goldfish bowl comes with a lot of perks and opens all sorts of doors. I can get tickets to any show, invitations to any party, reservations at any restaurant. And now that I can afford to buy stuff, people keep offering it to me for free! It’s a great life, but it’s not fair on partners or children and I wouldn’t want to put an innocent child through that.”

“You could make it work if you wanted to. Other people have.”

Nina shook her head. She’d met a few of the grown-up children of celebrities and they were even more screwed up than their parents.

“But what if you fall in love with a man who wants a family?” Moira asked and something clicked in Nina’s head. Moira wasn’t defending the virtues of familyhood. She was projecting a future for Dom. With Nina. And children.

She suppressed the manic laugh that bubbled up inside her. So not going to happen. Even if Dom were a different kind of man, she wasn’t about to become a different kind of woman.

And the moment they got out of here she was calling Wendy. The sooner she could get her hands on the morning-after pill, the better.

She’d made uncomfortable requests of her PA before. None was as excruciating as asking Wendy for contraceptives and a pregnancy test kit. As always, her PA remained professional. Nina was the one who was mortified.

“It should be effective up to three days after unprotected sex, but the longer you wait, the less effective it is,” Wendy said. “How long has it been?”

Nina’s face flamed. “Not that long,” she mumbled, hiding the brown-paper packet beneath the breakfast table before Dom’s housekeeper could spot it.

“You have the Easter Red Cross benefit in a few weeks. They want to know if you’re bringing a date. For the seating arrangements.”

Nina was sure that was a glint in Wendy’s eye as she asked, but her PA got extra credit for not glancing towards the French doors, where Dom had disappeared into the house.