Away From the Spotlight (31 page)

Great
.
  I
could feel the jealousy rising.

“Who?”  I asked unable to hide my curiosity.  Will had asked me not to
perform
any
more internet searches on him after the initial one confirm
ing
who he was.  He
had told me
that a lot of
what was out there
wouldn’t be true and
that
he would be embarrassed.  I promised him
that
I wouldn’t and
I
kept my promise.  Now, I was wishing
that
I hadn’t.

Gemma
looked down at her hands and
answered,
“Kayla Roberts.  She plays one of his sisters, the dark-haired one.  It was during the pr
omotional
tour for
Midnight 1
and for a time afterward.  There was a feeding frenzy around him at that time and I think he needed a distraction.  She was a bit of a partier
,
which suited him then.  But I think she wanted a relationship and he
didn’t, so it ended awkwardly.”

She continued without looking over at the unhappy expression on Colin’s face,
“
Over the years, they
’
ve smoothed things out. 
But back then, i
t was the combination of that
e
nding poorly and his downward spiral
in reaction to the frenzy over him
that led Katherine to stage an intervention of sorts
,
which
gave us the Will we had before he met you.  Then you came along and he now seems genuinely happy.”
She then smiled at Colin hesitantly.  He gave her a tight smile that looked more like a grimace in return.

The beep on my cell phone effectively ended the conversation.  I
t was
t
ime for one of my regularly scheduled texts from Will.  
It was the next morning for him in Tokyo.

I opened the text message
.  “U @ the house?”

“Yes.  Thx 4 the flowers.  Been meaning 2 ask – y
carousel rose
s?”

“They remind me of u.  Beautiful.”  I had expected a more elaborate explanation, like his mother liked them
or grew them at
home
or something.

“How r ur costars?”

“Good.  Y do u ask?  I told u stories about K
S
r not tr
ue.”

“What about the others?”

Rather than a
receiving a return text
, the phone rang. 
I answered it and walked inside to the family room so as not to be overheard.

“Hi, Shannon.  What are you getting at?”  I could hear a lot of noise in the background. 
It s
ounded like
some kind of
a
convention
.

“Your friends tried to make me the topic of conversation today, but I was able to turn
the subject
around to
you
.”

“
That
can’t be good.”

“No, it’s fine.  They talked about the hard time you had a few years back.  You already told me about that.  They just filled in a few details
,
that’s all
.  N
othing for you to worry about.”

There was silence on the other end
for a few seconds
.  “So they t
old you about Kayla, did they?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you
should
be fine.  There’s nothing to i
t.  It’s ancient history now.”

“I believe you.  But just remember that if you ever get jealous of any friend of mine . . .”

“You’re referring to John
,
I assume.”

“Maybe.”

“
I
heard he was out with you the other day.  Funny how you didn’t mention it.”

“It’s not like we get to talk very long and I don’t want to waste my precious time with you talking about
him
.  Besides, it wasn
’
t a big deal.”

“Uh-huh.”  He didn’t sound convinced.  “I’ll make a bargain with you.  I won’t act jealous
. 
I can’t promise I won’t
be
jealous, but I won’t act jealous, if you won’t.”

“It’s not a very fair trade
,
you know.  You have one person to potentially be jealous of and I have thousands, maybe millions.”

“You’re talking about fans that I never even get close to
, b
ut if you’re talking about people we know or have the opportunity to meet, I imagine the numbers are more even.”

“Not even
close
.”

“You forget, I’ve seen
your
fans both at school
and work as well as
whenever we go out.  I’m
not
overestimating
that
.”

“Right,” I said with deep sarcasm.  “Okay, I’ll agree just to change the subject.  Have I told you
lately
how much I miss you?”

After I got off the phone,
I returned to the backyard to find the others in the
J
acuzzi
adjacent to the pool.  The subject never veered back to Will again for the rest of the weekend
.  I figured it was
either
due to
their horror
at
the Kayla story
getting
out or because Will had called them to
give them a hard time about it, and p
robably both.

I managed to get some studying in intermittently during the
weekend
between swimming, barbequ
ing and
watching a few
rented movies that didn’t feature Will.  I was
particularly
able to study
at night
when I returned to Will’s room to sleep.

On the one hand,
I
was sad to
return
home on Monday morning
and
start my
weekday study
routine
.
  I had had a
very
good time.  On the other, it was a few more days closer now to Will’s return.

If I c
an
just
make it to tomorrow night
. . .

The day
of Will’s return
finally arrived and I sat in
Bar review
c
lass willing the clock to move faster.
  I had made an effort to look nice
for Will and was way overdressed for class, wearing the formfitting outfit Colin had scolded me about
at
the
Royalist
a few weeks back.

This week, we didn’t have a
USC
p
rofessor as our lecturer and, in that week, I realized how great I had it in law school.  The subject was Contracts and it was
snore
-
worthy
.  The reading in law school on this subject certainly had been
dry
, but my professor cracked the class up regularly, albeit unintentionally
.  Like almost all law professors, he used the Socratic Method, asking students about the cases they had read.  After hearing the answer, he frequently would say,
in his very flat Midwestern accent, “You’re wrong, but why?”
or
“There’s more than one way to slice the bologna.”
It was funny because the
student on the receiving end
would
not
have a
nswered the way he or she did in front of a very large
audience
if they had
known
they
were wrong
and
why
.
 
But t
here was no humor during this week’s lectures whatsoever
a
nd it so needed humor as it was one of the more dense subjects.

Finally, the lecture came to an end and I bolted out the door.  I looked at my phone to find a text message.

“I’m home.  Call when u get out of class. 
ILY
.”

Will
was home. 
Thank God.

I put on my Bluetooth headset as I walked to the car and called
as I drove off toward the Palisades.

“I’m so happy you’re finally home.  So what’s the plan for sneaking me in tonight?”

“Same as last time.  Colin’s at the
Royalist
waiting.  It’s
,
uh
,
a little worse than last time, I’m afraid.  I’m so sorry for this.  I love you.”

I almost asked him to define “worse,” but I didn’t really want to know.  It certainly wouldn’t stop me from getting to him.  Nothing was going to stop me from that.  I had been waiting too long.  When I thought about it, though, nothing would have stopped me even if it had been
one day instead of two weeks since I had been with him. 
At that moment, my need to be with him terrified me.  I just couldn’t imagine that all this would end
in a happily ever after like in the movies
.  I would be broken
and bleeding
afterward.
 
I pushed those thoughts aside and braced myself for the trip to Will’s
house
.

The press clearly had
gotten wind of the fact that the pr
omotional
tour was over and th
at th
e cast
had
return
ed
home because there was a huge crowd outside the house as Colin informed me
.  T
his time, I didn’t peek.  I could see flashing lights around the car as we approached the house so it appeared that LAPD must be there trying to dis
b
urse the crowd.  Consequently, no one got close to the car as we drove up the driveway and into the garage.

When I got inside, Will wasn’t in the living room.  Stephen informed me that he was in his room and I hurried to meet him, my heart racing.

I knocked on the door and walked in
side
to find
Will
ris
e from
his
seated position
on the b
ed with his head in his hands. 
He looked worried.
 
H
e rushed over
and
hugged me so tightly I couldn’t breathe.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.  There was no problem whatsoever.  I think the police are outside now.”

“
Good
.
 
We were ambushed at the airport and followed home only to be joined by more photographers.  Someone must have leaked
our
itinerary.”

He stood back to look at me.

“
Wow
!
  You are beautiful.  I missed you
s
o much.”

“I missed you.”
 
I leaned up to kiss him.  “Mmm.  I’ve missed this.”

“Mmm.  So have I.”

We la
y
down
on the bed together, staring at each other and kissing intermittently.
 
This wasn’t the attack that usually happened after we had been apart so I wondered if something was wrong.

“You must be tired after such a long trip.  Maybe I should have waited until tomorrow to come.”
  I didn’t want to leave, but I was hoping that he was just tired and that nothing else was
the matter
.

“No, no.  You think I don’t want you here?”

“You seem a little
different
.”

“I just . . . it’s been
a fortnight
since I’ve seen
you.  I just wanted to look at you.  You’re so beautiful.”

I thought it would kill the mood if I told him he needed glasses
,
so I let it go.

He leaned forward and kissed me
,
and the urgency was there just as it had always been.
 
Neither of us was going to get a whole lot of sleep that night.