BRIAN (The Callahans Book 1) (41 page)

“Devon.”

“Yeah?” He looked over his shoulder at me.

I held out my phone, which showed the crappy picture I’d taken of him in the hotel room.

“I see it,” he said tiredly.

“Now you don’t.” I deleted it, just as he’d come to try and convince me to do. It was too much power to hold over a person, no matter how much I might dislike said person.

I don’t know what I expected. Gratitude, maybe. Or reassurance that he’d leave Nana and me alone.

What I didn’t except was for him to take a couple of quick steps over to me and envelop me in a bear hug.

“You don’t understand how worried I was about that stupid photo,” he said, squeezing me too tightly.

“I understand,” I managed to gasp out, patting him awkwardly on the back in what I hoped was Morse code for “let go immediately.”

He seemed to get the message, releasing me. “That was the only copy, wasn’t it?” he demanded suddenly. “Did you save one? Send it to anyone else?”

I could appreciate that the existence of the photo made him nervous, but I’d just deleted it in his presence.

“That was it!” I exclaimed. “Jeez! You need to work on your trust issues!”

“And now you sound like my therapist,” he said, frowning. “Are you sure you haven’t worked in Hollywood before?”

“Enough,” I said, pushing him away from me. “Get out of here. You promised you’d leave us alone if I just deleted the damn photo, and I did. You’re unbearable.”

His wounded look would’ve made me feel bad, but I was able to remember just in time that he was an actor. He could throw any look he wanted my way to try and manipulate me.

When he rounded the block, walking away, I hoped it was the last time I would ever see him. But it didn’t help that I could still feel his arms around me.

I thought my troubles were over. Then again, I never thought that my troubles would take on the corporeal form of one of Hollywood’s finest. I actually looked forward to work delivering pizzas because I thought driving around Dallas would take my mind off of things.

It didn’t. Being alone with my thoughts in the car magnified everything. I analyzed every tiny detail about the encounters I’d had with Devon up until this point. A week ago, I would’ve laughed myself out of the car to think I’d be anguishing over Devon Ray. But here I was, driving around the city, trying to figure out if I could’ve done anything differently.

It was a relief to get home and out of the car, for once. I looked forward to decompressing in front of the TV with Nana, losing myself in someone else’s story. I just hoped that I could convince her to watch something other than a Devon Ray movie.

“Look who’s back!” Nana crowed as I walked in the door, before I could holler that I was home.

“Is it Milo?” I asked, frowning and checking the time on my phone. It couldn’t be Milo. The home healthcare professionals were almost always done with their visit and gone by the time I got back to the house from a regular shift.

“No, it’s Devon Ray!” she cackled, but by the time she said that, I could already see who her surprise guest was. He looked almost guilty, crouched in front of the television, plugging some wires into the back of it.

“Seriously?” I said, my jaw just about dropping to the floor. “Are you seriously here right now?”

“I know,” Nana said excitedly. “Can you believe it?”

“No, I really can’t,” I said, shaking my head at him and putting my hands on my hips. “What is it tonight, Devon?”

“Well, I noticed when I was here yesterday that you two only had a DVD player,” he said. “And Nana said that you all had watched some movies so many times that they were scratched, so I thought I’d stop by and drop this Blu-ray player off.”

I cringed to hear him call her Nana.

“Devon says that this is the newest thing for movies,” Nana said. “He says that playing a movie on one of these things makes it even better quality than in the theater.”

“That’s if you play a Blu-ray disc on it, Nana,” I said. “We don’t have any of those. Just DVDs.”

“I also took the liberty of picking up a few movies on Blu-ray, to help you rebuild your library,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder as he finished up his work.

I walked around behind the couch to see what he was talking about, and my eyes bugged out. There were literally hundreds of movies piled up behind him, representing an investment worth thousands of dollars. He had bought us thousands of dollars’ worth of movies.

“Look, June,” Nana said, still brimming with excitement. “He even replaced all the movies of his that we had—even my favorite. We can watch it without it skipping.”

My heart did something stupid, in that moment. It warmed to the man fiddling with the wires on our television, flip-flopping because he’d made Nana so happy and excited. I didn’t know if the movies represented hush money or what, but I was thrilled that he’d made her feel like this. It made me not regret leaving her in the house every day when I went to work.

“Devon…this is too much,” I said.

“I told him the same thing,” Nana said, somber. “But he won’t take them back.”

“I just wanted to do something nice for you all,” he said, turning the television back around and settling the Blu-ray player in the same spot the DVD player used to reside. “There. All set. You all were so kind to me, tolerating me just dropping in. I know how much Nana loves her movies, so I wanted to make sure she stayed entertained.”

“June,” Nana whispered, practically vibrating with energy. “There are some movies that I haven’t even seen before. Not even once.”

“Well, thanks, Devon,” I said. “Thank you for this. This is too much, but if you insist…”

“Of course I insist,” he said. “In fact, I also wanted to come here to ask you both something.”

“Ask us anything,” Nana said, delirious with joy.

“I don’t know if you were here already, June, but yesterday I mentioned that some friends had invited me back to Hawaii, back to the location in one of the films that Nana likes so much,” he said.

“My favorite film,” Nana emphasized. “With the beach.”

I’d been here when he’d mentioned it, lurking in the shadows and trying to figure out what I was going to do with the actor in my house.

“And then Nana said something that stuck with me,” Devon continued. “That if it was important enough to me, I’d find the time for it. Well, I’ve made the time. I’m going to Hawaii to visit them. And I was wondering if you two would do me the honor of joining me there.”

My eyes bugged out of my head. “What? Are you crazy?”

“You’re talking about that beach?” Nana asked, peering at him. “The beach in the movie?”

“The very same,” Devon said. “If I hadn’t talked to you about it yesterday, it never would’ve happened for me. And I know you love that beach in the movie, Nana. I want to show it to you.”

“We can’t go to Hawaii,” I said flatly. “It’s an insane idea. We don’t even know you.”

“Of course we know him,” Nana argued. “He’s Devon Ray. What else is there to know?”

“Nana, it’s just not good logistics,” I told her, panic rising in my throat. What the hell was this? We couldn’t just go to Hawaii. And why did Devon want us there?

“I want you both to come,” he said stubbornly. “What’s not going to work? I can help you figure things out.”

“You can’t just throw money at things and expect them to work out,” I snapped at him. “I have a job. Nana needs to be in contact with her doctors. We can’t just up and leave.”

“They have doctors in Hawaii,” Devon said.

“Doctors,” Nana scoffed. “I’m not going to need doctors. Those home health people only take my pulse and watch me exercise. We can take my rubber bands to Hawaii, can’t we, June?”

“And if you come, you can make sure she does her exercises,” Devon put in.

Both of them looked at me with identical pleading expressions. It hurt my heart to see just how desperate Nana was to go. None of this made sense. But if I could make Nana happy by saying yes to this foolish idea, maybe that was the right thing to do.

And that’s how I found myself on a private plane with Devon Ray and Nana.

“Can I talk to you?” Devon asked. He was lounging on a couch that served, apparently, as an airplane seat. I was sitting beside Nana, who had started to nod off.

“What do you want to talk about?” I asked, leaning over Nana.

“Maybe you could come over here, so we’re not disturbing Nana,” he said. Nana was battling with slumber, excited enough to want to enjoy the plane ride, but still tired. It was well past her bedtime.

I eased past her and sat as far away from Devon as possible.

“I’m not going to bite,” he said. “Come here, so I don’t have to raise my voice.”

“I can hear you just fine.”

“We should probably be quiet,” Devon said, nodding across the aisle. Nana was fast asleep at last, not even the novelty of a jaunt around the globe on a private jet enough to keep her awake.

“Nana’s a heavy sleeper,” I said. “We won’t bother her.”

“Well, in that case…” Devon waggled his eyebrows at me.

“Don’t be a pig.” As if I needed yet another reason to not want to be here, on this trip.

“You need to try to be a little nicer,” he said.

“And you need to try to be less creepy,” I retorted.

“Think of how excited Nana is,” he cajoled. “You wouldn’t want to ruin it for her, would you?”

“Listen. The one and only reason I am on this plane is for Nana. That’s the only reason I’m doing this, is because she’s so excited, so happy. I haven’t seen her like this in a really long time, and that’s special to us both. I don’t know why you’re doing this, but I know why I am.”

I turned stubbornly away, studying Nana as she slept, her mouth hanging open just wide enough to be cute, not scary. I’d sidle in next to her if I weren’t afraid of waking her. She needed her rest. Too much excitement was a bad thing, the doctors had warned us. A little bit of excitement required a nice, long break, and today had just been so big.

Beside me, Devon heaved a sigh.

“I’m doing this to impress you,” he said, making me turn back to him in surprise.

“You’re what?”

“To impress you,” he said. “I…felt bad. Really bad. About the way everything has gone down between us.”

I opened my mouth and closed it again, unsure of what to say. Had he done some soul-searching, or what?

“Who I was in the hotel room…that’s not who I am. I was upset. I was messed up about my breakup. I shouldn’t have been drinking alone, and I shouldn’t have come on as strongly as I did. It’s just…you showed up. You were pretty. You liked me, or at least I thought you did. And all I wanted was some physical comfort.”

I sighed. The guy had dumped out his heart for me to see, and he needed a bone thrown to him.

“If it makes you feel any better, I was into you,” I said. “I wanted to…kiss you. Okay, I wanted to do a little more than kiss you.”

“Really?” He blinked at me, eager. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because you seemed so sure of it,” I said. “That it was a given I would give it up because of who you are. That you felt entitled to it. That’s what turned me off.”

“I didn’t mean to come off like that,” he said. “I just thought I read all the signs right.”

“It was right until it was wrong,” I said, shrugging. “I don’t know how else to explain it to you.”

“And now?”

I blinked. “Pardon?”

“Now?” He leaned closer. “Is now right again? Did I make it right again?”

The dry air circulating through the plane practically ignited between us in that same, strange draw I’d experienced in the hotel room, but I shook my head quickly.

“Too soon,” I blurted out, scooting down the couch from him.

“What the hell, June?” he asked, his eyebrows drawing together. “You’re sending mixed messages. That’s you, not me.”

“What did you think was going to happen?” I demanded. “Did you think that you were going to explain yourself—not even apologize, mind you, but flap your jaw at me—and I was going to, what? Spread my legs for you?”

“Would you think I was a bad person if I said yes?” he asked, spreading his hands in a helpless gesture.

The situation was too ludicrous for me not to laugh at. “You seriously thought that. You seriously thought that dumping a bunch of money on Nana and me, inconveniencing yourself and your busy schedule by flying us across the globe, charming my grandmother, doing God knows what else, was going to make me fuck you!”

Nana stirred across the aisle, murmuring softly, and both of us froze. I clapped my hands over my mouth, until she started snoring softly again. I got up to check on her—one side of her oxygen tubing had slid down over an ear, so I slipped it back in place, tucking it behind her snowy white hair.

Assuring myself that Nana was resting well, I whirled back around to face Devon. He wasn’t getting off so easily.

“What the actual fuck, asshole?” I whispered furiously, leaning down to get in his face partly so he could hear my diatribe, and partly so he would understand how angry I was. “This is the most sociopathic thing I could think of. Are we in danger? Should I strap a parachute to Nana and get her out of here?”

“The jet doesn’t have parachutes,” he said.

“Ugh!” I threw my hands up into the air. “You are the most ridiculous thing I have ever encountered in my entire life, and that’s saying something. Neither of my parents had any interest in raising me after they brought me into the world, so I know a thing or two about ridiculous things. You, however, are much more ridiculous than that. Are you able to grasp the scale on which I’m rating you?”

Devon nodded shortly, his brown eyes big, and I was mollified, to a certain extent, that I was, at least, reaching him in whatever reality he existed.

“You could’ve spent less money on a prostitute,” I told him, exasperated. “Seriously. This is all way too much. If you’d wanted some kind of physical comfort so badly, you could’ve gotten what you wanted minus all this drama.”

“I didn’t want a prostitute,” he said innocently. “I wanted you. I want you.”

“What?”

The jet jolted suddenly with a pocket of bad air, a random spiral of turbulence that was just enough to throw me forward into Devon’s lap. He caught me reflexively, and in that quick instant, I somehow felt at home pressed against that hard torso, his strong arms wrapped around my body,

“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice low and husky. I could feel it vibrate inside his chest. It…did things to me. I nodded, not sure I trusted my own voice to do any talking for me.

“I’m not used to people telling me no, June,” Devon said. “I’m used to getting what I want.”

“I am well aware of that fact.” My chest heaved as if I’d sprinted up a couple of flights of stairs.

“I wish…that you would tell me yes.”