“Where’s Luca?” The old man marched past me as if I didn’t exist.
I shut the door and cleared my throat. “She’s in the living—”
Luca staggered into the kitchen looking frazzled. Her lips were swollen and her hair was a disheveled mess. Yet I wasn’t sure if her being freaked out was from our kiss or her being worried about the old guy. She looked pretty panicked. “Doc? What’s the matter? Is everything okay?”
He made a beeline for her and placed both his hands on her shoulders. “Are you okay? You didn’t text like you were supposed to.”
Luca let out a relieved breath. “Shoot. I’m sorry, Doc. Griffin and I, we started to . . . We just got caught up, and it slipped my mind that I was supposed to let you know I was okay.”
Doc gave her a thorough once-over, then looked suspiciously at me and back to her. “You’re sure everything is okay?”
“Yes. I’m fine. Griffin . . . he knows who I am now.”
Doc’s forehead smoothed out. “Oh. Okay. Well, I’m glad to hear that. I was worried about you. I didn’t mean to intrude.”
I knew he was important to her, so I extended my hand. “Griffin Marchese. Sometimes known as Cole Archer, Dr. Maxwell. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
The good doctor warmed up. “Call me Chester, please.”
It dawned on me that security hadn’t called to let me know they were letting anyone come up to the house. “Did you come through the front gate, Chester?”
He shook his head. “I climbed the fence at the far end of the property.”
My eyes widened. My fence had to be eight feet tall. “You climbed . . . the fence?”
“Luca wasn’t answering her phone, and I was worried.”
I started to crack up at the visual of this seventy-year-old man scaling a giant fence to save his patient. These two were one hell of a team.
Luca smiled at him warmly. “I’m so sorry for making you worry, Doc.”
He held up a hand. “No need to apologize. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I’ll leave you two alone, then.”
There was absolutely nothing I wanted more than to be left alone with Luca, to pick up exactly where we’d just left off. But when I looked over at her and saw the sweet smile she wore melt to a frown, the stupidest thing came out of my mouth. “No. Stay. Why don’t you join us for dinner?”
“So how long are you two planning on staying in California?”
Luca sighed, and I knew before she spoke that I didn’t want to hear the answer. “We have to get back on the road the day after tomorrow.”
Heaviness settled in my chest. “Why so soon?”
“It’s a three-thousand-mile drive. We took a little longer than we’d planned to get out here, and we need to leave six days for getting back. If I’m behind the wheel too many hours in a day, I start to daydream and forget I’m driving. I missed half of Colorado plotting my next book in my head. It’s not exactly safe.”
“What about if I get someone to trailer the RV back and you guys take a plane? I’ll book you a private flight.”
Luca smiled sadly. “That’s very sweet. But I . . . I don’t go on planes.” She looked down. “Or trains or buses. I don’t even go to the grocery store like a normal person, Griffin.”
Doc piped in. “She did great at the pet store last week, though.”
Luca shook her head. “My life is . . . complicated.”
Doc caught my eye. “Yes, Luca’s life is complicated. But I’d venture to guess that Griffin’s isn’t uncomplicated. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
It was easy to forget about Luca’s issues while looking at her. Hell, it was easy to forget everything while admiring her beautiful face. But Doc was right; my life was as complicated as hers, maybe even more so—just in a very different way. I stared at Luca—we only had a day and a half, and I didn’t want to waste a minute of our time together.
“Doc, I have a small pool house in the back of my property. It’s got a bedroom and a kitchenette. Why don’t you camp out there for the next two nights? I’m sure the beds in that RV can’t be too comfortable. We can pull the camper into the driveway so that it’s secure, and you can have some privacy.”
Doc seemed hesitant to accept my offer. So I told a little white lie that I knew would sway things in my favor. “There’re some great birds out there. I just installed a new feeder, so I bet it’s like an aviary first thing in the morning.”
Doc’s eyes lit up. “Have you seen the spotted towhee? I hear she’s quite the stunner.”
The spotted what? “Sure, sure. Definitely have some of those out there.”
Doc looked to Luca. His face reminded me of a little boy with his nose pressed up to the glass ice-cream display at the store while he waited for his mom to say he could get a scoop.
Luca smiled at Doc. “That sounds like a great idea, Doc.”
He beamed. “Alright. Thank you for the offer, Griffin. But only if we can really pull the rig into the driveway behind the gates. I don’t want Luca sleeping in the RV all by herself out on the street.”
Oh, don’t worry about that. I have no intention of letting Luca stay in that RV, either. “Of course. Why don’t we go take care of that now, and I’ll show you to the pool house.”
The three of us headed out, Doc walking through the front door first. I extended my hand to tell Luca to go ahead of me, but she stopped, turned to face me, and pushed up on her tippy-toes to whisper in my ear. “You better find a way to make birds appear back there by morning, liar.”
Cole: Need you to do me a favor.
Aiden: Whatever you need, boss.
Cole: Find a 24-hour Home Depot and pick up a dozen bird feeders and seed. Hang them all around my pool house by the time the sun rises. I need birds out there bright and early. Buy a dozen parrots from the damn pet store if you have to.
Aiden: Okay . . .
Cole: And don’t wake up the old man sleeping inside the pool house.
My assistant had received way stranger requests than this. One of the things that made him good at his job was that he never asked questions. So I powered my phone off, confident that Doc would be happy in the morning, and turned my attention to the woman standing in my kitchen.
Her beautiful mouth stayed in an unreadable line.
I walked toward her, focused on those lips. I wondered if she’d mind if I bit them. But Luca put her hand up and pressed against my chest, stopping me from finding out.
“I’m not sleeping with you.”
I raised one brow. “Not ever?”
“Not tonight.”
I nodded, amused. “Okay. So tomorrow night it is, then.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
She still had her palm to my chest, so I tested the waters by giving a little nudge forward. She didn’t stop me, so I leaned down and buried my face in her neck, kissing my way along her pulse line up to her ear to whisper, “Are you saying you’re not attracted to me, Luca? That’s a shame, because I’m very attracted to you.”
She shook her head. “I . . . I am. Very. But . . .” Her words fell away. I had no doubt I could convince her to change her decision if I set my mind to it. Though Luca meant more than just a quick fuck to me.
I pulled back to look at her and cupped both her cheeks. “I respect that, Luca. I’d be lying if I said that the thought of burying myself inside you wouldn’t be a dream come true. But I’d never ask you to do anything you didn’t want to do.”
She looked genuinely relieved. “I’m just afraid. Meeting you was such a huge step, and I don’t want to get even more attached than I already am.”
Hearing her say that was more of a disappointment than her no sex declaration. She’d only been in my home for a few hours, but I was pretty sure I was already more attached to her than some of my appendages. “Why don’t we go relax a bit? I have more than one guest room when you’re ready to get some sleep. I don’t know about you, but I’m nowhere near ready to stop talking to you.”
She smiled. “Yeah. That would be perfect.”
In the living room, I lit the fireplace and filled our abandoned wineglasses from earlier. Luca pulled her feet up and tucked them under her. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.” I sipped my wine.
“Why didn’t you want to tell me?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I guess I liked us being just us. I was afraid things would change if you found out the truth.”
“Did someone you trusted do that to you? Change because of your fame?”
I wasn’t surprised she’d hit it on the head. Luca could read me better than anyone, without us ever having met. Now that she sat in front of me, I didn’t even need to say the answer aloud. She saw my face and spoke again before I did.
“I’m sorry they did that to you. That sucks.”
Since we had limited time together, I didn’t want to focus on all the negative shit that had gone down in my life, so I gave the abbreviated version. “Friends who I thought were friends turned out not to be. And women . . . well, they want to be with me because I’m Cole Archer, not for who I really am. If that makes sense.”
She nodded. “It does. You know, the funny thing is—your being famous is probably the worst attribute in a man for me. I don’t do crowds and busy places, and from the limited stuff I saw on the internet today, your life is one giant crowd and busy place.”
“I guess . . . sometimes anyway. But the last few weeks, I’ve mostly been recording in the studio, so it’s been pretty low-key. Honestly, I love the music but the crowds and the fame got old pretty quickly. I never appreciated anonymity until I didn’t have it anymore. Things can get insane in this business.”
“Like what? Tell me the craziest thing that’s ever happened to you.”
I thought about it. I had enough stories to write a dozen books, but one in particular stuck out. “I once came home to a woman cooking me dinner in the buff in my kitchen.”
Luca’s brows knitted together. “I would think a man would be happy to find his date cooking in the nude, not think it’s crazy.”
“She wasn’t my date. I’d never met the woman before in my life. She broke in and acted like she knew me, calling me honey and stuff. It was like something out of The Twilight Zone. She had my name tattooed over her heart and had legally changed her last name to Archer. In her mind, we were married.”
Luca’s eyes bulged. “Oh my God. That’s terrifying. Did she go to jail?”
I shook my head. “No. I agreed to drop the charges as long as she went for psychiatric counseling. She obviously wasn’t right. But after that, I hired the security guard team that sits at the front gate twenty-four seven. I needed it anyway. A week after Miss Archer was arrested, one of those celebrity tour buses added me as a stop on their map, and now there are always people trying to get on the property.”
“How can they do that? What about your privacy?”
I shrugged. “I traded my privacy for fame, Luca.”
“That’s crap. I can understand people wanting autographs and trying to take your picture when you’re out and about. But your home—that should be your sanctuary.”
“Yeah. People sort of forget I’m a real person.”
Her shoulders slumped. “And here I just did the same thing to you, didn’t I? I showed up in an RV without being invited. In fact, you specifically told me you didn’t even want to exchange photos.”
“That’s different. I’m glad you took this leap for us, Luca. I really am. It needed to be done. Though I hope you can understand why I was hesitant at first. People don’t show up to see Griffin. They show up to see Cole.”
“But I didn’t even know you were Cole when I made this trip.”
“I know that now. And I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”
“I’m sorry I pushed you outside your comfort zone. God knows I hate being outside of mine.”
My eyes roamed her face. “Thank you for coming all this way. I know it couldn’t have been easy.”
She nodded.
Luca went quiet for a long time after that. She stared down at her wine, seemingly lost in thought. After a minute, I slipped my finger under her chin and lifted. “If we only have a day and a half, you’re going to have to tell me what’s on your mind. While I’d love to get inside that head of yours and try to make sense of how it works, I’m afraid we don’t have that luxury.”
She nodded. “I was just thinking that . . . you must have a lot of women throwing themselves at you all the time.”
There was no point in lying. All she had to do was Google and she’d find women flashing me their tits from the front row of almost any of my shows. And I’d indulged my fair share when everything first hit. The paparazzi had captured more walks of shame leaving my dressing room than I wanted to remember. I wasn’t proud of the man I’d been in the beginning, but I’d learned my lesson. “I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I’m a virgin, but those women, they aren’t throwing themselves at Griffin Marchese. They’re throwing themselves at Cole Archer—a man who doesn’t even really exist.”
“Have you had any serious girlfriends?”
My jaw clenched. “I thought I did, but it turned out I didn’t. Haley lived with me for about three months. She was an aspiring singer. On my last tour, I decided to surprise her and come home between shows when I hadn’t been scheduled to. I found her in bed with my forty-five-year-old agent.”
“Wow. I’m sorry. That’s awful.”
“Yeah. That was just the beginning of finding out a bunch of dark shit about the people I thought cared about me.”
Luca stroked my forearm. “I guess I can understand why you wanted to keep your current life a secret from me.”
This conversation had taken a turn toward depressing. I reminded myself that we only had a little time together; the clock was ticking. I scratched at the stubble on my chin. “I have an idea. Do you remember that little game we used to play as teenagers? The one where we would tell each other a couple of true things and a lie and we’d have to figure out which was which.”
Luca grinned. “Two truths and a lie. How could I forget? Like when you got your driver’s license and thought you were so cool going to the drive-through line at McDonald’s the first time, and you placed your entire order yelling into the trash receptacle?”
I laughed. I had forgotten all about that. Figures Luca hadn’t. “That’s the game. The loser used to have to send the other stickers, if I remember correctly.”
“I stickered an entire closet door because I beat you so often.”
“I used to let you win, cocky girl,” I lied.
“Sure you did.”
“I’m thinking it’s time for a rematch. We only have a day and a half to get to know each other again. What better way than to play our old game?”
“I’m down for that. But I don’t have any stickers with me, on the off chance you actually get something right.”
“That’s okay. We’re not going to be playing for stickers this time.”
“We’re not? What exactly are we playing for, Mr. Quinn?”
“Kisses. Winner gets to pick where they want to give them.”
