Instead of driving me home, he drove us back to Bel Air, to the heaven that was his home.
“Do you want something to drink?” he asked as soon as we were inside.
“I’m good. Thank you.”
“I’ll get something for myself then.”
He poured himself…I didn’t even care what it was at that point. I just stood in the middle of his living room, hugging myself and generally feeling like crap.
“Maybe you should’ve dropped me at home, Jason,” I said when he kept his back turned to me. “I don’t think this night out was a good idea. If this is about you taking me to the set, or, hell, I don’t know, to tell me that you think my book is crap…or maybe it’s about the photos, that would make more sense, bu—”
“Stop, Olive. Just stop,” he interrupted me.
He finally left the bottle of alcohol alone and walked to my side. Cupping my cheeks, he looked into my eyes. “Your book was amazing. You’re amazing. Stop thinking badly about yourself. I have to…no, I need to tell you something, or ask you something. Hell…” He let my face go and turned his back to me, again. “I’m already making a mess of this. I just don’t know how to say it…where to start.”
“Well.” I dropped the clutch onto the comfy looking armchair. “I’m half convinced you’re trying to tell me you have to kill me, so it can’t be worse than that. Just tell me and get over it with already.”
He raked his hand through his already sexily messed up hair and let out a deep breath. “You’re right. Okay. You liked sitting outside last time, so let’s go out.” Grabbing my hand, he walked us outside.
“You have chaise lounges,” I said when we stepped outside. There were six of them and they looked gorgeous next to the pool. There were also more than a few giant cushions, the ones that you can curl up and comfortably sleep on. “You didn’t have them the last time I was here.”
“Yeah, I asked Alvin to find something comfortable to sit on for when I had guests who wanted to sit close to the pool instead of at the table.”
He had gotten them because of me?
I was unable to hold back my smile.
We arranged the cushions closer to the pool and sat down facing each other.
“I’ve danced around it enough, so here we go,” he started. I sat up straighter, ready for whatever he was about to throw my way.
“My publicist wants me to get married, Olive.”
Wait. What? I wasn’t ready for that!
“Come again?”
“I lost a few jobs after the alley video scandal; apparently they don’t think I’m serious enough about my work, and no major studio wants to deal with that. They didn’t want the negative press around me to affect their movie, so they ended my contracts. Tom thinks that’ll only be the start if things don’t change.”
Wait. What?
I was barely hearing a word of what he was saying. He was getting married?
Was I cursed? Because there was no way this was fair. I’d long ago given up on my childhood crush, but now after seeing him again, spending time with him again…now he was getting married to someone?
“Wait a second.” I shook my head. “I don’t understand. What does that have to do with you getting married?”
“It’s what they do in this industry, Olive. They paint you a life for the public. They shape you into something new, something that fits into their standards. It’s all an illusion. Sometimes even in your private life you have to keep acting. You get a new girlfriend; your publicists sit down and draw up a contract. Everything ends up in a contract. Everything is binding. Of course there are real couples, too, but it’s tough to find that with someone in this industry.”
“So why not get a girlfriend?”
A pretend girlfriend was still bad, but a wife?! I’d read enough romance novels to know that those marriages always had a shot at a real love, and what woman in her right mind wouldn’t fall in love with Jason after spending some time with him?
He shook his head. “No. They think the media will see right through that, and if the public and everyone else thinks I’m playing them, it’ll only bury my career deeper into the ground. Long story short, Megan thinks that if I get married and act the part for a few years, everyone’s opinion about me will change. In the meantime, I’ll be able to focus on my work instead of dealing with the ripple effects my actions cause in the media.”
My heart sinking further and further, I tried not to show what I was feeling—pure agony—on my face.
“Then congratulations are in order, I guess,” I said, properly taken back. “Wow. You’re getting married. You already announced it?”
He laughed, and it wasn’t a happy laugh. Far from it. “Yeah, no.”
Not looking at him, I leaned to my left and pushed my hand into the pool water. It was a chilly night, but I was hardly feeling anything.
“My publicist and Tom have been showing me headshots of some new actresses for quite some time now, but I couldn’t choose one.” He continued to break my heart. “Well, now they chose someone for me.”
Headshots? That was freaking hilarious. Choosing a wife by looking at headshots? Obviously, Hollywood wasn’t my thing. Where is the love, people?
I forced my lips to tilt up. “Who is the lucky lady?”
Instead of answering me, he said the strangest thing. “Do you remember the first day we met? The first day where I found you hiding next to the wall upstairs?”
My smile turned genuine. “Bits and pieces.” False. Of course I remembered that day.
“Then,” he said as he shifted in his seat. “Let me answer a question you asked me back then.” He paused, then said, “Yes.”
I stared at him, clueless. “What?”
Had I asked him if he liked pie or not? I didn’t remember asking anything.
“Yes to what?”
“You don’t remember,” he mumbled as he scrubbed his stubble. Taking a deep breath, he reminded me, “You asked me to marry you…so…would you like to marry me, Olive?”
I laughed. Like a big LOL laugh. Then I saw his face. “What? You’re serious?”
A big, giant lump took residence in my throat, almost to the point of suffocating me. Could he hear my heartbeat? See how my hands were starting to shake? “You’re not serious, right?” I asked at last, my smile long gone.
He gave me a sarcastic laugh. “Apparently our photos made everyone believe that we were in love with each other, and since we already have a past, Megan thinks the public won’t question our marriage. The opposite actually.”
“Our marriage?” I managed to choke out. He was actually serious. It was right there in his eyes.
“If you accept that is.”
“Wow.” I scrambled up to my feet and walked away from him. “Wow.”
A part of me was screaming inside me to jump on him, monkey style, and shout ‘Yes! Of course, I’ll marry you. YES!’ until my voice grew hoarse so he would get the point. After all, I’d been wishing for this moment ever since I was eight years old, hadn’t I? The other part of me…well, there was no other part of me. Apparently, I was just one giant, mushy, Jason Thorn lover.
I jumped when Jason’s hand touched my shoulder and he turned me to face him. I hadn’t even heard him get up.
“I’m most likely screwing this up. Let me explain a little more before you answer.”
I must have nodded, because he continued.
“If you accept, we’ll get married in a week or two.”
I gave him a sarcastic laugh. Did he think giving me that information would help? Because it didn’t. Not at all.
He kept going. “Of course, you’ll live here with me until the divorce.”
We weren’t even married yet, and he was already planning for a divorce?
“In the contract I’ve signed with the studio for Soul Ache, they added a clause that says I can’t be in a relationship while we are filming the movie and through the promotion phase of it. However, since you are the author, us getting married would be a priceless promotion for them.” He stopped talking and looked into my eyes. “Megan and Tom think you might have had me in your mind when you wrote your book.”
My heart literally stopped beating, longer than it should have. I stood frozen until he spoke again.
“But that can’t be true, right?”
“Of course not.” I shook my head.
“Right. Well, the public will think like Megan and Tom,” he muttered, his eyes still searching mine. “They think the executives will be happy about the news since it will only draw more attention to the movie. When the story gets out that we’re together, everyone will talk about how, after so many years, we found each other again, how the movie star fell in love with the author of their own story. In the movie, practically all they’ll see is me falling in love with you. The more they talk about us, the more your book and their movie will be mentioned. And, well, you’ll be the girl who made me give up my old ways.”
I opened my mouth, but he stopped me and took my hands in his.
“Yes, this will help me get everyone off of my back so I can get back to doing what I love doing without all this media crap, but it can also be a good thing for your career, too. Your next book is pretty much guaranteed to be another bestseller before you even finish writing it.”
I didn’t like hearing that. Not at all. I didn’t want people to read my words just because I was married to their favorite movie star. I wanted to make my own path, not walk in Jason’s shadow.
“The truth is, Olive, I’d take marrying you over marrying some girl I don’t know any day, some girl who is just looking to get a piggyback ride by marrying me.”
Lucky, lucky me.
Wasn’t that the marriage proposal every girl dreamed they would get from the love of their life?
“We are friends, right?” he asked when I kept silent.
Still shell-shocked, I was trying very hard to keep up with him. I nodded. I guessed we could be called friends. “It might be fun living together again. You’ll have your own room right across from mine, just like the old days, except this time there is no Dylan to bother you. I’ll mostly be gone, filming.” He looked around his heavenly backyard—if that expansive space could even be called a backyard, that is—and gave my hands a squeeze. “You can have this place all to yourself, Olive. It would be easier to write here instead of in a house filled with roommates, right?” His eyes came back to me.
“I’m not even writing,” I said stupidly.
“What?”
“I think I’m fresh out of creativity. Nothing new is coming, so that might have been my first and only book.”
He tilted his head and showed me his hypnotizing dimple.
“Maybe when you move here I can help with your creativity issues.”
My eyes got stuck on his mouth.
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
I forced my eyes away from his lips. I was dreaming of an alternate world where we were kissing. When the love of your life asks you to freaking marry him, you laugh with joy, maybe even shed a few happy tears, and eventually kiss, right? But this wasn’t my childhood dream coming true, was it? No, this would just be living in the same house with Jason Thorn, acting like we were in love only when were out in public, maybe holding his hand, kissing him on the cheek.
Could my heart survive Jason Thorn?
“So, what do you think?”
“About?”
“Marrying me…”
Did he really not see how I felt about him? Not even a little?
“I’m not sure if I’m capable of thinking right now, Jason,” I admitted.
“You’ll be saving me, Olive.”
But what would happen to me in the process? That was the real question. My heart was willing to go along with what he was proposing; after all, there was no way I could attend his wedding knowing it could’ve been me up there standing right next to him—even if it was a lie. But my mind wasn’t thinking any of that; it was giving out all kinds of warning signs.
“Can I think about it?”
“Of course,” he said, letting my hands go.
I was cold. Very cold.
Not knowing what to do with myself, I hugged my elbows and looked down at my feet.
His finger tilted my chin up and he ducked low to capture my eyes, so I gave them to him. He was smiling then, his eyes kind. “It’s okay if you don’t want to say yes, little one. It’s not something I thought I would do this year either.”
Was he getting closer to me? Involuntarily—yeah, no, it was very much voluntarily—I took a step forward to close the distance between us. His eyes were my beacon.
What did he see in my eyes?
His gaze dropped to my neck. He lifted his hand and his fingertips touched the arch of my neck. I stopped breathing and swallowed. His gaze jumped up to mine as if the motion startled him. Then his fingertips trailed up and around my neck and tangled in my hair, his gentle, unexpected touch causing my body to tremble.
My eyes fell closed and I breathed in his scent.
He was standing so close to me.
To my heart.
His thumb caressed my cheekbones and I tilted my head into his touch.
“Olive,” he whispered.
That voice…
I shivered, got wet… My body did all kinds of things that always happen in romance novels.
He was going to freaking kiss me!
If it happens, don’t freak out, Olive.
You’re a calm waterfall, a purring fucking cat.
At first, he rested his forehead against mine and we just stood like that for a moment, breathing each other in.
Gently. Slowly.
His nose touched mine.
Then, nothing. Absolutely NOTHING! His phone started ringing and his hands stiffened against my suddenly heated skin. For a moment there, it had felt like he was right there with me and there was no one else in the world other than us—but then, nothing.
His damn phone was a cock blocker after all.
His eyes still focused on me, he took a few steps back, answered his phone, and only then broke the eye contact. Had his eyes darkened? Was I starting to see things?
I lifted my fingers to touch my lips. How could I feel like his lips had caressed mine even though he hadn’t even touched me?
I walked back inside to where I had left my clutch and picked it up.
When Jason came inside, I was ready to leave before I did something stupid.
I was going crazy.
