I led Ryan to the pantry. “In here.”
I opened the door and pulled the string to turn on the single bulb inside, and then bent down to roll back the rug covering the floor. There was a trap door below it, the outline barely noticeable in the hardwood planks. I pushed my fingers into the corner where there was a slightly bigger space, and pulled the door up.
Ryan knelt down on the other side of the door, and we both peered into the dark space, which was really not much more than a hole cut into the earth below.
“That’s really cool, Tess,” he said, looking up at me across the space. His intent and open gaze made my stomach flip.
“Isn’t it? They used it for the Underground Railroad too.”
“No shit?”
A laugh rolled out of me, low and happy. No one ever wanted to talk history with me, and it was fun to see Ryan seem to truly appreciate my little diversion. “Yeah, no shit.”
“I love history,” he said. “We have history out west, you know. But it’s not the same—not ours really. Not American, exactly, you know?”
“I’d love to go out west,” I told him, closing the door again. He reached out and helped me smooth the rug over the floor, and then we stood.
Suddenly, I was inches away from Ryan McDonnell in a space no bigger than most closets, his chest just a few inches from my face. My heart skittered as I looked up at him to find him smiling down at me, something flickering in his eyes. In any other situation, I would have said it felt like heat, like interest, like some kind of nearly sexual intensity between us. But this was not just some guy. And this guy was not available.
And I was definitely imagining the energy drawing me closer to him.
I stepped back, bumping into the shelves behind me and sending a couple cans crashing to the floor. The noise broke the strange moment into fragments that skittered away like mice, disappearing into the pantry’s dark corners as we righted the cans and went back out into the kitchen.
“Did you get enough to eat?” I asked Ryan, unable to look at him now, for fear I’d fling myself into his arms.
He cleared his throat, swallowed loudly. “Yeah, uh. Thanks, Tess. That was great.”
I took the dishes from the table and walked to the sink. I needed to get back up to my room, to get some distance. The late hour and the headiness of being alone with Ryan McDonnell was doing things to my mind.
“I can wash those,” he said, stepping up next to me.
“Don’t be silly,” I told him. “You’re company. And we have a dishwasher.”
He stood there a long minute more as I rinsed the bowl and glass, and then he stepped away. “Okay, well. I guess I’ll head up to bed then. Should we bake tomorrow?”
I turned to face him.
Mistake. Whatever I’d felt in the pantry was still there, burning in those eyes when I met them with my own.
God, how did women function around this man?
“You don’t really have to help with that,” I said quickly. I was certain he’d just been being nice. “I mean, I’ve got YouTube and the recipe.”
“I’ll help. Tomorrow, okay?”
“Yeah, okay. Thanks.” How would I survive baking a cake with him? I wanted to throw myself into his arms, could I manage mixing and sifting instead?
“Great.” He shot me another smile, and turned to go. At the doorway, he said, “Tess?” God, my name on his lips was like the nicest song I’d ever heard. It was better than Pitch Perfect and I was obsessed with that movie.
I turned to find him lingering just inside the kitchen. “Yeah?”
“It’s really nice to meet you.”
And then he was gone.
I collapsed into the chair he’d sat in and dropped my head into my hands, unable to process the amount of time and words I’d just shared with Ryan McDonnell, the movie star. This was not my life.
I just wished I could keep my mind from embellishing everything that had just happened.
He had definitely not been giving me a look in the pantry, right? He was Juliet’s boyfriend. And in my experience, when you had champagne, you didn’t go looking for moonshine.
Chapter Five
Ryan
I woke to sun streaming through the tall windows of my room, and I stretched in bed and lounged longer than I probably should have, enjoying the lazy lack of anything I absolutely had to do.
Sleep had come pretty easily, despite the unfamiliar location and bed. I was tired, for one thing, and that helped. The stranger thing, though, was that I felt oddly settled here. At home. And that was something I hadn’t felt in a long time. Maybe ever.
I suspected some part of that had to do with Tess, but I couldn’t have explained exactly why.
When she’d gotten me dinner, there had been something so natural about spending time with her, talking with her in the cozy old kitchen with its warm light and hidden spaces. This house—more than that, even—this place… it spoke to something inside me in a way I couldn’t understand in any terms that made sense. But I knew I liked it here. A part of me already felt sad that soon I’d be going back to the plastic people and shiny spaces that made up my regular life.
Sure, there were great people and real things in Hollywood. But so much of my world was made up of people focused on things that just seemed somehow impermanent and flimsy to me. My own quest for stardom … what would it get me? Financial security, I hoped. And security for my dad. But beyond that? Look at what Juliet was going through, all in an effort to keep her reputation clean in the eyes of the world, all to stay on top in the minds of people who didn’t even
