“We’re almost there,” she said, nodding at the passing fields and barns, as if she’d spotted some landmark that to me looked just like everything else we’d seen.
“You ready?” I asked her, our eyes meeting and some kind of understanding passing between us.
My heart went out to her—she looked so sad. Part of me wished I felt something else, that I was interested in her, that my body responded to her obvious sex appeal the way the rest of the red-blooded male population of the United States—and the rest of the world, for that matter—seemed to. But Juliet Manchester, though gorgeous, didn’t do it for me.
There was something too shiny, too perfect about her. And I wasn’t looking anyway. I’d dated Hollywood starlets, and even regular women I’d met along the journey to becoming Ryan McDonnell. But nothing had ever felt real. I’d always had the sense that each relationship was built for the purpose of one or both people getting something out of it. Every relationship I’d had felt just like this one—forced, a business transaction. This was just the first time the cards were on the table at the outset.
No, if I were looking, it wouldn’t be in Hollywood. Some day I’d have enough financial security to leave all that and figure out who the hell I actually was. I’d find someone real and live in a place where people didn’t base their estimation of your worth on what your last film grossed or what your address was. For now, that’s the life I’d chosen—and it paid well enough most of the time to help me set up a better future. But this weekend, I had a role to play.
“The security team arrived a little while ago,” Juliet said. “My sister didn’t sound very happy about them scouting the property and poking around the house.”
I shrugged. “Necessary evil, I guess.” Juliet was a star of the caliber that attracted stalkers and other crazies, so I understood a little bit why we had two burly men in a car behind us and two ahead of us already poking around the house where we’d be staying.
With Juliet’s sister and grandmother, apparently. I wasn’t sure why we couldn’t just stay in a nice hotel nearby, but I was beginning to think it had to do with the totally isolated nature of this place.
Juliet nodded absently. “Once we get settled, it should be just family and stuff until the magazine crew comes out tomorrow. They’ll pop in for the party too.”
“And are we a couple where your family is concerned?” It would be easier if we didn’t have to pretend when the cameras weren’t around.
She wrinkled her nose and seemed to think about this. “The fewer people who know we’re pretending, the better, I guess.”
Great. The pressure just doubled—there’d be no chance to take a breath, let down my guard.
“Is that okay?” she asked, sounding sincerely sorry.
“It’s fine, Juliet. That’s what I agreed to, right? I save your image, you save my career.”
She smiled and laughed, but it was a practiced response. “We’ll see what we can manage on both counts.”
“So this is your sister’s house?” The car had turned between the tall brick posts of a wrought iron fence and was headed down a long gravel drive between two fields of what looked like corn. “Is your sister a farmer?” I angled my head at the crop, shadowed and eerie in the moonlight.
Juliet laughed. “No,” she said. “She runs a river adventure shop, actually, teaching people to kayak, stand-up paddleboard, do yoga on the river, that kind of thing. There’s a family that lives across the road here that farms the property. And the house is really my grandmother’s, but my sister lives here and looks after her.”
“That’s nice of her.”
“It is,” she agreed, though something in her voice was hesitant. “Gran’s kind of a handful.”
The woman was about to turn ninety. I doubted she could be too much of a handful.
“So it’s like a farm? Animals and stuff?”
Juliet laughed, something wistful in the sound as she leaned back into the seat and stared out the window. “Used to have. She loved horses, but can’t care for them now. She still has chickens, some goats…”
“Pigs?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine a farm without pigs. I’d seen the Wizard of Oz, after all.
Juliet’s face lost its smile. “No, and definitely don’t bring up pigs around Gran.”
“Seriously?” I asked. Juliet sounded strangely alarmed and I needed to understand why.
“She hates pigs. Like really hates them.”
“Who hates pigs? They’re so cute. Look.” I pulled up a gif of a pig waving a pinwheel out a car window. “Cute.”
“Not cute. She thinks pigs are possessed by the devil.”
Gran did sound like a handful, I decided. “Huh.”
“Something about being attacked at the Achilles tendon by one at some point.”
I had no idea what to say to that, so another “huh” escaped me and I turned my attention back to the windows.
After a moment, a huge two-story brick house came into view, lit up against the darkness, with wings reaching out on each side of the main structure. There were huge trees towering over the smaller wings, casting parts of the enormous structure into shadow. A fountain stood in the center of the circular drive, surrounded by a lawn that rolled around the property and spread out beyond. The whole place was lit up like a national monument. I guess maybe because they were expecting us.
On one side of the house, the lawn reached down a hill and I thought there might be water back there, shaded by trees hanging at the bank.
“It’s incredible,” I said, my voice holding a reverence I hadn’t intended. I’d seen plenty of waterfront property, but this wasn’t Malibu. There was something much more stately and reserved about this kind of luxury, about the way it was tucked quietly back here
