“It was a plantation originally,” she explained as the car pulled to a stop in front of the house. “The original house was actually built in early 1700, and it’s evolved over the years. The British took over the property during the War of 1812 when they blockaded the Chesapeake,” she was saying, but my attention was no longer on Juliet’s words or on the hulking historic house before us. It was laser-focused on something else. Someone else.
A woman had just stepped out the front door and stood on the front steps, watching our car with wide eyes, dark hair cascading in waves around her face as the lights caught her in their glow.
Juliet stopped speaking, following my gaze out the window. “And that,” she said. “Is my little sister. Tess.”
Tess. Everything I didn’t feel when I looked at Juliet jumped to attention when I spotted her sister.
The weekend had just become a whole lot more interesting.
Chapter Four
Tess
Gran had gone to bed by the time two dark cars pulled into the driveway. Juliet had called an hour ago, so I’d been watching for them, unsure how to feel about seeing her with my ridiculous celebrity crush. I bit a nail as I stepped out onto the porch to greet them.
My sister slid from the back seat of the car looking every bit the movie star she was. I hoped everything was going to meet her standards. The security guys had looked around the property for God-only-knew what, and asked me questions about our alarm system (nonexistent), our security perimeter (also nonexistent) and our emergency evacuation CONOPS (seriously? Once they explained what a “CONOPS” was—a concept of operations, in case you’re wondering—I explained that was also nonexistent).
My big sister Juliet lived in a world I could barely begin to understand, where movie stars were people you actually knew. People like Ryan McDonnell.
Sigh. Deep, lovelorn sigh.
My sister had never really belonged here, and she didn’t fit in any better now, with slim-fitted pink capris and high-heeled sandals. The second I saw her, I felt myself inching toward invisibility again. I loved her, but my life worked better when Juliet wasn’t standing at my side, begging the world to wonder how two sisters could be so different.
I pushed down my own insecurities and smiled at her.
“You look great,” I told her. It was true. She always looked great.
“Hey,” she said in that breathy voice she’d become famous for. She pulled me into a tight hug, smiled at me, and then took a step back, ducking her chin a tiny bit as she said, “I want to introduce you to someone.”
A pair of long jean-clad legs slid out of the car behind her, attached to a broad tall body that I already knew too well was Ryan McDonnell. I was more than familiar with this particular ‘someone.’ He’d been my on-screen crush forever, though I hadn’t seen him in anything lately. There had been a movie I hadn’t seen—one that hadn’t done too well, but it included zombies, which were not my thing, even if you added in Ryan McDonnell hotness.
The object of my movie star affections had bright blue eyes, perfectly tousled dark hair—cropped close now, I noticed—and a body that appeared to have been carved from stone, or so I’d thought in the last role I’d seen him in as a comic book hero reimagined as a dark avenger. God, he was hot.
“Tess?” My sister’s voice cut through my stupor.
“Sorry,” I said, shaking off the dreamy haze. “Yes.”
“Yes?” He asked me, a smile spreading slowly across the perfect lips I couldn’t stop staring at. He chuckled, and I realized he hadn’t asked me a question. Embarrassment surged inside me, making my stomach churn.
“No,” I said, covering my affirmative declaration with an equally unnecessary negative word. “Or, I … um, hello.”
“I apologize for the short notice,” Ryan said letting my idiocy slide. People probably acted like loons around him all the time. I tried not to look at him, but there were parts of my body that were not listening at all to my brain. Ryan’s smile was like a speeding train coming right at me and freezing me to the spot where I stood, stupid and dazed. “I hope it’s not an inconvenience having us both here,” he said.
I watched his perfect full lips as he spoke, almost unable to process the actual words. I was having trouble being human, thanks to his actual existence right in front of me.
“Sure,” I said, my voice higher than I remembered it being.
More answering questions no one asked. My sister was smiling at me, shaking her head. Juliet knew about my long-time Ryan McDonnell affliction, and it was pretty obvious at this point. I hated that she undoubtedly knew I was flustered just trying to form actual words around her new boyfriend.
I forced myself back to sanity.
“Can I help get your things?” I had no idea if it would be weird to acknowledge his status as my favorite actor or if it was rude to pretend I had no idea who he was.
I settled for a moronic silence on the topic.
Juliet put her arm around me. “You don’t need to get the bags,” she said lightly, as two of the men from her security team emerged from a second car, all black T-shirts and muscled arms pulling suitcases from the trunk.
Of course not. My sister had people for that.
I’d given the security guys a few rooms in the east wing of the house. With only Gran and me here, we barely even went into most of the rooms on that side, but I’d managed to get a few rooms decent. The house was hardly celebrity material the way we usually lived, the two of us moving mostly through three or
