Grounded By You (19 page)

He couldn’t stop the startled laugh from escaping his lips. “You’re worried that I’m a bad kisser?”

Delaney swiveled in her seat to face him. “Look, we’re going to be lip locked in a few days. A lot. We’re supposed to be a couple already, so it’s a foregone conclusion that people are going to think we’ve kissed, and done a whole lot more than that.”

Sam was starting to see where her train of thought was going. “You’re saying that if we look uncomfortable, or like we’ve never done it before that people are going to wonder if we’re actually a couple.”

“Exactly.” Delaney said with a satisfied smile. “It’s not like I’m jonesing to kiss you either, you know. There may be millions of women out there who think you are God’s gift, but I am not one of them.”

Sam couldn’t help but smile. Delaney’s sarcastic wit was one of the reasons that he liked her. It reminded him of Millie. The smile fell off this face.

“No, stop it,” Delaney said, waggling her finger under his nose. “Stop thinking about her. That’s not going to help your mojo.”

“How did you know that I was thinking about her?” Sam asked.

“You have a look,” Delaney said with a sniff. “A Millie look. It’s actually kind of disturbing.”

“I have a look?”

Delaney made a puppy dog sad face and then rubbed her fists against her eyes as if she were crying. “Kind of like this.”

He didn’t want to talk about Millie anymore. It hurt too much. But it was good to know that he apparently had
a tell. It was something he’d have to watch. He saw the entrance to the Willoughby up ahead. They were almost there. “So what are you proposing, Delaney?”

“We should rehearse it,” Delaney said. “That’s all I’m saying. We’re in character all day long, so it shouldn’t be too hard for Jackson to dredge up the urge to kiss his girlfriend. If you’re feeling it, just go for it. I’ll be ready.”

Sam groaned. “I do not want to play this game with you.”

“Buck up,” she said. “We’re already playing this game. Now we just have to make sure that we win. That’s all. When you are a famous movie star, you’ll be able to do whatever you want, Sam.”

Sam felt like the ground was disappearing beneath him. The deeper he got the less and less likely it seemed that he’d ever be able to find his way back to Millie.

Later that afternoon, Sam paced the backyard. He had a rough morning. He didn’t understand why, but he was losing his lines at every turn, and Lee had gotten more than agitated with him. Delaney could tell that something was bothering him, but she couldn’t seem to help pull him out of his funk.

“Cut!” Lee finally yelled after the twentieth take. “Break for lunch. Groveson, get your head in the game or don’t bother coming back this afternoon.”

Sam shook Delaney off and stalked down to the beach. It was almost impossible to find a place of solitude around the Willoughby’s grounds. The movie crew had effectively taken over. Kate told him that she was glad that Patrice suggested only taking short-term reservations at the inn while the movie crew were on location. There was a kind of thrill being able to get a glimpse of the movie action, but it wore thin quickly with the chaotic bustle, especially at almost five hundred dollars a night.

Finally, he decided to take a drive into town. He needed to get away. Delaney caught up with him just as he was opening the driver’s side door of his car.

“Sam, we’re supposed to start again in less than an hour,” she warned.

“Lee said if my head wasn’t in it not to come back,” Sam growled. “At this point, I’m not sure my head’s going to be in it. I need to take a drive.”

“I’ll go with you,” Delaney said.

“No!” Sam yelled. He saw the shocked expression on her face. “I just need to be alone for five minutes.” There was a part of him that wanted to apologize to her, but the anger he felt inside wasn’t going to let him stop.

He got in the car and saw Delaney slowly back away. It wasn’t until he looked in the rearview mirror that he saw that there were witnesses to his outburst. A few of the extras were sitting on the half wall that edged the driveway, and he hadn’t even noticed them. He ran a hand through his hair. He could just see the headlines now.

Trouble in Paradise?

Groveson and Rose Over?

Hearts Really Breaking on the Set of Where My Heart Breaks!

He hated it all of the sudden. The drive into town didn’t take long, and then he got out of his car and started to walk. He ignored the waves and the hellos from the people he’d known all his life. He didn’t know where he was going, other than he was just going somewhere else.

Wandering onto a side street, he saw the Java Joe’s was open. He’d spent hours of time there in high school as it was one of the locals favorite hangouts. The quaint coffee shop took up the lower level of an older Victorian style home. He hadn’t had anything to eat yet, but his stomach was tied up in knots. He thought that a coffee would do the trick. As he climbed the steps, he saw a familiar face at a table tucked away in the back corner of the porch.

“Kate?”

She looked up from a stack of textbooks and smiled at him. “Hey, stranger. I thought you’d be filming right now.”

He eased into the chair across from her. He wanted to ask her about Millie, but he couldn’t. Not right away. A part of him needed to know that Millie was okay.

“I’m on my lunch break. I thought I’d come into town and grab a coffee just to get away from the craziness for a while. Plus that stuff that the catering crew brews could make a corpse stand up and walk,” he said.

Kate laughed. “That doesn’t sound good at all. I’m running on no sleep and a ton of caffeine. That little trip sounded like such a good idea at the time, but now I’m up to my ears in homework trying to catch up. I’ve forgotten how hard college is.”

“My classes were really different once I transferred,” Sam admitted. “It was an adjustment, but I eventually figured it out.” At least he had until he dropped out to become a movie star.

Kate pulled her backpack up into her lap and dug inside of it. She pulled out a slightly tattered envelope and looked at him sheepishly before handing it to him. He saw his name scrawled across the side.

“What’s this?”

“Patrice is throwing us an engagement party this weekend. I meant to give this to you a few weeks ago, but then Millie asked me specifically not to invite you.”

“Oh,” Sam said. His throat felt tight.

“She didn’t tell me why,” Kate said slowly. “I didn’t even try to pry. Millie doesn’t tell me a thing unless she wants to, and her tone definitely said the topic was off limits.”

“The last time we spoke, it wasn’t pleasant,” Sam said evasively. If Millie wasn’t going to fess up about what happened to her best friend, he wasn’t going to either. He could tell that Kate was dying of curiosity, but he didn’t say anything else.

“Did it have anything to do with a particularly attractive young actress?”

Delaney. Sam hated that all roads in his life suddenly led back to Delaney. He wanted to tell Kate the truth, but if it got out that their romance was all a sham, he’d be in hot water.

He struggled with what to say next. “Delaney and I have gotten close. It was inevitable with how much time we’re spending together. Millie didn’t understand.”

Kate nodded her head sadly. “I get it. I wish that it were different though. I really always thought that you and Millie would be perfect together.”

Sam’s ears perked up. “Really? I thought that you would have said that she was out of my league.”

Kate shook her head. “Millie is a strong, determined, independent woman. Always has been. I thought that she would eat you up and spit you out, and you’re too nice a guy for that. But the way that you guys were with each other last summer, I don’t know. I thought maybe you managed to scratch through that tough hide of hers.”

Sam leaned forward. “She was the one who left without telling me goodbye, remember? I did feel something more for her, but she made it pretty clear that wasn’t what she wanted.”

“She was scared,” Kate said. “Millie’s complicated. I thought that over this past year, she really came into her own. All of those traits that sometimes made her brash and crude turned into a confidence and swagger that she could accomplish anything. She didn’t have to live in her family’s shadow. She could build her own dreams.”

“I never saw her as a work in progress. I thought she was perfect just the way she was,” Sam replied.

Kate grabbed his hand. “Then what happened, Sam? Why are you with Delaney if you still care about Millie?”

Sam realized his mistake too late. Talking to Kate was dangerous. It made that ache inside of him bigger, not smaller. Standing, he put on his movie star smile. “Thanks for the invite. I appreciate that you changed your mind about inviting me. It was really nice to see you, Kate. I’ve got to get back though. I’m sure Lee’s wondering where I went.”

He started to walk away when he heard Kate’s voice behind him. “My only request is that if you do come to my engagement party, you leave the plus one at home.”

He winced, but kept walking and didn’t look back.

As the countdown to the engagement party ticked forward, Millie buckled down and focused on her work. She hadn’t made a decision about what she was going to do about the baby yet. She was almost one hundred percent confident that she was going to keep it, but if she did, she knew that she was going to have to tell Sam. And the last thing that Millie wanted to do ever again was be in the same room with him.

Josh pulled her aside several times to try asking her what was wrong, but she brushed him off every time. Finally, he stopped asking, and she was relieved. The morning sickness was officially kicking in though, and she had a feeling that her frequent trips to the bathroom were making the truth of her situation painfully obvious.

Then it was the Friday before the engagement party and the big meeting in DC, and she and Josh were sequestered in his office running through the last minute details on the presentation.

“I really could use you here this weekend,” he said, refusing to accept that she was going to leave him.

“I’m not missing my best friend’s engagement party,” Millie said with a sigh. The anger had come and gone. “I’m the maid of honor. She needs me, and I’m going.”

“You know that it’s going to be a crazy fiasco down there with that movie being filmed at the same time.”

Kate told Millie that Patrice organized it with the film’s director so that the movie would be shooting offsite that night so that they’d have the Willoughby all to themselves. Between the shooting schedule, and her explicit request that Kate not invite Sam to the party, Millie hoped to be in and out of Bleckerville before Sam even knew that she was there.

The little voice in her head whispered though that if he knew about the engagement party, then he knew that she would be there. And if he knew that she was there, he might try to see her. Although she railed against the idea, the little voice also whispered that she knew that was really what she hoped would happen. After almost a month away from him, she felt the hole in her life that she didn’t even know was there because he had filled it so completely.

“All of that isn’t going to be an issue,” Millie explained. “It’s going to be perfect. I know it’s going to be perfect because I’ve been helping Patrice organize it from here, and we both know that I’m the best party planner on the planet.”

Josh smiled wryly. “If you are referring to my twenty-first birthday party, I’m pleading the fifth.”

Millie grinned back at him. “I’ve never heard a guy complain about seeing strippers before.”

“The fact that my eighteen year old sister was supervising the festivities was more of the issue than anything else,” Josh said.

“I insist on perfection,” Millie said, flipping her hair with a twist of her head. “Like I told your buddies who insisted on
enticing
entertainment. If there were going to be strippers at the party, I was going to make sure they were classy strippers.”

“That’s an oxymoron,” Josh laughed.

“You’re the moron,” Millie countered.

Then they both looked at each other and burst into a fit of laughter. It felt good. Millie laughed long and hard until tears streamed down her face. For a few moments, life was simple and normal again. Josh slapped her on the back a few times and then they both finally quieted.

Millie had a spark of an idea. She figured out a way that she’d be able to kill two birds with one stone. “Josh, why don’t you come with me?”

Josh shook his head. “No way. I’ve got too much prep work to do. Some of us can’t just shirk our responsibility to get ready for this presentation.”

“You keep telling me that we need to work on it more. We can do that if we go together. That way I’ll stay sharp, and you won’t go crazy and become a total bore because all you do is work. You like Kate. It’ll be good for you to get away.”

She saw that he was considering it. “Dad would kill me.”

“Dad’s not running this deal,” Millie said. “He told you it’s yours, win or lose. I know you’re ready. We’re both ready. But if you want to do more prep together, this is the only way.” She crossed her arms and waited.