Catch a Falling Star (Second Chances Book 3) (17 page)

“You know, I’m never going to be able to come if I’m more upset about what you’re not telling me than I am turned on by your touch.”

He stopped.

She winced.

“I’m sorry.” His words held the same depth of pathos that they had when he’d slurred them on her doorstep days ago, but this time there was more.

As gently as she could, she twisted in his arms to face him. They’d never turned the light on when they entered the room, but the ambient glow of the snowfall outside the window was enough for her to make out the lines of his face. She traced those lines with her fingertips for good measure.

“Don’t you trust me?”
This relationship will never go anywhere if you don’t trust me
.

She swallowed. What relationship?

He nodded. The lines around his eyes were more than smile lines. In the darkness, they made him look old and weary. “You’re the only person in the world that I do trust.”

Her throat closed up. What was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he confide in her? Against nine kinds of better judgment, she’d opened her heart to him, fallen in love with him—yep, she was ready to admit it—and broken down a wall between them, only to find a bigger wall behind it. This wasn’t some silly dalliance anymore, but what the freakin’ hell was it?

“Don’t trust me,” he whispered. His eyes seemed wider in the dark.

She shook her head. “Too late.”

He touched his fingers to her lips. “Don’t.”

Anger flooded her with such unexpected intensity that she wanted to bite his fingers. Who the hell did he think he was to pull away from her right when they had gotten truly, genuinely close? She wasn’t some naïve kid who didn’t know how to protect herself. And what kind of ruined self-esteem did he have if he was trying to tell her he wasn’t good enough and all that crap? She loved him, dammit. He’d better fucking accept it.

“Too late,” she repeated, throwing all the intensity of thoughts she would never dare to give voice to into those words.

His expression hardened. She prepared for a fight.

He let out a breath and went limp in her arms. “All right,” he whispered. He closed his eyes.

“Good. Glad we got that sorted out.”

At last, a faint hint of a smile touched his lips. Jo’s heart blossomed into affection for him and all his crazy, broken ways. His arms tightened around her, and he shifted her so that he could spoon her again.

“Be quiet and let me finish what I was doing,” he murmured against her ear, repositioning her leg over his thigh and sliding his fingers back into place.

Jo let out a breath and closed her eyes, moving her hips to give him the right access. Sweet as it was, she had a feeling they were in for a bumpy ride.

As the penetratingly white light of sunrise after a snowstorm leaked into his bedroom, Ben mentally counted the number of condoms he’d found in his suitcase. Twelve minus two from the night before. Jo slept peacefully against him—and she had every right to after he’d made her come five times last night—but he’d hardly slept a wink. Guilt had a way of doing that.

He let out a breath, scrubbed his face, and fought to ignore the guilt. A dozen condoms in his suitcase. Yvonne had packed his suitcase. He didn’t keep condoms in it when it was in storage. He’d found them while unpacking the day she’d showed up. Clearly Yvonne meant for the items in question to be used. What benefit did Yvonne have in him sleeping with Jo? Yvonne never did anything accidentally, and she never did anything unless it had some benefit for her.

Or was he too jaded to think that maybe Yvonne wanted him to be happy?

No, she wanted him to commit to
Second Chances
, and giving him something else to stay in Maine for was a damn good way to do that.

And she was right.

Jo stirred, moving and stretching against him. Ben grinned, shifting to his side so he could watch her wake. He was horrible, two-faced, evil, even, but none of that mattered as he watched the miracle of Jo coming to life beside him.

She blinked, smiled. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” he answered. She would break his heart with her purity, her trust.

Because there was no way he was going to be able to live up to her standards.

Of course, you
could
give it a try
.

He ignored the suggestion and lifted himself on one arm. “Do you want to see how much snow we got last night?” Anything to get them out of bed and away from temptation.

Jo sat up, turning to the window. “That’s right. It snowed.” She paused, bit her lip. “I hope Nick didn’t try to make it back in the snowstorm last night.”

And there it was. Mention of the brother. Yep, he was in no danger of having sex with her again for a while.

“I’m sure Adelaide offered him shelter for the night.” With a laugh, he rolled out of bed and walked around to the bureau where he’d stored his stuff after Jo invited him to stay.

“Ugh. Please don’t make me think about my brother…like that.” She got out of bed, and it was all Ben could do not to drop what he was doing to stare at her naked body. Of course, she was doing a bit of staring herself, but she shook herself out of it to say, “I’m going to take a shower and go down to make some breakfast. Any requests?”

Going back to bed? Staying locked up in the house, just the two of them, for the rest of their lives? Telling the rest of the world to go to hell?

“I’ll be happy with whatever you make.”

She grinned and stepped over to kiss his cheek. “A man after my own heart.”

He hummed, kissed her lips, and cursed himself a thousand times over for everything he was about to do to her. The Pollard’s suggestion for her play hung over him like a wrecking ball about to swing, but he was certain he would do as much damage all by himself if he didn’t let her go.

If he even
could
let her go.

Jo skipped out of the room, and a few minutes later, he heard the distant sound of a shower. He popped into the shower in Nick’s bathroom, shaved and dressed, and within half an hour, they were both downstairs in the kitchen, drinking coffee while Jo cooked bacon and eggs.

“How do you deal with all that snow anyhow?” Ben asked, looking out the window. It was a lazy question, avoiding the inevitable.

Jo shrugged. “Nick bought a new snow blower last year when he saw how pathetic the one I had was. He’s not always here, especially in the winter. Somehow he manages to find photography assignments in the southern hemisphere in the winter.”

“Why is he home now?”
The play. Ask her about the play, let her say no, then go back to the Pollards to tell them she’s not interested
.

“He recently got back from a month in Belize, as it happens,” Jo answered, flipping the bacon.

Normally the scent and sizzle would set Ben at ease, remind him of Sundays at home growing up. Not today. “I wonder if he’ll stick around for a while now that he’s met Adelaide.”

Jo smirked at him over her shoulder. “They just met. Who knows what’s really going on there. Relationships don’t happen in an instant.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, her cheeks flared red. She turned back to the stove.

Ben’s heart throbbed in his chest. Just for a moment, he wanted to close his eyes, let everything else go, and believe in love at first sight. He wanted to believe that a one-night stand could be more than a diversion. It could be the beginning of a lifetime.

“Are you planning to get some work done today?” he asked instead. If he was going to make it through this, he needed to get it over with fast. Rip the bandage off.

Jo shrugged, checking on the eggs. “After I take care of the driveway.”

“The whole thing?”

“Only the top part. I’ve got a guy on retainer who will come in and plow from the road up to the house.”

“A guy on retainer who plows.” He pushed away from the table where he’d been leaning and snuck up behind her to slip his arms around her. “You naughty romance novelist, you.”

She laughed. The sound and vibration hit every tender nerve in Ben’s body. Please, let the world go away so he could be with her.

“Jo, have you ever considered adapting one of your books into a play?” he forced himself to ask before he gave up his mission, his life, and everything in it for good.

“A play?” She turned in his arms, looking up at him in consideration. “Hmm. I never thought of that.”

“You’re a brilliant writer, you know, and any one of your books that I’ve read has all the dramatic tension and excitement to make a play. A musical even.” He hated himself more than he thought possible. There was still a chance she would say no, and when she did, he wouldn’t force the issue.

Jo laughed. “A romance novel musical. Would people really pay to see that?” Her face lit up.

A sick hitch caught in Ben’s stomach. She was actually considering the idea. He wanted to back down, tell her no, never mind. It wasn’t too late.

“I don’t see why not,” he said. “They made a movie out of that romance book, didn’t they?”

“They did,” she answered, unconvinced.

“So why not a musical?”

She tilted her head to the side, then snapped her attention to the bacon and eggs before they burned. The pause in the conversation gave Ben a chance to refill his coffee, help her bring things to the table, pick up his phone from where it had been charging on the counter, and flay himself with disgust.
You deserve everything you have coming to you if you convince Jo to do business with the Pollards
, he told himself.
Keep her out of it
.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said once they were seated and had started on breakfast. “I’ll write one of my books into a musical only if you direct it.”

She was joking, but he smiled and said, “It’s a deal.”

She chuckled over her bacon. He could barely keep his food down, in spite of his teasing grin.

“Perfect,” she went on. “Now all I need to do is come up with an idea for a new novel, and I’ll be golden.”

“We’d better get started on that, then.” He reached for her hand on the tabletop, raised it to his lips, and kissed it.

“After we clean up the snow,” she said. “Are you up to it?”

“Of course. I may be a New Yorker, but I think I can figure out how to work a snow blower.”

She arched a doubtful brow. He laughed, charmed by her sweetness, even as he stood on the brink of destroying it. She was going to hate him when all was said and done.

She went back to her eggs, and he tapped his phone on, sliding the screen to get to his email. With any luck, Jett and Ashton had changed their minds and decided to fund his original idea. There was nothing from them, but there was an automatically generated email from his bank.

With a frown, he tapped on the email to bring it up. He reached for his coffee, then nearly choked on it as he scanned the content of the email.

“What? What’s wrong?” Jo asked as he coughed and sputtered.

“The payment for my last job never deposited. And my rent check bounced.” Back itching with dread, he flipped through the apps on his phone to pull up his bank information. A lot of red numbers stared back at him. “It’s gone. It’s all gone.”

“What is?” Jo asked.

He dragged his eyes up to meet hers. “My money. All of it. I’m broke.”

Chapter Fourteen

“I don’t understand any of this,” Jo whispered to Tasha Ellis a few days later. The two of them stood off to the side of the living room. The whole thing had been transformed. All new pieces of furniture and fixtures that were authentic to the 1950s had been brought in to replace the room’s usual furnishings—which had been moved to storage for their own safety—but it was the huge camera where Ben sat, the massive lights on poles and reflectors held by assistants, and the microphones held by grips as Spence, Devon and Theresa played out their scene in full costume and make-up that made the real difference.

“Well, when filming television, the trick is to get it done in as few takes as possible while still getting a good performance from the actors. Ben is watching the whole thing with one eye on the set and the other on the screen by the camera,” Tasha explained.

“No, I get that.” Jenny lowered her voice. Her eyes stayed trained on the complete concentration in Ben’s face. Even his posture had strengthened to give off an aura of command as he put everything into his work. It was a complete contrast to the tender lover and the nervous wreck that had spent the last two days kicking around her house, making frantic calls to Manhattan between stretches of helping her shovel snow in silence. “What I don’t understand is how someone who lives in a penthouse apartment off of Central Park could suddenly be flat broke.”

Tasha sent her a sideways look, then motioned for her to slip around the corner into the dining room. Yvonne sat at the dining room table, cradling a sleeping Hazel in her arms and reading something on her phone.

“I’ve only been around show business for two years or so,” Tasha answered, louder, but still keeping her voice from interfering with filming in the next room. “But that’s all it’s taken for me to see that none of it is what it seems.”

Yvonne glanced up. “That’s my baby you’re talking about.”

“I’m not saying it’s all bad,” Tasha went on, moving to sit in the chair by Yvonne’s side so she could tickle Hazel’s cheek. “Only that there’s a lot going on behind what the public sees.”

“Like financial peril?” Jo drawled.

Yvonne pursed her lips. “I wish he had told me things were that bad. Things shouldn’t be that bad.”

“I would have thought so too. I’ve been to his apartment, after all.” Jo sat across from Tasha, focusing on the baby instead of the niggling doubt about everything in her gut.

“That place is rented,” Yvonne informed her. “Most of those kinds of digs are.” She paused, shook her head. “I knew the rumors around town were serious, but if it was just a bunch of hot air, Ben would have started bouncing back by now.”

That was what Jo had been afraid of. That and the fact that because her body and soul had been turned inside out and upside down by a man who was barely hanging on and refused to tell her what he was hanging on to, she hadn’t written a single word in more than a week. She hadn’t even tried for days. That clock wasn’t ticking any slower.

“So you think there’s something besides all the crap that went public last week?” Tasha asked.

Yvonne was apparently done with her grandmother fix. She handed Hazel off into Tasha’s ready arms, then straightened her tailored suit, brushing the sleeves. “Honey, there’s always more than what ends up going public.”

Jo chewed her lip and sank into her chair. She should break up with him. Well, she should figure out if they were actually dating in the first place, and then she should break up with him. He’d told her not to trust him. He’d
told
her. In as many words. Maybe he was right.

“Jo? Where’s Jo?” Ben called from the other room.

Jo sat straight, throwing a questioning glance between Tasha and Yvonne. She could hear movement from the other room, then Ben popped his head around the corner.

“This scene isn’t working. The dialog isn’t right. They want you to come take a look at it,” he said, then disappeared back into the living room.

“Me?” Jo blinked.

“Don’t keep the director waiting,” Yvonne said.

Not one to argue an order like that, Jo got up and double-timed it into the living room. Spencer and Devon were huddled together with a man Jo had been introduced to earlier—one of the staff writers—talking about something while a make-up tech touched up Theresa’s cheeks. Ben stood beside the camera consulting Moira and Charles. Jo made her way over to them.

“It’s stiff,” Ben said, not a hint of teasing or playing in what could have been the double-entendre to end all double-entendres. “There’s no flow to it. We need this scene to be emotional, but even the ad lib isn’t working.”

Charles handed Jo the script with a shrewd point to his expression that made Jo feel like she was at her first pitch-session for a Big 5 editor. She scanned the lines. It was a crucial scene in the show, the moment where Theresa’s character—the episode’s heroine—made the decision that would change her life. The way the show worked, each character, on their deathbed in a nursing home in the present, was given the chance to go back to the most important moment in their life to make a different decision. Spence played the angel who made it possible. Theresa’s character had chosen to run away with the boy who had gotten her pregnant when she was eighteen. In this moment of truth, the character changed that decision and decided to let him go. The rest of the episode was about how much better her life would have been if she’d made that choice. Theresa’s character would then go on to live out that life instead of going straight on to the afterlife.

The words blurred together on the page. What would her life have been like if she had laughed off Ben’s suggestion at the coffee shop? It may have only happened ten or so days ago, but how would her life have been different? Which was the right decision?

“Are you sure I’m allowed to do this?” Jo asked.

“As long as you don’t tell the writer’s union, we’ll consider it,” Charles answered. Moira scowled, crossed her arms, and shook her head.

Jo felt terrible for breaking so many rules, but they’d asked for her help. “I can’t think with all these people here. How fast do you need suggestions?” She glanced to Ben, but that wasn’t the question in her eyes. What if they’d never met?

She had a feeling Ben knew what she was thinking. He held her gaze for too long, with too much intensity for work. Then he blinked and turned to Moira, the moment gone.

“Fifteen?” he asked. Moira nodded and sighed, clearly upset that her show wasn’t following usual procedure. “Fifteen minutes, everybody. There’s coffee and all that in the kitchen.”

The cast and crew dispersed. Ben took a pen off of what looked like a music stand and handed it to her. “I have every faith in your excellent writing ability.” He smiled.

There. That wasn’t so bad. He had confidence in her. He was doing his job. He had friends.

So why the unbreakable tension around his eyes? And why was she making it her mission to care.

Because you love him, you idiot
, she told herself with a sigh as she took the script and pen and marched off to the only semi-quiet place on the first floor, the foyer.
Because he charmed you and disarmed you and literally makes you cry out his name when you’re in bed with him. Welcome to the halls of the hopeless, tragic heroines of every kind of romance you hate
.

She plunked herself on the stairs, facing the front door, and went to work. Within about five seconds, her grinding sense of scorn at her decisions floated away. The words on the page were a comfort to her, even if she hadn’t written him. Words had always gotten her through hard time. She understood them. She could work with them. She was good at them. And, really, she should be flattered that Ben had trusted her with them in the first place. Charles and Moira too. She might not have been penning the next bestselling romance classic, but she was working, doing what she loved.

Maybe turning one of her books into a play would be a fun project after all. It might bring in enough money to keep the house from the bank. She crossed out one of Theresa’s lines and wrote something that had more feeling. Better still, maybe she should find out if what she was doing right now, sitting on the steps in her foyer, an icy breeze pushing in around the cracks in the front door, was an actual job or just something Ben was having her do. What did television writers make for a living anyhow? She would have to sit down with the staff writer, who was still talking to Spence, and ask.

Halfway through that thought, the doorbell rang.

“I got it,” she called out of habit.

She tucked the script under her arm as she stood and crossed the foyer. Before she even opened the door, she could see two bright spots of color through the frosted glass. As she opened the door, they proved to be two men, probably in their fifties, who were clearly identical twins. They even wore the same full-length wool coats, although in different colors.

“Well, hello,” the one on the right said with inflection that would offend the most flamboyant queen.

“You must be Josephine Burkhart,” the other said, slightly less offensive.

“Yep. And you are?”

The less offensive one held out a hand. “Jett Pollard.”

“Ashton Pollard,” the other thrust out his hand too. “Can we come in? It’s cold enough to freeze a baboon’s balls off out here.”

Maybe it was their obviously fake gayness, or it could have been the creepy matchy-matchy thing they had going on, but the last thing Jo wanted to do was let them in. It was nineteen degrees outside, though, and she still had a heart. She stepped aside, the two men rushed into the foyer, and Jo closed the door.

“We can’t tell you how happy we are that we get to work with you,” the one who had called himself Jett said, giving a dramatic shake before unbuttoning his coat.

“Oh my god, I’m was so excited when Jett broke the news that I nearly peed myself,” Ashton said.

Jo frowned. “Work with you?” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t even know who you are.”

“The Pollard twins,” Ashton said, his inflection so twee it should have broken the glass in the front door.

“We’re Ben’s friends,” Jett added. “Didn’t he tell you about us? We’re going to be producing your musical.”

A numb tingle spread up Jo’s neck to her face—the kind that felt a little like embarrassment, but a little like fury at the same time. “I thought Ben was only throwing ideas around when he asked me if I wanted to make one of my books into a play.”

“We’re not throwing anything, sister.” Jett leaned closer to her. Under his coat, he wore a maroon suit and wingtip shoes. “We’re dead serious.”

“Romance novels are all the rage right now,” Ashton added, shrugging out of his coat to reveal a cobalt blue suit. “We want to strike this one while the iron is hot.”

“Jett, Ashton.” Ben strode into the foyer, the color gone from his face, before Ashton finished. “What are you doing here?” If Jo wasn’t mistaken, the real question that radiated off of him was, “What the
hell
are you doing here?”

“We came to check on our star writer.” The smile Jett turned to Ben dropped so many pieces into place in Jo’s mind so suddenly that she had a hard time breathing.
This
was where the rumors that had brought Ben down started. It was written in the obsequious spark in the twins’ eyes. This was what was keeping Ben far, far away from New York.

She didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out, but when Yvonne marched into the room, heels clacking on the hardwood, and demanded, “How did you two snakes slither your way up here?” Jo had all the confirmation she needed.

Ashton flinched. Jett grinned like the viper he’d been accused of being. “Yvonne. Nice to see you here.”

“I won’t be saying the same.” She turned to Jo. “Honey, craft services needs your help in the kitchen. Ben, deal with this.”

That was it. She turned on her heel and marched away to the kitchen.

Jo held her breath, not sure what was actually happening. She checked with Ben, lifting her shoulders enough to let him know she was clueless about what she should be doing. Ben nodded to the hall. Jo nodded back and started moving. She didn’t need to be told twice, and, frankly, she didn’t want to be in the same room with two men who felt like they should be either in a novel or on a tv show and not as a part of an actual, real world where normal people lived.

“Who are those people?” she whispered when she joined Yvonne by the kitchen counter. Most of the cast and crew, including the aforementioned craft services people, were either in the kitchen or dining room, and definitely within earshot.

“The Pollard twins,” Yvonne answered. She paced to the end of the table, more agitated than Jo figured she usually got, judging by the worried looks everyone in the kitchen gave her.

“No.” Spence gaped. “Not here.”

“Who are they?” Tasha seconded Jo’s question, bouncing Hazel against her shoulder.

“They’re big players in the Broadway world,” Yvonne explained. “Rich as Croesus, and crooked as whatever other cliché you want to stick in there. They’re failed actors who happened to have made a mint in real estate. Since they couldn’t make it on the stage, they put themselves in a position where the stage can’t make it without them.”