Catch a Falling Star (Second Chances Book 3) (23 page)

Ben was surprised to find Spence nodding in agreement.

“So, what do you want?” Yvonne repeated Spence’s question.

This time, Ben took it seriously. Elbows still on his knees, he steepled his fingers and pressed them against his lips, staring out the window at the Manhattan skyline. The view was different from the one he was used to looking at. Still, it didn’t hold a candle to the view out Jo’s living room window.

He’d never been as happy in his life as he was grocery shopping with Jo on an average Tuesday afternoon. He’d never felt more useful—or more out of control sexually—than when helping her come up with story ideas. The deep certainty that because they understood each other, they could make anything possible together that he’d felt flickers of before everything went wrong grabbed hold of him and wouldn’t let go. Jo
was
talented. She
could
write or television as well as books. He
did
have something to bring to the table in their relationship, but he would have to make sacrifices to do it. Starting with his pride.

A quick laugh burst from him. Third act. The hero sacrifices his goals for the heroine.

“All right.” He shook his head, letting out a breath and relaxing against the back of the sofa. “I give up. I want her. I have since the moment I met her. She wasn’t supposed to be anything serious, but I knew it was before the sun went down that day. Benjamin Paul, Broadway lothario, struck down by Cupid’s bow in one afternoon. And maybe it’s too late, maybe she thinks I’m the scum of the earth, but if I have any chance at all of turning things around and being the hero she keeps writing about, then I have to take it.”

“Good,” Yvonne nearly shouted, grinning from ear to ear. “That’s my boy.”

He sent her a wry arch of his brow, beginning to feel like himself again. “So what the hell do I do now?”

“It just so happens that I’m driving back to Maine this afternoon,” Spence said. “Care for a ride?”

Ben blinked at him, then burst into laughter. “You bastard, you planned this all along.”

“Yep,” Spence admitted. “Well, Yvonne did.”

Yvonne shrugged. “What are friends for if not to meddle in each other’s lives and keep each other from screwing up irreparably?”

“I’m amazed that I actually have friends,” Ben admitted.

“You do.” Spence pushed himself out of his chair and walked into the kitchen. “And don’t you forget who the real ones are.”

“I won’t.” It was a simple promise, the easiest words to speak, but Ben had never meant anything so deeply in his life.

It was well after dark by the time Jo pulled her car into the driveway at home. Seeing Nick’s SUV in its spot was enough to bring her to tears. A car she didn’t recognize was there beside his, so she sucked her tears up after letting only a couple fall, then dragged herself out of her car and into the house. She had nothing to bring in with her but her purse. She’d fled Ben’s apartment so fast that she hadn’t thought to get her things out of the suitcase they’d shared for the trip.

That asshole has my expensive shampoo
, she grumbled as the warm air of the kitchen wafted around her.

Nick was in the living room, and to her surprise, so were Adelaide Townsend, Jenny and Tasha, and their kids. That explained the other car.

“You’re back.” Tasha brightened as Jo walked into the room. The others turned to her with such speed, their looks so perfectly sympathetic and supportive, that Jo was ready to strangle whoever had called ahead to tell them about New York.

But who would have? Not Ben. He was probably celebrating the return to his old theater life right now with that bimbo, Pamela what’s-her-name.

No. That wasn’t fair. Pamela the bimbo had backed off as soon as Jo entered the apartment.

Not that she’d been replaying the scene over and over and over for the entire seven hour drive or anything.

“What are you all doing here?” she dragged herself out of her thoughts long enough to ask.

“I asked Adelaide over to take a look at the shots I took in Arizona,” Nick explained, leaving his laptop on the living room coffee table and practically climbing over everyone else and half the furniture to reach her. “She was hanging out with Jenny and Tasha, so I invited them to come along.”

He reached her and closed his arms around her in a bear hug.

“Likely story,” she muttered against his shoulder, feeling like she might cry again.

“I’ll kill him for you if you want,” Nick replied, equally quiet.

She shook her head, gave him a squeeze, then backed off. Nick stepped to the side and faced the others. “Okay, so who told you Ben and I had a major fight?”

“Yvonne,” the three women answered simultaneously.

In spite of the gaping ache in her heart, Jo laughed. “Figures.” Moments later, she burst into tears.

Nick’s arm was around her, leading her into the living room with the other girls and the babies so fast that it made her dizzy. He took her coat and purse as Adelaide jumped up and guided her to the sofa. Three seconds later, Tasha thrust baby Hazel into her arms. That simple, poignant gesture made Jo laugh and cry even more, but at the same time, holding the startled, innocent baby made her feel good.

“I have no idea if I should stay here and help right now because Jo is my sister,” Nick said from behind the sofa, “or if I should clear out because you need to do girl things.”

“Stay, stay,” Jenny, Tasha, and Adelaide all urged him at the same time.

“Right.” Nick nodded. “I’m going. But I’m only going into the other room.”

Jo sent him a grateful smile as he turned and fled to the hall with her coat.

“You’re really lucky to have him as a brother,” Adelaide said, watching him go.

The momentary shock of having a cover-model-beautiful television star who Jo barely knew making eyes at her brother snapped her out of her funk. “Don’t do it,” she warned Adelaide. “Men aren’t worth it. They aren’t as great as they seem in novels.”

All three of the other women looked at her.

“Actually, that’s bullshit,” Jenny said. A second later, she glanced at little Daniel—who was playing with blocks in the center of the living room, and said, “Don’t tell Daddy that Mommy said the word she’s not supposed to say.”

“Okay,” Daniel said, banging away with his blocks.

“All right,” Jo conceded. “Maybe there’s hope for Daniel. If you train him while he’s young.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Jenny said.

“So what exactly happened with you and Ben?” Tasha came right out and asked.

Jo sighed, going as limp as she could with Hazel in her arms. “I walked in on him with another woman.”

“Whoa,” Jenny exclaimed as Tasha hummed in disapproval and Adelaide frowned. “How much
with another woman
?” Jenny went on.

“Well, he’d obviously kissed her, because he had lipstick on his mouth. And she was wrapped around him.”

“Do you know who it was?” Adelaide asked.

“Pamela someone,” Jo admitted, focusing on Hazel to stop the scene from replaying again. It got worse every time she saw it.

“Pamela Parsons?”

Jo glanced up at Adelaide. Jenny and Tasha were staring at her too. “Yeah, that’s her.”

Adelaide rolled her eyes and waved her hands as if calling a time-out. “Okay, what you have to know about Pamela is that she’d kiss
me
if she thought it would get her what she wanted. I’m a hundred percent sure nothing fishy was going on between her and Ben.”

Jo frowned, torn between admitting that Adelaide might have a point, based on how quick Pamela was to introduce herself and then leave, and the gnawing acid of everything else Ben had told her. She opted for the acid. “How can it be nothing when Ben pretty much came right out and said that he’s slept with everyone in New York and that it was just the way theater operates?”

Jenny and Tasha were silent, their faces falling with disappointment. Only Adelaide remained unmoved.

“Well, it is how
some
aspects of theater business work,” she admitted.

“Is that entirely helpful?” Jenny snapped.

Adelaide shook her head, brushing away Jenny’s ire with a sweep of her perfectly-manicured hand. “I don’t mean it like that. All I mean is that as far back as I can remember, even when I was in college, the theater people were a whole lot more experimental than everyone else. We dressed weird, we accepted everyone, and, yeah, we were a whole lot more willing to jump into bed with anyone we felt like.”

“Still not particularly helpful,” Jenny said, louder this time.

Adelaide huffed out a breath. “What I’m saying is that everyone has a different standard for what normal behavior is. I worked with Ben on a Broadway show years ago, before
Second Chances
was even an idea.”

“You did?” Jo perked up.

“Mmm hmm. Not gonna lie. We all wanted him. Every woman in that cast, and half the men too.”

Jo’s brow darkened. “Don’t tell me you slept with him too.”

“Nope,” she answered quickly. “And none of us knew who else did or didn’t either. Which is saying something. Every workplace has its gossip, and theater is no exception. But Ben was one of the few guys out there who didn’t kiss and tell. You knew you were safe with him, no matter what.” She turned to Jenny, brow arched, and said, “Is that helpful now?”

Jenny had the good grace to look repentant. “Okay, maybe.”

Adelaide shifted back to Jo. “When I saw the two of you together when I came over here for the reading, I knew that at long last, Benjamin Paul was off the market. You got him, girl.”

“Had him,” Jo admitted with a sigh. “I think it’s over. I yelled at him pretty hard.”

“I don’t hear any fat ladies singing,” Adelaide replied. Her grin was downright victorious. She stood, giving Jo’s arm a squeeze. “I’m going to go see if your brother has any more of that stew he made us earlier. You look hungry.” She stepped around Jenny, and headed into the kitchen.

“Please don’t tell her I like her,” Jenny whispered. “She’s a cocky little—” she glanced over her shoulder at Daniel playing, “—you-know-what, but I could seriously throw back some shots with her.”

Tasha laughed, shaking her head. “I always knew I was too tame to be your best friend.”

Jenny straightened, brow shooting up. “Tash, you’ll always be my best friend. But the world is a better place when you have a bunch of girlfriends to rely on.” She winked at Jo to prove her point.

Jo blinked in amazement, staring from Jenny to Tasha, then down at Hazel. When had she gained so many friends? She was the hermit writer, the one who had lists of online friends as long as her arms, but few she could count on in real life. And not just the ones in her house right now. Yvonne deserved the title of friend as much as any of the younger women. If it weren’t for her, who knows whether she would be with Ben. Not that she knew now, but—

The idea hit her so fast and so hard that it took her breath away. A contemporary series about friends helping each other out on the road back from heartbreak. It would be about romance, strong heroes who helped the friends see what love was truly about, but it would be as much about those friendships as well. And it would start with a hero whose past was so dark he didn’t think he could get over it. But he could. With love, he could make himself a new man.

“Oh my gosh, I have to write this down,” she gasped, handing Hazel back over to Tasha.

“What? Write what down?” Tasha asked, shuffling her baby back into her arms.

Jo stood, searching the room. “A pen, a pen. I need a pen.”

“Here’s one.” Jenny leaned back and grabbed one of the pens the
Second Chances
production crew had left on a side table.

“And paper. I’ve got an idea.”

“A story idea?” Tasha asked. She and Jenny both were excited now. Because that’s what friends did. They got excited for each other’s triumphs, even if that triumph was as simple as busting through writer’s block.

Only, there was nothing simple about kicking down the wall that had kept Jo from her work. This meant everything. This would mean she had books to sell, income to save the house, direction when she thought she’d lost it. She sat on the floor, scribbling notes on characters and setting, scenes, and even lines of dialog. As soon as Jenny and Tasha caught on, they started suggesting names, situations the characters could find themselves in, bits of backstory. Jo had never collaborated with anyone before, but the more the three of them—and then Adelaide when she rejoined them with a reheated bowl of soup—threw out ideas, the faster the ball started rolling.

Jo was so intent on capturing all of the ideas, she only barely heard the doorbell ring.

“I’ll get it.” Jenny jumped up and rushed for the front hall.

“I’m out of paper. I’ve got a notebook in my study,” Jo said aloud to no one in particular, hopping up and leaving the pile of loose paper and scribbles on the coffee table.

She dashed down the hall, turning first into the library. The two chairs where she and Ben had sat a week ago, silently holding hands as the storm of their emotions played itself out, caught her attention. He’d told her then that she was all he had. No mention of Pamela or anyone else from the crazy, mixed up life of his that she only barely understood.