Close to You (8 page)

She was calling his bluff. Loud and clear.

He turned and half slipped, half walked his way back down the slope.

Allie considered his approach through stormy eyes.

He shrugged. “Okay, fine. You got me. Even I'm not that much of a jerk.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

She flung her arms out, almost throwing herself off-­balance. “Why are you even here if you don't give a pip about Tolkien? Why do you want me to help you pretend you do? Who are you? Because you're as much an assistant as I am a supermodel.”

He plunged one foot into the mud, watching as it swallowed his shoe.

“Uh-uh. What are you doing?”

“I'm coming in to get you.”

“Not until you answer some of my questions, you're not.”

He looked at her. “What are you going to do? Fight me?”

Her face set, Allie crossed her arms. “Maybe. Want to try me?”

She probably would, too. The woman was impossible. Call a guy to come save her and then threaten to fight him when he tried. “Look, I'm trying to get Louis to invest in my business, okay? And securing his good opinion of my character is one of the hoops he's making me jump through. Being a fellow Tol­kien fan seems to be a big part of that.” He crossed his arms.
“And you're right. I'm not an assistant. Louis is my great-­uncle. His assistant quit unexpectedly and he asked me to take his place.”

She turned this over for a few seconds. “What kind of business?”

Not a chance. “Sorry, that's confidential.”

“Why does he think you're a big Tolkien fan?”

“Because when he was interviewing me about my business plan, he mentioned this trip. He was so excited and . . .” He shrugged his shoulders. “I guess I let him think I was a fan too, in some sort of attempt at bonding.”

She studied him as if she had some sort of supernatural ability to determine if he was telling the truth. After a few seconds, her shoulders relaxed and she nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, you can come and get me now.”

How had she become the one doing him the favor? “Gee, thanks.”

There was nothing around that would give him the leverage he needed to get her out, which meant there was only one way it was going to happen. And it wasn't going to be glamorous. And there was a fifty-fifty chance he was going to end up making an absolute idiot of himself.

He tucked his phone back in his pocket and zipped it up. Not that it would make much difference if he went for a swim. Though it would be a good test of the salesman's claims of it being so waterproof a navy SEAL would own it. “Okay, I'm coming in.”

Taking careful steps, he watched as the cool mud engulfed his ankles, followed by calves and knees.

Wading in, he got to a couple of feet of her within a few seconds. Mud slurped around his legs but it wasn't as bad as it could be, or as strong.

“So you can't move your legs at all?”

She shook her head, wet hair slapping against her cheeks. He tried not to notice how cute she was, even when doing an impersonation of a drowned hamster. “Not beyond what I showed you.”

“Well, then, there's only one way we're going to be able to do this.” He wasn't planning on telling her what it was. Let her find out when it was happening. “I need you to promise to stay still, because if you move unexpectedly and throw me off-­balance, we're both going to be in this stuff up to our necks.”

She scrunched her nose at him, considering. “Fine.”

“All right then.”

Leaning over, he wrapped his arms around her backside, tipping her top half over his shoulder.

Her entire being went as rigid as an ironing board. “Whoa, whoa. What do you think you're doing?”

Releasing his hold, he stood back up. For someone who was apparently smart, she obviously hadn't thought this through. “This is the only way I'm going to get enough leverage to get you out. What do you want me to do? Drag you like I'm a tractor?”

Allie puffed out her cheeks, resignation written across her face.

“Remember, one false move and you'll be going headfirst into this stuff.” Part of him was mighty tempted.

She sighed. “Okay, I'm ready.”

Leaning over again, he wrapped his arms around the tops
of her legs and managed to get her into a poor imitation of a fireman's carry.

Pushing through his heels, he fought against the mud that trapped her legs until he felt it slowly beginning to give; then, with a giant slurp, it gave them up. Hardest part over. Now all he had to do was turn around and carry her the eight or so feet back to solid ground. No problem.

At least it wasn't until a high-pitched foghorn ripped apart his right eardrum. He jolted upright, and the sudden movement combined with Allie's weight over his shoulders caused him to lose his center of gravity. He tried to move back, but the mud was too thick to allow him the size of step he needed to save them both.

Realizing what was happening, he felt Allie's upper half move up and sideways as she flung herself out of his hold.

The sound of her hitting the mud was the last thing he heard before he took a deep breath and went backward into the glop, ending up in it up to his neck. Beside him, Allie floundered around, a flurry of arms and matted hair.

Getting to his feet, he looked around their surroundings, trying to work out what had caused her to scream like a dying banshee.

A large cow stood at the other side of the bog, chewing some grass and looking at them with large, curious eyes. That could not be it.

He kept turning, but nothing else met his gaze except for rolling pastures and rustling trees.

He turned back to her. “A cow? I've lost my hearing over a cow?”

She swiped a hand over her forehead, moving some hair out of her eyes and leaving a streak of brown in its wake. “I
hate cows.” Her gaze challenged him. “What? You don't hate anything?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Not cows.” He sighed. “Give me your arm.” Reaching out, he grabbed her right forearm and hauled her up to standing.

She stumbled, slamming into his chest. This time he was prepared and managed to remain upright, his hands tightening around her slim waist.

Allie blinked up at him, long lashes and green eyes set against her dark-brown face. “I'm sorry I screamed.”

“Can you say that again? I seem to have lost the hearing in my right ear.”

She scrunched her nose at him. “Ha ha. Very funny.”

They were standing close. Too close. His senses hummed. He still had to be jet-lagged. He grasped at the pitiful explanation. It was a hundred times better than the alternative.

* * *

T
he guy was a moron, but a good-looking one. Even more so close up. He reminded Allie of the plastic surgeon guy on
Grey's Anatomy
with his blue eyes and light olive skin
.
What was his name? Avery. That was it.

This was ridiculous. She was standing in a mud bath, in the middle of a field, being chaperoned by a cow, having weird feelings for a guy she couldn't stand.

Allie forced her eyes away from his. Solid ground was now only a meter or so away—where they'd landed, the mud wasn't as deep as where she'd been stuck. She didn't need any more of his help. Breaking his hold on her waist, she forced her feet to move.

Wading through the sludge, she was hyperconscious of him
right beside her. She made it almost all of the way when the blasted cow let out a loud bellow, causing her to scream and stumble, her hands flying out in front of her as she went face-first onto the bank. Pushing herself up, she refused to look to her side as she hauled first one leg, then the other, out of the pit, ending the whole mortifying episode with her hand slipping out from under her and flopping onto her back like a dying fish.

Jackson clambered up beside her. Out of the corner of her eye she could see him sitting down, knees up to his chest, feet planted on the ground.

He was absolutely filthy; the only part of him remaining untouched by dirt was the space from his eyebrows up. “Your middle name isn't Grace by any chance, is it?”

Allie shook her head. Then hysterical laughter bubbled up from her chest and out of her mouth as she imagined how ridiculous she must look.

Jackson stared at her for a few seconds, as if uncertain whether she was laughing or crying, then threw his head back and started to laugh as well.

It was a good laugh. The kind that came from deep inside and held nothing back. She suspected he hadn't had one in a while. Just like her.

Worst of all, something about it snagged at her heart and pulled it toward him. She slammed her mouth shut. So the guy had a small halfway decent part of him buried deep down. So what? It made no difference to anything.

Nine

“I
'M SORRY.
W
E'RE OFF TO
do what?” The next morning Jackson stood in the parking lot in front of the farm B and B and stared at Allie like she'd asked him to strip naked and do laps. Quite frankly, he almost would have preferred that.

She smiled up at him from under her frizzy wig. Her expression held the innocence of a cherub, but the glint in her eye gave away how much she was enjoying the conversation. Little wonder since, in a matter of an hour or so, he'd look as stupid as she did, in her hobbit feet, fat suit, and frumpy dress.

He'd thought he'd read through the itinerary for the day, but obviously he'd missed what must have been a footnote in two-point font that mentioned that makeup artists and stylists would transform them into the actual characters for their Hobbiton tour. Clearly, when you had loads of money to fling around, the private extended behind-the-scenes tour of the movie set turned tourist mecca wouldn't suffice without full costumes.

Now he understood why most of the group had spent dinner the previous evening so excited they could barely manage coherent sentences. At one point, Elroy/Legolas had even teared up a little and been treated to an awkward sideways man-hug from Hans. It was all a little touchy-feely for Jackson, but at least now he knew it was over more than just visiting the Shire.

He breathed in and promptly choked from the rank smell. He kept forgetting the place stunk so bad, it was like taking a bath in rotten eggs. Ostensibly because of the famous thermal sulfur pools the town was built around. He peered down at the itinerary in his hands.
Rotorua.
Everywhere he looked there was another word he couldn't pronounce.

Allie interrupted his thoughts. “On the upside, you're too tall to be a hobbit.”

“I'm not doing it.” If the other Tolkienites wanted to make complete idiots of themselves, that was up to them, but Jackson Gregory was not going to be one of them.

Allie consulted the clipboard in front of her, although he was pretty sure that was just her cover to hide a smile for a few seconds. “I think you'll find your boss has decided differently.”

Of course he had. For ten seconds he'd forgotten about his uncle and the three-week test that would determine his destiny. Okay, maybe that was a little on the melodramatic side. However, the weight of the knowledge that he had no plan B for how to get the money he needed was heavier when he woke up each morning.

So not only was he going to have to participate today, he was going to have to pretend to be thrilled about it. It was slowly sinking in that he was going to have to spend the next two and a half weeks permanently enthusiastic, enraptured, and partak
ing with gusto in every single activity that came his way. Just like a true Tolkienite.

Please let him at least be a human character. With a wig of dark scraggly hair, a cape, and a sword. Maybe Boromir. He could cope with that. Especially since he spent his time on-screen perpetually with a brooding scowl. That wouldn't take much to conjure up at all. Then he died a hero and got to float off down a waterfall. All of which Jackson felt a certain amount of kinship with at this precise moment.

Just as long as he wasn't Aragorn. He'd spent the last day dodging any and all contact with Esther/Arwen, but there was no doubt he'd have no chance of that if he was trussed up as her soul mate again, on an actual part of the movie set, no less.

He looked at the minivan, where all but one of his fellow tourists sat belted in and ready to go. The only reason they hadn't left was because one of the spinsters—he couldn't tell them apart—had forgotten to take her heart medication and had to go back for it. He sighed. “Okay, who am I going to be?”

This time she didn't even bother to smother her smile. “An Uruk-hai scout.”

Uruk-hai? Who, or what, on earth was an Uruk-hai? He flipped through his mind trying to come up with a face or movie scene to go with the name. The only human male he could recall other than Aragorn and Boromir was Éomer, so clearly he'd run out of luck there. Was he a dwarf? An Elf? A wizard? A monster? He directed unkind thoughts toward the long-gone J. R. R. What kind of person conjured up books with more characters than days of the year?

He carefully kept his face neutral. “Lucky me.”

Her smile turned into a face-splitting grin. “You have no idea.”

He should never have told her anything yesterday. He'd already spent the entire time feeling like he was trying to breathe through a straw, and yet, in a moment of stupidity, he'd dropped his guard and let her slip underneath. The one person who had nothing to lose by throwing him under the bus every chance she got. He should've left her to get herself out of the mud. Since she obviously thought she was all that, she could've just levitated or something.

“It's a type of orc.” Allie spoke so quietly he almost missed it.

“Sorry?” He blinked at her. Was she
helping
him?

“An Uruk-hai is an advanced breed of orc created during the Third Age. And the scouts were the elite variety. In the movies . . .” She paused and tilted her frizzy red head at him. “You have at least seen the movies, right?”

He gave her his best death stare. “Yes, I've seen the movies.”

“Just checking. Can't be sure with you.”

What was that supposed to mean?

“So in the movies they were the ones that killed Boromir and kidnapped Pippin and Merry.”

That rang a bell. Not that the cathedral wasn't full of ugly villains who all merged into each other. He pictured the scene from the movie she referred to and visualized the fighting that had taken place. “Tall guys, blackish, bad teeth, weird-looking ears, right?”

She shrugged. “Close enough.”

“Okay.” Over her shoulder he could see Spinster One hurrying out the front door.

“Your missing client is back,” Jackson pointed out.

Allie turned, just in time to see the lady almost tripping over her own feet in her eagerness to rejoin the group.

“I'm fine, I'm fine,” the elderly lady called across the lot before anyone could even open their mouth to ask.

“Oh, and Allie?”

She half turned and looked at him over her shoulder.

“Thanks.” He forced the word out. As much as he hated to admit it, she had done him a big favor.

“You're welcome.”

Though, from the look on her face, she was as uncertain as he as to why she'd helped him at all.

* * *

A
llie idly watched as the blue skies and lush green paddocks of Waikato rolled by her window in a never-ending view that could star in a New Zealand tourism campaign. Behind her, the minivan was filled with exuberant chatter. Even the small frames of the usually grim Misses Barrett were almost humming with anticipation.

Glancing over her shoulder, she caught a glimpse of Jackson attempting to hold an expression she guessed was meant to be somewhere between excited and interested.

She shook her head. What had made her give him a leg up out of his hole? If it hadn't been for her, the guy would've had no clue his boss had fitted him up to be a breed of orc. Oh well, she was pretty sure he still didn't completely understand what he'd been set up for. He was going to flip out when he found out—though who knew when that would be. Most of the forty-minute journey would find them with sporadic cell coverage, which would prevent him from his practice of trying to surreptitiously get the answers he desperately needed from Google via his phone.

She hoped she was around to see it, especially following his
reaction in the car park after he found out this wasn't an ordinary sightseeing trip around Hobbiton. The guy took himself way too seriously. His face when he learned he would be spending three hours in makeup and costuming—two hours longer than anyone else—would be magical!

Better yet, Kat would get to meet him. Her best friend had an innate ability to detect the true measure of a person in the time they sat in her makeup chair. She'd confirm Allie's initial reaction, and that disconcerting interlude of yesterday could be filed away as an anomaly.

Allie's gaze flitted up to the mirror she used to keep her eye on the group without constantly looking over her shoulder. Jackson had turned from the others and was peering out the window, as if immersed in the scenery. His lost expression almost had her feeling sorry for him. Almost. But this was the pit you dug when you tried to impress someone by telling them you were a Tolkien fan to get a free trip to New Zealand out of it. A little floundering would be good for him. It wasn't her job to guard his little secret. That was his problem.

It certainly wasn't her job to help him. It had kind of slipped out before she realized. And when had he started calling her Allie? She wasn't sure what bothered her more: that he had, or that something in her had liked the way it'd sounded coming from him, American accent and all.

She was going to have to get him back to “Dr. Shire,” or “Allison” at the least. “Allie” was too close, too friendly, too familiar. And being any of those things with Jackson Gregory was out of the question.

Forcing her eyes off him, Allie looked around at the rest of her charges. There were no big surprises regarding what every­
one else had chosen, especially when Tolkien didn't provide a wide range of heroines to choose from. Esther and Elroy—well, a deaf and blind man could guess their picks. Ditto with Mr. Duff. Ethel was going to be a hobbit, Mavis a Rohan villager, which made Allie happy since she would be able to tell the sisters apart for a day. Sofia was a perfect Éowyn with her fair coloring. For some reason, Hans had chosen Lord Celeborn. Not exactly an obvious pick, given that his hulking physique was about as far from lithe and Elf-like as you could get; they'd had to get his costume specially made.

She wished he'd chosen one of the trolls. He would have made a perfect troll, and at least then Jackson wouldn't have found himself alone on the side of evil. Not that it mattered to her. Just because the guy had pulled her out of some mud and made her laugh for a few seconds didn't mean she gave a fig about anything to do with him. Not even the seed of a fig. If they even had seeds.

In fact, now that she'd enlightened him as to his destiny today, she was pretty sure she could consider the debt paid. They could return to their respective fighting corners and all would be right with the world again.

Letting Jackson Gregory get under her skin was not an option. Not when she was only months away from finally starting to reclaim her life.

* * *

“S
o.” Kat picked up a small brush from her extensive collection and dusted its bristles against the back of her hand. “Time to spill. Who's the hottie?”

Allie looked over the group for a couple of seconds. Two
hours after the group's arrival at the Green Dragon Inn and taking over the function room, Hans and Elroy had been transformed and costumed and the rest were well on their way. She made her gaze skip over Jackson, who sat in a folding chair, his face coated in goop, halfway to becoming an Uruk-hai. She turned back to her friend. “Who?”

Kat raised her blond eyebrows at her. “Okay, let me clarify. Who's the hottie you keep forcing yourself not to look at?” Her Australian accent grew more pronounced as she drew out the latter half of the question.

“I have no idea what you're talking about.” Hopefully her frilly collar would hide the telltale blush she could feel starting at the base of her neck.

Trust Kat to spot the weird tension that had been bouncing between her and Jackson all morning. And it was all her fault for helping him; it had thrown the whole foundation of their hate-hate relationship off-kilter. Now they seemed to circle each other like two boxers in the ring, each waiting for the other to make the move that would define the next round.

Kat tucked some strands of blond hair that had fallen out of her ponytail behind her ear. “Allison Shire. How long have we been working together now?”

“Almost five years.” They'd originally met on the set of
The Hobbit
, just before Allie had moved to England to finish her PhD. Now SLT used Kat's company for all their Hobbiton days. When the makeup business was slow, Kat sometimes came in as a temporary co-guide for longer tours like this one. The gypsy-style life of a tour guide didn't leave a lot of room for the nurturing of friendships. So Allie was grateful for this one.

“Don't use too much base—she doesn't need it,” Kat instructed the artist working on Esther, then cast a critical eye over the activities of the other two members of her team before turning back to Allie. “That's right. And in that time you've showed up with a few cute guys on the tours. Not many, I'll grant you, but a few.”

“And your point is?”

Kat jabbed the makeup brush she was holding in her right hand toward Jackson. “My point is, I've never known you to so much as look at any of them twice, let alone struggle to stop yourself from looking at one.”

Allie forced herself to look at Jackson, who was sitting, face frozen, under strict orders not to so much as twitch a muscle as the third layer of goop dried.

“The only thing going on between us is that we can't stand each other. Mainly because he is the world's biggest pain in the behind.” Her conscience flinched a little at her words. The guy had saved her yesterday. She could probably be a little kinder.

Kat eyed her up. “Uh-hmmm. And what makes him any different from all the other high-maintenance people you've had on your tours? Like the guy who wanted to fly with his sword?”

Allie groaned. “Don't remind me.” Six months earlier, one of her German tourists had tried to get on a plane with his sword stuffed down his pants.

She'd thought the paperwork for dealing with an injury was bad, but it was nothing compared to what was required in trying to extract a client from airline security.