Famously Engaged (18 page)

“Sixty seconds,” one of Leanna’s cameramen announced. Beth ignored him and continued her conversation. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

“When are you not?”

Christophe’s comment shredded what was left of her patience.

“I’m a chef,” she told him, aware that her voice had become a tad shrill, yet unable to do anything about it. “I’m not an innkeeper or a celebrity.” She threw her hands up in exasperation, beyond caring that the entire crew was hanging on her every word.

“Somebody give this man some newspapers so he can get up to speed with what’s been going on.”

Nodding silent thanks to the sound guy who helped to remove her microphone, she spun on her heel and left them to it. Jake hadn’t said anything since she’d been forced to ad-lib and she could only assume she’d messed up. Well what did he—or any of them—expect from her? She’d bluffed as best she could. It shouldn’t have been left to her anyway. Didn’t famous people stalk out of interviews all the time? Weren’t managers and publicists supposed to offer assistance?

Oh, what did she know? They’d dressed her up pretty, done her hair and makeup, and drilled her on how to respond to the approved questions, yet she’d managed to ruin the whole thing by being herself. Worse than that, she’d become an intruder in her own house. Even escaping to the kitchen for a few hours didn’t appeal now.

She was far too restless to create anything, but there was one place she’d like to go. She’d have to leave the house to get there, although it was still within the grounds. No doubt she’d freak everyone out if she wandered off unannounced, but surely that’s what the Kens were here for?

Marching to the kitchen door, she swung it open and peered inside. “Hey Teddy, things aren’t going well and I’m about to cause a scene. Any chance you could take five?”

“Interesting dress.” He gave her a dubious once-over and an awkward pat on the shoulder before stepping into the hall.

He almost made her smile, but she held onto her anger and hollered as soon as she had the room to herself. Yelling went way beyond the usual bounds of courtesy and it gave her an odd sense of satisfaction today. “Ken! I need help.”

…

Jake charged toward the sound of Beth’s voice the moment he heard her yell. Something had to be wrong, very wrong, if she’d called for Ken rather than him. She’d said all the right things when Ken and Keith had arrived yesterday, but he’d felt her discomfort and sensed that she’d avoid them wherever possible.

“What’s up?” he asked in a low voice as he drew her into the hall and stepped between her and the door into her commercial kitchen. Where the heck was Teddy? Was there an intruder in the kitchen? And if so, what did that mean for the security people who were supposed to be patrolling the grounds? He grimaced at the thought of them all being overpowered before they could alert Ken or Keith. If that was the case, Beth’s safety was in jeopardy.

“Do you have a cellar you can take shelter in? Does it lock from the inside?”

“What?
Why would you even ask that?” She stared at him in complete horror. Shadows stole the customary brightness from her eyes as Ken and Keith sprinted in from their designated posts and shouldered past Leanna and her crew in their haste to secure the kitchen.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she blurted as Ken and Keith reached for their holstered guns to protect her from the perceived threat.

“Nothing that can be fixed by a gun at any rate. Oh God, I’ve accidentally called in a threat, haven’t I? You all seem to operate on some sort of shorthand that I don’t understand. And I’m blundering about like an incompetent idiot.”

She wasn’t making a scrap of sense, but when she tried to pull out of his arms, he refused to let her go. Leanna’s crew was filming them, so he angled his body to shield Beth, the naked distress on her face visible only to him. Protecting her was all that mattered.

After nodding to Ken and Keith to go ahead and inspect the kitchen anyway, he murmured comforting nonsense to Beth in the hope of calming her. Or himself.

“I can’t do this, Jake,” she said. He heard the conviction in her tone, felt the truth of her words in the tension that gripped her as she held herself apart from him.

Without knowing what she meant, the best he could do was whisper, “Cameras,” into her ear. It was enough to make her freeze in place. In his arms. Where she belonged.

“I just wanted to go outside,” she said in a near whisper.

“There’s an observatory in my backyard.”

“Is it secure?” he demanded. The wariness in her eyes made him soften his tone and loosen his possessive hold on her enough that she’d notice. That
her
safety could come under threat was clearly something she hadn’t considered. And dammit all, he’d deliberately avoided the subject. He’d told himself he’d protect her. The security team outside would protect her, and Ken and Keith and Teddy would protect her.

Yet he’d spent a restless night unconvinced by his ownrationale and barely resisting the urge to check on her ev ery five minutes while she’d slept alone in her own bed.

“Are you saying that
I
need security?” she asked in utter disbelief. “Because that doesn’t make any sense. No one’s interested in mobbing me. I’m not famous or talented or—”

“Engaged to me?” he finished and watched her lips form a perfect circle when realization dawned. He was a target and she was standing right next to him.

She’d been standing right next to him for days. 

Knowing the risks, he’d
asked
her to stand next to him.

“Get me out of here, Jake.” Her head tilted slightly toward the camera crew behind him and he realized that they bothered her more than any possibility of physical danger.

“The kitchen will do for starters,” she said, “assuming it’s not already hosting a bodyguard convention.”

In one smooth move he guided her into the kitchen and closed the door behind them. The simple line of defense between them and Leanna’s camera crew felt momentous, because Beth’s relief was tangible. The distress she’d shown in the hall lessened. He smiled at her and for one brief, glorious moment, he thought she might smile back. But her gaze shifted and he saw the weight of something unbearably heavy settle over her like a cloak of doom.

She looked at Keith, who was by the open kitchen door,

peering outside, scanning for threats, his right hand resting on the butt of his gun. Beth scanned too, and Jake followed suit. Through the windows, he could see Ken talking to two other security guys outside and he sensed it was their presence that troubled her. Her shoulders slumped in apparent defeat when Ken reached for his radio to confer with yet another person.

Jake gave her shoulders a gentle squeeze. “You might as well say it,” he said in an offhand tone he knew would annoy her. “I can read most of what you’re thinking anyway.”

“Handy talent, that. You’re good at everything, and now I see why.”

Because he was surrounded by security?
“Why’s that?”

Keith turned toward them and whatever Beth had been about to say, she bit back. Frustration threatened to explode out of him. This was important, and yet he and Beth couldn’t have a two-minute discussion without interruption. What was the point of anything, of being safe or successful or wealthy, if he couldn’t even
speak
to the newest yet most vital member of his entourage?

“I want to go out there.” She pointed at an ivy-covered structure in the bottom corner of her garden.

Presumably that was her observatory, although it looked more like a round brick chimney that’d been abandoned and allowed to fall into disrepair.

She gestured to encompass every member of his security team, and there were five in sight now. “Can you tell them not to overreact when I go outside?”

He could tell them. Whether or not they’d listen was anyone’s guess.

But it’d be private out there. No one would be within hearing distance and if he went with her they’d be able to recapture some of the blissful isolation they’d enjoyed before his team had arrived.

He didn’t know how or when it had happened, but he’d come to rely on a daily fix of alone-time with Beth. So far every day’s fix had been different. The glint of challenge in Beth’s eyes warned that today’s would be unusually fiery. He didn’t want to miss it.

…

Beth refused to be mollified by the familiarity of the observatory her grandfather had built. As soon as she and Jake were alone, she started climbing the steps to the second level.

“I need to move out. Today.” She paused and turned to face him, taking comfort in the three-step height advantage she currently held. “If I need to go to a hotel, then I want a say in where it is because I can’t afford to be trapped somewhere impractical.”

“Like here?”

The irony didn’t escape her but she nodded anyway and finished climbing, wishing there were more steps. Now that they were both on the upper level, she felt short again. And caged in.

Had the observatory always been so damned small? Or was he simply taking up more than his fair share of the available space?

“This place isn’t practical,” Jake grumbled as he ducked beneath a low beam, “not even close, but your house is.”

“Not anymore. Not from where I’m standing. A houseful of strange men, some of them particularly strange, isn’t what I need at the moment. Look, I’m not putting this on your shoulders—”

“Much,” he countered before she could finish. “I’m not to blame but you’ll punish me anyway? That sounds fair.”

“You think I’m trying to
punish
you? By moving out? I’m not. It’s more a question of survival. When it was just the two of us it was different, but now that the interview is over, I’d like to be excused.”

“From what? By who? It’s your house, Beth.”

“I’ve been over it a dozen times and we’ve got two options,” she said with all the patience she could muster. “Either you go permanently, or I go temporarily. It makes more sense for me to go because I’ve got a wedding to organize and attend. You can stay here for as long as you need to with the band and Teddy and Christophe and the Kens and all those other people who keep popping up out of the woodwork.”

“The Kens?”
Jake chuckled and leaned closer. “Also known as Ken and Keith.”

He continued to find her amusing, but his charm was wearing off now that reality had been revealed to her. She’d had a rare glimpse of Jake as he must’ve been before fame found him.

Taking those memories away from here before they got tainted was imperative, because the toxins from his famous existence were beginning to corrode her soul.

Jake’s good humor faded. “Why the big change of heart? Did Leanna get to you?”

Get to her? Why did that conjure an image of the other woman
with wild eyes and a pair of scissors?
“Why would I take offense at anything she said? She’s such a warmhearted soul, I bet her parents taught her that.”

His grin was fleeting. “Why do you want to leave?”

“Stop me any time, okay?” He didn’t react but she had his full attention so she ran with it. “When you first arrived, you drove through wide open gates and rang the doorbell. The curtains were all open, the kitchen windows were open, I was here alone and everything was a little…
haphazard.
”

He smiled and it was difficult to push hurtful words past the sudden constriction in her throat.

“Now the house is closed up like we’re allergic to sunlight. Armed guards patrol the yard, Ken and Keith and Teddy are ever-present and don’t miss a thing that goes on indoors, Christophe and Leanna-what’s-her-face issue orders every chance they get,and a throng of camera-wielding reporters are holding us all hostage from outside the main gates.” She forced a laugh. “Living here isn’t the same as it was before.”

Suspicion radiated out of him. “You didn’t mention Sam, Riley, Jessie, and Liam.”

“Oh, them?” She smiled and waved her hand. “I have nocomplaints. All the famous men I’ve met have been utt erly charming. The Emperors, of course, and Leanna’s surprise guests as well.”

“If we’re so charming…”

“The Emperors aren’t a problem. I’m just not comfortable with the possibility of getting shot, by security with guns or media with cameras, when I leave the house.”

He stepped toward her and braced his forearms against the low overhead beam. The lazy dominance of his stance as he loomed over her was mesmerizing. She couldn’t breathe, her body greedily anticipating what he might do to convince her to stay.

He reached out to toy with her hair, but stopped just short of contact as if he didn’t trust himself to stop at one simple touch.

Oh boy.
Feeling strangely weak, she stumbled to her left and sat on one of the ancient leather cinema seats her father had bought for a song when she’d been about six years old. Everything here was familiar, even the man who crouched before her.

“Tell me what’s put that look on your face.”

“You’re famous.”

The corners of his mouth quirked. “Yeah.”

“I thought I was okay with that, but I was wrong.” Her hand played over the sleeve of his suit, dipping beneath it to examine the shiny cuff link she’d caught a glimpse of earlier. She traced over it, then dragged his arm closer and folded the sleeve back

“BC? You bought cuff links with my initials? Why would you do that?”

His enigmatic smile did nothing to calm her frazzled nerves.

He folded his other sleeve back and invited her to look at it.

Her brows met in confusion. “AD? Oh, it’s a time thing? I like that.” She studied him as the seconds ticked by and then she nodded. “I can work with time as a reference. If you and I were cuff links, we’d be permanent and temporary.”

“You’re permanent?”

“I am. My great-grandfather built this house and even though

I’m the last of the line, I’ll never sell it. Eventually I’ll have kids with a different surname and it will become theirs to cherish and preserve. Time usually moves slowly here and change takes a long time. I wouldn’t swap the last few days of rapid change for anything, but I need time to process them.”

“That’s a nice story. What does it mean?”