Heroes (Hollywood Heartthrobs #1) (2 page)

“Favorite
uncle, huh?” Dean said, trying to hide how deeply touched he was by Samantha’s
willingness to forgive and forget. “Better not tell your brother Mitch that.”

“Yeah,
well, next time they see Mitch on TV we can reevaluate your status. Until then
they’re pretty much convinced you’re whatever small boys think of as James
Bond.” Dean laughed; Samantha continued. “I’m not joking, it’s like you,
Batman, and that guy from the show about the talking dog. True heroes.”

“Little
young for
Once Bitten
, aren’t they?” he asked.

“Honestly,
Dean you think I would let them watch that crap? No, they just see you
strutting around half-naked in the commercials all day and night.”

“Oh
good, we wouldn’t want them to get the wrong ideas.”

He
felt relaxed enough to brooch the even harder question. “And you’re sure Nate
wouldn’t mind me around?”

He
could sense rather than hear Samantha’s smile through the phone. “You let me
worry about Nate, honey. I got this. When did you want to fly out?”

Three
minutes on the phone with Samantha and Dean felt better than he had in weeks. He
didn’t bother to hide the enthusiasm in his voice. “We wrapped season six
earlier today. How’s tomorrow?”

Samantha
laughed. “So, a short notice trip, you’re thinking.”

“I’m
sorry, Sam, that was rude. When is good for you and Nate?”

She
paused only a moment. “Sunday.”

“That’s
the day after tomorrow.”

“Oh
thank you Dean because while I can raise two boys, look after your little
brother, and run my own successful business I am completely incapable of
reading a calendar.”

Dean
soaked in the love with which Samantha could tease him. Another silent prayer
of thanks to Nate. “Alright, sister. You got it. I’ll book a flight tonight,
text you with the details.”

“Sounds
wonderful, Dean.”

“And
Sam, you’re sure?”

“Dean,
it’s you. Of course I’m sure. You’ve been away too long. It’s time to come
home. We love you.”

“I
love you, too.”

Of
course he meant his brother’s whole brood in that statement, but hanging up his
phone Dean realized he couldn’t remember the last time he said had said I love
you to anyone without the lines being fed to him in a script. Sunday couldn’t
come soon enough.

****

“
Allez
!”
Adam shouted, brandishing his foil with a flick of his wrist. He always did
have a flair for the dramatic, Jessie thought. She didn’t mind, she was fond of
his silly antics. She came at him with a vengeance. He was ready with a quick
step back, then forward in a lunge. She blocked him with a high inside parry,
followed by a quick riposte to his torso.

“
Touché
!”
she said triumphantly. They returned to the engarde line at the center of the
fencing strip.

“I
wasn’t ready!” Adam shouted back in jest. “Mulligan on that hit, Jessie.”

“Yeah,
yeah, take all the mulligans you need, old man,” Jessie answered.

“Well
I guess we can’t all have your catlike reflexes,” he said, sadly.

“Just
call me Lightning,” she shot back, advancing on him with her foil.

After
two more hits, she couldn’t resist rubbing it in a tiny bit. “Jeez Adam,
someone slip decaf in the department coffee again?”

“Some
of us don’t spend all our time with the foils, Jess. I have to carve out time
for my active social life,” Adam replied.

“Oh,
please. If either one of us ever spent any time with anyone not a pasty
graduate student, an ancient bearded professor, or a dead guy on a page we
wouldn’t know what to do,” Jessie replied, laughing.

“Hey,
when I meet a live guy half as interesting as Charlemagne or Richard the
Lionheart I’ll be all over it, promise,” Adam replied. 

Jessie
was just glad to be out of her tiny office. She loved the cramped little room
in the English building that always smelled of old books and freshly brewed
tea, and was incredibly proud of the small sign on the door that read J.
Brooke. But this week, she needed to be out. Fencing always cleared her mind,
and Adam was still her favorite opponent. He joked he could tell whenever
Jessie hit a roadblock in her research, as she would start pestering him to
come fencing all hours of the day and night. It was actually Adam who had first
gotten her into fencing way back when they first met as freshmen at the
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. On a lark, she came with him to a meeting of
the fencing club and was instantly hooked. It reminded her a bit of the ballet
classes she had taken as a kid, but with a healthy edge of fierce competition.
The movements were graceful and elegant, but required quick thinking and fast
reflexes. She loved the challenge of it. Great exercise, and you gained the
ability to kick serious ass. Nine years later, she and Adam were still at UM,
now both postgraduates with PhDs under their belts, and still fencing together.
She was a researcher in the English department, he was a teaching assistant
with the History department. But over the years their shared love of fencing,
late night arguments over the importance of
The Song of Roland
to the
history of the First and Second Crusade, and each other had endured.

At
various points, each of them had tried to get the people they dated interested
in their sport, but it never seemed to work out. Jessie’s boyfriends seemed to
find it threatening, Adam’s boyfriends found it brutish.

“
Touché
!”
Jessie shouted again.

“Uncle!”
Adam called out, reaching up to remove his fencing mask. “I am not worthy of
your attentions, my warrior queen. Long live Boudicca,” he said with a grin. He
had jet black hair, parted crisply to one side, and was always carefully
clean-shaved. With his dark brown eyes, long, ebony lashes, and very fair skin
he had the look of an extra in a film about Victorian London. Jessie had once
bought him a derby hat as a joke, made all the more hilarious when he put it on
and looked like he was born to wear it.

Part
of what made Adam such a great fencing partner was their similarity of size. At
5’9” they matched each other’s height almost to a millimeter. Jessie, however,
glowed with a distinctly modern American woman vibe. Soft brown hair fell
nearly to her olive-skinned shoulders, framing a face anchored by bright green
eyes. She had a girl-next-door kind of appearance that belied her studious
nature. Her skin was radiant from the exercise as she took off her mask and
plopped down on a bench next to Adam.

“Worn
out already?” she asked.

“Nah,
but I need to hop in the shower and head back to the department. Prof. McKee
will have me drawn and quartered if I don’t get those papers graded to hand
back to Monday’s class.”

“It’s
not the freshman seminar, is it?”

“Tragically,
yes,” Adam answered, his face drawn in an outlandish frown.

“Well,
at least they’ll be short,” Jessie offered.

“Short
and uninspired. I swear, these kids think they’re the first ones ever to
determine that you get more pages if you enlarge the margins. I want to tell
them, look sport, I was young once, too. You don’t know how lucky you are in
research.”

“Eh,
you have a bunch of young tyrants to answer to, I have one old one,” Jessie
answered. “But no, I don’t envy you.” Her research stipend stipulated that she
needed to be available a certain number of hours to assist Professor Neville
with his forthcoming book on the history of the English sonnet, but she still
had time to work on independent papers.

“So,
we going to talk about the conference, or did you lure me here just to kick my
ass with a sword?” Adam asked.

Jessie
made a face.

“Okay,
drawing on my years of experience as your best friend, I’m going to deduce that
you’re very nervous about the conference but don’t want to talk about it. So,
I’ll just skip to the good part and tell you that you are brilliant, your paper
about the significance of God’s instructions to Raphael in
Paradise Lost
is blazingly insightful, and no one with half a brain at this conference is
going to say anything different.”

Jessie’s
focus of study was poetry and drama of the English Renaissance, sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. After publishing a paper on John Milton’s
Paradise
Lost
last year, she had been invited to participate in a conference on
Milton in Chicago the following week.

Adam
went on. “Jess, you wouldn’t have been invited to the conference if your paper
wasn’t well received. I know it’s stressful that they gave the keynote position
to someone who is, A, a lying, cheating asshat and, B, interpreting
Paradise
Lost
differently than you, but academics disagree all the time. The fact
that they think the argument he published is interesting doesn’t mean your
argument is any less valid. It just means whoever he stole this idea from was
also interesting. Your panel is an opportunity to discuss both
interpretations.”

“I
know. Thanks, Adam. And I really am excited. This is the first time a scholarly
conference has ever wanted me as an actual panelist. It’s just… well… we both
know that I would be a lot less nervous if said asshat wasn’t going to be on
the same panel.” Her excitement about the conference had taken a substantial
hit after hearing that Prof. Richard Pinkman, a Milton scholar with whom she
had an unpleasant history, would be giving the keynote address and participating
in the same panel to which she had been invited. She had nearly backed out of
the conference, until Adam had talked her out of it.

“Jess.
Go to the conference. Keep your enemies closer, know the competition, all
that.”

“I
know, Adam, and I’m going. You should be proud of me, I actually got Neville to
agree to let me go a few days early to hit up a few of the university libraries
in Chicago before the shindig starts on Thursday. I’m driving down Sunday
afternoon.”

“Great!
I think a few days in Chicago will be good for you.” Adam said, heading off to
the locker room. “Who knows, maybe you’ll meet a guy who hasn’t been dead for
four hundred years.” Jessie rolled her eyes at him. “You should wear that blue
dress with the white trim.”

She
was mildly annoyed by that. “That is sexist. I’m there to work; no one is going
to notice what I’m wearing.”

“Trust
me, Jess, people will notice. You look lovely in it, but mostly it makes men
underestimate you.” She laughed. “I’m serious. You show up all sweet and
summery, they never know what hit them when you whip out your research notes.
Like Wonder Woman, but with a notebook instead of a lasso.” Jessie couldn’t
hold back a smile. “And if any of those ivory tower old fogeys give you trouble,
remember, gentlemen in England now a-bed shall think themselves accursed that
were not here.” He winked at her before he left.

“The
St. Crispin’s Day speech,
Henry V
, act four, scene three,” Jessie
muttered to herself. That was Adam for you, only quoted Shakespeare when he
knew she needed a boost. She smiled. Bring on Chicago and Prof. Pinkman, Jessie
thought. Sunday couldn’t come soon enough.

Sunday
afternoon, Dean stepped off the jetway at O’Hare International Airport and made
the familiar way to baggage claim. It had been a while, a long while this time,
but no matter how long he lived in L.A., Chicago would always be home. He had
dressed the part in his Cubs ballcap and felt supremely relieved to finally be
wearing clothes he had actually chosen for himself. No labels, just a
comfortable pair of jeans and flannel shirt. He knew the less he dressed like
Jared, the jet-setting clotheshorse vampire, the less likely he was to be
recognized. Jared would give up immortality before being caught dead in flannel
and a Cubs hat, he thought ruefully. He really needed to get Jared out of his
head, he thought picking up his suitcase.

That
got easier as he exited the security gate to see the crowd of people waiting
excitedly to meet their loved ones. It took him a minute to spot Nathan and the
boys. The oldest, Tucker, at the mature age of seven, was standing as patiently
as possible next to his dad (which for a seven year old is not terribly
patient). On the other hand, Alec, at the more tender age of five, was
desperately squirreling around, peeking around people’s suitcases and legs,
trying to find a better vantage point.

          All regard
for Hollywood appearances left the instant Dean saw his nephews. He put two
fingers in his mouth and let out a loud whistle. The boys responded like
bloodhounds, and came tearing toward the source of the noise before they could
even see their uncle. He dropped to his knees and hugged them each in one arm.
Tucker manfully grabbed Dean’s suitcase from him, despite being only slightly
taller that it was, while Alec contented himself with crawling up his uncle
like a tree.

          “That’s
enough, boys,” Nathan said, finally arriving at the rambunctious group. The
boys stood down. “Dean,” he said, holding out his hand formally to his brother.

          Dean knew
better than to take it. Thirty years of fraternal tradition commanded it. He
had been in the wrong, he would have to make the first move back.

          “Nate, I’m so
glad to be here. Thank you.” And with that he gave his brother a warm embrace.
When he pulled back, Nate was smiling, and Dean knew he was home.

          On the
expressway to the Northwest suburbs, the boys regaled Uncle Dean with stories
of their myriad adventures at school, on the t-ball team, and in the various
worlds small children inhabit that can only be shared with the most trusted of
adults. Pulling into the long driveway flanked by blooming daffodils and
budding hydrangeas, Dean saw Samantha on the front porch swing with a book,
obviously waiting. The boys were first out of the car, as Tucker shouted, “He’s
really here, Mom!”

Dean
turned to Nate. “
Really here
?” he asked.

          Nate
shrugged. “I told them yesterday, after we got your flight details. Can you
blame them for having their doubts?” Dean burned with shame. “You’re basically
Santa Claus. They’re willing to believe you exist, but they don’t really expect
to see you in the flesh.”

          “Nate, I…”

          Nate cut him
off. “Don’t. Like Tuck said, you’re really here. That’s what counts, Dean.”

          As they came
up the drive with Dean’s suitcase, Samantha came down the front steps to meet
them. Dean was shocked to see her. She looked lovely, and very, very large, as
she was obviously heavily pregnant. She caught Dean’s eye as the surprise
showed on his face.

          “Surprise!”
she said. Leaning in for a delicate hug, she giggled and Nathan let out a
hearty laugh.

          “Man, your
face right now is priceless.” Nate said.

          “Well,
surprise is right,” Dean answered. “Congratulations guys! Why didn’t you tell
me?!”

          Samantha gave
him a good-natured smile with more than a hint of motherly condescension.
“Well, we would have told you at Christmas, but then that didn’t exactly work
out. And when you called the other day, I thought the surprise was too good to
pass up.”

          “When?” he
asked.

The
boys had crowded around again. Tucker looked thrilled to have been in on a
secret excluded even from Uncle Dean. “Our little sister is going to be born in
six weeks.” He said, proudly holding up his left hand outstretched and his right
index finger to demonstrate his understanding of the number six. “I’m already a
big brother, but now Alec will be a big brother too, instead of just a little
brother.” Alec beamed.

“Well,
as a resident expert on big brothers, welcome to the club, Al,” Dean said.

“Alright,
fellas,” Samantha said. “Uncle Dean had a long flight, he probably needs a
minute to settle in. Dean, you’re in the downstairs guest room, you remember
where it is, right?” Dean nodded. “Okay then, Uncle Dean gets a bit of peace
and quiet, and if he’s lucky maybe there will be some cookies left in the
kitchen when he’s ready.” At the mention of cookies the boys’ faces lit up in
Pavlovian response. They raced into the house with the sound of doors banging
open and closed.

“Well,
that takes care of them for a minute,” Samantha said. “Don’t worry, they won’t
be able to find them all before you get there.”

“Wouldn’t
want to miss out on your cookies, Sam.” Dean replied.

“No
you wouldn’t, she made apricot ricotta bars.” Nate said with a smile.

“My
favorite,” Dean said with a grin.

“I
remember; that’s why I made them, dumbass,” Samantha said. “It’s just easier to
explain to the boys if everything is ‘cookies’.”

Five
minutes later Dean was unpacking into the guest suite. Leave it to Nathan and
Samantha to ensure a guest was at least as comfortable in their home as they
were. The large and well-appointed suburban house had four bedrooms upstairs,
one with an ensuite bathroom (obviously for Nathan and Samantha), three sharing
the second bathroom. The first floor had all the living space, plus a sizable
guest suite with its own bathroom and entrance to the spacious back deck. Dean
had always wondered if this was meant to be the master, but Samantha and Nathan
had never referred to it as anything other than the guest room. It was nearly
the size of his apartment in L.A. View is better too, he thought, looking out
across the deck to the creek behind. Apparently it had been designated as some
kind of woodland preserve, so Samantha and Nathan were blessed with an amazing
view in perpetuity. For the suburbs of one of the largest cities in America,
damn those two could pick a home.

That
night after the loudest, messiest, and most joyful dinner Dean could remember
in years, he sat on the back porch watching the boys play on the swing set
Nathan had installed just this year.

          The back door
opened, and Nathan came out carrying two beers. He handed one to Dean and sat
down next to him. “So. You going to tell me what’s going on or do we have to
play twenty questions?” he asked kindly.

          “Hmm?”

          “Dean, you’re
my brother, and I’ve known you all thirty-one years of my life. Last year, you
can’t get home for love or money, then I don’t hear from you for months, then
suddenly you’re flying out this week for an unknown amount of time. I’m
thrilled you’re here, the boys are on cloud nine, and Samantha is on an
I-told-you-so-high she absolutely deserves. But honestly, brother, I can tell something
is going on with you. Something not good. So, do you want to talk about it?”

          Dean took a
slow drink from his bottle, trying to put into words the disappointment and
emptiness he felt. “Well, I guess the official reason I’m off Team Awesome is
that I lost out on a part I really wanted. I was hoping when we wrapped this
season I’d be off to work on this war movie thing. It’s a great part with a
great script and a great director. Oscar caliber, yaknow?”

          “But you
didn’t get it?”

          “But I didn’t
get it.”

          “Well, I’m
glad you’re handling it better than last time.” Dean cocked an eyebrow at his
brother. “Family, remember? I seem to recall several desperate collect calls
from Tijuana after you missed out on a part on a soap opera. You thought you
wanted that one too, then three months later you’re reading for
Once Bitten
.
You’ve had disappointments before.” 

          Dean chuckled
at the memory. “Yeah, Tijuana was not one of my better decisions.”

          “Agreed. I
still have the pictures to prove it.”

          “It’s just, this
is different, Nate.”

          “Different
how?”

          Dean paused
to collect his thoughts. “Before, when something threw up a roadblock, it was
like I knew I would get past it. Like I knew I was going to win one way or
another. Now, for the first time, I’m not sure I want to play the game
anymore.”

          “As in, not
play the acting game?”

          “Yes. No.
Maybe, I don’t know. It’s just, I’m not sure Hollywood is what I want anymore.”

          “So what do
you want?” Nate asked, suspecting he knew the answer.

          Dean smiled
ruefully. He took another drink, then waved his hand across the beautiful
suburban tableau before him. “Something like this maybe.”

          Nathan
clapped his brother on the shoulder. “Hey, now, before you start checking the
real estate ads, maybe take the whole suburban dad life for a test drive?
Yaknow, now that the weather has warmed up the boys have been begging for a day
out in the city. Samantha can’t exactly herd them around at the moment, and I’m
working like crazy to try to clear my caseload before I take paternity leave. I
know the boys would love a day out in Chicago with Uncle Dean. Plus, chicks dig
a guys with kids in tow, especially when they’re not his.” He winked at Dean.

          Dean grinned.
“So, I go on a journey of self-discovery giving you and Sam a day off from the
rug rats?” Nathan shrugged conspiratorially. “Sounds perfect. The boys been on
the Navy Pier Ferris Wheel lately?”

****

Jessie
dropped her bag on an easy chair in her hotel room, pulling out her day
planner, a paperback copy of
Blackwell’s Essential Renaissance Poetry
,
and the smallest of the three notebooks she had brought with her.  

She
stretched out comfortably on the bed. Opening the book to Andrew Marvell, she
reread
To His Coy Mistress
for the umpteenth time, but it didn’t have
the soothing effect it usually did. As much as she hated to admit it, she was
very nervous about the conference. The thought of running into Richard Pinkman,
let alone sharing a stage with him, filled her with dread.

Richard
(no, Prof. Pinkman, Jessie thought angrily) had been an adjunct professor at
the University of Michigan years before. She had taken two of his classes as an
undergraduate, and was consistently fascinated by his lectures. He in turn had
lavished praise on her papers, and had been instrumental in helping her get
into her graduate program. Like it or not, she was in his debt for that. That
was part of what made it all so complicated. No matter what, she had to be
grateful for the opportunities to which he had contributed. Around the time she
started her PhD program, Richard had asked her out to dinner. Infatuated with
him and starry-eyed that such a learned older man would be interested in her,
Jessie quickly tumbled into a love affair with him.

Other
than Adam, Richard had been the only man to take her literary interpretations
seriously, as though she was worth listening to as a scholar. He had even
offered to coauthor a paper with her. It was a fairly standard practice for new
scholars to coauthor with more well-known experts, even when the junior member
did most of the work. She was elated. The paper, a discussion of John Donne’s
Holy Sonnet sequence, was supposed to have been the next step for her, a debut
into the world of literary scholarship and a first stab at teasing out the
ideas for her dissertation. They would lie together in his bed, talking late
into the night about Donne’s conflation of bodies and souls. The result had
been a very good paper. 

Unfortunately,
Jessie never saw the praise for it. Instead, Richard had submitted it early
bearing only his name as author. It was the greatest betrayal of her life. When
she confronted him about it, he had claimed that it was mostly his ideas in it
anyway, that he had lead her along to these conclusions, and, most unfairly,
that she could not challenge the authorship without calling attention to their
affair. Determined not to be branded as some academic groupie trying to take
credit for her boyfriend’s work, she had burned her Donne notebook as an act of
defiance. She knew she could write other papers, but the blot on her reputation
if she challenged Richard might never be erased. Her good name was worth
sacrificing the credit. Adam had cleared his schedule to fence with her every
night for two weeks.

It
had taken her years to get over. The setback to her career was in some ways
worse than the personal loss of the romance. It took her nearly a year to write
another paper of publishable quality, and she guarded her ideas so closely that
until her dissertation was published more than one colleague had come to
believe she simply didn’t have any. With time, she found new avenues of
research, and her newest paper on Milton was, in her opinion, even better than
the stolen work on Donne. She was proud of her accomplishments, and
participating in this conference was a part of that. She was not about to let
Richard Pinkman wreck this week.