Souvenirs (25 page)

“He didn’t want her with me,” Grace explained, careful to keep her voice low, “in case the press pounces.”

“Rubbish,” Camille snapped from the back seat, proving her hearing was above average. “He worries too much. It’s
Harrods
. You can’t be in London without seeing it, and he’ll never take you for proper shopping. Besides, I need your help in selecting chocolates to send your mother for her birthday.”

“It’ll be fine,” Fe muttered. She didn’t sound quite so convinced.

As they parked, a car pulled behind them and a group of photographers spilled out. Grace stared out the back window.

“Geez, it’s like a clown car at the circus,” she marveled.

“Should we leave?” Fe asked.

Camille already had the door halfway open. “Nonsense.”

The photographers crowded the car. Grace gulped. Ben would go nuts if anything happened to his mother. “You two stay in here for a minute. Let me deal with this.”

With shaking fingers and wobbly knees, she emerged into the melee. Strobing flashbulbs left her with spots in her vision.

“Grace, are you shagging Bennett Oliver?” One man yelled, loud enough to be heard across the street.

She took a deep breath. “Fellas? See that nice older lady in the car? She’s my mother’s closest friend, and she wants to share London with me. If she gets injured doing it, I’ll never hear the end of it. You know how mothers are. Back up, please.”

They did. That was a good start.

“Now to answer your question. It’s really no one’s business who I’m shagging. If you’d like a picture of me going into Harrods, fine. If you’d like it with them, I’ll ask. But you get one, and you have to be polite or I’ll ask someone to call the nearest cop.” She looked at the group surrounding her. “Agreed?”

They each nodded, and Grace returned to the car to ask Camille about a photo. She and Fe agreed and emerged into the crowd. Grace was careful to keep Camille near the open back door as the shutters clicked.

As the group dispersed, Grace reached for her purse and Camille walked to the front of the car.

Fiona sighed. “You handled that well.”

Weak with relief, Grace thanked her lucky stars. The appreciation died as Camille’s voice carried on the breeze.

“Oh no, Bennett and I met Grace on vacation.”

Chapter 22

Trousseau?

Ben stared at the picture under the headline until his vision blurred. When the elevator doors swung open, he charged down the hotel hallway and to Grace’s door. It shook under his fist.

“What the hell?” Grace growled as she swung the door open. Her hair was wet, and she clutched a towel around her. The shower spray hissed in the background.

Refusing to be distracted, he pushed inside and held up the paper. “I told you not to do this. I warned you what would happen.”

She dropped onto the bed. “You did.”

“Yet you did it anyway.”

“What was I supposed to do? Tell her you didn’t want us to go?”

“Yes.”

She sighed. “Yes, milord.”

“Don’t make light of this. You deliberately disobeyed me.”

“I’m a grown-ass woman, and so is your mother. We don’t need your permission to go shopping for chocolates and shoes. She insisted on going, we had a great time, and the paparazzi left us alone after they got their picture. We didn’t run, and they didn’t chase us. You should try it.”

“What?” he thundered. “One run-in with these vultures doesn’t mean you know anything about dealing with them. They aren’t your fawning fans. If you think you can treat them with respect and receive the same, you’re naïve.”

“I get it. I went for
shoes
and they’ve got me picking out china patterns. But I can’t help what they print. I know what happened, and I wish you’d trust me.”

“And I wish you’d give me a reason to,” he snarled.

She strode to the door and yanked it open, holding the towel closed between her breasts. “Get out of my room.”

He widened his stance, balling the gossip rag in his fist.

Her eyes narrowed. “Get out before I scream loud enough to bring the roof down on your arrogant head.”

He stalked out but then turned. “You are going to have to learn—”

She slammed the door in his face and shoved the security lock home. The noise echoed down the quiet hallway.

The elevator was waiting, and Ben walked all the way to the back. Grasping the rail, he wrestled with his temper. When his phone rang, he answered it out of habit.

“What?” he snapped.

“Nob, don’t be narked,” Fiona began, then she kept nattering. He’d walked out of the hotel and halfway to his car before her words sank in. He went cold.

“Wait. Back up. What?”

“Cam insisted, Ben. You’d have been so proud of Grace. I think the paps were scared of her by the time we got out of the car. It was like a spy mission. We each had a hand on the door in case we need to push off in a hurry. Grace even worked out a way to keep them off your scent. Until Cam spilled the beans. You can’t blame her though. She’s proud of you.”

“Umm, no. Can’t blame her at all. Can you ring Emily and tell her I’ll fetch Grace this morning?”

“Sure. She’ll be glad to lie-in.”

“Ta, muppet,” he mumbled as he rung off. Trudging back into the hotel, he sat in the nearest chair and waited.

Thirty minutes later, Grace walked into the lobby. Her steps slowed as he stood.

“I thought we could ride up together,” he offered. Panic set in as the silence stretched between them. When she nodded, he stepped closer and took her bags. “It’s the weekend. We could stay gone.”

“Have you lost your mind?” she asked.

“Fe called.”

“So everything’s rosy because
Fe
eased your mind? Bennett, this won’t work.”

“I’m a prat, I know, but let me try and make this up to you. Please.”

She made him wait for the longest minute of his life. “It’ll take me a bit to pack.”

“I had a role in a racing movie,” he said, grinning. “We’ll probably beat the crew there.”

She returned upstairs and came back in fifteen minutes, zipping her bag closed as she walked from the elevator. He fell into step beside her for the quiet walk to the car.

Once they were away, she shifted in the passenger seat to glare at him. “That was completely uncalled for.”

“I know, and I’m sorry,” he said.

“And you would’ve known from
me
if you’d asked. For the past year, I’ve tried to make amends for lying to you. Things between us will never work if you don’t trust me.”

“I’m sorry I hurt your feelings, and I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions. Again.”

He made a left into a coffee shop parking lot and queued into the drive-thru.

“I love this place. Emily and I stop here most mornings.”

He nodded, and then grimaced when he heard her gasp.

“She told you, didn’t she?”

“Yes.” In for a penny, in for a pound. “I also know you stop by the Asian market on the way home for sushi rolls and egg drop soup.”

When it was their turn to order, Ben asked, “What would you like?”

“Don’t you already know?” she groused.

He waited, holding up the line.

“Coffee, fruit salad, and an egg biscuit,” she whispered.

He turned. “One large coffee with two sugars and two creams, fruit salad with no grapes, and an egg sandwich—no meat, no cheese. Then one large black coffee and a ham breakfast sandwich, add egg and tomato. Please.”

“How did you know about the grapes?” she asked.

“You hate them,” he said as they crept toward the pay window. “In Paris you hid them under your napkin so no one would think you were rude.”

“Why do you have to do that?”

“What?” he asked as he handed off their food.

“When I want to be mad at you, you go and be all mushy.”

“Grapes aren’t mushy.”

“Yes they are,” she quipped. “They’re like squishy little cells from biology class.”

“I’ll never eat them again.” Once they were safely merged into traffic, he glanced at her. “For the record, our vacation lies cancel each other, and I do trust you. But the paps would trample you both and sell the photos of your broken bones, and I’d be hours away.”

“And, for the record, I’m sorry I worried you about your mother,” she sighed. “But I couldn’t tell her to go home.”

They ate in silence as sunrise colored the sky.

“Have you written your story for the anthology?” he asked.

“I have a rough draft.”

“What’s the plot?”

“A fortune-telling gypsy who’s actually a con woman. One day, her fake fortunes start coming to pass, and it gets her into some serious trouble.” She hesitated. “Would you like to hear it?”

“Love to.”

She read until they reached location, and he carried her bags to her office before loping off to makeup.

In the next chair, Susan rolled her eyes. “It’s about time.”

“Bite me,” Ben grumbled, his smile ruining the effect. “You’ve not been here long.”

“Not what I’m talking about, moron,” she drawled, a teasing glint in her eye. “It’s gonna be fun to kick your clueless ass.”

“Bring it on, love.”

Shooting went well, and they finished early on what was supposed to be a short day anyway. Ben found Grace in her office on her phone.

“No. I like my original covers. Changing them makes devoted readers feel manipulated, and—most importantly—I’m not exploiting the cast’s images. Because if this thing tanks, they have their pictures on a book tied to a crappy adaptation. It will ruin their brand.” She fell quiet, shaking her head and jostling her ponytail against her shoulders. “I’m the boss, Rick. No.”

She hung up and turned, blinking. “Hi.”

He bent and kissed her nose. “It won’t tank.”

“Thank you. Please don’t tell anyone I’m worried.”

“Not a word,” he said, crossing his heart. “Busy day?”

“I scouted back up locations with Maddie.”

“Do you want to leave now or stay and watch dailies?” he offered.

“Would you be mad if I said dailies?”

She was the perfect woman for him. “I was hoping you’d want to see them. We had fun today.”

They joined everyone inside the makeshift canvas theater, and Ted rolled the footage. Ben looked down at Grace’s hand in his before focusing on the screen. When it went dark, her breath came out in a rush.

“What?” he whispered.

“Ian and Zadie were make-believe when I wrote those fight scenes,” she replied. “I’ve been terrified you and Susan would get hurt because of something I wrote.”

“All in one piece,” he assured her as he stood. “Ready to go?”

There was a basket in the back seat of the Land Rover. “I wasn’t sure where we were going,” Grace explained, “so craft services put a few things together for us.”

“Brilliant,” he said. “We’re not going far, but the market may be closed when we get there.”

In minutes they’d put work behind them and green hills and fields in front of them. The sunroof was open, the windows were down, and Grace was holding his hand. The crowds and hustle of London fell away, the weirdness of red carpets and cameras were non-existent. For a short time, he could be peaceful.

As they drove, Grace fidgeted in the passenger seat, looking out every window and trying to see all the sights at once. “It’s beautiful,” she breathed. “I had no idea.”

“You’ve never been here?”

“I’ve never been anywhere,” she reminded him. “I go everywhere in my head. I researched until the librarians were sick of me and Google started showing UK Internet sites in my search results.”

He shook his head, laughing. “Your descriptions were so dead on, they made me homesick. I imagined E.G. Donnelley as an old man on a Yorkshire farm with his sheep and his dog, smoking a pipe and setting next to a fire with a kettle on the stove.”

“Best compliment I could get. Thank you.”

They left the main road to go deeper into the countryside, and Ben pointed out landmarks he knew as well as the tourist stops in London. Grace asked more questions and made him stop so they could explore. If local residents were nearby, she listened to stories until Ben reminded her of the time.

It was mid-afternoon when they reached his first destination. After a picnic in the sunshine, he led Grace down the sidewalks, through shopping districts, to the river.

“This is Skipton,” Ben explained. “After Dad died, Mum stayed on the farm as long as she could, but it cost more to operate when we had to hire help, and she insisted I stay in school.”

“You wanted to drop out?”

“Not really, but I wanted to help and I was disappointed she wouldn’t let me, that she treated me like a baby. She sold the farm, got a teaching job, and we moved here. It was difficult. I’d always roamed wherever I wanted, and someone had been at home to keep me in line. Here, I knocked about, got into rows, and made a lot of noise. Then Andrew roped me into football, and I met Noah and Fiona.”

“Where? Can you show me?”

They walked through a maze of streets until they reached his former home. On an interior street, crowded by other buildings, it was constantly in shadow. Behind its tall iron gate stood a cracked, moldy fountain.

He pointed to the second floor window behind a rusty patio railing. “I lived there from age eleven until Mum married Andrew.”

Her fingers laced through his. “It looks like . . .”

“Jail,” he breathed. “It always did. As much as I loved my mother, I hated it here. The flat was tiny, and the ceilings were low. By the time we left, I had to walk stooped to keep from banging my head. The upstairs neighbors had barneys every night, screaming at each other and breaking things against their floor. It was hell.”

Grace tugged him away. “Show me something else.”

On their way back to the car, he chose more pleasant sights—the home they’d shared with Andrew, the market where he’d had his first after-school job, the school where he’d been in his first play, and the football field. Then they left it behind.

As they turned onto the village road, his heart swelled. Stone walls and wooden gates bisected pastures. Streams and brooks bubbled over rocks. Trees stretched toward the sky.

Green, blue, gray; the colors had been part of his childhood, and at times he missed them to the point of aching. Fresh air brought the scents of newly turned earth and mowed grass. Villagers waved. Livestock bells clanged, and sheep bleated. Ben’s spine curved to the shape of the driver’s seat.

Home.

The knot of buildings at the center of the village was easily walked in minutes. Due to the late afternoon hour, the only sounds were muffled laughter from behind closed doors and the birds overhead. “This is Buckden.” His whisper was involuntary. “Where I was born.”

Hoping she saw what he did, the peace of it, he followed her gaze as it bounced from shop to shop, from gray granite to whitewashed stone. Every door was painted a bright color, and flowers spilled from pots on doorsteps.

“It’s lovely.”

Back in the Rover, they left the village and followed the winding lane up hill to the farm. Ben took a moment’s satisfaction in driving a smooth and groomed lane rather than the rutted track he’d grown up with. He parked in front of the house and the gravel crunched under the tires. The hills towered over them.

Grace scampered out before he could open her door, looking at everything, touching stones and smelling the flowers tumbling over the walls. With bags and supplies in hand, they walked through the gate and the front garden. Memories assailed Ben. Games, tears, bicycles, kittens, Jilly—who’d stayed with the sheep instead of moving to Skipton.

He swung the door open and followed Grace through the house, snapping on lights as she explored. The floors squeaked under their feet as they moved from room to room. She ignored the soot embedded in the stone fireplaces in favor of the notches in the kitchen doorframe where his father had measured his height. He pointed out the room under the stairs where he’d hidden from his mother when he was ill or cross.