Stunt Doubled: A Movie Star Standalone

Mac ordered another round of beer even though it tasted like beer-flavored water. “To Veronica,” he said once it arrived. We raised our glasses and clinked them together. Ronnie gave us a half-hearted smile and then downed half her drink. At least that stuff wasn’t strong enough to get her drunk. That was the last thing she needed tonight.

When at last everyone had eaten their fill—except for Ronnie whose meal was largely untouched—Mac called for the bill. “Of course I’m paying,” he insisted when Aiden tried to get it. “This is my first time ever having all my kids in the same place.” His eyes included me as he said it, which normally would’ve made me smile, but Mac words had likely upset Ronnie. After all, not all of Mac’s kids were here—Ronnie had a brother. But Mac had never been what you’d call a sensitive man.

“Are her bags in your truck?” Tanner asked Mac once the check was settled.

“Yeah, I locked them in the cab.” Mac shifted in the seat until he was able to fish his keys out of his jeans. He tossed them across the table to Tanner.

Ronnie stared at Tanner. “Are you driving me to my hotel?”

Tanner shook his head, not meeting her eyes. “Not exactly.”

He nudged me and I turned to Ronnie. “Let’s get up so he can slide out.” Once that was done, I sat down again but Ronnie stood at the edge of the table, her eyes on Mac.

“What did he mean, not exactly?”

Mac gave her what might have been an attempt at a reassuring smile. Or maybe not… whatever kind of expression it was, it looked very strange on the big man. Maybe he was rusty at parenting young women.

“Well, most of the cast and crew are staying in a small town about fifteen miles from the shoot. There are a lot of us, see, and there aren’t any hotel rooms left.”

“So where am I staying?” Ronnie said stiffly.

“With us,” Aiden said, cutting to the chase.

“What?” she shrieked, drawing attention from nearby tables. I couldn’t quite decide if she was going to bolt or blow up. “I don’t even know you.”

“If there were a spare bed in a hotel room with Tina or someone, we’d give you that, Veronica, but there’s not,” Mac said. “But these guys have a whole house. There’s plenty of room.”

I looked up at her. “It’s in Aiden’s contract that the studio rents a house for him when he’s on location, and we always stay with him.” Her expression softened slightly when she looked at me. “It’s a nice place. You’ll like it.”

“Don’t worry, Princess, you’ll have your privacy,” Aiden said, and Ronnie’s face hardened again. “We’ve got a tent set up in the backyard for you. We even dragged out a real mattress—an air mattress isn’t good enough for Mac’s little girl.”

Ronnie’s voice was the loudest I’d heard it so far tonight. “You have got to be shitting me.”

“We only saw one scorpion,” Aiden said, not even a twitch of his lips giving him away. The rest of us knew he was bullshitting, but Ronnie didn’t. Sometimes, given the kind of movies Aiden made, it was easy to forget that he really could act. Ever since grade school, he’d gotten a part, usually the lead, in every play. And he always knocked it out of the park. Always. It was a skill Tanner and I would never have, but one that I’d always admired.

But I had to admit that it was a bit of a dick move to use that skill tonight on a young woman whose life had just been turned upside down. Time to fix that.

“He’s joking,” I assured Ronnie. “We even switched rooms so you’d have your own bathroom. Not everyone can say that a movie star agreed to share a bathroom just for them.”

“Such an honor.” The glare she was giving Aiden clearly said that she didn’t appreciate his joke. I suppose that in her shoes, I wouldn’t have, either. It took my extremely limited acting abilities not to smile at the sour expression on her face, though.

I gave Aiden a stern look, too, but he just grinned. He could be an ass sometimes, but he was a good guy deep down. And it was funny… he liked the bells and whistles that went with being famous. He liked having fans, okay, women falling all over him. He liked people recognizing him at airports. But he could be down to earth, too. He wouldn’t mind sharing a bathroom with Tanner at all. After all, they’d shared a room for the first ten years of their life. Hell, if there really was a tent set up in the backyard, Aiden probably wouldn’t mind sleeping out there, scorpions or not.

Tanner appeared behind Ronnie, looking surprised to see her standing there, every muscle in her body tense. “We good to go?” he asked.