More Than Anything

“I have to be back in the city by New Year’s…the premiere…” I trailed off and looked at him, suddenly afraid—afraid of losing him, of losing the magic I’d felt in the one day I’d spent with him. “Do you think we could make this work?”

“I want to try,” he replied.

“Me too.” I sighed. “We have very different lives…”

He lifted my face to his. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I want to be with you. from the moment I saw you on those stairs, it has felt like…”

“Magic.”

He nodded. “I don’t know how we’ll make it work, but what I do know is I’m not letting you go, not if I can help it.”

I sighed and laid my head on his chest. “I’m not going anywhere.”

A few days later at the premiere, he was right by my side. It was the first time I’d been seen in public since Christmas Eve, and the press went mad. I held on to to Braden’s hand as we climbed out of the limo and stepped onto the red carpet, and from across the velvet rope, cameras flashed as the paps threw question after question at me.

“Where have you been, Allie?”

“Are you dating Braden Rhodes?”

“Where did you two meet?”

I smiled for them, feeling the comfort of Braden’s hand around mine. He waited while I took pictures with my co-stars, as comfortable on the red carpet as he was everywhere else. At the wide entrance of the event, the official network host covering the event approached me for a quick interview. When they finished asking the routine questions about the movie and my relationships with my co-stars, they got around to the one question I was sure they couldn’t wait to ask.

“You’re here with investment billionaire Braden Rhodes, and everyone has been speculating. Are you two together together, and is it serious?”

I smiled and met Braden’s eyes just a few feet away. He gave me a slow smile, and I felt my cheeks heat. Once again, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was.

“Yes, it is,” I said to the interviewer. “He’s my husband.”

Book Two

Present

Nine

Allie

I had never been so tired in my life. I looked from camera to camera, a fixed smile on my face. Luckily this was the last of the premieres for the latest movie in the box-office-smashing franchise I’d been a part of since the start of my career. After the rounds of premieres, I planned to take a break for the first time in year

s.

Other people would call me lucky—so many parts in so few years—but I didn’t feel lucky. I felt drained, weak, empty. I wanted to collapse on a bed and sleep forever.

“Gimme a smile, Allie.”

“Come on, Allie, let’s see the dress.”

“No date tonight, Allie?”

I smiled and waved toward the crowd with an expression of recognition at a random face. Who had taught me to do that? I couldn’t remember, in the long line of people who felt like I was their protégée. Older actresses, agent, directors, manager—it could have been anyone.

One more pose. I was counting the seconds in my head. I’d been standing and smiling for a count of two hundred and seventy-five already. I was exhausted and tempted to walk away, to just keep walking until I found a place to lay my head and sleep.

“You’re glowing, Allie. What’s your secret?”

How could I be glowing when I felt like a wreck? What did they see, these people? Inside, I still felt like the overweight girl who had worn braces all through high school. That feeling had never completely gone away, except for one short period in my life when I’d felt like the most beautiful woman in the world.

I tore my thoughts from that direction, forbidding my mind from venturing toward that place of hurt. I turned my gaze to a spot in the crowd where a couple of heavy girls were waving frantically at me, and I smiled in their direction. Another fan base—the swans, as I called them privately. They took encouragement from my journey that they would one day lose weight and blossom into beautiful women. I wanted to tell them all that they were already beautiful.