Runaway Groom (I Do, I Don't 2)

A full-time actor who’s away on set isn’t the man for the job. We both know it.

“What about you?” she asks, her smile dimming a bit. “What’s your heart’s grand desire?”

I feel a quick stab of desire to be honest—to be brave, as she just was, and lay out that part of myself I buried deep after Layla left me.

But the desire to play it safe is just as strong. Stronger, apparently, because when I open my mouth, it’s not the truth that spills out.

Or rather it is, but not the whole truth—not the truth that matters the most.

“I want to be a silver screen legend,” I say with a wink. “I want to be remembered along with Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne. I want my name to be uttered in the same breath as those of Harrison Ford and Clint Eastwood and Paul Newman.”

“Ah yes, the almighty Oscar hunt,” she says, resting her chin on her hands.

“Not so much,” I correct. “I wouldn’t mind, and I sure as hell intend to have one of those on my mantel someday. But what I’m after is more than a statuette or the label of Best Actor next to my name. It’s more. It’s…”

I break off, not really sure how to explain, and too embarrassed to admit that nobody’s ever asked me this before.

“It’s a feeling,” she completes for me. She’s smiling a little, but it’s not mocking. “You want people to feel something when they hear your name. Or more specifically to remember how they felt when they watched you in a particular movie.”

My smile slips, a little unnerved at how much she gets it.

“Yeah, exactly.”

This time I don’t catch the server’s eye in time to shoo him away, and he approaches with the dessert menus, although other than telling us the pineapple upside-down cake with lime crème anglaise is their most popular dessert and is “not to be missed,” he doesn’t linger.

I tell Ellie to choose, and she alternates between chewing her lip in consideration and musing out loud whether she’s in a “chocolate mood” or a “fruit mood.”

It doesn’t matter. I’ll order her both. I’d order the whole damn menu if she wanted. But she doesn’t want. The stuff will never be enough for Ellie. Not the five-star resorts, not the lobster entrées, not the whole dessert menu.

Ellie wants what I can’t give, and the real kicker? I want what she can’t give.

That truth I wasn’t brave enough to tell Ellie?

I want someone who wants me in spite of the actor stuff, not because of it. I’m not an idiot. I know that along with the perks of being in a relationship with an actor comes a whole bag of shit. Months spent apart. Walking the red carpet even when you’ve got the flu. Missing birthdays and holidays because a night shoot runs over. Knowing that your significant other has to film a sex scene with a beautiful actress and then having to watch that sex scene at the movie premiere. Strangers demanding selfies when you’re trying to have a date night.

The list of bullshit is endless. I know that. Layla didn’t want it. Ellie doesn’t want it. I don’t blame them, I get it.

But once, just once, I want someone I care about to look at the crapshoot that is my life, to take in the Jilted contract and the Killboy movie shoots and the never-ending tabloid rumors and say, “Yeah, that stuff sucks, but Gage is worth it.”

I want to be worth it.

Just once.

Ellie

Dinner with Gage was both magical and melancholy. So were the sexy times that followed it. Our touches were both frantic and lingering, as though we were all too aware that our time together was down to hours.

Gage fell asleep almost immediately after, his arm heavy on my waist, his breath steady against the back of my neck.

But I can’t fall asleep. Maybe because of the pre-dinner nap, maybe because of the coffee with dessert.

Maybe because I’ve got too much on my mind. On my heart.

I glance at the clock. It’s only eleven, which means it’s one in the morning in California. Too late to call normal people, but…

I ease out from under Gage’s arm, moving slowly so as not to wake him.

His cellphone’s on the desk, but even if I knew his passcode, it feels like far too big an invasion of privacy. And since mine is still hidden under my pillow at the villa, I pick up the cordless phone on the desk. The long-distance call will be expensive, but I’ll keep it short and pay Gage back later.