Star of His Heart
“So what are you doing for lunch, Ethan? We would love for you to join us,” Paige invited, interrupting his thoughts.
“Thanks, but I have a few errands I need to take care of,” he said, knowing it was a lie as he said it. But in this case, he felt it was justified.
“No problem. Maybe we can help with your errands and—”
“Thanks again, but that’s not necessary,” he said, pulling his keys out of his back pocket. He had planned to wait until the weekend to shop for Kendra’s gift, but now was just as good a time since these two were beginning to make a nuisance of themselves.
“I’ll see you ladies later. I need to leave so I can be back on time.”
For a second Paige looked like she was going to invite herself along. Instead she said, “Then I guess we’ll see you when you return.”
He only smiled, refusing to make any promises as he headed toward the exit. He was grateful for the additional hour and planned on making good use of it. Moving quickly, he reached for the door at the same time someone else did. The moment their hands touched he knew the identity of that person. Her scent gave her away.
“Excuse me.”
“Excuse me as well,” he said, taking a step back, opening the door and holding it for her to pass through. “You’re taking advantage of the extra hour, I see.”
Rachel smiled up at him. “I think everyone is.” She glanced back over his shoulder. “Where’s your fan club?”
His gaze scanned over her face and he saw a cute little mole near the corner of her lip. How could he have missed it yesterday? “My fan club?”
“Yes.”
They were walking together as they headed toward the parking lot. “Trust me, there are some fans you can do without.”
“And you want me to believe you’re not flattered?” she teased, speaking in a low tone when a crew member passed them on the sidewalk.
He slowed his pace as they got closer to where the cars were parked in the studio lot. “Yes, that’s exactly what I want you to believe.”
She stopped walking and so did he. “Why? Why does it matter what I think?”
Ethan thought she had asked a good question. Why did it matter what she thought? He knew the answer before he could pull in his next breath. He liked her, and if he had the time he would try to get something going with her. The thing was he didn’t have the time. He had to stay focused and doubted he would have time to pursue a relationship, serious or otherwise, with any woman anytime soon. He kept reminding himself that this was his big break, and he wasn’t about to mess it up by trying to get between any woman’s legs. He had gone without for six months, and he could go another six months or more if he had to.
But that didn’t mean that he and Rachel couldn’t be just friends, did it? It would be nice to have someone who wasn’t interested in anything more than friendship. The little attraction that had passed between them yesterday couldn’t be helped. After all, she was a nice-looking woman and he was a hot-blooded man. But as long as they kept things under control, being just friends would be fine.
“It matters because I like you and I’d like for us to be friends,” he said.
She pushed a wayward strand of hair from her face as she looked at him. “And why would you want us to become friends?”
Providing an answer to that question was easy enough. “The one thing I noticed yesterday was that you’re genuinely a nice person.” He chuckled then added, “Hey, you didn’t rag on me about being nervous. And it’s obvious everyone on the set likes you, from the maintenance man all the way up to the bigwigs. I figure with that kind of popularity, you can’t be all bad. Besides, you and Livia are the only two females on the set that I feel pretty comfortable around.”
She lifted a brow. “Livia?”
“Yes.”
She tilted her head back as if to give him her full attention. “Not that it is any of my business, but I thought that maybe something was going on between the two of you.”
He smiled. “There is, on the show. But it’s all acting. She’s supposed to be my new love interest for the next few episodes.”
She nodded. “Your scenes earlier were pretty convincing.”
He chuckled. “We’re actors. They were meant to be convincing.”
Ethan glanced at his watch. “I’d better get going. I want to pick up something for my six-year-old niece from the Disney Store. After watching The Princess and the Frog she’s into princesses, so I thought I’d pick her up a Princess Tiana doll.”
A smile touched the corners of her lips. “You have a niece?”
“Yes, Kendra. She’s my older brother’s little girl and, I hate to say it, but she’s perfect.”
She chuckled. “I believe you. And there’s a store in walking distance on Hollywood Boulevard. I’m headed that way myself to pick up something from the art supply shop.”
He turned the idea over in his mind only once before asking, “Mind if I tag along?”
He did his best not to watch the way her lips were tugged up in a smile when she said, “Sure, you can tag along, as long as we don’t talk about work. We need to give our brains a break.”
He jammed his keys in his pocket as he resumed walking by her side. It was a beautiful August day, and he had a beautiful woman strolling alongside him. Things couldn’t get any better than that. “So what do we talk about?” he decided to ask her.
She slanted her head to look at him. “You.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“Hey, we talked about me yesterday.”
Her mouth twitched in a grin. “Yes, but all I know is that you’re from Napa Valley and you have a niece.” She chuckled. “I guess I could go by what I’ve heard and—”
“Read in the tabloids,” he said, finishing the statement for her.
“No, I don’t do tabloids. It would be nice if others didn’t do them either, then they would go out of business.”
He glanced over at her and laughed. “You don’t like the right of free speech?”
She laughed back at him. “More like the right of sleazy speech. Ninety percent of what they print isn’t true, but then I guess that’s the price of being a star.”
He smiled, liking the way the sunlight was bouncing off her hair, making it appear even more lustrous. He liked the short cut on her. “Yes, it’s one of the detriments, that’s for sure. I just go with the flow. As long as I know what’s true about me and what’s not, I don’t lose any sleep.”
She didn’t say anything for a while, and then replied, “I hate being in the spotlight.”
She kept looking ahead, but he’d heard what she said. Clearly. If that was true, he wondered how she managed it, being a Wellesley. The company her family owned was so connected with this industry, and had been for close to thirty years, they were practically an icon in Hollywood.
He had researched information on Limelight when he’d returned to the States from abroad. He had even considered contacting them to handle his affairs before he’d chosen Curtis, who’d been a friend of a friend to whom he’d owed a favor. But he wouldn’t hesitate to consider them again when his contract with Curtis ended. Lately, he’d begun feeling as if he was making his own contacts. Everyone he knew handled by Limelight was pleased with its services. Not once had they ever been made to feel like they were a passenger instead of a driver.
“Being in the spotlight doesn’t bother me,” he decided to say. “It comes with the territory. But then, my family is well-known in Napa Valley, so I got used to having a mike shoved in my face, only to be quoted incorrectly.” He could recall a number of times when he’d been referred to as “the playboy Chambers” while Hunter had always been considered the one with a level head. The responsibly acting Chambers.
“And it doesn’t bother you?” she asked.
He met her gaze. “A distortion of the truth will bother most people, and I’m no different. However, I don’t lose sleep over it,” he said, shifting his gaze to study her features.
But he had a feeling she would.
There had to be a reason, and the question rested on the tip of his tongue.
But he had no right to pry. This woman owed him nothing, had no reason to divulge her deep, dark secrets and innermost feelings. Not to him. They weren’t husband and wife. They weren’t even lovers. Nor would they ever be.
No, he reminded himself, he was trying out the friendship thing.
Chapter Five
Rachel could feel the power of Ethan as he walked beside her. And although it sounded strange, she could feel his strength. Not only did she feel it, she was drawing from it.
The very thought that such a thing was possible should be disconcerting, but instead the knowledge seemed to wrap her in some sort of warm embrace. That in itself was kind of weird since they’d decided to just be friends. She was fine with that decision. In fact, she refused to have things any other way. She didn’t mix business with pleasure and she had too much on her plate to become involved in a serious relationship.
The last guy she had gone out with that she’d truly liked had been Theo Lovett. That had been a couple of years ago. They had dated for almost six months before she’d found out the only reason he’d been interested in her was as a way into her family’s business. Luckily, she’d overheard him bragging to a friend on the phone when he’d thought she was in the shower and out of hearing range. Theo’s explanation that he’d only been joking with his friend hadn’t made her change her mind when she had kicked him out that day.
She stepped out of her memory and into the present. Apparently she’d missed some of what Ethan had said while she’d been daydreaming, because he’d changed the subject and was talking about his family.
“My older brother’s name is Hunter. There is an eight year difference in our ages.”
She glanced over at him. Despite the fact he was a lot taller than she, walking side by side they seemed to fit, and their steps appeared to be perfectly synchronized. How was that possible with his long legs and her short ones? He’d evidently adjusted his steps to stay in sync with hers. It was a perfectly measured pace.
“There is a nine year difference in me and my sister’s ages,” she said.
“Really? Was your sibling as overprotective as mine while you were growing up?”
Rachel made a face. “Boy, was she ever. She was ten when our parents were killed in a plane crash, and I was one. Our aunt and uncle became our legal guardians, but somewhere along the way my sister, Sofia, thought I became her responsibility. It was only when she left for college that I got some breathing space.”
“Are the two of you close now?”
“Yes, very. What about you and your brother? Are the two of you close?”
“Yes, although I would be the first to admit he was somewhat of a pain in the ass while we were growing up. But I can appreciate it now since he covered for me a lot with my parents.”
She could imagine someone having to do that for him. She had a feeling he’d probably been a handful. “Was your family upset when you decided not to enter the family business but to forge a path in a different direction?”
The corners of his lips lifted in a wry smile. “Let’s just say they weren’t thrilled with the idea. But I think it bothered Hunter more than it did them,” he said. “The Chamberses have been in the wine business for generations, and I was the first to pull out and try doing something else. He lay on the pressure for me to stay for a while but then he backed off.”
He placed his hand at the center of her back when others, walking at a swifter pace than they, moved to pass them. She could feel the warmth of his touch through her blouse. She breathed in deeply at the feeling of butterflies flapping around in her stomach.
“What about your family?” he inquired, not realizing the effect of his touch on her.
“Once I explained things to Uncle Jacob and Aunt Lily, they were fine with it. They wanted me to do whatever made me happy. But Sofia felt it was part of our father’s legacy, that I owed it to him to join her and Uncle Jacob at Limelight. I had made up my mind on how I wanted to do things with my future, so instead of letting there be this bone of contention between us, she backed off and eventually gave me her blessings to do whatever I wanted to do with my life.”
She chuckled. “As a concession, I am letting Limelight Entertainment handle my career. I’m one of their clients.”
They paused a moment when they reached the security gate. They had deliberately walked the expanse of the studio lot to avoid running into the paparazzi that made the place their regular beat. Now that they were no longer in safe and protected territory, she noticed Ethan had slid on a pair of sunglasses. He had kept on his medical scrubs and had a stethoscope around his neck, and she wondered if anyone seeing him would assume he was a bona fide doctor walking the strip on lunch break.
She pulled her sunglasses out of her bag, too, although it had been years since she’d had the paparazzi on her tail. When she was younger, they’d seemed to enjoy keeping up with the two Wellesley heirs. She’d always found the media’s actions intrusive and an invasion of her privacy. She could recall all the photographs of her as a child that had appeared in the tabloids. That was the main reason she much preferred not being the focus of their attention again.
She glanced over at Ethan when his hand went to the center of her back again. It was time for them to cross the street, and he was evidently trying to hurry her along before traffic started up again. Her pulse began fluttering, caused by the heat generated from his touch.
They increased their pace to make it across the street. She checked him out from the corner of her eye and saw how sexy the scrubs looked on him. They had agreed to be just friends, she reminded herself. And it meant absolutely nothing that they had a few things in common. Like the fact that they were both renegades. That they were both members of well-known families. That they both had siblings who’d chosen to go into the family business. Overprotective, older siblings who meant well but if given the chance would run their lives.
Rachel inconspicuously scanned the area around them and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the paparazzi was nowhere in sight. But then they were known to bounce out from just about any place. Hopefully she and Ethan looked like a regular couple out on a stroll during their lunch hour.
A couple who were just friends, which was something she could not forget.
“You are such a good uncle.”
Ethan glanced at Rachel while accepting his change from the girl behind the counter at the Disney Store. Had he used his charge card his cover would have been blown. Even through his sunglasses, he could see the woman was looking at him, trying to figure out if he was a doctor or someone she should know.
He smiled at Rachel. “I’d like to think so, especially since I doubt very seriously that Hunter will have any more children,” he said, accepting the bag the cashier was handing him.
“Why is that?”
“He lost his wife in a car accident,” he explained as they headed for the exit. “He took Annette’s death hard and hasn’t been in a serious relationship since. It’s been three years now.”
“Oh, how sad.”
“Yes, it was. Hunter and Kendra were in the car at the time of the accident and survived with minor injuries,” he said. He paused a moment and then added, “Kendra was three at the time and very close to her mother. She felt the loss immediately and withdrew into her own world and stopped talking.”
The eyes that stared into his were full of sorrow and compassion. “She doesn’t talk?”
He released his breath in a long and slow sigh, wondering why he was sharing this information about his family with anyone, especially to a woman he’d only met yesterday. But there was something about Rachel that was different from most women he’d met. For one, she wasn’t trying to come on to him or jump his bones. It was as if she saw him as a person and not some sex symbol, and he appreciated that.
“She talks now, but not as much as she should for a child her age,” he responded. “And she talks more with some people than with others. I happen to be one of those she will talk to most of the time. But it took me a while to gain that much ground again after the accident.” He recalled the time he had come home from France to give his brother and niece his support. “But a part of Kendra is still withdrawn and so far no one has been able to fully bring her back. She’s been seen by the best psychologists money can hire. They practically all said the same thing. Kendra suffered a traumatic loss, and until she’s convinced in her mind that she can love someone again, become attached to that person without losing them all over again, she will continue to withdraw into her own little world.”
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