Chapter 35: Her Boyfriend

Ronan was lost in it—the soft give of her lips, the slow slide of her tongue against his, the way her body yielded under his hands. He mapped her through the thin fabric of her clothes: the full curve of her ass, the soft weight of her breasts, the tight peaks of her nipples already hard against his palms.

She smelled like warm skin and something faintly sweet beneath her perfume. Her mouth tasted of mint and coffee with milk, addictive in a way that made him deepen the kiss, chasing more of her.

This was Jane Kingsley—famous, untouchable, the kind of woman who had always existed on the other side of a screen—and she was kissing him back like she wanted it just as badly.

Then her phone rang.

The sharp sound cut through the heat between them. Jane tensed, breath catching, and gently pushed against his chest, breaking the kiss.

"Jane..."

She looked up at him, and she wanted to say it about as much as he wanted to hear it. "Ronan— I can’t. We can’t be doing this."

His hands were still at her waist and he left them there. "Why not? We’ve kissed harder than that on set."

"No." She shook her head. "That isn’t the same thing and you know it isn’t. There’s no set here, Ronan. Nobody’s paying either of us to do this."

He had something to come back at her with. She didn’t leave him room for it.

"I have to take this."

That was when he heard it properly. The phone was still going in her bag, the same ring that had cut through the middle of everything, and it hadn’t stopped once since.

He let go of her and nodded.

She got the bag open and had it at her ear before it quit. "Hey. How are you doing?" A few steps took her away from him, over toward the window. "Huh? No, I’m at the house. Hollywood Hills, where else. Feet up, doing absolutely nothing." She listened. "Don’t worry about me."

She kept on like that, easy and reassuring, working whoever it was around to whatever she wanted them at. It didn’t seem to occur to her that there was anybody else standing in the room.

It ran a minute, if that, and then she was done with it.

"Who was that?"

She put the phone back in the bag, and some color came up in her face while she was doing it. "My agent. She had a couple of things she wanted to run past me." The bag closed. "Mostly the promo tour for our show."

"Right."

And then neither of them had anything to put in the gap. Two minutes ago her hands had been up under his jacket. Now they were standing a yard apart in a room where the neighbor’s television came through the wall.

"I should probably—"

"Hold on." He got it in before she finished. "Weren’t we in the middle of something? You wanting me out of here and into somewhere decent."

She stopped where she was. "Oh. Right, that."

She took a second over it. "There’s a few buildings I’d put you in. I’ll text you the addresses."

"Alright."

He waited a moment before the rest of it, and then went ahead anyway.

"Look— I’m sorry about the kiss. Coming at you like that with no warning. I couldn’t stop myself doing it."

She didn’t answer straight off, and the silence sat between them long enough to be its own answer.

"It’s fine. It— it’s fine. Let’s put it down as nothing and leave it there."

He started to nod. Then he saw the red still sitting high in her face, and the nod stopped where it was.

"Can I ask you one thing straight?" He waited on it, long enough that she looked up. "Do you like me?"

The color went deeper on her. "I’ve already answered that! I’m concerned about you, that’s all it is, so don’t turn it into something else. And I’m a professional, Ronan. Off the set, I don’t have feelings for you."

She meant it, or she’d made up her mind to mean it, and either way there was nothing left in it for him to push at. He took it the way she’d handed it to him.

"I understand."

It landed on him harder than he let show. Whatever that had been a minute ago, it hadn’t felt like nothing to him.

"You’re probably right. We’ll leave it where it is and keep our heads on the job. I won’t bring it up again."

As soon as it was out of him the color started going out of her face. She looked down at her shoes and stayed there, and there wasn’t enough of her face showing for him to get anything off it.

A few seconds went by like that. Then her head came up and she met his eyes properly.

"Well. I’ll get going, then."

He nodded.

She fixed the cap down over her hair on her way to the door, and had a hand on it before she turned back.

"One more thing. Did you ever call that business manager? I gave you his number three weeks ago."

"Not yet." He put his hand to the back of his neck. "I’ll get to it."

"Call him. He’s good at what he does."

"I will. Thanks."

Then she was out, and he stood there until he couldn’t hear her in the hallway anymore.

It wouldn’t leave him. Her mouth, her hands, the smell of her that was still on his jacket. All of it, and none of it had been anything.

"I’m an idiot," he told the empty room. "Thinking she actually liked me."

He turned back in and stepped on something that slid out from under his foot.

Jane’s sunglasses, flat on the floor where they’d come off her.

He’d stood over her on the lot and made her put those on before he’d take her anywhere. She’d walked out of here in the cap and nothing else.

"Oh, hell."

He had them up off the floor and was out the door with them a second later. She’d been gone a minute, maybe less than that.

He was counting on less.

***

Jane came out of the building without the first idea that anything was missing off her face.

She took the street slowly on the way down. She’d never been in this part of Koreatown before, and there was more of it than she’d expected: signs in Hangul over every second door, a butcher’s window, the smell of grilling meat coming out of a place that wasn’t even open yet. She looked at all of it. It was the first thing in weeks nobody had scheduled for her.

She reached up and got the cap sitting straight, and pushed her hair back off her cheek.

Then a flash went off on her left, and the shutter sound came with it.

She knew that sound better than she knew most people’s voices, and she was turned around before she’d decided to turn. Three men, ten feet back, all three of them with a phone up and pointed at her.

Something was wrong. She went for her sunglasses to pull them down, and her fingers closed on nothing.

That was when she understood it. She’d walked out of his apartment without them.

She got the brim of the cap lower and put her head down and went, faster than she’d been going. The three of them came off the wall and came after her.

"Hey. Miss." The one in front had his phone up the whole time. "You look really familiar, you know that?"

"Take the hat off a second." The tall one had gone wide to get level with her. "Let us see you properly."

"You’re gorgeous, that’s all we’re saying." That was the youngest of the three, hanging off the back of them. "One look. I swear I know your face from somewhere."

"Ease up, man." The first one shoved at his arm. "You’re freaking her out."

"Yeah, seriously. You’re scaring the poor girl."

"My bad! My bad."

She got something out of that, at least. They didn’t have her. They were three men who’d seen a woman on a street and liked the look of her, and it hadn’t gone any further than that.

It didn’t slow her heart down any. She’d heard that tone plenty of times before, and she knew exactly what kind of men made it.

She lengthened her stride and they matched it, close enough now that she could hear their shoes.

’They’re going to be on me in a second. There’s nowhere on this street to go.’

Then a hand came down on her shoulder.

Her whole body went with the shock of it, and then it didn’t, because the weight of that hand was one she’d had on her for weeks. Whatever should have come next in her didn’t come.

She turned and it was Ronan.

"Ronan..."

He smiled at her, and instead of saying anything he opened her sunglasses and put them on her face himself.

"Act normal." He said it low, against her ear. Then his arm went round her waist and pulled her in against his side.

The three of them pulled up short.

"Who are you?"

"Me?" Ronan looked back at him and kept his voice easy. "I’m her boyfriend. Something you needed? Because you’ve been walking behind my girlfriend since back up the block, and I’m about one minute off getting the police out here to talk it through with you."

The word police landed and stopped all three of them where they stood. Their hands came up, the way hands do when nobody has done anything and everybody wants that on the record.

"Whoa. Hey. No problem here, my dude." The tall one was doing the talking now. "We thought we knew her, that’s the whole thing. Nobody needs to get the cops involved."

"Yeah, we’re good." The youngest was already turning. "We’re good, we’re going."

And they went, badly, the way people do when they’ve decided to look like it was their idea.