AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Okay, so who else? You said you don’t know a lot of people here. And that you’re gun-shy from LA?”
“I lost touch with show friends after I left Bridge. It’s a long story. Some stuff went down with the crew, and—I needed to start over.”
“Any heads I need to knock together?”
She smiles. “No. Just people being people. Believing rumors, taking sides.”
I want to know more, but Ivy’s already made it clear that stories about the end of her time in LA require alcohol. “What about before that? College?”
“I had good friends in college, but it got weird with them when I got famous. The first time my assistant accidentally replied to one of my personal emails, my friend sent me a ragey response and said she was done. After I did the engine-room scene, one told me that she didn’t want anything to do with my kind of ‘exposure.’ A couple others drifted away.”
“Jesus!”
The urge to break a few kneecaps is strong again.
“Obviously they weren’t the greatest friends to begin with. It made me realize that you can’t trust most people to have your back.” She shrugs, trying to make it seem like she doesn’t care, but then she bites her lip again.
Maybe I will knock a few heads together. How can anyone not want to be Ivy’s friend? She’s great—smart, funny, kind, gorgeous…though maybe that last one isn’t a trait they value? How the hell do I know?
“What about you?”
It takes me a second to realize she’s asking about my friends and family. “I have my agent. A few guys I pal around with occasionally. I get friendly with whatever cast and crew I’m filming with. But friends? Not so much.”
“Your dad? Are you going to tell him about us?”
Us.
I like the sound of it—more than I should.
Make-believe. That’s all this is. Don’t read anything into…anything. “He knows.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Knows the truth?”
For a moment, I think she’s talking about the fact that I’ve gotten off track a bit. That I’ve given way too much thought to what it would be like to strip her out of her clothes. Tongue my way down her body. Taste her at great length.
Nope. She means the truth that we’re faking it.
Pull it together, Shane.
“Not exactly,” I say. “He decided on his own that we’re faking it for PR reasons.”
“Because he knows you would never actually get married?”
“That and because he has a jaded view of relationships. He’s not much for connecting with people on anything beyond a transactional level.”
I can tell she wants to ask me more, her eyes moving curiously over my face, but she doesn’t.
“You have a good relationship with your brothers, though, right?”
“They’re good people. But?—”
I stop.
“What?” she asks gently.
“We were really close as kids. We had a blood oath that we’d stay in Rush Creek and run the ranch together.” I hold up my hand, showing her the scar on the meat of my thumb. “Then we all fucked it up, one by one—me by running away to Hollywood and basically declaring myself in my dad’s camp instead of my mom’s, granddad’s, and theirs. Now we’re just a bunch of guys who love Hanna.”
Her expression is soft. “I don’t know,” she says. “Sonya came through for you pretty damn fast when you needed help with the proposal. So I’m guessing that means Quinn loves you a hell of a lot.”
