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I manage a smile. “No.”
“Okay then. Have a good day, and Grace, kindly refrain from speaking to the press.”
As if I would, but the chief doesn’t know that. “Yes, sir.”
The air in the room has grown stifling, and I’m glad to escape. Isla is hanging around the hallway, and when she sees me, she takes my arm and takes me to the ladies’ changing room and closes the door firmly behind us. Not that it’s necessary. We’re the only female firefighters in the station, and the changing room is private.
I sit down on the bench, proud of myself for holding it together.
“How are you?” Isla asks.
My response? I burst into tears. Messy, ugly tears. I cry for my heart which was slowly falling in love. I cry for broken dreams. I thought I had finally found love. The man I was going to spend my life with.
“I’m sorry.”
“No!” Isla says. “You’ve had a massive shock. Don’t apologize for crying. It’s okay.” She holds me close, and fresh tears come to me.
“He lied to me!” I say harshly. The shock is gone. What I feel now is red hot anger. “He used me, knowing all along he would be out of my simple little life and back to his fancy one.”
“That’s a bit harsh, Grace,” Isla says.
“What do you call it when you let a man into your life in all the ways that a man can, and then you find out later that he lied to you?” My mouth tastes bitter. Pain ripples through me, and my skin burns with shame. Had he been laughing at me the whole time that I could imagine a big movie star like him would be interested in a simple girl like me?
It hurts. But I only have myself to blame. I ignored all the warning signs, some so big that they were practically sticking out of his forehead. How could I have thought it nothing that he had never taken me to his place? For almost three weeks of sleeping together he always found a way to divert my attention from wanting to go to his place.
I was such a trusting fool.
“He might have a good explanation for it,” Isla says. “Don’t condemn him before hearing him out.”
I shake my head. “I don’t want to hear his explanations. There’s no explanation for lying to someone.”
A knock comes on the door.
“I’ll get it,” Isla says and hurries to the door.
“There’s a call for Grace in the chief’s office,” someone says.
I do my best to wipe my face before going to the chief’s office. Thankfully, it’s empty, but the phone is out of its cradle. I pick it up, my heart pumping because I have an inkling who it is.
“Yes,” I bark rudely.
“Grace, it’s Jack. You’re not picking up your phone. I was worried.”
I really want to hear what lie he’ll come up with. Then maybe I can have a chance to laugh at him as well. “You found me.”
“I owe you an explanation. I’m really sorry it came out before I could tell you myself.”
He doesn’t even have a ready lie. I’ve wasted enough time. “Look, Jack, Kyle, or whatever the fuck your name is, I’m not interested in an explanation. What I want you to do is to get out of my life. I never want to see or hear from you ever again. Got it?”
I don’t wait for an answer. I bang the phone back to its cradle and experience a moment of satisfaction. Except that it’s short-lived and shallow. Two seconds later, my chest constricts, and I’m a breath away from bursting into tears in the chief’s office.
Then the bell goes off, and a dispatch goes off over the speakers. I’ve never been so pleased to hear that sound.
Chapter 13
Jack
They are everywhere. I feel as if I’m under siege. I can’t leave my house, and Grace won’t take my calls. I’m growing more desperate by the day and getting very little work done. I’m waking up at night drenched in sweat. I can’t lose her. Not when I just found her. It’s afternoon, and I’m in the library practicing scenes from the movie, which we’ll start shooting in two weeks. But I’m not working. All I can think about is Grace.
We’ve tried to figure out how the paparazzi caught on that it was me, and we’ve come to the conclusion that it was the night I took Grace out to dinner at La Sade. They figured that I had to be someone monied, and they probably followed me as I led them home. From there, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. I’m glad the fuckers didn’t bother Grace. They didn’t follow her trail, and I’m glad they are not intruding into her life.
I need to talk to Grace and explain myself. I fear that this is it for us. More so now that I know why she would never date a celebrity. I need to convince her that it can work between us, but to do that, I need to see her or at least talk to her.
