I actually let out a gasp seeing it, immediately covering up my mouth in embarrassment. I really hoped Duke didn’t hear that, as that would be more proof I was the vapid, dramatic movie star. I didn’t dare look at him. Plus, I was too busy taking in the house. It was built for a large family. Maybe added on to over generations. Everything about it called to parts of my soul that I didn’t know existed.
I was expecting a deep brown log cabin. Isn’t that what they specialized in here in Montana? But this wasn’t that.
It was a grand, Victorian-style house with a wrap-around porch. Pure white, stark against the landscape surrounding it. It had two floors, and had been taken care of with generations of love. Even from inside the cab of the truck, I could feel what this was.
A home.
Flowers everywhere. Colorful. Healthy. Well-tended, like the house itself. I had flowers around my house too, but I employed a small army of landscapers to tend to them. I had a feeling that the people who planted these in the soil were people who lived here.
There were outbuildings scattered around the vast property. Fields, mountains, animals, beauty, all stretching to the horizon.
I’d been all over the world. I’d seen many beautiful things. I was virtually numb to them now. Nothing wowed me. But right now, staring at this, it was safe to say I was wowed. For the smallest of moments, everything else melted away. The very reason I was here melted away, and I had a moment to just...marvel.
To covet this place, the life that must be lived here.
I wanted it more than anything. Right at this moment, I wished I’d done my whole life differently, that I’d chased other things, things that made me warm, easy and able to live a life in a place like this.
“One thing,” Duke said when he stopped the car.
His voice, terse and bordering on cruel jerked me from my fantasy, which was a blessing really, considering how dangerous it was to linger in fantasies. I moved my attention from the view to him. He was staring at me in that way I hated. In that forced, distasteful, professional mask.
As someone who was not a stranger to distaste—heck the media loved to hate me, and just check out the comments section of my Instagram—it affected me in a way it shouldn’t.
Duke’s dislike of me was a weapon. Something biological. He let it out into the air and I breathed it in. It seeped into my pores and sickened me.
“We’re together.”
I blinked at the words. They made absolutely no sense, nor did the meaning behind them. My heart skipped a beat nonetheless and I hated myself for continuing such a juvenile, school girl reaction to this man.
He was annoyed by my silent confusion. Everything about me annoyed him. Duke nodded his head to the house. “I don’t want my family caught up in this. I never see them. I sure as shit don’t want them thinking that the first visit in two years is because of a job.” He paused, still gripping the steering wheel. This pissed him off. Infuriated him. “So we’re together. Here for a break from the spotlight for you. Vacation for me.”
It took great effort to keep my expression even. “You want me to pretend I’m your girlfriend?” I clarified.
A muscle in his jaw ticked. He nodded violently. Only a man like him could nod violently. “Shouldn’t be hard. You’re an actress, aren’t you?”
People came rushing out of the house as Duke left me sitting in the car with the bomb that I was not only having to stay with his family, but also pretend I was his fucking girlfriend.
He was right, I could act, and I was great at it. No matter what anyone said about me getting roles for my tits, ass, or the fact I slept my way to the top, my one talent in life was pretending to be anyone but who I was.
In my childhood, it was a survival tactic.
In my adulthood, it was my ticket to millions.
Right now, I was certain it spelled destruction.
But I didn’t have any other choice but to get out of the car and pretend to be Duke’s girlfriend.
So I got out of the car.
Duke was being let out of a hug with an older woman with long blond hair in loose braids, wearing faded jeans with a huge belt buckle, a rust shirt tucked in and turquoise necklaces slung around her neck.
The closer I was the more beautiful I found her. She wasn’t wearing makeup. She had lines on her face, although not as many as she should for the age I guessed she was. She had an aura about her. I had always rolled my eyes at people spouting that shit in LA, but it was the only way I could describe it. There was an energy that surrounded her, that bounced off her fricking pores.
Her gaze was a weight on me. I carried it over the dirt driveway, onto the cobbled walkway toward the house. She was smiling. Easily. But there was something else in her eyes. Not recognition. That was something I easily saw in people. No, not that. It was something I didn’t understand, because it wasn’t shallow or hostile, the only things I had true experience in.
Duke was doing the whole, handshake-hug type thing with an older man that was about his height, slightly less muscled and leaner than him and a good few decades older.
“Mom, Dad, this is Anastasia,” Duke said, extracting himself from the man hug and moving back toward me.
To my shock, horror, and secret pleasure, he moved to put his arm around me and kiss my forehead tenderly. Naturally. Like it was something we’d done about a thousand times. He smelled of simple, expensive, and classy cologne, slightly like the burger he’d eaten for lunch and something altogether uniquely him.
All of this was so jarring to me that I froze and stood there like a stumped, mute robot. This was the first time I’d ever frozen in front of people. From the second I decided I’d become an actress, any stage fright or shyness was impossible. That would hinder my goal. My goal was to get enough jobs to make money. My desperation was stronger than anything else. Maybe there was a natural talent to act in there somewhere, but it was mostly desperation. I’d always been confident. Articulate. I’d met some of the most famous and powerful people in the world, I’d been flawless in my interactions with them. But now, in front of Duke’s parents, I was a mute idiot.
To their credit, both were polite enough to ignore this and moved forward to greet me.
His mother smiled warmly, her gaze on Duke and his arm. “It’s so nice to meet you, Anastasia. I love you already since you brought my son home to me.”
And somehow, as quickly as I had been in Duke’s embrace, I was in his mother’s. She smelled like Chanel and the outdoors. She was warm, and a hugger, and I hated it.
I was not a hugger. I did not know how to give casual, genuine human affection. Nor did I know how to receive it.
I could fake it all day long. I could portray intimacy and love so well I’d made a fortune off it. Won awards for it. But that’s the only thing I could do—fake things. In LA, it served me well, because even when the cameras were turned off, no one wanted real.
This place, these people—even though they were strangers to me—were not fake. This was the furthest thing from it. It was impossible to be fake in the face of this kind of real.
So I stood awkwardly and stiffly in the hug until she let go. But she didn’t let all the way go; she held on to my upper arms in a strong grip and regarded me. “Now I could pretend I don’t know you from your movies, but I’m no bullshitter and I love them, so I’m not going to pretend. I am going to say, you are just as stunning in real life, if not more.” She paused. “Then again, it could be that beautiful blush you seem to still have for my Duke. And I’ll tell you, I like that too.” She let me go then. “I’m Anna, by the way.”