As soon as they left my side, people started closing in. I’d never been afraid of crowds and I wasn’t now. I just wasn’t used to being bombarded anymore. Other performers, designers, directors, scriptwriters, and even a few people I thought might actually be their mothers approached me.
All of them asked the same basic questions. How are you? Are you back? Where did you go?
No one knew why I really took a break from Broadway but the rumors had been aplenty. The grapevine had carried a full harvest of speculation when I’d first announced I would be taking some time off. The phrase “heard it through the grapevine” had taken on a whole other meaning to me, considering that I’d heard about my own secret pregnancy via the tabloids. I’d also heard that I’d been brainwashed by aliens, had fallen in unrequited love with my last director—who was married—and a whole host of other things.
News spread like wildfire in this town, but rumors? They spread like only a good old-fashioned STD at an orgy could.
“Excuse me,” I said to the latest trawler fishing for the “truth,” and kept my head down as I made my way to the bathroom. Jules and Tani had been bringing me drinks for the last hour, but I declined any offers from anyone else.
My sparkling grape juice might look like champagne, but no one seemed to have realized it wasn’t. Except for one suspicious waiter who was carrying trays of the real stuff around and kept eyeing my glass like I was a traitor for not having gotten it from him.
A small hand closed around my elbow just before I walked into the ladies’ room. I tensed until I recognized Tani’s voice behind me. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” I turned to smile at her. “I just needed a breather. Are you guys almost ready to leave?”
“Nope.” Jules came to stand in the doorway with us, steadfastly ignoring all the side-eyed looks he got for being just about inside the ladies’ bathroom. He caught my gaze before giving me a deliberate but discreet onceover. “Unless you’re not feeling well, that is.”
He didn’t say it in so many words, but he was asking if I was feeling any symptoms acting up. I shook my head, reaching out to place a comforting hand on his arm. The man had become as protective as an attack dog. If he so much as caught a whiff that the stress was causing any out of the ordinary effects, he’d have me out of there in a heartbeat.
While it would’ve been a surefire way to get out of there, I wasn’t in the business of deceiving my closest friends. “It’s not that. I’m just a little overwhelmed by all the questions.”
Tani gripped my shoulder. “Just give us the signal when you’re ready to leave, okay?”
“Same to you.” She hadn’t been to one of these shindigs in almost double as long as it’d been for me. The only reason she’d even agreed to come to this one was for moral support in case I needed her.
Cash had been an unexpected surprise that had turned her life upside down. Since he’d been the result of a one-night stand, she’d known from the second she found out he was in her belly that she would be raising him alone.
My ever optimistic, “always looking for the bright side” best friend hadn’t batted an eye before saying farewell to Broadway. He might’ve been unexpected, but Cash became the apple of her eye and her reason for being on the very day she learned he was there.
She’d reached out to some of her contacts in the industry, had gotten a job as a secretary for a production company, and never looked back. Sometimes I envied her ability to approach life the way she did.
Even after my diagnosis, I hadn’t been able to accept that I was done with the stage. In my heart of hearts, I’d always wanted to get back to doing what I loved. I just hadn’t thought it would really be possible until now.
When Tani, Jules, and I walked out of the bathroom, I felt someone’s eyes on me. Jerking my gaze up, I saw the same guy who had been eyeballing me for most of the night. He hadn’t approached me yet, but I knew he would.
I didn’t think he would approach because I had a big ego and thought every man who looked at me would come on to me. I knew he would try to speak to me tonight because I knew who he was. Everyone did.
Nathan Biles was a reporter for the New York Times and one of the few journalists who merited an invite of his own to these parties. I had to steer clear of him, even if he was sex on a stick.
At six-five with his strong shoulders and the cleft in his chin, he resembled none other than Clark Kent himself. He even had the same day job.
But a night with him, even if I’d heard he had no problem with a little super-hero roleplay, wasn’t worth the fallout. Yanking my gaze away before he took it as an invitation to come up to me, I spent the rest of the evening sticking closer to my friends.
Nathan wasn’t easily deterred, though. Near the end of the night when I’d dropped my guard some, I suddenly became aware of a looming presence behind me.
I knew it was him before I even turned around. He grinned when I faced him, a predatory flashing of his perfectly white teeth.
“You making a comeback?” he asked without any pleasantries being exchanged.
I faked a smile of my own and raised one shoulder. “I’m not sure, but thanks for asking.”
Hard pass, buddy. Hard pass.
Jules caught my eye and nodded. We’d put in our appearance, talked, and stayed long enough not to be accused of leaving too early. But there was a time to come and a time to go.
It was definitely our time to go.
Chapter 3
CARTER
Mom insisted on having us all home for Thanksgiving every year. No matter how old we got, we Demming boys knew that the woman who raised us was not to be trifled with—especially not over this particular holiday.
We also respected her enough that none of us even tried trifling. Every year, regardless of what was going on in our own lives or jobs, all five of us put everything on hold and headed back to Conroe for the week.
Technically, it wasn’t just the five of us. It was all seventeen of us.
At twenty-nine, I was the youngest of the brothers and the only one without children or a love interest. And they never let me forget it.
It didn’t matter to my family that I drove a bad-ass motorcycle, was tough as nails to the outside world, or that I protected people for a living. When I walked into our parents’ house, I was the baby brother. The single, childless one who spoiled their kids and got to walk away without having to worry about breaking the habit of sugar before bedtime.
I shrugged when Tucker, my oldest brother, grabbed the candy bar out of my hand. “We’re not having a repeat of last year, Carter. I don’t care if you’ve got more muscles than brain cells now. I can still take you.”
“Boys,” Mom warned, tutting as she propped the hand that wasn’t holding a really big knife on her hip. Her kitchen might’ve smelled like my dreams of childhood, but the expression she was wearing came straight out of my nightmares. “No one is taking anyone. Carter, we’re having lunch in fifteen. You can give the kids more candy once they’ve eaten. Tucker, uncles and grandparents were put on this earth to spoil your kids. You only have to deal with it once or twice a year, so suck it up.”