Free Fall Page 19

  Maggie’s breath mingled with his as she gave a shaky laugh. “I hope I never give you reason to press that button.”

  With one last, hard kiss, Jack turned toward the spectacular view, wrapping his arms around Maggie so that her back was against his chest and his face was next to hers. Secure in his arms, Maggie found she could actually admire the view without the fear of falling.

  “When I was flying in, Will and I saw a pod of orcas just off the north end of the island,” he said in her ear. He pointed toward the narrow strait. “Look, there they are.”

  Following his finger, Maggie saw them. Two orcas were making their way through the narrow pass, toward the bay.

  “Do you think they’re the same two we saw that first night?” she asked, watching them.

  “Maybe. I can’t tell for sure from here, but it looks like a male and a female.”

  Maggie thought back to that first night, when the female had headed toward the open sea, leaving the male to swim alone toward the bay. Now she watched as the two swam beneath the soaring bridge, both of them heading into the bay. She smiled and angled her face to press a kiss against the corner of Jack’s mouth, knowing she was finally where she was supposed to be.

  Epilogue

  Nine months later

  MAGGIE STOOD ON the wide deck with her elbows braced on the railing, drinking in the view of Cornet Bay. Through the open doors behind her, she could hear one of the twins wailing plaintively, and she smiled. Probably Paige, since she seemed to always be hungry and wasn’t shy about letting her parents know. Paige’s twin brother, Josh, was much mellower, and Maggie could already see which one of them was going to be a handful. Even at seven months old, they had their own personalities. She breathed in the crisp, salty air and closed her eyes, feeling completely content.

  “Hey, what are you thinking about?”

  Opening her eyes, she turned and smiled at Jack. She hadn’t heard him approach. He leaned on the railing beside her, cradling a beer in one hand, and watched her with warm eyes.

  “I was just thinking how perfect this house is, and how you’ve managed to capture the best of the view and the light,” she said, turning to look up at the soaring windows behind them.

  The post-and-beam house had been completed less than a month ago, and Jack had finally moved out of the small cottage and into his new home. “I’m glad you approve,” he said, grinning as he pulled her into his arms, “since it’s your house, too. And I have you to thank for pulling it all together. I couldn’t have done it without you. You make it feel like a real home.”

  Jack had done a three-month sea tour, and had returned just weeks before the house was completed. While he’d been gone, Maggie had helped to oversee the construction of the house, providing him with daily updates on the progress, since he couldn’t be there himself. She’d been waiting for him on the base the day he’d returned from his deployment, and he’d proposed to her that night.

  Now she slid her arms around his waist and pressed a lingering kiss against his mouth. “It is a real home. It’s our home.”

  “Hey, you two, knock it off.”

  They turned to see Eric step onto the deck, a baby tucked in one arm, greedily sucking on a bottle. The twins were just over seven months old, and although they were both a little small, Maggie felt sure they would soon catch up. Paige was certainly doing her best, and Maggie reached out to stroke the infant’s soft cheek.

  “She is so perfect,” she murmured, watching the baby. As if sensing she had an appreciative audience, Paige gave her a watery smile and gurgled, making them laugh.

  “Maggie, can you take Josh for a minute? I want to show Danielle the necklaces I made while I was in California last month.”

  Maggie’s mother, Valerie, stood in the doorway to the kitchen, holding little Josh, while Danielle stood right behind her, looking tired but happy.

  “Of course I’ll take him,” Maggie said, moving forward, but Jack was there before her.

  “I’ve got him,” he said, taking the baby from Valerie’s arms with an easy confidence. Josh’s eyes widened and he stared at Jack for a long, steady moment before reaching out one chubby hand toward his beer. “Not so fast, little man,” Jack laughed, and handed his beer to Maggie. “Maybe when you’re older, and your parents aren’t standing right there.”

  “Yeah, okay, you’re off my list of potential babysitters,” Danielle called to him, but she was laughing as Valerie led her back into the house.

  “Wow,” Maggie murmured, watching Jack and her brother as they each held a baby. “Where’s my camera when I need it? Nobody will believe this unless I capture it on film.”

  “Hey, no fair,” Eric protested, easing himself into an Adirondack chair. “I’m always holding one of them.”

  “You’re right,” Maggie said in an indulgent tone. “You’re a wonderful father.”

  She walked over to where Jack stood cuddling little Josh, looking completely comfortable in his role as future uncle. The baby had wrapped his fist around one of Jack’s fingers and was watching Jack’s face intently.

  “Are you ready for this?” she asked.

  He looked at her. “For what? Your whole family descending on us?”

  “Well, that, too,” she said, smiling. “No, I meant are you ready for this—a family?”

  “That’s why I gave you a ring,” he said, catching her hand and lifting it to his mouth. The diamond solitaire on her finger sparkled in the sunlight. “Because I’m ready. I’ve been ready since the day I met you.”

  “Oh, Jack,” she whispered, feeling herself go soft at the tender expression in his eyes. “I love you so much.”

  Leaning forward, he kissed her over the baby’s head. “I love you, too.”

  “Do you think your grandparents would approve? Of the house? Of me?”

  Jack smiled into her eyes. “Sweetheart, I know that wherever they are, they not only approve, they are absolutely ecstatic. We’re both exactly where we should be. We’re home.”

  Maggie leaned her head on his shoulder and looked out over the water, knowing it was true. She was exactly where she should be. Where she wanted to be. Forever.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt of Waking up To You by Leslie Kelly!

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  1

  “WAIT, YOU’RE ASKING me to marry you?”

  Her mouth open, Candace Reid stared into the beautiful, sky-blue eyes that were the dominant feature of the most perfect male face she had ever seen. Thomas Shane, handsomest man on the planet, hottest young up-and-comer in Hollywood, subject of fantasies and object of obsessions, had just said the words every other woman in America would kill to hear from his lips. And he didn’t appear to be joking.

  “Yes, I am. Marry me, Candace. Say yes.”

  “But...but...y
ou’re a movie star.”

  “So what? You’re a movie costumer.”

  She grunted. That so didn’t count. Her check on their last film was smaller than his by at least four zeroes.

  “We’ve known each other since kindergarten.”

  “Nursery school. Say yes and I will at last forgive you for stealing my Fruit Roll-Ups during nap time the day we met.”

  She growled. She hadn’t taken the damn Fruit Roll-Ups. “That was Joey Winpigler...don’t you remember his green teeth?”

  “That kid’s teeth were always green.”

  She groaned, realizing they were getting off topic—off this insane topic. “I can’t marry you...you’re my best friend.”

  “And you’re mine. That’s why it’s so perfect.”

  Throwing her arms up in frustration, she exclaimed, “But, Tommy, you’re gay!”

  He waved an unconcerned hand. “Oh, that.”

  “Yeah. That.”

  “It’s really no big deal.”

  “I disagree. I don’t have a penis, and they’re right up there with raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens for you.”

  “Well, I’ll admit they are among my fav-o-rite things.”

  Of course Tommy would get the show-tune quip—he’d starred in every musical in their high school and could tap-dance his way around a chorus line of Rockettes. Not that anyone who had seen him in his last film, taking out an entire terrorist camp single-handedly, would believe that.

  “But really, penises schmenises, most men are jerks,” he insisted. “I adore women.”

  “Not sexually.”

  He plopped down beside her on the buttery-soft leather sofa in the living room of his Malibu condo. “Sex isn’t everything.”

  “Yeah, right.” For him maybe it wasn’t, since his career was his entire focus right now. But for Candace, who liked sex a lot, even if she seldom got it, it was kind of a biggie.

  “I think maybe I’ll just be asexual from now on.”

  She snorted and rolled her eyes.

  “What? I can love from afar. It’ll be all tragic and shit.”

  “Like the mad crush you had on that guy who played your grandfather in your second film?”

  He pursed his lips, looking prim. “Every serious actor has a crush on Sir Anthony Hopkins. He’s a God.”

  “But not every serious actor goes trolling for a little strange cock when he’s out of town, away from the cameras.”

  “Big strange cock,” he retorted. “And that’s a secret.”

  “This is nuts. Stop playing around.”

  “Babe, I’ve got to keep my personal life on the down-low for now,” he said, growing serious. “If I don’t, my superhero action-movie days are over. It sucks, but you know it’s true.”

  Part of her wanted to urge him to be true to himself and stop hiding the man he was. She’d known about his sexual orientation for as long as he had, having realized it in middle school when Tommy had gotten pissy about her landing a date with the hottest guy in their class. It hadn’t been hard to figure out who, exactly, he was jealous of. The two of them had talked about it, acknowledged Tommy was gay and that was that.

  Her sister, Madison, the only person in the world to whom she was closer than Tommy, hadn’t figured it out quite as quickly. But once she had, the three of them had become like the Three Musketeers, fighting for Tommy’s right to be himself.

  And now he wanted to hide who he was for good.

  “There have been rumors,” he said, not meeting her eye.

  She shrugged. “There are always those kinds of rumors about movie stars.” Tommy wasn’t the first Hollywood celebrity to worry about in-the-closet stories, and he wouldn’t be the last.

  He rested his head on the back of the couch and stared at the ceiling. “I’ve also gotten a few veiled threats.”

  Oh, hell. “What do you mean? Threats from who?”

  “Just somebody I had a fling with last year.”

  “Blackmail?” she said, indignant on his behalf.

  “Not yet. But it could get there. He’s making rumbles about supposedly having some kind of proof.”

  Candace glowered at him for being careless. “Tell me you didn’t let some dude take pictures.”

  “Do I look mentally challenged?” He sounded indignant.

  “Sorry.”

  “And before you ask if I left DNA on a Gap dress, let me explain. It was just some text messages.”

  “They can be faked,” she said, waving an airy hand.

  “Yeah, but look at what happened to Tiger.”

  True. Text messages could definitely come back to bite you. She made a mental note. Next time you’re about to break up with someone, borrow his phone to destroy the evidence first.

  He turned to face her. “So you see why this is so important? With that tabloid article hinting I was going to settle down with you, I think I can put out the fires for a while. Once I nail this franchise, I can get haughty and walk away to do high-minded indie films.”

  Haughty wasn’t hard for Tommy, although she knew it was a pretense. He was almost always in character. Right now it suited him to act the part of spoiled Hollywood star. But playing the role of her husband? That would take some Oscar-worthy skills.

  “Please, Candy, I’m begging you,” he said. “Just give me a few years—five max. You and I both know it wouldn’t be the first five-years-to-hide-the-fact-that-I’m-gay marriage in Hollywood.”

  Five years. Could she really give up five years of her life? Okay, so she was only twenty-six, she wasn’t seeing anyone and had no interest in settling down and having babies until she was in her thirties. Still...it was quite a commitment.

  “And there’ll be no prenup. You’ll get half of whatever I earn.”

  Her eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.

  He saw her reaction and pounced. “You know you could use the money, since you won’t let me lend it to you. You can help out your parents and your sister, give your grandfather the money to get that broken-down winery he bought last year up and running.”

  That was all true. Curse him for understanding her well enough to know exactly which buttons to push.

  “And it’ll be fun. We’ll walk the red carpet together.” He dropped an arm over her shoulders and pulled her close. “I’ll be all romantic when I give my Oscar acceptance speech and thank the wildly sexy woman who made it all possible.”

  Hmm. That sounded like fun.

  “There is still one big problem,” she finally said. “I like sex. Five years is a long time to go without it.”

  “You don’t have to,” he insisted.

  “Eww,” she said, shoving his arm off her. “That’d be like having sex with my brother. My gay brother.”

  “I wasn’t talking about me! You can have affairs.”

  “Tacky. Besides, that’d really cause some gossip. I’m already on the radar of those leeches.”

  She hated that, truly. Being the subject of gossip was infuriating, and she doubly hated the idea that some people might have decided she got her start in Hollywood because of Tommy. If anything, he’d gotten his first break through her. He’d come to visit her at work at one of the studios one day, met a casting director and the rest was history.

  “Look,” he said, “we both know you’ve got a gazillion gigabytes of internal memory when it comes to sex. You’ve already stored up experiences that helped you through dry spells in the past.”

  She couldn’t arg
ue that, but did stick out her tongue at him. It wasn’t nice of him to point out all those dry spells, usually caused because Candace had a bad habit of going out with guys who were far more focused on material things and their own ambitions than they were on her. “Your point?”

  “My point is, I’ll send you on a trip to France for two weeks. You can boink your way from Bordeaux to Paris, free from the paparazzi. Once you back up some orgasms on your libido’s hard drive, you can come home and we’ll announce our engagement.”

  He always managed to make her laugh. “And what if my vaginal computer crashes? Am I supposed to zip off to a bordello to do an emergency dump onto my flash drive?”

  “I bet you’d make it two years. Then, when you’re crawling out of your skin, I’ll pay for you to go to Australia and you can throw a few shrimp on your barbie.”

  He said the words in a cheesy down-under accent, and she couldn’t help laughing. The whole thing was absurd, ridiculous.

  But, craziest of all, she was seriously thinking about it.

  Not just because she loved Tommy, or because it might be fun playing Hollywood wife. No, because she could really use the money. Her parents were happy in the Florida home where she’d grown up. But since her dad’s heart attack two months ago, they’d been stretched thin financially.

  Her sister had just finished grad school and had a mountain of debt. And her wonderful, willful grandfather had, indeed, been struck by some wild notion and bought an old run-down winery in Northern California a year ago. The place had nary a grape in sight, and Grandpa had no clue how to grow them, much less turn them into wine. But he was determined to make a go of it.

  So, yeah, the money would come in handy. Tommy had offered to help out, but she wouldn’t accept charity. She always earned what she got. And frankly, if she had to give up sex for five years, she would earn every penny. Because, no matter what he said, she’d never risk having an affair after their engagement was announced, a time when she’d be more under the paparazzi spotlight than ever. This sowing-her-wild-oats-in-France thing would be it, the full extent of her sexual activity for five long, lonely, vibrator-filled years.