The Things She Says (14 page)

“You’re the only person I want to be photographed with.” A camera, a huge professional number like from a movie set, appeared in his hands from its hiding place under a table. He pushed some buttons and positioned it carefully on the scarred Formica tabletop. Suddenly, the camera was on them both, recording.

Kris took her hand and squeezed, so she couldn’t move out of range. “This time, everyone, especially the media, will get the story right. Once upon a time, there was this guy who had all these chaotic, extreme emotions inside, and he was so afraid of letting those things control him, he pretended he didn’t feel anything at all. Then he met this extraordinary woman who really got that. And this guy fell in love with her but couldn’t figure out how to get past being that same guy so he let her go. Now he’s trying to get her back.”

Kris was in love with her? Definitely a dream. “How does the story end?”

“With a translation.” He nodded to the card hanging from the sunflower still clutched in her fist. “It says, ‘The first time I saw you, you reminded me of a living sunflower. Beautiful and open.’”

With a firm hand, he guided her to the next person, who held the next flower. Her third-grade teacher, Mrs. Cole, smiled and handed off the bloom. “I’m jealous you got to stay in such a fancy hotel,” she said with a wink.

Coupled with Mrs. Johnson’s nice comment, it warmed her. Not everyone thought she was the devil incarnate. These people were here to support her. They were here because Kris had asked them to be. He was rescuing her from the bad press, because that was what he did.

Kris leaned in, brushing her ear with his lips and as her lobe burned, he said, “This one reads, ‘The second time I saw you, your hair smelled like coconut, and I couldn’t get the scent out of my mind.’”

Where was he going with all this loveliness? Before she could blink, Kris shuttled her to the next flower, held by Pearl. “This card says, ‘I nicknamed you my desert mirage, a shimmering, gorgeous fantasy rising up out of the bleak landscape.’”

A nickname.
Oh, no.
“The stages. You have all the stages written down on these cards.”

Impishly, Kris smiled and handed her another flower. “‘The Scrambler. Then the Ferris wheel.’”

He was reading the cards in public. Great balls of fire.
In public.

“Everybody out. Now.” She turned to address the room at large before Kris could start on the next flower, which undoubtedly read:
You exposed your breast, showed me the butterfly tattoo and I tasted it in the elevator.
“I appreciate everyone coming out today. Your support means a lot. But some things are best done without an audience.”

Grumbling, everyone shuffled to their feet and filed out slower than lizards molt. The flower bearers laid the stalks in a pile on a nearby table. Pamela Sue grinned and hustled a glowering Bobby Junior out the door. VJ made a mental note to thank her later for taking care of all this.

Finally, they were alone.

Alone, with Kris. She never thought she’d see him again, never mind while he spouted romanticisms in that gorgeous voice.

“I wasn’t going to read them all aloud,” he said. “That’s why I wrote them in Greek.”

“What else do the cards say?” she asked, her throat raw with emotions too big to process.

“Lots of things. Like, how I love being your guinea pig. Six-forty-five, which is what time I watched the sunrise while I held you. This one.” He pulled a bloom from the stack and swept it across her cheek. “This one says, ‘Love, passion and friendship. You gifted me with all three, and I want to spend my life giving them back to you.’”

He dropped the flower, pulled something out of his back pocket and held it up. Her lungs collapsed.

A ring box.

Hesitantly, he fingered a lock of her hair. “I didn’t put it in a big box and let you unwrap it. Our relationship is based on honesty. I didn’t want you to have to guess. So you know right up front that I’m asking you to marry me.”

“Why?” she blurted out because her brain was stuck. Her pulse was stuck. Everything was stunned into immobilization.

His stormy eyes roamed over her face. “There’s only one reason to marry someone, or so you’ve thoroughly convinced me. Because I love you and can’t live without you.”

God Almighty. Kris had been possessed by aliens. “Eh.” She waved it off. “You’re only suffering from a hormonal imbalance.”

Without missing a beat, he flipped the hinged lid and took the ring, holding it out between two steady, golden fingers. “It’s inscribed. Will you read it?”

Gingerly, she accepted the pale circle of metal—Holy Heaven, it was a huge, beautiful square-cut diamond exploding with fire—and read the inscription carved into the platinum. Her knees turned to jelly.

Stage Seven is Forever.

When she couldn’t speak, he said, “At Casa di Luigi, you told me I’d hit all the stages. But I missed one. Happily ever after.” He plucked the ring from her fingertips. “Will you allow me to put this on?”

This wasn’t solely a rescue, some elaborate scheme he’d invented to save her reputation. He was balancing the scales, legitimizing their relationship. Transforming her with his magic-wand-engagement-ring into Mrs. Demetrious.

“You’re crazier than a drunk June bug.” Or she was. She hardly knew which way was up. Was this some kind of setup? A different approach to publicity? “What’s happening with
Visions of Black?
”

“It’s a mess, but I don’t care. Resolving it is meaningless unless I fix us first. I can’t function without you. I can’t think, can’t concentrate. I need you more than I need to breathe. Please.”

He was truly hurting. The evidence was there, in his rigid stance and the pain in his tumultuous expression. Hurting, because he was in love with her, like head-over-heels, Romeo and Juliet, take-a-bullet-for-her in love. Refusing him might result in as much of a gutting as his lost career. What was she supposed to do?

Once, when she was still blinded by stupidity and had an overinflated sense of her ability to read this profound man, she’d have known what to say, how to act. He’d destroyed that in Dallas, and she didn’t know how to get it back.

“VJ, I messed up by not grabbing what we had.” Clearly disconcerted, he exhaled and shoved his free hand through his hair. “But I’m not afraid anymore. I’m on this side of the camera, in the middle of the scene with you, exactly where I want to be. Begging you to believe in me, to believe in happily ever after again after I broke your heart. What can I say to convince you I’m sincere?”

“That was a pretty good start,” she mumbled, her heart too busy duking it out with her brain to come up with a better response. “You can’t marry me. We’ve known each other barely a week.”

He cupped her chin, lifted it. The touch of his fingertips on her face almost split her in two.

“The length of our acquaintance is irrelevant,
agapi mou,
” he said, drawing her into his melty-brown eyes. “There’s been something between us from the first. You feel it, too. You knew immediately you didn’t want to marry that other guy. Why can’t I be certain in an instant that you’re the one?”

Where had this stuff
come
from? He’d blown far past romance instruction,
far
past any romance novel, into territory she’d never dreamed existed. With no experience and no clues, she didn’t trust herself, didn’t believe she could ever fathom the mind of Kristian Demetrious. What if she was wrong? What if it wasn’t real love? What if—

In a flash, the answer came to her. With the smallest bit of dawning hope, she asked, “What kind of car do you have? At home?”

“What? A BMW SUV. So I can haul around equipment.”

German. Still foreign and complex and incomprehensible.

“And a ’67 Mustang,” he continued as an afterthought. “I only drive it occasionally. It’s the quintessential American car, symbolic of my U.S. citizenship. What does this have to do with anything?”

A Ford. Kris had a Ford in his garage.

“With a 428 V-8 engine?”

When he nodded, tears finally burst the dam and flowed down her cheeks. It was the first engine she’d ever touched, the one she’d learned everything from. She could take the entire thing apart and rebuild it. One-handed.

The coincidence didn’t mean anything. Not really, but it broke her resistance. Her greatest emotional need was the heart of this man, and he was spilling it out, passionately, with soul-wrenching truth. Offering her something real, tied up with a fairy-tale bow, and asking if she was woman enough to accept.

“And you’re crying because?” he asked.

“Because I love you. Put the ring on, Kristian.”

The storm clouds finally cleared from his eyes as he slid the circle of forever onto her finger. Then he kissed her. It was joyous, magical, right.

Almost.

She pulled back. “Um, can you turn off the camera? I’m about four seconds from stripping you, and a sex-tape scandal might not be the best move for us.”

His rich laughter took up residence in her heart, and she believed again. Not in a fantasy, but in real, true love.

Epilogue

K
ris tossed the phone onto the island in the middle of his kitchen.
No way
had that just happened. He barged into the master bathroom, raring for a confrontation, anticipating it, because he never had to pretend he was emotionless ever again.

Coconut-scented bubble bath hit him at the threshold and ignited that primal reaction that hadn't faded. At all. His mind drained of everything except for the scene before him. VJ soaked in the tub, spread out appetizingly, with her eyes closed, hair wet and pure bliss in her smile. The diamond on her third finger caught the light and refracted, splintering through his heart.

She'd moved into his condo only a month ago, sliding into it as if she'd always been there. Her presence alone lightened the darkness of the decor as if he had a private sun all his own. Only a month, and already the preproduction work on
Visions of Black
was done. Brilliantly, and largely due to VJ, his stellar new production assistant.

Love was the greatest muse of all. How had he ever created without her? How had he ever lived?

She popped an eye open and regarded him steadily, shamelessly naked and gorgeous.

“Are you going to watch or get in?” she asked, her voice husky. “If it's the former, I should move some of these bubbles.”

In a slow, sensuous scrape, she swished them from her breasts and the red butterfly peeped up from the foam. That butterfly—the color of passion and permanent. Every waking moment, he labored to live up to what it represented. To be worthy of the faith she'd had in him from the beginning.

Familiar quickening spiked through his groin, but he crossed his arms instead of flinging clothes to the floor. “I'm not falling for that again. Figure out a different way to distract me because—” With a sigh, he turned his back to the provocative sight of his soon-to-be-wife. “Never mind. It still works.”

VJ laughed. “What am I trying to distract you from this time?”

“Kyla called. A warning might have been nice.” He tried to sound stern and failed. “She was letting me know, oh-so-casually, how excited she was to start shooting since you talked her into taking a percentage of profits instead of the upfront fee her contract called for.”

What a relief. A huge, gigantic relief to have that albatross off his shoulders. The film was all downhill from here.

“What? I'm not allowed to rescue you occasionally? Too bad if you don't like it. That's stage eight, by the way, and I'm bound to think of a few more,” she said with a little splash, as if she'd risen from the water, perhaps exposing the butterfly fully. “Wedding's in three days. Last chance to back out.”

“No way,
agapi mou.
” He twisted and ripped off his T-shirt, followed swiftly by the rest of his clothes. He stepped down, sank into the water filling the enormous garden tub and spooned VJ into his arms. Definitely his favorite position. “You're stuck with me. I gave up half my bed for you, after all.”

“It's only fair. I gave up a half of a condo in Dallas for you. Though I have a feeling Beverly Porter and Pamela Sue are going to kill each other before too much longer,” she said drily and settled back into that place only she fit. Wet cinnamon hair splayed across his chest, warming his skin and his heart.

Now.
He had to join with this amazing woman who had saved him, and within seconds, it was a reality. The best reality because it was a combination of passion, love, friendship and a touch of magic.

Happily ever after had a lot to recommend it.

Six months passed in a blur of pleasure. Kris married VJ in a fairy-tale wedding and took her on a two-week honeymoon to Fiji, which was as far out of the state of Texas as he could get. He fell more in love with his wife every day.

He filmed
Visions of Black
on a shoe-string budget like in the old days, and discovered an interesting secret. Turned out when he put his heart into directing, cast and crew alike responded with vivid performances. The media, never hesitant to jump on a good story, devoted a great deal of coverage to the romance between the director and the woman who inspired him.

During the whirlwind of positive publicity following a surprise record-breaking opening weekend for
Visions of Black,
a reporter asked Kris how he knew it was true love with VJ. With a laugh, he said, “She told me, step by step, the secrets of romance. And she keeps telling me every day. Fortunately, I pay attention to the things she says.”

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from
One Winter's Night
by Brenda Jackson

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