“Was it bad?”
He sat on the edge of the bed, toed off his shoes. “Not bad. Just complicated.”
“We’ve avoided your family for a year.”
“Yeah. A few months more would have been nice.”
Karen leaned over, picked up her book, and put it on the nightstand.
“Wanna talk about it?” He hadn’t in the past, but his hesitation made her push. “C’mon, Michael.” She lowered her voice. “You don’t have a lover, and you know you can trust me. Who else can you talk to?”
There was his smile. He reached over and laid a hand on her leg through the blankets. “It would be so much easier if women turned me on. I’d marry you all over again.”
“You wouldn’t have met me if women did it for you,” she teased.
“Still would have been easier.”
She couldn’t argue that. “Tell me about your family.”
Just like that, the gates opened. He leaned against the bedpost and kicked his feet up on the bed. “Rena is the oldest, married her high school sweetheart, has two kids. Zach is older than me by a year and a half. Total jock in school. Then there’s me. After a few years, we didn’t think there would be any more of us, then Judy arrived, and a handful of years later came Hannah. Jesus, Karen, I forgot how old my youngest sister was.” He shook his head in what looked like disgust with himself.
“What about your parents? Happy?”
“June and Ward had nothing on my parents. Cookie-baking mom, dad worked hard, built his business.”
Karen reached deep in her memory to what she’d read in Michael’s profile before she agreed to meet him. “Hardware store?”
“Yeah. Zach runs a small construction crew now. It’s a small town, didn’t take a lot to be the go-to guy for a team. I think my dad wanted some of that for me. My dad was disappointed in me from the beginning.”
Karen waited for him to elaborate. For a while, she thought he’d stop talking. “I tried, Karen. I can work alongside my dad, but never liked it. I like cars, but didn’t want to work on them. Zach was always working on his car, trying to drag me under it.”
“Other than Neil, I don’t know one guy who willingly works on his own car.”
“Yeah, but it was more than cars. It seemed everything that defined Sawyer Gardner didn’t define me.”
“Did you and your dad fight?”
“We didn’t have to fight for me to understand his disappointment.”
In that moment, Karen knew why Michael worked so hard to be America’s bad boy on screen.
“It didn’t help that Hilton, Utah, is about as backwater as it comes for small towns. The running joke is Hilton isn’t big enough for a Hilton.” He laughed at that, as if it brought him a pleasant memory. “And Utah…Jesus, have you ever been there?”
“You’ve seen where I’ve been.” She’d not traveled outside of California before meeting Samantha and hooking up with Alliance. Since then, she’d traveled to Europe a couple of times, Canada, where Michael had shot more than one film in their brief marriage, and Aruba for one more wedding in their circle of friends.
“You can’t get a drink in Hilton, Utah, on Sunday.”
“Really?”
“Backwater. I’m telling you. Everyone knows everything about everybody.”
“I’m starting to understand why you left.” She did. Michael’s sexuality would never have flown there. But it wasn’t exactly flying here either.
“If it’s so ass-backward, why does your family stay?”
He sucked in a breath. “I don’t know. Good people. It didn’t suck growing up there. Crime isn’t off the charts.”
“Small-town America.” Where secrets are hidden and the kids run to the city at the first opportunity they get. Karen glanced at the hands in her lap and fiddled with the ring Michael had placed on her finger.
Damn. Michael was like one of her kids at the club. One that needed direction to find himself, to forgive himself for not being just like the other kids. She wasn’t sure he would ever give himself permission to be himself, to give up his tough-guy image…but she wouldn’t live with herself if she didn’t try. “We should visit your family.”
His silence made her look up.
“You’d do that?”
“Michael, I said I was in this with you, and I meant it.”
He wore a strange expression on his face. It was laced with question and concern. “We’d stay with my parents.”
“How bad can that be?”
“In a room the size of this bed.”
“So don’t snore and let me have the covers. We’ll be fine. Remember the bed in France?” They’d had a “brief” honeymoon in France and ended up at a chateau in a small winery. Michael had asked and paid for deluxe accommodations. They ended up with a twin bed and a bathroom with only cold running water…and pictures of them spread through the tabloids the next day. They’d held hands and laughed like friends, and by the time they had to come home, Karen knew there was no possible way for her to hold any attraction to the man she called husband. There simply wasn’t any chemistry.
Michael took her hand in his and kissed the edges of her fingertips. “Thanks, Karen.”
As he walked into the bathroom, and the sound of running water met her ears, Karen’s smile fell.
Small-town America. How bad could it be?
Chapter Four
Zach usually made it out of bed before dawn. Sleeping in would have been a luxury, and his brother’s digs were beyond comfortable. The king-size bed was overkill for a guest room, but Zach wasn’t complaining. He was tall, like his brother, and he always hung off beds in hotels. There were tile floors throughout the home, and in the bedrooms large colorful carpets warmed up the space. He couldn’t help but wonder if Karen had anything to do with the decor of the home. She and Mike had only been married a year, and not everything he’d seen looked new. In fact, there were antiques throughout the house and various pieces of art scattered along the walls.
He liked it. The entire palette of colors and textures wasn’t something he would have chosen, but he couldn’t deny the warmth and comfort of the home.
Zach had to admit that their father would probably hate it. He’d think everything was too perfect, too staged. Even though the home appeared more casual than he expected for his hotshot Hollywood movie star brother, he understood what things cost. On the construction level, there was crown molding and carved paneling along the walls in the main hall. The massive fireplace in the great room was large enough for a child to walk into. With a little less Spanish influence, and a little more Western rustic, this house would be perfect for him.