A Little Less than Famous (14 page)

“I’m pretty sure they don’t run that show anymore,” Jake said, sitting next to me.

I ignored him. “Do you have a pool too?”

He smirked. “Of course.” Before I could ask, he continued, “And yes, I use it. I have parties in the backyard all the time.”

“Very nice,” I said. I looked up at him and saw him staring at me. “What?”

“Nothing,” he answered, leaning forward to place his lips on mine. I felt myself feel amused for a moment before kissing him back. We stayed like
that
for a few moments, kissing, nothing more, his hand placed gently on my waist. Then slowly, he pulled me toward the bed, easing me onto my back. His kisses got more eager and I found myself responding equally. It was only when I felt his hand behind my knee as he pulled my leg up around his waist that I hesitated. “Jake, no.”

“Sorry,” Jake breathed into my neck. “You’re kind of addicting.”

I felt myself smile involuntarily. “Thank you. We really should stop though.”

“Okay,” Jake said, resting his hand on my hip. “It’s really hard to stop, especially now.”

I smirked, feeling how hard he was against my leg. I ran my fingers through his hair, still amazed at how incredibly soft it was. “Jake, stop,” I said, suddenly, as I felt his lips on my neck.

“Shit,” Jake said, his lips still brushing against my collarbone. “Maybe bringing you here was a bad idea.” He pulled his hand away from my waist, and his fingers lightly grazed across my chest. I sucked in my breath.

“Okay, off,” I said, sitting up and crawling over to one of the bedposts and examining it.

“What are you doing?” Jake said, sitting up, his hair tousled.

“Checking for notches,” I said, absentmindedly, trying to ignore the feeling in my stomach and in my legs and in my chest.
I needed a break. I needed to decide when this happened and he had a way of overriding my control.

“Okay, you’re being silly,”
Jake
said, wrapping an arm around my waist and pulling me back over. “There are no notches in my bedpost.
There isn’t enough room for all the notches I need to make.” I rolled my eyes and he laughed.
“
What about your bedpost, hmm?” He raised his eyebrow at me, as if knowing that if I had a bedpost with notches, there would be, well, more than I wanted to admit. I looked away from him. “I mean, McKinley, I’m not going to lie and say that I haven’t been with my fair share of girls. But I’ve never brought any of them home. You have to believe me on that one.”

I scoffed. “I’m not stupid-I know how many girls you’ve been with, Jake.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t bring them home, McKinley. Its called hotel rooms.”
Before I had a chance to answer, he was kissing me again, hard, and I was sinking backwards into the pillows.

“All right, fine,” I agreed, when I was able to breathe.

Jake pulled back and looked at me curiously. “Fine?”

“Yes,” I said, smirking. “Fine.” I pulled his face back towards mine.

Chapter Five

When I woke, I was tangled in the down comforter I had been admiring earlier, loving the way it brushed against my skin. I ran my fingers through my bedraggled hair and tried not to think of what had happened. It had happened though, with that sort of urgency that comes with being with a person for the first time. My face flushed at the thought of it. I looked over at Jake, asleep on his stomach next to me, breathing deeply.
I let my gaze rove over his muscled back un
til I noticed a long, thin scar
on the left side of his lower back. I reached over to touch it, slowly, before my eyes fell on the alarm clock on the bedside table.

I pulled my arm back quickly. “Oh shit,” I hissed, as the numbers blinked up at me. 5:15. “Oh god, I am going to be so late.” I disentangled myself from the sheets and grabbed my clothes from the floor. I made it all the way to the kitchen before I remembered that we had taken the Volante and my car was still back in Brea. I glanced at Jake’s keys on the counter and nearly laughed.

“Definitely not,” I said, shaking my head. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed a number. “Yes, I need a cab please…where am I?” I glanced around and saw a pile of mail. I grabbed an envelope. “26843 Mont Calabasas Drive.”

By the time I made it back to the diner, it was already almost seven-thirty and Luke was not looking pleased. I gave him an apologetic look and dashed behind the counter and tied an apron around my waist. “Oh my god, Luke, I am so sorry.” I smiled at the lady sitting at the front counter and refilled her coffee and waved to Robert and Diane as they walked in.

Luke turned to me, a frustrated but highly amused look on his face. “It
’
s fine, McKinley. I knew where you were.” He winked.

“How did you know where I was?” I asked.

“You were on the news this morning, you and Jake, leaving some restaurant in L.A.,” he said.

My mouth dropped. “You’re joking.”

“He’s not,” Iris said, from her corner. “You’re all over the blogs too. No one knows who you are, of course, but they’re dying to know. It won’t be long before someone lets it leak.” She looked thrilled at the thought. “McKinley Evans, famous.”

“I don’t want to be famous,” I grumbled, wiping down the counter.

“For those abs? I’d be famous. I’d be telling everyone,” Cassandra said from her table. I shot her look.

“He looks like a nice young man, McKinley,” Diane said, from over her newspaper. “I don’t see what
all this protest is about
.”

“I’m sure there are some serious perks from dating Jake Kennedy,” Cassandra said, rolling her eyes.

“I am not dating Jake,” I said, firmly. “We’re just hanging out.”

Iris smirked and exchanged a look with Robert and Diane, whose usual table, the Cary Grant table, was the nearest the counter. “Is that what kids are calling it nowadays? ‘Hanging out’?”

I found myself blushing a little. “Oh shut up.” A couple walked in and took a seat. “I’m going to work now okay?”

After a busy late breakfast and then the usual lunch rush, I finally collapsed into a chair behind the counter and grabbed a water bottle from one of the fridges. Oliver was sitting at the counter,
forgoing his regular table, the Audrey Hepburn. He
bent over some sort of homework assignment. He’d been there for a while and I hadn’t had t
he chance to talk to him. P
eople had been
coming and leaving so quickly and I had been kept busy.

“So what’re you working on?” I said, leaning over and looking at the textbook that was easily thicker than any textbook I had ever owned.

“Numerical analysis,” Oliver said, barely glancing up.

I raised my eyebrow at him. “What the hell is that?” I leaned over a bit more and actually looked at the text. “Is this a foreign language?”

Oliver laughed, his blond hair flopping as he did so. “No, it’s a math class.”

“There are no numbers,” I pointed out. “Oh wait, there’s a 2!”

Oliver rolled his eyes. “Okay, it’s an extremely hard math class. Basically it involves algorithms.”

I shrugged and then ruffled his hair. “Our little genius.”

“I hate when you call me little,” he grumbled, leaning out of my reach. I laughed. At six foot four, a good foot taller than me and only a
few months older than me
, he was the last person in the world I should be calling little. Which, of course, didn’t actually stop me from doing so. I reached my hands into my apron pockets and pulled out the bills I had stuffed there unceremoniously during the rush.

“So what’s this I hear about you and Jake Kennedy?”

I paused in the middle of counting my tips. “Oliver, I’m surprised at you. I didn’t kno
w you knew who Jake Kennedy was!
”

“Don’t avoid the question, McKinley,” Oliver said, picking up his pencil again and turning the page of his book. “What’s going on there? Are we going to be McKinley Kennedy any time soon?”

“Oh G
od,” I said, “definitely not.
That sounds terrible!
And nothing is going on. We’re just friends.” I looked at Iris out of the corner of my eye and ignored the smirk she had on her face as she typed furiously on her keyboard.

Oliver looked up at me for a moment before looking at Iris and her silly grin. “It’s never ‘just friends’ with you, McKinley. And I mean that in the best way possible.”

It was my turn to roll my eyes. “Whatever. We’re dating, I guess. But don’t tell anyone! I don’t really need
US Weekly
and
Entertainment Tonight
knocking on my door. What I
really
need is to finish my economics paper before I have class tonight.”

“Go upstairs and finish it,” Luke said, from the back of house, his face dripping with sweat and his apron covered in grease. “We got it covered now.”

“Awesome,” I said, tossing my apron aside and waving good-bye to both Iris and Oliver.

After spending about an hour upstairs in my room cranking out an exhausting economics essay, I came downstairs, backpack flung over my right shoulder and keys in my left hand. I waved goodbye to Luke, who was stacking the chairs on top of the tables and turned to go outside. I stopped just in time. “Oh my god.”
I started backing away from the door.

Luke turned around and looked at me curiously. “What are you doing?”

“Um, how long have they been out there?” I asked, frantic, peeking behind the shade covering the front door.

“How long has who been out there?” Luke asked, coming over to stand next to me. He pulled the shade aside himself and looked out. “Oh shit, where did they come from?”

My eyes grew wider as I took in all the people sitting outside the diner, cameras in hand, staring in anticipation at the front door. “You don’t think they are here for me, do you?”

Luke took in all the people and shrugged. “I mean, I don’t know who else they’d be here for, McKinley. I’m not the one dating one of America’s most eligible bachelors.”

I groaned, wanting to back up and go upstairs to my room. “How the hell did they find me?”

“Someone spilled the beans,” Luke said drily. “What do yo
u want me to do? Call the cops? G
et them off the premises?”

I took a deep breath. “Yeah, that’d be great. Hopefully they’ll be gone by the time I get back.”

“Get back?”

“Yeah, after I get back home from class,” I said, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world.

“You’re going to class?” Luke asked, incredulously, looking back out a
t the crowd of paparazzi. They looked
completely out of place, milling around a small diner parking lot in Brea. “Maybe you should stay inside until I can get rid of these people.”

“Yeah, I’d love to but I have a paper to turn in,” I said, sharply. “And I highly doubt that
‘
paparazzi in your backyard
’
counts as a legitimate excuse for missing a paper deadline.”

Luke winced, but nodded. “True enough. And who am I to say no to school? Let me walk you out at least. I have a feeling as soon as we open this door, shit is going to hit the fan.”

“Well, lets find out, shall we?” I said, looking up at him over my shoulder and smiling. I reached down and turned the lock, wincing at the loudness of click in the silence of the empty diner. I opened the door slowly, as if by doing so, they wouldn’t notice me.