Acting Happy (Texas Desires #2) (32 page)

“I love you,” she whispered in defeat. It took a second as he absorbed that comment. Her sad face didn’t match the words.

“I love you,” he said in return. After a second more, he decided he had to look as confused as he felt.

“I have for a long time. It scares me. You’re all I think about. You’re all I want. You’re such a wonderful man,” she confessed.

“Those are good things, right?” he asked quietly. His heart hammered in his chest for a completely different reason than her reservation. He’d waited for what felt like a lifetime to hear those words. He’d waited to hear them said every single day for weeks now, but she looked unhappy.

“Yes, I think so. I’m scared.”

In one swift move, he scooped her off his lap, landing her flat on her back against the bed. He angled his body over her, supporting himself on his elbow as he stared down at her.

“I get you’re scared, I swear to God I do, but you have to know you’re it for me. I love you so damn much that it scares me too, but we’ll manage through because I want you by my side for the rest of my life. I’m so in love with you.” Ty confessed the words deep inside his heart and watched the worry slowly fade from her face. She reached up, easing her arms around his neck, and he bent in, crushing his lips to hers. There was absolutely no doubt that this woman completed him.

With not much more than a brush of his teeth, a baseball cap to cover his bedhead, and tugging on the closest pair a blue jeans and T-shirt he could find, Ty grabbed his electric razor and headed back to the bedroom where his tired angel still slept. She was burrowed under the blankets with her arms tucked around his pillow and those sweet little snores blowing at the hair surrounding her face. He leaned over, moved some of the hair away from her ear before whispering softly to her.

“Baby, I’m leaving. Enjoy your day.” He hoped for her to stay asleep, but her eyes fluttered open as she looked up at him.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” she said, struggling to rise.

“No, stay asleep. It’s early.” Ty rested a hand on her shoulder, trying to keep her down.

“How early?” Her voice was raspy, and she looked around the room, moving the hair out of her face.

“Five thirty.”

“We didn’t go to sleep that long ago. Why are you leaving so early?” Kenzie forced herself up, her wild hair a tangled freefall down her body, and he gave a strong inner groan. This might actually be the first time ever that he didn’t automatically crawl back in bed to sample that beautiful body now exposed to him. He rose, stepping back several feet as his cock focused on its target.

“What?” she asked, rubbing one of her eyes.

“I gotta go. You stay just like that, because when I get home, it’s on.” For effect, he made a show of adjusting himself inside his jeans and that made her smile. “Go back to sleep. Text or call me when you wake.”

“Be safe,” she said and did snuggle back down in the mattress.

“Tell me you love me,” he said tenderly and bent forward to tuck her back under the blanket. He loved hearing her say those words. He’d made her say it over and over while gently making love to her last night. Might have been the best orgasm of his life.

“I love you. I’ll miss you today,” she said sleepily.

“Good. Me too. Enjoy your day.” He kissed her head and forced himself to turn and leave the room. The sooner he got to work, the faster he’d be home, which had been the number one driving force in cutting out sleep and leaving so early this morning.

Unfortunately, he had an even bigger unexpected problem at hand—as much as he’d grown to dislike his job before, he hated it now. All he could see was a heavy workload of shooting for the next ten weeks—long hours, six to seven days a week, which meant all those hours away from his Kenzie. Man, that was just going to suck so badly.

~~~

A faint buzzing noise penetrated Kenzie’s deep sleep. She rolled to her back and lifted her arms above her head, stretching out her body. She was alone and more rested than she might have ever been in her entire life. With a thud, she dropped her hands back on the bed and looked over at the alarm clock on the nightstand. She’d slept until ten forty-five this morning. What a life! Could this even be real?

She was sprawled fully across Ty’s side of the bed. Kenzie turned her head, seeing the painting she’d given him last night displayed prominently on his nightstand. He’d placed it there, making a show of wanting to wake to that picture every single morning.

Ty just had a way of making her feel special. He seemed to do it without even thinking.

Kenzie rose as the buzzing from her cell phone grew more insistent and the default ringtone started to play. She easily ignored the thing as she went to the bathroom. She stood in front of the mirror, and the image greeting her was pretty standard. Since Ty liked her hair down when she slept, it was a wild mess every morning, and her body was solidly marked again. He liked giving little hickeys. Today there were two strategically placed marks right above each nipple. He said the sweetest words of already missing their time spent together when he gave each one. God, she loved their sex.

Pulling herself from her thoughts, she grabbed a brush and began to yank it through her hair as she reached to turn on the shower. As she stepped inside, she heard her phone ring. This time it was her mother’s ringtone, but she decided to wait. The warm water beckoned her. She’d call her back in a few minutes.

~~~

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Ty actually yelled into the phone as his brain went numb. The violent drumming in his ears made hearing anything else virtually impossible. He was on set, reading over this week’s script when he’d finally stopped the entire team and picked up the phone to take Reed’s third back-to-back call. “What the fuck are you saying?”

“I’ve already got Braden on it, Bateman.” Reed’s hard voice shouted back, probably the only thing able to penetrate the shock. “But seriously, ass, what the fuck did you think was gonna happen?”

Ty shoved away from the table and out of his chair, not paying any attention to the clanking of the metal as it tipped, falling to the floor. He ignored all the worry radiating from everyone at the table. The alarm on every face made the bottomless pit of fear coil tighter in his gut. He immediately pivoted on his heels and took off running from the room. At all cost, he had to get to Kenzie before she found out.

“It’s against the law!” A lame response, but still true.

“And when does that fucking stop anything?”

Ty started to run in earnest now. His car was parked right out front. Bluetooth picked up the call that Ty had stopped paying attention to, and he tossed his phone on the passenger seat. He was zipping down the parking lot in seconds before a hard steel edge took over his thoughts and his voice.

“Get Braden on the phone. I want their fucking heads for this one and any site that publishes those photos—I want to own that company when this is said and done.
Goddammit,
they’re going down. I’m not fucking kidding… Get Bray. On. The. Motherfucking. Phone!"

He listened to a series of beeps as he zoomed past the security stand, barreling out into traffic. He prayed Kenzie hadn’t seen this yet.

~~~

A solid thirty minutes later, Kenzie had her hair blown dry, did a little repair job on her toenail polish, and dressed in what she was beginning to refer as her always sunny California attire. Today she wore a pair of capris and a pretty tank top with no panties or bra. Since they hadn’t gone without sex for more than a few hours since leaving Tennessee, she decided Ty might appreciate her removing any barriers when he got home.

Real life was knocking on the door, something Ty had so romantically whisked her away from. He was totally her knight in shining armor. He had utterly changed her life. The fairy tale was hers. Grinning from ear to ear, she strolled through the bedroom, grabbing her phone before heading to the kitchen for some breakfast. Then she’d need to call Lara for a scheduled conference call to begin the foundation training. Another cool thing, her sign-on bonus had been deposited into her account over the weekend. Having money to pay her very few bills was a giant weight off her shoulders.

The phone in her hand started vibrating seconds before Lara’s name appeared on the screen. Kenzie walked down the main hall toward the entryway when she swiped her finger across the screen. “Hey, I was just thinking of our call today. Thank you for coming out. Did you get home safely?”

“Why do you sound like that?”

“Like what?” she asked, coming to a stop in the middle of the entry separating the front door from the living room. The edge in Lara’s voice had an unknown anxiety tickling up her spine.

“Where’s Ty?”

“He’s at work. He started back on the show today. What’s going on?” she asked, her tone turning a little frantic, matching Lara’s.

“You haven’t seen the news, have you?”

“Oh no. What happened? Is it Ty and Julia again? That peace and calm didn’t last very long,” she said. Relieved it wasn’t something more terrible than a news story, she started walking toward the kitchen again.

“Kenzie, I don’t know how to tell you this, but it’s so much worse than that. They have pictures of you and Ty in the swimming pool,” Lara said carefully.

“What? How’d they get those?” She understood that must be bad. She wasn’t big on being seen in her bathing suit in public. She’d never gone to the beach in one of those strappy things Ty kept getting for her. A bigger question was who could have pulled off those kinds of shots? Maybe someone on staff? Ty would feel betrayed, probably fire everyone over this slip.

“In one article from the AP, it says they had to have used those long-range cameras. They’re supposedly illegal, but these pictures are bad, Kenzie. In the sites I’ve seen, they’ve blurred out the private parts, but it looks like you and Ty were having sex,” Lara said carefully.

Wait, what? Seconds later, Kenzie’s whole world stopped.

“Oh my God,” she whispered as the realization of what Lara was trying to tell her sunk in. The pictures were from last night. They were being watched.

Oh God. No!

“Oh, Kenzie, I’m so sorry.”

Kenzie collapsed to her feet, dropping her head between her parted knees, feeling like she might truly pass out. When that didn’t happen, she stayed scrunched together in that ball, ignored Lara and pulled up Google, working her phone faster than she ever thought was possible. Within a minute, she saw the lead story on TMZ. It was a picture of her, half in and half out of the pool, hanging on to the side with Ty’s hand between her shoulder blades. Her eyes were closed, her mouth open, and her breasts blurred. Her butt partially exposed, and what she assumed might be some of Ty’s cock underneath a small blurry bubble. They had no problem showing Ty’s ass.

When she clicked on the photo, a slideshow of twenty-four photos started to play. Each one damning, and she knew for a fact they were taken last night in the only place outdoors that Ty had felt truly safe. Heavy tears sprang to her eyes, madly rushing down her face as the front door slammed open, bouncing off the small entry table, sending the mirror on the wall crashing down.

“I’m sorry,” she said, still in that ball with the tears falling down her face as she looked over her shoulder, seeing him standing there.

“
Goddammit!
I’m so fucking sorry.” Ty rushed toward her, yanking her up in his arms.

The incriminating photos were the most embarrassing thing in her life and that said a lot for a woman who’d spent several nights in jail trying to manage her bail. But none of that mattered as she wrapped both her arms securely around Ty. The man never got a break, and now even his sanctuary had a horribly violating breach.

“Ty, I’m sorry!”

“Baby, you have nothing to be sorry for.” Ty held her so tight she couldn’t breathe.

“How did they do this?” she asked on a haggard breath against his neck.

“Illegally, Kenzie. It’s my fault. I should have known better. Things weren’t truly settling down. I should have known better.” She lifted on her tiptoes and held him tighter, wishing he never had to deal with any of this pain ever again.

“We’re naked all over the Internet. Until a few hours ago, there were three people on this whole planet who had seen me naked. I hate those pictures. I’m so sorry they do this to you,” she mumbled and gave another shuddered breath, tucking her head tighter into the crook of his neck, closing her eyes tight, wishing those words were enough to make all this go away.

Hate filled his heart on a level he’d never experienced before as he listened to Braden and his team discuss a list of bullshit injunctions and very clear threats of pending prosecution to anyone who chose to publish the illegal photos. He was determined to bury them. No question he’d do what it took, spend whatever he had to in order to stand up for Kenzie, but fuck it if this violation didn’t change everything.

He’d been shortsighted and failed her. Never one time did he truly consider the far-reaching lengths the opportunists of his world would go to in order to make a buck and as a result destroy his love. This whole time, he’d only considered himself. His wishes, his wants. He’d pushed so hard to get her there with him, not once realizing the toll she’d face for his stupid desires.

Had he truly thought that just having him in her life was enough to overcome everything else?

Disgust ate at his soul, and Ty dropped his head in his hands as all the talking around him continued.

Of course someone like Kenzie Stanton would be eaten alive by his world. Only the hardest of the hard, creepiest of the creepy, meanest of the mean could survive. Ty understood what that said about him as a person and leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and dug two fingers against his eyelids. How could he have ever thought he deserved someone like McKenzie Stanton? He was the king of this world. He’d done better here than anyone. It spoke volumes to the character of who he was as a man.

“Bateman! You’re not paying attention,” Braden barked sternly. Ty cut his eyes to the screen were all the meeting participants stared back at him.

“No, I’m not. I can’t fucking understand why I’m even required to listen to all this bullshit. I need you to do your fucking job, and if you’re wasting precious time meeting, you aren’t completing the tasks I’m fucking paying for,” he roared, adjusting in his seat to better face the monitor.

“Buddy, I get it,” Bray started while the others remained quiet, but Ty cut him off.

“There’s no way you can possibly understand. I made this worse for her. I did it.” Ty angrily poked himself in the chest with his index finger.

“No, you didn’t,” Bray started again. Ty reached over and disconnected the call by powering off the computer. He sat there several minutes staring at the darkened screen, anger tainting every single thought he had. Frustrated beyond belief, he forced himself out of the office and went in search Kenzie. The house was darkening, no lights were lit anywhere. It took several minutes to find her even after having a moment of fear that she’d left, but that faded quickly. She had no way to leave, and now he felt like a heel about that too.

It wasn’t until he realized one of the chairs was turned the wrong direction that he found Kenzie sitting in the living room. She was facing the backyard, her seat right at the window. They’d spent every night out there, and now she was afraid to go outside. He walked around the chair, saw both legs were drawn up, her head lying back against the headrest and she was sound asleep. Her sweet face still red and swollen from crying. He had caused those tears.

Instead of waking her, he went for a blanket, carefully draping it across her. She never woke. For the next couple of hours, he paced his bedroom, going to check on her every so often. Kenzie slept, eventually stretching out in the chair, her head using the armrest as a pillow.

With everything they’d been through, the whole whirlwind of their relationship, Ty got the exhaustion she must be experiencing. He went back to the bedroom, spreading out across the bed and stared up at the ceiling until he finally nodded off. Pretty certain that life sucked shit with zero hope that might ever change.