Love Me Sweet (A Bell Harbor Novel) (2 page)

For an adventure-show cameraman like Grant Connelly, home was a campsite near the Ucayali River in Peru, or at the base of an active volcano like Tinakula, or maybe some ramshackle motel in Katmandu if he decided to splurge on having a solid roof over his head, but now it was time to head home to Bell Harbor because his younger brother was about to do something irretrievably stupid.

“Stupid,” Grant murmured.

Assistant producer Jake Simmons didn’t bother to look Grant’s way. Instead he leaned closer to the video monitor in front of them and adjusted a few dials. The two men were inside a makeshift editing room, their office for the past two months, although it was really nothing more than an oversized canvas tent full of high-tech equipment powered by a big-ass generator—a generator that had been a bitch and a half to haul through the Philippine jungle to their current location. Jake tapped the monitor with his index finger, pointing at the image of a man dangling over a rocky precipice several yards from where they sat.

“Who’s stupid?” Jake asked. “Surely you’re not referring to the star of
One Man, One Planet
, are you?” His voice was commercial-grade enthusiasm, but Grant knew he shared the same low opinion of the man on-screen. Blake Rockstone. Their idiot boss.

Blake turned his face toward the camera lens as if he could hear their criticism. He couldn’t, of course. He was too far away and too busy pretending to be in a precarious predicament. Exaggerated facial expressions and clever camera angles made it look as if he were high in the air, when in reality, a mere six feet separated him from a soft, mossy landing. Six feet and a protective harness hidden under his clothes, the gutless coward.

One man, one planet?

Hardly. More like one mammoth ego supported by dozens of highly skilled but invisible men. Lately everything about this show had become fake, from the dangerous situations right down to the survival skills of the star. Blake Rockstone was no daredevil. He wasn’t a great outdoorsman either. Shit, he wasn’t even a happy camper.

And two nights ago he’d slept with Grant’s girlfriend.

Make that
ex
-girlfriend.

“That horse’s ass couldn’t start a campfire with two blow torches and a gallon of gas,” Grant muttered, “but in this case, I’m talking about my brother.” He held up a smudged, tattered envelope, ivory cardstock—now bent, spindled, and mutilated after its journey all the way from Bell Harbor, Michigan, to their camp at the base of Mount Pinatubo. It had taken more than a month to get there, judging from the date stamp, and how the thing had found its way to him in the Philippines was a mystery, but it was the contents he found the most surprising.

“What’s that?” Jake asked, his gaze flicking over Grant like a mosquito before returning to the monitor.

“I’ll show you what it is.” Grant tugged the card from the envelope, adding another tear in his haste. He’d read the thing fifteen times in as many minutes but it still hadn’t sunk in.

“Evelyn Marjorie Rhoades and Tyler Robert Connelly cordially request the honor of your presence at their wedding as they join together in holy matrimony.” Grant flung the invitation down like pocket aces on the table in front of the monitor. “Who the hell is Evelyn Marjorie Rhoades? The last time I talked to my brother, he wasn’t even dating anyone.”

Jake picked up the invitation and looked it over like it was a jungle leaf waiting to be classified. “Married, huh? When’s the last time you talked to him?”

Grant stood up and walked to the boundary of the tent, looking out into dense foliage. It was late afternoon and hot as hell, even for the dry season, but it wasn’t the weather making him sweat. It was the hollow realization that his brother’s life was heading in a direction the complete opposite of his own.

“I don’t know. Three months ago? Maybe four? I know for sure I talked to him in June when we were still in New Zealand.”

Jake arched one sandy-colored eyebrow and counted on his fingers. “June? Dude, it’s January. That was six months ago.”

Grant turned back around to face him. “Six months? Yeah, OK, so I haven’t talked to him in a while, but he never said anything about her then, and now all of a sudden he’s getting married? That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”

A monumentally stupid thing—and a move straight out of their mother’s playbook. Marry first, get acquainted afterward. To hell with the consequences. She was on her third marriage now but he’d thought Tyler had better sense.

“You think marriage is stupid?” Jake’s chuckle was slightly patronizing but Grant ignored that.

“It is if you’re twenty-seven years old and have never left Bell Harbor. My brother is still a kid.”

“Hey, I resent that. I’m twenty-seven, you know.” Jake took off his safari hat and wiped the perspiration from his forehead, but he didn’t sound resentful. He sounded amused, which only added to Grant’s irritation. He took off his own hat, running a hand through his shaggy brown hair, making it stand on end.

“That’s my point exactly, Jake. You’re traveling, having adventures, living a life.
And
you’re smart enough to stay single. You see what I’m saying?”

Jake’s sudden laughter split through the clearing, causing a bar-bellied cuckoo shrike to flap its wings and squawk in annoyance. “I’m single
because
I travel all the time, dumbass. You don’t realize how lucky you are to have Miranda.”

Grant opened his mouth to explain he wasn’t lucky at all. Miranda had her own agenda, her own reasons for joining this show that had nothing to do with him, but he swallowed the words. He didn’t want to talk about her right now. Not even to Jake, his closest friend and frequent partner in crime.

Jake looked back at the wedding invitation, turning it this way and that. “Anyway, this is kind of a fancy invite. Maybe this Evelyn chick is rich.”

Grant stuffed both fists into the deep pockets of his cargo pants. “I seriously doubt that. She must be pregnant. Why else get married in such a hurry?” His poor, dumb, irresponsible brother.

Jake shook his head. “You’re a real romantic guy, you know that, Grant? Maybe you should get a job on one of those reality dating shows.”

Grant’s snort wasn’t subtle. “You know as well as I do there is no
reality
in reality television.”

Jake turned back to the monitor. “Probably not, but I’d sure as hell rather work on a set with twenty-five hot bachelorettes than hang out in the jungle with you for the rest of my life. No offense.”

Grant’s mood lightened. Jake might be on to something. “No offense taken. I suppose I’d rather live in a house full of beautiful women than follow this asshat around too.” He pointed to the video monitor where Blake Rockstone had dropped from the rope and was pretending to wrestle a fifteen-foot python near the edge of a lake. The thing was totally fake. Made of rubber. They’d ordered it from Amazon. “But even so,” Grant added, “there’s a big difference between hanging out with a bunch of women and actually marrying one.”

Jake handed back the invitation. “I had no idea you were so averse to the concept of wedlock. What does Miranda think of that?”

Grant felt all the muscles in his shoulders seize up. No, he didn’t want to talk about this now, but it was evidently unavoidable. There were only thirty-five people in this camp, after all, and the news would get out soon enough. In fact, he was surprised it wasn’t already public knowledge.

“Miranda has jumped ship,” Grant said.

She hadn’t just jumped ship, though. She’d jumped from his boat into Blake’s. Of all the insults, losing a woman to that Eddie Bauer mannequin was a real kick in the groin.

Jake’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

Grant reached up and tried to squeeze the knot of tension out of his shoulder. “Blake offered her a better deal and she took it. He says he’ll make her the cohost of the show, which apparently comes with a broad range of job requirements.”

Jake leaned closer. “Are you kidding me? She’s with Blake now?”

“Well, last night after dark, she moved all of her stuff from my tent into his. So, yeah, I guess she is. He’s a big star, you know. I’m just the cinematographer. Guess being with him in front of the camera is better than being with me behind it. I was just a stepping stone on her path to fame.”

Jake’s face flushed, his voice lowered. “I’m sorry, bro. That’s lousy.”

It was lousy. His relationship with Miranda had always been more about convenience than true love, but still, he had cared about her, and she’d used him. On a humiliation scale ranging from having your fly unzipped to showing up at a bar mitzvah buck-ass naked, well, this left him feeling kind of naked. He’d be damned if he let anyone know how this left him stinging, though. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of showing his wounds.

“Well, what Miranda lacks in sensitivity she makes up for in ambition. There’s not much opportunity in a place like this for a woman like her. I guess she had to take her shot.”

Not much opportunity for him in a place like this either. He’d been thinking about that quite a bit lately, even before this debacle with Blake and Miranda. Grant was director of photography and coproducer of
One Man, One Planet
. He was at the top of his game professionally, but his income and reputation depended on creating a quality show, and lately Blake had been phoning it in. What had started out a few years ago as riveting television full of majestic photography and wild adventures had been reduced to close-ups of Blake eating beetles secretly made of sugar, and sound bites aimed at the lowest common intellectual denominator. They’d gone commercial, and Grant’s integrity was taking a hit. He didn’t like that. He had bigger goals for his career. And for his life.

Grant picked up the wedding invitation and read it once more. Maybe it was time for him to move on to a new phase too, just like Miranda had. Just like his brother was doing.

No. Not maybe. Definitely.

The decision was spontaneous, but he knew in his gut it was the right call.

“I’m going home,” he said as much to the jungle as to Jake.

“For the wedding?”

“Nope. For good. I’m quitting.”

Jake knocked over a canvas chair as he took a giant step closer. “Quitting? Because of Miranda? Don’t do it, bro. You can’t leave me in the jungle with Blake. You’d miss this.”

Grant stepped out from the shade of the tent into the bright sunshine. Overhead the sky was a rich, cloudless blue. The air was noisy with the clicks and chatter of the jungle, heavy with the sweet scent of sampaguita jasmine.

“It’s not about her. Not really. It’s about a lot of other things. I will miss this, but I haven’t seen my family in ages, you know? My grandfather deeded that house to me last year when he died and I haven’t even been back to see it yet. Remember? We were filming in Cambodia so I missed the funeral?”

Jake stepped into the sunlight next to him. “Then go home for a vacation, visit with your family, but don’t quit.”

Grant looked up to the peak of Mount Pinatubo. “You know how, when you get to the top of a mountain, you enjoy the view for about five minutes before you start looking around for the next summit? That’s where I’m at, Jake. I need a new challenge.”

Jake scratched his head. “OK, I get that, but everything you’ve ever said about Bell Harbor is that it’s a dead-end town with nothing to offer, so why go back there now?”

“I don’t know. I probably won’t stay for long, but it’s a good place to regroup, maybe rescue my brother from throwing his life away.” He smirked at Jake.

He was mostly kidding about rescuing Tyler. Mostly. If his brother wanted to waste his future in that tiny town, it wasn’t Grant’s problem. In fact, he’d made it a policy to not let family drama pull him back to Michigan. His job was all-consuming, sometimes even dangerous, but it was still easier than negotiating Connelly family politics. Even so, he did miss them. And back in Bell Harbor he could make some new plans. He had lots of connections in this business, and with just a few phone calls he could probably work out a deal better than what he had now. Maybe even produce his own show where he could be the boss. He had some ideas.

So . . . what the hell?

It looked like Grant Connelly was going home.

Chapter 2

DELANEY DIDN’T REALIZE SHE’D LEFT
the lights on in the kitchen when she’d gone to Gibson’s grocery store, but there they were, glowing brightly through the window. Good thing too, since apparently around here it got dark at dinnertime. She pulled two overloaded grocery bags from the passenger seat of her car and hurried inside, nudging the back door of the house closed with her hip. She set the bags on the yellowed Formica countertop and halted in her tracks, snow dropping from her boots.

Slung over one of the dinged-up dinette chairs was a coat. A man’s coat, by the looks of it. Black, bulky, and definitely not new. And a pair of weather-beaten boots too. One was sitting upright in the middle of the linoleum floor, and the other lay on its side in the hallway as if the wearer had taken them off while still walking.

She heard the shower upstairs turn on, accompanied by a cheery whistle, and her curiosity melted with the snow.

At last, the long-lost Carl had come to do his chores. Thank goodness too, because she’d been here for four days and that leaky shower was full-bore water torture. She’d taken to counting the drip, drip, drips as she lay in her lumpy bed. Last night she’d gotten to three hundred ninety-seven before she’d finally drifted off to sleep and dreamt she’d moved into an enormous clock.

Delaney slid her arms from her coat and turned to hang it up on the hook by the door. A glowing pocket caught her gaze, and the telltale buzz of vibration sounded in her ears. Her phone was in that pocket but she had no intention of answering it. She’d turned off the ringer sometime during her drive through Utah after every single family member had called to implore her to return home where she belonged. She wasn’t going back to Beverly Hills, though. Not yet. Not until everyone in the media had moved on to a new scandal and forgotten all about hers.

Still, from habit, she pulled the phone out to see who was calling, and Melody’s face appeared. Her middle sister. Her tenacious middle sister who’d called sixty-three times since Delaney had left home over a week ago. Melody was quite possibly the only thing more annoying to Delaney at the moment than that leaky showerhead, and she’d never give up. Frustrated, Delaney tapped the phone’s surface
really hard
, but the effort was unsatisfying. “I don’t want to talk, Mel. I’m fine but I don’t feel like talking, OK?”

“Michigan?” Melody’s voice was anything but melodious. “What the hell are you doing in Michigan?”

Delaney looked out the window as if her sister might be poised on her front step, ready to storm in, followed by the flashing cameras. “What makes you think I’m in Michigan?”

“You have a location finder on your phone, moron. It was pretty easy. I’ve known where you’ve been this whole time.”

“Shit.” That was a distinct disadvantage of trying to hide in this digital world. Delaney might need to buy a new phone and get off the family plan. “Who else knows I’m here?”

“Nobody, just me, but seriously, how did you end up in Michigan?” Melody’s voice mellowed and Delaney could picture her sister just then, lying in the big hammock on their back deck, soaking up the warm sun. Delaney hadn’t been warm since Nevada.

She straightened her shoulders as if Melody could see. “Michigan has its appeal.
Condé Nast
Traveler
said it was gorgeous here. Apparently the sand dunes and beaches are magnificent, although I haven’t seen any yet. So far everything is just piles of snow.”

Melody paused on the other end. “You went to Michigan because of its beautiful beaches? In January?”

That may have been a flaw in Delaney’s plan but she wasn’t going to admit to it. “I wanted to get a good parking space. So, what’s it going to cost me for you to keep this a secret?” Everyone in her family had a price. Even her, and she was willing to pay for her privacy.

“I don’t know yet,” Melody answered. “For starters, how about you tell me what you’re hoping to accomplish with this stunt. Mom is climbing the walls, you know, and she’s taking it out on all of us. And what am I supposed to tell people who ask where you are? Everyone is getting worried because you’re not answering your calls.”

Delaney pulled a box of cereal from the grocery bag and put it in the cabinet. “Tell everyone I’m at a spa. And it’s not a stunt. I just needed to get away from the rabid media for a while and be on my own. Tell Mom not to worry. I’m fine.”

“I’m sure she’ll be glad to hear that, Lane, but what she also wants to know is when the hell you’ll be back. She can’t keep putting off our production people, you know. We have a show to make and they’re all pretty eager to talk to you. You’re the girl of the hour, you know.”

Delaney couldn’t quite name the tone in her sister’s voice. It was a fine line between derision, amusement, and envy.

“I bet they are. Can’t they just read the tabloids like everybody else?”

“The tabs are just recycling the same stuff over and over. Our producers want to see your reaction to all of this. They want to know what really went down.” Then she giggled. “Oh, sorry.”

What had gone down was Delaney.

“Thanks, Mel. That’s very sensitive of you.”

“I know. It just slipped out. Oh! Shit. Sorry. Again.” She didn’t sound sorry. Not in the least. “But listen, Lane,” her sister continued, “this story is money in the bank, but only if you come home and tell your side of it.”

“I don’t want to tell my side. I just want everyone to mind their own business.” She plunked a box of crackers on the shelf next to the cereal.

“Nobody in Beverly Hills minds their own business, and besides, you signed a contract to do a second season, remember? The producers are expecting you here.”

“So they can sue me if they want to. If you, Mom, Dad, and Roxanne want to parade around in front of the TV cameras and yank all the skeletons from our closets, be my guest. I’m done with it. One year was enough for me. The whole show was supposed to be about Dad anyway. Why are they so interested in us?” Delaney reached into the grocery bag and pulled out a bottle of wine. She wished it had a screw top so she could open it right now and guzzle it straight from the rim.

“Hmm, let’s think,” Melody answered. “Fifty-six-year-old rocker trying to make a musical comeback versus his three hot daughters. Who do you think is going to make for better reality television?”

“But the show was supposed to be about Dad’s career.”

The eye roll was implied in Melody’s tone. “No it wasn’t. The show was always supposed to be about us. Why do you think they named it
Pop Rocks
? He’s not a
Pop
without us daughters. Geez. No wonder they never call you the smart one.”

They never did call her the smart one.

And it pissed her off.

Everybody thought Roxanne was the smart one. Melody was the musical one. Go figure. And Delaney? Well, somebody had to be cast as the ditzy baby of the family. The unpredictable wild child. That wasn’t her, though. She wasn’t
that
wild, and she wasn’t
that
ditzy, but carefully selected editing from the first season had certainly painted her that way. And then of course there was The Scandal.

“I don’t want to do the show anymore. I’ve had enough . . . exposure. It was sort of fun the first season but then Boyd went and ruined everything. He completely humiliated me.”

Boyd—as in Boydell Hampton—the preacher’s son with the baby face and the mile-wide naughty streak. The kind of guy who talked poetically about being a missionary but who was really far more interested in exploring the missionary position. And every other position he could think of. Their fling had been as brief and fiery as one of his daddy’s sermons, but that had been ages ago. She didn’t even remember who had broken up with whom. First they were together, then they weren’t, but she hadn’t thought of him in ages.

Not until last month when Mount Lascivious erupted by way of a grainy, low-quality video. She didn’t know he’d ever recorded them in the act, but there she was, her head bobbing up and down over Boydell Hampton’s junk. Somehow that video had found its way into the media machine—the machine that regularly fed and shred celebrities’ lives with remorseless impunity—and the next thing she knew, headlines like “Delaney Masterson Masters the Son of a Minister” popped up and waved around as frantically as Boyd’s erection.

In the last four weeks, Delaney’s name had become every late-night comedian’s favorite punch line.

Melody’s voice over the phone was determined and calm. “We can sue him, Lane. The lawyers are looking into it. Tony thinks we have a strong case.”

“No!” Delaney gasped. She opened a drawer, looking for a corkscrew. That wine wasn’t going to open itself. “I don’t want Tony the lawyer looking into it. I don’t want to go to court. That will only keep this in the news that much longer.”

“So you’re just going to do nothing but sit on your ass inside some igloo in Michigan? That’s crazy.”

“No, I’m not just sitting on my ass. I’ve decided to use this time to better myself.”

“Better yourself?” If disbelief had a ringtone, it sounded just like that.

Delaney’s jaw tightened. “Yes, I had a lot of time to think about things while I was driving across the country, and I realized I don’t know how to do much other than
accessorize
. So, if I’m going to have all this time to myself, I should make the most of it, maybe try to develop some skills that are outside of my comfort zone.”

“Like what?”

“Well, for starters, I’m learning how to knit.”

Melody’s burst of laughter was not encouraging. “Knitting? That’s outside your comfort zone, you crazy risk taker?”

“Shut up. You’re missing my point. I just want to try some new things, and maybe find a way to offer something useful and tangible to the world. I found a place online where I can donate knitted baby hats for newborns.”

Delaney could have run a 5K in the time it took for her sister to respond.

“You’re knitting . . . baby hats?”

“Yes.”

“Girl, you have lost your frickin’ mind. I’m calling Mom’s psychiatrist.”

“I haven’t lost my mind. Maybe I’ve finally found it, and now I understand that I should be doing something to contribute to the greater good.”

Her sister’s laughter turned into a sniff of impatience. “OK, then. How about you contribute to the greater good of our family and come home? We need you here. You’re the best one on the show.”

“That’s ridiculous. Of course I’m not the best one.” Was she? The best one?

“Yes you are, Lane. You’re the funniest and we need you or the ratings will tank.”

“Did Mom tell you to say that?” Delaney loved her parents, but emotional manipulation was Ginsu sharp at the Masterson household, and this television show had brought out their most desperate qualities. Everyone but her seemed determined to stake their claim in the public’s consciousness.

“No, she didn’t,” Melody answered. “This is coming from me. So just think about that, OK? This isn’t just about you. It’s about the whole family.”

The whole family? Really? How had things turned so topsy-turvy that the whole family was relying on her? The ditzy baby of the family? The one with the sex tape? Her father was Jesse Masterson, eighties pop icon with three platinum records to his name.
Her mother was Nicole Westgate, a Victoria’s Secret model turned luxury-soap
maker, and Delaney’s sisters were both better looking an
d far more stylish than she was. They didn’t need her to make
Pop Rocks
a successful show. She just wanted to go back to being anonymous. But she had signed a contract. Her failure to show up for filming could impact them all.

She pulled open another drawer.
Corkscrew. Corkscrew. Please let there be a corkscrew.

“OK, I’ll keep that in mind, Mel. But in the meantime, promise not to tell anyone where I am? Please? I need this time.”

Melody’s sigh was emphatic. “Fine. And for what it’s worth, if I see Boyd Hampton on the street, I’m going kick him in the groin so hard his nuts pop out of his nostrils.”

Delaney’s laughter was loud inside the diminutive kitchen. She’d needed that laugh. “Please do, and then ask him why the hell he did this to me after all this time. I haven’t seen him in five years.”

“Well, that’s no mystery. He did it because your fame is exploding. He wants his slice of your fifteen minutes, and the tabloids probably offered him a ridiculous amount of money for that tape. But you know, if you went on TV, you could ask him yourself. I’m sure he’ll be watching.”

Delaney yanked open the final drawer.
Yes! A corkscrew.
“Nice try, Mel. I’m not going to talk about this in public. Ever. Not ever in the whole future of everness.” She could not feel more decisive about anything in her life. And she needed to end this phone call, because opening the wine required both hands. “Listen, I really do have to go because my landlord is upstairs fixing the shower and I want to go see what’s taking him so long. I’ll call you in a couple of days.”

They said their final good-byes and Delaney poured herself a glass of merlot—into a jelly jar, because that’s what she’d found in the cupboard. Sometimes function was more important than style.