Page 21 of Shine For Me

“I know enough.”

I want to argue with her. Want to tell her that Fox isn’t like other people in the industry. I want to tell her about the graduation party the other day, what the Ransome family is like. But there’s no point. Fox is an actor, and that’s all my mom needs to know.

I can’t even blame her for her preconceived opinion about him. An actor broke her heart and ruined her life, after all. Cheated on her. Humiliated her. Took her children away. No one knows about the dark side of this industry better than Bethany Cain.

So instead of defending him, I tell her another truth. “There’s nothing going on between me and Fox. We’re just friends.” I think about that overheard conversation between him and River at the party, his insistence that he would never date an actress, and that he would never see me in that way anyhow. It only aches for a few seconds this time, a far better response than the last several hundred times I’ve replayed it.

“Okay, sweetheart.” But I can tell she doesn’t really believe it. Suddenly, the urge to get up to Napa in the next few days fades and I’m relieved I didn’t mention the thought when I first had it. I’ll probably be too busy getting ready for the trip anyhow.

“How have you been?” I don’t even care that my change of subject is both abrupt and obvious. “How’s Jude? How are the grapes?”

She chuckles. “The grapes are good, which means Jude is good.” My second oldest brother lives and dies by the fruit that grows on those vines. It’s basically a symbiotic relationship at this point. I swear I’ve heard him talking to the grapes like they’re his babies. I wouldn’t be surprised if he thinks he hears them talking back.

He’s a bit of an odd duck, my brother Jude. But he’s the only one in our family who resisted the movie-making bug, so maybe he’s actually saner than the rest of us.

Mom happily chats about the winery and the blends she’s most excited about for next season. Apparently, their tourism numbers are way up, which my people-person mom loves. My grumpy brother Jude is another story, and I laugh along as she tells me about his moody interactions with the tourists. The conversation takes me all the way to the gate of my house in Los Feliz and by the time I get home most of the remaining sting from the less pleasant parts of our conversation have faded.

But then I see the car parked on the other side of my gate and my smile drops off my face. “Momma, I need to go,” I tell her. “Can I call you later in the week?”

“Sure, honey. Try to rest a little bit before you head out of town, okay? You’ll be working far too many hours once you start shooting.”

“I will,” I agree, but my mind is no longer on our conversation—it’s on the one I’m about to have with my fiancé.

I find Adam sitting on my couch, arms and legs spread out—he’s always been the worst kind of manspreader—the television tuned to some golf tournament. He looks as comfortable as can be in my space and I grit my teeth in annoyance. “What are you doing here?”

He looks up and I can see the precise moment he fixes his most charming smile to his face. “Sweetheart. You look lovely.”

I raise an eyebrow. I’m dressed in leggings and a sports tank, my hair damp and frizzy after a tough workout with my personal trainer. “What are you doing here?” I repeat.

He holds his hands out wide. “Am I not allowed to visit my fiancée?”

It takes all my self-control not to roll my eyes but I refuse to allow him to goad me into childish behavior. Instead I turn on my heel and walk into the kitchen, knowing he’ll follow. He’s most definitely here for a reason, and the best way to get him to spill it is to pretend like I don’t care. Sure enough, he’s joined me by the time I’ve started throwing frozen fruit and protein powder into a blender

“Good work out?”

“Yup.”

He eyes me as I pull a jar of locally-sourced honey from the cabinet. The wrinkle of his nose when I add a spoonful has me adding a second, just out of spite. He always liked to tell me what I should and shouldn’t eat, back when we were a real couple. That should have been a warning sign that things weren’t what they should have been. God, I’d been so stupid. A stupid, easily manipulated little girl.

Angry heat rises in my chest and I slam the lid on the blender, my determination to remain mature going straight out the window. “What the hell do you want, Adam? I’m leaving in a few days and I have a million things to do first. If you need me to join you at some event, you should have cleared it with my team weeks ago.”

“I don’t need you at an event,” he says, his cool calmness annoying me even more. It was always like this with us. He would provoke me into a temper and then turn maddeningly calm, giving him the perfect opportunity to remind me that I was always the unreasonable one.

“I was just hoping—” His words are cut off by the loud whirl of my blender. Was it totally childish to wait until the moment he started speaking before pressing start? Probably. Does the tiny act of rebellion make me feel better? Hell yes.

I hold the button for just a few seconds too long, knowing it’s annoying the hell out of him. Oh, he looks completely unruffled, but I know this man well enough to pick up on the little signs. The way his fingers tap against his trousers. The tightness around his eyes. He’s pissed off, all right

“Sorry,” I say sweetly when the blender clicks off. “What were you saying?”

He surprises me by coming around the kitchen island and opening an overhead cabinet to pull down one of my nicer goblets from a high shelf. Then he nudges me out of the way and lifts the pitcher from the blender, pouring a stream of thick, dark pink smoothie into the cut-glass goblet. “Here,” he says, nudging it toward me. “I know how you feel about your fancy glasses.”

I grit my teeth, annoyed by his reminder that he knows me as well as I know him.

“What do you want?” I ask again, sounding more tired than aggressive this time.

“I wanted to see you.” At my expression he raises his hands. “I mean it. When’s the last time we spent time together outside of an event?”

I blink at him for a long moment. “Why would we spend time together outside of an event?”