Chapter Text
“No, I’m not!” Lucy says quickly—panicky—with darting eyes that make her look like a squirrel trying to protect a precious acorn secret. She wants to stuff that secret into her cheeks and run.
He doesn’t flinch. “Yes. You are.”
“Nope.” She gives a serious shake of her head. “I don’t even—who is that singer, anyway?” She doesn’t quite make eye contact with him.
“Never said she was a singer.”
She scrunches her nose. Looks like Wilderness Ken has her cornered.
“Okay. You’re right. It’s me,” She says, letting her hands rise and then fall back to her sides. She refrains from tacking on a dejected and angsty, Now what do you want? But I can’t say that because Lucy Chen is never rude to fans.
She was thrilled when he looked at her face outside and didn’t seem to know who she was. It was a stroke of good luck that made her feel as if maybe this adventure wasn’t a completely terrible idea. Now she’s back to doom, gloom, and terror. Don’t get her wrong, she loves her fans, and she loves getting to know them. She just preferred for their introductions to happen when she has a security team around and not when she’s alone in the middle of the night with this somewhere-over-six-foot man.
And now this is the point where fans either pretend they know very little about her, but she catches them staring at every turn, or they start flipping out and crying and having her sign random stuff. Sometimes she’s asked to call their mom or their best friend. Take a picture. Just something that lets them prove to their friends that they really met her. Maybe she could just go ahead and preemptively offer him a trade: one VIP ticket in exchange for not murdering her tonight? Seems like a good deal to her.
Lucy steps back into her Lucy Chen skin. It’s softer, gentler—more regal than hers. Lucy Chen is everyone’s best friend. She’s pliable and easy to love. “Well, since the cat is out of the bag, I’d like to offer you a VIP backstage ticket to an upcoming concert in exchange for letting me stay here, as well as financial compensation, of course.”
She looks into Tim’s eyes. They’re bright blue. Startling, sharp, and almost unnatural in their intensity. They’re nearly the exact color as the ocean she imagines in her dreams. Pair those eyes with the strong set of his scruffy jaw and the stern pinch of his eyebrows—and the effect is…unnerving. But oddly, not in a frightening way.
With his arms still crossed, he raises and lowers a shoulder. “Why would I want a VIP ticket?”
That’s not a question she was expecting. She flounders, and when shd speaks, it’s a bumpy delivery. “Umm…because…you’re a fan?”
“Also never said I was a fan.”
Right. Wow. Okay.
Silence drops between them like a grenade. He doesn’t feel compelled to say anything else and Lucy’s uncertain of what to say, so they just stare. Propriety tells her she should feel upset right now. Offended even. Curiously, she’s not. In fact, there’s a giddy sort of sensation building in her stomach. It makes her want to laugh.
They watch each other closely for a long moment, chests inflating and deflating in a perfectly mirrored rhythm. Lucy knows why she’s cautiously taking him in, but what she can’t figure out is why he looks so concerned. As if she’s about to snatch his throw pillows and lamps and run away with them in the night. The Pillow Bandit on the run.
Okay, so he doesn’t want to come to her concert, but surely he knows she can afford her own throw pillows?
The longer she stands here and watching his flexing jawline, she gets the distinct feeling that he’s not only Not A Fan, he’s the opposite. The normal glowing adoration she sees in people’s eyes is replaced with annoyance in his. Just look at that deep crease between his brows. It’s surly. Grumpy. Agitated.
She doesn’f suspect he’s going to hurt her, but he seems to have a low opinion of her. Maybe it’s because she parked on his grass. Maybe it’s something else. Either way, it’s absolutely and wonderfully new for her, and because it’s late and she’s slightly hysterical, she decides to press his buttons.”
Lucy mimics his pose. “I see what it is. A ticket’s not good enough?” She gives him a smile like they’re in on his secret together. “You want me to throw in a signed poster, too, don’t you?” She wiggles her eyebrows. There’s no part of her that believes he wants a poster.
He blinks.
“Two VIP tickets and a signed poster? Wow. You drive a hard bargain, but I’ll comply for my biggest fan.”
His face doesn’t change a bit, but something in his fierce eyes sparkles. Lucy thinks he wants to smile but won’t let himself. Sometimes people decide not to like her for the most arbitrary reasons. Sometimes it’s just because she’s famous, and successful people make them uncomfortable. Sometimes it’s because she’s voted differently than them. And sometimes it’s because she frowned outside their favorite yogurt shop and now they want to cancel her forever because they think she’s against yogurt. She can’t help but wonder if she’s found one of those very people. Usually her very elaborate security detail is around to protect her, but there’s no one standing between her and Tim right now, and she can’t say she hates it. A thrill zaps its way through her veins.
Tim shakes his head lightly and looks down to pick up his bag again. He’s done with this conversation.
“Follow me,” he says.
Two words. A command. No one commands her anymore—oh, they still tell her what to do, but they phrase it so that it sounds like it’s her idea. Lucy, you must be exhausted. The guest room is right down that hallway, perhaps it would be nice to go on to bed now and get some rest?
Tim Bradford is too confident for manipulation.
He takes his bag with him down a hallway off the foyer and disappears into a bedroom. He wants to wander around a little, but most of the house is dark, and it seems like invading someone’s home and flipping on lights, opening some cupboards and digging around might be a weird thing to do. So Lucy settles for walking down the hallway after Tim just as he instructed.
She stops when they get to two rooms opposite each other in the hallway. One door is shut, and one is not. In the open room, she finds her bag sitting on the floor, and Tim parachuting a fresh white sheet onto a queen-size bed.
She watches him in the doorway for a minute feeling very dreamlike. She ran away from her life of fame today, and now she’s standing in a strange man’s house watching him make up a bed for her even though he dislikes her. His actions are as much a paradox as that butter soft sheet is to his scruffy jawline. Ashley would undoubtedly at this moment tell her to get out of this house immediately and go somewhere safer.
“Tim,” she says, leaning her shoulder against the doorframe. “How do you feel about yogurt?” He pauses and sends a look over his shoulder at me. “Yogurt?”
“Mm-hmm. Do you like it?”
He turns his attention back to the sheets. “Why? Are you going to offer to throw in a tub of yogurt with the tickets and poster and money if I say yes?”
Aha! There is humor under that annoyance. Lucy thought so.
“Maybe.” She smiles even though he’s not looking at her.
“Well, don’t. I don’t want yogurt or the other stuff.”
She takes a big fat Sharpie and marks off Angry because of yogurt shop picture.
Tim spreads a well-loved patchwork quilt onto the bed. It looks like it’s been passed down through several generations of loving family members. Her heart tugs and twists to get away from the feelings the sight of that quilt evokes in her. She wonders if her mom even read her text message earlier.
“Can I help?” she asks, taking a daring step into the same cage as the bear.
He glances over his shoulder again and when his eyes land on her, his frown deepens. He turns back toward the bed and begins tucking the top sheet under the mattress. She doesn’t tell him I’ll immediately untuck it before she gets in. “Nope.”
She was reaching for a corner of the quilt, but when his single-syllable answer barks at her, she raises her hands and takes a step away. “Okay.”
Tim’s eyes bounce to her lifted hands and for a fraction of a second, she sees him soften. “Thank you. But no.” And then they fall into silence again.
Lucy’s done hundreds of press events over the past ten years, interacted with thousands and thousands of fans during meet and greets. Was live on Jimmy Fallon just last month where she sang an ad-libbed song in front of a studio audience without a moment’s hesitation. And yet, standing in front of Tim Bradford, she’s not at all sure what to say. But she doesn’t feel like being polite. Or gracious. That thrill pulses harder.
She hovers somewhere between the door and the bed so she doesn’t get in his way, watching as he silently retrieves a pillow and slides a pillowcase onto it. This is all so normal, and domestic, and it feels wildly out of place to be sharing it with a stranger who doesn’t like her.
She glances around the room and then over her shoulder and registers the closed door across the hall. Suddenly, a thought strikes me. Is Tim married? Maybe that’s why he’s being so prickly and standoffish? He doesn’t want her to get any funny ideas. He’s seen a movie, or the covers of tabloids, and assumes all of us famous types are amorous home-wreckers.
She clears her throat, trying to find the right segue to let him know she won’t be trying to jump his bones tonight. “So, uh—Tim. Do you have a…special someone?”
His eyes dart in her direction and now he looks considerably agitated. “Is that your way of asking me out?”
Lucy does a hypothetical spit take. “What? No! I just…” She has zero amounts of Normal left inside her to give tonight. She was trying to put him at ease, and somehow, she’s managed to make it worse as well as apparent that she doesn’t know what to do with my hands. She waves them back and forth like a T. rex trying to land a plane. “No. I just wanted to make sure before I spend the night here that I’m not…stepping on anyone’s toes.” She grimaces. It’s getting worse. “Gahhh, I don’t mean stepping on their toes because I’m spending the night with you. I know I’m going to be sleeping in here alone. I’m not really into one-night stands anyways because they’re always so awkward…”
She’s saying too much. She officially entered sex into a conversation for the second time tonight with a stranger who doesn’t like her. She’s absolutely floundering, and Lucy never flounders.
Tim sets the freshly cased pillow onto the bed and finally turns to face her. Wordlessly, he walks closer. She has to tip her chin up, up, up to see him. He’s not smiling, but he’s not frowning, either. He’s the Unreadable Man. “I am single, but I’m also not on the market.”
He continues to stand there as her face turns hot as lava and melts right off her cheekbones. That was the softest, most polite letdown she’s ever received in my entire life, and she wasn’t even asking him out.
Thank goodness none of this matters. she’ll leave tomorrow morning, find the B and B, and Wilderness Ken will never have to be annoyed with her again.
But then why is he still standing in front of her like this? Why does she feel an instant connection to him? There’s something inside her, tugging her closer to him, begging her to raise her hand to his chest and run her hand over his soft cotton tee. He’s not moving. She’s not moving.
Tim’s expression suddenly turns awkward and he gestures toward the doorway that she didn’t realize she had sunk back into. “I can’t get through with you standing there.”
Oh.
OH!
Polite, polite, polite. “Yes! So sorry! I’ll just…move.” His solemn expression does not crack as Lucy steps aside and gestures dramatically toward his exit.
“Drinking glasses are in the cupboard beside the sink in the kitchen if you need water. Bathroom is at the end of the hall. I’m headed to bed. Feel free to lock your door, I know I will.”
“Smart move. Wouldn’t want to let the Pillow Bandit strike,” she says, feeling that thrill surge once again after saying exactly what she wants—untethered and without filter.
Maybe…just maybe this adventure wasn’t a mistake after all.