in a deep breath, then exhaled, long and slow. His arms released her and she grabbed onto the handrail to keep her balance on the choppy sea. He looked down, glowering at the water. “I didn’t exactly help. Leaving like I did. Not calling you.”
The boat rolled, lifted and dropped by the movement of the ocean. Maggie felt as if she’d been slapped in the face with a cold clump of wet seaweed. Did Alex think he was the reason she was going it alone?
“We let each other go. If we’d talked, we might have made things harder for each other.”
Alex reached out and squeezed her shoulders. She’d have had to tell him she was in love with him, and he’d have had to tell her that he wasn’t coming back. They might have started putting the kind of pressure on each other that ends up with people hating each other. Leaving a good-luck message and fading away was easy. She distanced herself from people because she didn’t believe that she was worth sticking around for. Her mother hadn’t thought she was worth staying for. Why should anyone else?
“Back then I needed to put Nick first.”
“There wasn’t a part for an extra,” she joked. “It’s okay. I understood.” Alex running off to join the metaphorical circus in LA hadn’t been the clincher. She didn’t need to be an astrologer to predict that he’d have left her eventually. Still she’d remained cautiously optimistic on the boyfriend front. She had a tendency to cut guys loose before they got close enough to dump her first, but generally speaking she’d hoped to find The One someday. Until Marcus.
“I wouldn’t have gone for the part of Jago if Nick – and our mother – hadn’t begged me to. They made it impossible to say no.”
“I know.” Maggie stared at Alex’s granite face. Shoulders hunched, head hanging, he didn’t look up. Tabloid fodder, rumors abounded that Cassandra Wells had used shameless nepotism to guarantee that her sons landed the parts of the vampire twins. That must have been hell for Alex, but it was years ago. They’d more than proved themselves in the decade since.
“I couldn’t let Nick down. He wanted it badly. And I went along for the ride. Now that it’s all over, he thinks I regret the last ten years.”
Alex’s hands grasped the guardrail. Relieved that they’d strayed onto safer ground than why she was having a baby on her own, Maggie placed one hand over his taut knuckles.
“I want to explore the things I might have done if Mercy of the Vampires hadn’t happened. Nick resents that. According to him, there’s no going back, only forward. He thinks I should use the popularity of the show as a springboard. That’s what he plans to do.”
“Seems like six of one and half a dozen of the other, if you ask me.” Maggie squeezed his hand. “If you want to retrace your steps in order to move on, why shouldn’t you?”
“Nick doesn’t believe I can go back to zero.”
“Maybe he’s got a point.” She nudged him with her elbow, attempting to lighten the mood. “I mean, look at me. What am I if not a scene in your rear-view mirror? Right?”
He raked his gaze over her. “I wouldn’t put it quite like that.”
They both laughed. “You shouldn’t be ashamed of Mercy. It’s been an amazing success. You should be proud.”
“It’s hard to be proud when my own father called it the ‘naffest thing on the goggle box’. He hates it.”
Maggie breathed out a long, shrill whistle. “Harsh!” She whooshed her chipped purple nails through the air. “It’s sour grapes. Didn’t I read somewhere that he’s starring as a sci-fi villain? That’s not exactly Richard III!”
Maggie didn’t get Alex and his family. He was devoted to Nick, even though they were behaving more like their on-screen characters than real-life brothers. Why couldn’t he agree to disagree with Nick about there not being any more mileage in Vampires? And why was he so eager to please a father who did nothing but put down his work? As families went the Wells made her “one parent, one baby” plan look positively idyllic.
“Nick and I have been at each other’s throats since Mercy ended.”
“Maybe you’re being unfair on him. The show might have started out more his thing than yours, but if you hadn’t been into it, it would have shown. There’s no way it would have lasted ten years.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” he admitted, his tone mock-grudging, “Without Jago, I’d have been lucky to get a walk-on in Hamlet.”
“Or Rosencrantz. Or Guildenstern. If you were really lucky,” Maggie teased.
“And that’s only maybe, on a good day, with the wind in the right direction, and all the stars in my horoscope perfectly aligned and shining down on me.”
Maggie giggled. “I read the horoscope on the plane.”
“What did mine say? That I’m not destined to play a vampire forever?”
“I think it said something cryptic about Saturn’s life-changing energy.”
“Thank you, Mystic Maggie. What about yours?”
“Mine said I should prepare for an encounter with my destiny.”
A deep chuckle erupted from Alex’s throat. “Well, you encountered me. Only I’m not your destiny. It’s not in my stars to play a part in anyone’s destiny but my own.”
Her heart plummeted. Inappropriately gutted, she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why. She wasn’t expecting anything from Alex. A quirk of fate had brought them together, but they’d be going back to their real lives soon enough. She’d return to the world outside his celebrity bubble, resume her place as a plankton speck he’d hung out with before he’d landed the top spot on a gazillion hottest bachelor lists.
The spark she’d felt from his kiss on the beach was all about the feelings she’d once had for him. He’d left her floating on air like a party balloon. None of it meant a thing. Acting was his job description. Friends would be fine for him because there’d never been any danger of him seeing her as anything more. For a few whimsical minutes at Cape Cod they’d slipped back like a couple of characters from a time-travel drama. In reality, there’d be no going back. Only forward.
“Anyway,” he said, breaking the sudden silence. “You don’t need to know what’s in the stars. You know what you want and you’re making it happen.”
Wasn’t that what he was doing? It bothered her that he was so sure he’d never find The One. She had Marcus to thank for that, but she only had to open her eyes and look around to see that Alex could have lovely women queuing around the block to share his life. She didn’t really want to know, but deep down she couldn’t help herself.
“Haven’t you ever come close to meeting Miss Right?” she quizzed.
“A soul mate?” He gave a bitter laugh. “You’ve got to be joking.” As soon as it was out there she felt bad for asking. Just like her mother and her grandmother’s imperfect love lives, Alex’s parents’ marriage hadn’t been a match made in heaven. Still before Marcus had shattered her hopes, she’d remained optimistic about love, so why should Alex let Drake and Cassandra spoil his chances of happiness? “The One is a flawed concept. Isn’t that what you said?”
“Well … yes … but,” she stumbled over her words, not wanting to confess all about Marcus.
“Here’s the thing.” He swept a hand through his hair. “True love in Hollywood doesn’t really exist. It’s a fiction like practically everything else that happens there. Take Nick and Ella Swift, for example.”
“That’s not fake?”
“Sure it is. Nick’s love life is a publicity stunt. And Ella’s a willing accessory.”
“Oh, I see.”
“No,