I felt slightly sick to my stomach as I entered the restaurant. I knew what my friends all believed, but the idea of someone like Brian Oliver wanting someone like me was too insane to accept, even if I could make myself understand that he was the guy I’d known for years.
I was so lost in thought that I didn’t see anyone approach me until a man said, “Miss Ella?”
I drew back a step, startled. “Yes. That’s me.”
“Welcome. Your table is ready for you.” The guy flashed me a brilliant smile. “Right this way, please.”
I was a little baffled by the special treatment. Then again, it made sense when the man said, “Mr. Oliver is running a few minutes late as well. He asked me to convey his sincerest apologies, but he should be here in just a few minutes.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
The restaurant was all one big, open dining floor with tables in the middle and booths lining the outside edges. It wasn’t the best place for privacy, but I could tell the manager had tried his best because he led me to a booth in the far back corner. We wouldn’t be tucked away entirely, but we wouldn’t be in the middle of everything, either. I was grateful for the effort.
The manager fussed over me for a minute, lighting a small candle in the middle of the table. Before he left, I had to ask. “Excuse me, but how did you know who I was?”
The man smiled again. “When Mr. Oliver called ahead for a table, he described what you would be wearing. He also said I’d know for certain it was you by your ‘stunning eyes.’” The man didn’t move his hands, but the air quotes were definitely there in his tone.
“And was I not right?” a quiet voice asked. A voice that made me shiver.
Cinder slid gracefully into the booth across from me and smiled from beneath the hood of a heavy cloak—a cloak a lot like my gorgeous white one, except for its dark color. His face was shadowed, but the flicker of the candle on the table caused his eyes to gleam in the soft light. Those eyes never left my face as he thanked the manager for reserving us a table and ordered dinner. They burned into me like lasers.
The manager hurried off to give our orders to the kitchen, leaving me alone—well, as alone as two people can get in a crowded restaurant—with my best friend, who just happened to be a famous movie star. For a moment, all we could do was stare at one another.
“Ella.”
He said my name with reverence and deep satisfaction. My response sounded nervous and unsure. “Cinder?”
“Call me Brian, Ella. Please.”
He paused, waiting for me to respond.
“Okay… Brian.”
He grinned, and the effect was devastating. “I’ve always wished I could tell you my name. Every time you called me Cinder, it felt like a lie. I hated that you didn’t know me.”
Finally, the shock cleared from my head. His words caused reality to crash down on me with vengeance. “Then why didn’t you ever tell me?” I was unable to keep my spiraling emotions in check. “How could you not tell me this?”
His smile faded a little. “If I’d told you, you wouldn’t have believed me.”
“Maybe not three years ago, but two weeks ago when you said we could never meet? You could have just told me you were famous and way too busy with your big movie and your psycho fiancée to spend time with me.”
Cinder flinched as if I’d slapped him. He seemed stunned by my anger, but what had he expected? His face crumpled with regret. “Ella, that wasn’t it. You don’t understand.”
“No, I finally do.” My head spun as everything fell into place with perfect clarity. “It all makes so much sense now. Everything. That’s the last piece of the puzzle I’ve been missing this whole time. Your relationship with Kaylee is a scam. It’s a publicity thing, isn’t it?”
Brian grimaced. “I didn’t want to have any part of it, but I was in a vulnerable position and everyone insisted it would solve my problem. Plus, there were a lot of people that had a lot to gain if Kaylee and I were together. At the time, I didn’t have an excuse to say no. I didn’t have you back yet.”
His confession startled me. I wasn’t sure what he meant, but it was very hard not to read into it and see things I wanted to see. Impossible things.
He reached both hands across the table, in a gesture asking for mine. When I didn’t give him my hands, he pulled his back and started fiddling with his glass of ice water.
“When you and I first started talking, I’d done a few TV shows and a Disney movie. I was pretty unknown. When I made the jump to teen comedies, everything changed. The fame was crazy. Landing The Druid Prince took my star status from crazy to insane. I can’t go anywhere without being mauled. I don’t have any real friends. Nobody knows how to treat me like a regular person anymore, and I hate it.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before continuing. “You disappeared right as my life started to spin out of control. I didn’t handle it well. Suddenly I had a whole world of friends, but not a single relationship that mattered. I shut down. Stopped caring. By the time you contacted me again, my entire life was superficial. I was basically dead inside—the world’s biggest asshole. That first night we talked again felt like waking up from a foggy dream. You took away the numbness. You made me remember how to feel, how to care about someone other than myself.”
His speech took my breath away. The thought that I could mean so much to somebody, that I could affect someone in such a way, wasn’t just shocking, but overwhelming. My heart pounded in my chest, and butterflies bounced around in my stomach like lottery balls. I had to look away from him before I could regain the ability to speak. “Are all actors so…passionate all the time?” I focused on my water glass as my face heated from embarrassment.
I expected him to laugh at me, but he didn’t. His voice sounded as serious as ever. “When it comes to the things we love, we are.”
Startled, I looked up into his eyes again. The emotion I saw there was indescribable.
“Aside from my mother, you are the only person in my life that matters to me,” he insisted, attempting to penetrate my soul with his gaze. “When I found out you were still alive, I tried to call everything with Kaylee off. I told her I wasn’t going to go through with it. I was going to fly to Boston and tell you who I really was.”
“Seriously?”
Brian nodded. “But Kaylee already had the ring, and she caused this huge scene, acting like I just asked her to marry me. There were people everywhere, people I have to work with and reporters. I was stuck. After that, she blackmailed me into playing along. She threatened to ruin my career and get my father fired from the Cinder Chronicles sequels. She’s evil, Ella, ruthless, and she especially hated the idea of you. I didn’t want to get you involved, but I always planned on explaining everything as soon as I could. We were supposed to ‘break up’ after the awards season was over. I was just trying to wait until then to keep you out of the insanity and away from Kaylee. I didn’t want you to get hurt.”
“Um…” I didn’t even bother to hide how flustered I was. “I suppose you’re forgiven, then.”
Cinder let out a breath. His entire body sagged as relief flooded him from head to toe. He reached his hands out to me again, curling his fingers in a clear “give me” gesture. There was something so vulnerable about him that I couldn’t refuse this time. I gave him only my left hand, knowing I wouldn’t be able to extend my right far enough to reach him. He didn’t seem to notice. He simply took my one offered hand in both of his. His touch felt like fire, even through the satin of my glove.
“I am glad that we met,” he promised. “I’m glad fate stepped in and did what I wasn’t brave enough to do.”
Again, I had no idea how to respond to him. Had it really been fate? Did he actually believe in fate? And the way he was looking at me…
He let go of my hand and sat back when he realized how much he was overwhelming me. In the blink of an eye, he reverted to his calm, casual, playful self. “I have something for you.”
It took a minute for my brain to switch gears with him. By the time I caught up, he was pushing a book across the table to me. I gasped, recognizing it instantly even though I’d never seen it before. It was a first-edition copy of The Druid Prince.
Taking the book with caution, I reverently ran my hand over the cover. It was in good condition yet well worn at the same time, as if its previous owner had cherished it—read it over and over again while taking care not to damage it. I knew that if I opened the front cover I would find it signed to me by L.P. Morgan. It was perfect.
“As soon as I met you earlier, I had my assistant drive to my house to pick this up,” Cinder said as I studied my new treasure. “That’s why I was late. I was waiting for him to get back.”
I pulled the open book to my face and breathed in its rich scent, not caring if the action made me look like a freak. I’d always loved the smell of books.
“Do you remember that day?” Cinder’s voice, nothing more than a whisper now, sounded haunted.
I couldn’t speak above a whisper, either. “Just bits and pieces, but I remember this.”
I flipped to the inside cover and touched the inscription. Even though I’d just met L.P. Morgan for myself this afternoon and had another book with his signature in it, this was different. It was infinitely more special. I swallowed back the emotions that were suddenly threatening to explode from me.
“I was worried giving it to you would remind you of that day, but I really want you to have it.”
I met his solemn gaze with glistening eyes. “I love it. Thank you.”
The moment was broken between us when a young waitress appeared with our food. As she set our plates down, she noticed who was sitting there, hiding beneath his Elven cloak of invisibility. She gasped and nearly dropped Cinder’s plate in his lap. It slipped to the table with a loud clang—embarrassing, but luckily harmless since nothing spilled. The girl was mortified. “I am so sorry, Mr. Oliver! Are you all right?”
Cinder didn’t miss a beat. He flashed her a smile she was likely to dream about for the rest of her life and said, “Ah, no worries. If a girl as pretty as you had taken me by surprise, I’d have done the same thing.”
I suppressed a groan for our waitress’s sake. She ate up the attention like a starving child, and blushed an attractive pink. “Th-thank you, Mr. Oliver. Is there anything else I can get you?”
How strange would it be to have everyone know your name and reduce people to such clumsy, stuttering messes all the time? I could understand why he’d always liked the anonymity of our relationship so much if this was how everyone treated him. I’d only been with him for fifteen minutes, and I already knew I would hate fame.
Cinder glanced at the food on the table and started to shake his head, but then looked at me and changed his mind. “Actually, would you mind taking a picture for us?”
The way the girl’s face lit up, you’d think he just offered to take her home in his Ferrari. “Sure!”
I tried not to smile at how the girl’s hands shook as she accepted the phone. I must have failed to hide my amusement because Cinder gave me a subtle wink. It was no wonder the guy had an ego bigger than the moon.
The girl stepped back to get both Cinder and me in the shot, but before she could take the picture, Cinder got up from his seat and slid into the booth next to me. He threw his arm around me and tucked me snugly into his side.
I stopped breathing.
No, I came completely unglued.
Geez! I was worse than the waitress!
Everything about him flooded my senses. The smell of his cologne—a spicy, musky scent that was one hundred percent yummy, sexy, male—led the assault, followed by the feel of him. He was no longer just an Internet persona. He wasn’t just a face from a movie anymore, either. He was real. He was warm, and strong, and very, very touchable. I clasped my hands together in my lap so that they couldn’t betray me in any embarrassing way.
“Hang on.” Cinder pulled the hood from his head, then eyed mine. “Do you mind if I just…” He didn’t finish his sentence before reaching up to push the cloak off my head. “Don’t want that beautiful face of yours hidden in the picture.”
He fussed with my hair for a minute, smoothing it down. His fingertips grazed my cheek as he tucked a random lock of hair behind my ear. It took everything I had in me not to gasp. “There.” I could hear the pride in his voice. “You’re ready for your close-up, Miss DeMille.”
The play on the famous Gloria Swanson line barely registered with me. My skin was still tingling where he’d touched me. I looked up at him in a daze.
He smiled arrogantly, as though he knew exactly what he was doing to me and liked the effect he had on me. “You didn’t seem so scared of me earlier when you were busy making fun of my pick-up lines and calling my character a coward.”
“You were just Brian Oliver then, and there was a table of space between us,” I murmured, blinking over and over again as if doing so might magically clear the fog from my brain. No such luck.
“I was just Brian Oliver?” With a shake of his head, Cinder laughed—a deep, throaty chuckle that promised trouble. “Only you, Ella.”
Suddenly he ducked his head and put his lips to my ear. When he spoke, his breath blanketed my neck, warm and sensual. It sent a chill through me that raised goose bumps on my arms. “Smile for the camera, Ellamara,” he whispered. “I promise I won’t bite.” But even as he promised this, his teeth gently nipped my ear.
Now I did gasp, and he laughed again. “Not hard, anyway,” he amended.
He leaned back up and winked at me before turning his glowing smile to the girl waiting to take our picture. Her eyes were as big as saucers. I’m not sure whose face was a deeper red—hers or mine.
“Um, are you guys ready, then?”
“Smile pretty, Ella,” Cinder chirped, giving me a gentle squeeze. “This is going to be my new desktop for my computer.”
The waitress kindly waited to take our photo until I broke from my stupor enough to manage a smile. Then she handed the phone back to Cinder and hurried off to the kitchen to relay the story to the rest of the restaurant staff. Her cheeks were still flushed as she disappeared from our sight.