Chapter Twenty-Eight

Luke and Dan watched Jade practically sprint from the room, their gazes locked firmly on her shapely derriere. Logan smacked both of them on the back of the head. “Cut it out.”

“Jeez, bro, you truly are my hero,” Dan whispered reverently.

“You dog,” Luke teased, thumping him hard on the chest. “You were holding out on us.”

He smiled cockily. He couldn’t help it. “She’s hot, eh?”

“Hot? Is that all you can say?”

Logan’s smile slipped. “Killer bod?”

“And…” Dan prompted.

Logan was starting to get annoyed. “Look, don’t you be saying anything raunchy. She’s a nice girl.” And she said she loved him. He gulped.

Both men gawked at him.

“What?” He didn’t say that part about love out loud, did he? Now he really was pissed.

“Don’t you have anything else to add?” Luke asked.

What the hell were these two boneheads talking about? “Spit it the hell out before I start throwing punches.”

“You want me to spell it out,” Dan said. “Fine. The babe you were just, if I’m not mistaken, burning up the sheets with…Juliet LaRue.”

Logan scoffed. “I introduced her you dolt. Her name is Jade LaRossa.”

Dan and Luke exchanged astonished glances.

Luke jerked a thumb in the direction Jade and Bella disappeared. “I don’t know what planet you've been living on, dude. That’s Juliet LaRue…the movie star.”

Juliet a movie star? No, no way. She couldn’t be. She was a school teacher. From St. Louis. She told him so.

Luke and Dan looked convinced of their reveal. Dan could be clueless sometimes, but never Luke. If Luke insisted she was Juliet LaRue, then she probably was the famous movie star.

Logan shook his head feebly, hanging on to one last shred of hope. His voice came out as a croak. “No, it’s not. Her name is Jade. Jade LaRossa.”

A sudden memory flashed through his head of the night her husband paid her a late night visit and he went to investigate. “I’m her husband,” the man claimed. When Logan questioned her with the simple utterance of her name, her husband responded: “Jade? Who the hell is Jade? Her name is Juliet.”

Juliet LaRue. And the man had been Kyle Ashton, the actor killed a couple of weeks ago in a car accident, the funeral Jade attended.

Logan watched with a sense of detachment as Dan stalked over to a cabinet and whipped out a DVD. He slapped it into Logan’s hand. “Look familiar?”

Logan didn’t want to look, he knew the truth would stare him in the face and he wouldn’t be able to cling to that last shred of hope that Jade was who she said she was…a Midwestern school teacher.

Dan and Luke were watching him intently…he couldn’t put it off any longer. He gazed at the picture of Jade, aka Juliet LaRue smiling back at him. She was wearing a low cut T-shirt, showcasing cleavage he was intimately familiar with, cleavage he'd buried his face in ten minutes ago. The hair was different but it was definitely his Jade. No. Scratch that. Not his. She wasn’t his anything.

He lifted his head to the two other men, both staring at him with something akin to hero-worship. He felt like laughing. He was no hero. He was a first class idiot, a sucker who had just been played like a well-tuned piano.

“She lied to me.”

He snapped the plastic DVD case in two and flung it across the room. It took out a lamp and he felt a small thrill of satisfaction when it crashed to the floor.

He needed air. He stalked outside, reached behind his head and pulled his T-shirt off. Then he kicked off his shoes, unlocked the gate and dove into the pool, jeans and all.

#

“We’re back, and we bringed ‘ookies,” Isabella sang. She stopped and looked around the room. “Where’s my daddy?”

Dan crouched down to face the little girl. “He went for a swim, Bella. Why don’t you join him?”

“Come-on Jade.” The little girl squealed and took off.

Isabella completely forgave Jade for missing her play and even offered to reenact her part as the caterpillar turned butterfly, wings and all. The resilience of children was nothing short of amazing.

Logan’s partner put a restraining hand on her arm, stopping her progress. She looked at his quizzically. He waited until Dan opened the door for Bella and then both men turned and faced her, arms crossed over their massive chests.

Jade took a step back. Both of their handsome faces were narrowed with anger. She felt as if she were standing in front of a firing squad.

“What do you think you're doing?” This from the brother she'd pegged as easy-going.

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.” Her gaze shifted from one man to the other and she took another step back.

“Logan's been through a lot the last few years,” Luke growled. “The last thing he needs is some woman waltzing in, messing with his head, playing him for a fool.”

Jade’s discomfort was replaced by irritation. “Logan is a grown man.” He shouldn’t have to run his sex life by these two Neanderthals. “And for your information, no one is playing anyone for a fool. I would never do that to Logan or anyone for that matter.”

Logan’s brother stalked across the room and picked something up off the floor. He walked back and held two pieces of plastic in front of her face.

Siege at Seattle High. All the blood drained from Jade’s face. Her eyes flew to the two men in front of her. “Oh no.” She covered her mouth with a hand. “He knows?”

“Right in one,” the brother said.

“Why did you lie to him?” Luke snapped.

“I didn’t…exactly.” Jade crossed her arms around her stomach and started pacing. She wanted to throw up.

He would never forgive her now. She loved him and he hated her. She was the lowest of the low—a liar. Desperately needing two people close to him to know the truth, she started talking.

“At first, I didn’t want anyone to know I was staying here this summer. I needed time away, time to relax. I didn’t know Logan, didn’t know if I could trust him. There are very few people in the world I can trust.” She didn’t say that for sympathy, rather it was the harsh, depressing truth.

“After I got to know him better, he confided in me about Isabella’s mother and how she had left him to become an actress. He despised the profession and even expressed his fear that Bella would want to be an actress like her mother. By that time, I really started to like him, I couldn’t tell him that I was the very thing he hated most.”

Luke pinned her with a fierce scowl. “So what, you figured you’d have a little summer fling, wave goodbye at the end of a couple of months and then flutter on back to Hollywood?”

She flinched as if he'd slapped her. “No, I would never do that.”

“So were you actually planning on telling my brother…or did you just want him to stumble across one of your movies and find out? Which, I might add, is exactly what happened.”

She squirmed nervously. “I was going to tell him, I just hadn’t found a way to do so yet.”

“I can see where it would be hard to find the time to tell someone your true identity while you were rolling around in the sheets together,” Luke continued relentlessly.

She opened her mouth to blast him but Dan cut her off. “My brother is trying his hardest to be a good father and mother to Bella. He didn’t have much experience to draw from so he's determined not to make any mistakes. He's never brought a woman here and has refused to even date since Bella came to stay. How do you think it will make him feel to know he ignored all his self-imposed rules on you and you repaid him by lying to him?”

“He slept with you in this house…Bella’s house. He’s going to hate himself for that more than anything,” Luke added.

Jade pressed her lips together. They were both right. She deserved the horrible things they were saying to her. How could she have made an even bigger mess of her life? She gazed out the glass door. Logan was swimming laps, a happy Isabella riding him like a horse.

Luke placed a hand on her arm, forcing her to turn and face him.

“Look Jade or Juliet or whatever your real name is, Logan was hurt deeply by a woman he trusted. I won’t watch him go through that again.” He paused. “I think you'd better leave.”

Jade considered his words and turned to leave. She spun around so suddenly, Luke jumped back in surprise.

“No, you know what? I’m tired of people telling me what I should do, what I shouldn’t do, who I should be seen with. I have enough of that in LA. I don’t need it from you. I really like Logan, Isabella, too. I’m going to apologize to him and explain why I didn’t tell him sooner.” She marched to the sliding glass door.

Dan bolted forward and blocked the exit, his fists planted on his hips. “I don’t think you understand. That leaving thing…it wasn’t a request. We won’t let you hurt him.”

She mimicked his stance and glared mutinously.

#

Dan sighed. Man, he was a sucker for a beautiful face. He wanted to call this woman one hundred kinds of a bitch, but he could see the real pain etched on her features. She may have royally messed with his brother, but she wasn’t the unaffected Hollywood princess he thought her to be. She cared for Logan, by the looks of it, deeply.

His brother would beat the crap out of him if he heard him say this, but Logan truly was a hero, had been Dan’s since the day he was born. He understood why this amazingly beautiful starlet would be captivated completely by Logan. Most people who met him were. Juliet LaRue wasn’t stringing him along. If he read her right, she'd already fallen in love.

“Look, I know my brother. If you go out there now, he's going to say or do something he will regret later. Most likely, it will upset Bella, and he'd hate himself even worse. Now, I’m not going to let that happen. Give him a chance to cool off. If he sees things differently in the morning and wants to discuss it with you, I’m sure he will be in touch.”

Jade looked ready to argue again and then suddenly the fight went out of her and her shoulders slumped like a deflated balloon. “I suppose you're right…you know, for Isabella’s sake.” She cast one last look out the door and then turned and fled up the stairs.

Dan waited until he heard the front door close before he faced Luke.

“He’s going to beat himself up over this. At least he has Bella to take his mind off of the whole thing.”

“And us too,” Luke added with a toss of his head, indicating they should go out and be with him.

Bella was riding on Logan’s shoulders, twirling around happily, but he stopped suddenly when he heard footsteps and turned a grim face. He visibly relaxed when he saw Dan and Luke.

Dan vowed not to let Jade hurt his brother again.

He peeled off his shirt and yelled, “I’m gonna get you Bella!”

She screamed with glee and clapped her hands as he and Luke raced to the pool and jumped in.