Along Came Trouble(8)

“Did you consider asking me first?”

Ellen walked to the window and checked the yard. Empty. She had to admit, it was a relief to see it that way.

“If I’d asked you, you’d have shot me down, right?”

“Of course.”

Jamie ran a hand through his curly blond hair, taming the sleep-mussed mess into something approaching his usual style. Even minimally groomed, he had the sort of masculine beauty millions of screaming fans went crazy for.

Growing up, she’d often wished for Jamie’s golden curls instead of her own flyaway white-blonde hair, his blue eyes to replace her hazel ones. She’d thought that if she were more beautiful, more talented, their mother might have given her an equal share of attention. Instead, Mom had raised her to watch out for her brother, to make sure he never got too tired or stressed out. She and her mother had specialized in spoiling Jamie, focusing all their collective energy on the more talented twin.

Ellen had always loved Jamie too much to hold the maternal favoritism against him. Only one person in a thousand got to be as gorgeous as her brother, and nobody got to choose their parents.

“I thought you might be more receptive to a stranger,” he said. “But I didn’t hire him, Breckenridge did. My head security guy suggested it would be a good idea to put some guys on you and Carly until this thing blows over. Apparently they don’t have their own people in the Midwest, so they contracted it out. Could you please stop pacing around? You’re making me motion-sick.”

Ellen propped the tablet against her salt-and-pepper shakers and sat down at the kitchen table. “Better?”

“Much. You were all nose hair from that angle.”

“Gee, thanks.”

She pulled a basket of laundry closer, spilled the warm contents onto the table, and started picking out and matching Henry’s socks.

Really, she ought to have called on her cell. Then she could have berated Jamie hands-free while she picked up the toy cars off the floor and unloaded the dishwasher. She and her brother had fallen into the habit of doing the video chat thing for Henry’s sake. He wasn’t quite old enough yet to know what to make of the phone, but he loved to talk to his uncle on-screen.

“So I’m guessing a guy showed up, and you sent him packing?” Jamie asked.

Was that the best way to summarize the morning’s events? It left out Weasel Face, the assault-by-tea, Caleb’s arrival, Caleb’s smile, Caleb’s biceps . . . “More or less. There was another photographer out there.”

His eyebrows drew together. “Sorry, Ellen.”

“Not your fault.”

It was, but she had a hard time holding the press against Jamie for more than a couple of minutes at a time. He’d only ever wanted to sing. The rest of this had come to him accidentally, all part of the celebrity package.

Plus, he couldn’t help it that somebody local had sold a cell-phone shot of him and Carly to the tabloids. He’d been far more upset about that than Ellen had. After the picture hit the Internet, he’d picked a pointless fight with Carly that ended in their breakup and his retreat to California. A few hours after his plane lifted off, the first photographer had landed on Ellen’s lawn.

“Anyway,” she said, “this security guy showed up and ran off the photographer, and he talked me into letting him put a car out on the cul-de-sac. So you got your wish.”

“Good. I thought for sure you’d fire him on the spot.”

I tried that. But it hadn’t worked, and she still wasn’t quite sure why. The whoa thing had distracted her. That, and the appeal of not having to worry about keeping one eye out the window at all times. “I still could.”

“Don’t, okay? It’s bad enough that I can’t be there. I feel better knowing somebody’s watching out for you guys and Carly.”

“I’m not letting him within ten feet of my house.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Just work with him as much as you can stand to. And be nice, huh? It’s not his fault you’re insanely touchy about that house.”

“I’m not—”

Jamie raised an eyebrow, and she gave it up without even finishing the sentence. She was insanely touchy about her house. But it wasn’t as though she hadn’t earned the right to be.

This house was the prize she’d rescued from the wreckage of her marriage. It was where she’d learned independence, where she raised her son, and she refused to cower behind her own doors, locked down for fear of a few lowlifes with cameras. She couldn’t stand the idea of bodyguards and alarm codes, gates and barricades messing with her peace. Not when it had taken her so long to find it.