The Real Thing (The Bouquet Catchers Book 5) Read online

  THE REAL THING

  By Lizzie Shane

  A Bouquet Catchers Novel

  Copyright © 2019 Lizzie Shane

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights reserved under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ADDITIONAL TITLES BY LIZZIE SHANE

  Reality Romance

  Marrying Mister Perfect

  Romancing Miss Right

  Falling for Mister Wrong

  Planning on Prince Charming

  Home for Christmas (A Holiday Novella)

  Courting Trouble

  The Bouquet Catchers

  Always a Bridesmaid

  Little White Lies

  Dirty Little Secrets

  The Decoy Bride

  The Real Thing

  Yours For Christmas

  All He Wants for Christmas

  Miracle on Mulholland

  An Unplanned Christmas (Coming July 2019)

  THE REAL THING

  Not your average girl next door…

  As Hollywood’s hottest leading lady, Maggie Tate is a master of illusions—so much so that she’s even managed to convince the world she’s perfectly happy. But when her estranged aunt leaves her a run-down beach house in sleepy Long Shores, Oregon, she jumps at the chance to escape the bubble of her perfect life. What better place to lay low than the tiny coastal town where she used to spend her summers?

  But when Maggie arrives in Long Shores, nothing is quite like she remembered…including the boy next door.

  The unforgettable boy next door…

  Ian Summer was the first boy Maggie ever kissed, but he’s all grown up now, with a daughter of his own. She knows she should keep her distance—no matter how rugged and manly he’s turned out. With her disastrous relationship track record, she’s sworn off men, but she’s never been able to resist the emotionally unavailable ones.

  Ian isn’t the ambitious musician he was when Maggie knew him. He’s got his daughter to think of now, and a steady job as the town handyman. He doesn’t need a diva actress coming in and rocking the boat—but the more time he spends with Maggie, the more glimpses he catches of the girl he used to know. And the more right it feels.

  Could this be love?

  Maggie can play the love interest like no one else, but with Ian it isn’t an act. After a lifetime of Hollywood illusions, could this finally be the real thing?

  CHAPTER ONE

  The house had shrunk.

  Though it was possible it was simply smaller than she remembered.

  Maggie peered through the drizzle slowly collecting on the windshield, half-heartedly wondering if she might have taken a wrong turn, but the house numbers nailed in a vertical line to the front porch pillar were too familiar. They’d been red once, but now they’d faded to a muted peachy orange. Everything about the place had faded.

  And shrunk.

  She shouldn’t have been surprised. She hadn’t been here in fifteen years. Didn’t everyone say childhood memories shrank in the face of reality? Wasn’t that the cliché? But Maggie still stared at the ramshackle little bungalow that seemed to be leaning slightly in the wind and felt something inside her deflate.

  It probably didn’t help that her perceptions had been warped by the scale of Beverly Hills, but the place looked like a shack. Nothing like the warm, cozy cottage of her memory.

  The paint had been stripped by the wind and the salt in the air, leaving weathered, graying boards. The ocean wasn’t visible from the house, separated by a quarter mile of patchy forest and grass-covered sand dunes, but she knew she would smell it as soon as she opened the car door. Just like she knew where, in the overgrown brush of the garden, she would find the start of the path that wended through a thicket of trees, past the gorgeous sprawl of the Summer house, and over the dunes before emptying onto the beach.

  She must have run that path two thousand times, starting when she was so small the tall grass of the dunes had hit her in the chest. That first summer.

  The wipers swish-thwapped across the windshield as Maggie squinted through the glass. In the passenger seat, Cecil B. DeMille stirred, snuffling sleepily before settling back into his nap. She reached over and stroked his silky-soft head, crooning something soothing. He’d been sleeping a lot lately and she tried not to worry that her baby was getting older, little white hairs beginning to crop up in his furry eyebrows.

  He’d been so good during the two day car ride to get here, alternating between sleeping and standing on her lap, his little nose pressed against the driver’s side window. It had been fun, their little road trip, but now that they were actually here, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go inside. She was starting to think this may have been a mistake. Two days of driving. An impulse decision.

  Maggie was known for her impulse decisions. For never really thinking things through—but she usually had a team of people around her who were paid to think things through. Paid to worry about details and logistics so she never had to. But none of them were here. She’d left them all behind in LA.

  Melanie would undoubtedly be annoyed. Her manager hated anything that wasn’t under her control, and there was a certain note she would get in her voice when Maggie did something illogical or foolish to upset the status quo. A note Maggie had no desire to hear right now—which was why she’d turned off her phone two days ago.

  She paid Mel to run her life, and the woman was amazing at it, but somewhere along the line it had stopped feeling like her life.

  When Maggie had read the letter about Aunt Lolly, she’d just wanted to get away. She hadn’t thought about logistics. Or optics. Or any of the other bullshit that seemed to consume her life. She’d just jumped into the car Ethan had given her as a ridiculously over-the-top present when they wrapped principle photography on the last Alien Adventuress movie and started to drive.

  It was a hot pink vintage convertible. Not really her style and not exactly ideal for a movie star traveling incognito, but it was the only car in her garage since she hadn’t gone anywhere in anything other than a chauffeured SUV in years.

  She could have called the car service. She had a contract with a private jet charter as well. She could have made the trip from Beverly Hills to Long Shores, Oregon in a matter of hours, and in perfect comfort. But she hadn’t just wanted to get away from Los Angeles. She’d wanted to get away from being Maggie Tate, if only for a little while.

  Sneaking off at five in the morning with just her dog probably wasn’t the most rational choice she’d ever made, but it certainly wasn’t the most irrational either.

  Maggie shoved open the car door. The drizzle had diminished until it was little more than a mist in the air, kissing everything with an edge of cold. It was May, practically summer, but there was no sign of that on the Oregon coast. In a few weeks summer would find the shore and the beach would be crowded with weekend tourists, basking in the sun—though the weather could turn on a dime, pivoting back to fifties and raining with no warning.

  Once upon a time, Maggie had loved those unexpected cold snaps almost as much as the perfect summer days. Clouds had meant long hours inside, hiding from the rain, listening to The Fifth Horseman, the Allman Brothers
, and Van Morrison for hours on end and dreaming about who she was going to be when she grew up. The famous actress. Beloved by all. Glorying in success and all that came with it.

  Stupid girl.

  The porch steps creaked beneath her feet. The executor of her aunt’s estate hadn’t sent a key with the letter, but she knew where Lolly had always kept one hidden—provided she hadn’t moved it in the last fifteen years.

  Maggie reached for the window to the left of the door, tugging on the lower corner of the windowsill. The trim had always been loose there, concealing the hidden key, but when she pulled up on it, it didn’t budge. Frowning, she pulled harder, in case the damp had warped the board and made it stick, but on the whole rickety, practically-falling-over house, this board seemed to be the one part that was nailed down firmly.

  “Come on,” she muttered, bending to get a better grip. The rough wood bit into her fingertips, groaning, but refusing to give an inch.

  “Breaking and entering is illegal, you know.”

  Maggie squeaked, spinning around guiltily.

  A man stood at the base of the steps, watching her try to break into her aunt’s house. He wasn’t wearing a jacket and the rain had darkened the shoulders of his dingy grey T-shirt, outlining the well-defined muscles of his upper body like a cinematographer’s dream. Brown hair and a brown beard complemented dark brown eyebrows slashing downward in a frown, his eyes narrowed mistrustfully. Twenty yards behind him, an old tan pickup truck she somehow hadn’t heard coming idled at the edge of the gravel drive that led toward the beachfront Summer house.

  “This is private property.”

  There was something ominous about his expression, but his posture was relaxed, his stance lazy. As if he knew he was in command of the situation. Bigger. Stronger. Faster. Unease whispered through her—they were all alone out here and suddenly she wished she had a locked door between them. But Maggie Tate never showed fear. She straightened, tilting her chin up, and took a step forward, staring him down. “It’s my property.”

  It felt wrong, saying it out loud. As if by claiming the house as her own she was throwing another layer of dirt on Aunt Lolly’s grave, but it was technically the truth. Maggie held her I’m a badass with every right to be here pose—

  And recognition flashed across his face.

  Shit. What was she doing? Striking a pose that was on every freaking Alien Adventuress movie poster? Did she want it to be all over Twitter by the end of the day that Maggie Tate was hiding out in a secret house in Oregon?

  She dropped her hands. “Look—” she started to say, hoping to defuse the situation before it got out of control, but he spoke over her.

  “Lori?”

  Maggie’s throat closed at the old name. A name no one had called her in years. The last person who had known her as Lori had just died. Except…

  Her gaze flicked to the truck behind him. The truck parked on the side of the wending driveway that only led to Aunt Lolly’s place…and the big, beautiful weekend home of the Summer family.

  Her eyes snapped back to lock on the man with the lazy stance, standing at the base of the steps getting slowly soaked. The beard covered most of his face. He could have been anyone, but he looked about her age. About the right height, though the Summer boy had always been lanky, his mother lamenting that she could never feed him enough to keep any meat on his bones. This man was muscled. Mature.

  His hair was a little darker than she remembered—or was that the rain? It couldn’t be him, could it?

  Then she looked into his eyes. Eyes so dark they almost looked black, fringed by those long, thick lashes she must have sighed over a thousand times.

  Her first crush. Her first kiss.

  “Ian?”

  * * * * *

  He hadn’t expected her to come back.

  Ian had known since the reading of the will that the place was hers now, known that her arrival was a possibility, but he hadn’t actually expected her to show.

  Lori Terchovsky.

  Or rather Maggie Tate. She hadn’t been Lori for a long time.

  She wore a Dodgers cap pulled low over her eyes, her blonde hair tugged into a sloppy knot at the base of her neck, but she still looked more like a runaway movie star than a normal person. Which made sense, since that was what she was.

  She’d always been gorgeous—well. Not always. He was probably one of the few people in the world who remembered her awkward years. But she’d always had presence. Charisma. That extra something that she could turn on at will that seemed to shine out of her and make it impossible to look away, even when it felt like you were staring straight into the sun.

  That glow was sharper now. More refined.

  What was she doing here?

  Ian opened his mouth to ask, but she beat him to it.

  “It’s Wednesday,” she blurted, then blushed as if embarrassed by the comment, though he had no idea what could be embarrassing about it.

  “I’m out here full time now,” he explained. “Not just the weekends. For about eight years actually.”

  “Oh. Wow,” she said lamely, and he could see assumptions shifting around in her eyes as she glanced at his grease-stained T-shirt and torn jeans and the dirty truck behind him, drawing the usual conclusions. That he was mooching off his parents by taking up residence in their vacation house. That he was exactly where she’d left him, fifteen years ago. That he hadn’t actually made anything of himself after all.

  He didn’t bother correcting her. Let the great Maggie Tate think whatever the hell she wanted about him. “What are you doing here?” he asked instead.

  “She left me the house.” The words seemed to make her acutely uncomfortable—so at least she had the grace to be ashamed that a woman she hadn’t spoken to in a decade had left her the last thing she had in the world.

  “Funeral was three weeks ago.” He told himself he wasn’t trying to make her feel bad—but, fuck it, yes, he was. Lolly had been his friend. One of his best friends these last few years, even if she was fifty years older than him, and he was always going to be Team Lolly when it came to the rift between his friend and her great-niece.

  “I just found out a couple days ago. It would have been a circus if I’d shown up anyway.” Her gaze flicked away from his, but not before he saw the regret.

  Ian had been working on a grudge against Maggie Tate for years, but it did suck that she hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye. Lolly had been sick for a while. They’d all known this was coming. Her friends had made their peace as best they could so by the time the end came it had seemed natural.

  For no one to reach out to Maggie, for her to not even find out until weeks later…

  Ian worked his jaw. “I’m sorry. Someone should have called you.”

  She drew herself up, the movement so slight it was almost imperceptible, but all the vulnerability he’d seen moments ago vanished like mist as she straightened. She shrugged, a casual nonchalance falling over her features. “My number’s unlisted. I’m hard to reach.”

  A moment ago she’d almost been real, but now she was the movie star again. “Right.”

  Should he congratulate her? She’d always wanted to be famous, but the words stuck in his throat.

  “I just came to clear out the house. Take a trip down memory lane and get it ready to sell.” She glanced over her shoulder at the weathered grey boards, smiling wryly. “Though I can’t imagine it’s worth much.”

  Not to a woman who made several million a picture maybe, but it had been worth something to Lolly. Her little piece of paradise, she’d called it, but Ian kept that memory to himself as he studied the woman on the porch.

  She wouldn’t be here long. A week at the most. A momentary disruption of the status quo. And the best thing he could do was stay out of her way. It was tempting to offer to help, for old times’ sake, for Lolly, but he quashed the impulse.

  “Enjoy your stay.” He gave her a nod and headed back to his truck, circling that ridiculous pink convert
ible.

  Civil, but distant. That was the best way to deal with her.

  “Thanks,” she called after him and he raised one hand in a wave without turning back.

  She wasn’t Lori Terchovsky anymore, the girl he’d once worshipped to an unhealthy degree. And even if she had been, he remembered Lori. Remembered the huge, gaping hunger in her for fame—and he’d learned his lesson about women like that. No. His life was good, just the way it was. He had his priorities right where they needed to be and Maggie Tate was none of his goddamn business.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Maggie leaned against the post holding up the porch roof and watched Ian Summer walk away, her gaze drifting down to take in the well-worn jeans and the lazy, unhurried confidence of his movements. Why was a man always exponentially hotter when he displayed a complete lack of interest in her?

  It was rare, these days. Maybe that was why she was so annoyed by it. Though Ian had taken it beyond disinterest. He’d tipped right over into disdain.

  He wasn’t at all how she’d remembered him, but people changed in fifteen years. Look at her. Though something about being back here made her feel like she hadn’t changed at all. Like she was still the same insecure, awkward girl she’d been back when she thought Ian Summer hung the stars.

  He climbed into his truck without looking back, throwing it into gear and rumbling softly toward the Summer house. Would it look smaller too when she saw it?

  She remembered it almost as well as Aunt Lolly’s place, though she hadn’t spent anywhere near as much time inside. She’d loved that house. The big, beautiful sprawl of it. She used to fantasize about living there. For a girl who had grown up in a series of trailer parks and apartments, the beach house had been the height of luxury.

  And Ian’s family had seemed perfect. Mother, father, child. All living together and loving one another. It had been like one of the perfect nuclear families she’d been addicted to on television. Growing Pains. Family Ties. Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Pure fantasy.

  She used to pretend she was the extra little sister on all those shows, acting out her own scenes. Then she’d met Ian and his family had been exactly like one of those shows. She’d envied him, envied his place in the world, his security—though at the time she hadn’t realized it. When she was eight all she’d thought was that the people who lived in that big, beautiful beach house had to be the happiest people in the world.