Sealed With A Kiss: Boys of the Bayou Gone Wild, page 9
But over the months he’d been in town, she’d seen him opening up to it. He brightened whenever Ellie and Leo greeted him when he came into Ellie’s. He smiled bigger when he made someone laugh. He actually told stories that had nothing to do with animal rescues. He especially softened whenever Ellie put a hand on his shoulder, or gave him a hug, or filled up his bowl of gumbo with a second helping without asking.
Ellie Landry had a way about her. She made you feel loved and accepted without ever actually saying those words. Of course, she’d bluntly say the words too if she thought you needed to hear them.
Just like she’d bluntly say, “Stop being an ass,” or, “Well, that was a really stupid decision,” if she thought that was what you needed to hear.
The only person who made a bigger difference in Donovan’s demeanor than Ellie was his brother, Griffin. Donovan was twenty-five years old but clearly his older brother’s praise and opinion still mattered immensely to him.
Naomi wondered if Griffin even realized it.
“Okay,” Donovan said, when several more seconds had ticked by without her saying anything. “So I want to know about your past, maybe I should tell you something about mine first.”
Naomi felt her heart do a double flip at that. Donovan was going to open up and share? See, this was where it got dangerous.
She wanted to know more about him. But the more she knew about him, the more she would care. The more she cared, the harder it would be to keep her distance. The closer she got, the harder it would be to say goodbye to him when it came time for him to leave.
Still, she was only human, and the guy she had stupidly fallen for wanted to tell her personal things about himself. “Okay,” she finally said.
“After my parents died, I spiraled,” he said, launching right into the story. “I decided I didn’t want to be sad anymore and so I did everything I could to numb the pain and keep things superficial. I started partying. Hard. Lots of drinking, even dabbling in some drugs. I broke things off with all of my friends and started running around with a new crowd. I didn’t care about any of them, which was exactly the way I wanted it, and they didn’t care about me. I just didn’t want to feel anything anymore. I worked especially hard to distance myself from Griffin.”
Naomi was riveted. Just those few lines and she was fully invested here. “That makes sense. That was a horrible thing to have to go through at any age. But especially as a teenager.”
His grip on the steering wheel tightened. “Yeah. I have all kinds of excuses. But none of those really matter. It’s the consequences. I hurt a lot of people and I knew it at the time. I just convinced myself I didn’t care. I figured it was better for them than having to be around a sad, pathetic guy who had decided that life wasn’t fair and everything sucked and bad things happened to good people no matter what you did.”
“You were just a kid.”
“Yeah. But I kept doing it. For four years. I drank and partied and kept myself from getting close to anyone. Because of all that, my brother had to give up all of his plans. He came home from Africa right after they died. He was my legal guardian. But I’m sure he planned to go back as soon as I turned eighteen. And he should have been able to.” Donovan swallowed hard, his eyes glued to the road. “But instead, because I was a mess, he had to stay.”
“But he went on to vet school. And he loves that,” Naomi offered.
“Yeah, eventually. On my schedule. Once I kind of got my shit together. But everything in Griffin’s life for a few years there was all about me. He stayed close and went to school near where I did. And then one night I ended up in the ER with alcohol poisoning.”
Donovan swallowed again and squeezed the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white.
“A cop actually found me passed out in my car. I’d pulled over, somehow, before I blacked out. Thank God.” He took a shaky breath. “But I was driving. What the fuck I was thinking I have no idea. I don’t remember any of it. And of course, I had no friends to give a shit, so when I walked out of wherever I was and got in my car, no one cared.”
Donovan blew out a breath and was quiet for a few seconds. Naomi just sat, processing it all. She felt like crying.
Donovan could have died. She could have lost him before she even knew him. It was the strangest thing to feel a sense of anger and loss in that moment. He was here with her, healthy and alive and fine. But for a moment, she felt a stab of grief.
“He had to sit by my bed and hope that the only family he had left didn’t die,” Donovan finally went on, his voice rough. “Of course, if I had, it would have been self-inflicted, which was way worse and far more selfish than what happened to our parents. When I woke up in the hospital room and saw him sleeping in the chair next to my bed, I realized that I couldn’t keep doing it. He’d given everything up for me and I was completely wasting it. I realized that I wasn’t afraid to die, but I was afraid to die in a pathetic, selfish way that would hurt my brother even more and leave him not just sad but also angry.
“So I decided to clean things up and do something meaningful with my life. I decided to do that with animals because they were so important to him. And it keeps us close, gives us a reason to communicate and to run into each other and work together once in a while. But I’m also able to stay out of his way. I let him go his direction and do his thing. And I’ve worked my ass off to do my thing and prove to him that I’m okay and that he can not only stop worrying about me, but he can be proud of me and know that his coming back and being there for me turned into something good.”
Naomi knew her eyes were as wide as they could go. She wasn’t sure that she had breathed in the past several seconds. Certainly not deeply. She hadn’t blinked or swallowed. She hadn’t wanted to miss a single word of Donovan’s story.
Her heart was hammering hard in her chest and her palms itched to reach out and touch him.
He was wounded. She hadn’t expected that. He was such a happy person. Optimistic, constantly excited and on the go, passionate and driven, a focused advocate and activist. He was so charming and funny and approachable. But underneath all of that was a guy who was trying to make amends. Who had regrets and who had made some big mistakes.
How the hell was she supposed to resist him now?
He glanced over. “You okay?”
She shook her head, trying to figure out what word she wanted to use. “You… just complicated things.”
5
Donovan felt as if his heart was slamming against his rib cage. Dammit. Of course he’d complicated things. His past was complicated. And pathetic and sad and full of screwups.
Naomi LeClaire was not the kind of woman a guy dumped that kind of stuff on. But she needed to know.
He was still in Autre because of her. At some point in the past twenty-four hours, he’d realized that. Of course, it had been happening slowly. He’d been in this town for seven months accidentally. But it was probably the moment when she’d come to stand over him on the highway, with the rain pounding down, and asked him what in God’s name he thought he was doing, he realized that he was still in Autre because of her.
So she needed to know all of this grimy, dirty, not-pretty stuff from his past.
“Sorry,” he said simply, meaning it. “I wanted you to know. Not just because I want you to, but because…” He shook his head. “I guess I don’t even know.”
“I like that.”
He looked over at her. “You like what?”
“I like that you’re not confident and cocky all the time. I like that you just spilled your guts and you didn’t need to. I like that we can be complicated together.”
He hadn’t been expecting that. He sat up a little straighter. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. And… I don’t get it either. I do not like complicated. I don’t like messy. I’ve had that and I want easy and simple now.”
“So I just fucked everything up by telling you I’m not easy and simple at all.”
She nodded. “That should be true.”
“But?” He looked over. She hadn’t said “but”. He sensed one though.
“I guess it’s kind of like how you dress.”
“The way I dress?”
She nodded. “Yeah. When you wear a button-down shirt and roll the sleeves up to your elbows when you come up to Ellie’s, you look so hot. Or like yesterday at the rehab center when you’d just gotten out of the shower and were wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt and you were fresh and clean and looking casual, I, obviously, wanted to climb in your lap and do dirty things to you.”
Donovan had to shift on his seat as heat shot through him at the memory. Damn, he didn’t remember a woman ever affecting him the way Naomi did. She could just casually mention something like that and he was instantly hot and hard.
“But,” Naomi went on. “I think that you’re most attractive to me when you are out in the wild, dirty, sweaty and muddy and—bloody—” She sighed. “Even bloody. And it’s not because that makes you more tough or rugged or anything. It’s because that’s when you’re happiest. You’re smiling and confident and it’s so clearly exactly where you should be.”
His chest felt tight as he tried to take a deep breath. “Dammit, girl,” he said, his voice rough.
“What?”
“You say stuff to me like that while I’m driving and can’t reach over and pull you into my lap and kiss you?”
She was quiet for a second, as if he’d surprised her. “Yeah, damn,” she finally agreed. “I can say it all again later.”
“If we have even two seconds together I’ll have you do that.” He shot her a hot look.
They didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then she took a deep breath. “Okay, I guess it’s my turn then.”
Donovan gripped the steering wheel tighter again.
He really wanted to know everything about her, but in particular the fact that she dated in secret intrigued him. And concerned him. If something bad happened to her in the past with another guy, he wasn’t sure what he’d do.
He’d learned better coping mechanisms and had grown up and become more rational as an adult, but there was a primitive part of him that still roared to life when innocent and vulnerable beings were threatened. He knew that would be one hundred times stronger if he found out someone had hurt Naomi.
The woman sitting next to him right now had gotten under his skin and into his heart despite his best efforts to keep those walls up high.
“Have you ever heard of Zoey At the Zoo?”
He thought for a moment. It sounded vaguely familiar. “It was a kid’s show, right?”
“Yes. Kind of. It was a family sitcom. Prime time. It ended about eleven years ago. It was a show about a family that owned a zoo and Zoey, their daughter, grew up there. Her friends were animals and zookeepers and there was a lot of education about the animals and their natural habitats and how we needed to protect them. There were also messages about how Zoey didn’t fit in with other kids, but about how kids needed to be confident about the things they loved and doing the right thing and how they would find acceptance from the right people when they did that.”
“Okay.” Donovan was following so far and again, it all sounded familiar-ish.
She lifted her shoulder. “I’m Zoey. Was Zoey.”
He frowned and glanced over. “What do you mean?”
“I was the star of the show. From age eight to fourteen.”
Donovan processed that. Slowly. She was Zoey. The girl on the show. That meant… “You were on TV?”
“Yeah. For six and a half years.”
“Like network TV?”
“Yes.”
That was…wow. Not even close to what he’d thought she was going to tell him today. “How did I not know that? Does everyone else know? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Some know. Not everyone. But yeah, most. We don’t talk about it because it doesn’t matter anymore. After I retired, I came back to Louisiana and gave it all up. Everybody in Autre protects me and my identity. For a while I had private security that kept people from finding me. Now, though, it’s been long enough that people don’t really look. If anyone comes to town and tries to find me, everyone just pretends they have no idea where I am.”
Donovan shook his head. That was…something. He wasn’t sure what. “Even with all the tourists in and out of Autre, no one’s ever recognized you?”
“They have. Or they think they have, but I just say, ‘oh, I get that a lot’ or, if they ask someone else if it’s me, they lie and say no.”
That didn’t surprise him. These people absolutely protected each other. “Wait…” His mind was turning. “When we went out to the bar in Bad with everyone shortly after I’d gotten to Autre, and Charlie asked if I was just flirting with you or if I really didn’t know who you were—this is what she was referring to, right?”
Naomi laughed softly. “Yes.”
“I was going on about my show and how I could sign autographs as a fundraiser and you were sittin’ there, way more famous than me.” He laughed. “God, everyone must have thought I was such an ass.”
She grinned. “No, they didn’t.”
“But you are more famous than me.”
“Maybe at one time…”
“You definitely are.”
“Maybe to a very specific demographic.”
He gave her a look. “You are. Just accept it.”
“Well, I don’t want to be, so now you have to help keep the secret too.”
He nodded and put one hand over his heart. “Absolutely.”
“Thanks.”
“Okay, so what’s that got to do with your dating habits though?” Now he definitely wanted to know everything about her. This woman was even more fascinating than he’d thought and he was already pretty fucking enamored.
She blew out a breath. “We’re back to that?”
“We never really left that.”
She rolled her eyes, but said, “Well, for one thing, I spent six plus years in the public eye—some of my formative years as a young teen—and it made me just want to be a lot more private after it was over.”
“Okay. That’s fair.” He could understand that. He didn’t feel that way, but he hadn’t been in front of the camera until he was an adult and had a lot of say in what happened and what got put out there for the public to see.
“And a personal relationship with a boy was one of the reasons I retired.”
He looked over at her quickly. “What happened?” Yeah, see, he was definitely ready to punch someone on her behalf.
“Nothing bad,” she said quickly, evidently reading his expression. Or the growl in his voice.
“Then what?”
“One of my co-stars, Liam, was sixteen. We played best friends on the show. No one ever made a big deal out of that or said anything. Until…we were photographed hugging at my fourteenth birthday party. Suddenly the media started wondering—on the pages of their magazines and blogs, of course—if we were more than friends. Then fans got in on it, wanting it to be true, ‘shipping’ us,” she said, using air quotes. “My mother, who was my representative, paid attention to all of that and the moment she saw it, she demanded the show’s PR people put a stop to the rumors. But they hemmed and hawed about it because the producers thought it was good for ratings. Then our agents came to us with a proposal—play boyfriend and girlfriend on and off the show. They even offered to increase our salaries.”
Donovan looked over at her. He was sure his face showed everything he was feeling. Outrage, shock, and yes, the urge to punch someone. “You were fourteen.”
She nodded. “My mother said, ‘No way in hell,’ and when they pressed again, she told them I was quitting. I left the show and Zoey At the Zoo ended.”
“Wow, just like that?”
“Yeah. My mom doesn’t play around. There was no way she was going to let her fourteen-year-old daughter have a boyfriend or even let people think she had a boyfriend. That just wasn’t going to happen.”
Donovan stared at the road, processing all of it. That she’d been famous. That she’d been famous so young. That she wasn’t now. Just how kickass Monique LeClaire really was.
He already really liked Naomi’s mother, though he’d only met her a couple of times, but she’d reminded him very much of her daughter—confident, cool, and not afraid to tell you exactly what she thought. But she’d pulled her daughter out of Hollywood at the first whiff of something inappropriate. That was awesome.
“And I was really happy to come home,” Naomi went on. “I was tired of being away from all my family other than my mom. And being away from my friends here. I’d come home for breaks and hang out with Jordan and Kennedy, and Charlie if it was summer or Christmas-time, and I just wanted to be like them. I wanted to be normal. To put on clothes without anyone writing a social media post about it. To order lunch without a blog talking about it. So when all of that blew up just because of a hug between friends, I realized I didn’t want to be living my life for everyone to see anymore. I just wanted to have a quiet, simple, private life.”
“In Autre?” he asked, teasing. And still processing.
She laughed. “Well, that’s a different kind of attention and meddling.”
He nodded. She was right. The involved-in-everything-you-do in Autre came from genuine, well-intentioned interest and love.
“So you’re okay?” He looked over at her.
She gave him a sincere smile. “I’m very okay. Just…private.”
“I get it.”
“Thank you.”
They were quiet for a several seconds. Then Donovan blew out a breath and shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re famous.”
She shrugged. “More like pseudo-famous now. With certain people I would be famous, but it’s been a long time. But, partially because of that, and partially because I just like keeping things private, I decided a romantic relationship should be just between the two people who are in it until it’s really clear what the relationship is going to be and that it’s going to last. There’s no reason to bring other people into it if it’s not going to turn in into anything serious.”
