Chapter 1
“Um. What?”
A sheepish shrug. Like he hadn’t just completely blown my brains out of the known galaxy and everything beyond it.
“I bought you a house.”
I shook my blankly numb head in complete bewilderment. “I told you I couldn’t afford to buy a house. Or even rent one.”
I got an almost equally blank look of bewilderment in return.
“I know. That’s why I bought you one.” That last sentence came carefully measured out, like he was talking to a particularly stubborn or stupid child.
So. Well.
Anybody else out there with a completely dopey former best friend who became a billionaire movie star and returned to buy you a seven-figure house in London?
Or maybe that was just me. Isla Elliott.
I had known James Tyler Scott since we were in high school. We did our Post-16 education in the local college, in the same Performing Arts course, w lhere we became quite close friends. Then, we ended up in the same drama school in London for a Musical Theatre Degree and stuck together tightly because we didn’t know anyone else, ending up as inseparable best friends.
James Tyler Scott then went on to be one of the biggest movie stars in the world. He lost touch with me, and I proceeded to assume he’d also lost touch with reality. He had been scoring auditions and then winning them since before he graduated with his degree, so afterwards he had naturally been eaten up with a spoon by Hollywood, moving to Los Angeles, California, to have an absolutely ludicrous career in films, modelling, product advertisement, and even film producing. The man went on to achieve a myriad of accolades and win just about every acting award known to the human race at least twice. Well, except for the Oscars and Oliviers, of which he only ever scored one of each, so far. On the flip side, he’d managed to win four BAFTAs and three Golden Globes, and I’d lost count of the amount of nominations he’d been given for them all.
He then went and joined the Forbes Billionaire Club early last year. As you do.
A couple of weeks ago, James Tyler Scott then returned to London and deliberately sought me out, which came as one hell of a shock, I can tell you. I hadn’t seen him in person since we were twenty-one years old at the Graduation Ceremony, and I subsequently spent the next seven years watching him in films, interviews or in commercials. Then there were the modelling contracts, so his face was everywhere in placed adverts for the multitude of designerwear brands he ended up signing himself to, as well as the neverending paparazzi shots, and whatever the overpaid idiot was posing online himself, on his personal social media.
What I wasn’t expecting was the knock on my friend’s front door, and then seeing him standing there behind it, in person, all dressed up in his black designer shirt and jeans, looking far more stunning than he did on-screen or in photos.
Did I happen to mention that James was also devastatingly gorgeous, bulked up like he lived at the gym, genuinely sweet, and fun to be around? So, when he smiled at seeing me opening the door, his big and infectious grin widening in delight, I quite nearly turned to mush right there at his feet.
“Am I hallucinating?” I muttered weakly, at seeing my best-friend-turned-mega-movie-star on my (borrowed) doorstep. I assumed, and hoped, I was, because otherwise the hottest (in every sense) movie star on the planet was seeing me at my absolute worst. With chestnut hair in disarray, ratty jeans and my favourite huge comfort-jumper, and eyes irritated by contact lenses so much they were bloodshot instead of blue – but I couldn’t find my glasses anywhere, so I couldn’t even take them out to give them a rest – I was a mess, but I’d figured it hardly mattered because it was a quiet Saturday, with nowhere to go to or be until work again on Monday.
Well. Until this blond-haired, blue-eyed Adonis appeared at the door.
“That’s your response to me being here, Bestie?” James – Jay – retorted, using our old nickname for each other back in drama school.
“You’re supposed to be in Hollywood making people feel inferior to your gorgeous face and abs,” I answered vaguely, wondering when I had blacked out or zoned off. I’d been watching one of his movies, a firm favourite of mine, when the knock came, so this being a hallucination was really the only theory that made sense.
An embarrassed huff of a laugh made me blink and look at him again.
“Is that right?” he said mildly. “Well, I’m here instead, and I brought my face and abs with me.”
That’s when reality hit. Jay really was there in front of me, and I’d said that out loud. Mortified, I’d had no idea what to say, but I was beaten to it, anyway.
“Gona give your bestie a hug, now?” he offered, his beautiful smile back on his face.
Of course, I’d given in to giving him a hug after all these years. In the midst of wrapping my arms around him and putting my head on his shoulder right there on the stoop, my brain began registering just how much of what I’d seen on screen was absolutely not fake or embellished, whatsoever. His waist was small and rock-hard, his back was undulating solid muscle, and there was absolutely no give in the chest I was pulled hard into. I couldn’t help but think, in that moment, how I would have loved to put my hands on his chest and run them all the way down his torso. But then I metaphorically slapped the back of my head and reminded myself that was not how one treated their friends.
After that, I got a grip on myself and invited him into my friend’s home to sit and talk. It did not help matters when upon entering the living room, he gave a startled laugh and nodded at the stilled image on the TV.
Naturally, it was stuck on a scene where the camera was directly showing a closeup on his face. This just kept getting more and more mortifying.
“Still a fan of my work, then?” he grinned, teasing.
“Of Emily Hanover,” I immediately shot back, mentioning the other big lead in the romcom I’d been watching. “It’s one that you just happen to be in. How are you such an egomaniacal knob? Not everything’s about you, Jay!”
I grinned teasingly and tried not to melt into the floor at the same time, whilst simultaneously throwing him his long-assigned, pointed look to shut up. I’d been using it since we were seventeen and in college, so he inevitably still knew it when it was thrown at him.
“Yep. Riiiight.” He nodded sagely at me, mildly elongating that last word in the way he always did, when he absolutely had no intention of believing you, whatsoever. “Methinks the lady doth protest far too much, but who am I to say anything?”
The idiot grinned widely, clearly choking back his laughter, if his slightly shaking shoulders were anything to go by. I rolled my eyes and pointed at the settee behind him so he would sit down, and maybe, hopefully, just shut up.
Inside, my brain was screaming, Oh My God, movie star James Scott is sitting on the couch in front of me!, whilst the rest of me was feeling numb that my old best friend was suddenly back in my life again. Surreal didn’t even begin to cover it.
However, it wasn’t long until the years vanished and we were back to being the same friends again, which should have probably felt strange, but really wasn’t.
“I’d ask what you’d been up to, but I’m pretty sure every real and online magazine, the general mass media and social media, have made it abundantly clear what you’ve been up to and covered everything quite thoroughly,” I stated dryly, eyeing him with some growing, prickling ire about the fact I’d heard hide nor hair from him for nearly a decade.
I got a snort as my first response, paired with a still familiar scrunched-up nose. Not a thing from any movies – this was pure Jay, my best friend still somehow being just that same person.
“You’d be surprised how much of that is pure, utter bollocks,” he retorted with a nonchalant shrug. “And you might be even more surprised to find out what they get paid or threatened with to suppress.”
He raised an eyebrow very suggestively, and I could only wonder what the hell that was even supposed to mean. I wasn’t given very long to consider the implications, though, because the next second I had the entire scenario spun round to focus on me, instead.
“So, now we’ve covered my life, what about yours?” Jay cocked his head and those insanely blue eyes locked on my face with interest I wasn’t used to experiencing. Certainly not from gorgeous, rich movie stars. “What’s Isla Shannon Elliott been up to?”
“Ah… There’s not much to tell, really,” I shrugged, trying not to wince at my full name being used on me for the first time in nearly ten years. “I’m just a bit of a writer, and I’m also an admin specialist for the company I work for.”
“No more acting?” The surprise was more than evident in his expression and tone.
“Not everyone ends up an award-winning Hollywood icon,” I remarked wryly. “Sometimes life happens instead.”
“But you used to be one of the best. You got a First Class Honours Degree!”
I definitely winced at that one. I didn’t need reminding; the stupid certificate was buried in a box somewhere upstairs, very studiously being permanently ignored.
“That hardly matters when bills need to be paid, and we’re not all Hollywood elites,” I snapped back.
Jay stared at me, shocked at my outburst. I just carried on.
“Like I said, life… happens. Then everything you ever thought goes out the window and nothing's ever going to be the same ever again.”
