"It's not just about sex."
"Yeah? Then you're doing it wrong."
Wyatt rolled his eyes. Patrick might like to talk big, but he was more bluster than action.
"Besides," Patrick continued, "from what I've seen, her dad's pretty strict. Like he walked out of a nineteen-fifties TV show. Probably why she doesn't talk to the guys. Or really to the girls, for that matter. Just forget about it. Seriously."
It was good advice, and Wyatt even tried to follow it for a few days, forcibly pushing her out of his thoughts and going out of his way to not be anywhere that she might be working. It even worked. Sort of. But then he'd catch a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye, and she'd enchant him all over again.
Soon, he realized that he was finding ways to be around when she was finishing her shift. He'd offer her a ride, and she'd repeatedly turn him down. Politely and sweetly, but also firmly.
He also found ways to be around when she was starting her shift. That's when he'd offer to bring her a coffee. Again, she always said no.
He tried again and again, sometimes suggesting a coffee, once even asking if she wanted to play a game of tennis after her shift. "I can't," she said. "I have to get home. Besides, I'm horrible at tennis."
"Right," he said. "Me, too." That was a blatant lie--he was actually pretty good at the game--but she'd rattled him. And he crossed tennis off the list.
After a full week of trying, he started to give up. She hadn't said as much, but considering what Patrick had said about her dad, Wyatt assumed she wasn't allowed to date. Or maybe she just didn't want to date him. Maybe that was even what he found so attractive, the fact that she didn't seem to care in the least who his family was.
The day she said, "no thanks, really," before he'd even asked her about a coffee was the day he started to worry that he was crossing into stalker territory, which was really not the vibe he wanted. He made a point of backing off. No sense acting like a douchebag, after all.
He started spending more time with Patrick. And then Grace joined them, and she was most definitely interested in him. She sat a little closer than necessary. She brushed his arm when she laughed at his jokes.
She also talked incessantly about his family. His sister and her cooking show. His mother, with her screenplays and novels. His grandmother, with her Hollywood pedigree and all those lovely award statues. The family mansion in Beverly Hills. The twenty-thousand square foot summer house in Santa Barbara. The chalet in St. Moritz. The family legacy. The studio Wyatt's great-grandfather had founded. And on, and on, and on.
All stuff that had nothing to do with him.
All stuff he really didn't want to talk about.
But at the same time, he was a guy, wasn't he? A seventeen-year-old guy with all the raging hormones that came with it. And maybe he had more discipline than some of his peers, but he wasn't a saint, not by a long shot.
So when Grace came to him when he was leaving the club one Friday night and told him her car wouldn't start, he did the gentlemanly thing. He offered her a ride. And when she offered to use her fake ID to buy some beer as payment for the lift, that seemed the polite thing to do. And when she offered to go down on him . . . well, he was a guy, after all.
Or rather, he was guy enough to enjoy it in the moment, but afterwards, he felt like shit. He didn't want Grace, and all he'd done was lead her on. And when she started hanging around him more--obviously believing that they were sliding into coupledom--he manned up, told her he didn't think it was going to work, and ended it.
To say she didn't take it well would be the understatement of the century. She called him a stuck up prick who thought he could just skate by on his family name and didn't have to be nice to anyone. Which was ridiculously unfair since he'd always felt like his family name was an albatross. But unfair or not, it stung.
"That's the price we pay," his father had said when Wyatt decided to bite the bullet, swallow some pride, and ask his dad for advice. He'd always had a good relationship with his father, but lately Carlton Royce had seemed distracted. An accountant, Carlton had met Wyatt's mother, Lorelei, when they were both attending the same charity function. They'd each come with other
dates, had met at the dessert table, and had married four months later.
"Price?" Wyatt asked.
"Of celebrity."
"Yeah, but I'm not a celebrity. That's Grandma. And Jenna," he added, referring to his sister who owned three restaurants and starred in her own Manhattan-based celebrity cooking show. "Mom, too, sort of." Considering all his mother's work was behind the camera, she wasn't as recognizable. But she'd grown up on studio lots and at star-studded premiers. So that definitely put her in the celebrity bucket.
But Wyatt had avoided all that stuff. Not because he was shy, but because he just didn't get it. If the spotlight wasn't actually shining on him, why would he want to be standing in its glow?
"Comes with the territory, kid," his dad had said. "Just because you never escort your mom down the red carpet doesn't mean the world doesn't see you as one of them. You're Hollywood royalty, son. We both are. Whether we want to be or not. Whether we deserve it or not. And most of the time, that's all anyone cares about. They want that piece of you. That shiny anointed part. They don't see you. They see the family."
Wyatt frowned, not used to hearing such harshness in his father's voice.
He started to ask about it, but his dad continued. "Even on the inside," he said. "It's everywhere. Permeates everything. It's like dry rot, and it eats away at the foundation."
"Dad? What are you talking about?"
Carlton drew a breath and shook his head. "Sorry. Just rambling. Don't listen to me." He sighed, the sound long and mournful. "You know I love you, right?"