Chapter Three
Jilly: Just checking in. No need to reply unless you’re dead.
Jack: I am not dead.
THE HUMAN WHIRLWIND .
If anyone cared to ask what superpower she desired to have, that would be it.
To turn herself into a whirlwind, just so she could go throughout her apartment as fast as she could, hide as much as she could, and clean as thoroughly as she could.
Jilly dashed from room to room, snatching up movie posters, collector's edition DVDs, and— oh my gosh —that unauthorized biography with the gold-embossed lettering that spelled out HIS name.
She shoved everything she could under the bed, into closets, and even under the pile of clothes in the laundry basket.
Anywhere was fine as long as it was out of sight.
Oh, Poppy, I'm so going to send you memes of girls salivating after your husband if I ever survive this. And I will make sure they're the extra disturbing kind that will haunt you in your sleep!
But in the meantime...
Jilly tried to catch her breath as she halted in front of the hallway mirror, which revealed the wild look in her eyes and the flushed state of her cheeks.
Gaaah.
She looked like she had just survived a hurricane.
Only in this case, the hurricane was self-made and self-inflicted.
You can do this, Jilly.
She hastily combed her still-wet hair with her fingers and nervously ran a hand over the navy fabric of her jumpsuit.
Surely he would understand that she had dressed up for the occasion.
..and not him. She just didn't want him to think that she had made herself pretty.
..for him. And why that was so important, well.
..it just was, and she was going to leave it at that.
Jilly adjusted her glasses, took one last deep breath to calm herself, and threw the door open with the widest smile ever.
"All done," she announced brightly. "Come in, please.
" She caught her reflection again as she took a step back, and when she saw how her smile had her looking like Pennywise's sister from another mother—
Ugh, never mind.
Jilly quit smiling and also nearly quit breathing as her not-that-small home seemed to shrink the moment her ultimate Hollywood crush entered her living space. His shoulders nearly brushed both sides of her narrow entryway, and the air around her started getting curiously warmer.
Ventilation problem.
It had to be that, just that.
She followed behind him, her panic increasing as she saw his gaze swept over her place. Please, please, please let him not...aaaah!
Guy raised a brow when she suddenly darted past him and started fluffing up the throw pillows on the couch while deftly shoving some magazine under the cushion.
Porn?
Guy pretended not to notice anything amiss when she turned to face him again, and the way her shoulders relaxed in immediate relief was telling.
Jilly had a hard time keeping herself still. The truth of what was happening had finally started sinking in, and she felt like fainting and melting all at the same time.
Guy de la Rocq was inside her house.
Guy! De! La! Rocq!
His face card alone was just...
I have no words.
It was the kind of face that launched a thousand fan clubs, 'Nuff said.
And those beautiful ice-ice-baby-blue eyes.
She could drown in those eyes, and die happily.
And oh, the way his crisp white shirt molded to every muscled inch of his chest.
She could die with a smile on her face right now, abso—
"It seems Poppy misunderstood."
The words brought Jilly back to her senses, and she had to give herself a quick mental shake so she could refocus. Guy was still looking around, and what was that he said? Something about Poppy not understanding...something?
Guy glanced back at Jilly, saying in a deadpanned tone, "What you really need is a zookeeper—"
Oh!
A startled laugh escaped Jilly. She had been a fan of this man since the beginning of his career.
Had bought every magazine that featured him, watched and listened to every interview of his regardless of the platform.
So how was it that none of those things contained even the slightest hint of his humor and how incredibly funny he could be?
"I'm sorry." Jilly's tone was sheepish, with his words having worked as an icebreaker of sorts, and she now actually found herself relaxing despite being in the presence of Hollywood royalty. "It's a little too much to take, isn't it?"
"Not at all."
His tone was so, so courteous she knew what he meant was the opposite, and it had her laughing and wondering helplessly at the same time as to why...
Why was this man so, so perfect?
Surely it wasn't right that a man as beautiful as him be this charming, too?
A flash of orange fur darted between them at that moment, and Guy watched with interest as Jilly's features softened with affection that the actor in him knew right away was impossible to fake.
There was a bond between Jilly and the cat, and he saw that bond mirrored when a dachshund with gray around its muzzle padded up to her and started rubbing his head against the wide-legged pants covering her legs.
"Do you really take care of all of them on your own?" Guy asked with genuine curiosity.
The chance to talk about her babies worked the way it always did, with Jillian forgetting all of her inhibitions as she asked Guy if he wanted to be introduced to them.
"I would love that."
His immediate response had Jilly biting back a sigh.
So, so perfect, just like her babies.
But anyway...
"That's Mack," Jilly started off as she pointed to the sleek black cat lounging on a window perch. "I named him so to remind myself that we met each other in a McDonald's parking lot. He's five years old now, and he's really, really good at enslaving foolish humans into giving him treats."
And as if on cue, Mack lazily stretched on his perch before looking straight at Guy—
Meow.
Guy's lips twitched. The sound was exactly as Jilly described, since it had him mentally making a note of having treats for his next—
Whoa.
He had always been a one-night-stand kind of guy to avoid complications. So why was he now suddenly thinking of meeting Jilly more than once?
"This, on the other hand, is Mounty." Oblivious to the way her world-famous pet sitter seemed momentarily thrown off, Jilly was now on her knees as she gave her oldest rescue his favorite head rub.
"He loves to deceive people into thinking he's four, not fourteen.
" Jilly's voice unintentionally trailed off when Guy knelt right next to her, close enough for their shoulders to brush against each other as he started scratching behind Mounty's ears.
The heat of being this near to him was dizzying.
And those hands of his.
She couldn't remember being fascinated with the size of one's hands before.
They were just so large. And yet so gentle. It had her wondering if he would be just as gentle if he were to—
Stop right there, Jilly!
She jumped to her feet.
I need distraction, fast.
And so she quickly moved on to introducing the rest of her babies.
"This is Middle." Jilly showed Guy his glass terrarium while taking extra care not to stand too close to him. "He's a two-year-old gecko lizard. His eyes sometimes look crazy, but it's nothing to be worried about, I promise."
Jilly moved to the next enclosure while making sure not to meet a certain pair of ice-ice-baby-blue eyes. "Over here is Meanie. He's just your regular box turtle, except for the fact that he's just turned ten, and his desire for space must be respected at all costs."
Guy followed Jillian to the second floor. It didn't escape him at all that she was suddenly nervous and self-conscious around him. With other women, he would have simply assumed they were pretending to be shy. But Jillian, though...
He enjoyed seeing her like this. And he looked forward to seeing her disturbed more and more by his presence.
"The covered-up cage—" Jilly pointed to the cage in one corner. "—-is where Manny and Maiden sleep. They're a bonded pair of sun conures. I adopted them from a bird sanctuary. They told me their first owners surrendered them because they were too "high maintenance."
A glower darkened her features as she said this, and Guy had the most ridiculous desire to play her knight in shining armor and find out just who Manny and Maiden's first owners were, just so he could punish them in her name.
What the hell was wrong with him?
"And finally, Apple."
Jillian called out to the three-year-old cockatiel, and Guy was impressed in how swiftly the bird responded to her command, having now perched himself comfortably on her fingers.
"That's pretty much it—"
Guy raised a brow when Jillian suddenly stopped speaking.
"Oh, I almost forgot. Just a second—"
She rushed out of the room, and Guy followed behind her at a leisurely pace. He eventually found her in the kitchen and pulling one of the counter drawers open.
"Here you go!"
Jillian dropped an armload of custom-printed cloth-bound tomes into his hands without warning, and caught by surprise, Guy nearly buckled under the weight.
"They're care manuals for every one of my babies," Jilly explained. "Anything you're likely to ask, it's all...there." Jilly's voice trailed off once again, having remembered something particularly... dangerous .
"Um, do you want anything to drink?"
Guy kept his face expressionless as he watched her start walking backwards while speaking.
"I've got, um, bottled water, soda, juice..."
Guy pretended not to notice how she seemed to be in a hurry to dump something she had grabbed from the refrigerator. First, there was that thing she had hidden under the cushion. And now, this? She didn't look like the type to take drugs, but who knew, really?
Looks were entirely deceiving, and Guy should know, considering what he did for a living.
Jilly nearly sagged with relief when she turned to face Guy and saw him thumbing through the care manuals.
Oh, thank God!
"So, um, do you have any questions before I go?"
Guy placed the care manuals on the counter. "I don't think so. They seem to pretty much cover everything." And this was no exaggeration, since the topics listed under the table of contents also included What to Do If The Rapture Takes Place, and My Owner Is No Longer Here.
"Are you sure?" Jilly suddenly started having second thoughts about leaving all of her babies under the care of His Gorgeousness. She might be his number one fan, but her familiarity with his life and career had nothing to do with his skills as a pet sitter.
Guy caught Jillian gnawing on her lip and knew she had started to overthink.
"There's nothing for you to worry about," he said gently. "I wasn't lying when I told you I was a fast learner."
Jilly slowly nodded. "I...know." She did watch that documentary about him—
Oops.
Jilly belatedly noticed Guy raising a brow at her answer.
"Do you, really?"
"Because you, um, have that look about you."
"What kind of look?"
"The kind that, um, says, 'I'm smarty and I know it?' "
Guy's lips slowly pressed together in a straight line. Did she even realize she had uttered those words to the tune of Sexy and I Know It?
Jilly started squirming on her feet at his continued silence. "Maybe this is a mistake—"
"Or maybe..." Guy's voice was still gentle. "It's simply time for you to go."
Jilly couldn't answer, with Guy's hands having suddenly settled on her shoulders while speaking.
Oh...my.
All she could do was swallow hard as his touch seemed to burn all the way to her skin, and her breath caught when she felt him slowly exert pressure through his grip.
Was he going to pull her close in order to kiss her?
"Jillian?"
Or was he going to—
"G-Guy?"
—suddenly turn her around so he could march her out to the garage?
"Enjoy your evening," Guy said pleasantly...before slamming the door on her face.
What in the world?
A helpless smile touched her lips as she got behind the wheel of her Tesla. The way Guy had paid her back for slamming the door on his face earlier had been oh-so-smooth, she hadn't even seen it coming.
At all!
And that was really, really bad.
Guy de la Rocq as Hollywood's Hottest Man Alive, Jilly could barely handle as it was.
But for that same Guy to also have the kind of humor that she found irresistible?
Focus on the age gap, Jillian Kitt!
Her fingers tightened around the steering wheel.
Remember the oath you took as the Founder of the Secret International Alliance of Supporters of Guy de la Rocq!
Jilly nodded to herself determinedly.
Yes, that was it.
His Gorgeousness might be to her what the forbidden apple was to Eve, but that didn't mean her fate would be the same. She could pray to resist temptation.
Or flee it even, if worst come to worst.