Prologue
Carmel-by-the-Sea, twelve years ago
The first time I saw Ally Montrose, she didn’t steal my breath.
She just borrowed it. Permanently.
***
The roar of the sea is the only sound in Mac’s clifftop home, a restless heartbeat against the glass. I skip the TV, skip the music, just let the noise settle in my bones while I wait for my stepmother and her kid to arrive.
I’ve met wife number four and I like her.
Fallon is this rare blend of no-nonsense and warm, sprawling friendliness, and she treats me like an actual human rather than the semi-inconvenient permanent reminder of one of Mac’s less glamorous decisions.
I look so much like him that a DNA test would have been redundant.
Wife number three certainly noticed that resemblance, and when she wasn’t being snide to protect her own kids’ inheritance, she was trying to coax me into her bed when I was barely a teenager.
So, yeah. Every pilgrimage to Carmel comes with tension baked in.
Mac Woodruff is a Hollywood institution; four decades at the top, multiple franchises, a mantel crowded with awards since he switched to directing.
Criticism bounces off him. Accountability never lands.
The fact that the son he didn’t plan for sometimes thinks he could use an attitude upgrade?
Unfathomable. Sometimes there’s this half second pause before he says my name, like he’s scrolling through a cast list.
He’s upstairs in one of his “writing moods,” muttering dialog at the walls. I’m just here so someone greets Fallon and her daughter. God forbid he interrupts the process while he’s busy with his own genius.
I’m halfway through pouring coffee when the front door opens and a lilting British voice fills the hall. “Sorry we’re late! There was a lorry on fire on the motorway. Um, I mean freeway. We nearly melted!”
Another voice follows. Softer. Uncertain. New.
I look up, my coffee mug forgotten.
She stands just inside the doorway, tugging her sleeve like she’s not sure she’s allowed to exist here. I remember doing the same thing, and I shared DNA with the owner; as a stepkid, she must be feeling wary.
And then I take her in.
Pale blonde hair. A dust of sun made freckles. Long legs in cut-offs. A hesitant smile that doesn’t know yet how much power it has. Fallon once mentioned she was sixteen, as though it were a detail and not a bright yellow warning label.
Allyson Montrose.
Half-English. Half-stick of dynamite.
She looks like the human version of dawn in the summertime. I’ve spent my life around pretty girls, but not one of them has ever instantly stopped my speech like this. And I, wrong footed and knocked sideways, forget how to breathe.
Fallon’s voice slices through the static. “Nate! There you are.” She engulfs me in a Jo Malone scented hug, her red hair and floating caftan grounding the moment. “Lovely to see you, pet. This is my daughter, Ally. Ally, this is Nate, Mac’s son.”
Ally’s brows jump. “Wow. Mum wasn’t kidding. You do look like your dad.”
My jaw tics the way it always does when someone points that out. “Uh, hey.”
“Hey yourself.” She offers her hand, direct and unflinching from her new brother figure. Brother figure, I remind myself. Her fingers are cool and faintly callused, like maybe she plays guitar. I shake once, then let go before my pulse gives me away.
My new stepsister is uncomfortably pretty.
She scans the house, wide-eyed. “God, this place is massive. It’s like a museum for cowboy movies.”
“Pretty much is,” I admit, biting back a smile.
In the world of westerns, there are three kings: Kurt Russell, Clint Eastwood, and Mac Woodruff.
And Mac’s last main feature, a biopic of Pink Higgins, won four Academy Awards, including a nod for both Best Director and Best Supporting Actor for Mac himself.
Fallon drops a garment bag on the banister. “I’m dressing your father for his gala, which means I’ll be swearing at a bow tie for the next hour. Ally, entertain yourself, my love.” She sweeps upstairs. “And don’t touch the Oscars.”
“I’d never,” Ally says, already eyeing the display cases.
Mac’s booming laughter carries from the landing, affectionate in that grand, theatrical way of his. Ally smiles toward the sound, and then it’s just the two of us in a thousand square feet of sunlight and awkwardness.
She drifts to the grand piano overlooking the sea, fingers trailing the polished lid. “So… you live here too?”
I shake my head. “Just visiting.”
“From where?”
“Wherever a casting call lands me. Mostly the coast. You?”
“Born in Yorkshire. Now an L.A. girl, for my sins. Mum thinks sunshine will make me less sarcastic.”
“How’s that going?”
“Dismally.”
Her grin kills me. Not flirtatious; just bright, and proud of her own joke. It hits me low in my stomach, so I sip my coffee to cover it and scorch my tongue, spluttering like a total god.
Ally winces sympathetically. “Smooth.”
Clearing my throat, I smile wryly. “I try.”
Her laugh is a quick, ringing thing, and it makes my spine feel…alive.
She’s not the kid I was expecting. There’s something coltish and half-formed about her, budding confidence wrapped in unsteady limbs. The kind of beauty that’s dangerous because it doesn’t know it is beauty yet.
“So, what’s it like being Mac Woodruff’s son?” she asks, teasing but curious. “I’m guessing weird.”
I grimace. “That’s one word.” And it doesn’t even begin to cover it.
He only acknowledged paternity when I was eight, and since then I’ve been in this weird limbo of wanting to spend time with him while simultaneously resenting the gratitude he seems to expect for every hour in his presence. I’m his son. Not his charity case.
She notices. “Sorry, I didn’t mean-”
“It’s fine,” I assure her with a shrug. Lord knows she didn’t intend to wander into the thorny hedge that is my relationship with my bio dad. “We’re still figuring out the whole father-son thing.”
She studies me like she’s reading footnotes.
Maybe she hasn’t seen the selfish, careless side of him yet.
Maybe she doesn’t realize how different my reality of Mac is from the polished living legend figure he likes to publicize.
The man can act, and it’s fair to say that the greatest role of Mac Woodruff’s life is, in fact, Mac Woodruff.
“He talks about you,” she says softly.
My eyebrows rise. “Does he.”
“Mmhmm. Says you’ve got his stubborn streak. But a better ear for Shakespeare.”
An unwilling smile sneaks out. “You’re not making that up?”
“I swear on this holy cowboy museum.”
We’re grinning, standing a shade too close, the sunlight streaming through the bay windows turning the moment warm and unreal. For a heartbeat, we’re just two strangers meeting by chance. I can see myself drifting closer, leaning into inherited charm, nudging her hip, making her laugh…
Mac’s boots thunder the stairs. Reality slams back. I once gave him hell for wife number three trying to Mrs. Robinson me when I was far too young. That’s not what family does, I’d said.
I can’t then turn around and make cow eyes at my stepsister, no matter how hot she is. I’m not a hypocrite.
“Mac’s… impossible not to like,” I allow instead.
She tilts her head. “And you?”
“What about me?”
“Are you impossible not to like?”
It’s innocent and lethal all at once. The ground shifts beneath me. The line between us brightens in neon with added alarm bells supporting it.
I take the easy way out. “Meh, I’m alright. Don’t let the accent fool you. I’m the most boring one.”
Her mischievous smile says she doesn’t buy that for a second.
Mac bursts into the room, filling it with noise and charm. He always enters like he’s stepping onto a set: boots heavy on the wood, energy unmistakable, voice rolling in with that gravelly, effortless authority that made him a household name long before I was even a twinkle in his steel gray eyes.
“Well, hell,” he drawls, sweeping his gaze over the room like he owns every inch of it. “Look at this sweet little elf. Must be Christmas.”
Ally brightens instantly at him, the way everyone does. Mac’s charm is gravitational, and she’s only human, not immune. She grins up at him, all warmth and easy affection.
“Hi, Mac,” she says, tucking a stray strand of pale hair behind her ear with a soft, unconscious gesture that knocks the breath out of me.
He bends to kiss the top of her head, gentle in a way most people would never believe him capable of after watching his trademark bloodthirsty movie shootouts. “There’s my girl. You travel OK? Or did ol’ Californee scare the Yorkshire right outta you?”
She laughs, bumping his arm. “It’ll take more than palm trees and a little sunshine to burn the Leeds out of this lass.”
Mac booms a laugh, clapping his hands together like the room was getting cold and he needed to warm it by force of his personality alone.
And as I watch her bathe in the orbit of his charm, her smile wide, her eyes bright, her golden hair in waves behind her ear, I feel something drop straight through me.
I’m in trouble.
Ally Montrose is sixteen. She’s my stepsister. She could not possibly be more off limits if she came wrapped in crime scene tape.
So the necessary wall goes up, the sting of regret shoved aside. I’ll be polite. I’ll keep my distance. This instinctive, insistent pull toward her will fade.
It has to.