And earned himself another round of glances, some with raised eyebrows thrown in.
But as much as he was glad to support Kacey, he wanted the dinner party to be over.
* * *
SHE COULDN’T REMEMBER if the steak Diane they’d been served had been good or not. She hadn’t eaten enough of it to care. There’d been some kind of potato that she hadn’t touched. The salad dressing had been good. She hadn’t tasted the dessert.
What she remembered most about the entire evening was how incredibly good it felt to be with someone she could share her snarky comments with, someone who wouldn’t care if she sneezed on her dinner and whose only concern if she tripped was that she hadn’t hurt herself.
And she would never ever forget the way some people had looked at Michael. Or how, after they’d seen that he was with her, they’d looked back at him a second time, as though to ascertain if it had been as horrible as they’d thought.
For the first time in her career, she’d hated being a part of the Hollywood crowd.
She apologized to him all the way back to her place. She’d had one glass of wine to see her through the evening, or she might have asked him to take her to get her car out of the secure studio lot where they’d left it for the night.
But she’d always had a very strong, unbendable rule. She did not ever get behind the wheel after consuming any amount of alcohol.
Mike had sipped water all through dinner. She planned to pour him a shot of bourbon the second they got home.
“Are you okay?” she finally asked when he kept shrugging off her apologies.
“Yes.”
“You don’t seem okay at all.”
He glanced at her. Then back to the road. Coming to a stop at a light, he turned her way again. “Don’t you feel even a little awkward with me staying at your place tonight?”
It made perfect sense to her. “People stay at my place often after an evening out. I’m centrally located. Look, we’re just blocks from home.”
The car moved forward again. “I’m not people, Kace.”
She grinned. “No, I actually know you well and am glad you’re staying.”
“You aren’t glad when others stay?”
He was confusing her again. “Of course I’m fine with it. But...that’s like, the party thing. So people don’t drive drunk. But you...it’s more like a sleepover with my best friend.”
And if she kept telling herself that, over and over again, would it squelch this crazy sense of finding him so masculinely delicious? What was with her all of a sudden?
He was frowning. She needed to get out of her own life for a second and look into his. She should free him up to go home. She could easily call a cab to the studio in the morning. She didn’t want him to go, but she wanted to be a real friend even more. A decent human being.
“You can just drop me off, Michael. I’ve left my car in that lot many times. It’s no problem for me to call a car for the morning.” And to make it easy for him. “I know you’ve got Willie at home and it’ll probably be better for him if you take him to school instead of Diane. And you’ve got work—”
“I’ve got an appointment here in LA in the morning. I’d have been driving in anyway,” he told her, shooting down the easy out she was giving him.
But she was worried about him. About the odd tension emanating from him.
Not that she blamed him. She’d been shocked and sickened by those in her circle who were so shallow that they stared at Michael’s scars as if they were horrific. One woman—Sammie, someone she’d never met before—had even asked him how it happened.
He’d shrugged her off very politely before Kacey had had a chance to put the woman properly in her place.
“I’m looking forward to having you in my home,” she told him, hoping it would lighten his load. “I changed the sheets in Lacey’s room. It’s the biggest and has the nicest mattress of all the three guest rooms.”
“You have four bedrooms?”
She nodded. “And a great balcony. I figured we could sit out for a bit, have a drink and watch the people below.”
She grinned at him.