PROLOGUE
Carmel-by-the-Sea, twelve years ago
Nate - 18
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. Youdolook 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.
