Sofie and the Movie Star: A Lovestruck Short Story (Lovestruck #3.5)(9)

Unfortunately, there was only one thing Jackson could brace himself against to stop his fall. The pile of presents behind him.

“Shit,” I muttered, feeling the stack wobble.

Jackson pulled back slightly, looking over his shoulder in the nearly pitch darkness. “I think they’re okay—” No sooner had he opened his mouth did the first present fall down and hit him on the head. “Bollocks!” he cried. I started to laugh but then something hard hit my shoulder and I gasped instead. “Move, Sofie!”

Before I could take a step back more boxes were raining down on us. Jackson threw his arms around me, sheltering me with his body, pushing me back to the door where I stood, breathing heavily, trapped in the cage of his arms.

“Are you okay?” he asked, looking down at me.

“I think so.” The deluge of falling presents seemed to have stopped, the only sound in the room our labored breathing. “That was pretty cool—the way you saved me.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” he asked, his voice bright and boyish. “It was like a movie!”

I snorted. “You sound pretty tickled by that. Haven’t you done tons of action scenes?”

“Yeah, but those are all so choreographed and broken down. This was real.”

I wanted to kiss him again, even more than I had before. There was just something so appealing about boyish, unvarnished Jackson. Before I could act on the impulse, there was a loud shattering behind him, followed by what sounded like rushing liquid.

“Uh,” Jackson said, sounding slightly nervous. “Maybe we should find that light switch.”



“Ruined,” I muttered several minutes later as I took in the carnage of the storage room. “Ruined.”

“It’s not that bad,” Jackson said bracingly, pulling another piece of wine-sodden wrapping paper away from a box. “At least it didn’t bleed through. I’m sure the gifts are fine.”

“Look at this mess!” I cried, gesturing at the pile of presents. “How am I going to explain this to my cousin?”

He ran his hands through his hair again. “We could tell her the truth.” I raised an eyebrow and he shook his head, smiling sheepishly. “What? You don’t think she’ll be understanding when she finds out that you snuck in here to make out with me and became so enflamed by your passion that you knocked a case of red wine all over her wedding gifts?”

I snorted. “Enflamed by my passion?”

His grin grew wicked. “Sure felt that way to me.”

Of course, that only made me want to kiss him so more. I turned my head, focusing on the presents instead so I didn’t knock him over with more enflamed passion. The sight sobered me right up. At least ten of the boxes were completely covered in dark red wine. Jackson had managed to pull most of the stained wrapping paper off the gifts, and the wine didn’t seem to have spread under the paper, so it could have been worse. But still—how was I going to explain this to Lizzie?

“You know, I skipped her first wedding dress shopping trip,” I muttered. “I was all hormonal and upset about the pregnancy so I didn’t go with her. And I felt terrible after.” I met his eyes. “This is so much worse.”

“It’s not that—”

“Jackson.” I picked up a white box. “Her gifts are unwrapped. I’m the worst maid of honor ever.”

“Right, that’s it.” He stood up, tossing the paper aside and dusting off his hands. “We’re going to fix this.”

“We are?”

“Indeed.” He pulled his smart phone from his pocket and tapped at the screen for a few seconds. “Ah,” he finally said, grinning at me. “Found it.”

“Found what?”

“There’s a Boots two blocks away.” I stared at him uncomprehendingly. “Boots, you know. Like, a chemists? A drug store, you would call it. We can go get more paper.”

“More paper?”

He nodded. “Right. More paper. And rewrap the gifts.”

I gaped at him. For some reason my first thought at the appearance of his cell phone was that he was going to call a personal assistant or something. I had never expected that he would be willing to run to the drug store at this time of night and then help me wrap presents.


“What?” he asked, sounding slightly unsure. “You don’t think it’s a good idea?”

“I think it’s a great idea,” I said hurriedly. “Thank you.”

His answering grin was so big it actually made my chest ache a little. How could something so common as a thank you create such a smile? But then he was holding out his hand and pulling me back into the hall and I decided to just go with it.

“Hang on.” He stopped, looking around at the cluttered space. “Here we are.” He grabbed a spindly-looking chair that looked like those out in the dining room—minus its broken leg—and placed it in front of the door we had just exited. “That way hopefully no one will go in there and see what we did.”

Suddenly the entire thing felt really ridiculous and I was giggling before I could stop myself. I had ruined my cousin’s wedding presents because I was so busy making out with a movie star. Jackson, to his credit, didn’t look at me like I was a crazy person. Instead he grinned and placed a finger over his mouth. “Shh. We need to be sneaky or we’re going to get caught.”