Starstruck

Chapter Six

He was charmed by her, Jason thought as he watched Kendyls teacher drive away. He had to admire any woman passionate enough about her job to climb a fence, just to get her point across. Not to mention those delectable lips…

Nothing could come of it. He knew that. Miss Ashley Barnes had commitment written all over her cute little face and he had a terrible track record in that department.

He had decided after Ruby came into his life that he just had to close the door on anything long–term. He had been burned too many times. He picked the wrong kind of women to tangle with and then ended up paying for it.

Kendy;’s mother had been the final straw. Tamara Drake had been an aspiring actress he met at a party and dated a few times, unaware that underneath her fun, sexy act was a predatory woman who thought trapping him by becoming pregnant with his child would seal her celebrity status. Tamara’s pregnancy and her increasingly strident demands on him had been Jason’s wake–up call that his life was not traveling a course he wanted. He had fathered a child with a woman he barely knew and one he had come to despise, and the grim reality of it all forced him to take a good, hard look at himself.

He hadn’t been very crazy about what he saw. He was just like Tamara, he had realized. He had become selfish, materialistic, shallow. He went after what he wanted at the moment without thought of the consequences, and he knew he couldn’t continue on that road.

He started looking for a quiet  town to settle in, told Tamara he was leaving Nashville and offered a financial settlement and annuity in return for her signing over parental rights to Kendyl to him. Though she had been livid at him for walking away, she certainly hadn’t wanted to be saddled with a baby. She agreed with alacrity and died a year later of a drug overdose.

It was an ugly story, one that still made him ashamed of the man he had been six years ago.

He had changed. Kendyl had seen to that, but he still didn’t trust his own judgment about women. Tamara had just been the last in a long line of mistakes, and with a child’s fragile emotions to consider, he couldn’t afford the high price, anymore.

He avoided the spotlight now as much as he could but to his jaded eye, it seemed like every woman he met since Tamara was mostly interested in him for his ex–celebrity status, enthralled, for some crazy reason, to be seen with a man who had once been moderately famous.

It turned his stomach. He wanted them to see beyond the image that had appeared on far too much movie–related merchandise. To see the man whose favorite things now were mowing the lawn on a warm summer afternoon, playing outside in the sunshine with his daughter, training a good horse.

He didn’t trust many women and he certainly didn’t trust his own judgment. This way was better. Just him and Kendyl and Kasi. They made a good team and there just wasn’t room for any more players.

Not even cute–as–pie schoolteachers with dimples and hazel eyes and blond, starlit curls.