by Teri Wilson
“One of the guys at the station is coming to get me. Wade. Thank you again for the blanket.” He reached for Madison’s hand and held it loosely in his as they neared the doorway. “Assuming I do, in fact, get out of here, can I see you tonight?”
“Why? Do you need a night nanny?” She gave his hand a playful squeeze.
He wanted to laugh, but he couldn’t. He didn’t need a night nanny. It had taken finding Madison, stupidly pushing her away and being forced out of a tree by an angry feline for him to realize they both needed the same thing. They needed connection. They needed to love and be loved in return. What they needed most of all was each other.
He lifted her hand to his lips and covered it with a tender kiss. “No, I need you.”
If only there wasn’t one last thing standing in their way...
Chapter Fourteen
“No way.” Wade shook his head, but kept his gaze glued on the steady stream of traffic snaking its way up the interstate toward Lovestruck. “Absolutely not.”
Jack’s CT scan had shown no progression of the bleed in his brain, so he’d been discharged with head injury protocol, which meant no drinking, no driving and no strenuous activity or heavy lifting. He didn’t dare ask if toting six-month-old twins around counted as an overly taxing activity, because he couldn’t wait to wrap his arms around his little girls and breathe in their delicate baby powder scent.
Nor did he ask if he should be going on a date in just a handful of hours, because he had a feeling that answer would also be a firm no. He and Madison would technically be staying in, anyway. Plus, he wasn’t entirely sure she’d want anything to do with him at all once he finally told her the truth.
“What did you just say?” Jack said, turning to glance at Wade sitting in the driver’s seat of the Lovestruck Fire Department’s small SUV. His lingering concussion must have been messing with his hearing, because it sounded like Wade had just told him not to out himself as Fired Up to Madison.
“I said no. Don’t do it, man. Keep that information to yourself.” Wade sent a knowing look Jack’s way to hammer his point home.
Jack leaned his head against the headrest and closed his eyes. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re the one who’s been encouraging me to pursue a relationship with Madison since the day we responded to her hair-straightener fire.”
“Correct.”
“And now that I’m finally ready, you’re telling me to lie to her.” He shook his head. “Nope. Not going to happen.”
Wade held up a hand. “I’m not telling you to lie to her. There’s just no reason to bring it up at this late date. It’s over. That last letter was your swan song, and you haven’t contacted the newspaper again. It’s done. You know what they say about letting sleeping dogs lie.”
“True, but keeping it a secret would still be wrong.” Jack swallowed. Why, oh why hadn’t he just fessed up the instant he starting suspecting Madison was Queen Bee? “A lie of omission is still a lie.”
“I agree, but you’ve waited too long. The window of opportunity has slammed shut, my friend,” Wade said.
Jack tried—and failed—to tamp down his annoyance. This couldn’t be good advice. “And when exactly did the window close?”
Wade didn’t hesitate. He had an answer at the ready. “Last night, when you let her sleep in your hospital bed. Think about it, man. Telling her now would only hurt her, and I know you don’t want to do that.”
Hurting Madison was the last thing in the world Jack wanted to do. He’d already done it once, and it had taken a near-death experience to undo that particular mistake.
Still, wouldn’t keeping such a terrible secret hurt her even more?
Jack sighed. “I might not have a choice in the matter.”
“What do you mean?” Wade asked as he exited the interstate and steered the vehicle toward the town highway that led to Lovestruck.
Toward Madison.
Toward home.
“There’s apparently a reporter at the Bee who’s trying to track me down.” Jack swallowed hard.
Wade’s advice about the whole debacle was certainly questionable, but he was dead right about one thing—Jack had waited too long to tell the truth. If he’d fessed up weeks ago, he and Madison might have laughed about it...eventually. No one would find it funny now.
Wade frowned, thought for a minute and finally shook his head. “That’s not ideal, but I stand by what I said. Keep it to yourself. If a hugely popular national television show can’t find you, the Bee doesn’t have a prayer. You’re safe.”
Safe?
Jack wasn’t so sure. In fact, he had a feeling he’d left safe behind a long, long time ago.
* * *
Aunt Alice and Madison made it back to Lovestruck less than half an hour before she was scheduled to show up for work at the Bee. Toby scurried after her as she darted to her room, stepped out of the clothes she’d been wearing for twenty-four hours straight and tried to make herself presentable. The dog’s tiny, quivering nose peeked out from beneath her discarded swing dress as she pulled on a pair of black high-waisted trousers and a pink-and black-striped blouse.
“Sorry, little guy,” she whispered, plucking him out from beneath the dress and hugging him tight. His plumed ear twitched as she whispered directly into it. “Toby, you wouldn’t believe the night I just had.”
She spun the dainty little Chinese crested in a gleeful circle and then plopped him down on the bed while she finished getting ready for work. It was funny how drastically things could change in such a short amount of time.
She’d been wrong about Jack. He did have feelings for her. He just hadn’t been ready to tell her how he felt, and that was fine. She of all people could understand the concept of self-preservation, and Jack and his girls had been through a lot. Of course he’d freaked out when she’d told him she was leaving Lovestruck.
But things were okay now. More than okay, actually. They had a date tonight—a real, romantic date—and she didn’t mind a single bit that they’d be spending the evening at Jack’s house with Emma and Ella sleeping right down the hall instead of going to a fancy restaurant or out dancing at one of the nightclubs in New York where her dates in Manhattan so often took place. In fact, she rather liked the idea of a cozy night at home. She just wished it didn’t involve an injury to Jack’s beautiful head.
Goodness, she really had it bad, didn’t she? She couldn’t wipe the smile from her face as she walked to work, and once she got there, she didn’t even mind the fact that Brett had lived up to his word and thrown himself full force into his investigation of Fired Up in Lovestruck.
She poured herself a generous portion of hazelnut coffee into a mug emblazoned with the words Bee Amazing and wandered over to the barn door conference table, which Brett seemed to be using as his makeshift headquarters. Every letter that Fired Up in Lovestruck had written and sent to the Bee had been photocopied and blown up to three times its original size. The copies were lined up in chronological order, from one end of the table to the other.
“Any luck?” she asked, sipping from her mug.
“Not yet.” Brett shook his head. “I’m thinking about bringing in a handwriting expert to take a look at his penmanship.”
“Then what? Are you going to have every reader in town give you a handwriting sample for comparison and see which one fits, like Cinderella and her glass slipper?”
“Very funny.” Brett straightened one of the photocopies a fraction of an inch.
“I’m only kidding. The handwriting thing is actually a pretty good idea. There are some distinctive pen strokes here, especially the way he crosses his z’s with a little dash.” She pointed to the letter where he’d used the word puzzling, drawing an invisible underline beneath the twin letters with her fingertip.
Then she frowned at the familiarity of the dashes. Madison hadn’t thought about t
hose distinctive z’s in weeks, but she felt like she’d seen letters just like them recently. She just couldn’t remember where.
“Everything okay? You practically floated in here, and now you seem upset,” Brett said.
“I’m not upset,” Madison said, taking another gulp of coffee. It tasted bitter on her tongue, though. Something wasn’t right. “I’m happy.”
So, so happy. She loved Jack, and she had a feeling he just might love her, too. She had nothing at all to be upset about...
Except she suddenly remembered where she’d seen z’s like the ones in Fired Up’s letter before, and unless she was mistaken, they’d been in the completed squares of the crossword puzzles on the end table in Jack’s living room.
“Good,” Brett said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “I guess, um, just let me know if you think of any information that might help the investigation.”
“Of course.” Madison nodded, pasted on a smile and wandered back to her desk, where she spent the rest of the day telling herself she was only imagining things.
There was no logical reason why Jack’s handwriting would have anything in common with Fired Up in Lovestruck’s—no reason whatsoever. She was a journalist, not a handwriting expert. She’d gotten it wrong; that was all. There was nothing to be worried about. She had a perfect romantic evening to look forward to, and she wasn’t going to let Brett’s ridiculous investigation ruin it.
Nor would she let Fired Up in Lovestruck interfere in her personal life. Hadn’t he caused her enough grief already?
But as the hours dragged until she was supposed to see Jack again, a slow burn of panic gathered deep in the pit of her stomach. And when at last she arrived at his cozy little cottage, she placed a chaste kiss on his cheek, then without a word of greeting, walked straight to the easy chair in the living room and inspected the stack of crossword puzzles on the table beside it.
Jack followed, watching her with an open curiosity that changed to an expression of masked alarm as she studied the lettering on the newsprint pages.
He cleared his throat. “Madison?”
The handwriting in the little boxes was an unmistakable match, even to her untrained eye. She noticed similarities beyond the cross hatches on the z’s—like the way the closure of the o’s overlapped, just like the ones in Fired Up in Lovestruck’s letters. Brett had tried to tell her that particular characteristic was indicative of someone who liked to keep secrets, and she’d actually laughed.
She wasn’t laughing anymore.
“Madison, talk to me, sweetheart,” Jack said, and his voice should have sounded like the time he’d asked her to talk to him on the bench outside the fire station, but it didn’t. There was a vague tremor of unease in his tone this time, and that was when she really knew.
It was him.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” she whispered. Please, please tell me. Lie to me if you have to. One last time. I promise I’ll believe. “Tell me you’re not Fired Up in Lovestruck.”
Jack just looked at her, and his blue eyes seemed bottomless all of a sudden. Two luminous pools of grief.
“I wish I could, but I can’t.” He pressed a shaking hand to his chest. “It’s me.”
Chapter Fifteen
Oh, my God.
Madison felt paralyzed. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t think, she couldn’t even take a full breath. She covered her heart with her hands, and the crossword puzzle she’d been holding floated to the floor. She stared at it as she tried to take a deep inhale, but her head seemed to be enveloped in a thick fog of noise. Words that she’d read again and again were spinning in her mind faster than she could grab hold of them.
Bitter to the point of being inedible.
I must ask why a professional journalist insists on writing her material in this annoying list format.
Honestly, this latest attempt at journalism is so egregious...
She blinked up at Jack, trying to force his image into proper focus—trying to see him as the arrogant, judgmental troll who’d nearly sent her to the unemployment line before making her into a household name, famous for diaper bedazzling and terrible maternal instincts. She just couldn’t do it. Somehow, he still looked like the man who’d knelt beside the bathtub with her and told her she’d make a wonderful mother someday. He couldn’t be, though—not if he’d been writing letters to her boss all this time about what a disaster she was.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, and the ache in his voice was unbearable.
Madison shook her head. “No. No, no, no.”
She couldn’t stop saying it. It was too unbelievable...too awful to think about, much less say it out loud. All this time, Jack had been Fired Up in Lovestruck. He’d been the one writing all those letters to the paper. He’d mocked her column since the very first day she’d worked at the Bee. He’d tried to get her fired.
Those things had been bad enough, but the really devastating part had been when he’d implied that she didn’t care about children. She’d cried over that particular letter, because what he’d written had tapped into her deepest, darkest insecurities about her upbringing and her belief that growing up motherless made her somehow unlovable. Unable to mother. Unable to have a normal life at all.
Why did it have to be Jack that had written those words? Him, of all people?
“Madison, please.” Jack’s voice broke when he said her name. And the anguish in his tone brought tears to her eyes, which made her even more furious at him than ever.
She’d never cried over a man in her life, and now here she was, practically falling apart over the one who’d hurt her in ways she could have never imagined. What would her father say if he could see her now?
“Let me explain,” Jack said. “Please.”
“Okay, fine. Explain away.” She crossed her arms and glared at him, trying her best to stay strong. Stoic.
But just looking at him grieved her down to her core. Those lovely blue eyes that somehow saw her in a way that no one else could suddenly seemed like the eyes of a complete and total stranger. And those hands—those big, beautiful hands that had held her so close last night had been the same hands that wielded her nemesis’s pen. The only reason she could wrap her head around it was because deep down, this was exactly the sort of heartbreak she’d expected all along. It was why she’d tried her best to ignore the fact that she’d been falling for him since day one. Loving a person seemed to somehow end in loss.
Every. Single. Time.
She really should have seen this coming. There’d been so many signs, and she’d been oblivious to all of them—the piles of apples in Jack’s grocery cart at the market, the strange way he’d acted at the library when he’d picked her books up off the floor and even the name he’d chosen: Fired Up in Lovestruck. He was a literal firefighter. How on earth had she missed that?
Because love is blind, she thought. She really, truly loved him. Much to her horror, she’d loved him all along.
“I didn’t know it was you,” he said, eyes going bluer than she’d ever seen them before. “I promise.”
“Everyone in America knows I’m Queen Bee. You and I discussed it after I got back from New York, and...” Her voice trailed off as the memory of that painful night came back full force.
He’d told her she was perfect, and then he’d stepped away when she tried to kiss him. He’d let her quit her night nanny job, and all this time she’d thought it was because she’d done something wrong or he knew how she felt about him but he didn’t feel the same way. But in reality, he’d been lying to her the entire night.
Maybe she deserved it. She’d certainly misled him back in the beginning, especially about Toby. But this...this was a whopper.
“That night—the night I quit—you knew, and you didn’t say a word. Is that why you let me resign? So you wouldn’t have to tell me the truth?” She slumped down on Jack’s sofa, be
cause standing suddenly required too much energy. Trying not to collapse into a puddle of tears was using up every bit of strength she possessed.
“No, I pushed you away that night because you said you wanted to move back to New York and the very idea that you might leave—” he inhaled a ragged breath “—it scared the life out of me, sweetheart.”
Why did he have to call her sweetheart? It made her go all swoony, even now. She looked away, because his expression was too raw, too vulnerable, for her to take. If she met his gaze, she was afraid she might forgive him, and she didn’t want to do that. She liked feeling angry. It was so much easier than feeling heartbroken or accidentally falling in love with someone who could let you down when you were least expecting it.
“I just wish you’d told me,” she whispered, but she immediately realized that wasn’t quite true. What she really wished was that Fired Up in Lovestruck could have been someone else—some nameless, faceless stranger she’d never, ever met.
“I do, too,” Jack said. “Believe me, I tried.”
“Not hard enough.” She swallowed around the lump in her throat.
If she’d known Jack was Fired Up, would she have gone to him at the hospital the night before? When he’d patted the empty space on the sheet beside him, would she have still climbed into his bed and kissed him silly? Would she have spent the entire night with her head on his shoulder and the palm of her hand pressed against the strong thump of his heartbeat, just to remind herself he was really okay, that nothing truly awful had happened to him and he wasn’t going to vanish from her life like both her parents had?
Yes. She blinked hard to keep the tears at bay. Even if she’d known Jack had written the letters, she would have made those same choices—because she loved him, and love made people do foolish, self-destructive things.
Not anymore, though. She couldn’t do this. She wouldn’t.
