by Amy DeLuca
Jack’s blood boiled with outrage. “Who was the instructor?”
The names of a few of his less likable contemporaries popped to mind. Some people considered themselves the final word on how to write properly. Jack’s personal opinion was whatever got the job done was the “right way.”
Bonnie gave him a regretful glance. “Now that I’ve told such an unflattering story about him, I probably shouldn’t say.”
His response rolled out like gravel. “You should definitely say.”
For some reason, he wanted this guy’s name. He also wanted his home address and the GPS location of any secluded streets the pompous ass might happen to walk down alone at night.
“I don’t think so.” She shook him off. “Publishing is a small business. I’d be foolish to trash anyone. Anyway, that was a long time ago.”
“And did you quit writing?”
“Not entirely. It took me a while, but I did go back to the story. I scrapped the entire first chapter, of course. But eventually, I finished the book, just for myself, you know?”
“Good for you. You have to write for yourself first, before anyone else. What’s it about?”
Jack surprised himself with that question—he made it a point never to ask other writers about their stories anymore. For one thing, he didn’t want anyone to ever accuse him of stealing their ideas. For another, it might lead to their asking him to critique for them, which could lead to all kinds of grief he didn’t need in his life.
But he really wanted to know about Bonnie’s book. He really wanted to know more about her, and as most writers would tell you, what they chose to write about revealed a lot about their true selves.
She gave him a shy glance. “I’d rather not talk about it. I’m never going to publish it, anyway, so it doesn’t matter. That part of my life is over. I’ve moved on.”
Jack shook his head, feeling like an empath in that moment. He understood completely. The loss of your gift left a jagged hole in your life nothing else could quite fill.
“Fear can really mess you up, can’t it?” he said.
“Fear?”
“Yeah—the fear of rejection, the fear of being told you’re not good enough… the fear of being hurt again.”
She didn’t respond, only kept watching him with those deep, dark eyes, waiting for him to go on.
Am I really about to do this? She’d been open and honest with him. Jack admired her courage in doing that, and he was amazed to find himself tempted to open up to her in return.
At the same time, the thought of telling her about one of his worst moments had his belly tied up in complicated sailor’s knots. For a few moments, he wavered on the edge, not sure which way he’d go.
And then he took the plunge.
Eleven
Rogue Wave
“The past year has been… really rough,” Jack admitted. “I broke up with my long-time girlfriend.”
Bonnie nodded. “Mrs. Potts told me. I’m so sorry.”
“She did? Did she tell you why?”
“No. Don’t be mad at her, please. That’s all she said—that you two broke up. She wasn’t gossiping, just correcting misinformation.”
He shook his head and held a hand up in a don’t-worry-about-it gesture. “It’s okay. I’m sure it’s hard anytime a serious relationship breaks up, but sometimes it’s for the right reasons, you know? You want different things in life, you’re incompatible. This time… well, it was crushing.”
“She cheated on you?” Bonnie guessed.
“Yes. But it was worse than that. She was the one who sold the outline to the tabloid.”
Her intake of breath was audible, even over the noise of the waves. “It was real then.”
Jack nodded grimly. “A hundred percent genuine—that’s off the record, by the way.”
“Okay,” she agreed readily. “That’s horrible, Jack. Why on earth would she do it?”
“Well, I hear she got quite a payday out of it. But I think it was mostly for spite.”
“Spite? I guess you guys didn’t have one of those amicable ‘conscious uncouplings.’”
He rolled his eyes at the new-agey term. “Hardly.”
Picking up a shell, he skipped it across the water, buying time while he decided whether to tell her the whole disgraceful story. Finally, he decided to go for broke. It felt kind of good to get it all out there at long last. Bonnie would probably run screaming in the other direction, but maybe that was for the best.
“It was my fault,” Jack admitted.
Bonnie screwed up her face in a comical expression. “Your fault that she cheated on you and sold your work to a tabloid?”
“I drove her away.” He paused to adjust to the influx of self-disgust that always rose inside him whenever he thought about his relationship with Claudia.
“We’d been dating for a while—three years. She was the first person I’d ever been serious with. It hasn’t always been easy for me to… get close to women.” Understatement alert.
He glanced at Bonnie, but she didn’t seem horrified yet—only curious—so he continued. “We were well-suited. She seemed interested in me—like as a person, not just in the money and fame and all that crap most women cared about. I hate to say it because it sounds obnoxious, but it isn’t easy to find someone worthwhile when you’ve got a lot of money.”
Bonnie nodded. “I get it. You’re not sure if they’re in it for you or the lifestyle.”
“Exactly. But I’d grown to really trust Claudia, to count on her. She started dropping hints about wanting an engagement ring, mentioning places she’d like to go that would be ‘perfect honeymoon spots,’ that kind of thing.”
“Did you propose?”
“I was working up to it. I didn’t feel ready. I didn’t feel like we were ready. I’m not sure why. Maybe I’m just not capable of needing someone like that. But I didn’t want to lose her, either. I guess I thought we’d just stay together until the time was right.”
“Sometimes our instincts tell us to move slowly for a reason. Sometimes listening to them is the smartest thing we can do.” She looked thoughtful. “Did you love her?”
Jack scrubbed a hand through his hair, casting his gaze up at the sky. “I think so. She said she loved me. Then a friend told me he’d spotted her out in the harbor on the deck of some old, rich, European guy’s yacht and said they looked very close. When I confronted her, she lied about everything, explained it away and made me question things I’d seen with my own eyes. I actually apologized to her.”
He dropped his face and shook his head, still unable to believe his own stupidity. “When I woke up the next morning, she was gone. So was the outline. I did end up talking to her a few weeks after it all went down. She said she’d gotten tired of waiting, that she deserved someone who could commit—like Phillipe. She said I was… what were her words? Sushi. Cold Fish.”
Bonnie wrinkled her nose. “I hate sushi. You’re a lot of things, Jack Bestia. Cold is not one of them. Sounds like a flimsy justification for infidelity to me.”
“Ah heck, it’s probably true. I’m no good at relationships.” He swiped his hand through the air, ready to be done with the subject. “I don’t know. Doesn’t matter. It’s old history, and it’s boring. Let’s talk about you again. Got any more interesting skeletons in your closet?”
Bonnie ignored his attempt at frivolity. “I’m sorry that happened to you, Jack. Really. That’s a terrible way for a three-year relationship to end, and her putting all the blame on you stole your ability to even grieve its passing.”
The statement was so heartfelt, so sincere. She wasn’t offering pity. She was just telling him she was sorry for his loss. For the first time, he felt like he had permission to grieve it.
“Thank you,” Jack said and returned her genuine smile with one of his own.
“I dated a guy like that a few years ago,” Bonnie said. “He was never wrong, never at fault. He seemed to think his money absolved him of any and all
blame, no matter how despicable his actions were.”
“So… he was wealthy,” Jack prompted.
She snorted. “Ridiculously wealthy. And he made sure everyone knew it.”
Something in her tone made him uneasy. Though it shouldn’t matter to him what Bonnie thought of her ex—or of men with money—for some reason, it did.
“Is it rich guys that bother you… or money in general that you hate?” he asked.
Bonnie’s eyes rolled up, and she tilted her head to the side as if thinking about it. “I guess money can come in pretty handy. I know I could use a raise. But my experience so far with billionaires has been, how should I put it? A little off-putting.”
Her bright laughter kept the remark from feeling insulting. And what could he say? His behavior yesterday had been pretty repellent.
He laughed, too. “Touché.”
Bonnie’s expression sobered. “You must have been devastated when the outline was released to the public.”
“To say the least. I lost my relationship and my book all in one fell swoop.” Not to mention my faith in humanity.
“So then… well, I know we agreed no spoilers, so you don’t have to answer this,” she said, her tone hesitant. “Did you end up changing the story from that outline? Because you told the media it was a fake.”
She’d just said he didn’t have to answer. But Jack found himself wanting to. He’d never told anyone but Hunter and Mrs. Potts just how much damage Claudia had done with her vengeful act.
He felt like Bonnie would really get it. Though she was still pre-published, she was a writer, too. And she was so open, so honest with her feelings and about her own life. Besides, she’d signed a non-disclosure agreement, so what would it hurt?
“Yeah, I tossed the whole thing. I had no choice. And it nearly killed me because it was perfect—or at least as perfect as any story plan can be.”
“Wow. That is incredible.”
Her face was painted with distress, the knowing brown eyes offering all the sympathy Jack could have hoped for. “So that means you had to start all over again, come up with a new ending, new storylines for all the characters.”
Since he hadn’t actually done that yet, all he did was nod and say, “That’s what it means.”
It was truthful, if not the entire truth. He liked this girl, but she was still with the media. He couldn’t let her know how completely and utterly screwed he was.
“I am so, so sorry, Jack. And you win.”
His head jerked back in surprise. “I win?”
“Yes. Your tale of woe is way worse than mine.”
Jack laughed. “I don’t know about that. Yours is pretty bad, too. Let’s call it a draw. In any case, you seem to have recovered from yours better than I did from mine. You created a successful career for yourself as a journalist.”
“Jack—you’re still successful.” She made a silly, crazy-eyed expression and gestured around them.
“I’m still earning money, yes. But as you might have noticed, I haven’t put out anything new for two years. I missed my deadlines on this last Onyx book.”
“It’s understandable. You had to start from scratch. And your books are long and complex—they take time to write.”
Don’t remind me. “If only all my readers were so understanding,” Jack quipped. “Patience seems to be wearing pretty thin out there in Booklandia. All the pressure didn’t exactly help.”
Bonnie seemed to consider her words carefully before speaking again. “You could just quit, you know?”
“Quit? You mean not write?” She might as well have suggested he stop breathing air and eating food.
Picking up on his affronted tone, she held her hands up. “No, no, no. Not altogether. I mean, even after what happened, something inside me keeps pushing me to record the stories of these imaginary people who insist on invading my mind, and I’m just an unpublished hack, so I’d imagine it has to be the same for you.”
“You’re not a hack,” he started to argue, but Bonnie continued.
“I meant not write for publication—after this book, since it’s done already and about to come out,” she explained, blissfully ignorant of the awful truth.
“I’d be sad of course,” she said. “I’ll always want another book from you, like I’m sure all your fans do. Those who love your writing could never get enough. But you’ve already accomplished far more than most people could ever dream of. You could stop now and still be ahead of the game forever, still be known as one of the greatest fantasy writers of all time. You could just write for fun, for the love of it and not to satisfy other people. Because you want to, not because you have to.”
Jack thought about it for a minute. Could she be right? Could he get off the hamster wheel of always striving to top himself, to “succeed”—whatever that meant—to achieve more and more and more and more?
A white-hot lance of fear pierced his chest. Who would he be if he wasn’t striving to please his publishing house and his readers? If he wasn’t achieving greater and greater goals?
He didn’t let on to Bonnie how much terror those questions produced. Keeping his tone light, he said, “I don’t see that happening. Somebody’s got to pay the utility bill for this place.”
Snickering at his own feeble joke, he changed the subject. “You know… I think you should try again on the publishing front. It sounds like you love it. It would be a shame to give up before you’ve ever really gotten started. You could write a query letter, and I’d be happy to point you toward some good literary agents.”
Bonnie smiled and gave a saucy, playful toss of her head. “Maybe I will.” She looked out at the water then darted her eyes at him. “And I think you should get back out there on the dating front. Speaking on behalf of the female population of the world, I can assure you we’re not all soulless monsters.”
Jack snickered. “Well, maybe you’re right. I’ve been a little leery of beautiful women since Claudia—as you may have noticed yesterday when we met.”
She blushed a pretty pink and smiled shyly at his obvious flirtation. Just then a giant wave crashed against the rocks, arcing over them and soaking them both with a direct hit.
“Whoa,” Jack yelled. Grabbing Bonnie’s arm, he jerked her back against him to make sure the powerful wave didn’t carry her out to sea when it receded.
He hadn’t meant to do anything but steady her, to prevent her from being washed away. But once he had her in his arms, he didn’t let go, just held her close for a minute, stunned by the effect the feel of her had on him.
She was so soft, so small. Having her close sparked little bonfires all over his skin, and his heart turned over like the engine of a car that hadn’t been started in a long time, sputtering a bit before kicking into a new, faster rhythm.
She made him feel… alive. He hadn’t even realized before he met her that he’d become the walking dead over the past year.
He realized it now, though. He could fall for this person. Hard. Jack’s fingers abruptly released their grip.
“You all right?” he asked.
Bonnie turned to face him, drenched from head to toe in salt water. And she laughed out loud. “That was wild! I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Rogue wave. They happen here in this rocky area all the time. I should have warned you.”
He marveled at her laughter and jubilant expression. It was sort of glorious to be around such a carefree soul. If it had been Claudia, she would have pitched a fit over the destruction of her carefully styled hair and makeup and her dry-clean-only outfit.
That was assuming she’d ever wanted to join him for a walk out there in the wind and salty air. It was one of Jack’s favorite pastimes, but it wasn’t Claudia’s “thing.”
“Amazing,” Bonnie said. “Jack, you live in the most amazing spot. I can’t imagine having this as a backyard. I might never go inside the house if it were me.”
He grinned, enjoying her appreciation for something he loved as well.
“I guess we should go inside, though. You’re soaked.”
She nodded and attempted to blow a wet lock of hair from in front of one eye. “Not too beautiful, now, huh?”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Jack reached out to help, tucking the tendril behind her ear. “Seaweed in your hair is a good look for you.”
Bonnie automatically reached up to her head but then realized he was kidding. She laughed and wagged her finger in a you-got-me gesture. “I like you, Jack.”
A zing of delight shot down his spine. She’d only said it because he’d made her laugh, but those words coming out of her mouth did something to him.
And she did look gorgeous, even dripping wet—especially dripping wet. Her dark knit dress clung to her like a second skin. Down boy. Let’s stop ogling the nice reporter, shall we?
“Well, you can’t be too comfortable like that.” Adopting a sarcastic tone, he gestured to his wet jeans. “As for myself, I love nothing better than the feel of cold, wet, salty denim sticking to my skin. But I can find you some dry clothes to put on for the drive back to the hotel, if you’d like.”
“Thanks. That would be nice.”
As they walked back to the house, Jack realized he didn’t really want her to return to the hotel—not quite yet. There was something different about this woman. Being around her made him feel different, as if he was enough. As if what he already had was pretty darned great.
He wanted more of that feeling.
“Hey… would you want to maybe stick around a little longer? Monsieur Laplume is still living off the glow of preparing your lunch yesterday. You’d really make his week if you stayed for dinner.”
She beamed at him. “That would be nice. I’d love to.”
They took the elevator to the second floor to avoid dripping sea water all through the house and up the grand staircase. Jack led Bonnie to the master suite where he fished some clean sweatpants and a t-shirt from his drawers.
“These are going to be way too big on you, but the pants have a drawstring, so at least they’ll stay up.”
She accepted the clothes with a warm smile. “Thanks. I guess this is your room?”
