by Kim Boykin
She’d done several local TV appearances in the past few weeks in much bigger markets, this one shouldn’t have been any different. Maybe she was nervous because she said she used to watch Megan Miranda on Saturday mornings and sometimes on the afternoon news. Tara said on camera Megan seemed nice and fun, the kind of person you’d want to grab coffee or go shopping with, but she was still a journalist. Jake was smart enough to have a healthy distrust for her kind.
Tara had sat down with some of the biggest news people in the country since she’d started the tour, with Barbara Walters no less, but being back in Charlotte had made her more than a little nervous.
“You’re going to be great,” he whispered. “I love you.”
“You must be Tara.” A pretty blonde woman entered the room and offered her hand to Tara. “I’m so glad you’re here. I adored The Perfect Marriage, but I’ve got say, I’m hooked on your romance series too. Please tell me, does Angelica ever get her man?”
“I hate to be the spoiler, but she does,” Tara said. “I love your work too. I’ve told Jake all about you.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Jordan.”
Jake laughed and shook her hand. “Jake Randall, Tara’s publicist.”
“Really?” Megan looked embarrassed and surprised. “Sitting here together you look so—Are you sure he’s not your husband?” Jake laughed along with everyone, but inside he was beating himself up. He was a professional for God’s sake, and he damned well better project he was all business.
The same tech who’d ushered them to the green room stuck her head out the studio door. “You’re on in five.”
“Well, that was embarrassing, it’s just that you—look like a couple,” Megan said. “Anyway, my bad. I’ll see you on the set.”
The moment the studio doors swung shut behind Megan, Tara looked at him. “She knows.”
“You’re being paranoid. She doesn’t know.” He wasn’t so sure about that, but he needed to keep Tara calm before she went on camera.
“I’m telling you, Jake, I know that ah-ha look on a woman’s face.”
“This is local TV.” Out of habit, he started to reach for her had but then thought the better of it. “She’s not after some big exposé. You’re just going to talk about the book, maybe the romance series and then say the shows are sold out. That’s it.”
The interview went just like Jake said it would, and Tara was right. Megan Miranda was really good and she did exude the kind of kitchen-table type persona that made Tara like her. He waited off camera until the break and then gathered up Tara’s briefcase and purse. “Thanks for having us, Megan.”
She shook Jake’s hand and blushed a little. “Sorry about earlier.” But her smirk said, but you do make a cute couple.
We went back to the hotel and made some calls. I waited for Jake to finish the one he was on before taking his hand and leading him out the hotel room door. “Time for lunch, cowboy.”
“Noooo.” He stopped me in the hallway and kissed me senseless. “I want to eat in the room.”
We’d gotten less and less careful about being cozy together, but our bravado didn’t extend far past the hotel room door, and I’d never been happier. I had my career and Jake was working on a PR strategy that would allow us to be together in front of God and everybody. I pulled him toward the elevator against his will.
“Where are we going?”
“To church,” I said.
For a Wisconsin boy, he sure took to the food at the United House of Prayer. Monday through Friday, the church on Mint Street serves up some of the best southern comfort food in the city, cafeteria style. We gorged ourselves on fried chicken and mac and cheese, and I watched Jake fall in love with fried okra. I knew I’d probably regret it, but I topped off my meal with a great big slice of sweet potato pie and he had the same with a side of peach cobbler.
“If there’s a pool somewhere near here,” he said on the way back to the hotel, “I need to find it. Now.”
I elbowed his rock-hard abs and agreed. Since Jake and I had been traveling together, I learned that whole thing about waiting thirty minutes after you eat to swim is an old wives’ tale. I took a book to the Mecklenburg Aquatic Center to read, but couldn’t take my eyes off of him slicing through the water. Neither could a handful of gabbing young mothers who’d brought their little ones in for swimming lessons.
He swam freestyle for almost an hour, stopping occasionally to look at the lap clock and drink some water. The final lap, he made sure I was watching when he pushed off the end of the pool, his gorgeous chest rising out of the water. Arms spread wide, the first powerful stroke of the butterfly. By the time he reached the other end of the pool, I’d all but come. Judging from their gaping looks, the mothers were on the verge.
He got out of the pool, and came over to me, still breathing hard, and kissed me on the cheek. The women looked awestruck at him and then at me before they started gossiping again. They could say whatever they wanted. Jake Randall had made it clear that he belonged to me.
The nerves I’d felt about coming back to Charlotte were gone, and I don’t think I’d ever been more self-confident in my life, although coming back was more than strange. I’d started out in this town, going to writers’ conferences and critique groups, questioning if anyone would ever read what I wrote. Was I was good really enough to publish? But at seven o’clock when the lights of the Belk Theater came up, I read to a full house of more than two thousand people for almost an hour, laughing and crying along with the audience at e-mails and letters I’d gotten from couples all over the country.
Sure, I started out a little shaky, but the longer I went into the program, the more comfortable I was. By the time the house lights went on and I started taking questions from the audience, I was bulletproof.
I let go of the worries about how Jake and I were going to navigate our future because I had embraced every word in my book. If my book had been a fabrication of what I had with Jim when I wrote it, it had turned into a premonition of what I was to have with Jake. And it had become a roadmap of possibilities for couples to find what they needed in their own marriages, and permission to say things that needed to be said before it was too late.
Jake watched the show from one of the private balconies of the Belk Theater and had to admit, the Janzen people knew what they were doing. The format had worked beautifully in every city so far and never got stale. Of course Tara had a lot to do with that. She was amazing with the fans, with the crowds in the theaters, with the press. But after being pulled in so many different directions, at the end of the day, she belonged to him.
It had been a brutal tour. Sometimes they were so tired, they just checked into the hotel and watched a little TV. Once she’d dragged him to a bar to dance. She didn’t believe him when he told her that watching a six-foot-four guy dance wasn’t a pretty sight, but now she did. Some nights she wrote, and he’d been doing some writing too. The new romance she was working on was really good. Jake thought the series that was selling like crazy in stores everywhere was good, but the new one really showed how much Tara had grown as a writer. And her career was so hot, her agent, Kit, could have pitched Tara’s grocery list, and it probably would have been a bestseller.
Lately, Tara had been curious about what he was working on. He read her stuff all the time, but he wasn’t ready to show her anything, yet. She was sure Jake was writing the great American novel, but he wasn’t. He was writing his and Tara’s story down for someday. He didn’t imagine it being anything corny like The Notebook, but he liked the idea of putting the words down on paper. How, with the exception of Jake playing the part of the asshole, they’d been drawn together from the beginning.
Sometimes he wondered what his life would be like if Erin hadn’t called him that day. He liked to believe that somehow, he would have found Tara anyway, that the pull he’d felt from the beginning would have eventually drawn him to her. He’d felt a version of that with Kate, and as much as he’d loved her, that part of
his life had happened so long ago, it almost felt like fiction.
Jake watched the spotlight follow the Janzen employees as they zipped around the Belk Theater with wireless mikes to pre-selected couples, doing a good job of making the Q&A portion of the show look impromptu. The audience didn’t seem to have any idea that the questions they’d written down on index cards while they waited to get into the theater had been sorted and analyzed, most of them handpicked by him and Tara. The women especially seemed to love seeing their faces on the jumbo screen to the right of Tara’s podium as they read their questions, glancing up at themselves like people do when they’re on camera.
Jake had thought it would be hard for Tara, coming back to Charlotte, but she’d amazed tonight him by being confident, almost triumphant.
Tomorrow, after the show, they’d leave for Miami, but he’d tell her tonight that he’d given his notice to his boss in New York and told her about their relationship. He’d been on speakerphone with Sylvia until she yanked up the phone to ream him out. Erin was on the call too, laughing hysterically and taking full credit for their love story.
“I should sack you now, Jake Randall,” Sylvia had snapped.
“Do what you have to do.” He knew she’d let him finish out the tour. With Tara at the top of the fiction and nonfiction bestseller lists, the last thing anybody at Penguin wanted was to piss her off. Not that he was hiding behind Tara, but he’d be damned before he apologized to anybody for falling in love with her.
One thing was for sure, Jake wasn’t looking forward to having dinner with Marsha and her asshole husband after the show, but he hoped by now the old guy would see that Jake wasn’t going anywhere.
Last question of the night. He couldn’t wait to tell Tara about his plan to spin the book and how they met, how the end of her marriage had become a new beginning for the two of them. Tara was as sick of hiding their relationship as Jake was, and he was glad to have his resignation out of the way so they didn’t have to anymore.
A slender blond woman in the back of the orchestra section stood up. The Janzen guy in the red jacket, handed her the mike. “What advice would you give to couples just starting out?” Jake had picked that question; he wanted to see what Tara would say. The camera stayed trained on the woman as Tara answered.
Jake knew she couldn’t see very far into the crowd because of the lights. The woman sat back down in her seat. That was when Jake got a glimpse of him.
“Shit.” He grabbed his walkie-talkie. “Security. The guy behind the blond that was just up on the screen. Mid-fifties, gray hair, khaki jacket. Get him out of the theater. Now.”
Jake wanted to strangle the bastard for what he’d done to Tara. She was still closing out the show, unaware that Jim Jordan was in the house.
Chapter Fifteen
‡
The head of security looked bewildered when I walked up. “What do you want us to do with him, Jake? We can’t hold him, not legally. He bought a ticket.”
“Jim’s here?”
Jake nodded. “Will you excuse us?” he said and pulled me aside. “He says he wants to talk to you.”
“Fine. He can come to our room in a half hour, but I want to talk to him alone.”
“I don’t like that, Tara.”
“I need to do this, Jake. It’s better this way.”
Lou Rosen was right about Jim showing up, but after being gone over three months, I hoped she was wrong that he wanted revenge. Maybe my lawyer had finally been able to track him down. Maybe he wanted to talk about the contract on the house. Maybe he was ready to talk about the divorce.
I left the theater feeling pent up, so we left the car parked at the theater and walked back to the hotel. The worry was apparent on Jake’s face. “I know you don’t want me to see him, but I have take care of the business that’s left between me and Jim. And that’s all that’s left, Jake. I promise.” He didn’t deny it, just waited until we were alone in the elevator and kissed me, reminding me that I belonged to him. “There’s nothing he can do or say that can make me stop loving you.”
We stepped out of the elevator and walked toward our room. “I gave my notice. I told them after tonight, I’d save the company some money, just get one hotel room from here on out. My boss wasn’t happy about me finishing the tour, but Erin was cheering in the background.”
“I’m so happy, Jake.”
The hotel room door closed behind us and we stood there holding each other. There was a knock at the door. I stiffened in Jake’s arms.
“Are you afraid of him, Tara? Should I stay?”
“No. But I need to do this on my own. Promise me you’ll stay out of this.”
I could see in his face that was the last thing he wanted to do, but he promised.
He kissed me again, then opened the door. Jim did a double take. In less than three seconds, everything clicked with my soon-to-be ex-husband, but Jake pushed past him and closed the door behind him before Jim could say anything.
“Well, I see you’ve moved on.” Jim gave if-looks-could-kill a whole new meaning, but it had nothing to do with being served divorce papers or a book that had embarrassed the hell out of him.
“We never fought, Jim. Not really. And I’m not starting now.” Breathe. Don’t get sucked into his game.
“How old is he?”
“Old enough,” I snapped and then chided myself. “Look, I don’t want this to get any uglier than it already is. The fact is that you left me. I don’t care that you took the money—”
“My money.”
“Whatever. I don’t even care that you took my advance. You can have it. I just want to get on with my life.”
“With him?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I gave you fifteen years of my life and this is how you thank me?” he screamed. “You humiliate me. You—.”
“I’m not going to stand here and listen to this. Either be civil or leave.”
“After what you did to me? I’ll leave when I’m good and goddamn ready.” He pushed me up against the wall, face just inches from mine. “And where do you get off telling me what to do? Oh, that’s right, you’re all high and mighty now. But it wasn’t so long ago that you were nothing, a nobody. And you’ll be a nobody again when I’m through with you.”
I spun away from him and ran to the bathroom. I tried to close the door, but he pushed it open and blocked my way when I tried to get out.
His face was bright red, his breathing was too fast. “The Perfect Marriage? Not with you, you ungrateful bitch.” He was holding his left arm. “And you think you’re going to get that with him? Does he know how old you are?”
“I’m not going to listen to this. I’m happy now—”
“Happy? You know what? I’m glad we’re over. I’m glad I fucking lied to you all those years.”
“What are you talking about?”
“And now you’re old, and dried up, with your pretty boyfriend.” His bitter laughter made me sick. “All those years you couldn’t get pregnant, it wasn’t you, sweetheart.”
“But I went through all those treatments. My doctor even said—.”
“What I told him to say,” he screamed.
I’d tried so damn hard to have a baby, but I never even got pregnant. After five years of trying, my doctor, Jim’s best friend, pulled me aside at a cocktail party and told me it would be easier on Jim and me if I just accepted that I couldn’t have a baby. Things had been so rough, I thought he was being compassionate. But it was just a sick good-old-boy way of making life easier for Jim.
My husband had slurred his last words like he was drunk. I knew he was having a heart attack, but I stood there unable to move. His back slid down the wall until he was sitting on the bathroom tile. He gripped his chest, fighting to breathe. His face had already drooped to one side, eyes no longer angry, but pleading. “Help me.”
I bolted out of the bathroom to call 911 and crashed into the thick glass coffee table. My skull smashed
into the end table, snapping my head back. I was paralyzed by the rhythm of the pain taking me to the edge of consciousness and back. Blood gushed down the side of my face. My cellphone was on the floor, within reach, it was ringing. Jim was dying. Someone opening the hotel room door.
I could see his legs from where I was on the floor. I punched in the numbers—911. The pain traveled up my legs to my brain, swimming with the pain of everything Jim had taken from me. I hated him. I could have hit the Send button; I could have saved him. But when the next beat of darkness came, I let go of the phone and let my husband die.
Chapter Sixteen
‡
“Tara.” I opened my eyes. Jake was holding my hand. A lady in a uniform waved a foil packet of smelling salts under my nose. I reached for him. The pain constricted around my head like a hungry snake, making me gag. I had already vomited, I could smell it down the front of my clothes. Everything started to go black again. “Stay with me, Tara.”
“Mrs. Jordan,” the paramedic said. “My name is Dee. You hit your head. You’ve got some bruises on your legs. We’re going to take you to the ER and get you checked out. My partners are working on your husband.”
I looked at Jake. He was blurry and then beautiful and then blurry again. “Jim’s dead,” I cried. “I killed him.”
“No, Tara, you didn’t kill anybody.” Jake’s voice. I loved Jake’s voice.
The gurney magically rose and I floated down the hallway with the pretty lights overhead. Jake was beside me. I love Jake. Jim is dead. I killed Jim.
Then we were outside and the gurney was low again. I was being lifted into the truck. Jake let go of my hand. He tried to get into the ambulance, but the lady stopped him. “Are you family?” Yes. Jake. You are family. You are the one. You are home.
Jake was terrified. He parked the car and sprinted toward the ER to find Tara, but he knew with privacy laws, there was a good possibility that wasn’t happening. With that bastard in the same hospital as Tara, they knew Jim was her husband. Jake would have no chance at getting any information. He slowed his pace as he got to the automatic doors, in full-blown obnoxious New Yorker mode.
