by Lizzie Shane
Miranda sighed. “Oh well. It was worth asking.” She grinned. “Come on. Missy should be ready in Confessional Two.”
“Jack is such an amazing man,” the stunning brunette gushed enthusiastically. “I’ve been hurt by men who weren’t faithful in the past, but Jack…”
Lou stood in the background, trying to stay out of the way, as a four-man camera and sound crew captured footage of Missy in preparation for her evening out with Jack. Something about the fervent, almost desperate way Missy said Jack’s name had disconcerted Lou as soon as she started speaking into the camera. She was almost obsessive in her intensity.
As Missy waxed poetic about Jack’s amazing fidelity, Lou’s disquiet increased. The man was simultaneously dating thirteen women at last count and Missy thought he was a paragon of faithfulness? Just how disconnected with reality was she?
“I feel very confident about getting the last ring. As our journey progresses, I think Jack is realizing which of us are here for the Right Reasons and which aren’t. I have so much love in me to give and I want so badly to be loved. He has to see that.” Missy started to get teary as she professed her enormous capacity for emotion. “I never expected, when I came here, to be falling in love, to be really, genuinely feeling the way I feel for this incredible man, but you just can’t control your heart.”
Lou rolled her eyes. If she thought it would do any good, she would sit Missy the Gorgeous Doormat down and have a talk with her about how “genuine” the emotion she’d developed over the last week was in comparison to the emotion Lou had been developing over the last decade.
Though maybe Lou was the one who was delusional. Jack was no more likely to return her feelings than he was to return Missy’s.
“I just know he will see that I am here for him, for all the right reasons, and I feel more for him than any of the other girls.”
Lou had heard enough. As Miranda stepped in and started asking pointed questions to guide quotes out of Missy, Lou slipped away, heading back up the flagstone path leading to the other property and the craft service tent.
Missy had some hard life lessons to learn. First among them being that this competition wasn’t about who loved Jack the most, but who he wanted the most. If it had just been about loving him, Lou would have won hands down. It was that reciprocation element that was so tricky.
No wonder these shows were so rarely successful at pairing couples up. That they were ever successful was a small miracle.
Lou set off to track down the kids. Miranda had certainly given her a lot to think about.
Chapter Fourteen
When Jack arrived back at the mansion after his extreme date, he wanted nothing more than to find Lou and the kids and unwind for a couple hours before they had to go back home and he had to go to the symphony. He would have rather had four hours on a plane with two hyper children than two hours with Bach—or whoever it was who’d be assaulting his ears tonight.
He jogged up the stairs, intent on grabbing a quick shower to rinse off the dirt and sweat from the base-jumping expedition. He heard splashing coming from the direction of the pool. It sounded like the kids were enjoying the house, at least. He’d wanted more time with them than just a thirty-six hour layover, but the producers had talked him out of keeping the kids longer. It was a simple matter to take a first-grader out of school for a week or two, but even if TJ and Emma were here, he wouldn’t be. A wine tasting in Napa, a ski weekend in Aspen—the destination dates only got more elaborate as the weeks wore on and even though there were fewer women, his time would be less and less his own.
He couldn’t complain. This was exactly what he’d signed up for. He just hadn’t realized how much of a homebody he’d become over the last four years. He hadn’t lost the taste for new experiences and adventures, but nothing felt right without Lou and the kids around. Everything he saw, he wanted to show them and see how they reacted to it.
After his shower, Jack yanked on swim trunks and a T-shirt, relieved to have a few more hours before he had to strangle himself in one of the designer suits the show had picked out for him. He slipped out into the hallway, pulling up short when he saw Miranda striding toward him with her ubiquitous tablet in hand.
“Jack! Just the man I wanted to see.” She beamed a bright smile that made him intensely nervous.
“I was just on my way to the pool to see the kids.” Please don’t stop me. Let me have just one afternoon of normalcy.
“I won’t keep you. I was just going over the schedule for the next week and thinking about what we talked about yesterday. About being open to love?”
“Uh-huh.”
She smiled, undeterred by his unenthusiastic response. “I talked to Lou earlier and it’s occurred to me that while the whole purpose of this is to shake you out of your romantic rut, we may have inadvertently brought your rut with us.”
“I have no idea what you’re saying.”
“Lou.”
He nodded. “Lou is here.”
“Exactly. Lou is here and you’re relying on her, your emotional crutch, rather than opening yourself up to the possibility of finding someone else to rely on. Do you see what I mean?”
Jack’s shoulders tightened. “My kids are coming to visit every weekend, Miranda. That was the deal. I’m not negotiating on that.”
“No, of course I’m not arguing that. As long as we’re able to make it work with the schedule, we’re going to bring them out here. They’re fantastic. And the fact that you’re a great father is one of the primary reasons you were selected, so we could ask nothing less of you.”
“Then what’s the problem?” he asked, impatient to get downstairs so he could see his kids and start being this epically great father they were billing him as.
“Lou is your crutch.”
“You said that already.”
“So maybe next week when the children come to visit, we could have one of our producers fly with them and Lou could stay in Chicago. I’d hate to think that your reliance on her was undermining your romantic efforts here the way it has for the last four years.”
“She isn’t undermining anything.”
“Jack, I’m not attacking Lou. I adore her. But I have to think about what’s best for your romantic future and maybe it’s time to cut the umbilical.”
“There is no umbilical.”
Miranda smiled, flapping a hand. “Forget I said anything. I’m probably imagining things. But if she decides she wants a weekend without the children hanging off of her, remember we have staff who can travel with them.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
The afternoon passed too quickly. He played with the kids in the pool until Emma was so exhausted she threw a screaming fit the likes of which she hadn’t thrown in years when they tried to get her out of the water. Lou had carried her off to the showers, muttering that at least she’d sleep well on the plane, leaving Jack to ride herd on TJ to get him into his own plane clothes.
It felt like they’d only just arrived and soon they’d be leaving to go to the airport and he’d be off to wine and dine a pair of beautiful brunettes whose names were so similar the blooper reel was already full of him tripping over them.
When Lou came back downstairs with Emma and the carry-on, she set the kids up at a table on the terrace with chicken tenders and an assortment of berries from craft services. Jack sat with the kids, listening to their cranky grumblings while she asked one of the producers if she could raid the screening room for DVDs for the portable player for the flight in case the kids didn’t immediately drop off when they got airborne.
Instead of devouring the berries in a blitz attack like they normally would, both children sat zombielike at the table and automatically went through the motions of feeding themselves, eyes glazed. They might have played a little too hard today, but he’d wanted to pack the most into every second he had with them.
Emma froze with a chicken tender halfway to her mouth, turning wide, concerned eyes toward him. “D
addy, where’s Fluff Muffin?”
He hadn’t seen the raggedy blue puffball that was Emma’s go-to security blanket stuffed animal. They’d been slowly weaning her off taking it with her everywhere she went for the last year. “I thought you left her in Chicago.”
Em’s lower lip began to tremble. “I want Fluff Muffin.”
Seeing another meltdown looming, Jack quickly scraped back his chair. “I’ll ask Aunt Lou. She’ll know where Fluff Muffin is. Eat your chicken tenders.”
Emma sniffled wetly, temporarily mollified, but ready to burst into tears should they be called for, and took the world’s smallest bite of chicken.
He found Lou in the screening room, peering at the lowest shelf of DVDs on all fours. She wore jeans for the plane, but they weren’t like any jeans he’d ever seen her in. They looked new and snug, stretching taut over her ass as she bent to examine the bottom shelf. He froze in the doorway, arrested by the sight, suddenly tense.
He cleared his throat around a strange thickness there.
Lou gasped and came up on her knees, twisting around. Her face fell with relief when she saw him. “Jack. You startled me.”
He started toward her to help her to her feet. Along with the jeans she wore some slinky plunging top—the kind he expected to see on the Suitorettes. It was distracting on Lou, fluttering and sliding against her skin as if the right breeze would give him a glimpse of something he shouldn’t want to see. But there was no breeze.
“Expecting someone else? An illicit rendezvous with a cameraman or sound mixer?” His voice sounded oddly rough.
“The gaffers are more my type,” she said dryly, taking his hand to come to her feet and putting her back against the shelves. “All that talk of amps and fill lights gets me all hot and bothered.”
“I knew there was a reason you were so eager to visit.”
Something about the words seemed to catch her out. She looked up at him with big, dark eyes and slowly wet her lip, lifting one hand to toy with the pendant that flirted with the cleavage revealed by that slippery slinky top. “Jack… I…”
He cleared his throat again, the sound harsh in the air-conditioned hum of the media room. He was standing too close to her, but he couldn’t seem to move away. Even with the lights on, the windowless screening room was still dark and filled with shadows. Shadows and possibilities.
He’d been kissed by five women in the last two weeks, but Lou’s was the only one he remembered with crystalline clarity. Perhaps because it was more tease than kiss, just a tantalizing taste of what could be. The possibilities… Temptation tugged at him. Would she mind? Just one harmless little kiss?
“Emma’s asking for Fluff Muffin,” he said, reaching for a safe topic.
“She left her in Chicago.”
Jack nodded. “I thought so.”
Then the silence fell again, wrapping them in that odd pocket of awareness. But awareness of what, he didn’t know. Lou was still looking at him, the eye-contact lingering until it became something else, something more. He propped his shoulder against the shelves beside her and Lou tucked her hands behind her, gazing up at him. The pose was naturally flirtatious, but she couldn’t be aware of how coy and inviting she looked. Lou didn’t flirt. That wasn’t her. But nonetheless there seemed to be a strange tension in the room.
Did she feel it too? It had sprung up out of nowhere with just a flick of her lashes.
“Find anything good?” he asked.
He nodded toward the DVDs, but her face flamed as if the question were loaded with double meanings.
“Some Pixar. We should be good on the plane.” She swallowed and he saw the resolve flicker in her eyes a moment before she spoke. “Jack, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you.”
She wet her lips again and he waited, letting the silence grow expectant.
“I love you.” The words rushed out on an exhale.
Jack nodded. “I love you too. I know I don’t say it much, but Miranda’s been all over me to be more upfront with my feelings.”
“Yeah, I know, but that isn’t what I—”
The intercom speaker above them crackled noisily to life. “Attention all staff. The Tanner-Doyle party will be departing for LAX in fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes. Thank you.”
He looked up at the speaker and when he looked down again, Lou had averted her eyes.
Jack straightened, only realizing how he’d been leaning down to her as he moved away. Lou wasn’t one of the Suitorettes. Lou was home and stability and friendship. One thing she could never be was temptation.
He shoved his hands into his pocket, recalling Miranda’s words from earlier and wondering if there was any truth in what she’d said.
Lou was his support system—both emotional and otherwise—that was true. But did he use her to avoid having to make connections with other people? Was she his shield against real emotion so he wouldn’t experience another loss like he had with Gillian? She was comfortable and safe—and at a safe distance.
Or at least she had been until yesterday. Now things seemed to be changing, and he wasn’t sure he liked it. She was dressing different, acting differently, and he didn’t know what to make of all the changes. Before the show had come into their lives, she was sweet, comfortable Lou. He didn’t know who this new version was.
But he knew he felt stripped raw and hyperaware around her. All the tension that had been in the room hadn’t dissipated, it had funneled into him, leaving him wound tight. He was on a hair trigger, but a hair trigger to what, he didn’t know.
“Why are you dressing like that?” he heard himself saying as he put space between them, the words a little too harsh. “It isn’t you.”
Lou’s face flushed with embarrassment. “I wanted to shake things up a little.”
He hated himself for embarrassing her, but that only seemed to make him angrier. “Aren’t things shaken up enough already?” Everything was changing, and he was realizing how badly he hadn’t wanted things to change. “You’re supposed to be my one constant. Though maybe Miranda is right and you shouldn’t be. Maybe I’m not open to love when you’re around.”
“I want you to be open to love with me,” she whispered.
His body reacted in an entirely inappropriate way to the soft vulnerability in the words, urging him to move forward, take her in his arms, see if her lips were as soft as he remembered. “Maybe you shouldn’t come next week.”
She sucked in a breath as if he’d hit her. “The kids want to come see you—”
“And they will,” he said with forced calm. “But there’s really no reason you have to be the one to accompany them. Especially if we’re both letting you undermine what I’m doing here. I’m not blaming you. It’s as much my fault as yours.”
“Who will look after the kids when you’re on your dates?”
“They have child-care people on staff.”
“And will those people care more about the kids or about how they can use them to boost the ratings of the show?”
He glowered at her. “This was Miranda’s idea. Miranda is your friend.”
“And she’s paid to make the show profitable. I know we want to trust her because we knew her in high school, but maybe you should be a little more cautious about doing whatever she tells you. Especially where the children are concerned.”
“I would never let them do anything to hurt the children. I can’t believe you would think that of me.”
“I know you wouldn’t on purpose, but they’re filming you the entire time you’re with them and you don’t know how they are going to use that footage or what kind of ripples this might have for them. Emma and TJ didn’t sign up to be exploited on national television. You did that for them.”
“They aren’t being exploited.” Icy anger ran through his veins. “They’re barely going to be on the final program. I hardly see how a few shots of us playing together are going to emotionally scar them.”
“You can’t control what ends up on the f
inal program. You don’t know what may be said or done. You aren’t in charge here, Jack. No matter how much Miranda and her minions might try to convince you that you have all the power. You’re just a puppet with a pretty face.”
He jerked a hand through his hair. “Wow. It’s nice to know you think so highly of me.”
“It isn’t what I think of you. It’s the show. This isn’t about love or family or happy endings to Miranda. Frankly, I doubt very much it’s about love for ninety-nine percent of the people involved. It’s propaganda and emotional manipulation. They throw you into romantic situations and toss you off bridges to build a false sense of intimacy. It’s all contrived. They are using you, Jack, which is your call, so if you want to be used, that’s fine. But how can you let them use the kids?”
“That isn’t really your call, is it?” Jack snapped. “You may not agree with my choice to allow them to be part of this experience, but they’re my kids. It’s my decision, not yours.”
The word were out before he had any awareness that he was going to say them and then it was too late to take them back. Lou paled, her pale blue eyes filling with tears that didn’t fall as she looked at him with equal parts anger and hurt.
“You asshole,” she whispered, snatching up the DVDs and starting to push past him.
“Lou.” His hand shot out of its own accord, catching her upper arm.
“Don’t touch me.”
“There you are!” Miranda’s voice sliced through whatever Jack would have said to fuck up the situation even more. Her eyes flicked between the two of them, her brow wrinkling in concern. “Everything okay in here? We’ve got to get Lou and the kids off to the airport or they’re going to miss their flight.”
“Everything’s fine,” Lou said, pulling at her arm in his grip. With Miranda watching, he forced himself to release her.
Miranda beamed as if the room wasn’t crackling with wild surges of tension. “Chop, chop, you two. Planes wait for no man.” She spun on her heel and marched out, calling out “I’ve found them!” to the rest of the house.
