[What's Luck Got to Do With It 01.0] Some Lucky Woman: Jana's Story

by Carmen DeSousa

  I arched my hips, releasing a soft groan as well. I wanted to feel his hands on every part of my body.

  Adrian’s fingers found the waistband of my yoga pants. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes!” I screamed.

  Agh! I bolted upright as J’Austen jumped on my lap. “J’Austen, you did it again! Why do you keep startling me when I start to write the really good parts?”

  She curled up on my lap, making it impossible for me to type. Within seconds she purred her contentment.

  “Well, at least one of us is satisfied,” I growled.

  Chapter 26 – My Biggest Fan

  Even though J’Austen had ruined a perfectly good fantasy, I didn’t have the heart to push her away when she only wanted attention. I certainly understood her desire to be held.

  Instead, I clicked around her the best I could for the file I’d downloaded from HELL Pictures. She never seemed to mind when I read, so I read the entire screenplay before passing out.

  The next morning, I returned the manuscript to the email address provided, along with my few comments and suggestions.

  It was good. Not perfect. But what author — or reader for that matter — ever thought a book adapted into a movie was perfect? Still, I was happy with it. How could I not be happy? I was going to see my characters come alive on the big screen by one of the most successful producers in the business. Yes, I was happy.

  Well, happy was an exaggeration. I was excited about my book, but I couldn’t get over the way Adrian had left the previous night. I’d replayed the scene over and over in my head. And despite the fact that my what are we doing comment might have been a tad callous, it hadn’t been vicious. I’d said the words playfully, even though I’d really wanted an answer.

  I logged into my email account to let Connie know I’d sent the screenplay back, plus I realized she’d probably want a copy.

  “Oh, my God, J’Austen.” I hesitantly moved my mouse to click on the newest email, as if it would explode — or worse, disappear. “Howard Edwards the Second just sent us an email, baby.” Of course, it wasn’t from him. It couldn’t be. Certainly, it had to be from his secretary.

  Dear Jana,

  It’s so good to hear from you. I’d almost given up trying to reach you through Connie and was getting ready to hop a flight to Tampa Bay. I hope it’s not a new beau keeping you occupied. We can’t have our world-famous single woman in a relationship. Just kidding. :)

  By the way, I’m pleased that you enjoyed the screenplay. I sent your regards to myself, including a pat on the back for doing such a great job with the adaptation.

  I stopped reading. Howard Edwards had a sense of humor. And apparently had written the screenplay adaptation. “I’m sure glad we were nice with our comments, J’Austen. Probably wouldn’t have been good if we offended the world’s most powerful producer.” I went back to reading.

  Our next job is casting. I find that having the author involved with character casting provides depth to the movie, a realistic feel that only the author can deliver. As the author, you have an intimate relationship with your characters. You know them. You’ve lived with them for a lot longer than I or the casting director have. You know their deep dark secrets. If you have character bios and descriptions, please forward them to me.

  Also, please make arrangements with my personal assistant, Anna. I would like you to fly up here next week. Plan on a two-week stay.

  Regards,

  HEII

  I clasped my hand over my mouth as I re-read the email. “Involved with casting. Fly up there next week? Two weeks?” I knew nothing about casting. I couldn’t fly to California — my thoughts backed up to his use of the word: up. Since when was California up? Obviously a slight mistake on his part. Howard traveled around the world. And probably, he thought that everyone was below him, so maybe he always thought of himself or where he resided as up.

  Regardless, I had J’Austen to take care of. Well, Angela would be happy to watch my kitty. What about my son? Eric came home a couple times a month.

  Nice try, Jana.

  Who was I kidding? Eric could do his laundry without me here to ask him about college, and relationships, and his plans.

  But I had books to write. Physical therapy appointments. Adrian. We were right on the edge of starting a relationship. I couldn’t leave my life for two weeks.

  I typed up an email to Connie, attached the screenplay with my notes, then copy-pasted Howard’s message at the bottom. Not that I thought she’d help me get out of it, but I needed to make sure I wasn’t misunderstanding his request. Not that I could misunderstand such a simple email, but still. Why? “Why me?” I said aloud.

  I glanced at the time and shrieked. I only had ten minutes to shower, brush my teeth, dress, and drive to PT. If I showed up late, Adrian would think I was mad because he’d left last night. Which I wasn’t. Not really. Confused, maybe, but not angry. He’d been nothing but straightforward from the beginning. I knew he liked me, knew he wanted more, but he’d given me the real reason we couldn’t take our friendship to the next level on our first date: sex changes everything. He knew that if we took the next step, sex was pretty much inevitable. Maybe he’d had a similar situation in the past. Although, he’d said that he’d never taken another patient home from a bar, kayaking, or met for dinner.

  I inspected myself, then decided brushing my teeth would suffice. That meant that I wouldn’t look my best, but Adrian had seen me in worse condition than I was right now, and I’d rather not be late.

  With a quick swipe of a brush, I swept my hair up in a ponytail, rolled on some deodorant, sprayed on body spray, then charged out the door to my Tacoma.

  Only two stop sign rolls and one barely-red-light run later, I made it to Adrian’s office with two minutes to spare.

  As soon as I stepped inside the building, Adrian greeted me with a soft smile. “Hey, I have some business to take care of, so warm up on your own today, okay?”

  Not such an unusual request. Several times when he’d gotten behind or had a phone call from a doctor, I knew to warm up first. “Okay. No problem.” I walked toward the rack of free weights and picked up a three-pound weight. Adrian walked toward his office, his hands running through his already tousled hair. I couldn’t imagine what would have Adrian so ruffled. Even though we’d kept our outside relationship a secret, Adrian laughed and carried on with me the way he did with all of his patients. And with me, he tended to whisper funny anecdotes about his day or how much he was looking forward to seeing me later into my ear when no one was looking. For him to walk off while running his hands through his hair — a tic I’d seen on a couple of occasions — without a soft squeeze to my forearm or even a glance over his shoulder was highly unusual.

  Adrian’s office door swung open before he reached it and a tall beautiful blond woman stepped out, her hands on her hips. “Adrian, I really have to go. I have a meeting in half an hour.”

  He waved the woman back in and closed the door behind them. Highly unusual. He never closed his door, especially when he was with a woman. None of the therapists closed the doors, he’d explained, as a security measure, so no patient could accuse him or his employees of misconduct.

  The sudden moisture in my palms made me set the blue weight on the table. She’s just a client. Or, a doctor who calls Adrian by his first name, I convinced myself. Everyone calls Adrian by his first name, I reminded myself. He doesn’t like to be called Dr. Kijek.

  Still, the pit in my stomach got heavier and heavier the longer the door remained closed. Each tick of the second hand on the clock might as well have been the echo of a gong in my ears.

  The door finally opened again and I reached for the weight, wishing I’d been doing my exercises so I wouldn’t have to be reminded how utterly breathtaking the woman was.

  “Oh, Adrian!” the mystery woman shrieked. “You didn’t tell me Jana Embers was your patient.” She ran toward me, and I instinctively turned around, looking for an escape. “Oh, yo
u’re my favorite author. I’ve read all your books, even the ones you wrote under a different name. Oh, wait. I have one of your books in my car. Will you sign it for me?” She took off toward the door before I could say yes or no.

  I looked up at Adrian for an explanation, but his eyes told me all I needed to know.

  I felt as though I’d been whisked back to that fateful night more than five years ago. The night I’d found out that I wasn’t good enough to keep my man happy. I’d been sitting across the table, staring at my ex-husband in total disbelief as he confessed to me that he’d gotten another woman pregnant.

  And here I was again, learning that I just wasn’t enough woman for a man. I shook my head as the realization hit me. Adrian had a girlfriend. This wasn’t a colleague or a cousin. Adrian’s look of panic made it clear that he wished the woman hadn’t recognized me.

  The woman rushed back in, book held out. She thrust it toward me with a pen. “I can’t tell you how much your book changed my life.”

  I stared at her copy of You Don’t Need a Man. “Whom should I make it out to?” I asked, surprised that I’d slipped into author-mode so easily. Of course, it wasn’t the woman’s fault that Adrian needed two women. Then again, he didn’t have two women; I wasn’t his woman. I was just a woman that for some reason he liked to kayak with, eat dinner with, and talk about life and books. Exactly what he’d said from the beginning; we were friends. Of course, friends weren’t supposed to kiss their friends the way he’d kissed me.

  But no sense in upsetting a fan, since that was all I was apparently good for, fulfilling other women’s fantasies.

  “Dr. Lena Kijek, please. That’s L-E-N-A K-I-J-E-K.”

  Doctor? Kijek? Not a girlfriend. A wife! Adrian had a wife! OH … MY … GOD! I signed the book and then stormed off as Mrs. Dr. Adrian Kijek thanked me.

  I shoved the metal bar on the door and flew out of the office, right into the throughway of the parking lot. I stopped, whipping my head back and forth, realizing that no man was worth getting run over for, and then charged toward my truck when I saw that the lane was clear.

  The sharp metallic clang of the door release rang out behind me again. “Jana!” Adrian called. “Jana, stop, please! It’s not what you think!”

  My body wasn’t in the same shape it was a couple of months ago. I was capable of storming out of offices and across parking lots quite well now. Thanks to my physical therapist. My truck chirped as I unlocked it via my key fob. Almost there. Almost to a safe place where I could cry. I hadn’t been cheated on, of course. We’d never made a commitment. No, I was the other woman this time.

  Adrian jumped in front of the path to my door. “Jana, please stop and listen to me. It’s not what you think.”

  I narrowed my eyes, huffing out a breath, then threw my head back, drying my eyes. No tears. Not here. “Move.”

  “Not until you listen to me.”

  I shoved at him with all my might, which sadly still wasn’t much. I was right-handed. Even though I could move my right arm, I still didn’t have any strength to use it. “Get out of my way.”

  “We’re separated, Jana. She left me. The divorce is almost final. I signed all the papers; she signed all the papers. We’re just waiting for a court date.”

  “You should have told me,” I growled. “You lied. You said it was because of your practice. If you’re separated, you should have told me the truth! You’re still living together, aren’t you?”

  Adrian dropped his head. “The truth … I don’t think you really want to hear the truth, Jana.”

  “Of course I want the truth! But I wanted the truth months ago, not … not … not today because your wife asked me for an autograph.”

  Adrian pursed his lips, then dropped his head, arms at his sides.

  Seeing his crushed demeanor, my thoughts traveled back to the first time he’d seen me. How he’d hated me without even knowing me. And when he’d stopped me from telling him that I was an author, saying, I know who you are. And then when he’d driven me home, he’d asked me why I’d care what any man thought of me.

  His wife is my biggest fan … “Changed my life,” she’d said. Adrian knew who I was because his wife had read all my books. My stomach flipped. “Oh …” I said on an exhale as his initial recognition of me made sense. Possibly just knowing his ex-wife had enjoyed my books had made him not like me. I knew how some people viewed any book with the romance genre attached, even though my books were much more than romance. I didn’t write heaving-bosoms and pulsing-members romances; I wrote romance books that were soulful, heartfelt, and suspenseful, or at least that was my goal.

  “Yeah,” Adrian said, shaking his head. “She carried that damn book around with her everywhere. At the dinner table. On the couch. In bed. All I saw was your face on the back of the cover every time I looked at my wife. She must have read your book three times in a row, and then she asked me for a divorce.”

  Shocked out of my self-loathing, I jolted upright. “What?” Furious at his implication, I shook my head in utter contempt. Adrian had hated me … Because he thought my book had led to his divorce. Never in my life had I written anything that suggested a woman should divorce her husband. “You’re blaming me that your wife asked you for a divorce? There’s nothing in my book that would suggest a woman get a divorce. In fact, just the opposite. When you find the love of your life …” I stopped trying to quote my book. He wouldn’t understand. No one who hadn’t read my book would understand. “What does it matter?” I huffed. “I knew you hated me from the first moment you saw me. Everything we’ve had has been a lie, hasn’t it? What was your plan? Were you trying to get me back? Make me suffer because she left you after reading my book?”

  Adrian’s eyelids fluttered rapidly. “I can’t believe you’d say that, Jana. I love —”

  “Shut up!” I screamed, moving toward my vehicle again, my escape. “Don’t you dare say that now. Not here!” I pushed him again, and this time he moved out of my way. I hopped in my truck, doing my best to ignore the prying eyes all around us. Especially the pompous head shake from the beautiful blonde, Mrs. Lena Kijek. Was she amused by my reaction, or the fact that Adrian had chased me out the door?

  Adrian whipped around and held onto my mirror. “I didn’t lie, Jana. I just didn’t tell you. What I said came out wrong. I know none of this has been your fault. But how was I supposed to approach that subject? How was I supposed to tell you that after my wife read your book she realized we had nothing in common other than our careers, and that she wanted a divorce? I promise I was going to tell you. I just … I wanted to wait until we could secure our relationship, once my divorce was final.”

  “We had a relationship, Adrian. Just because we didn’t say the words didn’t mean that we weren’t —” I stopped talking as my throat felt as though it would close up. This was stupid. No way was I going to go through this again, especially not with a man who wasn’t even my husband. “You should have told me, Adrian. Now step away from the vehicle. I don’t want to run you over,” I said with as much vehemence as I could muster.

  Adrian stepped back, and I squealed out of the parking lot.

  Part Three

  “If you build walls around yourself, you will never truly be free …”

  – Carmen DeSousa

  Chapter 27 – Get Away

  I dug my already-chomped-to-the-quick fingernails into the armrests of the 747 as it landed on the tarmac in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

  I hated flying, but at least this trip was a chance to get away.

  And what didn’t I hate nowadays?

  My shoulder and elbow were moving a little better. I could button the top of my favorite jeans, pull a shirt over my head, and shift a car into gear. So, at least I shouldn’t hate my physical therapist anymore. But I did.

  In fact, Adrian was at the top of the list of things I hated these days.

  He’d called me every day for the last week, and I’d repeatedly ignored his calls and then del
eted his messages. I didn’t want to hear why he’d felt the need to lie to me.

  Maybe he hadn’t really cheated on his wife. Based on her reaction, she probably knew he was seeing someone when he didn’t come home night after night. She certainly didn’t seem upset that Adrian had chased me out the door.

  But still, he’d lied to me. An omission of the truth was just as much of a lie as if he’d lied.

  No, I hadn’t asked him if he was married, but several times I’d asked him why he hated me at first. Adrian had insisted that he didn’t hate me, and that was a bold-faced lie!

  He’d hated me before I even stepped into his office. Hated my face. Hated the fact that his wife had read my book and decided she didn’t want to be married. Nothing in my book suggested that a woman should leave her husband. It was about living your life for you, learning to enjoy life without the stigma that you had to be married by a certain age, have children by a certain age.

  Then, when you meet the person who enjoys the things you do and loves you for who you are, more than likely he’s the man you’ll want to spend the rest of your life with, instead of getting married because you need a man to complete you.

  It wasn’t my fault that Dr. Lena Kijek married a man she didn’t love, whom she supposedly had nothing in common with, and then used my book as an excuse to end her marriage.

  Ugh! Lies! I hated lies.

  While I continued to seethe, wondering why people were so untrustworthy, passengers around me gathered up their belongings as the jet continued its taxi to the terminal.

  I sat stock-still as men and women buzzed about me. Like worker bees. Villeins that would spend their entire lives thinking they were free, but only living to serve others.

  Sadly, that’s what I felt like. I’d given my husband everything, physically and mentally. I lived to make him and my son happy. In return I felt happy, loved, needed. Until he’d tossed our marriage to the side, as though it were yesterday’s trash, that is.