Falling for Mister Wrong (20 page)

His blood froze. Not Caitlyn.
Shit
.
“Tria. I can’t say the same.”

“I suppose I deserve that,” she murmured,
soft and wounded. She’d always been good at playing the victim.
Even when she was the one waving the knife and stabbing him in the
back. “We saw you on TMZ. She’s really cute, Will. Your new girl.
We’re so happy for you. We’ve been hoping you’d find someone. Move
on.”

It took him a while to process what she was
saying. He kept getting caught up in the
we
. She’d been
doing that from the day she’d broken off the engagement.
We’re
sorry, Will.
We
never meant to hurt you.
Andy and I
care about you very much. It was like they’d
stopped having opinions of their own. A united front against him.
We
are breaking your heart.

Wait, TMZ?
What the hell?

“It’s Caitlyn, right? That’s her name? We’d
love to meet her. Maybe we could all get together—”

“She isn’t my girlfriend. She’s just a
neighbor.”

Tria was silent for a moment, as if stung by
the sharpness of his denial. Always the victim. “Oh… I’m sorry to
hear that. She has a really sweet face.”

“What do you want, Tria?”

A slow gathering breath. “We want to put this
behind us. Andy and I never meant to hurt you. And we certainly
never intended to screw you out of the down payment on the house,
but with the economy the way it is, you know how hard things have
been for Andy financially, and we just couldn’t scrape together the
capital to buy you out last summer. If you’d just talk to us, I’m
sure we can work something out and forget the legal nonsense. We’re
trying to secure a loan. We just don’t want to lose our home,
Will.”

“It isn’t your house, Tria.”

“I thought you didn’t want it. When you moved
out…”

“I moved out because I couldn’t stand to look
at it knowing what you’d done. That doesn’t make it yours.”

Andy had always been awful with money. He’d
never be able to afford to keep her the way she wanted to be kept
anyway. Best they discover that now. Will had used half his savings
and borrowed from his parents to get together enough money to buy
the damn thing for her. Because he’d thought they would be filling
all five of those bedrooms with their kids. Growing old there.

Tria sighed, so damn wounded. “Will, I’m
trying to make things right. What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to stop calling me. If you have
something to say to me, tell my lawyer.”

“Will, please. Be reasonable. We don’t
want—”

We
, again. “Goodbye, Tria.”

He must have stood on the deck for five
minutes, holding his phone in one hand while his brain simmered
incoherently. Then the other shoe dropped.

“Goddamn TMZ.”

#

Her recently re-hung door shuddered under a
rain of blows. Will’s voice came through the wood, hard and urgent.
“Caitlyn, open up.”

Her hair still wet from the shower, dripping
down the back of the T-shirt and work-out shorts she’d put on
after, she rushed to the door. Was there another fire? She hadn’t
heard that sharp, demanding tone from him since the night they
met.

She threw back the lock, yanked open the
door, and there he was. The dark god. Anger stood out sharp on his
face, making his cheekbones seem even more starkly chiseled and his
dark eyes almost devilishly black.

“We’re on TMZ.”

“Oh Jesus.” She swayed back, opening the door
wider, and he stalked past her into the apartment.

Panic flared. What could they have seen? What
if there had been a photographer lurking around the other night?
Shooting through her windows. Her lying on top of Will—not kissing,
but just that would be enough.

Hello, Breach of Contract. Goodbye, Life
Savings.

“What do they…?”

He extended the smart phone she hadn’t
noticed in his hand. “See for yourself.”

The first picture took a moment to register
because it was so far from what she was expecting. Two blurry
bodies, wrapped around one another in a hot tub—Elena and Daniel.
It was a still from Tuesday’s episode—an interlude which Daniel had
yet to explain, though he’d left messages when he knew she would be
teaching, telling her it had been edited to look worse than it was.
She scrolled past the picture, and the two following which showed
Daniel wearing a starlet like a human blanket at what was captioned
as a “popular LA nightspot.” Only then did she see the photo that
had Will pacing angrily across her living room.

The pictures were much more innocent than
she’d feared. The photographer had caught them the night of their
non-date, walking back to the chalet through the snow. She was
holding his arm, tucked against his side, but there was nothing
intimate or scandalous about the shot. Her face was turned away
from him, toward the camera, smiling shyly, and he was looking down
at the top of her head, a slight smile quirking his own lips. They
definitely looked friendly and it
could
have been
intimate—which was exactly what TMZ was implying. Especially in
combination with the next shot, which showed him holding the door
to the chalet as they went inside.

They’d just gone home to their separate
apartments, nothing could be more innocent, but it
looked
incriminating and that was all that mattered to the gossip rag.

“It’s not that bad,” she said, watching Will
prowl the room. “It looks like they don’t even have your name.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel
better?”

She held his smart phone out to him and he
snatched it out of her hand on his next prowling pass. “I can talk
to the show’s PR people, see about issuing a statement that we’re
just friends.”

He shook his head, more in anger than denial.
“I didn’t sign up for this.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I should have expected
something like this after the pictures with Mimi popped up. It was
too much to hope that the photographer would have left town.”

He was still stalking, barely looking at her.
“I never wanted to be mixed up with a celebrity.”

“I’m not a celebrity. This’ll blow over.”

“Maybe if we’d met at a different time,
things could have been different.”

She suddenly got the sense they were having
very different conversations. “Will, what are you saying?”

“I don’t need this right now. I’m sorry,
Caitlyn.”

He was breaking up with her. Except they
weren’t dating. A spike of something drove into her heart—panic,
denial. She didn’t want to lose him. She was more frightened of the
thought of never seeing him again than she’d ever been of losing
Daniel. She couldn’t be with him, not in any real way, but to lose
him…

“Will,
wait.
”

“I’m sorry,” he said again, the words sharp
and final. Like the sound of the door shutting behind him.

So much for perfect.

Chapter
Twenty-Three

Of course Daniel called first thing Friday
morning. He had the photos of her with Will to use as ammo now if
she started a fight about Elena and the Jacuzzi. But if he thought
that balanced the scales, he had critically misjudged her.

She’d had a sleepless night thinking about
Will, Daniel, Elena and what she really wanted out of life. Daniel
might be a master of side-stepping confrontation, but she was
having this out.

When she saw his number on the display, she
didn’t even bother with a greeting.

“Do you have that TMZ photographer on speed
dial?” she snapped after swiping her thumb to accept the call.

“Sweetheart, I don’t know what you’re
implying, but I had nothing to do with this most recent story.” His
voice was scolding, with a note of indulgence. “Do you want to tell
me about those photos?”

She wanted to snap
I don’t have to explain
myself to you
. But he was still her fiancé. For at least
another two minutes. And she didn’t want him thinking she’d cheated
on him. He didn’t deserve that.

“He’s just a friend. My downstairs neighbor.
Nothing happened.”
Not that I didn’t want it to.
“We were
walking back from grabbing a burger at the pub and I took his arm
to steady myself on the ice. It was completely innocent.”
Even
if I wanted to be much less innocent.
“Can you say the same
about Elena and the Jacuzzi?”

“I know that looked bad,” Daniel said
sheepishly. “But you know how the show is. Everyone telling you to
go with it and she’s so aggressive. I put a stop to it almost
immediately, but of course they don’t show that part. I had no idea
it was going to look so graphic. I’m sorry you had to see that,
sweetheart.”

Sorry you had to see it. Not sorry I did it.
Not I love you and I would do it differently if I had it to do
over. Just
sorry you caught me
. She’d heard too much of
those sorts of lying apologies out of her mother’s mouth not to
recognize one.

“Daniel, I don’t want you to think this is
about Elena. It’s a lot more than that—”

“My thoughts exactly. There’s a story about
us being played out in the press and we need to get in front of it.
They’re portraying our relationship as toxic and saying you’re
hooking up with that guy to retaliate against me for what happened
with Elena on Tuesday. Of course, it isn’t true, I believe you,
baby, but it’s catching on and we need to get on the same page and
approach this with a solid counter story—”

“I don’t think I want to get married.”

“
Caitlyn
.”

And there it was. He
was
capable of
saying her name.

“And I’m positive I don’t want to get married
on the reunion episode. I’m not saying we can’t ever have a future
together, but I think I need to not be thinking about getting
married while the show is airing. Afterwards, when we can have a
normal discussion that doesn’t include the press, we can talk about
it, decide what’s right for us, but right now, when I can’t even
see you, I think the best thing—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Baby. I know this week has
been rough, but let’s not be hasty. I don’t want to fight. Let’s
both take some time to think about this and we’ll talk about it
again in a few days. Remember Barbados? Remember how great it was?
That’s next week. Watch the episode. You’ll remember why we fell in
love in the first place. Okay? Just give us a chance.”

“Daniel—”

“I love you, baby. I love you so much. Give
us a chance. That’s all I’m asking.” The connection went dead.

Caitlyn somehow managed not to throw the
phone across the room. She dropped it in the trash can instead.

Twenty minutes punishing the piano with
bone-jarring Wagner didn’t help her mood.

She put on her professional face when her
first student of the day arrived, but her smile felt more and more
forced as the day progressed and more and more parents who usually
dropped their kids off and picked them up without coming inside
felt the need to pop in just to
see how she was handling
things
and find out
how she was holding up
.

By the time her last student of the day left
at six-fifteen, she was ready to scream.

So of course her house phone blared as soon
as she turned on the ringer and the caller-ID listed a New York
number. “Of course,” she growled, “the one thing that could make
this day complete.”

She stabbed the button to connect the call.
“Hello, Mother.”

“Who is that scruffy man with you on Access
Hollywood? Are you screwing things up with that lovely Daniel?”

Caitlyn grimaced. She really should have
known things with Daniel were too good to be true when her mother
liked
him. “What makes you think he isn’t screwing things up
with me? Did you miss the video of Daniel sucking face with
Elena?”

“You’re the one who wanted to go on a show
like that. It’s what they do.”

Caitlyn gritted her teeth. “Were you calling
for a reason? Or just to make me feel worse about myself?”

“Caitlyn. The things you say.” Her mother
sniffed indignantly. “I just thought you would want to know that I
spoke with our contacts at the Los Angeles Philharmonic and they’re
very receptive to the idea of hosting you as a resident artist as
you make your comeback.”

“Mother. We’ve been over this. I’m not making
a comeback. I hate performing.”

“Darling. No one is as good at something as
you are without enjoying it. Daniel told me how amazing you were
when you performed for him at Carnegie. Just imagine every chair
filled for you.”

The pieces fell into place. The Los Angeles
Philharmonic. His not-so-veiled attempts to get her to move out to
LA early. “Have you been talking to Daniel about this alleged
comeback?”

A slight, telling pause. “We both want what’s
best for you.”

“And what I want is to be allowed to decide
what is best for myself. Like an adult. I don’t like performing.”
She was drowning in déjà vu. How many times had she and her mother
had this argument in the last few years?

“Your music is a gift to the world.”

“My music is for me and my students now. And
I’m done discussing it. If this is all you called to talk about,
I’m going to hang up now.” She actually loved this woman, though
sometimes it was hard to remember that.

“This stubbornness is very unattractive,
Caitlyn.”

“Goodbye, Mother.”

She disconnected the call, turned the ringer
back off, and turned off both her personal and
Marrying Mister
Perfect
cell phones. She sat on the couch, not bothering to
turn on the lights as the sun set, hugging herself and watching as
the night skiing lights came on up the mountain.

The show had been a mistake. She could wallow
in that or she could fix it. But how? What could she do to undo the
mess her life had become? She was sort of engaged to a man who kept
hanging up on her when she tried to break off their engagement. Her
mother was planning her comeback tour with her unwanted fiancé. The
one man she
did
want was probably up on that mountain now,
mad at her because she’d splashed his face—and now his name, since
the reporters had uncovered it—all over the national gossip shows.
Her life had become a sideshow and all she could do was hold onto
her sanity by a thread as her love life was writ large across
television screens all across America for another month and a
half.