Just in Time (40 page)

She needed an attitude adjustment. She’d been so excited last night, had let herself feel, for just a little while, that Will was really hers, and she was really his. But it wasn’t true, he’d never pretended it was, and if she were going to see him today, if she were going to stay with him tonight, and most of all, if she were going to be able to leave tomorrow without doing or saying something she’d regret, she needed to get her head on straight.

A run around the lake, that was the ticket. A
long
run, because she didn’t have to leave for the airport for more than two hours, and hanging around here, waiting to go—that was just going to make her feel worse.

She pulled her workout clothes out of the drawer. She’d gotten into her capris and bra, had her shirt in her hand when the phone rang. She tossed the shirt onto the bed and dug her phone out of her bag. It had to be Will. Or her mother. She looked at the screen and couldn’t help a happy little sigh. Will.

“Hey,” she said, feeling unreasonably better just because he’d called, and that he didn’t want to wait until this afternoon to talk to her. That was exactly how foolish her demanding, undisciplined, irresponsible heart was. “I was just thinking about you, big guy. How are you feeling today?”

“I was feeling better before I heard the news.”

Something in his voice sent a chill straight down her back, and she sank onto the bed without even realizing what she was doing. “What? What’s wrong? Did something happen? The team? Your family—”

He cut her off with none of his normal courtesy. “Are you Olivia Jayne?”

No. How could he know? The blood was draining from her head, and she felt a little sick. “Wha—what?”

“You heard me. Have you been writing books about me?”

“Not—not about you. But I’ve been—” She had to stop and get her breath. “Yes. Yes, I have. I’ve written a serial. I wrote episodes for the website, and they were received really well, so I published them. And I’m selling them.” If she were going to have to tell him, it was better to say it all at once.

Silence, for a long moment. “Will?” she asked tentatively. She wanted to explain, wanted to say something to make it better. But she couldn’t think what it would be. And there was still nothing but silence on the other end.

“Right,” he said at last, the word an exhalation. “Right. And you didn’t think this was something you should tell me about.” He wasn’t shouting. It was so much worse than that. He was…defeated. “That you were writing porn about me, and publishing it. When you knew what my life was. You knew what those pictures did to me, and you did this anyway, something that’s going to make it all so much worse, and you didn’t even have the grace to tell me you were doing it so I could protect myself.”

“It isn’t—it isn’t porn,” she tried to explain. “It’s erotic romance. And it’s
not
about you. It’s about my character. It’s about Hemi. Remember? Hemi.”

“Who looks exactly like me. And who was written by
you.
By my girlfriend, the woman I’m sleeping with. Do you think anybody is going to believe for a second that that isn’t me, doing…whatever you have him doing to her? That it isn’t some kind of memoir?”

“What?” She actually laughed, she was so startled. “How could anybody think that? He’s a tortured multimillionaire CEO. Nobody who knows you could think you’re him.”

“But the people I’m talking about, they
don’t
know me. That’s the point. All they see is an image. Haven’t you realized that by now? And do you really not get that my image matters?”

“But I haven’t hurt your image. I
haven’t.”
She didn’t know how he’d found out, but she needed to make him understand. “Because nobody’s ever going to have a chance to make the connection. Because I’m
not
your girlfriend, and I’m leaving tomorrow, and anyway, I have a pen name. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

“Really.” His voice was soft now. Deadly. “Then how do I know?”

“I…I don’t know.” The hand holding the phone was trembling a little, because it was getting the message before her brain did. “How?”

“Gretchen. You told bloody Gretchen. And she told a reporter, and any minute now, he’s going to be telling the rest of New Zealand.”

“Oh, no.” It was a breath, about the last breath she had.

“Oh, yes. And what I want to know is,” he said, his voice finally rising, “was all this just part of a…part of a plan? Were you planning to leak it once you’d got safely back home? Was Gretchen going to do it all along, just maybe sprang it a bit early, or was it going to be you? Was that the real reason for the new hair, the new clothes, the…the new body, so you could go on some chat show and talk about it? And being with me. Was that all just a way to sell more books, too?”

“No!” She pressed her knees together to keep them from shaking.
Oh, no.
“No. Will, no. You have to believe me. I don’t know why I even told her. I didn’t tell anybody else. I never dreamed—I never imagined it would get out. It was just—” She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead with a couple of fingers, trying to think. “It was when I first…when the stories were first going up on the site, after the first couple weeks. When I was getting votes, and I logged on and saw I was number one, and I kept looking, all day. I was so excited that somebody was reading what I wrote, that they
liked
me. And I was having lunch with Gretchen, catching up, and…and I told her. It just…slipped out. She was the one person I could tell, because I was still a little…a little embarrassed, but I knew she wouldn’t judge. And I had to tell
somebody.
I just…I
had
to.”

“And you didn’t think,” he said, “that the person you should tell was me?”

“Well, no.” Suddenly, she didn’t feel quite so horrible. Not about this part. “How would I even have done that? You were
gone.
It’s not like you’d kept in touch. It’s not like we had some kind of relationship. You were just some guy I’d known for a little while, once upon a time. I started the story before I’d said more than twenty words to you, when all I knew about you was that you had muscles and a tattoo. We both did this, and we both made some money at it. And then you called me, out of the blue, and offered to pay me to come over here and pretend to be your girlfriend, and you said that was all it would be. Pretending.”

“Except it wasn’t, was it?” he asked, taking the wind right back out of her sails again. “Or was it? Was it all just pretending after all?”

“No! No. Of course it wasn’t. How could you think that? And I should have told you, but then I thought, no, don’t, because it’s only for a few days.” She was pleading now, she could hear it, but she couldn’t help it. “I thought you might feel this way, that you wouldn’t understand, and I didn’t want to wreck it. It was so good, and I didn’t want to ruin the little bit of time we had together, don’t you see?”

“Except that something can’t really be good if it’s not real. If one person’s still pretending after all.”

She sat there, the guilt a leaden lump in her stomach, because she didn’t have an answer for that.

“You should have told me, Faith,” he went on after a minute, sounding so…sad. So final. “You should have given me the choice. I gave you the choice to get involved. You should have given it to me.”

Her chest was aching, the tears trying to come. Because he was right. And it hurt so much.

“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling all the inadequacy of the word. She wanted to crawl into a corner and hide. She’d done so much damage. She hadn’t meant to, but that didn’t matter. “I’m sorry if it’s going to hurt your image. If it helps, I’ll…” She fought to keep her voice under control while she cast around for something. Anything. “I’ll…tell people I wasn’t writing about you. I’ll tell them you didn’t know. That will help, won’t it? Maybe?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I need to go. I need to get on the bus. When you come, we’ll plan a story, I guess. Figure out how to pretend some more. One last time.”

“All right.” Her voice was so small, because that was how she felt. Small. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

“Yeh,” he said. “I’m sorry, too.”

He had gone through the motions of getting on the bus, riding to the airport, going through check-in, just following the back of the fella in front of him. Not that anybody else was too chatty, either. It was always quiet the day after a match.

He needed to think, but he couldn’t think. Too much anger. Too much disbelief, still. And too much…too much something else that he didn’t want to examine too closely, because it might look like pain.

When he was in the Koru Lounge waiting for the flight to be called, the men around him thumbing over their phones, reading, or listening to music, he started to think that he should know. If he were going to talk to Ian about it, if he had to decide what to do, he needed to see for himself what was in those books, and exactly how bad it was. Because if she’d written anything too far out there, if she had Hemi hurting Hope…that could be very bad indeed. Ian could call it fiction all he wanted, and still, people would wonder how much of it was true. If she could really have made all that up.

Anyway, he had a choice. He could sit here packing a sad, or he could do something about it. At least he could read what she’d written. At least he could face the truth.

So he pulled out his laptop, went online, and bought all five stories, hating that he was giving Faith yet more money, paying her once again for the privilege of ruining his reputation, and began to read.

At first, he rolled his eyes in disbelief. Of course Hemi was a CEO. The only acceptable profession, apparently. And a multimillionaire. Not a billionaire? Wasn’t Faith selling him a little short?

A designer, too—that was nothing but ridiculous. At least she could have let the bloke do software, or own a construction firm. Something remotely manly. He didn’t see how this underwear magnate could maintain the physique she was describing, either. Building a body like that took time, and Hemi seemed to spend all of his sitting at the head of conference tables, jetting around the world in his company plane, and scheming to seduce his staff. But at least it wasn’t too horrible. It was just…ridiculous. And it wasn’t him. It so very clearly wasn’t him.

By the time they got to Paris, though, he was…all right, he was interested. In fact, he’d almost forgotten that Faith had written it, and why he was reading it. And when Hemi pulled out his red ribbon…

Unfortunately, that was when they got the call to board. He wished he’d thought to download the story onto his phone, but too late now. He waited impatiently as the aircraft climbed, leaving Dunedin behind and heading over the Pacific.

The announcement came at last, and he was opening his laptop again. And an hour and a half later, he wasn’t rolling his eyes anymore.

For the first few episodes, the story had been steamy enough that his eyes couldn’t have rolled, because they’d been glued to the screen. This was
Faith?
They said men never read the instruction manual, but they were wrong, because he was pretty sure he was reading it, and he suddenly knew why everything they’d done in that motel room had worked for her. He was still furious with her, of course he was, but he was turned on as hell, too, and he couldn’t help being impressed.

After that, though, he may have had to dab at his eyes a time or two. When Hope had been sitting at Karen’s bedside as she regained consciousness, trying to be strong for her sister—well, you could hardly blame him, because he had a few sisters of his own, didn’t he?

Now, his cup of tea was sitting cold and forgotten on the tray table, and he was still reading.

I opened the door to find Martine on the other side. “Nice place,” she said. “Lucky you.” She looked as polished as always, in a knit suit today that emphasized her willowy proportions. “Your sister’s doing better, I take it?”

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you,” I hastened to add.

Martine didn’t mention anything further, to my relief, while we sat at the round table in the suite’s dining area and went through what looked like far more than a week’s worth of work, but that I was somehow going to have to accomplish anyway.

“And that’s it,” Martine said crisply, shoving her laptop back into its Kate Spade bag. “Shouldn’t be a problem, not with all your other needs taken care of so…thoroughly.”

Her gaze traveled around the room, from the huge arrangement of roses and calla lilies on the marble coffee table to the windows overlooking the city, not to mention the two closed doors leading to the bedrooms.

Her eyes met mine again, and I realized I hadn’t answered. “No,” I hurried to say. “Of course it won’t be a problem.”

Martine hesitated, tapping an elegant fingernail against the clasp of her bag. “Can I make one more suggestion? A little word in your ear?”

“Of course.” I managed to get the words out, hoping that my galloping pulse wasn’t obvious. My emotions were so volatile these days, rocketing from the giddiest heights to the darkest depths. My brain and body seemed determined to force me to acknowledge the extent of my terror, now that it was over.