Marrying Mister Perfect (11 page)

He groaned an affirmative. “Miranda wasn’t
kidding when she said the hours were insane.”

“You should get some sleep. I’m sorry you
missed the kids, but I’ll tell them you called.”

“No.” He grunted groggily. “I mean, yes, tell
them I called, but I was hoping we could talk for a sec. Just you
and me?”

Her relief that he’d called morphed into
something stronger, a pleasure that hummed through her heart.
“Absolutely. Whatever you want.” Especially if he what he wanted
was her. “How did it go last night?”

Please let him say it was awful. Please,
please, please.

“It was… overwhelming. Definitely more of an
assault to the senses than I was expecting.”

Lou held her breath. What exactly did
assault to the senses
mean? Was that a good thing? A bad
thing? “Oh?”

“It’s insane. Thirty drop-dead gorgeous women
vying for my attention, crawling all over one another and clearly
willing to scratch one another’s eyes out for a chance to sit down
next to me for five minutes.”

Lou tried to read his voice without success.
Was that exasperation or was he flattered by the attention? He just
sounded exhausted.

“I think there was a PA whose entire job was
to make sure everyone had a fresh cocktail all night long and it
went on for hours. We started at dusk and didn’t wrap photography
until the sun was coming up.”

Miranda had said the first night was a
marathon, but that sounded like a nightmare.

“The Elimination Ceremony was the worst.”

This time she had no trouble reading his
voice. Irritation twined around the tension in his words.

“They’re
rings
, Lou. Did you know
that? Actual rings. I give each girl a gold ring and ask her if she
will accept it as a token that I would like her to continue on the
journey toward marriage with me.” He groaned. “Half of them were
tipsy by then, a few were flat out drunk, and they were all so
nervous it was like I was calling out the names of the last few
people to get on the lifeboats for the Titanic or something. I’d
call out a name and she’d rush forward. Every single time I had to
say the line and then Josh—that’s the host—would say, ‘You are
still in the running for the final ring.’ It was creepily
ritualistic. And we kept having to wait for them to set up shots
and angles. I couldn’t remember half of their names, so one of the
producers would run over between set-ups with a picture flip book
and remind me who was who. It took forever. By the time I got to
the last girl, four of the ones I hadn’t called were in tears. I
thought this one girl was going to attack me with her stiletto if I
didn’t call her name.”

Lou muffled a giggle, feeling more giddy with
every negative word he said about the show. “Did you?”

He snorted. “God, no. She scared the crap out
of me.”

“So it was awful?” Lou asked, knowing she
sounded a little too hopeful, but unable to help it. All he had to
do was say yes and she would remind him he could always come home.
No creepy ring ceremonies. No high-heeled attackers. Just the two
of them living happily ever after.
Even if it was just
pretend…

“Well, it wasn’t all bad. Some parts of it
were actually pretty fun.”

Those words made Lou feel like the
foundations of her world were sliding precariously to the side.
“Did you kiss any of them?” She couldn’t help the little catch in
her voice. She just hoped he didn’t hear it.

All night she’d lain awake, tortured by the
thought of kisses. For every one time she’d thought of their
awkward goodbye on the porch, there had been five times she’d
visualized him locking lips with some hand-picked size two
knockout. She’d pictured every possible variable—sweet kisses,
steamy kisses, playful kisses and kisses with frenzied groping
hands. Sometimes the girl in her head was a tall, svelte bleach
blonde with a spray-on tan. Sometimes she was a Mediterranean
beauty with dark flashing eyes and a lush figure. A Nubian goddess
with sleek limbs and pillowy lips. The only constant was that she
was a Perfect 10 and she was kissing Jack.

And when she asked him if he’d kissed any of
them, he hesitated.
Shit
.

Lou closed her eyes and pressed a fist
against her heart. “Jack?”

“Only a couple,” he said slowly. “And I
didn’t keep them just because they were forward.”

Her heart thudded ominously against her fist.
“So you kept them?”

“Well, yeah, but I just really liked their
confidence.”

And I’m sure the fact that they had their
tongues down your throat had nothing to do with it.
“Kel says
the first kissers are always in it for publicity. Are they wannabe
actresses or something?”

“One’s a lawyer.”

“And the other?

He hesitated again. Damn it.

“Swimsuit model,” he admitted grudgingly.

Lou felt ill. Physically ill. “Swimsuit
model. I’m sure she’s just dying to move to the suburbs and live on
a diet of mac n’ cheese and chicken tenders.”

“She seemed very down to earth,” Jack said
and Lou heard the lie in his voice. “And she isn’t the only one I
kept. Another one, Kim, she’s a single mom, so she knows all about
chicken tenders.”

“Kim.” Lovely. Now he was calling them by
name. Why did he have to give them names? That made them seem like
real people.

“Angela—she’s the lawyer—she just goes after
what she wants. No holds barred. But
Marcy
…”

Lou felt pressure start behind her eyes at
the way he said that name. Like he was smitten already. She
swallowed thickly. “Marcy?”

“She’s not at all what I expected. Not that
she isn’t gorgeous, but there’s no pretension in her. When I saw
her, I thought she was going to be just like the others. This
petite, very put together brunette with her hair in one of those
bun things you wear sometimes when we go out to nice dinners.”

“A chignon.”

“Yeah, that. But then we started talking and,
I don’t know, Marcy has this sort of self-deprecating thing going
on. She’s a romance novelist, if you can believe it, but she’s the
first one to joke about it when the other girls get all
holier-than-thou about her writing ‘smut’. She says they’re just
jealous that she has an unfair advantage because love is her day
job.” His low chuckled rippled through the phone.

Lou decided she hated Marcy. Where was a
voodoo doll when you needed one?

“I think you’d really like her, Lou. There’s
just something about her. She’s so natural. I felt comfortable with
her right from the get go. And she was amazing at diffusing the
other girls’ drama—especially during the challenge. My night could
really
have been hell without her there.”

Lou wrapped her arm around her abdomen and
tucked her knees up to her chest, curling into a ball on the chair.
He was supposed to be missing her. He was supposed to be fixated on
how lost he was without her, not gushing over some
self-deprecating, down-to-earth portrait of perfection who could
de-drama any situation.

“I really do think you’d love her, Lou.”

And somehow, I really doubt that.
“She
sounds great.” Lou forced a note of cheery sincerity she didn’t
feel into her voice. She had to get off the phone. She wasn’t sure
how much longer she could pretend to be happy for him and
Marcy
. “You can tell me all about her when we visit this
weekend, but you really should get some sleep, Jack. Miranda’s
probably going to be demanding you do push-ups in a Speedo later
and you need your beauty rest.”

He gave a short laugh. “You’re right. You
know, when I called I was this close to calling it quits and coming
home, but you’ve made me feel a thousand times better. Thanks, Lou.
You’re the best.”

She bit her tongue on the urge to make a
snide remark about how apparently
Marcy
was the best.
“That’s what I’m here for.”
Apparently
. “Sweet dreams,
Jack.”

“Love you, Lou.”

The connection clicked dead. And Lou’s heart
stopped.

He didn’t mean it like that. She knew he
didn’t mean it like that. But had he ever said it before? Jack
wasn’t much for confessing his feelings. She knew he loved her,
just like she loved him—in a purely friends platonic way. Anything
else was just wishful thinking. But he’d said it. He’d said it
now.

Why now
?

Lou replaced the receiver and sank back down
onto the uncomfortable kitchen chairs. Her head felt like it
weighed a million pounds. She dropped it onto her hands and
groaned.

Jack was infatuated with some goddess on the
show. The producers would do everything they could to foster that
infatuation and turn it into something more. Exotic locales,
candlelit dinners, romantic getaways. Jack’s heart didn’t stand a
chance under that kind of strategic assault.

Lou couldn’t take much more of this emotional
yo-yoing. For years she’d loved him with a quiet, steady heart, but
in the last few weeks she felt like she was on a rollercoaster—up
and down and inside out. She kept telling herself she was over him
and it was for the best, but it just didn’t stick. She loved him,
then she gave up on him loving her back, but hope kindled again at
the slightest provocation, only to be smothered again—but it never
totally died. That stupid hope was bulletproof.

She needed advice. She needed reality to slap
her in the face.

Confession was good for the soul. And so was
chocolate.

Chapter
Eleven

“So let me see if I have this straight. You
think you’re in love with Jack.”

“Yes.”

“In fact, you’ve always been in love with
Jack, but now he’s a thousand miles away mooning over some
Hollywood trollop and sucking face with a bunch of other size zero
tramps, so you’ve decided next weekend in LA is the perfect time to
unveil your hidden passion for him, even though you have no idea if
he will reciprocate your feelings and cameras for a primetime
television show are currently stalking his every move.”

Lou’s stomach rolled. When Kelly put it like
that, her plan sounded mildly psychotic. “Yes?”

“Louisa Tanner, I have three words for
you.”

You’re out of your mind?
No, that was
more than three.

“About damn time!”

Kelly beamed at her. Lou leaned against the
counter in Kelly’s designer kitchen while Kelly drizzled gooey
ropes of fudge sauce over the sinful chocolate explosion that was
her Double Fudge brownies.

Lou groaned. “This is a terrible idea, isn’t
it?”

“Nonsense.” Finishing the fudge-drizzle with
a flourish, Kelly shoved the thickly coated wooden spoon at Lou.
“Here, lick this before you give yourself a nervous breakdown.
Chocolate is the world’s best antidepressant.”

“I’m not depressed.”

“Whatever. Eat the fudge sauce. It’s a
natural upper. It’ll keep you from freaking out when I tell you my
plan.” Kelly smiled wickedly, her eyes lit with unholy glee.

“I don’t need a plan. I’ve decided I’m not
really in love with Jack. Never was. Must have been
indigestion.”

“Then I guess the thought of Jack sipping
champagne in a Jacuzzi with some sexified Suitorette doesn’t bother
you at all.”

Lou felt nauseated.

“That’s what I thought,” Kelly said smugly,
correctly reading the expression on her face.

Lou licked the fudge. She needed all the
consolation she could get. “I feel like the first wife being
replaced by a young, sexy mistress. I’m the mom. I’m practically
the wife, but I never got to be the lover. And now I’m being
evicted from my position as wife and mom and I don’t even have
justification to protest. He can just yank my life right out from
under me, take the kids, the house, and everything I’ve been for
the last four years and hand it someone else and I can’t say a
word. It’s not like I have any claim on them. He’s not my husband.
They aren’t my kids.”

“Yes, they are,” Kelly insisted staunchly.
“You’re a better mom than half the biological incubators I know.
And your life isn’t going anywhere. We aren’t going to let that
happen.”

“I don’t see a way to stop it.”

“That’s because you’re overlooking The Plan.
Trust Kelly, baby. I’ll take care of you.”

“I can’t compete with a swimsuit model, Kel.
No one can.”

“You love him. And what’s more, he loves you.
That’s a huge advantage right there. I know, I know, it’s just
friend-love. For now. That’s what we need The Plan for. We have to
get him to stop looking at you as a friend and start looking at you
as a candidate for Mrs. Perfect.”

“And how are we supposed to do that? Look at
me.”

Lou was wearing her standard uniform of jeans
and a loose blouse that left everything to the imagination. Her
hair was yanked back in a no-muss, no-fuss ponytail and she wasn’t
wearing a drop of make-up. Her hips were too wide, her face too
round, and her thighs were a crime against humanity. Hardly
Suitorette material.

Kelly waved away her objections. “You’ve got
the framework, darling. You just aren’t staging your property to
sell. Some highlights, a new cut, a dollop of L’Oreal and some of
Victoria’s Secret puts you right on par with all those overblown
Suitorette floozies.”

“Did you just compare me to a house?”

“It’s HGTV. It’s taken over my brain. But the
principle still applies. You need a makeover to de-mom you. You’re
great with the kids, but a man is never going to rip your clothes
off if all he’s thinking about when he looks at you is his
children.”

“I’m going to be in LA
with
the
children. I’m not sure how I’m going to keep Jack from thinking of
them.”

“The children have to sleep, don’t they? The
nighttime is the right time, baby. And it’s not that you want him
to neglect his duties as a father. You just want him to be a man
first and a daddy second when he looks at
you
. And since
he’s had four years to get in the habit of
not
thinking of
you as a sex object, we need drastic measures to shake things
up.”