Summer Kisses (301 page)

Jack was right. They couldn’t go on like this anymore.

He wasn’t hers. Neither of them had ever really set any boundaries and they’d grown into an odd not-quite-a-couple relationship over the last four years, but the facts remained the same. This wasn’t her house. The kids upstairs tucked into their beds weren’t her children. And Jack wasn’t her husband. He never would be. She had to face that reality.

“Lou?” he asked, his gruff voice an abrasion against her senses. “What do you want?”

She shivered, wanting him so badly she ached. Lou closed her eyes and held her breath for a moment, trying to hold onto this last moment before everything changed.

Or maybe things were already irrevocably different.

“You’re right.” Lou opened her eyes again, refusing to be a coward who couldn’t face her own choices. She met Jack’s eyes squarely. “We have to shake things up. You need to get back out there. Start dating.”

The last word caught in her throat. She pulled away from Jack and crossed the kitchen, taking deep breaths until she no longer felt like the world was closing in on her.

“I want you to be happy, Jack. You’re my best friend and you deserve all the happiness in the world.”

“So do you.” He gave her a crooked smile and Lou’s heart turned over.

She turned away, reminding herself that he wasn’t for her and never would be. To occupy her hands, she busied herself pulling out mugs and pouring the hot coffee she’d forgotten she started before they attacked the beeping smoke detector. She automatically poured cream in one and sugar in the other.

She crossed back to the table, mugs in hand.

He settled into his usual chair, shoving hers out with his foot. “Is that decaf?”

Lou didn’t answer—it was pretty much a rhetorical question since they always had decaf after the kids were in bed. She just handed him his cup and dropped into her chair. The chairs in the living room were more comfortable, and they’d both agreed that they hated just about everything about the cramped little eat-in kitchen, but somehow they always ended up in here at the end of the day, sipping coffee while the kids slept upstairs.

“You really want to do the show?” she asked softly.

He shrugged, hiding his mouth behind the steaming mug. He inhaled deeply and made a rumbling noise of contentment before taking his first sip.

A pang echoed in Lou’s heart. Soon, who knew when, but soon, someone else would be up late drinking decaf with Jack in the kitchen while the kids slept. Someone else would be listening to him make that sound. And
that
someone would get to kiss him just because she felt like it.

“I wouldn’t be going in expecting to find the next love of my life,” he said. “But I know I’m not going to find her if I don’t do
something
to break us out of this routine…”

Meaning he would never find her in Lou. She’d known that. She just hadn’t wanted to see it. “You should do it.” The words jumped out of Lou’s mouth, almost without her permission. “How many people get a chance like this?”

“You really think so?”

No. I want you to decide you’re really in love with me and the idea of leaving me even for a day is torture, but that isn’t going to happen, is it?

“I’ll have help around here—between your parents, mine, and Kelly. But we should probably talk to the kids about it.”

He nodded. “Right. So we’re really talking about this. We’re really considering it.”

She swallowed and set down her coffee cup quickly before it fell from her numb fingers. “I guess we are.”

~~~

Jack looked down at the coffee cup in his hands, wondering how his life had taken such a bizarre turn in just a few hours. Yesterday everything had been pleasantly status quo and now—Christ, was he actually considering going on a reality television show?

It did seem remarkably convenient. An eight-week turbo-relationship and it’d all be settled. The entire dating process condensed into one neat package. He’d have a new someone—though he felt odd whenever he thought too much about that part—and Lou would be free to do her own thing. Problem solved.

And it was a problem. He’d been ignoring it because, well, if he was honest, he had a tendency toward tunnel-vision and ignored everything that wasn’t right in front of his nose, but now that Miranda had pointed it out, he couldn’t help but see it.

It wasn’t just French Fridays. It was obvious now even in the DVDs lined up on Lou’s keeper shelf.
Midnight in Paris. Roman Holiday. Sabrina. Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. La Vie En Rose. Amelie.
Even
Ratatouille
.

Every one an escape to an exotic locale.

She’d asked if he was unhappy, and the question seemed almost ludicrous.

He had a great job and two amazing kids he couldn’t possibly love more. He lived with his best friend, who was a wonderful, patient mother figure. He wasn’t going to lie—some sex would be nice, but dating was complicated with two kids and Lou to consider. He wasn’t hungry to fall in love. His life was already full.

But Lou deserved more. She deserved to be free to see the world like she’d always dreamed. Or if she decided not to, she deserved to be with someone who would love her to distraction. Someone she didn’t feel obligated to help out because he was a barely-functional single-dad widower.

She deserved happiness.

And if this would give that to her? He would do it without a single regret. He owed her that.

So. Logistics. If this was really happening…
Was he really considering this?

“I guess we should talk to Miranda.”

“Thank you so much for letting us take over your home, Miss Doyle. Cream?”

Lou watched numbly as one of the countless TV people reached into her fridge and offered her a splash of her own cream.

“It’s Tanner,” she corrected. She was turning over a new leaf. No more pretend—which was especially ironic with the reality television people descending on them. “I don’t take—”

“Hey, lady, our volt-meter’s busted. How many amps can this outlet take?” A man who looked like an electrician waved a handheld electronic device in her direction—gaffer? Gripper? She thought his title started with a ‘g’ but she couldn’t be sure.

No one introduced themselves by names, it seemed. They all threw out titles she didn’t understand instead—PA, segment producer, field producer. Fully half of them seemed to be producers of some kind. They swarmed the house, firing questions at her and tromping through the rooms with equipment, looking for the most “home-like atmosphere” to shoot the advance footage of Jack in his natural environment.

Lou shook her head at the G man—grapher?—trying to get her bearings. “Amps?”

“So it must be Dr. Doyle who takes cream. Got it.” The Cream Crewperson tapped something into her tablet with a stylus.

“Amps, volts. I need to know how much power I can run through this outlet. I’m trying to protect your electrical system here, lady.”

“We have circuit breakers. You flip the switches. That’s all I know.”

The G crew guy gave her the you-are-such-a-moron-I’m-amazed-you-can-breathe-without-assistance look all the Hollywood people had been giving her for the last two days and heaved a dramatic sigh. “Fine. I’ll figure it out myself.”

He had just stepped out of the kitchen when a plastically perky woman with unnaturally red hair appeared in the doorway. “Miss Doyle—”

Lou bared her teeth in a smile that felt a little feral. “Tanner.”

“Could you help us handle the children? We’re ready to shoot Dr. Doyle’s first fireside-confessional sequence and they’re disrupting the crew.”

Good.

Lou smothered that unhelpful sentiment and picked her way across the cables snaking through the kitchen doorway. It was hard not to be irritated with all the people intruding on their lives, poking around in their possessions and turning everything upside down. Especially knowing all of this was designed to package Jack as Mr. Perfect and take him away from her.

The crew members were absolutely angelic toward Jack—fawning over him and constantly working to make sure he was in a
good head space
. They seemed to enjoy the kids and they weren’t precisely rude to Lou. They just didn’t seem to understand what her purpose was—and everyone on set had to have a purpose. And her house was now a set.

The living room was cluttered by lights and cameras, but she immediately spotted Jack at the center of it all, perfectly lit and looking like a king in the armchair the producers had put in front of the fireplace. Lou didn’t recognize the throne-like chair, but she wasn’t surprised the show people had deemed their furniture not sufficiently “home-like” and brought in their own for the effect they were trying to create.

It took her a bit longer to spot Emma and TJ amid the crew people swarming behind the cameras. When she did see them, Lou laughed out loud. Disruptive was putting it mildly. They were riding the primary cameraman like a pony. He didn’t seem to mind, but the redhead segment producer looked like she was one “giddy-up” away from strangling them both. Or whacking them with the tablet held clenched in her manicured hands.

“Em. TJ,” she called them over, taking pity on the tablet wielding redhead. “Come sit on the couch with me. We can watch Daddy get interrogated.”

“Yeah!” The kids immediately scrambled off their pony and climbed over the nearest crew member to bounce up on the couch. Lou plopped in between them and secured an arm around each one to keep them from escaping. A metal light stand partially blocked their view of their father, but otherwise they had the best seats in the house. Emma burrowed into her side, settling in, as TJ wriggled and bounced, too wired to sit still.

The two of them had been remarkably receptive to the idea of their father going on the show—or perhaps not so remarkably since TJ had figured out almost immediately that California was where Disneyland was and they could trade in their father’s abandonment guilt for no less than three trips to the Magic Kingdom when they flew out to visit him.

They were treating the arrival of the crew and the upheaval in their lives as a giant game—and why wouldn’t they? They were kids. They couldn’t visualize what it was going to be like without Jack in their day-to-day lives for eight weeks. Or how this would drastically change their lives when he got back.

Lou, however, had no trouble visualizing. She couldn’t seem to stop.

Miranda appeared, kneeling in front of the three of them with a warm smile and her own tablet tucked against her chest. “Lou, we really need Jack to be able to focus right now. Do you think you could take these two little monsters—” She winked at the kids, making Emma giggle. “—on an outing? Give us a few hours—”

“No, let them stay,” Jack requested from the chair. All crew eyes turned to him and a little hush fell over the room as the king made his proclamation. “I’ll be more relaxed if they’re here.”

Miranda glanced back and forth between Jack and the kids, her smile never faltering—and Lou realized what a good actress a reality television producer needed to be. Miranda gave a little nod and broadened her smile. “Good point, Jack. We want you as relaxed and natural as possible.” She turned back to the kids, putting on an over-exaggeratedly stern face. “But you two need to be absolutely quiet. Remember. Shh!”

The kids giggled and mimed locking their lips and throwing away the key. Miranda winked at Lou and then straightened, turning the force of her personality back on Jack.

“Jackson Doyle. Are you ready to fall in love?”

Jack blinked, visibly startled. “Um. Yeah. Yeah, that’d be great.”

“Excellent. So Jack—a few ground rules as we’re getting warmed up. Remember that all the questions I’m going to be asking are going to be edited out, so you need to repeat them in your answers. So when I ask you if you’re ready to fall in love, you say…”

“I’m ready to fall in love,” Jack parroted obediently.

“Perfect. But then you are Mr. Perfect, aren’t you?” Miranda grinned, somehow making the cheesy line work with her self-deprecating laugh.

Lou watched her old friend, fascinated to see this side of her—blatantly manipulative, but somehow seeming less manipulative because she was being so
obvious
about it, and still getting exactly the results she was angling for. Had Miranda always had this skill? If not, how long had it taken her to build up this reality persona?

Miranda quickly checked with the crew, getting thumbs up all around and turned to Jack, seating herself so she matched the camera’s eye level. “All right, Jack. Let’s start with an easy one. Tell us why you’re looking for love.”

For a split second, an expression of deer-in-headlights horror flashed across Jack’s face. Lou bit her lip to keep from laughing out loud. This was going to be more interesting than she thought. Jack Doyle was about to talk about his feelings on national television. She only wished she had popcorn.

~~~

Four hours later, after dropping Emma and TJ off at Kelly’s for a play-date with the twins, Lou slipped in the back door and through the kitchen to peek into the living room. Poor Jack was still in that chair, suffering through the Interview that Would Not End.

Lou had grabbed the kids and abandoned him after the first solid hour of “Remember, Jack, it’s never a show, it’s always an
experience
or a
journey
” and “Jack, honey, don’t talk about the process like it isn’t real life. This journey is about finding true love. It doesn’t get any more real than that” and “Jack, baby, don’t look at the crew. They aren’t here, okay?”

Now Lou slipped silently into the living room and tucked herself behind a large, reflective screen one of the lighting people had put up near the bay windows. It was the perfect place to eavesdrop as Miranda coached Jack through the questions. Not that listening in on an interview being conducted in the middle of her living room counted as eavesdropping. She just didn’t particularly want to be the recipient of any more of the crew’s what-the-hell-is-your-purpose-here looks. Staying out of sight was much more appealing.