Summer Kisses (302 page)

Lou heard Jack clear his throat and tuned in to what he was saying into the microphones.

“Gillian was… she was so
alive
. I think that’s part of why her death came as such a shock.”

Lou went still behind the screen. She hadn’t heard Jack talk about Gillian’s death in years.

“When Emma was born, there were complications. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.” Jack expelled a short breath. “I was a mess at first, laying guilt on myself—the brilliant surgeon who couldn’t save his own wife. I don’t know what I would have done without Lou. She was my sanity those first few weeks. She stepped in, took care of Em and TJ and most of the funeral stuff, and I let her. I know I relied on her too much, but I’d just started my internship. The hours were insane and Lou was amazing. She got me back on my feet. I can never repay that debt. I—”

“Cut!” Miranda’s too-chipper voice blasted through Jack’s heartfelt confession like dynamite. “Let’s take ten, shall we? I think we could all use a break. Good stuff, Jack. Really great.”

Lou wanted to scream. Why did Miranda have to interrupt him? She’d never heard him open up like that about that awful time right after Gillian died. And she had
certainly
never heard him talk about her that way. What had he been about to say next? Could he have feelings for her that ran deeper than friendship and gratitude?

A pair of lowered voices on the other side of the screen where she was hiding startled her out of her musings.

“Still can’t get him to cry on camera?”

“I really thought playing the dead wife card would do it, but the man is made of stone. He’s barely even gotten misty and I’ve thrown everything I’ve got at him.”

Lou identified the first voice as coming from the startlingly fashionable young man with an effeminate air who had been hovering near Miranda all afternoon. Todd. She wasn’t sure whether he was Miranda’s assistant or another of the ubiquitous producers. The other voice was definitely Miranda herself.

“We’ll get him. Just keep at it. The viewers love tears.”

Miranda hummed agreement. “He’s a natural. The screen tests were good, but today… are you seeing this? The material we’re getting is golden. Though he is talking about Lou a lot more than I expected. It seems like on every question we always end up winding around and talking about her.”

“That’s what editing is for, darling,” Todd purred. “Sweet Lou is going to spend a lot of time on the cutting room floor.”

“I’m more worried about the girls. If he’s talking about her in front of them constantly, they’re going to start to wonder if he’s really emotionally available.” Lou heard a staccato rattling sound—acrylic nails drumming against a tablet case. “Especially since they live together.”

“It won’t just be the girls. She’s cute, in that wholesome Midwestern way. Viewers are going to wonder if there’s more to that relationship than just a live-in nanny,” Todd commented.

Miranda hummed again—a sound Lou remembered from when she was thinking. “We might have to cut her out of the footage entirely.”

Lou sucked in a breath. Of course they wanted to cut her out of her life. It wasn’t really her life, was it? Just a borrowed family. But to hear Miranda say it. Her supposed friend…

“It wouldn’t be hard,” Miranda went on. “During the Meet the Family episodes, we can focus on the kids and how maternal the various candidates are.”

“Or how maternal they aren’t.” Todd snickered. “Make sure he keeps in a couple of the worst mommy candidates until the family visit. The ratings will be great for sweeps. You know how the viewers love having someone to root against.”

Miranda snorted. “I don’t think that’ll be a problem. Even for Sexy Jack. The hottest ones are almost always the most self-absorbed and they tend to last without any help from me. One of them is bound to be a train wreck with kids.”

Lou held herself perfectly still behind the screen. She couldn’t reconcile Miranda her friend with the woman who spoke with mercenary glee about the ratings spike if Jack brought home someone who was a disaster with children.

Did he know what he was getting himself into? It had all happened so fast, a whirlwind of psychological evaluations and screen tests and nondisclosure agreements.

“Oh good, Jack, you’re back. Shall we get back to it?” Miranda’s heels clicked on the hardwood floors as she crossed to the fireplace. “Why don’t we talk about some of the qualities you’re looking for in a wife?”

Lou couldn’t have moved then if she wanted to. She needed to hear this answer. That was the fifty million dollar question, wasn’t it? What
was
he looking for in a wife?

A small part of her still hoped he would describe her—and realize he was describing her and leap up from the chair and declare that he couldn’t do the show because he was madly in love with her and had been for years without even realizing it.

Yeah. It could totally happen.

From her hiding place, she could see half of a monitor filled with Jack’s smiling face. He twinkled for the camera in a way that doubtless made Miranda giddy just thinking of the rating jump.

“I’m looking for someone I can share life’s adventures with, whether that means skydiving in Tahiti or running into the kitchen with a fire extinguisher because my kids have tried out a new experiment in the oven.” He gave a low chuckle and Lou smiled softly to herself. She wasn’t much of a skydiver, but when it came to domestic adventures, she was a pro.

“I’d like to find a woman who really
wants
to be a mother, not just someone who is willing to tolerate my kids. That’s crucial. She has to love Emma and TJ. There’s no negotiating on that point.”

Lou’s stomach curdled as she thought of the show dragging the worst mommy candidates through the process until the home visit. She didn’t like the idea of Emma and TJ meeting any of the women, but it wasn’t her decision. Jack had signed them up for this, embracing the whole experience with his usual single-minded determination. Lou could choose not to sign the waiver to be included in the show, but she couldn’t keep Emma and TJ from being used for ratings. Another bitter reminder that they weren’t really hers to protect.

“What attracts you to a woman?” Miranda prompted.

“What attracts me?” Jack’s brow furrowed, as if he was reaching way back into his memory for the answer. “Energy. I’m definitely attracted to vivacious women.”

Lou felt the hope that had been growing inside her at his earlier answers start to shrink. Gillian had been vivacious. Lou had always been quieter. People used words like
reliable
and
nice
to describe her. She’d never had Gillian’s bounce. Jack had loved that bounce.

“Passionate, definitely. Driven.”

Lou cringed. The part of her that went after her goals with passion and determination had gone dormant somewhere in the last four years of her stable, comfortable routine. She hadn’t dreamt of Paris and Prague in so long it almost felt like her ambition to see the world belonged to another person. Along with the passport she’d gotten years ago. The one that was about to expire without a single stamp in it while she was here, waiting for a kiss that was never going to come.

“She has to be fearless and confident. There is something so sexy about a woman who will take a risk with her heart.”

That had never been Lou. She wasn’t sexy—
wholesome
—and she didn’t take risks. That was why she was infatuated with the man she’d lived with for the last four years and he didn’t have a clue how she felt. Because she was a coward to the bone. Not that it would make any difference if he knew.

Would it?

What would happen if she told him? She’d always hesitated for fear it would ruin their friendship and she would lose him. But she was already losing him. Everything was changing.

He was going to LA in just a few days to look for the love of his life, but maybe the one he was supposed to fall in love with was right here under his own roof. Didn’t he deserve to know the truth before he left? Maybe if he knew, he would stay. Maybe, just maybe, he secretly loved her too.

Could those comments about being brave enough to take a risk with her heart have been meant for her? Could it have been a hint to wake her up and get her to tell him how she really felt?

“Great, Jack, that’s just perfect!” Miranda’s voice intruded on Lou’s fantasy world and reality smacked down on her.

Jack wasn’t giving her a hint. He didn’t even know she was hiding there.

“We’ll stop there for the day and pick up tomorrow with some action footage.”

“Action?” Jack asked.

“Jogging, working out, saving lives at the hospital. Just some shots to give people an idea of your day-to-day life. Is there a beach near here we can shoot you jogging on? Do you have swim trunks you can wear? Have you ever waxed your chest?”

Lou decided the time was ideal to sneak away before the crew dismantled her hiding place. She didn’t want to listen to Miranda’s plans to get Jack shirtless for the cameras. She slipped out of the room and up the stairs before anyone saw her, retreating to one of the few parts of the house that hadn’t been taken over—her room.

The guest room was tiny, the double bed and armoire crammed together in the narrow room. Lou had never minded the lack of space before, but now it was just another reminder that she’d never been a permanent part of the household. This wasn’t her home. She was the guest, not the mommy. And definitely not the wife.

Lou sank down onto the bed and put her head in her hands.

She had to tell him. She would regret it for the rest of her life if she let him fly off to Los Angeles without telling him what she wanted. How badly she wanted him.

She’d do it tonight. Before she lost her nerve.

Just as soon as the TV crew cleared out.

~~~

“Crazy day, huh?” Jack stood at his bathroom sink, grimacing as he wiped TV make-up off his face.

Lou leaned against the doorjamb, watching the play of muscles across his arms and shoulders as he scrubbed. “Get used to it. You’re going to have a lot more like this if you go to LA.”

“When,” Jack muttered into the washcloth.

“What?”

He dropped the cloth and turned his head to meet her eyes. “
When
I go to LA. Three days, Lou. It’s not an if anymore.”

She cast her gaze down to study the tiles on the floor. “No. I guess not.”

The press release announcing him as the next Mister Perfect would go out the following morning. It was about to be very official.
Last chance, Lou
.

The last crew member had finally left. The kids were still at Kelly’s, having begged to stay over for chicken taco night. Lou wasn’t going to have a better chance to talk to him than this.

She gathered up her courage. She could do this. Now or never.

Jack spoke before she could. “I knew before I agreed to this that some days were going to be bizarre.” He shrugged out of the shirt he’d splashed water on while cleaning off the make-up. “You take the bad with the good. That’s just part of the
process
.” He grinned at her, wadding up the shirt and tossing it in the general direction of the laundry hamper.

It hit the side of the hamper and the cotton caught on the wicker for a second before it slithered down to join the pile of clothes heaped in a sloppy mound at the foot of the hamper. The man couldn’t pick up after himself to save his life.

Lou tried not to overtly drool over his shirtless chest. She’d seen it before, too many times to count, but the sight never failed to hit her where it counted. “You don’t have to take the bad. You don’t have to go at all. There are simpler ways to date. You don’t have to go a thousand miles away to find a girl.”

He didn’t have to leave his own house.

Jack grabbed a worn grey T-shirt hanging over the rim of the hamper. “You’ve seen what happens when I try to date here.” He sniffed the shirt once before tugging it over his head. “Our life is too comfortable. I’m too happy in our routine. Work, the kids, you. I never have any reason to go out and meet someone. And neither do you. I have to go away or that will never change.”

Lou knew exactly what she needed to say.
I don’t want it to change
. She loved their routine. She wanted him to be happy with their life. All she had to do was say
I love you. Don’t go.
She just had to open her mouth and let the words out. Easy.

“Maybe you’re just dating the wrong women here,” she argued softly.
Maybe if you went out with me…

“Well, the women on the show will certainly be different. It’s like Miranda said. This show is just the wake-up call we need.”

Spit it out, Lou
. “I heard some of the producers worrying that the women would think that you and I were more than just friends,” she croaked.

“I guess it is hard for most people to accept that a man and a woman can be friends with absolutely no sexual feelings between them. They’ll see as soon as they see us together.” His eyes met her reflection in the mirror, glinting with amusement. “Can you imagine anyone who knows us thinking we were a couple?”

And Lou’s heart curled up and died.

She could imagine. That was the problem. She had always been able to imagine. But he never had.

She’d been playing at happily-ever-after and he’d been completely oblivious. If she told him she wanted him now, Christ, the embarrassment!

She couldn’t play pretend anymore. She needed a real life. And she wasn’t going to get it with Mister Perfect living in the bedroom down the hall, feeding her fantasies.

“I’m glad you’re going,” she said softly, frustration and hopelessness making the words the absolute truth.

Maybe the show was all about ratings, but not all the women would be there for their fifteen minutes of fame. Maybe some of them would be looking for Mr. Perfect. Maybe one of them would be perfect for
him
.

And she would finally be able to let go of the dream of him.

“Miranda Pierce. Are you using your powers for good?”

Miranda had answered her cell phone on autopilot without looking at the caller-ID and now an entirely inappropriate shiver of excitement worked its way down her spine. She set aside her tablet and stood from the desk in her room at the Evanston hotel that the production crew had been using as a base of operations, wanting to be on her feet for this conversation. “Bennett Lang. I haven’t heard your voice in a while.”