Flirting With Forever (5 page)

“When you were in the bathroom, I ordered you a pizza. It’ll be at the hotel soon. Be sure and eat. Drink plenty of water.” She said there was a town car waiting for me outside the hospital. They’d have me at the hotel in fifteen minutes and pick me up just before 5:30 in the freaking morning. “You’re going to be fabulous tomorrow, and you’re in luck, they’re sending Jake.”

Jake? Hopefully it wasn’t Jake the ass.

‡

J
ake Randall ran
his hand over his face and sighed into the phone. Barely thirty, he was too young to be this tired. “Where is she now?”

“She’s in the bathroom,” Erin said.

“God, I’m so tired of these people, and this one sounds like a train wreck.”

“Stop being such an ass,” Erin snapped. “Tara’s dog just died. Her life is shit right now, but she’s great. You’ll see. Besides you’ve begged for months to leave the diva side of the business and come over to the real author’s side. I just sent her itinerary to your phone, this is your chance.”

It was true. Just after college, Jake joined Penguin as a lowly publicist’s assistant, moving up through the ranks before ending up as a publicist. He had a talent for handling celebrities who couldn’t write a book if their life depended on it. Yet, there he was carting them around the country while they signed ghostwritten books and complained about everything from the inept design of Sharpies to hotel sheets with the incorrect thread count. Like they’d actually taken the time to count and knew the sheets were six hundred instead of sixteen hundred.

“I’m supposed to start my vacation tomorrow, which I need. A lot. But I’ll do it. Just don’t make it sound like you’re doing me a favor. She showed up drunk and broke your foot.”

“Hang on a second, the doctor is here—No, I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast. Some water, maybe around eleven this morning.” Jake could hear a woman explaining that Erin’s foot was broken in three places and the procedure for the surgery. Another voice said something about starting her IV and drugs. “Go slow, please, I have to finish this call.” She sounded shaky. “Jake?”

“I heard. You don’t want to go through this alone, Erin. I’ll be glad to come stay with you or I can call someone for you.”

“I gave them my sister’s name when we got here. She’s on her way. Hey, Tara’s coming, so I’m not going to ream you out for the ‘showed up drunk and broke my foot’ comment. Just go easy on her, Jake. Her dog died and there’s something else, I think—I don’t know what it is. Anyway she’s having a rough time, but I know she’ll come through like a champ.”

Jake hadn’t even been off the road twenty-four hours from his tour with a
champ
, heavyweight Marvin Johnson, who was diva and a baby and a train wreck. “We’ll see. Whatever time you were going to tell her to meet you in the lobby, tell her to have her ass there a half hour earlier.”

“Who’s the diva now?”

“I’m hanging up.”

“Wait. I didn’t want to say anything, but I’m being moved up to associate director.”

Jake had worked his ass off, but Erin had four years on him. She deserved the promotion. “Lucky you.”

“If you’ll come in and do the spectacular job I know you can, I’ll do what I can to make sure you take my place—senior publicist. What do you say?”

“No more divas?”

“Not on the celebrity side, anyway. Just authors who can actually write books. So do we have a deal?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“And the drugs are kicking in,” Erin let out a dreamy sigh. “No, cupcake, you don’t have a choice. Now sleep tight, you’ve got a big day ahead of you.”

Jake pulled up the itinerary on his laptop and scrolled down pages and pages of details, smiling that Erin Holiday was every bit as anal and organized as he was. The only thing that bothered him was the theater shows. He’d never had a tour with something like that. He’d bet they were tricky, especially after a day of bookstore appearances.

The shows sounded like a Dr. Phil-type format, an event for couples. If Tara Jordan wasn’t on her game, they could be a nightmare. There was a three-day gap in the schedule after her whirlwind tour of New York and before the first arena show in Chicago, probably so Jordan could go home and recharge. He sent Lou Rosen a quick text, changed the itinerary and booked two tickets to Atlanta.

Lou’s specialty was twofold, preparing celebrities for the spotlight and cleaning up their unseemly messes. Lou was just the person to whip Jordan into shape for the arena gigs. And if Tara Jordan did well during the live shows, the book would be an even bigger success and he’d make senior publicist for sure. Hell, maybe he’d skip that step and go straight to associate director.

Jake was up
by four. He checked his email and saw Lou had turned him down about ten minutes ago. He stabbed at his contact list until he found Rosen Communications, scrolled down to the mobile number and hit the call button. The phone clicked at the other end, but Lou didn’t say anything.

“What do you mean, no?” Jake said. “You owe me. Clear your schedule; we’ll be at your office by eight Wednesday morning. You have two days to turn this Jordan chick into a star—”

“Have you read her book?” Lou yawned. “It’s fluff at best. She’s got no real credentials, no experience at this kind of thing. She’s a housewife for God’s sake. Sure she’ll have some groupies at these events, but she’ll be dealing with unhappy couples—live. I really shouldn’t care, I’m sure her publisher will be calling me at some point to clean up this debacle and I’ll charge them double. Mark my words, Jake, Tara Jordan is a disaster waiting to happen. You really should call Janzen and talk them out this.”

“Oh, this is happening.” His long history with Lou began when he was still in school at Wisconsin University. He needed to get out of Madison and was looking for an internship that didn’t require shoveling snow. He was grateful when Lou picked him out of a hundred and fifty applicants. Jake learned a lot about the publicity business. And before his internship ended, he saved Lou’s ass when he testified for the defense in a sexual harassment suit. The court ruled in her favor which worked out super for Lou, who went on to buy and rebrand the company.

“Will she need a shopper?” Lou asked.

“I won’t know until I see her this morning. Check out the Today Show. That’s our first stop. We’re set to be on around 7:30.” He scanned the itinerary which included a guest shot on The View tomorrow morning and a Dr. Oz segment in the afternoon called Happy Marriages Make Healthy Couples. Tara would be on the front row of the audience and would get at the most a couple minutes between the medical experts on the subject. In Erin’s files, there was an email from the Oz producer saying this was no guarantee Jordan would get any time on camera, just a possibility. “She’s just got the Today Show this morning, then she’s signing books around town from four to seven. She can do dinner on her own. I’ll send you an assessment of where we are on clothes before the end of the day.”

“Anybody ever tell you you’re an ass, Jake Randall?”

“Yeah, well I saved yours and now I’m collecting.” He ended the call, grabbed his briefcase and left the apartment, hoping this woman wasn’t ready and waiting for him like Erin ordered. He’d like nothing better than to bang on her door and watch the fire drill, which she deserved after what she did to Erin and for what she was doing to Jake. After this was over, he was definitely taking a vacation.

‡

B
reaking someone’s foot
will sober you up fast, especially someone who is sweet and birdlike like Erin. There was no need for the alarm, although I’d set the clock radio beside the bed and my phone. Even though I am not a morning person and I typically require eight hours of sleep, I was up well before 4:00, trying hard not to think about being on national TV, the Today Show no less.

I opened the suitcase to discover that the old traveler’s trick of packing your hang up clothes in dry cleaning bags so they won’t wrinkle was a lie. The khaki suit I’d intended to wear looked like I’d slept in it for a week. The only thing that did look decent was a baby blue Gap T-shirt and a multicolored broomstick skirt. The outfit looked plain, so I dressed it up with a belt I bought on sale at Chico’s, BJL—before Jim left. It looked better, but not great. I dumped the jewelry I’d brought from home onto the bed and stared at trinkets from twenty years of birthdays and anniversaries.

“Stop it,” I snapped at myself. “It’s just jewelry.” I slipped on the lapis and silver hugs-and-kisses bracelet and then clasped on the matching necklace. The pieces were still shiny and beautiful, flat round lapis stones about the size of quarters interconnected by thick silver x’s. My left thigh tingled, remembering the moment Jim gave them to me.

We were at the Isle of Palms for the weekend and had been at the beach all day. We had reservations in Charleston at the new hot spot, The Ordinary. It had taken some doing to get them. After years of watching Chopped on a regular basis, Jim and I considered our selves foodies and couldn’t wait. “Let’s pack it up,” he’d said around four o’clock, but even with the promise of otherworldly food, I was feeling playful and ran into the surf that was unusually high due to a tropical storm hundreds of miles away. But Jim didn’t follow. He just kept loading our stuff into the beach cart. For the first time since I married Jim, he looked different, much older than fifty-five.

I felt the hard pull of the water against my thighs and knew without even looking that a big wave was coming. Was it possible that my husband was old? If Jim was old, what did that make me? And then the wave hit. I screamed and he came running.

“Get it off. Get it off,” I shrieked.

He looked at the back of my thigh. “It is off. It must have been a jellyfish, a big one, Tara. Your leg is turning into one giant welt.” He put his arm around me and helped me out of the water. “Let’s get you home.”

He hadn’t wanted to go to the restaurant without me, but I’d insisted, mainly because I wanted him to bring back takeout. I tearfully pulled up the menu on my laptop while he wrung the salt water out of my bathing suit and mixed it with vinegar to deactivate the stingers. He dabbed at the welts until the stinging subsided and I smelled like a pickle. “The tomato, sweet onion and goat cheese tart. The sautéed grouper—and I want dessert, anything chocolate. Lots of chocolate.”

Our reservations were at seven, and I didn’t expect him back until close to ten. He pushed through the door before eight-thirty with takeout for two. He had stopped at little jewelry shop on King Street and bought the bracelet and the necklace.

Fighting back tears, I slipped both pieces off and put the rest of the jewelry back in the bag. It wasn’t just jewelry.

A knock at the door brought my trip down Memory Lane to a screeching halt. “Just a minute.” I grabbed my purse and opened the door. He stood there, all drop-dead gorgeous with a go-to-hell look on his face, or maybe that was just his 5:30 in the morning face. He pushed his shades back. Who wears shades at this hour?

His eyes raked over me. “You must be Jake.”
The ass.
I extended my hand. “Hi, I’m Tara.”

“What else have you got to wear?” he said, ignoring my hand, eyes still raking, making me feel naked. What the hell?

I looked down at my outfit, the Chico’s belt was off center. I straightened it and looked at him.
There.
He shook his head. “You’re going to be on national television, you’ll look washed out in this color. What else have you got?”

He stepped past me and started going through my suitcase that was overflowing with everything I owned that wouldn’t travel well and would most definitely require being professionally pressed. He picked up the house phone and waited while I watched him work. He started to unzip the compartment with my underwear.

“That’s private,” I snapped and he stopped.

“Hi. Good morning.” He turned his back to me. “I’m in room 1437. There will be a lot of laundry on the bed, too much to stuff into a bag. Please have it pressed and back tonight. Before nine is perfect, thanks.” He hung up and started sorting pieces into two piles, acceptable and unacceptable; he did the same with my clothes in the dry cleaning bags. By the look on his face, the much smaller pile was the acceptable one. He scooped the rejects up and threw them into my open suitcase.