Marrying Mister Perfect (18 page)

Just the thought of sitting in a dark bar by
herself, awkwardly trying to come up with witty conversation with
some stranger made her shudder.

Okay, maybe not a bar. A movie. She could go
to the movies by herself. She could see something that wasn’t
animated. Something with lots of swearing and violence and sex, and
she wouldn’t even have to wait until after the kids were in bed and
keep the sound down low. Heck, she could go to an R rated
matinee.

Lou drove to the movie theatre by their
house, feeling like a complete loser for being so excited by the
idea of going to the movies. By herself. In the middle of a
Saturday afternoon.

Especially when she could be in California,
lazing by a pool with a man objectively declared to be perfect and
the two children she already missed.

Lou stood in the lobby and stared up at the
marquis, but it seemed like beside every title there was a reason
not to go.
Wouldn’t it be great to take the kids to that
one?
Or
that is so Jack’s kind of movie
. And
sitting
next to Kelly would make that one so much funnier
.

None of the shows were starting in the next
hour, which could have been a sign or a convenient excuse, but
either way Lou found herself back out in the parking lot, leaning
against the Focus in the October drizzle, wondering how she was
ever going to do this.

Why hadn’t she ever felt this crushing
loneliness four years ago? Had she just been too busy with working
two jobs to ever feel isolated?

A job
. This was the perfect
opportunity to look for work. She could actually print out resumes
without getting grape jelly on them. But what did she even want to
do?

Lou climbed into her car.

The thought of running away to Amsterdam or
Brussels just made her wonder how many time zones away from Jack
and the kids she would be. She wasn’t even sure she wanted the life
of an interpreter anymore. She’d miss the mommy routine. But the
idea of starting over, building a family with someone other than
Jack, without Emma and TJ…

She pulled out her cell phone and thumbed
through her contacts, tapping the screen to connect the call.
Voicemail picked up on the first ring—but then she’d known it
would. The producers kept Jack’s cell phone for him, to control his
access to the outside world. She’d known she wouldn’t get him and
the kids, but she’d wanted to hear the sound of his voice on the
recording and the abnormally long pause before the beep as he
fumbled with the phone. The man could repair microscopic damage to
hearts, his hands never wavering for a beat, but he was all thumbs
when it came to his cell phone.

When the beep finally squealed in her ear she
left a quick message saying she just wanted to make sure the kids
had arrived all right and check on their return flight time. Then
she forced herself to hang up without saying
Love you
at the
end.

Little victories.

“I am officially pathetic,” she told the
dashboard.

She could either mope about the life she was
about to lose or she could get on with her freaking life.

She started the car and pulled onto the
freeway, headed toward the city.

Forty minutes later, she walked up the steps
past the sculpted lions that flanked the Art Institute, wondering
how it was they lived less than an hour from the city and she’d
never brought Emma and TJ down here. Saturday crowds filled the
foyer as she bought her ticket.

Shoulder to shoulder with art lovers and
tourists, Lou walked past the Grand Staircase and through the
gallery of Southeast Asian artifacts. She wove through the Asian
shop, moving quickly now, guided by a five year old memory of where
her favorite painting lived on these walls. She rounded a corner
and there it was.

Gustave Caillebotte. A rainy Parisian street
scene.

Lou’s feet stilled and she could feel her
heart beating. The cobblestones glistened. The umbrellas shone
wetly. It was grey and gloomy, but the European
joie de
vivre
leapt from the canvas and dug into her soul.

Romantic and lovely, the painting had always
made her long to see the Parisian rain and it didn’t fail her
now.

She gazed at the vivid canvas and couldn’t
escape the feeling that she had let herself down by distilling her
entire life down to one word: caregiver. But that was her identity
now and no matter how much she might have once longed for this, the
passion and adventure of the wide world, she didn’t want to lose
that piece of herself that she’d built over the last four
years.

She didn’t want to lose Emma and TJ and
Jack.

But that wasn’t a choice that was hers to
make. That part of her life was already gone. It was only a matter
of time.

And it was time for her to start anew.

#

Jack threw Emma high into the air, catching
her squealing, flailing form before she could splash down into the
pool. She giggled and thumped him on the arm. “Again, Daddy!
Again!” she demanded imperiously. She waved her water-wing covered
arms, as if the wings could actually help her take flight.

Jack grinned and flung her up again, enjoying
that moment more than he had the entire last week combined.

“Watch me, Dad!” TJ stood on the edge of the
deep-end and bellowed, “Bombs away!” before cannon-balling into the
pool. Jack watched alertly until TJ surfaced and began paddling
toward where he stood in shallower water holding Emma. Lou was
right—those swim lessons at the Y had been a stroke of genius.

At the thought of Lou, some of Jack’s
pleasure faded. Things were still off between them. Their
conversations this last week had been brief and stilted,
frustratingly polite. He missed her. And then he felt guilty for
missing her. Like he wasn’t
investing in the experience
the
way the producers all wanted.

TJ hung from his shoulders, his teeth
chattering. It was a brisk seventy-two today and the pool was
unheated, but try telling two kids from northern Illinois that any
sunny California day is too cold for swimming.

“Can I go in the hot tub?” TJ asked.

Jack shivered. “Absolutely.” Emma was looking
a little blue around the lips too, so they all clambered out of the
chilly pool and dripped their way over to the hot tub where it sat,
recessed beneath a gazebo. At night, little twinkling lights built
into the gazebo ceiling gave the illusion that you could actually
see the stars from the heart of smoggy, light-polluted LA, but
during the day, the gaps in the lattice roof let in checkerboard
streams of sunlight.

Jack, TJ and Emma sat on the edge, dangling
their legs in the hot water. Jack immediately felt less like a
popsicle and the kids looked distinctly less blue. They giggled
when the jets tickled their feet and splashed one another with the
warm water.

It was quite a contrast to the last time he’d
been in the Jacuzzi, when sweet, bright-eyed,
supposedly-waiting-for-marriage Missy had tried to mount him in
this very hot tub on their date two nights ago.

Jack wasn’t a prude. Sure, he hadn’t exactly
had the world’s most active sex life in the last four years, but
that didn’t make him a eunuch. But even a healthy, red-blooded
American man with a libido that needed no help from little blue
pills had the right to a modicum of privacy.

Not that he had anything against a little
mild PDA, but everyone he knew was going to see the damn show. His
mother
was going to see it if he so much as copped a feel.
He couldn’t stop thinking about his friends, family and coworkers
being spectators on his lovelife, no matter how often Miranda told
him to forget the cameras and
go with the moment.

Jack liked sex as much as the next guy, but
he’d never been into exhibitionism. All it took was one stray
thought of what he was doing showing up in prime time television to
deflate any enthusiasm he might have had for the nubile and
extremely
enthusiastic Missy’s attempts to climb him.

Though, if he was honest with himself, he
doubted his heart would have been in it even if his lovelife hadn’t
become a spectator sport. Missy was sweet and earnest to the point
of discomfort, but her puppyish adoration wasn’t enough to sustain
a real relationship after this
journey
was over.

And it was pretty damn awkward being forced
to fend her off without crushing her precarious self-esteem,
especially with the cameras never more than a few feet away.

There was another Elimination Ceremony
tonight and Missy was definitely one of the two girls going home.
For her own good.

But that still left him with eight women the
producers kept encouraging him to get physical with. Eight
beautiful women, undeniably, but instead of feeling like the
luckiest SOB on the planet, he felt more like the world’s most
reluctant porn star.

The women, on the other hand, seemed far from
reluctant. They were always eager to
make a connection
and
take their relationship to the next level.

He’d kissed all but one of the remaining
eight. He’d even gotten a little carried away with Katya the
swimsuit model once, but he’d felt awkward about it immediately
afterward. Almost guilty. As if he’d cheated. Though he wasn’t even
entirely sure who he felt like he’d cheated on.

Halfway through the process, he was pretty
sure Marcy was the only one of the remaining girls he could
potentially have a lasting relationship with—and the compatibility
tests seemed to think they were a perfect match too—though the
chemistry with Katya was electric enough to give him pause. Part of
him wanted to send the other Suitorettes home and let the chips
fall where they may, but the producers hyperventilated whenever he
gave any overt sign of favoritism this early in the process.

He had to jump through the hoops. He knew
Missy was the next on the chopping block, but he had to wax poetic
for the camera on all the ways she was unique and special and
intriguing. Immediately before he sent her home.

It was a royal pain in the ass. There were
ways in which this experience was amazing—the dates were a string
of once-in-a-lifetime experiences and he would never forget a
single one of them—but he hadn’t expected to feel so guilty for
tangling up the emotions of the women involved. He just wasn’t cut
out for dating a bunch of women at once.

Which was probably a good thing.

“Daddy, do I really get to wear a princess
dress when you get married?”

Jack jolted out of his musings at those words
spoken in his daughter’s sweet high voice. “Who told you I was
getting married?” he asked, a little more sharply than he’d
intended.

The kids had met a few of the Suitorettes
yesterday on a “play” date. He thought he’d been aware of
everything that was said to them, but one of the girls could have
slipped in a word somehow. If that was the case, Missy might get a
stay of execution. No one was allowed to use his kids to try to get
to him.

“Sandy said,” Emma replied, innocently
unaware of how her words affected him.

“Sandy the craft service lady?”

“Uh-huh.”

He took a deep, relieved breath. Sandy talked
nonstop without engaging her brain much. She probably hadn’t meant
anything pointed by what she said. But he still had to do damage
control with Em.

“
If
I get married, you can wear
whatever kind of dress you want. But before I marry anyone, we’re
all gonna have to get to know her a lot more.”

Emma nodded solemnly. Jack glanced over at
TJ, who was uncharacteristically silent, staring at his feet as
they scissored back and forth in the hot water.

“Teej? Was there anyone you guys liked or
didn’t like yesterday?” He couldn’t ignore the impact any new
relationship he had was going to have on his kids. That was far
more important than who he had chemistry with.

TJ made a face, but didn’t look up.
“Miranda’s bossy.”

You can say that again
. “I can safely
promise that I will never marry Miranda.” He decided not to explain
the difference between the Suitorettes and the producers.

“Why don’t you marry Aunt Lou?” Emma piped
up.

Jack went still. “Uh…” Unbidden, an image of
her in that clingy dress from last week popped into his head.

Emma gazed him, her blue eyes wide and steady
as she waited for an answer with the serious concentration only a
four-year-old can muster.

Jack wracked his brain for a response that
would stand up to Emma’s brand of logic. “Um, well, Aunt Lou might
not want to marry me, honey.”

“Did you ask her?” Em asked, unblinking and
intent.

“Ah, no.”

“How come?”

Jack would rather have been fending off
Missy’s overeager advances than facing his daughter, the preschool
version of the Spanish Inquisition. How was he supposed to explain
to a four-year-old that her aunt was the kindest, most giving
person he’d ever met and if he proposed to her she might say yes
out of a sense of obligation because she knew he and the kids
needed her? It was the exact same reason she’d moved in with him,
but it wasn’t reason enough for marriage. Lou deserved love.
All-consuming love. And they were just friends.

“Are you scared she’ll say no?” TJ asked,
joining the interrogation.

Jack pulled out the Dad Voice. The
I-know-this-answer-because-I-am-an-adult-and-when-you-are-thirty-I-will-explain-it-to-you
voice that never failed to quell Doyle family uprisings. “I don’t
want Lou to feel like she has to say yes for the wrong
reasons.”

“That’s silly,” Emma declared. And she didn’t
let the subject drop, proving the Dad Voice was not nearly as
foolproof as he’d hoped. “People get married cuz of True Love, Dad.
And fancy dresses. You should buy Aunt Lou a fancy dress.”