Marrying Mister Perfect (19 page)

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jack deadpanned,
trying not to show Emma his amusement at her evaluation of
matrimony. Everything boiled down to True Love and princess dresses
when you were four.
The Gospel according to Disney.
It
wasn’t until much later in life—say, puberty—when things got more
complicated.

Marry Lou.

Trust Emma to come up with something so
elegant in its simplicity. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as simple as
all that. But those words dug into his brain, taking root.
Why
not marry Lou?
Part of him almost wished it wasn’t
impossible.

#

Lou felt confident declaring her weekend as a
single girl an unqualified failure. After leaving the Art
Institute, she’d spent the entire two days alone. Alone at the
movies. Alone doing laundry. And now, alone at the grocery store,
waiting in the longest line in the history of the universe.

She’d never realized before how much
alone
sucked. Even growing up, she’d never had much time
alone. The youngest of three, she’d shared a room with her sister
until Katie moved away for college. To save money, Lou had lived at
home with her folks until her senior year of college when she’d
gotten a small place with three roommates. She’d always been saving
up for her big Europe trip, so she’d stayed in the crowded little
place after college. Until Emma was born, Gillian passed away, and
everything changed.

She hadn’t been alone a day since. Until
now.

She didn’t like it.

Her mother would probably say she had to give
it a chance to grow on her, but Lou would rather skip the growth
and get her life back. She wanted the noisy kids who made her long
for a five second stretch by herself, not the empty hours when she
felt utterly adrift. She wanted the quiet companionship of late
night talks with Jack after the kids were in bed, or just watching
a TV show she professed not to like because he was addicted to it.
Since he’d been in LA, Lou had found herself watching all of
his
shows, even though she could easily have changed the
channel.

Four years was a long time. Jack and the kids
were ingrained in her life. How was she supposed to get over
that?

She wasn’t ready to dive into her new life
yet. The kids were coming back tonight and she just wanted to enjoy
the life she had for as long as she could hold onto it.

The woman in front of her in the grocery
store line shuffled forward a few inches and Lou followed suit.
Boredom had her peeking in the stranger’s cart. Juice boxes, Hot
Pockets, and Pop Tarts. Kid food. Lou looked at her own
cart—heavily stocked with Mac n’ Cheese, PBJ makings, and a
lifetime supply of granola bars that slip easily into a purse for
those ubiquitous
I’m hungry
moments between meals.

What would her cart look like in six months?
Frozen dinners for one and a case of Bud Light to drown her
sorrows? Lou’d never been much of a drinker, but she just might
have to learn.

Another shuffle, another few inches toward
the Promised Land of the check stand.

Lou leaned against her cart and eyed the
tabloids. Another celebrity break-up. Another Five Tips to a Better
Orgasm. Another Ten Tips to a Skinnier You.

Then a small, grainy picture on the upper
corner of one of the magazines caught her eye and stopped her
heart.

Jack
.

She couldn’t see his face very well, but she
knew that profile. She knew those shoulders and the rumpled mess of
his hair. The woman in the photo had long blonde hair, but other
than that, the only real distinguishing feature were the enormous
breasts all but falling out of her bodice as she leaned forward to
lock lips with Jack. The caption read:
TV’s Latest Mr. Perfect
Picks New Mommy for his Kids
.

Lou couldn’t take her eyes off the photo.
She’d known she would see things like this when the show aired, but
she thought she had a few months to get used to the idea, to brace
herself. There weren’t supposed to be any photos yet. This one was
obviously unauthorized, probably taken with a telephoto from a mile
away, but that didn’t make it any less real. Jack was kissing big
breasted blondes—maybe even right this very second.

At the sound of a throat clearing, Lou
started, realizing she hadn’t moved up in the line in quite a
while—there had been at least two shuffle-forwards and she hadn’t
even noticed. The woman behind her cleared her throat again—a
little more loudly—and Lou quickly shoved her cart forward, but not
before the Hot Pocket & Pop Tart lady in front of her glanced
back to see what the ruckus was.

Mrs. Hot Pocket took one look at Lou’s face
and her own screwed up with sympathy. “Oh, honey, are you all
right?”

She’d managed not to cry in front of the
kids. Not once. She’d been holding it together, but the sympathy
was all it took to open the floodgates.

Fat tears began rolling down Lou’s cheeks
unchecked. With a distant, rational part of her brain, she knew she
was making a scene in the checkout line at her grocery store—which
topped her list of mortifying things she must never do—but the
tears just kept falling. She couldn’t find the words to explain why
she was falling apart, so she just pointed to the tabloid.

Mrs. Hot Pocket looked at the tabloid and a
flicker of confusion clashed across her face. Then she looked in
Lou’s cart, glanced pointedly at Lou’s ring finger and gave a
single sharp nod. “They’re all bastards,” Mrs. Hot Pocket—or
perhaps more accurately Ms. Hot Pocket—declared. Lou noticed her
own ring finger was bare as she marched to Lou’s side and gave her
arm a hard squeeze.

“Don’t you let that bastard make you cry,
whatever he did. I felt the same way, let me tell you. Every time I
saw a damn magazine I couldn’t help thinking ‘If Jennifer Aniston
can’t keep her man, what chance do the rest of us have?’ Am I
right? Some big lipped home wrecker comes along and ruins
everything. You just let it out, honey. But you let it out for
you
. He isn’t worth your tears.”

Ms. Hot Pocket’s firm speech jostled Lou out
of her pity-fest. A brusque, no-nonsense woman who looked to be in
her forties, she had the bone-structure of a woman who had once
stopped traffic, but her face carried the weight of exhaustion and
a few extra pounds. Ms. Hot Pocket’s life had kicked her in the
face and she’d just gotten tougher for it.

What right did Lou have to feel sorry for
herself?

“I’m sorry,” Lou sniffled, rubbing away her
tears with the cuff of her shirt. “I don’t usually do that.”

“You’ve got the right to bawl your eyes out
in the grocery if you want and nobody can stop you.” Ms. Hot Pocket
shot a glare at the rest of the line, as if daring them to
contradict her. No one made a peep.

Lou’s cell phone chimed inside her purse. She
flashed Ms. Hot Pocket a grateful smile, mumbled, “Excuse me,” and
dove into the disorganized mess of her bag, fishing for the phone.
She yanked it out and quickly jabbed the talk button before it
could go to voicemail, not even bothering to check the caller ID.
“Hello?”

“Lou. It’s me.”

Lou’s eyes flicked to the tabloid of their
own volition at the sound of Jack’s voice.

“I just put the kids and the chaperone on the
flight back to you. The flight status thing says it’s going to be a
half-hour early, so I wanted to let you know about the change in
schedule.”

“Oh, good. Thanks. Did they, um, did you have
a nice visit with them?” She had a feeling this conversation would
have been awkward even if every shopper who had just seen her have
a nervous breakdown because of a tabloid weren’t hanging on her
every word.

“It was fun, yeah. Kinda cold for LA, but we
spent all weekend in the pool anyway.” His voice hitched and he
hesitated. Then, “We missed you, Lou. The exotic dates start this
week and we’ll be in Peru next weekend, but the week after Miranda
promised we’ll be back here for the kids’ visit and the Elimination
Ceremony. Will you come with them then?”

Sucking face on a tabloid or not, Lou
couldn’t say no to the request. Her heart melted and the steel went
out of her spine. “Yes, of course I’ll come.” She’d have enough
weekends alone when this was all over.

“Good.”

Lou heard Miranda’s voice in the background
demanding Jack get ready for the Elimination Ceremony. He muttered
something distinctly uncomplimentary about her friend and said
goodbye. Lou closed the phone and tucked it back into her purse,
feeling like a hundred pounds had been lifted from her
shoulders.

Until she looked up and met the disapproving
gaze of Ms. Hot Pocket. “Give him an inch and he’ll take your
heart, sweetie. Don’t be stupid just because he can be
charming.”

“I’m not.” She wasn’t. Was she?

“Mm-hmm,” Ms. Hot Pocket muttered, completely
unimpressed. She’d reached the front of the line and began loading
her items onto the conveyor belt, but she glanced back at Lou.
“Just remember
Sterling McCormick
.”

“Is that your ex?”

“Honey, that’s my divorce lawyer. The best.
You’re gonna need a barracuda. Especially if you go all mushy every
time that asshole calls. Sterling McCormick. He’s worth every
penny.”

“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind,” Lou
murmured.

Ms. Hot Pocket humphed and turned back to her
groceries. Lou took a deep breath and tried to get a hold of her
mixed up emotions.

She was too upset that Jack had been kissing
someone else, too excited that he really did want her to come back
next week, and too guilty for the fact that she felt like she’d
disappointed Ms. Hot Pocket by not standing her ground.

She was a mess. But in a couple hours the
kids would be home and her usual routine would keep things on track
until she saw Jack again.

Anticipation swirled insider her. She
couldn’t wait to see him again. Big-breasted blonde kisses
notwithstanding.

Chapter
Eighteen

Jack couldn’t wait to see Lou again. The last
three weeks felt like a lifetime without her—especially the last
six days. They’d entered the jet-setting portion of the show and
the Suitorettes were really starting to get into it. Natalie had
already declared herself in love with him and two others admitted
that they were
falling for him
.

He’d even found himself getting sucked into
it a time or two as well. A few times there this week he’d actually
felt like he was on a real date with a real woman—no cameras and no
pretense. Usually with Marcy, but occasionally even with Katya. It
just went to show that you could get used to anything.

They were gorgeous and fascinating, sexy
beyond belief and all they wanted was him.

His sense of reality was definitely getting
skewed.

And because things were amping up with the
show, with fewer, longer dates and more exotic travel, he’d only
get Saturday with Lou and the kids this week to reestablish his
link with the real world. Then he had one last date and an
Elimination Ceremony at the mansion on Sunday before the show went
on the road again for the Meet-the-Inlaws episode.

Though on the plus side, the week after that
all the girls came to Chicago to check out his place, which was
intrusive, but it also meant sleeping in his own bed and talking to
Lou and the kids as much as he wanted. No more producers demanding
he get off the phone. No more long airplane rides for Lou and the
kids. Just seven solid days of home sweet home.

“Daddy!”

Jack turned as two small bodies smashed
against his legs. He bent and pressed a hand against each of their
backs, but his gaze stayed trained on the door until Lou stepped
across the threshold. It wasn’t until relief zinged through him
that he realized how nervous he’d been that she might decide not to
come again.

She hesitated, biting her lower lip as she
hovered in the entry. “Hi, Jack.”

“Lou.”

She looked amazing wearing another of those
little stretchy dresses like the one she’d worn last time. Her hair
was down around her shoulders again, curling around her face. Her
pale blue eyes leapt out at him, meeting his.

For a moment, something intangible stretched
between them—a question or a hope, he didn’t know which—but then
the kids must have sensed something with their
Adult-Connection-Radar. They jumped up and down, each grabbing one
of his hands with both of theirs as they demanded his
attention.

“Dad, can we go to the zoo today, can
we?”

“Can we please, Daddy?”

Jack glanced at Lou with raised eyebrows.

She shrugged and gave a slight nod—their
I’m-okay-with-it-if-you-are signal. “The driver mentioned there’s a
new baby tiger at the LA zoo. It’s not San Diego, or anything, but
the kids really latched onto the idea.”

“Yeah, Dad, we’re latched,” TJ declared, in
his I’m-one-of-the-grown-ups voice.

Jack ruffled his hair and grinned. “If we’re
latched, I guess we’d better check out this baby tiger.”

After the week he’d had, a day at the zoo
with Emma, TJ and Lou sounded like heaven on earth.

#

Lou shifted Emma’s limp form in her arms as
she followed Jack, who carried an equally boneless TJ, up the
stairs. After their day running around like monkeys at the zoo and
pigging out on dried-out burgers and stale fries at the zoo food
court, the kids had immediately conked out on the drive home—almost
before they made it out of the parking lot.

It had been a great day—without a single
mention of
Marrying Mr. Perfect
and not a camera in
sight—but now Lou felt like she’d been run over with a steamroller.
Every muscle she had was sore and she was weary down to her
marrow.

Kelly had sent her off with instructions to
seduce the hell out of Jack as soon as the kids were asleep, but a
hot shower to work the aches out of her muscles and a rendezvous
with her fluffy pillow were the only things on Lou’s mind as they
trudged to the top of the stairs and down the hall to the room
where the kids usually slept.