Marrying Mister Perfect (21 page)

Lou had been leaning forward as she ranted.
With that, she sat back suddenly, so her back was pressed to the
opposite wall of the hot tub. “Sarcasm. Lovely. I’m trying to have
a serious conversation—”

“This isn’t a conversation,” he interrupted.
“This is you being pissed at me for going on this show and
finally
saying something about it.”

“What was I supposed to say? You were
martyring yourself for me. Going on the show
for me
, because
we were so pathetic and codependent we
needed
this.”

“You practically talked me into it.”

“I know! And I was an idiot. Do you think I
don’t hate that I threw you into this viper pit?”

“I came of my own volition.”

“And now, what? You’re falling in love? This
isn’t real, Jack. At best it’s courtship, infatuation—that perfect
phase when your beloved has no faults and all you do is stay up all
night dancing or sipping champagne in a Jacuzzi.” She waved her
flute and he realized it was empty again.

“Don’t knock sipping champagne in a Jacuzzi.”
He caught the hand waving the flute and stilled it to refill her
glass.

“It isn’t
love
.”

“Lou. I know that. For all the stupid things
Miranda says, she’s right about one. It’s a process. It’s an
experience. No one ever calls it a romance.”

She looked down, studying the bubbles fizzing
in her glass. “I just still don’t understand why you’re doing this.
Why do you have to fly a thousand miles and make a spectacle of
yourself on national television looking for love when everything—”
She abruptly cut herself off.

“Lou? When what?”

Chapter
Nineteen

When everything you need is right in front of
you.

Lou frowned at the treacherous champagne that
had nearly made her spill the embarrassing truth of her infatuation
with Jack. She didn’t think she’d had that much, but those couple
glasses had gone straight to her head. Her thoughts were swirling
like a whirlpool, making her feel dizzy and off balance.

It had to be the champagne’s fault. There was
no other way she would have slipped and come so close to revealing
her feelings. Not after the disaster of last time. It certainly
wasn’t that she wanted Jack to know how she felt. It couldn’t
be.

“Lou?”

“Nothing. I didn’t mean anything. I’m sorry.
I don’t want to fight anymore.”

“I don’t want to fight either, but I also
don’t want you bottling everything up. You can always yell at me
when I’m being an idiot. I know we tend to talk about schools and
work and the day-to-day stuff more than the emotion stuff, but that
doesn’t mean we can’t.”

“We seem to always end up fighting when we
try.”

Probably because whenever they tried to talk
about emotional stuff, Lou was spending half her energy trying to
conceal her feelings from him. She hated that deception, the
tension of always living right on the edge of discovery.

“Let’s talk about something else.” She
scrounged for a safe topic. The memory of that damned picture from
the supermarket swam up in her mind. “You were in a tabloid last
week,” she blurted out.

Jack visibly flinched. “Damn. What did it
say?”

“I didn’t read it. The picture on the front
was of you kissing a pretty blonde with a caption about auditioning
new mommies.”

He cringed. “It’ll blow over soon,
right?”

“I think you have several more months of hell
in front of you, Mr. Perfect. The show hasn’t even aired yet. The
worst is yet to come. Kelly says everyone harasses Mr. Perfect and
the girls while it’s being aired because they all want to know who
you picked.”

“I didn’t think people really cared that much
about reality TV.”

“That’s because you live under a rock.”

“Hey,” he protested defensively.

“It’s not my fault you have no awareness of
pop culture. Reality TV is huge, Jack. Like epic, gazillions of
people watching it, huge. I bet one of the reasons the producers
picked you is because you’re so clueless.”

“Hey!”

“It’s a compliment. You’re a doctor with two
kids who does crossword puzzles in his spare time and makes me
watch those awful CSI shows. There’s no reason why you should have
known about reality TV. Though anyone with half a brain would have
looked into it before they signed on the dotted line.”

“I read the fine print. I just underestimated
the scale of it.” He swallowed more champagne. “You know, even if I
didn’t know what I was getting into, I might still sign that
contract again, knowing what I know now. It has been an intense and
bizarre experience, but I’m kind of glad I’m doing it.”

Lou didn’t want to hear how glad he was he’d
done it. The show was dismantling her life piece by piece and he
would do it all over again. Lovely. “Just wait until it airs.
That’s when the real insanity begins.”

He grimaced. “When does it end?”

“When you get married? Or maybe when you
announce you’ve broken up with your fiancé. Or maybe never. I don’t
know. Kelly’s the expert.” Lou tipped up her glass and found it
empty again.

Jack reached behind him for the bottle,
angling it to see the little that was left. They’d nearly polished
off the entire bottle. “It’s a crime to leave it. Gimme your glass
and we’ll split the rest.”

Lou stood and waded through the hip-deep
water to Jack’s side. He wrapped his hand around hers, holding the
flute steady so he could splash the last bit of bubbly into her
glass. He set down the bottle and picked up his own refilled glass,
still holding her hand. His hand slid down to her wrist and tugged
gently until she sank onto the ledge beside him.

“To the end of the insanity,” he murmured,
clinking his glass against hers.

Lou leaned her shoulder against Jack’s,
sipping champagne. It was a gorgeous night. Fairy tale perfect. It
wasn’t’ hard to see why Jack liked it here. All of the aches from
the day had long since washed away.

Her jealous raving aside, this had been a
pretty fabulous day. It could almost have been one of
Marrying
Mr. Perfect
’s dream dates. Jack had been attentive and
considerate—without any producers there to coach him along. That
familiar twinkle had lit his blue eyes, which crinkled around the
edges when he laughed at TJ’s attempts to mimic a gibbon.

What girl wouldn’t fall for that?

If Lou had been a Suitorette on the show, she
would have been a goner—even without knowing in advance what a
great guy Jack was. She could just picture those laser-blue eyes
locked steadily on hers as he drank in every word she said over a
candlelight dinner. A string quartet would be playing in the
background—or maybe, since it was Jack, an old Allman Brothers
track. He would ask her to dance and they would sway slowly to the
bluesy growl of the song, pressed so tight against one another she
could feel his every heartbeat. His hands would press against her
spine, pulling her even closer until she was molded against
him…

“It wasn’t perfect, you know.” The low rumble
of his voice startled her out of her daydream.

“Sorry?”

“My marriage to Gillian. You said it was
perfect. It wasn’t.”

Lou would have blushed, but her face was
already rosy from the hot tub. She’d said a lot of things she
shouldn’t in the last half hour. Her head was starting to feel
distinctly fizzy. She wasn’t sure of half the things that had
traipsed out of her mouth without permission. “I’m sorry. I
shouldn’t have said—”

“No. It’s what you think. I want to know what
you think, Lou. No more censoring yourself so you can tell me what
you think I want to hear, okay?”

And what if she was censoring herself to tell
herself what she wanted to hear? Did that honesty have to extend to
owning up to her own desires?

Lou swallowed the last of her liquid courage
and set aside the empty flute. “Okay.”

“No marriage is perfect. Not without effort,
anyway.” He rolled his shoulders, rubbing again at the back of his
neck.

“Here. Let me.” Lou shoved his shoulder until
he shifted to give her his back. She pressed her fingers against
the muscle of his neck and he groaned.

“Perfect. Just keep doing that.”

She worked his neck, shoulders and upper back
in silence for a few minutes, but now that he’d opened the topic of
his marriage to Gillian, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. She’d
always had this idea in her head that Gillian and Jack had been one
of the great love affairs of all time. She couldn’t compete with
Juliet for Romeo’s attention. Even if Romeo had lived, he would
have always loved Juliet more than any other woman in the world,
wouldn’t he?

She felt like she’d just been told Romeo
really hadn’t been that into Juliet after all. She wasn’t sure
whether to be excited that Romeo still had room in his heart for
someone else, or depressed at having her illusions of the perfect
love affair shattered.

A question burned at the back of her throat.
She had to ask it now. Who knew if this mood of comfortable
confession would ever arise again?

“So you and Gillian weren’t… happy?”

“I don’t know,” he answered sincerely.
“Sometimes we were. Sometimes we were euphoric, but on the whole… I
don’t know. I loved her like crazy, but Gillian wasn’t exactly the
easiest person to live with. You know how she was. The dramatics,
the temper tantrums… Gillian was a force of nature, but compromise
wasn’t exactly her strong suit, and she had almost no patience for
kids, even when TJ was a baby. She got frustrated so easily.” Jack
shook his head. “I don’t know how things would have turned out if
not for… you know.”

If she hadn’t died. Yes, Lou knew.

She didn’t say anything, but it felt amazing
to hear Jack talking about Gillian like she really was—not as the
saint everyone had made up in their minds the second she passed
away. She’d been vivacious and wild and fun, but she’d also been a
royal pain in the ass. Everyone just carefully chose to forget
that. It always made Lou feel guilty for remembering.

Tears pricked the back of Lou’s eyes and she
blinked them furiously away. She and Gillian had never really been
close, but somehow hearing Jack acknowledging Gillian’s faults made
her death seem more real and Lou’s throat closed. She was Emma and
TJ’s mother—and she’d never really gotten a chance to know
them.

“The producers all want me to talk about
Gillian. They think I’m looking for someone exactly like her. The
truth is, even though Gillian was all passion and fire and energy,
she was a demanding wife and completely unwilling to compromise.
The day-to-day was always a challenge, but with you…”

Lou held her breath. With her?

“I think, on the whole, I’ve been happier
these last four years. Through every crisis, I always know you’re
going to be my rock. Steady and calm through it all.”

Lou’s hands stilled. She should be ecstatic
to hear him say that. Why did she feel like she’d just been kicked
in the gut? Didn’t she want to be his rock?

She pulled her hands off his shoulders.

“Thanks.” Jack glanced over his shoulder, his
blue eyes piercing at close range and seemed to realize she hadn’t
just finished the massage. “Lou?”

Champagne fizzled through her blood, giving
her courage she didn’t know she had. “I don’t want to be a rock.
I’m a person, Jack. I have feelings and…”
Do it. Say it.
She
tipped her chin back to meet his eyes squarely. “And needs.”

He turned to face her fully, never taking his
eyes off hers. “I know you have feelings, Lou. I hope you never
thought I took you for granted.”

She shook her head. “It’s not your fault.
It’s mine. I’ve been too undemanding.”

He nodded, frowning slightly. “And I’ve taken
advantage of that, but I’m not going to do it anymore. You just
tell me what you need, Lou. I respect—”

“Not respect. I don’t want respect.” No, that
wasn’t right. The champagne was getting ahead of her. “I want more
than respect.” Yeah, that sounded more like it. “I require
passion,” she informed him.

#

“Boss? We might have a situation.”

Miranda glanced up from the prospective
travel schedules she’d been reviewing for next week’s
Meet-the-In-Laws dates. They’d sent advance teams to all six
hometowns, but only four of the girls would make it through
tomorrow’s ceremony. Marcy was a lock and Katya seemed likely.
She’d marked Natalie as a probably, but she had no idea which of
the other three he was going to keep—and it was making scheduling a
pain in the ass. If only Jack were slightly more obvious about his
feelings—without being too obvious about his feelings, of course.
Suspense was paramount.

“Is one of the girls trying to sneak over the
wall for some nookie?” she asked Todd as he hovered nervously in
the doorway of the room she’d claimed as a temporary office in the
basement of the Mister Perfect Mansion. “We still have one roving
crew hanging around, right? Just get good footage on her attempt
and send her back over the wall. We can’t have any stowaways while
the kids are here.”

“It isn’t that,” Todd said. “It’s Lou.”

Miranda frowned. “Is she okay?”

“I think you’d better see this.” Todd
hesitated—since he was not a hesitant person, Miranda immediately
stood, tucking her tablet under her arm.

He led the way to the room that held the live
feeds from all the surveillance cameras around the estate. Avery,
the story producer who’d drawn the short straw and stayed behind
when everyone else took the night off, sat monitoring the feeds, a
shot of the Jacuzzi dominating the main screen.

The angle was bad, but the picture was
crystal clear. “Is that Lou and Jack?”

Avery grinned. “Yep.”

“Do you want me to break it up?” Todd
asked.