Must Be Crazy: (Melissa and Jackson) (A Jetty Beach Romance Book 2) (19 page)

“You were supposed to stay at the hotel,” I say.

“What the fuck was I supposed to do sitting in a goddamn hotel room for days on end?” she asks. “Sit around ordering room service? Watch some porn?”

“Those assholes are still out there,” I say.

“Oh, you noticed that? Thank you for pointing out the obvious, because here I was, thinking they’d gone and I could go back to my fucking life.”

I put my hands in my pockets and take a deep breath. This is not going the way it is supposed to. “I’m sorry this happened. I know you’re mad. I deserve it. This was my fault. I wasn’t prepared, and I should have been.”

“How do you prepare for something like this?” she asks. “Every time I leave, I have to wear sunglasses and a hoodie over my head. It got worse before it got better, you know. Today there’s only a few of them left, but two days ago? The hotel called the police, so they just started hanging out around town. I don’t even know how many of them were here. I guess some of them got bored, because by the time I came home there weren’t as many people following me.”

“Why did you come back here?” I ask.

“Because sitting in a hotel room with Curt was fucking miserable.” She leans toward the doorway. “No offense, Curt, you’re super nice.”

“None taken, Mel,” Curt says from the other room.

“Damn it, Melissa, you’re right on the ground floor. They could—”

“What, peek in my windows?” she asks. “Because they did that. Knock on my door at six in the morning? Yeah, they did that too. Follow me around town? Yep. Every time.”

“That’s why I told you to go to my place,” I say. I’m so exasperated. What part of this does she not understand?

“As if that would have mattered,” she says.

“Of course it would have mattered,” I say. “They can wander around my building all they want. You’d be safe upstairs.”

“No, it doesn’t even fucking matter,” she says. She taps furiously on her laptop. “Did you see this bullshit?”

She turns the screen around. It’s some celebrity gossip website. The headline reads,
Jackson Bennett Mystery Solved
. Below is a picture of Melissa and me in the club in San Diego. I have my hands all over her ass, and my face in her neck. She looks drunk. It isn’t a flattering shot.

“Listen to this,” she says, turning her laptop back around. “Jackson Bennett, playboy billionaire, had the Twitter-verse aflutter with his cryptic tweets and photos of an unknown woman. Who was this girl who had captured the heart of the notorious bachelor? She’s none other than Melissa Simon, a fifth grade teacher from a small town on the Washington coast. How did an ordinary girl snag the most eligible man in America? Judging by their wild excursions, we can certainly imagine.” She pauses, scrolling with her mouse. “And look at this, there’s us on the beach in San Diego, and you have your hand up my dress. And here we are at the club again, this time with my ass in your groin. That’s lovely. I certainly don’t look like a cheap whore. Oh, look, they decided to bury the one decent picture of us at the stupid banquet at the bottom. That’s great.” Her voice is thick with sarcasm.

“Yeah, it sucks when they do that, but this will all blow over in a week or so.”

“Is that what you think?” she asks, slamming her laptop closed. “Because I don’t think this is going to blow anywhere. Do you want to know why I know about this article, and these photos? My boss, Jackson. My motherfucking boss called me this morning. He said he’s
concerned.
He wonders whether I’m in the right profession, based on my
extracurricular activities.
I’m union, so it won’t be easy to fire me, but he can make my life miserable in the meantime. As soon as this gets around town, I’m screwed. Parents are going to call the district, demanding I be let go. They won’t want their kids around
that
.” She gestures to her laptop. “I can do what I want on my own time, but I can’t have it splashed across the internet for everyone to see. They’ll probably force me to resign.”

“They can’t do that,” I say.

“Believe me, they can.”

I put a hand to my mouth and turn away. How did this turn into such a disaster?

Melissa gets up and storms off to her bedroom. I follow her down the hall and close the door behind me.

“What do you want me to do?” I ask. “I’ll fix this.”

She whirls around. “How will you fix this? Tell me. Will you call my boss and convince him that I’m not some groupie? Explain to the parents of my students that it isn’t as bad as it looks in the pictures? That I’m still the same Ms. Simon they’ve been trusting with their kids for years? Maybe you can buy them off. Make a big donation to the school, and then they’ll make this all go away.”

It isn’t a bad idea. I open my mouth, but she keeps talking.

“No, do not even say it. Your money can’t fix this.”

I stare at her, my mouth still open, the words I was about to say retreating into the sudden silence. Her eyes are wet with tears and she swallows hard.

“It should have just been a week,” she says. “That was the deal.”

I stagger backward and clutch my chest, like she hit me. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Did you think this could work beyond that?” she asks. “I don’t understand this world that you live in. It isn’t my world. I don’t belong in it any more than you belong out here. I can’t figure out how to make this work. You have private jets and parties and paparazzi. But I have a life, too. You can’t just swoop in here in a limo and make all my problems go away.”

“That’s not what I’m trying to do,” I say.

“We aren’t doing ourselves any favors by dragging this out,” she says. Tears roll down her cheeks. “We both know how this ends. This can’t work. We’re too different.” She pauses again and turns away from me. “I think you should just go.”

I look down at the floor, my chest tightening. What is happening? Why the fuck do I care so much? I’ve known her for what, a little over a month? Maybe she’s right. Half the things I do confuse her. I never wanted a relationship anyway. It was only supposed to last a week.

“Fine,” I say. “Curt will stay until the paparazzi leave for good. I won’t bother you again.”

I leave her room and walk out the front door.

I wander through the party on the first floor of my condo. People laugh, smile, hold up their drinks to toast me. I clutch a glass of Scotch in my hand and half nod at the people I pass. It’s a great party—Dennis outdid himself. Music blares through the speakers; a bartender spins bottles, earning cheers from my guests; and beautiful women are everywhere. It isn’t even a weekend, and my place is packed.

None of it makes me feel better.

I barely remember the drive home from the beach last week. I was in a haze of anger and hurt. I don’t need all this fucking drama. Melissa was right: We said a week and we should have left it at that. It was a fantastic week—I think even she agrees with me there—but it’s over. I had my fun, and I need to go back to my life.

Then why does my life seem so fucking empty?

I pull out my phone and unlock the door to my private stairwell. Someone calls my name, but I ignore them. The bass bumps through the wall as I walk up the stairs to the top floor. I thought having my condo full of people would help. It’s what I do; I love to drink and dance and flirt and get lucky, all to blow off steam. My daily life is full of pressure—I need an outlet.

Why is losing Melissa any different? I have deals go south all the time. I’ve left women behind. None of it fazes me. I party it up and get back to work in the morning.

But a week has gone by since I left her, and nothing is the same.

I set my untouched drink on the kitchen counter. I feel like shit, and I have no idea what to do about it. I drank myself into a stupor after I got back from her house, but all that gained me was a fucking hangover. I go to the office, staying late every day. But I still come home to a bunch of empty rooms and a hole in my chest that nothing can fill.

The door opens and I glance up. Tammi walks in, still dressed for business, even though it’s after ten o’clock.

“Evening,” she says. She pulls up a bar stool and sets a file folder down on the counter. “I couldn’t find you downstairs, but someone said they saw you come up here. That’s quite the party you have going down there.”

“Yeah, I guess. What are you doing here?”

“I need a signature,” she says, pushing the file toward me. “They Fed Exed the contract from St. Louis this afternoon and if you sign everything now, I can send it off in the morning. I’m supposed to be out of the office tomorrow.”

“Out of the office?” I ask, sliding the file around so I can see it.

“Yes,” she says. “You
are
legally obligated to give me a day off once in a while, you know.”

“I know,” I say. “What are you doing with your day out of the office?”

Her brows crease, like she’s surprised at my question. “Well, my husband and I are going out of town for the weekend. You can still text me if you need something, but I might need a grace period before I respond.”

“No, it’s fine,” I say, flipping through the pages of the contract. “I won’t bother you.”

“Are you drunk?” she asks. “Because if you’re drunk, I can’t notarize this.”

I nod toward my glass. “That’s my first, and I haven’t touched it yet.” I thought I wanted a Scotch, but I can’t bring myself to drink it. I find a pen and sign where Tammi placed Post-its. “That it?”

“Yes, but…” She hesitates. “Are you okay?”

I look away. “No.”

“Oh,” she says. “I didn’t expect you to say that.”

I rub my chin and let out a breath. “Tammi, I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me.”

“Is it about Melissa?” she asks.

“Yeah, she’s … she doesn’t want to see me.”

“What happened?”

“A bunch of dipshits with cameras found her. They camped outside her house and followed her around town when I was in St. Louis. Then they printed a bunch of bullshit online and her boss saw it, so now she’s worried about her job—or she was a week ago. I haven’t talked to her. She told me to leave, so I did. I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this.”

“Wow,” Tammi says.

“What does that mean?”

“I just … I didn’t think it was possible,” she says.

I sigh. “What?”

“You’re in love with her.”

I stare at her, stunned. It’s like she hit me upside the head with a two by four.

“What the fuck did you just say?”

The corners of her mouth turn up in a smile. “You’re in love with Melissa. That’s what’s been going on this whole time.”

Oh, hell no. I do
not
do the L-word. I don’t love anyone, except maybe myself. But a woman? No. It isn’t going to happen.

Except…

“Well, if being in love feels like my chest is going to cave in, then maybe I am.”

“That’s exactly what it feels like,” she says. Her voice is sort of awed.

“Fuck off.”

“Don’t talk to me like that,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “And yes, it does. When you’re with her, you feel like your whole world is complete. Like you can’t fathom the idea of spending another minute apart. And when you’re not together, you think about her constantly. Like she took a piece of you with her. There’s a space only she can fill.”

I pick up my drink and toss the whole thing back in one swallow.
In love?
No fucking way. But Tammi’s making a little too much sense. “I feel like I’m dying. Like I’m going to suffocate. Is that love? Because if it is, it fucking sucks.”

Tammi laughs. “Yeah, especially when things are uncertain. Come on, Jackson, you can’t tell me you had no idea. You’ve been insane for her since you met her. Even I could see it.”

I grab a bottle—I don’t even look to see what it is—and pour another drink. “Yeah, sure, she’s great. She’s beautiful and fun, and fucking incredible. Anyone would think that. It has nothing to do with being in love.”

“No, that’s all being in love,” she says.

I pause, sipping from my glass. I can’t taste it.

Dennis walks in, and I almost tell him to leave. I’m confused as hell and I’m pretty sure he isn’t going to help.

“Is there a problem?” he asks. “You disappeared. People are asking for you.”

“I’m done for tonight,” I say.

Tammi rotates on her stool. “He’s in love with Melissa.”

“Yeah, I know that,” Dennis says.

My mouth drops open.

“See?” Tammi says.

“Don’t start ganging up on me,” I say. “Why are we talking about this?”

“Did you break up with that sweet woman?” Dennis says. “Is that why you’ve been moping around all week?”

“I have not been moping,” I say. “And no,
she
asked
me
to leave.”

“Damn,” Dennis says. He shares a look with Tammi.

“Will you two stop that,” I say. “I’ll fire you both.”

“Can I just speak plainly?” Tammi asks.

“As opposed to the way you usually speak?”

She raises an eyebrow. “You are who you are. You’ve lived this way for a long time, and probably been through a lot of women. Melissa was different from the beginning, though, wasn’t she? You care about her. You want her in your life. Am I wrong?”