Summer Kisses (310 page)

And why should they? Jack probably hadn’t even mentioned her.

Part of her was tempted. Tempted to see one of the women vying for Jack’s heart. Especially a favorite. “I should check on the kids…”

“Sweetie, we have people for that.” She waved to the plates Lou held. “I’ll have someone bring the kids down here and ride herd on them until we’re back.”

The curiosity was going to kill her. Lou set down her partially filled plates, snagging a muffin off one to take with her. “Lead the way.”

Miranda rattled off a series of instructions for Todd, tucked her tablet under her arm and guided her on a mazelike route through the mansion to a spot where the two properties—the Mister Perfect and Suitorette Mansions—connected. She waited until they were past the security guarding the boundary before she asked, still walking, “Lou, can I ask you a personal question?”

The question sounded like it came from Miranda-the-friend rather than Miranda-the-producer, so Lou answered automatically. “Of course.”

“Are you in love with Jack?”

She tripped over her own feet. Twisting her head around wildly, she tried to spot any hidden cameras. Miranda drew to a stop beside her.

“This is a dead zone,” Miranda explained, reading her frantic glancing at the bushes. “We’re past the security to keep the girls out of the Mister Perfect Mansion, but not yet to the security to keep the Suitorettes inside the camera range. Crew only here, so no cameras. And I’m not on a mic so you can speak freely.”

Lou’s face flamed. “No. Of course not.” She didn’t know why she denied it. It was automatic after all these years, but it was more than that. Some instinct screamed at her not to tell Miranda. Especially not before she told Jack. She didn’t want to be just another Suitorette.

“You’re sure? Because I may be a soulless reality TV hack, but you’re my friend and I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“I won’t.”

“Good.” Miranda smiled and started walking again through the grounds toward the other, larger mansion that housed the women. “So are you cockblocking him intentionally or inadvertently?”

“
What
?” Lou stumbled again.

“No offense. It just seems like you two have developed the kind of friendship that keeps either of you from developing strong emotional ties elsewhere. At least that’s my theory. Jack isn’t very open to love—and I know he’s a man and men aren’t always in touch with their emotions, but I’m trying to figure out how to help him find what he’s looking for—and that doesn’t mean just showing him beautiful girls. Often we also try to help people learn how to let their guard down and be vulnerable to others. How to really let love in.”

“Right.” She had no idea what Miranda wanted from her.

“And I figure you know him better than anyone, so you could help me figure out the best ways to get past his emotional guard.”

Lou almost laughed. If she knew how to get past his emotional guard in a romantic sense, she’d have done it years ago. “He’s unguarded when he’s relaxed, when we’re just hanging out, but that isn’t exactly romantic.”

Miranda sighed. “Oh well. It was worth asking.” She grinned. “Come on. Missy should be ready in Confessional Two.”

~~~

“Jack is such an amazing man,” the stunning brunette gushed enthusiastically. “I’ve been hurt by men who weren’t faithful in the past, but
Jack
…”

Lou stood in the background, trying to stay out of the way, as a four-man camera and sound crew captured footage of Missy in preparation for her evening out with Jack. Something about the fervent, almost desperate way Missy said Jack’s name had disconcerted Lou as soon as she started speaking into the camera. She was almost obsessive in her intensity.

As Missy waxed poetic about Jack’s amazing fidelity, Lou’s disquiet increased. The man was simultaneously dating thirteen women at last count and Missy thought he was a paragon of faithfulness? Just how disconnected with reality was she?

“I feel very confident about getting the last ring. As our journey progresses, I think Jack is realizing which of us are here for the Right Reasons and which aren’t. I have so much love in me to give and I want
so badly
to be loved. He has to see that.” Missy started to get teary as she professed her enormous capacity for emotion. “I never expected, when I came here, to be falling in love, to be really, genuinely
feeling
the way I feel for this incredible man, but you just can’t control your heart.”

Lou rolled her eyes. If she thought it would do any good, she would sit Missy the Gorgeous Doormat down and have a talk with her about how “genuine” the emotion she’d developed over the last week was in comparison to the emotion Lou had been developing over the last decade.

Though maybe Lou was the one who was delusional. Jack was no more likely to return her feelings than he was to return Missy’s.

“I just know he will see that I am here for him, for all the right reasons, and I
feel
more for him than any of the other girls.”

Lou had heard enough. As Miranda stepped in and started asking pointed questions to guide quotes out of Missy, Lou slipped away, heading back up the flagstone path leading to the other property and the craft service tent.

Missy had some hard life lessons to learn. First among them being that this competition wasn’t about who loved Jack the most, but who
he
wanted the most. If it had just been about loving him, Lou would have won hands down. It was that reciprocation element that was so tricky.

No wonder these shows were so rarely successful at pairing couples up. That they were
ever
successful was a small miracle.

Lou set off to track down the kids. Miranda had certainly given her a lot to think about.

When Jack arrived back at the mansion after his extreme date, he wanted nothing more than to find Lou and the kids and unwind for a couple hours before they had to go back home and he had to go to the symphony. He would have rather had four hours on a plane with two hyper children than two hours with Bach—or whoever it was who’d be assaulting his ears tonight.

He jogged up the stairs, intent on grabbing a quick shower to rinse off the dirt and sweat from the base-jumping expedition. He heard splashing coming from the direction of the pool. It sounded like the kids were enjoying the house, at least. He’d wanted more time with them than just a thirty-six hour layover, but the producers had talked him out of keeping the kids longer. It was a simple matter to take a first-grader out of school for a week or two, but even if TJ and Emma were here, he wouldn’t be. A wine tasting in Napa, a ski weekend in Aspen—the destination dates only got more elaborate as the weeks wore on and even though there were fewer women, his time would be less and less his own.

He couldn’t complain. This was exactly what he’d signed up for. He just hadn’t realized how much of a homebody he’d become over the last four years. He hadn’t lost the taste for new experiences and adventures, but nothing felt right without Lou and the kids around. Everything he saw, he wanted to show them and see how they reacted to it.

After his shower, Jack yanked on swim trunks and a T-shirt, relieved to have a few more hours before he had to strangle himself in one of the designer suits the show had picked out for him. He slipped out into the hallway, pulling up short when he saw Miranda striding toward him with her ubiquitous tablet in hand.

“Jack! Just the man I wanted to see.” She beamed a bright smile that made him intensely nervous.

“I was just on my way to the pool to see the kids.”
Please don’t stop me. Let me have just one afternoon of normalcy.

“I won’t keep you. I was just going over the schedule for the next week and thinking about what we talked about yesterday. About being open to love?”

“Uh-huh.”

She smiled, undeterred by his unenthusiastic response. “I talked to Lou earlier and it’s occurred to me that while the whole purpose of this is to shake you out of your romantic rut, we may have inadvertently brought your rut with us.”

“I have no idea what you’re saying.”

“Lou.”

He nodded. “Lou is here.”

“Exactly. Lou is here and you’re relying on her, your emotional crutch, rather than opening yourself up to the possibility of finding someone else to rely on. Do you see what I mean?”

Jack’s shoulders tightened. “My kids are coming to visit every weekend, Miranda. That was the deal. I’m not negotiating on that.”

“No, of course I’m not arguing that. As long as we’re able to make it work with the schedule, we’re going to bring them out here. They’re fantastic. And the fact that you’re a great father is one of the primary reasons you were selected, so we could ask nothing less of you.”

“Then what’s the problem?” he asked, impatient to get downstairs so he could see his kids and start being this epically great father they were billing him as.

“Lou is your crutch.”

“You said that already.”

“So maybe next week when the children come to visit, we could have one of our producers fly with them and Lou could stay in Chicago. I’d hate to think that your reliance on her was undermining your romantic efforts here the way it has for the last four years.”

“She isn’t undermining anything.”

“Jack, I’m not attacking Lou. I adore her. But I have to think about what’s best for your romantic future and maybe it’s time to cut the umbilical.”

“There is no umbilical.”

Miranda smiled, flapping a hand. “Forget I said anything. I’m probably imagining things. But if she decides she wants a weekend without the children hanging off of her, remember we have staff who can travel with them.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

~~~

The afternoon passed too quickly. He played with the kids in the pool until Emma was so exhausted she threw a screaming fit the likes of which she hadn’t thrown in years when they tried to get her out of the water. Lou had carried her off to the showers, muttering that at least she’d sleep well on the plane, leaving Jack to ride herd on TJ to get him into his own plane clothes.

It felt like they’d only just arrived and soon they’d be leaving to go to the airport and he’d be off to wine and dine a pair of beautiful brunettes whose names were so similar the blooper reel was already full of him tripping over them.

When Lou came back downstairs with Emma and the carry-on, she set the kids up at a table on the terrace with chicken tenders and an assortment of berries from craft services. Jack sat with the kids, listening to their cranky grumblings while she asked one of the producers if she could raid the screening room for DVDs for the portable player for the flight in case the kids didn’t immediately drop off when they got airborne.

Instead of devouring the berries in a blitz attack like they normally would, both children sat zombielike at the table and automatically went through the motions of feeding themselves, eyes glazed. They might have played a little too hard today, but he’d wanted to pack the most into every second he had with them.

Emma froze with a chicken tender halfway to her mouth, turning wide, concerned eyes toward him. “Daddy, where’s Fluff Muffin?”

He hadn’t seen the raggedy blue puffball that was Emma’s go-to security blanket stuffed animal. They’d been slowly weaning her off taking it with her everywhere she went for the last year. “I thought you left her in Chicago.”

Em’s lower lip began to tremble. “I want Fluff Muffin.”

Seeing another meltdown looming, Jack quickly scraped back his chair. “I’ll ask Aunt Lou. She’ll know where Fluff Muffin is. Eat your chicken tenders.”

Emma sniffled wetly, temporarily mollified, but ready to burst into tears should they be called for, and took the world’s smallest bite of chicken.

He found Lou in the screening room, peering at the lowest shelf of DVDs on all fours. She wore jeans for the plane, but they weren’t like any jeans he’d ever seen her in. They looked new and snug, stretching taut over her ass as she bent to examine the bottom shelf. He froze in the doorway, arrested by the sight, suddenly tense.

He cleared his throat around a strange thickness there.

Lou gasped and came up on her knees, twisting around. Her face fell with relief when she saw him. “Jack. You startled me.”

He started toward her to help her to her feet. Along with the jeans she wore some slinky plunging top—the kind he expected to see on the Suitorettes. It was distracting on Lou, fluttering and sliding against her skin as if the right breeze would give him a glimpse of something he shouldn’t want to see. But there was no breeze.

“Expecting someone else? An illicit rendezvous with a cameraman or sound mixer?” His voice sounded oddly rough.

“The gaffers are more my type,” she said dryly, taking his hand to come to her feet and putting her back against the shelves. “All that talk of amps and fill lights gets me all hot and bothered.”

“I knew there was a reason you were so eager to visit.”

Something about the words seemed to catch her out. She looked up at him with big, dark eyes and slowly wet her lip, lifting one hand to toy with the pendant that flirted with the cleavage revealed by that slippery slinky top. “Jack… I…”

He cleared his throat again, the sound harsh in the air-conditioned hum of the media room. He was standing too close to her, but he couldn’t seem to move away. Even with the lights on, the windowless screening room was still dark and filled with shadows. Shadows and possibilities.

He’d been kissed by five women in the last two weeks, but Lou’s was the only one he remembered with crystalline clarity. Perhaps because it was more tease than kiss, just a tantalizing taste of what could be. The possibilities… Temptation tugged at him. Would she mind? Just one harmless little kiss?

“Emma’s asking for Fluff Muffin,” he said, reaching for a safe topic.

“She left her in Chicago.”

Jack nodded. “I thought so.”

Then the silence fell again, wrapping them in that odd pocket of awareness. But awareness of what, he didn’t know. Lou was still looking at him, the eye-contact lingering until it became something else, something more. He propped his shoulder against the shelves beside her and Lou tucked her hands behind her, gazing up at him. The pose was naturally flirtatious, but she couldn’t be aware of how coy and inviting she looked. Lou didn’t flirt. That wasn’t her. But nonetheless there seemed to be a strange tension in the room.