Marrying Mister Perfect (17 page)

She’d had a lot of time to think on the plane
ride home. Maybe too much. She was sure Jack hadn’t meant to hurt
her with what he said in the screening room. His temper so rarely
came out she sometimes forgot how he reacted when he felt cornered.
And she hadn’t exactly been careful with her accusations.

Not that her words were any excuse for making
her feel like an imposter in her own life. She was going to make
him beg before she forgave him for that crack about her not having
any say in the kids’ lives.

Provided he even wanted to beg. The show had
some strange hold over him. Who knew what advice Miranda and the
Suitorettes were feeding him?

“Aunt Lou? Can we call Daddy to say good
night?”

Any other night Lou would have called Jack
and had him sing an off-key lullaby to Emma, but tonight she didn’t
know what kind of reception would meet her call. If they were going
to have a fight, she wouldn’t let it be in front of Emma. So Lou
made a stern face and tucked Emma in tighter. “Do we make phone
calls after bedtime?”

“No,” Emma grumbled, the covers slipping down
just enough to reveal a pout.

“Tell you what. We’ll call him as soon as you
get home from school tomorrow. And the sooner you go to sleep, the
sooner tomorrow will come. Okay?”

Emma’s nod took her back under the covers,
nearly to her eyebrows. Lou smoothed her curls one more time then
shifted on the edge of the bed, getting ready to stand. A tentative
whisper stopped her.

“Aunt Lou?”

“Yes, baby?”

“Don’t you want to be the mommy anymore?”

“Oh, baby.” Only Emma could shatter her heart
so completely. “I will always love you and TJ. I will
always
want to be with you and look after you. I’m always going to be here
for you, baby, no matter what. But… things are going to be
different when Daddy gets home.”

Everything would be different. She could only
hope that Jack wouldn’t be completely changed.

“Why different?”

“Oh, sweetie.” Lou sighed. “Sometimes
different is wonderful. You don’t ever have to be afraid of change,
okay, Em? Daddy and I are always gonna love you and be here for
you.”
Just not together
.

The eerie ex-wife feeling was back again. All
the heartache of a divorce with none of the visitation rights.

Lou bent and pressed a kiss to Emma’s
forehead, breathing in the scent of Johnson’s No More Tears. “Get
some sleep, Emma-belle. Tomorrow’s a school day.”

Having invoked the incontrovertible
school
night
bedtime warning, Lou stood and slipped out of the room.
She shut the bedroom door and rested her palm for a moment on the
wood, closing her eyes.

She’d never expected this
process
to
be easy, but it was turning out to be even harder than she’d
imagined. A mine field with the kids.

And with Jack… the cell phone was an ominous
weight in her pocket.

Her feet felt heavy as she dragged them down
the stairs. She curled up on the living room couch, suddenly afraid
to hear what Jack had said. Holding her phone in her cupped palms,
she stared at it like it might come to life and bite her.

She had to listen to the messages eventually.
But maybe not right this instant.

She wasn’t sure she was ready to know how he
felt when she had no idea how she did. Was she still angry? Could
she forgive him? Could she still trust him?

The message light on her phone blinked
cheerfully. It had no idea how important those messages were. She
felt like her whole life hung by a thread.

She had to know.

Lou pressed the button for her voicemail and
closed her eyes.
Please, please, please
.

First came the message from the plane.
“Lou. It’s, uh, it’s me. Obviously. Look, I’m sorry. I’m really
sorry. I shouldn’t have... It was a shitty thing to say, okay? And
I’m sorry. Call me back.”

The fear knotting her stomach eased. She’d
been ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure he was apologizing, but
that sliver of a chance that he wanted her out of his life had been
enough to scare her senseless. Now she could breathe again.

The second message must have come in while
they were getting their bags.
“Hey. The, uh, the flight status
thing said you landed. So I thought I’d call. To apologize. In case
my first message didn’t come through. I’m sorry. I’ll try back
later.”

The next three were more of the same. In the
fourth one he mentioned trying the house. She figured she’d have
another apology on the home machine. In each message, Jack sounded
more dejected. More lost. She’d just finished listening to the last
one when her phone vibrated. She had a new text.

Lou hated text messages, especially the
awful, abbreviated English people used to write them. She thought
they were a lazy impersonal way to communicate. Jack had heard her
complain about them a thousand times, but he was trying every
possible way he had to get through to her. Lou’s heart felt tight
in her chest. For once she didn’t hate getting a text.

She pressed the button to view it.

So sorry. I can’t stand fighting with you.
Please take my call. -J

The cell phone rang in her hand.

She swallowed, inexplicably nervous, and hit
the button to connect. “Hello?”

“God, Lou. I’m so sorry.”

Lou closed her eyes and sank deeper into the
couch cushions. “It’s okay,” she said, ignoring the fact that she’d
told herself she would make him beg. She just wanted to ease that
panicked edge she heard in his voice. He was still her Jack. The
show hadn’t completely stolen him. Yet. “I’m sorry too.”

“No. I was the jerk. Don’t apologize.”

“Jack,” she said, trying to make his name the
usual laughing scold. It didn’t come out quite right, but he
reacted as if it had.

“Fine. Apologize if you want. But accept mine
first. You’re the most important thing in Emma and TJ’s life, Lou.
You’re their mom in every way that matters. I should never have
tried to cut you out of the decisions about the show.”

“I should have trusted that you wouldn’t let
the producers exploit them,” she whispered.

“Hey. Stop trying to horn in on my apology.
This is my turn.”

Lou smiled, relieved he’d managed to bring it
back to their usual comfortable level. “Sorry. Go ahead.”

“I was mostly done,” he admitted. “I’m a
dickhead, you’re amazing, and I didn’t mean a word of it. Forgive
me?”

“Always. Even when you’re a dickhead.” Lou
smiled against the phone, ignoring the tears of relief gathering in
the corners of her eyes. God, she hated fighting with him. It felt
like she’d ripped out a piece of her soul.

“You’re better to me than I deserve,” he
said.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she soothed,
trying to keep things light. “It’s tough being Mister Perfect all
the time.”

“We both know I’m not.”

Lou hesitated. It was the perfect opening.
All she had to do was tell him he’d always be Mister Perfect to
her. Finally tell him she loved him with more than just friendship.
There it was. Opportunity knocking.

But she couldn’t tell him on the heels of a
fight. She didn’t want that to be how he remembered this moment.
Nor how
she
remembered it. She wanted it to be perfect. Like
a set-up on that damn show.

Lou felt her shoulders tense. They never used
to fight before the show. Not like this.

Then a second realization hit and her stomach
plummeted to her toes.

They never used to fight before she started
pushing to change their relationship. Before she became convinced
she had to tell him she loved him. When they were just friends,
they were fine.

What if they couldn’t be lovers without
ripping one another to shreds? What if
that
was the cause of
all this tension and anger? They’d been happy before, hadn’t
they?

Kelly was sure of her game plan, but playing
games with Jack’s heart didn’t sit right with Lou. Maybe they
should
just be friends.

She couldn’t stop thinking about that girl in
the interview this morning. Missy. So desperately looking for love.
What if Missy was right for Jack and Lou was standing in the way of
their happiness? What if she was wrong to try to make him love her
instead? It seemed horribly selfish, all of a sudden.

Had she even considered what would be best
for him? Had she thought for a moment about what he might want in
all this? She’d been so wrapped up in her own stupid fantasies,
just like the girls on the show, the ones who wanted him without
knowing him. Lou wanted him without knowing what
he
wanted.
Was that just as bad?

“Lou?”

“I’m here.” Here and confused out of her
mind. Where had her simple chaos-control life gone? When had it all
become tangled feelings and unanswerable questions?

Normally the person she would talk to about a
problem was Jack, but they never talked about problems like
this—even if he wasn’t right at the center of it all. Their usual
problems were kitchen remodels and whether to confront the lawn boy
about snitching a beer out of the fridge. This was a whole
different category.

“I should let you get some sleep,” Jack said,
misinterpreting her long silence as exhaustion. “Will you come back
next weekend?”

“I don’t know, Jack,” she hedged. “Maybe I
should stay home.”

A long silence met that comment. Then,
“Whatever you want.”

Whatever she wanted.

That was the trouble. She didn’t know what
she wanted anymore. She’d been so certain she wanted him, but at
what price? Their friendship? His happiness? What was the cost of
what she wanted? Was she willing to pay it?

“What do you want, Jack?” she asked softly.
“Not about whether I should come or not, but from the show. I feel
like we talk in these vague terms about you moving on and finding
someone new and I’ve never really asked you what you’re looking
for.”

Miranda had asked him and she’d eavesdropped,
but that wasn’t quite the same.

“I’m not sure I know,” he admitted. “It was
easy to talk about moving on in theory, but the reality—” He broke
off with a laugh. “The reality is reality TV. But I have to wonder
if Miranda has a point. About me not letting anyone in. Losing
Gillian… you saw how it wrecked me. I threw myself into work and I
might have even shut out the kids if not for the fact that you
wouldn’t let me. So maybe I do have walls up so I never have to go
through that again, but I’ll be damned if I know how to let them
down. So I guess the short answer is I had no idea what I was
looking for when I came here.”

Lou held her breath. The show was certainly
changing him in one way at least. She’d never heard him be so
upfront about what he was thinking and feeling before.

“Just another grandiose idea, I guess,” he
went on. “And now… hell, I don’t know. I get the compatibility test
results tomorrow. Maybe that will tell me something.”

Lou couldn’t help wondering what the show’s
team of fancy psychologists would say about her compatibility with
Jack.

“Kelly says the next big thing after the
compatibility test is the lie detector in episode six,” Lou said.
“She says when Josh Pendleton gives you the choice between looking
at the results and making a gesture of trust by tearing them up,
you should definitely look.”

Jack hesitated for so long Lou looked at the
phone to make sure she hadn’t lost the connection. “Maybe we
shouldn’t talk about the girls anymore,” he murmured. “It kind of
feels like when I used to come home from those online dates and
talk to you about them. And we both saw how that went. Maybe
Miranda is right and I’m using you as a crutch, keeping the girls
at a distance.”

“Yeah.”
And maybe I’m using my feelings
for you as a security blanket so I don’t have to go out and risk my
heart in a real relationship
. “Maybe I should stay home next
week. It could be a good thing. Give me a chance to figure out who
I’ll be without you guys.”

Jack made an agreeable noise and they hung up
moments later with those last words swirling in her brain.

Who was she without him?

Chapter
Seventeen

Lou’s delight at having an entire weekend
with no kids and no Jack lasted about fifteen seconds. Then it took
all of her willpower not to run after Emma, TJ, and the chaperone
the show had sent through airport security and jump on the plane
with them.

If this was her test run, to see how she’d do
after the show was over and she was alone, so far she was
failing.

She called Kelly as she wandered back to the
parking garage, but the twins had a soccer game, so a girls’ day
was out. She scrolled through the numbers on her cell, jarred by
the realization that every other number in there was a PTA pal or
car-pool contact. They were friends through their kids. And all of
them would be spending the weekends with their families. Which was
exactly what Lou always did. Which was why she didn’t know a
single, solitary person who had their Saturdays free.

She couldn’t just wave her magic wand and go
back to being a single girl with a single girl’s social life. Not
that she’d ever thought it would be like that. She just hadn’t
considered that this would involve building an entirely new social
circle from the ground up.

Lou climbed into the Focus and drummed her
fingers on the steering wheel. What to do?

Her first instinct was to get the laundry
done without the assistance of her two pyrotechnicians, and then go
to the grocery without extra hands helping her fill the cart. Just
another wild and fabulous weekend for the newly single girl. Or
rather, the always single girl who suddenly had to act single.

Maybe she’d go out tonight. She’d never been
the pick-up bar kind of girl, but where else was she supposed to
meet someone who could make her forget about Jack? As if anyone
could.