Marrying Mister Perfect (25 page)

“Oh, honey,” Kelly murmured, scooting her
chair closer so she could wrap her arms around Lou and give her a
squeeze. “It’s gonna work out. Jack isn’t an idiot. He knows a good
thing when he sees it. And you, Louisa Renee Tanner, are a very,
very good thing.”

Lou hugged Kelly back, telling herself she
was crying because she was so lucky to have such an amazing best
friend. She was getting pretty good at lying to herself. She almost
believed it.

#

Jack realized his sense of reality had been
screwed up beyond recognition when he didn’t even feel strange
climbing out of a limo in front of his house and strolling up the
walk slowly to allow the cameras on either side of him to keep
pace.

He wondered how long it would take his sense
of reality to get back on track after all this was over.

Only two weeks left
.

That thought comforted him as nothing else
could. This week the girls would visit his house and meet his
family—the kids, his parents, and Lou. Next week would be the
two-day exotic destination dates, culminating in the finale where
he picked between the final two. Then it was over. He headed home,
never to see the girls again until the reunion show aired live at
the end of the season. Free to live his life and figure out what
was between him and Lou, once and for all.

The front door opened when he set his foot on
the first step of the porch. The kids must have been watching for
him. Jack grinned and threw his arms open in time to catch TJ and
Emma as they barreled out the door. “Daddy!” they squealed and the
cameramen shuffled eagerly in circles, trying to get the best angle
on the happy reunion.

Lou’s earlier warning about exploiting the
kids rose up in his mind.
Was
this bad for them? Had he
failed to consider how this might impact them? Miranda had assured
him they would be a minor part of the show. Nothing was demanded of
them other than they be themselves. He couldn’t imagine a few
minutes of screentime would really do them any harm, but Jack still
cut the welcome-home hugs shorter than he normally would, ushering
the kids inside.

He didn’t see Lou immediately and wanted
nothing more than to look for her, but the crew was already
swarming in the door behind him, getting ready to set up for their
first day of home life. The first of the girls wouldn’t arrive
until tomorrow, but there was a lot of work to be done to wire the
house the way they wanted it.

Emma latched onto her favorite cameraman’s
ankles while TJ ran to high-five the sound guy he’d bonded with in
LA.

Jack nodded to himself. They were fine. The
show was a good experience for them. He was sure of it. Though he
was less and less sure it was good for him.

Or for Lou.

He couldn’t help wondering, if she did have
some feelings for him, if he had hurt her by going on
Marrying
Mr. Perfect
. He’d thought he was doing the right thing—for her
more than anyone, freeing her from the life he’d imposed on her
when she moved in here—but now he wasn’t so sure.

If only he could see her. Where the heck was
she?

He found her, twenty minutes later, upstairs
in Emma’s room, putting away laundry.

“What?” he said from the doorjamb, devouring
her with his eyes. “Don’t I merit a welcome home?”

God, she looked amazing. Snug jeans with a
frayed hem, a T-shirt worn soft and thin by the years, and her
blondish hair yanked high in a ponytail. The everyday familiarity
of the outfit was made oddly erotic by the knowledge that the
sultry woman in the red bikini was under there, waiting to get
out.

Her shoulders stiffened at his first words
and she turned, wrinkling one of Emma’s shirts in the tight grip of
her hands. “Jack.” She nodded in greeting, not moving an inch
toward him. “Welcome home.”

He arched his eyebrows, giving her a lazy
smile. “That was pathetic.” He shoved away from the doorjamb and
crossed the small room to her, noting the way her eyes widened
slightly—was that alarm?—as he approached. “Now, do I get a real
homecoming?”

He hadn’t meant the words to sound
suggestive. He hadn’t meant them to be a sensual challenge, but the
way her breath caught, raising her breasts up like a feast for his
eyes, said she heard the seductive undertones he couldn’t keep out
of his voice.

She met his eyes—hers were startled, perhaps
wary, but not repulsed. She didn’t look like she was angry with him
for taking advantage of her inebriation in the hot tub. She looked
like she’d just been offered the biggest chocolate sundae of her
life and was debating whether or not her hips could take the
indulgence.

She wet her lips and Jack knew—with a
certainty and decisiveness he usually reserved for surgery—that he
was going to kiss her. Now. He knew the taste of those lips now,
the sweet promise of them. Everything else could be worked out
later. This kiss couldn’t wait.

Jack bent his head. Lou rose up on her toes,
her eyelashes fluttering down to veil her hypnotic gray eyes. One
more inch…

“Jack, darling, if we can steal you for a
minute…”

Miranda’s voice instantly diffused the
expectant charge in the room. Lou dropped back onto her heels with
a thud then pivoted to shove Emma’s shirt into her dresser. Jack
straightened reluctantly.

“Lou!” Miranda said, seeming to notice her
for the first time. “I was wondering where you were hiding.” She
cleared her throat, shooting a meaningful glare at him. “Jack?
Downstairs? We’d like a few fireside confessional moments—just a
bit about how intimately you feel toward each of the girls right
now… how difficult your decision is going to be… that kind of
thing. If you would?”

“I’ll be right there,” he said, hoping she
would leave.

“I know how hard it must be, not being able
to tell the women how you really feel, but you know the rules.”

“Right.” He hesitated.

Lou had moved on to shoving Emma’s socks into
a drawer. She refused to look at him. Jack hovered for a moment,
hating
the rules
with every fiber of his being.

He’d go quietly, but he lived here and so did
Lou. They couldn’t watch him every second of every day and he had
unfinished business with Louisa Tanner.

“I’ll see you later, Lou.”

“Mm-hmm,” she agreed without looking up.

He exited the room in front of Miranda, who
smacked him hard on the back of the head as soon as they were out
of Lou’s sight. “Five million dollars, dumbass.”

“I know,” he growled.

“We’re wiring the kitchen with audio and
video. You can talk to her in there, but there will be absolutely
no protestations of eternal devotion. You can be exactly as
forthcoming with her as you can with the other girls. Don’t think I
didn’t notice that thing with Marcy. You’re lucky she’ll make an
amazing Miss Right.”

Jack smiled. “I don’t know what you’re
talking about.”

“Cute. Talk to Lou. Play with your kids. Stay
in the public areas where the cameras can see you. And then you
will go to the hotel suite and wait for Katya’s arrival
tomorrow.”

Jack stopped at the top of the stairs,
turning to frown down at Miranda. “What hotel? I thought I got to
spend the week with my family.”

“Jack. I’m not an idiot. Either you go to a
hotel or Lou does. Those are the rules.”

“I hate the rules.”

“Then I know the process is working,” Miranda
said, smiling sweetly.

“This has nothing to do with your
process.”

Miranda arched a brow. “Doesn’t it?”

#

By the time Jack managed to corner Lou in the
kitchen, he was starting to wonder if being in debt to the network
for the rest of his life wouldn’t be worth it just so he could kick
all the reality television people out of his house once and for
all. If not for the fact that he had Emma and TJ’s college
educations to pay for, he might have given it some serious
consideration. As it was, he was screwed.

But at least he was home.

Lou was making coffee. The kids were in bed.
Jack’s chair screeched across the tile as he pulled it out from the
table and dropped onto the harder-than-bricks seat. How many times
had they talked about replacing the chairs? Buying cushions?
Remodeling the kitchen? All that little domestic normalcy so he
never had to own up to the fact that Lou was the emotional center
of his entire world.

Gillian had been that center and it had
shattered him when she died. He hadn’t wanted to see that Lou had
inched her way to the center of his heart, but there she was. And
it would kill him to lose her now.

If only he could tell her that.

“It’s good to be home,” he said, trying to
imbue his voice with extra weight so he would hear what he wanted
to say beneath the words he could. “I wish I didn’t have to stay at
that hotel tonight.”

Lou handed him his coffee—prepared exactly
the way he liked it—and sank into the opposite chair with her own,
tucking one leg up on the chair as she always did. “Only a couple
more weeks. The kids are really amped up about the three days in
Disney Miranda arranged after the Finale.”

She said the words without looking at him. If
she would just meet his eyes he would know everything was going to
be okay. He needed to see those pale blue eyes.

Maybe if he just attacked the elephant in the
room. “Lou, about the Jacuzzi—”

“We don’t have to talk about that,” she said
quickly, still not meeting his gaze. “We got carried away. All that
champagne… You’re very attractive—what woman wouldn’t want Mister
Perfect, right? We both know it was a mistake. Nothing more to
say.”

“I didn’t say it was a mistake,” he said,
irrationally irritated. “I’m glad we kissed. I liked it.”

That got her looking at him. Her jaw dropped
like he’d told her he wanted to get a tattoo on his face.

“I’d like to do it again,” he said into her
stunned silence.

She started shaking her head and couldn’t
seem to stop. “Kissing is all well and good, but what about the
kids?”

He wanted to revisit the
all well and
good
portion of the question, but he played along. “What about
them?”

“Have you considered how a fling between us
would confuse the children?”

“A fling.” He hadn’t been thinking about
flings
at all, but if that was where Lou’s head was… He set
his coffee on the table, sliding it away from him,

“Whatever you want to call it,” she went
on.

“Why do we have to define it?” Especially now
when he couldn’t tell her what he really wanted. “Can’t we just see
where it goes?”
A few weeks, maybe an altar.

“Are you high? Of course not. The children
already want us to end up together. Can you imagine what Emma would
have thought if she’d seen something the other night?”

Okay, he did not want to think about his
daughter walking in on him fooling around with Lou. That was a fair
point. “We can be discreet—”

“While you’re on national television? This
can’t just be because you like it or it’s fun. Not with Emma and TJ
involved. Emma already asked me why I couldn’t be the mommy.”

“They both asked me why I didn’t marry you,”
he admitted.

“See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about.
What if it doesn’t work out? How could it? Everything is so
complicated right now. You’re being pulled in a dozen different
directions and I don’t want… I’m not going to pull you, Jack.” She
studied a worn spot in the hall rug, avoiding his eyes. “With that
damn show here, everything is under a microscope and it’s all out
of whack. How can you even really know what you want right
now?”

He felt like he was finally clear on what he
wanted for the first time in years, but he knew Lou. He knew the
way she would subvert what she wanted for whatever she felt was for
the best. Was she denying herself what she wanted now? Or was she
using all these—perfectly legitimate—excuses to tell him that she
didn’t want him the way he now wanted her?

“What do you want, Lou?”

“It isn’t always about what we want.”

“It’s
never
about what you want,” he
said, a little more sharply than he’d intended. “You always put
others above yourself. But maybe it should be about what you want
for a change.”

He wanted Lou, but he didn’t want her kissing
him because she felt like she should because it would be best for
the kids. He wanted her to want him, completely independent of the
children, but nothing they did was independent of the children. She
was right to remind him of that. When Emma had a bad dream, she
went to Lou, not to him. If he and Lou did have a relationship and
she left what would it do to Emma? Hell, what would it do to
him
?

But she would never leave. That wasn’t Lou’s
style. She would stay with him forever whether she wanted to or
not. If she thought that was what was right. But he didn’t want the
woman who thought she
should
be with him. He wanted one who
couldn’t live without him. As he was beginning to think he couldn’t
live without her.

Jack reached across the table, capturing her
hand and lacing their fingers together. “What do you want,
Lou?”

She pulled her fingers free. “I want you to
find what you’re looking for on the show.”

Jack barely stopped himself from cursing
aloud.

He’d been wrong. He’d read her wrong in the
Jacuzzi. She hadn’t been coming onto him. She didn’t want him. He’d
taken advantage and now she regretted it. She wanted him to find
someone else so she could be free of him.

Jack scraped back his chair. “I’m sorry about
the other night. Too much champagne.” He cleared his throat
roughly. “I should get back to the hotel. We have a long week
ahead. My parents will be here tomorrow for the first of the In-Law
sessions.”