Marrying Mister Perfect (5 page)

“You really think so?”

No. I want you to decide you’re really in
love with me and the idea of leaving me even for a day is torture,
but that isn’t going to happen, is it?

“I’ll have help around here—between your
parents, mine, and Kelly. But we should probably talk to the kids
about it.”

He nodded. “Right. So we’re really talking
about this. We’re really considering it.”

She swallowed and set down her coffee cup
quickly before it fell from her numb fingers. “I guess we are.”

#

Jack looked down at the coffee cup in his
hands, wondering how his life had taken such a bizarre turn in just
a few hours. Yesterday everything had been pleasantly status quo
and now—Christ, was he actually considering going on a reality
television show?

It did seem remarkably convenient. An
eight-week turbo-relationship and it’d all be settled. The entire
dating process condensed into one neat package. He’d have a new
someone—though he felt odd whenever he thought too much about that
part—and Lou would be free to do her own thing. Problem solved.

And it was a problem. He’d been ignoring it
because, well, if he was honest, he had a tendency toward
tunnel-vision and ignored everything that wasn’t right in front of
his nose, but now that Miranda had pointed it out, he couldn’t help
but see it.

It wasn’t just French Fridays. It was obvious
now even in the DVDs lined up on Lou’s keeper shelf.
Midnight in
Paris. Roman Holiday. Sabrina. Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. La Vie
En Rose. Amelie.
Even
Ratatouille
.

Every one an escape to an exotic locale.

She’d asked if he was unhappy, and the
question seemed almost ludicrous.

He had a great job and two amazing kids he
couldn’t possibly love more. He lived with his best friend, who was
a wonderful, patient mother figure. He wasn’t going to lie—some sex
would be nice, but dating was complicated with two kids and Lou to
consider. He wasn’t hungry to fall in love. His life was already
full.

But Lou deserved more. She deserved to be
free to see the world like she’d always dreamed. Or if she decided
not to, she deserved to be with someone who would love her to
distraction. Someone she didn’t feel obligated to help out because
he was a barely-functional single-dad widower.

She deserved happiness.

And if this would give that to her? He would
do it without a single regret. He owed her that.

So. Logistics. If this was really happening…
Was he really considering this?

“I guess we should talk to Miranda.”

Chapter
Five

“Thank you so much for letting us take over
your home, Miss Doyle. Cream?”

Lou watched numbly as one of the countless TV
people reached into her fridge and offered her a splash of her own
cream.

“It’s Tanner,” she corrected. She was turning
over a new leaf. No more pretend—which was especially ironic with
the reality television people descending on them. “I don’t
take—”

“Hey, lady, our volt-meter’s busted. How many
amps can this outlet take?” A man who looked like an electrician
waved a handheld electronic device in her direction—gaffer?
Gripper? She thought his title started with a ‘g’ but she couldn’t
be sure.

No one introduced themselves by names, it
seemed. They all threw out titles she didn’t understand instead—PA,
segment producer, field producer. Fully half of them seemed to be
producers of some kind. They swarmed the house, firing questions at
her and tromping through the rooms with equipment, looking for the
most “home-like atmosphere” to shoot the advance footage of Jack in
his natural environment.

Lou shook her head at the G
man—grapher?—trying to get her bearings. “Amps?”

“So it must be Dr. Doyle who takes cream. Got
it.” The Cream Crewperson tapped something into her tablet with a
stylus.

“Amps, volts. I need to know how much power I
can run through this outlet. I’m trying to protect your electrical
system here, lady.”

“We have circuit breakers. You flip the
switches. That’s all I know.”

The G crew guy gave her the
you-are-such-a-moron-I’m-amazed-you-can-breathe-without-assistance
look all the Hollywood people had been giving her for the last two
days and heaved a dramatic sigh. “Fine. I’ll figure it out
myself.”

He had just stepped out of the kitchen when a
plastically perky woman with unnaturally red hair appeared in the
doorway. “Miss Doyle—”

Lou bared her teeth in a smile that felt a
little feral. “Tanner.”

“Could you help us handle the children? We’re
ready to shoot Dr. Doyle’s first fireside-confessional sequence and
they’re disrupting the crew.”

Good.

Lou smothered that unhelpful sentiment and
picked her way across the cables snaking through the kitchen
doorway. It was hard not to be irritated with all the people
intruding on their lives, poking around in their possessions and
turning everything upside down. Especially knowing all of this was
designed to package Jack as Mr. Perfect and take him away from
her.

The crew members were absolutely angelic
toward Jack—fawning over him and constantly working to make sure he
was in a
good head space
. They seemed to enjoy the kids and
they weren’t precisely rude to Lou. They just didn’t seem to
understand what her purpose was—and everyone on set had to have a
purpose. And her house was now a set.

The living room was cluttered by lights and
cameras, but she immediately spotted Jack at the center of it all,
perfectly lit and looking like a king in the armchair the producers
had put in front of the fireplace. Lou didn’t recognize the
throne-like chair, but she wasn’t surprised the show people had
deemed their furniture not sufficiently “home-like” and brought in
their own for the effect they were trying to create.

It took her a bit longer to spot Emma and TJ
amid the crew people swarming behind the cameras. When she did see
them, Lou laughed out loud. Disruptive was putting it mildly. They
were riding the primary cameraman like a pony. He didn’t seem to
mind, but the redhead segment producer looked like she was one
“giddy-up” away from strangling them both. Or whacking them with
the tablet held clenched in her manicured hands.

“Em. TJ,” she called them over, taking pity
on the tablet wielding redhead. “Come sit on the couch with me. We
can watch Daddy get interrogated.”

“Yeah!” The kids immediately scrambled off
their pony and climbed over the nearest crew member to bounce up on
the couch. Lou plopped in between them and secured an arm around
each one to keep them from escaping. A metal light stand partially
blocked their view of their father, but otherwise they had the best
seats in the house. Emma burrowed into her side, settling in, as TJ
wriggled and bounced, too wired to sit still.

The two of them had been remarkably receptive
to the idea of their father going on the show—or perhaps not so
remarkably since TJ had figured out almost immediately that
California was where Disneyland was and they could trade in their
father’s abandonment guilt for no less than three trips to the
Magic Kingdom when they flew out to visit him.

They were treating the arrival of the crew
and the upheaval in their lives as a giant game—and why wouldn’t
they? They were kids. They couldn’t visualize what it was going to
be like without Jack in their day-to-day lives for eight weeks. Or
how this would drastically change their lives when he got back.

Lou, however, had no trouble visualizing. She
couldn’t seem to stop.

Miranda appeared, kneeling in front of the
three of them with a warm smile and her own tablet tucked against
her chest. “Lou, we really need Jack to be able to focus right now.
Do you think you could take these two little monsters—” She winked
at the kids, making Emma giggle. “—on an outing? Give us a few
hours—”

“No, let them stay,” Jack requested from the
chair. All crew eyes turned to him and a little hush fell over the
room as the king made his proclamation. “I’ll be more relaxed if
they’re here.”

Miranda glanced back and forth between Jack
and the kids, her smile never faltering—and Lou realized what a
good actress a reality television producer needed to be. Miranda
gave a little nod and broadened her smile. “Good point, Jack. We
want you as relaxed and natural as possible.” She turned back to
the kids, putting on an over-exaggeratedly stern face. “But you two
need to be absolutely quiet. Remember. Shh!”

The kids giggled and mimed locking their lips
and throwing away the key. Miranda winked at Lou and then
straightened, turning the force of her personality back on
Jack.

“Jackson Doyle. Are you ready to fall in
love?”

Jack blinked, visibly startled. “Um. Yeah.
Yeah, that’d be great.”

“Excellent. So Jack—a few ground rules as
we’re getting warmed up. Remember that all the questions I’m going
to be asking are going to be edited out, so you need to repeat them
in your answers. So when I ask you if you’re ready to fall in love,
you say…”

“I’m ready to fall in love,” Jack parroted
obediently.

“Perfect. But then you are Mr. Perfect,
aren’t you?” Miranda grinned, somehow making the cheesy line work
with her self-deprecating laugh.

Lou watched her old friend, fascinated to see
this side of her—blatantly manipulative, but somehow seeming less
manipulative because she was being so
obvious
about it, and
still getting exactly the results she was angling for. Had Miranda
always had this skill? If not, how long had it taken her to build
up this reality persona?

Miranda quickly checked with the crew,
getting thumbs up all around and turned to Jack, seating herself so
she matched the camera’s eye level. “All right, Jack. Let’s start
with an easy one. Tell us why you’re looking for love.”

For a split second, an expression of
deer-in-headlights horror flashed across Jack’s face. Lou bit her
lip to keep from laughing out loud. This was going to be more
interesting than she thought. Jack Doyle was about to talk about
his feelings on national television. She only wished she had
popcorn.

#

Four hours later, after dropping Emma and TJ
off at Kelly’s for a play-date with the twins, Lou slipped in the
back door and through the kitchen to peek into the living room.
Poor Jack was still in that chair, suffering through the Interview
that Would Not End.

Lou had grabbed the kids and abandoned him
after the first solid hour of “Remember, Jack, it’s never a show,
it’s always an
experience
or a
journey
” and “Jack,
honey, don’t talk about the process like it isn’t real life. This
journey is about finding true love. It doesn’t get any more real
than that” and “Jack, baby, don’t look at the crew. They aren’t
here, okay?”

Now Lou slipped silently into the living room
and tucked herself behind a large, reflective screen one of the
lighting people had put up near the bay windows. It was the perfect
place to eavesdrop as Miranda coached Jack through the questions.
Not that listening in on an interview being conducted in the middle
of her living room counted as eavesdropping. She just didn’t
particularly want to be the recipient of any more of the crew’s
what-the-hell-is-your-purpose-here looks. Staying out of sight was
much more appealing.

Lou heard Jack clear his throat and tuned in
to what he was saying into the microphones.

“Gillian was… she was so
alive
. I
think that’s part of why her death came as such a shock.”

Lou went still behind the screen. She hadn’t
heard Jack talk about Gillian’s death in years.

“When Emma was born, there were
complications. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.” Jack expelled a short
breath. “I was a mess at first, laying guilt on myself—the
brilliant surgeon who couldn’t save his own wife. I don’t know what
I would have done without Lou. She was my sanity those first few
weeks. She stepped in, took care of Em and TJ and most of the
funeral stuff, and I let her. I know I relied on her too much, but
I’d just started my internship. The hours were insane and Lou was
amazing. She got me back on my feet. I can never repay that debt.
I—”

“Cut!” Miranda’s too-chipper voice blasted
through Jack’s heartfelt confession like dynamite. “Let’s take ten,
shall we? I think we could all use a break. Good stuff, Jack.
Really great.”

Lou wanted to scream. Why did Miranda have to
interrupt him? She’d never heard him open up like that about that
awful time right after Gillian died. And she had
certainly
never heard him talk about her that way. What had he been about to
say next? Could he have feelings for her that ran deeper than
friendship and gratitude?

A pair of lowered voices on the other side of
the screen where she was hiding startled her out of her
musings.

“Still can’t get him to cry on camera?”

“I really thought playing the dead wife card
would do it, but the man is made of stone. He’s barely even gotten
misty and I’ve thrown everything I’ve got at him.”

Lou identified the first voice as coming from
the startlingly fashionable young man with an effeminate air who
had been hovering near Miranda all afternoon. Todd. She wasn’t sure
whether he was Miranda’s assistant or another of the ubiquitous
producers. The other voice was definitely Miranda herself.

“We’ll get him. Just keep at it. The viewers
love tears.”

Miranda hummed agreement. “He’s a natural.
The screen tests were good, but today… are you seeing this? The
material we’re getting is golden. Though he is talking about Lou a
lot more than I expected. It seems like on every question we always
end up winding around and talking about her.”