Chapter Twenty-one
He could bark three times.
Chopping some vegetables for the romantic dinner at home he’d planned while he waited for Jessie that night, Garrett mulled over how to tell Jessie how he felt about her. And that he wanted her to stay, but if she didn’t, he understood and could do long distance if he had to.
Because she wasn’t going to give up that anchor job, and he’d known that from the beginning. So how had he let himself fall so damn hard for her?
He didn’t know, but it happened. All the walls were gone—with her, at least—and all he wanted was to keep her as close to him as possible. How did you tell a woman she should change her life, leave her big-time job, and work on a dog farm?
You don’t, fool.
So he’d have to make the most of their few nights left. He shouldn’t muddy the waters by telling her he loved her. Maybe someday. Maybe things would change. But not tonight.
A few minutes later, a light tap on the door had him smiling before he even opened it. When he did, his whole heart melted, and every other organ did the opposite.
Who was he kidding? He’d never last the night without confessing his true feelings.
“Wow,” he whispered, checking out the waves she’d added to her hair, giving it a tousled, sexy look. She wore something sparkly on her eyes, her mouth glistened with lip gloss he couldn’t wait to taste, and she’d dressed in a slinky black top over skin-tight white jeans and high heels that should be sold with condoms in the shoe box.
“Wow yourself.” She tapped his chin with one finger, letting her gaze drop over his not nearly as nice shirt and khakis, but her eyes widened in appreciation anyway.
He closed his hand over that finger and kissed the tip of it. “You look sexy.”
“I feel—”
He wrapped his arms around her waist and cut her off with a solid, hard kiss. He held her there, long enough to melt together in what was now a familiar feeling.
“Sad,” she finished.
“Not what I was going for, but I understand when you say goodbye to a dog.” He skimmed his fingers over her bare shoulder, marveling at the creaminess of her skin, slipping under the tank top strap because he needed more of that skin. And less of these clothes. “I’ll let you wear the doggone hat, if you want.” He kissed her shoulder. “And nothing else.”
She gave a rueful laugh. “I’ll never forget Lola, Garrett.”
“Forget that she’s not in your life, don’t forget her. Don’t forget the way she made you feel or the fact that you saved her.”
She let her forehead lean against his chin. “That does make me happy. But, Garrett, that’s not what I’m most unhappy about.” When she looked up, he saw the shadow in her eyes. A different kind of sadness, but as real as he’d seen when she said goodbye to Lola.
And he knew what she was going to say before she said it.
“I’m leaving tomorrow morning.”
Knowing it didn’t make the kick in the gut any less painful.
“I’ve been summoned by my boss. No delay.”
“Tomorrow is Saturday, Jess. Can’t you stay the weekend?”
“They actually wanted me tonight, but I begged for twelve more hours.”
Hours. Not days. “Shit,” he murmured, then let his arms drop in resignation. “Okay. That’s…okay.”
As he turned back to the kitchen, Jessie caught his arm to stop him. “No, it’s not okay. At least, not based on that reaction.”
He tried for a casual shrug, but nothing felt casual. Not with her. “I hate to see you go,” he said softly. “I was just starting to…”
“Get used to me?” she offered when he couldn’t finish.
“Fall really hard for you,” he said. “Which is dumb, unless long-distance relationships are better than I imagine. But something tells me they’re not.”
She answered with a sigh that told him everything.
“Look, Jessie.” He took her hands in his. “I don’t want to get all drippy and emotional, especially now that it’s our last night, but I want you to know that…”
Once again, he couldn’t get the words out and stood there like a fool. She stepped closer, sliding her arms around him. “I know,” she whispered.
“You do?”
Tipping back, she looked up at him. “I think I do, and I’m just as conflicted.”
Conflicted? He wasn’t conflicted at all. He was certain. “What are you conflicted about?”
After a moment, she said, “I have a question I never asked you.”
“I thought we were done with all those questions.”
“One more. Was there ever a time in that storied career of yours when you thought that maybe the thing you wanted all along wasn’t what you really wanted?”
He didn’t answer, but not because he didn’t know what to say. Was this her way of telling him she wasn’t sure about leaving? He tamped down the hope that rose up, nodding. “After I started working at FriendGroup.”
“But that situation was…clouded.”
He couldn’t argue with that. “But I wasn’t happy working for a corporation. All the money meant nothing because I missed the spirit we had at PetPic.” He brushed back a lock of her hair, tucking it behind her ear. “Why are you asking?”
“Because I felt a little like that today. Like…maybe this job isn’t what I thought it’s going to be. I didn’t really enjoy that process today, not as much as I should have. What if I hate broadcast?”
Then life would be good. Perfect. Awesome, in fact. “Call me and I’ll come get you, move you, and bring you back to a place that gives you a sense of belonging and security.”
“Waterford?”
“And here.” He put his hand over his chest. “I’ll keep you right here.”
Her jaw loosened. “Do you mean that?”
“How can you even ask that, Jessie? I don’t have any walls left. I don’t have any self-preservation techniques with you. You took them all away and made me…”
“Open and different?”
He laughed softly. “Yeah, but that’s not what I was going to say. You made me love you, Jessica Jane. I love you.”
She tried to breathe, but he could tell the words had strangled her. Or maybe it was the response, the expected, hoped-for response, that strangled her. She stared at him, something unreadable in her eyes.
Fear? Was she still afraid?
“Do you love me?” he asked.
She stood perfectly silent, that vein in her temple pulsing rapidly. “I think I do,” she finally whispered.
“And that scares you.”
“More than I can say. What if…why does…how can…”
He stopped the half-formed questions with a kiss. “The answer to all your questions is simple. Just say it.”
“But I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“I don’t care, Jessie. I still love you.”
She sighed into him, kissing back with tenderness and tenacity at first, then she gave in to a real kiss. A full-bodied, openmouthed kiss that might be the only way she was capable of saying she loved him now.
He’d take it. He’d take everything. He’d take anything she’d give him.
With his hands already roaming up and down her back, he walked her to the hall and into his room, not bothering to close the door as they kissed their way to the bed.
They fell on it together, touching, rolling, loving each other in a frenzy of unzipping and tugging and sliding things off.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.
It barked in his ear with Lola’s old rhythm. To-mor-row.
He shoved the word aside, drowning out the sound of it with other words. Sexy words. Promises. Admiration. Sighs of pleasure and groans of sheer delight. Shoes dropped. Buttons popped. Her silky top whispered its way to the floor.
When he slid off her bra and took a moment to look down at her half-naked body, the blood in his head hammered so hard he couldn’t think about tomorrow.
There was now. This was Jessie and this bed and their bodies and heat. She touched him, making him hiss with satisfaction. He did the same to her, sliding his fingers into the sweet center of her, earning a long, low, helpless moan.
He peeled her jeans over her hips and backside, inching down to the sexy thong that beckoned him. “That thing’s not going to last long.” He rubbed his fingers over the lace, making her hips undulate.
“Don’t need it.” She writhed at his touch. “Don’t want it.” Pushed his head down. “Don’t care about anything but you.”
He kissed her belly and got those jeans down her legs. He straddled her, taking in the sight of her in nothing but lace and lust. Her hair in curls on his pillow. Her lips parted and wet. Her eyes dark with need.
“I love you, Jessie,” he said again. “I love—”
“Someone’s at your door.” She planted her hands on his chest and pushed him up. “Don’t you hear that?”
He shook off the sudden intrusion from the outside world, almost not believing her words.
But there it was—three, four, five slamming bangs on his front door.
“I don’t care. It’s locked. I’m not leaving this bed, and neither are you.”
She smiled and reached up to his neck to yank him closer. “Then come back down here.”
He kissed her, but the pounding didn’t stop. It got louder. Harder. Relentless. What the hell?
“Could it be an emergency at Waterford?” she asked.
He shook his head and went south again, lingering on the sweet buds of her breasts to—
“Goddammit, Garrett Kilcannon!” The man’s voice boomed from the other side of the front door, making Garrett shoot straight up in shock. “Open this door, or I’ll kick it in, you scum-sucking bastard, traitor, wife-stealing prick!”
Jessie’s eyes flashed wide in horror, but Garrett sat absolutely frozen as the impossible suddenly became real. That couldn’t be… That wasn’t…
“Kilcannon! I’m coming in!”
It was.
Slowly, as if in a dream, he pushed all the way off her, still holding her gaze, not understanding anything, but knowing…this couldn’t be good. This couldn’t be.
“Garrett? Who is it?”
He stared at her. “Why?” he whispered.
“That’s my question.”
Why would he be here? There was only one reason. One possible explanation. No, it couldn’t be. She wouldn’t have lied to him. Look at her. The image of…love.
“Kilcannon!”
Wordlessly, Garrett got off the bed, blindly aware of grabbing his jeans and stepping into them. His breath was still tight and ragged, but not from sex now.
From fear. From disbelief. From betrayal.
The relentless pounding stopped as the latch clicked, and he opened the door slowly, squinting at the silhouette outlined by the last rays of the setting sun. He barely had time to take a breath when a fist came at him like a bullet, cracking his jaw with so much force he stumbled backward and nearly fell.
And all he could think was… I deserved that.
For being stupid and trusting another woman. For loving another woman. Who, come to think of it in his rattled brain, had never said she loved him back.
* * *
Still scrambling to put her jeans on and pull her head through her tank top, Jessie stumbled through the hall, making it to the living room just as Garrett opened the front door.
And got sucker-punched in the face.
She gasped and froze in shock at the sight of a mountain of a man, a good six-four and muscular, with a craggy face and platinum-blond hair pulled into a long ponytail.
“I flew my jet three thousand miles to do that, you asswipe,” he said to Garrett, an Australian accent evident in every word. “You slept with my wife.”
“Actually, I didn’t.” He rubbed his jaw, straightening. “So get your facts straight before you swing, Jake.”
“You were married to her before I was! You expect me to believe you didn’t sleep with her.”
“Just like you help her by sending some sleaze-bucket website to smear my wife’s name all over the world?”
“What?” The word came out of Jessie’s mouth as barely more than a whisper, but both men whipped around to look at her, one with curiosity in his eyes, the other with agony. Disbelief. Disappointment. Nothing like the love she’d just seen.
“A website?” Garrett asked, still staring at her, though the question was directed at the other man. “Was it ITAL, by any chance?” There was enough sarcasm slicing through his voice to cut her.
“You know it was. You’re part of the whole thing. What are you trying to do? Wreck our marriage and get her back? Claim the kid is yours? What the hell is your endgame with this kind of publicity?”
Jessie felt lightheaded and lost. ITAL didn’t do this. She would know. She would—
“I don’t have an end game,” Garrett said, clearly getting his bearings now. “I gave my word to Claudia. And I kept my word.”
“You word is crap,” he spat. “Collaborating with some supermarket-rag tabloid to ambush my wife and—”
“He’s not collaborating!” she fired back. “No one is. ITAL isn’t covering that story!”
“Who are you?” Jake demanded.
She swayed for a moment. “My name is Jessie Curtis and—”
“Oh, the famous Jessica Jane Curtis. The one on the ‘East Coast angle’ of the story. The one who got him to admit everything.”
East Coast angle? What the hell was he talking about?
He snorted loudly, giving her a disgusted once-over. “Mercedes said you have legendary interview techniques. I’d say they’re pretty damn old school.”
Jessie actually had to put her hand on the wall to steady herself. Mercedes had talked to him?
“I don’t know how you could be any better than Mercedes, though,” he continued. “Tells us we’re some feature profile, drags in a video crew, gets us all set up and cozy on the couch, and wham! How did you feel when you learned your wife married another man in Vegas while she was pregnant?”
Jessie pressed her hand against her chest as white lights of disbelief exploded behind her eyes. “No. That’s impossible.”
“Want to see the film clip of that bitch joking about a chapel that was good enough for Mickey Rooney?”
“No!” Jessie groaned. “That’s not…no.” It couldn’t be possible. “I didn’t tell anybody anything.”
“Oh, really?” Jake said. “’Cause she was reading tender, heartfelt quotes from your interview about how he fed her saltines and love when she had morning sickness with my kid.”
She hadn’t written a word of that. Not one syllable of his story was on the page, she didn’t transcribe even one word. She looked at Garrett, whose jaw was clenched as tight as his fists, his eyes cast down to the ground.
Please don’t believe him, Garrett.
“How do you think it felt to be told another man was willing to take my kid as his?” Jake continued. “What was it? Legally, morally, and spiritually? Are you shitting me, Kilcannon?”
Garrett’s shoulders slumped and Jessie swallowed her next denial.
Sensing he’d won, Jake flattened Garrett with one last steely look. “If this story doesn’t get killed, I’ll weather the storm. But you and your family and all the PetPic employees who got shares will lose every one, along with whatever shreds of respectability they have for you.” He backed out the door that was still open behind him, shaking his head. “I hope you’re happy. I hope you can live with yourself now that you lost her. I know why you did this. To ruin what Claudia and I have. You can’t. But I can ruin you and your family and your name. And I will.”
Chamberlain turned around and walked away, leaving them in stone-cold silence.
Jessie’s nails dug into her palms as she stepped forward. “Garrett, I did not tell anyone anything.”
“No.” He shut her down with one low, slow, harsh syllable. “No lies. No explanations. No excuses. You did this, and you’ll fix it.”
“I did not! How can you stand there and call me a liar? Fifteen minutes ago you said you loved me.”
“Fifteen minutes ago I trusted you.” He finally looked at her, his expression a perfect reflection of the agony in her heart. “He quoted me, Jessie.”
“I don’t know how that happened. I’ll find out. I’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise.”
“You don’t know how? How about ‘nothing is off the record’? That’s as far to the bottom as I want to go with you.”
She inched back, his words as powerful as Jake Chamberlain’s fist. “You have to believe me.”
He exhaled, stabbing his hands through his hair. “What I have to do is talk to Shane.”
“You have to talk to me.”
“Like hell I do,” he fired back. “We’ve talked enough. I’ve said enough. You’ve broken enough walls, damn it! Now, go, Jessie. Just go and fix this.” He walked back into the living room, looking around for a moment, then finding his phone. “Goodbye, Jessie.”
For a moment, she stood there, jaw open, heartbroken, soul crushed.
He loved her? He wouldn’t even give her the slightest benefit of the doubt.
As he tapped his phone, she slipped back into his bedroom, scooped her bra off the bed, and then went back out to get her purse.
He was leaning against the kitchen counter, dragging his hand through his hair, the other holding his cell pressed to his ear. “Hey, Claudia? It’s me.”
She closed her eyes as the impact hit, actually jerking back. Without looking at him, she opened the front door and closed it silently behind her.
“What do you know?” she whispered to herself. “I’m number two again.”