One Thing I Know

by Kara Isaac

  Donna had disappeared from the table. Hopefully to place the order Rachel had been about to place. Joey was watching them both with unbridled interest.

  “So . . .” Rachel sat back in her seat, pushing her iPad a couple of inches away from her. “Joey’s not your son.”

  “I never said he was.”

  “You never said he wasn’t. It’s a fair enough assumption to make when you show up with a kid who looks like your mini me.” Why was she looking at him all mad again? Most women found the uncle-looking-after-nephew thing endearing.

  “No, he’s not my son. He’s my brother’s son. And Scott also happens to look quite a lot like me.”

  Joey looked back up from his Angry Birds. “Uncle Lucas doesn’t have any kids. He’s just an uncle.”

  “That’s me. Just an uncle. Joey’s mom had an unexpected appointment, so I offered to take him for the morning.”

  Joey narrowed his eyes and looked between Lucas and Rachel. “To have kids you have to have sex, and Uncle Lucas doesn’t have anyone to have sex with. Do you?”

  Oh wow. That was next level. Lucas could feel his ears heating up. He’d give anything to go back to the clothing insults now.

  “Um . . .” Lucas cleared his throat but couldn’t come up with any other words. Everything he could come up with had the potential to make things even more awkward.

  Joey looked at him expectantly. “What? It’s true. You don’t. My dad said—”

  Lucas panicked. “Joey, if you don’t finish that sentence I will take you for ice cream after this.” Who knew what Scott had said. Especially if he didn’t know Joey was listening. It would be worth Grace being cross with him just to end this.

  Joey’s eyes widened. “Ice cream before lunch?”

  Lucas shrugged his shoulders. “Sure.”

  “Okay.” Joey returned his attention to his screen, but Lucas’s system was still flooded with adrenaline.

  Rachel was trying to smother her laughter but doing a terrible job of it. “Are all five-year-olds like this?”

  “I don’t know. I only know this one.”

  She leaned back in her chair. “They should send them to all the CIA black sites. Imagine the intelligence they’d gather.”

  “I know.” They smiled at each other and something seemed to be broken. “Can I ask you a question?”

  Rachel tilted her head at him and took her time answering. “That depends on the question.”

  “Have we met before? Have I done something to offend you?”

  Rachel sighed. Drummed her fingers on the table for a couple of seconds. “No, I’m sorry. It’s not about you. It’s just this tour has taken months to plan and Donna’s got a book due in a few months that she hasn’t even really started writing and things are just a bit crazy. I just . . .” She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m sorry, but I’m just not sure about bringing you on board and adding all this extra stuff into the schedule. Especially this late in the game. Call it an occupational hazard, but an assistant’s job is to know what’s going on. To have everything under control. And now you’re on the scene and suddenly I don’t.”

  “If it helps at all, I probably want to be doing this about as much as you want me to be.”

  That mustered a small smile out of her as she picked up her water glass. “I thought that might be the case.”

  “Since we’re here, what exactly is awaiting me tomorrow at this test event? Ethan’s been very sketchy on the details. Am I coming to a book signing? Some kind of meet-and-greet thing?”

  They would be in Chicago. Where he was a nobody. Even if everything went well, they’d realize after Saturday night that he brought nothing to the table and they’d let him loose to go home and he could go back to his sports show, and Donna could just carry on with her tour without him.

  Rachel raised her eyebrows over the rim of her glass. “You don’t know what’s planned for tomorrow night?” The way that she carefully placed her drink on the table with puckered eyebrows sent a prickle down his spine.

  “Why? What’s with the concerned eyebrows?”

  Rachel glanced toward the counter, where Donna was ordering. “It would probably be better if Donna or Lacey, our publicist, looped you in. This was Donna’s idea, but Lacey is more involved with organizing it than I am and she has all the details. I can give you her phone number.”

  “As very competent as I’m sure Lacey is, I’d rather you just break whatever it is to me.” He’d rather hear it from the woman who was as skeptical of the whole thing as he was. Not the person in charge of planning it.

  Rachel shifted in her seat. “Well, it’s set up in a talk show style. So you and Donna will be up front on a couple of couches. She’ll speak for probably ten minutes or so about the latest book, then she’ll introduce you, and then there’s a Q-and-A session from the audience.”

  That didn’t sound so bad. How many people could it be at such short notice? “So, maybe a hundred people?”

  She winced. “Try two thousand.”

  “I’m sorry, what?” He had to have misheard. Or she had to be mistaken.

  “The venue capacity is two thousand. And all the tickets sold out in a few hours. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but Feelings and Football is already a runaway success, before it’s even a thing.”

  - 8 -

  Rachel had no reason to lie to him, but Lucas had hoped—with the fingers-and-toes-crossed, fervent-prayers-to-a-God-he-hadn’t-spoken-to-in-a-long-time type of hope—that she’d been mistaken. That Lacey had gotten this mixed up with some other event she was planning. Anything.

  And then he’d found himself in Chicago at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in a room bigger than a football field, with uniform rows of chairs that seemed to stretch forever.

  Lucas stood on one side of the stage, just out of sight of the women pouring into the room. His shirt already stuck to him from the heat of the lights. He hadn’t brought a spare. It had been a last-minute thought to bring a dress shirt, full stop.

  “Here’s a copy of the latest run sheet.” Rachel walked up to him and handed him a piece of paper. He looked down at the long list of items timed down to the second.

  “Is someone going to tell me what to do? Where’s Donna?” His voice was an octave higher than normal.

  “Just think of it like radio. Except you can see the people.”

  “One of the best things about radio is not being able to see the people.” He mumbled the words as he squinted at the page. Surely he didn’t need glasses already?

  There was a whoosh as a banner unfurled from the ceiling and down the back wall. An enormous banner, emblazoned with a photo of him and Donna, and The Feelings and Football Tour written across the bottom. Feelings was in cursive, and Football in block font.

  “What is that?”

  Rachel barely glanced up. “Oh, that’s nothing. You should see some of the merchandise that’s been ordered.”

  “Do I have to?”

  Her face split in a smile. “You’ll be fine. I promise. Just imagine them all in their underwear or something.”

  “That’s even more terrifying.” Two thousand women in their underwear. He’d rather imagine a zombie apocalypse.

  Rachel pointed to a door that was set into the wall a few yards away. “Let’s go to the green room and I’ll talk you through it all. Watching people arrive is just going to make things worse.”

  Lucas took one look at the growing crowd just in time to see a woman wearing a hot-pink T-shirt emblazoned with Lucas Lover take a seat in the front row. He couldn’t escape through the door fast enough.

  It closed behind them and suddenly there was blessed silence, with just a muffled hint of all the voices in the next room.

  Rachel sat down on the couch next to him and plucked the paper out of his hand. “Look. You really only have to remember three main parts. Stay in here until it starts. I’ll tell you and Donna when it’s time to go wait in the wings, and then you walk onto the stage when the t
wo of you are called, then sit on a couch while Donna does her spiel, then just talk for a while. Like you do five nights a week.”

  “I talk about sports, Rachel. Sports. You can’t tell me that there are two thousand women coming tonight to talk about baseball stats or defensive plays or ask about my draft picks.”

  Rachel lifted the paper to cover the bottom half of her face. Presumably to try to hide the fact that she was biting her bottom lip to contain her laughter. “Maybe not,” she finally conceded. “But what’s the worst that can happen? If you get up there and completely freak and just sit there mute, this will be the one and only event. And if you’re a natural, then that can only do good things for your profile. Even if it’s not exactly in your preferred area of expertise.”

  “Where is Donna?”

  Rachel shrugged. “Probably out working the crowd, signing books. She loves things like this. Hates being in the green room. She says green rooms are extroverts’ joy killers.”

  “You’re not an extrovert, are you?” Even though Lucas barely knew her, he couldn’t imagine Rachel as the life of the party.

  She shook her head. “Absolutely not. That’s why we make a good team. Lots of high-profile people fall out with their assistants because they secretly want to be in the spotlight too. That would be my worst nightmare. I’m definitely a behind-the-scenes woman.”

  “You and me both. Well, not the woman part. Obviously.”

  Rachel stood up. Helped herself to a couple of cookies from a plate on a table. “Want one?”

  “Sure.”

  She threw it at him like a Frisbee and he caught it midair. Shoveled it into his mouth. He hadn’t had any breakfast. Or lunch. The nerves had unexpectedly assaulted him from the moment he woke up. This had been the longest day in the history of the world.

  “Don’t you have things to be doing? Don’t let me keep you.”

  Rachel checked her watch. “Nope. This is Lacey’s gig. If Donna isn’t in here in ten minutes, then I’ll need to go and find her. Apart from that, my only other job is making sure the two of you are out there in time to go on the stage.”

  “But surely you must have other assistant-y stuff to be doing.”

  Rachel shrugged as she sat back down on the other couch. “Not really. If tonight goes well and Feelings and Football officially becomes a thing, then I’ll have plenty to do, but this is the calm before the storm.”

  “Well, hopefully it doesn’t become a thing, then. Then you can go back to your perfectly planned tour and I can go back to sports.” Well, sports with a side of angst, since he had yet to come up with a magic bullet to stop all the women from calling in to his show.

  Rachel didn’t say anything for a couple of seconds, then asked, “Does it really bother you that much? People asking you for advice?”

  “I’m a sports guy. Why do women call me to ask for relationship advice? Why do they even care what I have to say? I’m not an expert. I have no relevant experience. Heck, I’m not even married. I feel like such a fraud. They’d probably get better advice from a fortune cookie.”

  Now, there was an idea. For every call he got asking about anything that wasn’t sports related, he could just crack open a fortune cookie and read them whatever it said.

  Rachel didn’t say anything. Just tapped her phone and studied its screen for a second. Her hair slipped down and shielded the expression on her face. She looked back up, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Want to know why I think women call you?”

  “Fire away.”

  “Have you heard of Belle Gibson?”

  “No.”

  Rachel drummed her fingers on the arm of her couch for a few seconds. “Okay. So Belle Gibson is an Australian who was building this massive wellness empire off the back of having terminal brain cancer. She claimed she’d shunned conventional medicine and that she’d gone into remission thanks to whole foods, detoxing, that kind of thing. She created this app that Apple promoted in the App Store, had a huge book deal, hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram, you name it.”

  He could see where this was headed. “And she died? She wasn’t in remission at all?”

  Rachel shook her head. “She never had brain cancer. She’d made the whole thing up.”

  Lucas rubbed his hand through his hair. “She’d falsified her medical records?”

  “No. She didn’t have any medical records at all. At least not ones saying she had cancer.”

  “But how could she get a book deal based on a lie?”

  Rachel shrugged. “She’d built a big social media following and everyone just believed the hype. They were so desperate to cash in on it that they never asked for any evidence. But the worst of it is that people who really had cancer believed her and thought that if they shunned conventional medicine and followed her diet, then they could beat cancer too.”

  “So people could be dead because of her.”

  “It’s definitely possible.”

  “And I remind you of Belle Gibson.” Talk about a soul-destroying thought.

  Rachel leaned back on the couch. “What made me think about her was your comment about not being an expert. We live in an information age, where everything is contestable. Where people with PhDs and years of research have to compete with people who haven’t spent a day in a science lab since they left high school but think their arguments should be given equal weight because they found some stuff on Google.”

  Better and better. “So I’m not like this Belle woman, but I’m like an internet nut job? This is what you want me to be thinking when I’m about to get on a stage with your boss in front of thousands of women?”

  Rachel threw her head back and laughed. That kind of full-hearted laugh couldn’t help but make him laugh too. “No.” She managed to gasp out the word as she ran her fingertips under her eyes. “Okay, let me try again.”

  “To be honest, I’m really not sure if my ego can bear it.”

  “Okay, what I’m trying to say is that I think the reason that women find you so attractive—”

  “That’s definitely a more promising start.”

  Rachel rolled her eyes at him, but she couldn’t hide the flush that hit her cheeks. Which he took a childish amount of satisfaction in. “It’s because you’re the anti-expert. And I don’t mean that in a quackery kind of way.”

  “What other kind of way is there?”

  “Women believe you because you don’t have an ulterior motive. Like you said, you’re the sports guy who has never solicited women to call your show and ask you for advice on their love lives.”

  He sure hadn’t.

  “And that’s exactly what appeals to people. You’re not trying to build some kind of self-help empire or land a book deal or be the next Dr. Phil. You’re just a guy—and I’m not going to lie that being a single, eligible one doesn’t hurt—who doesn’t pull any punches, because what you really want is for them to get off your phone lines and let you get on with talking about the Dodgers or whoever your baseball team is.”

  “The Brewers.”

  “Whatever.” Rachel checked her watch. “Okay, I really need to go and find Donna now. Was that a good enough pep talk for you?”

  “Oh, is that what that was?”

  Standing, Rachel rounded the couch and opened a door opposite the one they’d entered from. She cast a smile over her shoulder. “Yup, and it was a one-time-only deal. So don’t go getting your hopes up for any more.”

  Their gaze connected, something seemed to spark, and suddenly Lucas found his hope rising for something completely different. Now that was something that hadn’t happened in a long time.

  • • •

  CLOSING THE door behind her, Rachel sagged against the wall. The intensity in Lucas’s gaze had spiraled something through her that she hadn’t felt in years. If ever.

  She didn’t have time for this. Didn’t have time to be distracted. Certainly not by a reluctant guy with a brooding gaze and a penchant for honesty.

  Pushing he
rself off the wall, she headed down the silent hall toward the door that would take her out to the main foyer. No doubt she’d find Donna there mingling with her hordes of adoring fans.

  “Sorry!” Donna rounded the corner at the end of the hall and walked toward her. “Though, in my defense, I am improving. I’m only a couple of minutes late and you didn’t have to come find me. How’s Lucas?”

  “Okay. He’s just waiting in the green room. Though I feel bad that we didn’t really do anything to prepare him for this. He has no idea what he’s in for.”

  Donna dismissed her concerns with a flap of her hand. “You can’t prepare someone for something like this. They just have to do it. He’ll be totally fine. His job is to be prepared for the unexpected.”

  “He asked me what I thought his appeal was. I told him I thought it was because this has landed in his lap despite his attempts to push it off. Unlike Belle Gibson.”

  Donna’s lips formed a thin line. “That woman should be in jail.”

  “How are we any different?” Rachel dropped her voice to a whisper as they headed back toward the green room. “That was all I could think as I was telling him about her. We’re just as bad.”

  “Nonsense. That woman was a pathological liar who preyed on the most vulnerable. People with terminal illnesses desperate to grab onto any scrap of hope they could find. And to make her money and fund her lifestyle, she sold them a complete lie.”

  “I know, but . . .”

  Donna stopped walking and turned toward her. “You worry too much. Ghostwriters are totally standard. You know that. I could put a billboard in Times Square tomorrow announcing that I have a ghostwriter and no one would care.”

  Her aunt was right in some ways, but it did nothing to salve her conscience. “I feel so guilty when I’m with Lucas. Knowing that he thinks that it’s you on his show when it’s me.” Ghostwriters might be common, but pretending to be Donna during interviews definitely was not. The advice that came out of her mouth during those interviews was all her, and people had no idea.

  “We’re not hurting anyone. You are giving the exact same advice that I would. That I do.”