Straight from the Hart

by Tracie Banister

  CHAPTER 16

  A massive yawn escapes my lips and I shake my head to try and wake myself up, but I think it’s probably a lost cause. I was at my grandmother’s house, working on Jax’s Insta post with Carmen, until well after midnight, so I didn’t get home and into bed until around one-thirty, which made me want to hurl my cellphone across the room when its alarm went off at six a.m. I’ve had two cups of black coffee so far this morning, but my eyelids still keep drifting closed, and reviewing websites of the newest batch of hotels that have offered to partner with Straight from the Hart is every bit as scintillating as it sounds.

  At least I’ve got a meeting with a client in a half-hour so that I can confirm some final details with her and make sure Aubrey knows what needs to be done for the themed date night she wanted us to create for her and her husband. The man has a sexy genie fantasy, so we’re going The Arabian Nights route with décor, music, and dinner in the Royal Suite of the InterContinental. Upon his arrival, the husband will be given a “magic” lamp and when he rubs it, his better half will appear dressed in a harem girl costume to grant his wishes for the rest of the evening. What those wishes entail is entirely up to them (I don’t need to know details!), but I’m sure they’ll have fun with the role-playing.

  There’s a rat-a-tat-tat knock on my office door to announce the presence of Carmen who bursts into the room without waiting for me to respond.

  “She liked the post!” my social media director proclaims gleefully.

  “She, as in Jazmin?”

  “Yes!” she squeals. “And the post, which has only been up on Instagram for five hours, already has twelve million likes. Twelve million! It’s been picked up by every news outlet and the hashtag ‘Jax is sorry’ is trending everywhere.”

  “Did you start that?”

  “Nope. It was created by his fans.”

  “Sounds like the tide is turning for our client.” With a satisfied smile, I close my laptop.

  “It was really smart of you to have Jax address the fans, as well as Jaz, in his post. They all feel seen by him now.”

  “Give yourself some credit too,” I tell her as I rise from my chair. “You helped me pare down that rambling monologue Jax wrote, and you came up with that great idea for the picture to go with the post.”

  After much deliberation, we ended up using a simple, but beautiful, photo of blue jasmine—its color symbolizing honesty and trust in the language of flowers, and Jax did lay his soul bare in the message in hopes that he could restore the faith his wife and fans previously had in him.

  Moving around my desk to join Carmen on the other side, I ask, “Did Jaz leave a comment or emoji on the post?” If so, that might give us some idea of where she’s at emotionally.

  “No, the like was it.” The corners of her mouth turn down.

  “That’s okay,” I assure her. “Baby steps. A marriage isn’t rebuilt in a day. I told Jax this would take time, so we all just have to be patient.”

  My cellphone starts playing the chorus from that old Foreigner song “Urgent.”

  “Speaking of the contrite actor . . .” I reach across the desk to grab my phone and cut off the song in the middle of the word emergency.

  “Hi, Jax,” I greet my number one client. “How are you?”

  Carmen points to the phone, then to herself, asking if I need her to stay for the call.

  I shake my head, so she leaves, closing the door behind her to give me some privacy to hear Jax whine, “I just spent half an hour having a team of people apply makeup to every square inch of my body, and I had to skip breakfast so that my abs would look ripped for this Calvin Klein shoot. Did you hear that? My stomach is growling like a pissed off circus lion.”

  “So you’re hangry?” Can’t blame him. I’d be super cranky if I’d gone twelve-plus hours without food too.

  “Well, I was, but then my assistant showed me some of the nice comments people are leaving on my Instagram post and that improved my mood somewhat.”

  “And did you see that a certain someone liked your post a few minutes ago?”

  “What? Are you serious? Kelly didn’t mention that. Hold on.”

  I assume he’s taken the phone away from his ear to check the post himself. When he returns to the call a short time later, he exults, “Hot damn, Red! We did it! Jaz actually read and liked my apology. That’s the first indication she’s given that she doesn’t hate my guts since the shit hit the fan. This is HUGE! Do you think this means she’s ready for me to come home? Should I call her? She’s probably at work on the Sony lot. I should go over there and surprise her. Screw this photo shoot! We’ll have to reschedule for another day.”

  “Woah, woah, woah! Slow down. A like doesn’t mean that all is forgiven, and it’s not an invitation to cause a disruption on the set of Jaz’s show. You can’t put pressure on her about reconciling right now. You need to let this apology breathe for a day or two.”

  “Then what?”

  “You’ll do something simple, but meaningful, to remind Jaz of the good times and let her know you’re thinking about her.”

  “Something simple, but meaningful, huh? I know! I’ll send her a puppy. She’s been talking about getting a Shorkie forever, but I wasn’t into it because they’re like these girly, little balls of fluff that yip all the time and shed everywhere. If I give her one now, it’ll show that I’m placing her desires above my own. Those things aren’t cheap either, so it would be a total baller move!”

  “Uh huh, and if Jaz has a cute puppy to cuddle and give all her love and attention to, why would she need to take you back?”

  “Hmmmm, you make a good point. Okay, forget the dog. What are my other—yeah, all right, I’ll be there in a sec,” he yells at someone on his end of the line. “Sorry, Red, I have to go make ‘Do me’ faces at the camera. You got this, right?”

  “Absolutely, and I’ll let you know what the next step is. Would be nice if we knew what Jaz’s schedule was for the rest of the week.”

  “Alex should be able to help with that. Give him a call.”

  I’d rather not, but . . .

  “Will do. In the meantime, promise me that you won’t phone, text, or make any attempt to see Jaz. With your apology post, you’ve shown her a more mature and self-reflective side of yourself. You don’t want to undo any of the progress you’ve made with her by running off half-cocked—”

  He snickers at my use of a word that could also have a dirty meaning.

  “More mature, Jax!” I sound like a teacher who’s reprimanding him for goofing off in class instead of someone he’s employing, but the man really needs to grow up if he wants to impress his wife and save his marriage.

  My order instantly sobers him. “Sorry. I’ll behave. Promise. No reaching out to Jaz until you say it’s okay. Maybe I’ll give my phone to Kelly and tell her to hide it so that I won’t be tempted.”

  “Whatever it takes. Good luck with the photo shoot. I’ll check in with you later.”

  “Thanks, Red. Bye.”

  I disconnect the call and stare at my display screen for a minute, debating if I really want to phone my ex. I’d resolved to treat him just like any other person I have to deal with in a professional capacity, but that’s a lot easier said than done when seeing, or even hearing, him makes me feel such a strange and uncomfortable mix of emotions. My heart, which once adored Alex unabashedly, still remembers what it was like to flutter with anticipation whenever I knew we were going to be together or soar with happiness every time he said he loved me. But my head wants me to stick the heel of my stiletto through that foolish, romantic organ and never forget what a disappointing jerk he turned out to be. I really just want to focus on the job at hand and not be forced to make a decision between the two warring parts of my psyche, so I take the coward’s way out and pick up my phone to text the cause of my turmoil.

  ‘I need to know what’s on Jaz’s agenda for the next few days. Jax said you might have access to that info.’

  I�
��m sure Alex is either busy with one of his high-maintenance clients or smooth-talking others on their behalf, so I’m shocked when my phone buzzes with a reply a couple of minutes after I set it down.

  ‘Ask and ye shall receive.’

  I hear the ding of an incoming e-mail and check my laptop to see Jaz’s calendar for the rest of the week.

  ‘Did you hack into Jaz’s phone?’

  ‘No need. Her PA is a fan.’

  ‘Of Jax’s?’

  ‘She likes him; she loves me.’

  Not surprising that he’s turned the head of some gullible assistant.

  ‘Using your powers for evil again?’

  ‘Fostering synergistic relationships is what I do.’

 

  ‘Why did you want the calendar? Are you going to have Jax “accidentally” bump into Jaz somewhere?’

  ‘What do you take me for, some kind of amateur? I think I can be more subtle than that.’

  ‘What’s the plan?’

  I screw up my face while scanning through the different entries on the calendar.

  ‘She’s having lunch at the Waldorf Astoria’s rooftop restaurant day after tomorrow, which is perfect. Jax can make his next conciliatory gesture then, and I’ll be there to gauge Jaz’s reaction to it.’

  ‘Great! I’m free for lunch on Friday.’

  ‘I can handle this recon mission on my own thank you very much.’

  ‘Maybe so, but you’re supposed to be keeping me in the loop, remember?’

  ‘Rest assured I’ll give you a full report afterward.’

  ‘No one eats lunch at The Rooftop alone. You’ll stick out and draw unwanted attention to yourself.’

  Ugh, he’s right, which is incredibly annoying.

  ‘I’ll take Ian then.’ He’s not even in town, but apparently I have a mile-wide vindictive streak that wants Alex to know I’d choose Ian over him as a lunch partner.

  ‘So your boyfriend can pull some strings and get you a last minute rez at a celebrity hotspot that books up a month in advance and make sure you get a table in a discreet location where you can spy on Jaz without her realizing it?’

  And he just checkmated me. Bastard.

  ‘Fine. Lunch on Friday. Make the rez. I’ll meet you at your office at 12:30.’

  ‘It’s a date.’

  ‘No, it’s business.’

  I turn off the phone and drop it in my purse so that I’ll have the definitive last word on the subject.

  CHAPTER 17

  Although I’m a few feet away and my back is turned to the receptionist’s desk at Pinnacle PR, I can still hear Alex’s harried voice when he walks up and declares, “I don’t see my lunch appointment. Did she have to use the ladies’ or something?”

  “She’s right behind you,” the headset-wearing blonde responds in a tone that clearly conveys she thinks he’s an unobservant idiot.

  I assume he tosses a look back over his shoulder because he follows up with, “That’s not her. The woman I’m meeting is a redhead.”

  “Is she?” I spin around on my black peep-toe pumps and smirk at him.

  Alex’s jaw drops.

  “Holy smokes!” he exclaims. “You’re unrecognizable.”

  “That’s generally why a person wears a disguise, isn’t it?”

  He frowns, moving closer to me. “That’s a wig, right? Please tell me you didn’t actually cut off all your hair and change the color.”

  “Why not? You don’t like me as a brunette?” I query with a raised brow.

  Regardless of Alex’s opinion on the change, I’ve really been enjoying crossing over to the dark side. I feel more vampy and mysterious with this chestnut brown ‘do, so I can understand why it’s the go-to hair color for a lot of fictional undercover agents—Vanessa Kensington, Jane Smith, Sidney Bristow, two out of three Charlie’s Angels. And the tousled, chin-length bob with thick bangs that this wig is styled in couldn’t be more different than my usual long, soft waves. To complement this new hair, I did a smoky eye and plum lip and ditched my signature, pink/red work wardrobe in favor of a lapis blue, cap-sleeved midi dress with a sassy peplum and a large crystal belt buckle.

  With a quirk of his lips, Alex murmurs, “I didn’t say that.” He circles me, taking in my transformation from all angles. When he’s facing me once again, he asserts, “This is definitely very effective. You look absolutely nothing like your regular self. Your skin doesn’t even—” His eyes widen when he realizes why my normally porcelain flesh has some color. “You got a spray tan!”

  And I hated every minute of being blasted with that sticky, brown goop, but I can’t argue with the results. My skin does appear to have been kissed by the sun.

  “Never let it be said that I don’t commit myself fully to a job.”

  “But why do all this? It’s not like Jaz has ever met you.”

  “No, but thanks to my family, my business, and my natural hair color, which stands out in this sea of blondes here in LA, she might see us together and wonder why her estranged husband’s publicist is lunching with a romance concierge. In this get-up . . .” I gesture at myself. “. . . she’ll think I’m your client or business associate and will never put two and two together.”

  Giving me a smile of approval, he says, “You’re as clever as you are beautiful, you know that?”

  His unexpected praise makes me blush. I try to think of a witty retort, but my quick tongue fails me. Fortunately, his question appears to be rhetorical because he says, “Come on, 99, let’s do this,” then grabs my hand and leads me out of the office.

  Him calling me the name of Anne Hathaway’s secret agent character in Get Smart takes me back to the night early in our relationship when we cuddled up on his couch and Netflixed that movie. Alex is a huge Steve Carell fan; so much so that he can pretty much quote every line Michael Scott said on The Office, which is something else we used to watch together. All of these memories of happier times is making me feel all gooey and sentimental, which is annoying, so I pull my hand out of Alex’s and cross my arms in a defensive posture as we stand in front of the elevators, waiting for one to arrive.

  “Okay if I drive?” he asks when the transport finally comes and we step on.

  I shrug, and he hits the P2 button for the parking garage. The elevator seems to stop on every floor on the way down to admit more passengers, and as it fills up, Alex and I are forced closer and closer together until the side of his body is smushed up against mine. I can feel the heat emanating from the skin beneath his suit and smell the heady scent of his cologne and I’m suddenly reminded of the story Astra told me about the two of them getting busy on an elevator in Vegas. My blood pressure shoots up and my hands clench into fists when I think about him having hot, satisfying sex with a gorgeous blonde who was probably just the latest in a long line of women he’s had similarly steamy encounters with since we parted ways.

  Not that I’m jealous, mind you. It just infuriates me that his sex life seems to be better than ever while mine has been nothing to brag about since our breakup. I did try with other guys once I’d pieced my heart back together, but no one really hit the mark, either figuratively or literally. First up was Wesley, the solutions architect (don’t ask me what that is) I met at a wedding of one of the couples Jacqueline matched. He was smart, handsome in a buttoned-up way, and spent plenty of money on our dates, but he bored me and I often found myself zoning out in the middle of our conversations.

  The tedium extended to our intimate moments too. Sex with Wesley felt very by-the-numbers: a little bit of kissing, some cursory fondling of my breasts, then he would whip out his not-impressively-sized penis and want me to stroke him until he was ready to go. For the sake of variety, I would attempt to maneuver him into different positions, but I’d always end up on my back where he’d thrust inside me for a few minutes, making absolutely no noise to convey that he was actually enjoying what
he was doing, and finish with nothing even closely resembling a bang for me. In the two-plus months we were together, he never once made me climax, and that didn’t seem to bother him. Not wanting to be stuck in a relationship where I was sexually frustrated all the time, I decided to write Wesley off as my rebound guy. A few weeks later, I moved on to Seth, an actor I met by a bin of mangos at the farmers market one Saturday.

  Seth was the total opposite of strait-laced Wesley, both in looks (he had a gym body and several tatts) and personality (he was very intense, wanting to spend all of his free time with me and texting constantly when we were apart; he even said he loved me after just a handful of dates). You would think all of that passion would have translated well to the bedroom and I guess it sort of did, but . . .

  Sex with Seth always seemed like he was putting on a performance and I was some kind of prop. Instead of looking me in the eyes so that we could make a connection with something more than our genitals, he would watch himself in one of the many mirrors in his apartment. Unlike Wesley, Seth loved to verbally express himself while inside me, but it felt like just another actorly affectation. Interspersed among his emphatic groans and grunts was a litany of self-congratulatory statements, “Yeah, baby, I’m giving it to you good,” “You’re loving every second of this,” “I’m the best you’ve ever had,” “You can’t get enough of me,” “I’m gonna make you come so hard.” Unfortunately, it was then Seth who would have an epic, body-shuddering orgasm because he’d gotten so turned on by himself. We’d been dating about six weeks when he asked if I’d be cool with him using multiple cameras to film us having sex, probably because he wanted to see what his lovemaking looked like from every possible angle. I politely declined and told him I didn’t think things were going to work out with us.

  At that point I realized I was rushing into relationships with men who were all wrong for me because I was desperately trying to prove to myself that I could do just fine without Alex. I decided to be more selective and find a guy who stimulated me intellectually, emotionally, and physically, someone I could have fun with in and out of the bedroom. I made a conscious effort to stop forcing the issue and dated casually for a while, never making it past one or two dinners with the same guy and not going any further than a goodnight kiss since none of them lit my fire. Soon after, I got busy with starting Straight from the Hart, which left me with a lot less time to angst over the sad state of my love life, then Ian proposed our fauxmance and you know the rest.