by Lizzie Shane
Katherine Henrickson was an attractive older woman, a little rounder than her daughters, with the fair coloring she’d given to Laurie, though Marcy and Dinah had their father’s darker looks. She wore a pair of fresh trousers and a neatly buttoned blouse, her hands busy with the silk scarf around her neck the same way Marcy fidgeted with her sleeves when she was upset. Her hair was a bit damp, but her make-up was perfect and fresh.
“Hello, Mrs. Henrickson. Has there been any news? Can I get you anything?”
“No news yet. And I’m well taken care of. My daughters talked me into taking a shower. They kept telling me I’d be refreshed, over and over again. I gave in just to make them feel like they were doing something—looking after me for their daddy—but you know I do actually feel quite refreshed.”
“Funny how that happens sometimes.”
She hummed agreeably. “I think the shower was supposed to be only for staff, but the people here have been very accommodating. Or maybe that’s Miranda being a bully to get us what we need. I could almost like that woman.”
“She is a force of nature.”
Another hum of agreement.
They fell silent then, letting the water in the fountain do their talking for them for a while.
The sound of her voice was almost as gentle as the water when she finally spoke. “I didn’t think much of Frank when we first met. He was so full of arrogance and bluster. He had a good heart, but he didn’t really know how to use it yet.”
“And you taught him?”
“I did my part. But it was those girls who really gave him an education. He became an expert at love when he became a daddy.” She smiled, still watching the fountain. “Some men are like that.”
Craig couldn’t imagine it—but he couldn’t imagine being anyone’s father either. The idea of having kids had always been mildly terrifying to him. It would have been making the best of a mistake, but undeniably a mistake. He’d never really dreamed about a family. Being a daddy on purpose.
“I’ll always be Frank’s sweetheart, but those girls are the lights of his life. Especially Marcy. She was her daddy’s girl from the day she was born. Wrapped him around her little finger when she was a teeny little thing. I worry for Dinah, my wild child, but Frank has always worried for Marcy.”
Craig wasn’t sure if he was being warned off or not. She seemed more contemplative than accusatory. “I don’t want to hurt her.”
“I know you don’t.” Her soft smile warmed slightly as she took her eyes off the fountain and looked up at him, resting her hand on top of his. “You have a good heart, young man. You just need to learn how to use it.”
Something thick clogged his throat and he cleared it roughly, squeezing her hand. “He’s going to be fine, you know. He has a good heart.”
She looked back to the fountain with another soft smile. “That he does.”
“That nurse said he saw her down here.” Marcy rushed into the lobby with Dinah on her heels, scanning every chair for a sign of her mother. They’d just gotten news that the second emergency surgery her father had been rushed into was now complete and the doctor would be out to speak with them soon.
There would be news soon. Actual news. She could only hope it was good. They’d been waiting so long without knowing.
“There,” Dinah said, pointing, and Marcy followed her finger toward the fountain to one side of the lobby. She was so fixated on her mother it took her a moment to identify the figure seated beside her—asleep sitting up again.
Craig.
When they reached their mother, she held up a finger to her lips to quiet them. “He just nodded off. Is there news?”
“Should be soon. A nurse sent us to get you.”
Katherine carefully unwound the hand that Craig had been clasping in his sleep. “We should let him rest. I don’t think he’s had much sleep.”
“How long have you been down here with him?” Marcy asked.
“Since I finished freshening up after my shower. I know I should have come right back up, but it was so peaceful down here, just us and the fountain.”
Marcy never would have thought Craig would be peaceful—but then she’d never thought he would stay long after the benefit to him had passed. She was tempted to kiss his cheek as he slept—right above where the two-days stubble was growing in—but some instinct stopped her. “We should get upstairs.”
Dinah and Marcy flanked their mother and together they walked to the elevators, each praying for the best. Marcy hadn’t kissed him, but she did look back at Craig’s sleeping sprawl as the elevator arrived. She was beginning to wonder if he was a better man than even he gave himself credit for.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Awake. It was a glorious, massive, shattering word.
When the doctor said it, her relief was so big and profound she couldn’t even really feel it properly. He would recover. He was awake. He was alive.
He’d had a severe heart attack and the first surgery had apparently kicked something loose that had caused a minor stroke, but thanks to the attentions of the doctors in the ICU, they’d caught it almost instantly and thought there would be only minimal effects. He would be fine. He was awake.
They cried and laughed and hugged and held one another, rocking back and forth with pure happiness, and for a flicker of a moment she missed Craig, wished he was there to fling herself against—but then it was time to see him. Her father.
Awake.
Everything was a rush from there. The hours blurred into a frenzy of activity and euphoria after all the waiting and fear. Twenty-four hours of drawing back a sling-shot with slow, agonizing tension stretching her every inch of the way had released and she was flying, catapulting through life.
After she saw her father, saw him gruff and irritated with all the attention, she went home and showered. Then it was over to her parents’ house with Laurie to clean out the fridge and completely restock it with heart-healthy alternatives.
No more salami. It would be all turkey-bacon from here on out.
She kept busy, back and forth from the hospital a dozen times, leaping to do every little task that might need doing—all the while ignoring Miranda’s calls and her very patient and understanding voicemails which all ultimately asked the same question.
When?
When would Marcy be ready to restart the show? It didn’t have to be soon, they understood that her family needed her, but if she could just tell the crew how long they would be on hiatus…
But Marcy didn’t want to go back to the show that had worried her father into a heart attack. Not now, not ever. She didn’t want to re-enter that reality where nothing was real and she definitely didn’t want to leave her family.
She missed Craig and even sort of missed Daniel, but she wasn’t ready to go back—and she didn’t know when, because she wasn’t sure she ever would be.
She entered her father’s hospital room on Thursday to find him sitting up, his skin tone back to a healthy shade and his big booming laugh filling the room. When he saw her in the doorway, his grin broadened and he waved her forward. “Marcy! Just the daughter I’ve been hoping to see.”
“Oh? You’re in a good mood,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound too surprised—he was rubbish as a patient, always insisting he was fine, damn it—so this cheerfulness was particularly unexpected.
“They’ve told me I can be released back into the wild on Saturday,” he bragged. “But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. Sit.”
As Marcy pulled a chair next to his bed, her mother rose from the one on the opposite side. “I’ve got some calls to return. I’ll leave you two alone.”
Marcy took her father’s hand as the door snicked quickly shut behind her mother. He wasn’t big on displays of emotion—she probably hadn’t held his hand since she was a child, but he let her now.
“When do you go back to California?”
Marcy shook her head. “You don’t have to worry about that. I’m not going back on the show.”<
br />
“Yes, you are.”
“Dad…”
“Your mother thought you were leery of going back but I told her she had you wrong. Not my Marcy. She’s too smart for that.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be the smart one this time. Besides, what’s so wrong with staying here with you?”
“Nothing. As long as you’re not letting fear stop you. That’s not who you are.”
There it was again. Not who you are. That compliment that was also pressure to be more, to be better. She studied their linked hands, his much larger and age-spotted, hers with nails bitten down to the quick from the stress of the last week.
“Marcy.” He squeezed her hand until she looked up and met his eyes. “Don’t stop being who you are because I had a little heart flutter.”
“It was more than a flutter.”
“Whatever it was. You’re my clever daughter. My brave one. And I’m so proud of you.”
“I sit at home writing stories. Hardly brave.”
“You go after your dreams when other people are caught up in dreaming about them. I liked you home writing stories where you were safe, but I always knew you would leave someday. Murphysboro was never going to be a big enough adventure for you.”
“I’m not planning to move. Even if I went back to the show, I’d come back here when we wrap filming. Murphysboro will always be my home.”
“You need to go out and find the life you want rather than staying safe here forever. And when you find it, grab on with both hands.” He grimaced. “Even if it’s in San Diego.”
She had been studying their linked hands, but that brought her head up with a snap. “I thought you hated Craig.”
Her father shrugged. “I still think Daniel is a better choice, but your mother is talking me around. Some. Though I still worry he’ll hurt you.”
Anxiety jumped in her chest. “Don’t worry—”
“I’m always going to worry about you, kiddo. It’s my job. But don’t you dare play it safe just to keep me from fretting. Being with someone you don’t care for just because they can’t hurt you isn’t a life, Marcy.”
“I care for Daniel.” In a way. She could grow to love him. He was so much like her father, how could she not?
“It’s your choice. You know what I think, but whoever you choose, we support you.” The words were gruff and grudging and her heart clenched hard.
“I love you, Daddy.”
His cheeks flushed above his beard. “Yeah, well, I think you’re pretty great too. Now when are you going back to show biz?”
“I want to stay here while you’re recovering.”
“I’ll keep you a few more days. I’m selfish enough to want that. But not too long. Your adventure is waiting.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Craig dodged a light stand, barely missing getting brained by a tripod in the process, and came to the realization that perhaps watching the crew set up the confessional in the spare bedroom of his Verona hotel suite wasn’t the safest place to wait for Miranda.
It was strange, being back in the world of swarming camera crews and exotic destinations. Marcy was due to meet him tomorrow for their two day overnight date. He’d overheard some of the crew talking and knew she would be on a train down from the Austrian Alps—which could only mean she was with Daniel there now. A fact he couldn’t seem to get out of his head.
Daniel got the Alps. Craig got the city of Romeo and Juliet—which he tried not to take as a commentary on the doomed nature of his relationship. The location had probably been scouted for Mark the Shakespeare scholar and they’d just kept it for convenience when Craig accidentally made it all the way to the finals.
From eavesdropping on the crew, he knew that Miranda was due any minute, so he hovered, hoping to catch her. He hadn’t had a chance to talk to her one-on-one since the hospital, so he didn’t have a clue what the state of his job offer was. She’d said it expired at the Elimination Ceremony and there hadn’t been one, so it had to still be on the table—at least that was what he was prepared to argue.
He’d decided—somewhere between hospital waiting rooms and the zillion hour flight to Venice—that he was going to take his mother’s advice. He wanted to have his cake and eat it too. There was no reason why he couldn’t have the dream job and Marcy.
Something had shifted in him on a tectonic level when Marcy had needed him. It hadn’t been all fun and games anymore. The cameras stopped rolling and life became real again. All too real. At the time he had just reacted, but now, when he thought back to why he hadn’t been able to leave her, he could only come up with two possible explanations: pity and love.
If anything happened to his mother, he would be a wreck—and he would face it completely alone. He didn’t have anyone who would stand by him then—so he had needed to stand by Marcy. Anyone would in that situation, wouldn’t they? It didn’t mean he loved her. Though he did feel for her. And lately those feelings had been different—seismic, tectonic shifts.
Perhaps it was an illusion, what he wasn’t quite ready to admit to himself he might be feeling. Their relationship had been all about different kinds of emotional stress—that could create a false positive in the love department, couldn’t it?
Of course it could.
But that didn’t stop him from thinking forward. Thinking about what his life could be like after the show. What it might be like with her.
They weren’t the picket fence type—even if she was from the world’s cutest small town. No. They would have an apartment. He would work television hours—early to bed, insanely early to rise if he was on a morning show. They’d be in LA or New York—bustling, active cities with a million things to do. He’d come home to her and when she was done spinning tales for the day, they would explore their new city together, finding their favorite restaurants, figuring out which bars had the best specials on hot wings during football games. He could see it and it was better because he was doing it with her.
Was that love? Maybe not yet. But it was an opportunity worth fighting for.
“Craig. Just the man I was looking for.”
Miranda’s crisp, direct voice brought him out of his lovesick musings. “Funny. I’ve been looking for you too.”
“Well, isn’t that convenient?” Her ubiquitous tablet was tucked under one arm. “Why don’t we go up to the roof? I’d like to check out the view for some possible establishing shots.”
“Sounds good.”
The luxury hotel where he’d been installed featured every modern luxury, but was housed in what had once been an eighteenth century palazzo, so the act of getting up to the roof took a convoluted route of narrow hallways and twisting staircases. He trailed after Miranda who seemed to know the way and was rewarded when she opened a final door onto the rooftop, revealing the stunning panorama of Verona sprawled around them.
The sun was bright and high, with only a few puffy white clouds providing an accent to the piercing blue of the sky. The breeze on the roof was cool enough to remind him that summer hadn’t started in earnest, but not so cold to send him running back inside.
Miranda strolled to the edge of the roof, craning her neck to take in every view, studying each one for the best shot.
“So you made it to the finals,” she said eventually, without turning to face him.
“Yeah, sorry about that. Not really according to your plan, was it? Or did you bring me up here to toss me off the edge and replace me with Darius or Mark?”
“They were easier to manage,” Miranda commented. She turned to face him, clasping her hands in front of her. “Didn’t you want the network job?”
“I couldn’t very well take myself off the show while Marcy’s dad was in the hospital—even if it wouldn’t have been a complete dick move, the cameras wouldn’t have seen it. If drama happens on a reality show but there’s no camera there to film it, does it still happen?”
“Cute,” she said dryly.
“Besides, you said I had until the
Elimination Ceremony and there never was one. Marcy just got rid of Darius. So if I bailed on you, you’d only have one guy in the finals—where’s the suspense in that?”
“You’re right. I’m actually glad you stuck around.”
He frowned. “You just wanted to force me to defend myself?”
“I wanted to hear what you would say. Sounds like you still want the job.”
“Of course I do.”
Miranda studied him for a long moment, her short blond hair whipping against her forehead from the wind. Finally she nodded, coming to some unknown conclusion. “All right. New deal. The job is still on the table and it’s yours on two conditions. One—you can’t tell Marcy about it. I need you to play along, stay until the final choice, and be the perfect Suitor, but you can’t tell her why.”
It wasn’t bad, as conditions went. He could always tell her about the job later. She didn’t need to know about it before she made her choice. “Fine. And the second condition?”
“If she chooses you, in the end, you can only have the job if you turn her down.”
“What? Why?” Craig glowered. “You said before you needed me to leave so I didn’t get in the way of your perfect happy ending, but if she wants me to be her happy ending, why are you fucking with that?”
“The audience loves drama. They love choices. They know most of these relationships don’t work out, but they love seeing who picks what. Your choice has always been between love and money, Craig. You’ve made that very clear. So we’re going to have Pendleton film a sit down with you where he offers you the network job, but you can only have it if you ditch Marcy at the final pedestal. The home audience will see her choice and yours. Double the drama.”
“I’ve studied these shows. That isn’t how you do things. You’re supposed to be selling happiness and romance not forcing me to break her heart.”
“The shows are about ratings and what will get people talking around the water cooler the next day. They aren’t about being humane. They never have been. I got this job because I was willing to think outside the box. Jack picked a Suitorette last season who wasn’t even on the show. America got a heaping plate of love served to them last season. But every season is different. And this one seems to be about materialism and honesty. I wasn’t expecting that, but you work with what you have.”