At the Heart of It

by Tawna Fenske

  “Typical guy.”

  “You’ve done it?”

  “Probably.”

  Kate laughed, not looking too perturbed. “I could have refused, but it seemed like a pretty harmless way to spice things up,” she said. “Then again, it’s tough to feel sexy when you’re sitting on the toilet in the ladies room, yanking your boobs out of your bra between meetings.”

  “Is this supposed to be turning me on?”

  She grinned, but ignored him. “Anyway, this one time I was in a hurry, so I snapped this really quick up-skirt photo while I was sitting at my desk eating lunch.”

  “Hot,” he said, not caring that he sounded like Average Joe.

  “Not quite. I went to text it to Anton, but instead of hitting the message icon, I hit the icon right above it. The one that says, ‘Tap to Share with AirDrop.’”

  “Oh no.”

  “Oh yes. And since I was at work, the AirDrop user closest to me was the person in the next office.”

  “God.” Jonah shook his head. “Was it your boss?”

  “Thankfully, no. It was Amy. She still teases me about it sometimes.”

  Jonah laughed and picked up his beer. God, he loved this. Not the dirty story swap, though that was fun, too. He loved sitting here with her like this, laughing together at themselves and each other. Not caring about showing each other their very best sides, but letting their silliness show, too.

  This is real intimacy.

  He almost said it out loud, but stopped himself. It didn’t seem like the right thing to say. Not now, not with what they’d agreed.

  Still, he felt closer to her. Did she feel it, too? He looked in her eyes and knew the answer. There was an intensity there that made his chest ache. A longing he knew matched his own.

  “Kate—”

  “I should let you get home.” She stood up fast, nearly sending her chair toppling. She righted it and began stacking paper plates and bowls into a pile, arranging the plastic utensils in the top bowl. She wasn’t meeting his eyes, so he stepped forward and touched the side of her face.

  “Kate,” he said again, softer this time. She lifted her chin, meeting his eyes at last, and the urgency in her gaze made his chest feel tight.

  Then his lips were on hers, gentle at first, waiting to see if she’d respond. She did respond, kissing him back with a hunger that sent his pulse racing. She tasted like hops and honey and something unbearably sweet.

  He tunneled his fingers into her hair, while his other hand still cupped the side of her face. Deepening the kiss, he knew this went beyond lust. Beyond desire. In thirty-six years, he’d never had such a deep-seated longing to connect with another human.

  He broke the kiss but didn’t let go of her. Looking deep into her eyes, he knew she felt this, too. “Please,” he whispered. “Let me make love to you again. Just once more.”

  Something flickered in her eyes. Desire, yes, but something else. If she said no, he’d accept it. He’d walk away and never ask again. But holy mother of hell, it was going to hurt.

  The silence stretched out so long he began to count his own heartbeat. Or was that hers? They were pressed against each other, chest to chest, heart to heart.

  “We shouldn’t,” she whispered.

  “I know.” He tried to step back, but something held him there. Maybe it was Kate’s palms pressing against his shoulder blades, but it felt more than physical. “It’s okay.” He meant it as a reassurance that he was fine walking away. That he could step back and exit the room with his pants zipped, his job safe, his heart intact.

  But the longing in Kate’s eyes was unmistakable. She didn’t let go. She took a shaky breath that made everything ache in the center of Jonah’s chest.

  “No, I need this,” she whispered, and kissed him again.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “This feels weird on so many levels,” Kate muttered to Amy in the elevator the next morning.

  Amy gave her a sympathetic smile. “You mean attending a TV network meeting in the same building where you shagged the show’s star the night before?”

  Kate grimaced as she watched the buttons on the elevator counting down to the awkward meeting. Five, four, three . . .

  “God, I shouldn’t have slept with him again,” Kate whispered.

  “Will you stop it? You’re both consenting adults. And don’t give me that bullshit again about how he’s technically still married. As far as he knows, he’s been divorced for a year.”

  “Yes, but as far as I know—”

  “Don’t.” The elevator doors swished open, but Amy put a hand on Kate’s shoulder to hold her back. With her free hand, she hit two more buttons and sent the doors sliding shut again. The buttons began to light up once more, this time in ascending order.

  Kate looked at Amy. “We’re going back up? What did you forget?”

  “Nothing, but this seems like one of the few places for a private conversation.”

  Kate glanced around, half expecting to see hidden microphones in the walls. How did that little emergency-call button work, anyway?

  “Look, Kate,” Amy continued. “Don’t turn this into a moral issue. You know as well as I do that the marriage only exists on paper. This is a technicality. One we can fix easily enough with a good lawyer and some hastily filed paperwork from the couple.”

  “But that’s not what everyone wants,” she said. “Not Viv, anyway.”

  “So? You can’t force someone to stay married to you. This is reality television, not Vatican City. Jonah wants to be divorced, right?”

  Kate hesitated. “Right,” she said, hoping it was true. God, it felt true last night when he held her in his arms, murmuring about how he wished he could stay there in bed with her forever.

  “Besides,” Amy continued. “If you hadn’t slept with him last night—”

  “I shouldn’t have told you that,” Kate interrupted, prompting an eye roll from Amy. “I shouldn’t. I know better than to kiss and tell.”

  “Please,” Amy said. “The man showed up with dinner and didn’t leave until two in the morning, which I know because I was up all night working on scheduling and heard him leave. You think I’m dumb enough to believe you ate cornbread for six hours?” She shook her head, not giving Kate a chance to retort. “Like I was saying, he would have just gotten suspicious if you’d eaten his dinner and sent him on his way home with a pat on the head.”

  The elevator doors swished open again, this time on the eleventh floor. A man in black holding a room-service tray looked startled to see them. “Are you going down?”

  Amy hovered a hand over the elevator buttons. “Which way are you going?”

  “Down.”

  “Sorry, we’re going up.”

  She hit the close button and sent the elevator surging upward again. Kate looked at her. “I’m not sure whether to be more concerned that you just implied it would be suspicious for me not to sleep with a guy who brought me food, or more concerned that you’re treating the elevators as our private mobile confession booth.”

  “There are plenty of things to be concerned about in this situation,” Amy said. “Those aren’t the most important ones.”

  “What are the most important ones?”

  “Keeping the show running smoothly,” Amy said. “And keeping Chase Whitfield from doing anything stupid.”

  And keeping Jonah on the show so he can help Jossy, Kate amended in her mind. She hadn’t told Amy about the accident or Jonah’s role in it. Unless Amy remembered that brief line in On the Other Hand, she probably had no idea Jonah’s dad was dead, or how that had sparked Jonah’s urge to protect his sister.

  That was Kate’s secret to hold. There were so few opportunities in this job for her to protect other people’s private stories. To protect their hearts. Something about that detail made Kate want to hold it tightly to her chest.

  “I swear, Chase is like a bloodhound when he gets the scent of some juicy, heartbreaking story line,” Kate muttered.

>   “It makes me hate him as a person,” Amy agreed. “But as a network exec, it’s what’s made him successful.”

  The doors swished open again, revealing a tall, beefy figure standing in front of them on the fifteenth floor.

  Speak of the devil, Kate thought as she pasted on her most professional smile.

  “Chase,” she said. “It’s great to see you. I didn’t realize you were staying here as well.”

  “I normally wouldn’t, but they were all booked at the Four Seasons,” he said. “That’s why we’re in the conference room here this morning.”

  “I wondered about that,” Amy said, shuffling through a stack of papers in her arms. “Here’s that post-production report you asked for. It’s coming along nicely.”

  “Excellent work.” Chase took the folder as the doors opened into the lobby. He stepped out ahead of them and took off at a speedy clip, leaving Kate and Amy to exchange a covert glance.

  The three of them trooped into the conference room with Chase barking orders at the concierge about coffee service and scones. Amy walked around the table, laying a briefing at each spot, and Kate checked her phone for any messages.

  There was one from Jonah, sent just a few minutes before.

  I miss you already. Last night was amazing. I wish we could—

  “Kate!”

  She looked up sharply to see Chase looming in front of her. She clicked off her phone and said a silent prayer he hadn’t seen anything.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I’ve been thinking about how to do the big reveal.”

  Kate set her phone facedown on the conference table. “The one where Viv tells Jonah—Joe—that she’s still in love with him?”

  “That, but also when he discovers they’re still married. What do you think about sending him on some made-up errand to the courthouse, where he’ll realize he fucked up and never filed the papers?”

  Kate swallowed hard and concentrated on keeping a steady expression. “I think we’d run the risk of making him feel stupid,” she said. “And that’s something we promised not to do.”

  “Promises broken.” Chase snapped his fingers. “That’s brilliant! That’s a great title for the first episode, don’t you think?”

  “Um—”

  “Okay, how about this,” Chase continued, oblivious to Kate’s objections. “We get the two of them in the hot tub together—”

  “The two of who?”

  “Viv and Joe, of course.” Chase waved a hand as though to indicate the details were irrelevant. “We make up something about needing them to model some form of hydro therapy for couples or some shit like that. Anyway, they’re sitting there in the hot tub when the lawyer walks out—”

  “Is the lawyer in a Speedo?” Amy pulled out her notepad, and Kate watched her starting to scribble words on the page.

  “No, the lawyer isn’t in a Speedo.” Chase scoffed like it was the dumbest idea he’d ever heard. Dumber than getting two ex-spouses into a hot tub together or having one of them reveal her love for the other in front of millions of viewers. “Anyway, the lawyer comes in looking all official and says he has something important to tell them.”

  “Cut to commercial break,” Kate said, hating that she could picture this so clearly in her mind. That she knew it would make great television.

  “Exactly,” Chase said. “And then when we come back, he delivers the news about the divorce papers not being filed. Boom!”

  “Boom,” Amy repeated with a lot less enthusiasm. “So are we setting this up for the season finale, or one of the earlier episodes?”

  “That’s the beauty of this, isn’t it?” Chase said. “Post-production can edit to make it look like it happened at any point. We can splice it together so it seems like the big news came after months of filming, or we can do it early in the schedule so the whole season arc is about what happens next.”

  It was on the tip of Kate’s tongue to echo Amy’s words from so long ago. Isn’t that a little dishonest?

  But she knew better. And she could see Chase’s mind was already made up. “I say we do it fast.”

  “What?” Kate took a steadying breath at his words. “But why? What’s the rush?”

  “News spreads fast in this business,” he said. “I don’t want any leaks. I’d rather spring it on Jonah fast so we don’t risk someone else spilling the beans.”

  Kate swallowed hard and nodded. “Right. There are bloggers who get off on spoiling shows months before they release.”

  “I’ve already heard about Reality Steve sniffing around the camera crew,” Amy added, prompting a sour look from Chase. “Don’t worry—Pete wouldn’t do that. He’s one of the most honest guys I know.”

  Chase nodded, though it occurred to Kate that wasn’t necessarily a plus in the boss’s book.

  “So what are you thinking?” Kate asked Chase. “How soon?”

  “Now. In the next couple days.” Chase folded his arms over his chest and leaned back against the table. “It seems smart, don’t you think? If he learns the divorce isn’t final after Viv’s been throwing herself at him for weeks, he’s going to react with suspicion, right?”

  “Right,” Kate said slowly, knowing that was probably true.

  “But if we do it now, when it’s truly coming from out of nowhere, we catch him on tape with shock that’s authentic. He’d be truly stunned.”

  Kate nodded, knowing that was true as well, and also that she hated it.

  “But is that really worth it?” Amy asked. “Like you said, we can edit in a shocked reaction from some other scene.”

  She sent Kate a frantic look, and Kate recognized she was grasping at straws. Amy knew better than anyone the importance of continuity. The fact that she was even trying to convince Chase otherwise made Kate want to hug her.

  “Nah, we need things to be authentic,” Chase argued. “We need footage to show Joe in the same outfit, sitting in the same setting, wearing the most genuine look of shock we’re ever going to get from the guy.” He snorted and leveled Amy with a look. “Come on, he’s no actor. Besides, how’s he going to react if he finds out at the end of the season that we knew all along about the divorce?”

  “Pissed,” Amy said, and Kate felt grateful that she wasn’t the only one weighing in on Jonah’s emotional responses. That they weren’t counting on her to be the authority on Jonah Porter.

  Still, it was Kate that Chase turned to when he spoke his next words. “We want him a little pissed,” Chase said. “That’s part of his persona. It makes for good ratings.”

  “You’re messing with a man’s life here,” Kate pointed out. “With Viv’s life, too, but at least she’s in on the plan.”

  Not all the details, of course. She didn’t know about Kate and Jonah sleeping together, or that Viv’s quest to win back Jonah was unlikely to succeed.

  “We’ve got him on contract for fourteen episodes,” Chase said. “He’s not going anywhere.”

  Amy shifted a little and lowered her notepad. “I agree that Joe might not react well if he thinks we’ve been hiding things from him.”

  “Exactly,” Kate said, telegraphing silent thanks to Amy. “There’s a difference between having him a little angry in general and having him pissed off at the whole show. At everyone involved with it.”

  Chase looked at her again, and something in his expression made her wonder how much he knew. Made her question whether the elevator or her hotel room or her breakfast tray had been bugged after all. She knew that wasn’t possible, but she got a slithering feeling down her spine from the way he stared at her.

  “Then you need to do whatever it takes to keep him around.” He held Kate’s gaze for a few beats longer, and she fought the urge to look away. “It’s your job to keep him happy, isn’t it?”

  Kate swallowed. She opened her mouth to respond, but another voice echoed in the room.

  “It’s no one’s job to keep someone else happy.”

  Kate turned to see Viv floating into the r
oom. She was beaming from ear to ear and wearing an ivory tank top printed with a mandala, and olive-green yoga pants that made her look like a cross between a ballet dancer and a pixie.

  Viv swept through the entrance and put a hand on Chase’s arm. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “I just overheard the last of what you said and wanted to point out that people are responsible for their own happiness and no one else’s.” Her smile faltered a little then as she glanced from one face to the other. “I’m sorry, did I come in at a bad time?”

  “No, it’s fine.” Kate offered her best imitation of a smile and hoped like hell Viv hadn’t heard anything too damning.

  “Vivienne,” Chase said, putting an arm around her and steering her toward the head of the conference table. “It’s lovely to see you again. You’re a little early, aren’t you?”

  “I know, I’m sorry. I had a yoga class just down the street and decided to pop by.” She glanced back at Kate and Amy. “Were you talking about the show?”

  “Employee relations,” Kate said before anyone else could speak up. “Just making sure everyone who’s part the show is taken care of financially, spiritually, emotionally—”

  “Physically,” Chase added, his eyes still locked on Kate. “I know we can all trust Kate to handle everything, though.”

  “She’s very good at it,” Viv chimed in, offering Kate such a genuine smile that it nearly broke her heart. “The best at making sure everything and everyone is handled with care.”

  “The very best,” Chase agreed, sending a shiver down Kate’s spine.

  Jonah had distinct memories of basic training as a young Marine. Of twelve-mile night marches and 3:00 a.m. stick battles designed to test a recruit’s stamina and hand-to-hand combat skills.

  But the filming schedule they followed over the next few days was making that look like a cakewalk.

  On top of that, Viv was acting weird. At first he chalked it up to her mugging for the camera. She’d share some poignant memory from their past, always as a means of illustrating a point she was making for a couple they counseled. He’d catch her smiling at him a little long, or reaching across her desk to touch his hand.