by Kim Boykin
“I heard. You don’t want to go through this alone, Erin. I’ll be glad to come stay with you or I can call someone for you.”
“I gave them my sister’s name when we got here. She’s on her way. Hey, Tara’s coming, so I’m not going to ream you out for the ‘showed up drunk and broke my foot’ comment. Just go easy on her, Jake. Her dog died and there’s something else, I think—I don’t know what it is. Anyway she’s having a rough time, but I know she’ll come through like a champ.”
Jake hadn’t even been off the road twenty-four hours from his tour with a champ, heavyweight Marvin Johnson, who was diva and a baby and a train wreck. “We’ll see. Whatever time you were going to tell her to meet you in the lobby, tell her to have her ass there a half hour earlier.”
“Who’s the diva now?”
“I’m hanging up.”
“Wait. I didn’t want to say anything, but I’m being moved up to associate director.”
Jake had worked his ass off, but Erin had four years on him. She deserved the promotion. “Lucky you.”
“If you’ll come in and do the spectacular job I know you can, I’ll do what I can to make sure you take my place—senior publicist. What do you say?”
“No more divas?”
“Not on the celebrity side, anyway. Just authors who can actually write books. So do we have a deal?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“And the drugs are kicking in,” Erin let out a dreamy sigh. “No, cupcake, you don’t have a choice. Now sleep tight, you’ve got a big day ahead of you.”
Jake pulled up the itinerary on his laptop and scrolled down pages and pages of details, smiling that Erin Holiday was every bit as anal and organized as he was. The only thing that bothered him was the theater shows. He’d never had a tour with something like that. He’d bet they were tricky, especially after a day of bookstore appearances.
The shows sounded like a Dr. Phil-type format, an event for couples. If Tara Jordan wasn’t on her game, they could be a nightmare. There was a three-day gap in the schedule after her whirlwind tour of New York and before the first arena show in Chicago, probably so Jordan could go home and recharge. He sent Lou Rosen a quick text, changed the itinerary and booked two tickets to Atlanta.
Lou’s specialty was twofold, preparing celebrities for the spotlight and cleaning up their unseemly messes. Lou was just the person to whip Jordan into shape for the arena gigs. And if Tara Jordan did well during the live shows, the book would be an even bigger success and he’d make senior publicist for sure. Hell, maybe he’d skip that step and go straight to associate director.
Jake was up by four. He checked his email and saw Lou had turned him down about ten minutes ago. He stabbed at his contact list until he found Rosen Communications, scrolled down to the mobile number and hit the call button. The phone clicked at the other end, but Lou didn’t say anything.
“What do you mean, no?” Jake said. “You owe me. Clear your schedule; we’ll be at your office by eight Wednesday morning. You have two days to turn this Jordan chick into a star—”
“Have you read her book?” Lou yawned. “It’s fluff at best. She’s got no real credentials, no experience at this kind of thing. She’s a housewife for God’s sake. Sure she’ll have some groupies at these events, but she’ll be dealing with unhappy couples—live. I really shouldn’t care, I’m sure her publisher will be calling me at some point to clean up this debacle and I’ll charge them double. Mark my words, Jake, Tara Jordan is a disaster waiting to happen. You really should call Janzen and talk them out this.”
“Oh, this is happening.” His long history with Lou began when he was still in school at Wisconsin University. He needed to get out of Madison and was looking for an internship that didn’t require shoveling snow. He was grateful when Lou picked him out of a hundred and fifty applicants. Jake learned a lot about the publicity business. And before his internship ended, he saved Lou’s ass when he testified for the defense in a sexual harassment suit. The court ruled in her favor which worked out super for Lou, who went on to buy and rebrand the company.
“Will she need a shopper?” Lou asked.
“I won’t know until I see her this morning. Check out the Today Show. That’s our first stop. We’re set to be on around 7:30.” He scanned the itinerary which included a guest shot on The View tomorrow morning and a Dr. Oz segment in the afternoon called Happy Marriages Make Healthy Couples. Tara would be on the front row of the audience and would get at the most a couple minutes between the medical experts on the subject. In Erin’s files, there was an email from the Oz producer saying this was no guarantee Jordan would get any time on camera, just a possibility. “She’s just got the Today Show this morning, then she’s signing books around town from four to seven. She can do dinner on her own. I’ll send you an assessment of where we are on clothes before the end of the day.”
“Anybody ever tell you you’re an ass, Jake Randall?”
“Yeah, well I saved yours and now I’m collecting.” He ended the call, grabbed his briefcase and left the apartment, hoping this woman wasn’t ready and waiting for him like Erin ordered. He’d like nothing better than to bang on her door and watch the fire drill, which she deserved after what she did to Erin and for what she was doing to Jake. After this was over, he was definitely taking a vacation.
Chapter Six
‡
Breaking someone’s foot will sober you up fast, especially someone who is sweet and birdlike like Erin. There was no need for the alarm, although I’d set the clock radio beside the bed and my phone. Even though I am not a morning person and I typically require eight hours of sleep, I was up well before 4:00, trying hard not to think about being on national TV, the Today Show no less.
I opened the suitcase to discover that the old traveler’s trick of packing your hang up clothes in dry cleaning bags so they won’t wrinkle was a lie. The khaki suit I’d intended to wear looked like I’d slept in it for a week. The only thing that did look decent was a baby blue Gap T-shirt and a multicolored broomstick skirt. The outfit looked plain, so I dressed it up with a belt I bought on sale at Chico’s, BJL—before Jim left. It looked better, but not great. I dumped the jewelry I’d brought from home onto the bed and stared at trinkets from twenty years of birthdays and anniversaries.
“Stop it,” I snapped at myself. “It’s just jewelry.” I slipped on the lapis and silver hugs-and-kisses bracelet and then clasped on the matching necklace. The pieces were still shiny and beautiful, flat round lapis stones about the size of quarters interconnected by thick silver x’s. My left thigh tingled, remembering the moment Jim gave them to me.
We were at the Isle of Palms for the weekend and had been at the beach all day. We had reservations in Charleston at the new hot spot, The Ordinary. It had taken some doing to get them. After years of watching Chopped on a regular basis, Jim and I considered our selves foodies and couldn’t wait. “Let’s pack it up,” he’d said around four o’clock, but even with the promise of otherworldly food, I was feeling playful and ran into the surf that was unusually high due to a tropical storm hundreds of miles away. But Jim didn’t follow. He just kept loading our stuff into the beach cart. For the first time since I married Jim, he looked different, much older than fifty-five.
I felt the hard pull of the water against my thighs and knew without even looking that a big wave was coming. Was it possible that my husband was old? If Jim was old, what did that make me? And then the wave hit. I screamed and he came running.
“Get it off. Get it off,” I shrieked.
He looked at the back of my thigh. “It is off. It must have been a jellyfish, a big one, Tara. Your leg is turning into one giant welt.” He put his arm around me and helped me out of the water. “Let’s get you home.”
He hadn’t wanted to go to the restaurant without me, but I’d insisted, mainly because I wanted him to bring back takeout. I tearfully pulled up the menu on my laptop while he wrung the salt water out of my bathing suit and
mixed it with vinegar to deactivate the stingers. He dabbed at the welts until the stinging subsided and I smelled like a pickle. “The tomato, sweet onion and goat cheese tart. The sautéed grouper—and I want dessert, anything chocolate. Lots of chocolate.”
Our reservations were at seven, and I didn’t expect him back until close to ten. He pushed through the door before eight-thirty with takeout for two. He had stopped at little jewelry shop on King Street and bought the bracelet and the necklace.
Fighting back tears, I slipped both pieces off and put the rest of the jewelry back in the bag. It wasn’t just jewelry.
A knock at the door brought my trip down Memory Lane to a screeching halt. “Just a minute.” I grabbed my purse and opened the door. He stood there, all drop-dead gorgeous with a go-to-hell look on his face, or maybe that was just his 5:30 in the morning face. He pushed his shades back. Who wears shades at this hour?
His eyes raked over me. “You must be Jake.” The ass. I extended my hand. “Hi, I’m Tara.”
“What else have you got to wear?” he said, ignoring my hand, eyes still raking, making me feel naked. What the hell?
I looked down at my outfit, the Chico’s belt was off center. I straightened it and looked at him. There. He shook his head. “You’re going to be on national television, you’ll look washed out in this color. What else have you got?”
He stepped past me and started going through my suitcase that was overflowing with everything I owned that wouldn’t travel well and would most definitely require being professionally pressed. He picked up the house phone and waited while I watched him work. He started to unzip the compartment with my underwear.
“That’s private,” I snapped and he stopped.
“Hi. Good morning.” He turned his back to me. “I’m in room 1437. There will be a lot of laundry on the bed, too much to stuff into a bag. Please have it pressed and back tonight. Before nine is perfect, thanks.” He hung up and started sorting pieces into two piles, acceptable and unacceptable; he did the same with my clothes in the dry cleaning bags. By the look on his face, the much smaller pile was the acceptable one. He scooped the rejects up and threw them into my open suitcase.
“Who are you?”
He looked puzzled. “Jake Randall.”
“No. Who in the hell do you think you are? Those are my things.”
He took a deep breath. “Tara?” he said like he was guessing at my name. “I’m going to break the cardinal rule of public relations and be brutally honest with you. I don’t want to be here. I’m supposed to be on vacation right now, but you broke Erin’s foot and I wasn’t given a choice. I’m sorry I’ve got a short fuse, I just want to get through the next thirty days and then vegetate on a beach somewhere.”
The tears were building, my breathing becoming more ragged. I didn’t have time to cry and I refused to give this asshole the satisfaction of thinking he’d made me cry. “I’m sorry about your vacation. I don’t want to be here anymore than you do.”
He looked surprised, then nodded and picked through my jewelry. He held up the lapis pieces. “Put these on.”
I was too embarrassed to argue with him.
“You did well.” Jake tried not to sound surprised, but he was. The segment didn’t start until almost 8:00. He expected for the cameras to come up and for Tara to fall apart, but she didn’t. She started waffling a little about a minute and a half in, but lucky for her, the news cut in to report on a tornado that had hit a small farm community in Nebraska. Not so lucky for the folks in Nebraska.
“Thanks, Jake. I was terrified.”
“It didn’t show.” He held the door of the town car for her and then climbed in behind her. “We’ve got some time before the signings start. How about some breakfast?”
“That would be great, I’m starved.” When she spoke, she looked out the window instead of looking at him.
He deserved that. He had been a bastard in her hotel room, going through her things like some sort of Svengali. He’d never done anything like that before in his life. Maybe this job was getting to him. Maybe he was getting burned out. It wasn’t unusual, most people hacked away at publicity in the publishing world, thinking they wanted to champion books. But the ones who didn’t have it in them usually didn’t love books as much as they thought they did. But Jake loved books. He still believed in them. At least he thought he did.
What if this woman had rifled through his things? His books? His father’s Hardy Boys collection? The wornout children’s books his mother had read and reread to him? The ones Kate had given him when they were together?
The driver pulled up in front of the 7A Café. Jake needed to fix this before they sat down at a table across from each other. She was getting out of the car when he blurted out the words. “I’m sorry.”
She stood on the curb waiting for him, blushing a little. She licked her lips, waiting for the rest of his apology. He looked down at her flats and followed her out of the car. With some decent heels on he wouldn’t even have to bend to kiss her, just dip his head, and—Where the hell did that come from? “I’m sorry. I know you thought I was a jerk earlier—”
“Either that or a very bitchy gay man,” she said and headed inside the restaurant.
Okay, so Jake didn’t have to go to the last signing of the day. Not after he’d called a couple of the bookstores and listened to the staff rave about Tara, how funny she was, how Southern she was. But he wanted to see for himself.
He hung back and watched her. She was good with people. And it was kind of priceless to see the looks on the hardcore New Yorkers’ faces whenever she hugged them and thanked them in that sexy southern drawl for reading the book. This woman was no diva. She didn’t have the first clue about how to act like a celebrity, which was fine by him.
“If I could bottle what she has, Jake, I could buy that Caribbean island The Donald has for sale.” The store manager looked as enchanted as the twenty or so people still in line. “Some of those people have waited for hours. They were mean and grouchy and if stones had been available on the sidewalk when they were waiting outside, they would have chucked them. But look at them now.”
“Did you sell a lot of books?”
“What do you think?”
When I handed the last person in line their book, I looked up to see Jake watching me. I don’t know why I blushed. Granted, this morning, I felt like a bit of a fraud hawking a marriage self-help book when my own marriage was in the toilet, but The Today Show had gone great and the signings had too. I’d sold lots of books and met so many people who swore my book had changed their lives, most all of them women. Assuming there was a partner attached to each claim, that was a lot of people. Even if my marriage was shot to hell, it was sinking in that my book really was helping couples.
Jake said something to the store manager and headed toward me. I was exhausted, but there was no way I was letting my guard down with this guy. Sure he’d softened up a little after apologizing this morning. Conversation at breakfast had been polite but minimal, although he had told me the good things on the menu at the little café where we had breakfast before heading back to his office on Hudson Street.
“Heard you had a good day.” He picked up my briefcase before I could. “Wanna guess what’s next?”
“Dinner?” I said, when I’d really wanted to say, truce?
“Nope.”
I followed him out to the town car, and he gave the driver an address. Soon we rolled up on Fifth Avenue. He glanced at the diamond on my finger, the upgrade Jim joked I earned after fifteen years of being married to him. I would have to hock it soon if this tour didn’t pan out.
“You need an outfit for tomorrow.”
“I have that khaki—”
“I don’t know what your budget is. Bloomingdale’s or Bergdorf’s?” he asked totally ignoring my perfectly good suit. But given the size of my ring and the success of my book, those were good guesses. Not so good if you throw in a husband who’d taken almost everything and le
ft me with two huge mortgages to cover.
This was embarrassing. Some place with gently used clothes? A bargain basement? Maybe I could splurge. “Macy’s?”
“We’ll get out here,” he told the driver who pulled in front of Bloomingdales. “I know someone.”
A tall redhead threw her arms around Jake when we walked into the boutique section of the store.
“Tara, this is my cousin, Jes. Jes, this is Tara Jordan.”
“Nice to meet you, Tara. Now, go find something to do, Jake, and leave us to it.” She looked me over. “Jake told me you’re going to be on The View tomorrow. You must be excited.”
“Yes,” I said watching Jake disappear around the corner.
“You’re what, a size six?”
“Thanks, but not since college.”
“I think my cousin wants you in something a little more tailored. After he called, I went online and took a look at The View’s set. I don’t know why some of the hosts wear patterns, especially with that backdrop of the city. It’s just too busy.” She flipped through some dresses she’d set aside, all gorgeous. All expensive. “Come on, let’s get you in a dressing room.”
I looked at one of the price tags, $435. “Um, Jes? I really appreciate your help, but I can’t afford these.”
“Don’t worry,” she whispered. “They’re are sale. I’m buying them with my employee discount, so they’ll be at least forty percent off the regular price.” Even at that, not having any money coming in any time soon, made this seem sillier than I felt in the first two dresses I tried. Both of them were too tight and too short. “How are we doing in there? Have you tried on the Ted Baker yet?”
She knocked on the dressing room door but didn’t wait for me to open it. “Does Diane von Furstenberg know how to make a little black dress or what? Jake, get over here, you have to see this.”
She pulled me out of my hiding place. “By the way, dressing authors is not in my cousin’s job description. I think he likes you,” she said under her breath.