Tracey was still talking. Stephanie didn’t like how Tracey’s mind worked sometimes. She was slightly devious in a way that often made Stephanie uncomfortable. Even with all of her spoiled rich girl behavior, there were certain lines you just don’t cross. Tracey wanted her to cross all of them.
“You need to get into his life deeper, Steph.”
“I will, I promise.”
“Let’s talk more about my idea,” she began mysteriously, “tonight over drinks.”
Stephanie got an odd feeling in her gut. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t like Tracey’s idea. At all.
CHAPTER 83
The elevator doors opened and Kate stepped on. Some idiot had decided that it was a good idea to pipe in music. As the doors closed, John Denver started wafting from the speakers. A soft, sorrowful tune of “I’m Sorry” started playing.
More than anything else, I’m sorry for myself because you’re not here with me.
Kate silently cursed the song, the speakers, and the elevator. The last thing she needed right now was some sad love song. It had been three days since Mac had dropped the infidelity bomb, and today was her first day back in the office. She was on a search for a new editor, and she needed to do that in the privacy of her home. She’d gone on several meetings to get a sense of the candidates in person but had requested that they keep the new hire position confidential, at least for now. She did not tell them it was a replacement but merely that they were “expanding,” which seemed plausible given how well Lavigne House was doing. Still, people usually don’t keep expansion confidential, and she knew that sooner or later—probably sooner—people would start getting wind that she was shopping. She needed to tell her staff now, before someone else did.
She was not at all looking forward to this conversation. He would be working for another month to wrap up his projects, but he would work from home. Kate assumed his “home” would be with Carolyn in Connecticut.
Another slice through her heart. She was surprised she had any of it left.
The elevators doors slid open and Kate walked out and up to the doorman.
“G’morning, Miss Mitchell!” he smiled cheerfully.
“Tom, hi. Listen, I need you to get a message to the Super. I hate the music in the elevator. Either play something happy or remove it.” Kate realized she must sound like a maniac. But only three days out of a devastating breakup, the doorman was lucky she wasn’t holding him hostage until someone ripped the sound system out of the elevator.
Tom eyed her carefully, “Eh, sure. Yes ma’am. I’ll let someone know.”
Kate nodded at him. “Thanks, Tom. I appreciate it.” She walked out the door and into the bright, July sunlight, realizing she would soon be the talk of the condo staff.
The crazy woman in 1214. The handsome guy she was with left her, you know.
She may be a day or two away from becoming a cat hoarder.
But that was the least of her worries. She could only imagine what people would say when the news hit the publishing media that MacDermott Ellis had left Lavigne House. And of course, the conversation that wouldn’t be printed was the one about their broken engagement and how he had left her to go back to his ex-wife.
“Kate.”
She spun around. She would know that voice anywhere. It was Mac.
She could feel the cold trickle of dread that sliced through the warm summer day.
CHAPTER 84
Kate blinked. She thought for a moment she was seeing and hearing things. Mac looked disheveled, as though he hadn’t slept since she’d last seen him.
“What the hell do you want?” she spat. She could feel her heart speed up.
“I-I got your email about my things and I came to get them.”
Kate’s eyes narrowed, “You’re waiting on the curb for them? Is someone bringing them out to you?”
“I was hoping we could talk.” Mac tried to sound amiable, but he failed. Miserably.
Kate gripped her briefcase tighter. “We did talk. It didn’t end well as I recall.”
Mac took a step towards her, and she took an unsteady step back. “Don’t,” she said with as much control as she could muster.
“Kate, please. I need to tell you what happened. I need to explain.”
She shook her head. “I don’t need to know more. You cheated. What else is there?”
“A lot, actually,” Mac said. “A whole lot. Look, I’m not trying to talk my way back into your life, but I just need to say some things.”
“Then say them and get your crap and leave.”
Mac gestured with his arms. “Here?”
“Yes, here. This is New York, Mac. I’ve seen worse things in this city. Now hurry up. I have to get into the office and tell the staff you quit.”
Kate could see Mac reeling from her words. Part of her wanted to back down desperately, but she couldn’t. And not just because Grace would kill her, because Mac had broken something in her that would never be unbroken. You can’t unring a bell, and God knows Mac had rung a lot of them the other night.
Mac dug his hands in his pockets. It was the first time Kate had seen him look less than one hundred percent confident.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen, Kate. No, wait. I’m sorry, I mean…” Mac jammed a hand through his hair. “I can’t do this here.”
“It’s here or nowhere,” Kate said, her voice brittle. Seeing Mac like this was unnerving.
Mac looked around and then reached out and pulled her towards the doorway where they would be out of the rush of the crowd. He leaned into her and Kate could feel his breath on her. She pulled herself out of his grip; a tingle ran up her spine. His touch, that feel of him. For a split second, her mind jumped back to a time when they were happy, which, ironically, was actually—she couldn’t remember—a week, a month ago?
“I didn’t realize that Carolyn and I have so much unfinished business,” he said finally. “I felt it before, a bit, and then it really hit me in Paris. Kate, you have to know that I’m so sorry this happened, but I’m not sure I can honestly say it was an accident.” Mac watched for her reaction, but there was none. She looked him with vacant eyes.
“In the past, when, when I’ve been unfaithful, it was often unintentional and careless. This wasn’t that.”
Kate frowned. The dagger in her heart burrowing in deeper.
“Is this supposed to make me feel better, Mac?”
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“No, no. I’m sorry this is coming out wrong. I just—I love you and I’m horribly sorry, but the bigger picture is that I need to find out what this is with Carolyn or what it was that it is again.”
Kate blinked. She wasn’t following at all.
“So, you’re apologizing but not apologizing because you broke my heart, but now want to go back with the woman that you cheated on for more than ten years? Am I getting that right?”
“Yes. I mean, no,” Mac fumbled his words. “I just—I wanted to say that I won’t pretend this didn’t mean anything, Kate, because it did. I know that sounds horrible, but I just wanted you to know that I didn’t plan this. It wasn’t something I set out to do because I was unhappy with you or us. I loved you. I still love you, but this—this was something that had nothing to do with you.”
Kate could feel the anger rise in her cheeks. “It sure as hell felt like it had something to do with me.”
“I’m really screwing this up, Katie. I’m sorry. I just meant that I wasn’t driven to this because you made me unhappy or because I wasn’t happy. I needed you to know it wasn’t you. It was me. All me.”
Kate looked at him with a stony stare. This conversation wasn’t helping at all.
“I know it wasn’t me, Mac. You had the perfect life. We had the perfect life, and you had to go and screw it up.”
Mac nodded, “You’re right about that, Kate. I did screw it up. But I started screwing it up long before we met. I’ve been screwing up my life for years.”
“Mac, look, I’m sure this whole talk you want to have is more about you than it is about me, so I’m going to go now and let you figure out the who and why of your life. As for me, I’m done.”
Kate stepped out into the crowd and Mac said, “Kate, sooner or later this would have happened between Carolyn and I. I realized that the night that she and I…” he stopped short of saying it. “I realized that there was no way you and I could ever be together, not really, not with this hanging over our heads.”
Kate shook her head to try and dislodge the vision of him and Carolyn tangled in sheets, making love in Paris—a thought that haunted her almost every second of every waking hour since he’d returned home. A rush of pedestrians passed her by. No one paid the slightest bit of attention to them.
“Great. Good to know. Saved us a divorce. I have to go.” And as quickly as she could, Kate started walking. She could hear Mac calling her name, but she kept moving until his voice faded into the crowd behind her.
Mac’s mish-mashed explanation of what had happened did nothing to make her feel better; in fact, it made things worse. He said, in effect, that regardless of how much he loved her or how many plans they made, he was and always would be destined to be with Carolyn.
Helpful and good to know. However, it would have been helpful to have this intel before she’d thrown her life into a total tailspin over a man who was and always would be a cheater.
CHAPTER 85
Mac watched her walk away. This had been a mistake, trying to talk to her like this, out here. He slammed a hand against the stone wall of his former residence and then jammed both hands through his hair.
“Damn it!” he said as he took a strong step into the crowd and nearly toppled over an elderly woman. She was holding a brown paper bag full of groceries. She looked startled and clutched her bag tighter when Mac nearly spun into her. You could never be too careful in New York.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry,” Mac was breathless from the emotion of seeing Kate again. The woman held her bag even tighter and quickened her step to get away from him. She scurried away, disappearing into the crowd.
Mac was furious with himself. He had prepared what he was going to say so carefully, and then when he saw her it became this fragmented mish-mashed string of words that barely even made sense to him. He should have waited. Just a few more days could have made all the difference, but he was so desperate to see her, to tell her, to apologize.
But why? He knew how she would react, and he didn’t blame her at all. What he had wanted to tell her was that he loved her. He still loved her, but he had also come to realize that he loved Carolyn, too. And he’d also realized that there was so much unfinished about his former marriage that a strong connection still existed between him and Carolyn. The problem was he didn’t want to lose Kate. If he could, he would marry her tomorrow. But given what he may or may not feel for Carolyn, it just wasn’t fair. But he knew now that he should have waited until his mind had cleared a bit more and the guilt of what he’d done wasn’t consuming him alive.
Mac stood on the street as the day marched on, wondering if Kate would ever be ready to sit down with him and talk this out. He doubted it. She was pretty clear on her deal breakers, and this was one of them. He’d seen the shattered look in her eye. She would never forgive him and nothing would ever be the same again.
Mac stood out in the bright summer sun recalling their time together and missing her terribly.
CHAPTER 86
“Mac won’t be returning.”
Even as Kate said the words, she felt the crack inside her widen. She shoved the pain down as far away as she could. They had a very important fall line, and the last thing she needed was panic from the troops or to fall apart in front of them.
Lulu gasped as Kate spoke and Rebecca’s eyes widened. Both women knew Mac’s prior reputation enough to guess what happened. But Annabelle was pretty clueless about it.
“But I thought you two were a team. I thought you were getting married?” she asked, clearly ignoring Publicist School 101.
Avoid the jugular. It gets messy.
Kate shuffled a stack of papers and said, “He has decided to seek other opportunities within publishing. This will not affect Lavigne House in any way; in fact, I have already been looking for a replacement.”
She looked at Annabelle and added, specifically for her, “Mac’s professional choices have no bearing on us personally.”
Even as she said it, she knew that soon enough the gossip hounds in publishing would report that after years of separation and divorce, Mac was back with his ex-wife.
Happily ever after.
But not for everyone.
“Lulu, I’ll need you to issue a press release that Mac has left, we wish him all the best, he’s very talented, he will be missed, and we will be announcing his replacement soon.”
Lulu looked uncomfortable as she shuffled in her chair. “We are?”
“Announcing soon? Yes, likely. I had some good prospects. And Rebecca, I’d like to chat with you about some of your contacts, too.”
Rebecca nodded. Her eyes were soft and sympathetic. “A lot of talented people looking for work, Kate. I’m sure we’ll find someone very soon.”
That was it. It was done. The team knew. Well, the majority of the team. The freelancers who they shopped editing and cover design work to would find out from a well thought out email.
Kate needed to get out of the conference room before she erupted into a pool of tears. She stood up.
“That’s all for now, thank you.” She walked out quickly before the little bit of thread that held her together unraveled entirely.
Kate sat in her office with the door closed. The meeting hadn’t gone well, but it hadn’t been terrible. However, she knew that Mac’s termination was something she could not skirt. It left a big hole in their staff, and she imagined that once word got out that he was gone all of his authors would be calling her. To circumvent that, she shot a quick email off to Lulu and asked her to send a note to Mac that he should contact all of his authors immediately by phone and make sure they knew that they were still safe at Lavigne House. She needed to get to her authors quickly, before anyone else did. And as for the office team, of course there would be questions, but she wouldn’t address them. Keep personal out of the workplace; that was the key. The problem was that with Mac, things had always been personal, and everyone had known how in love they were. Now he was gone and the reasons were clearly obvious.
Her phone buzzed. It was Andrew. He called daily and sent texts offering to send a bunch of former rocker buddies to Mac’s house to castrate him.
“Katie, my love. How are you?”
Kate took a deep breath and told Andrew about running into Mac and how he had tried to explain what happened.
Finally, Andrew said, “The bloke sounds like he’s a total mess, Love. And I can’t really blame him. If I had just thrown away my life, I would be a mess, too. In fact, I was. Hard times, Love.”
Kate was silent for a long moment. “Andrew, we were going to get married in a week, in Mexico.”
She could hear Andrew gasp softly. Kate could swear she heard her own heart shatter in her chest.
“God. I’m sorry, Katie.”
“I have to go there for a writer’s conference, and he rented this gorgeous home for two weeks so we could have the wedding and then stay down there after.”
“If I may say so, a Mexican wedding doesn’t seem like your style, Love.”
Kate shrugged, “It was fine. I mean, I had wanted something different, maybe in New York, maybe in a church, but you know Mac had that when he married…” She stopped before she said her name.
Hearing the tremble in her voice, Andrew quickly added, “I’m sorry, Katie. Will you still go?”
“Well, I’m speaking there so I’ll go, but I won’t stay and I won’t stay at the house.”
“Go
od show,” Andrew cheered. “Don’t let this idiot bring you down. Onward.”
Kate sighed, “Yes, onward.”
She didn’t feel very onward though. If it hadn’t been for her work and the people who depended on her, she would have spent the day in the fetal position.
“I’d meet you there but we’re supposed to go to Atlanta for a family reunion with James’ terrifying aunts, uncles, cousins, and whatnot. Invariably, one of them will get drunk and try to sing one of my old songs. It’s torture. Say the word and I’m on a plane with you to Mexico.”
Kate smiled. What an amazing friend Andrew was. Although she’d never ask him to abandon his commitments, she knew that he’d do it in a heartbeat.
There was a light tap at the door. “Andrew, I need to go. We’re issuing the press release today about Mac. I’ll call you later.”
“Godspeed, Katie. Don’t let the vultures pick at you.”
“I won’t. And, Andrew? Thank you. I love you.”
Kate clicked off and said, “Come in.”
It was Lulu who stood tentatively in the doorway. “Kate, listen. I’m sorry.” She walked inside and closed the door. Kate’s heart sank; she knew what this was about.
“Lulu, now is really not the best time.”
Lulu shuffled from one foot to the other. “Kate, I’m sorry. I just sent you a link that I think you need to see.”
Just the tone of Lu’s voice made her skin prickle in an Armageddon sort of way. Kate skimmed through her email and spotted Lulu’s note. She opened it and clicked the link. It was a piece in the Post, online only. Well, for now. It was a picture of her and Mac standing outside their building. Kate gasped. It had been taken this morning when Mac had shown up to talk. Mac had her arm, and Kate looked at him with an anger she almost didn’t recognize in herself. This is New York, she’d said, no one cares.
Apparently someone cared. From the angle, it looked like it was taken from a few feet away. Some journalist got lucky on her way to their next breaking news feeding frenzy. The caption read, “Honeymoon Over for Publishing Moguls Kate Mitchell and MacDermott Ellis.” The piece was short but went into detail about their fight and how only moments later Mac had been seen leaving the building with a box. She was surprised the news vulture didn’t take a picture of Mac moving out, too.
Climax: The Publicist, Book Three Page 30