Marrying Mister Perfect

by Lizzie Shane

  If only he could see her. Where the heck was she?

  He found her, twenty minutes later, upstairs in Emma’s room, putting away laundry.

  “What?” he said from the doorjamb, devouring her with his eyes. “Don’t I merit a welcome home?”

  God, she looked amazing. Snug jeans with a frayed hem, a T-shirt worn soft and thin by the years, and her blondish hair yanked high in a ponytail. The everyday familiarity of the outfit was made oddly erotic by the knowledge that the sultry woman in the red bikini was under there, waiting to get out.

  Her shoulders stiffened at his first words and she turned, wrinkling one of Emma’s shirts in the tight grip of her hands. “Jack.” She nodded in greeting, not moving an inch toward him. “Welcome home.”

  He arched his eyebrows, giving her a lazy smile. “That was pathetic.” He shoved away from the doorjamb and crossed the small room to her, noting the way her eyes widened slightly—was that alarm?—as he approached. “Now, do I get a real homecoming?”

  He hadn’t meant the words to sound suggestive. He hadn’t meant them to be a sensual challenge, but the way her breath caught, raising her breasts up like a feast for his eyes, said she heard the seductive undertones he couldn’t keep out of his voice.

  She met his eyes—hers were startled, perhaps wary, but not repulsed. She didn’t look like she was angry with him for taking advantage of her inebriation in the hot tub. She looked like she’d just been offered the biggest chocolate sundae of her life and was debating whether or not her hips could take the indulgence.

  She wet her lips and Jack knew—with a certainty and decisiveness he usually reserved for surgery—that he was going to kiss her. Now. He knew the taste of those lips now, the sweet promise of them. Everything else could be worked out later. This kiss couldn’t wait.

  Jack bent his head. Lou rose up on her toes, her eyelashes fluttering down to veil her hypnotic gray eyes. One more inch…

  “Jack, darling, if we can steal you for a minute…”

  Miranda’s voice instantly diffused the expectant charge in the room. Lou dropped back onto her heels with a thud then pivoted to shove Emma’s shirt into her dresser. Jack straightened reluctantly.

  “Lou!” Miranda said, seeming to notice her for the first time. “I was wondering where you were hiding.” She cleared her throat, shooting a meaningful glare at him. “Jack? Downstairs? We’d like a few fireside confessional moments—just a bit about how intimately you feel toward each of the girls right now… how difficult your decision is going to be… that kind of thing. If you would?”

  “I’ll be right there,” he said, hoping she would leave.

  “I know how hard it must be, not being able to tell the women how you really feel, but you know the rules.”

  “Right.” He hesitated.

  Lou had moved on to shoving Emma’s socks into a drawer. She refused to look at him. Jack hovered for a moment, hating the rules with every fiber of his being.

  He’d go quietly, but he lived here and so did Lou. They couldn’t watch him every second of every day and he had unfinished business with Louisa Tanner.

  “I’ll see you later, Lou.”

  “Mm-hmm,” she agreed without looking up.

  He exited the room in front of Miranda, who smacked him hard on the back of the head as soon as they were out of Lou’s sight. “Five million dollars, dumbass.”

  “I know,” he growled.

  “We’re wiring the kitchen with audio and video. You can talk to her in there, but there will be absolutely no protestations of eternal devotion. You can be exactly as forthcoming with her as you can with the other girls. Don’t think I didn’t notice that thing with Marcy. You’re lucky she’ll make an amazing Miss Right.”

  Jack smiled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Cute. Talk to Lou. Play with your kids. Stay in the public areas where the cameras can see you. And then you will go to the hotel suite and wait for Katya’s arrival tomorrow.”

  Jack stopped at the top of the stairs, turning to frown down at Miranda. “What hotel? I thought I got to spend the week with my family.”

  “Jack. I’m not an idiot. Either you go to a hotel or Lou does. Those are the rules.”

  “I hate the rules.”

  “Then I know the process is working,” Miranda said, smiling sweetly.

  “This has nothing to do with your process.”

  Miranda arched a brow. “Doesn’t it?”

  By the time Jack managed to corner Lou in the kitchen, he was starting to wonder if being in debt to the network for the rest of his life wouldn’t be worth it just so he could kick all the reality television people out of his house once and for all. If not for the fact that he had Emma and TJ’s college educations to pay for, he might have given it some serious consideration. As it was, he was screwed.

  But at least he was home.

  Lou was making coffee. The kids were in bed. Jack’s chair screeched across the tile as he pulled it out from the table and dropped onto the harder-than-bricks seat. How many times had they talked about replacing the chairs? Buying cushions? Remodeling the kitchen? All that little domestic normalcy so he never had to own up to the fact that Lou was the emotional center of his entire world.

  Gillian had been that center and it had shattered him when she died. He hadn’t wanted to see that Lou had inched her way to the center of his heart, but there she was. And it would kill him to lose her now.

  If only he could tell her that.

  “It’s good to be home,” he said, trying to imbue his voice with extra weight so he would hear what he wanted to say beneath the words he could. “I wish I didn’t have to stay at that hotel tonight.”

  Lou handed him his coffee—prepared exactly the way he liked it—and sank into the opposite chair with her own, tucking one leg up on the chair as she always did. “Only a couple more weeks. The kids are really amped up about the three days in Disney Miranda arranged after the Finale.”

  She said the words without looking at him. If she would just meet his eyes he would know everything was going to be okay. He needed to see those pale blue eyes.

  Maybe if he just attacked the elephant in the room. “Lou, about the Jacuzzi—”

  “We don’t have to talk about that,” she said quickly, still not meeting his gaze. “We got carried away. All that champagne… You’re very attractive—what woman wouldn’t want Mister Perfect, right? We both know it was a mistake. Nothing more to say.”

  “I didn’t say it was a mistake,” he said, irrationally irritated. “I’m glad we kissed. I liked it.”

  That got her looking at him. Her jaw dropped like he’d told her he wanted to get a tattoo on his face.

  “I’d like to do it again,” he said into her stunned silence.

  She started shaking her head and couldn’t seem to stop. “Kissing is all well and good, but what about the kids?”

  He wanted to revisit the all well and good portion of the question, but he played along. “What about them?”

  “Have you considered how a fling between us would confuse the children?”

  “A fling.” He hadn’t been thinking about flings at all, but if that was where Lou’s head was… He set his coffee on the table, sliding it away from him,

  “Whatever you want to call it,” she went on.

  “Why do we have to define it?” Especially now when he couldn’t tell her what he really wanted. “Can’t we just see where it goes?” A few weeks, maybe an altar.

  “Are you high? Of course not. The children already want us to end up together. Can you imagine what Emma would have thought if she’d seen something the other night?”

  Okay, he did not want to think about his daughter walking in on him fooling around with Lou. That was a fair point. “We can be discreet—”

  “While you’re on national television? This can’t just be because you like it or it’s fun. Not with Emma and TJ involved. Emma already asked me why I couldn’t be the mom
my.”

  “They both asked me why I didn’t marry you,” he admitted.

  “See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about. What if it doesn’t work out? How could it? Everything is so complicated right now. You’re being pulled in a dozen different directions and I don’t want… I’m not going to pull you, Jack.” She studied a worn spot in the hall rug, avoiding his eyes. “With that damn show here, everything is under a microscope and it’s all out of whack. How can you even really know what you want right now?”

  He felt like he was finally clear on what he wanted for the first time in years, but he knew Lou. He knew the way she would subvert what she wanted for whatever she felt was for the best. Was she denying herself what she wanted now? Or was she using all these—perfectly legitimate—excuses to tell him that she didn’t want him the way he now wanted her?

  “What do you want, Lou?”

  “It isn’t always about what we want.”

  “It’s never about what you want,” he said, a little more sharply than he’d intended. “You always put others above yourself. But maybe it should be about what you want for a change.”

  He wanted Lou, but he didn’t want her kissing him because she felt like she should because it would be best for the kids. He wanted her to want him, completely independent of the children, but nothing they did was independent of the children. She was right to remind him of that. When Emma had a bad dream, she went to Lou, not to him. If he and Lou did have a relationship and she left what would it do to Emma? Hell, what would it do to him?

  But she would never leave. That wasn’t Lou’s style. She would stay with him forever whether she wanted to or not. If she thought that was what was right. But he didn’t want the woman who thought she should be with him. He wanted one who couldn’t live without him. As he was beginning to think he couldn’t live without her.

  Jack reached across the table, capturing her hand and lacing their fingers together. “What do you want, Lou?”

  She pulled her fingers free. “I want you to find what you’re looking for on the show.”

  Jack barely stopped himself from cursing aloud.

  He’d been wrong. He’d read her wrong in the Jacuzzi. She hadn’t been coming onto him. She didn’t want him. He’d taken advantage and now she regretted it. She wanted him to find someone else so she could be free of him.

  Jack scraped back his chair. “I’m sorry about the other night. Too much champagne.” He cleared his throat roughly. “I should get back to the hotel. We have a long week ahead. My parents will be here tomorrow for the first of the In-Law sessions.”

  “I feel like I should clean something. I know how the Doctors Doyle love a sterile environment,” Lou said, trying for levity, but the joke fell flat.

  Neither of them felt much like laughing.

  He wanted to say something more, but he had no idea what he would have said even without the show’s rules hanging over him. The air between them was saturated with unspoken words.

  But in the end he just said good night and walked out, uncertain what he was supposed to do now. Falling in love with someone other than Lou in the next two weeks was utterly inconceivable, but he’d told her originally that he would do this for her, so she could walk away and have her own life.

  He owed her that. So he would try.

  Lou stayed seated at the kitchen table until she heard the front door close behind Jack. At the distant click, she let out a shuddering breath and sagged down over the table, letting her head rest against the wood as tears came out of nowhere to fill her eyes.

  She’d done the right thing. She was sure of it. So why did she feel like she’d just made the biggest mistake of her life? Why was her entire body shaking with emotion?

  He was glad they’d kissed. It felt like such a short step from there to happily ever after. But it was a step through a minefield.

  They needed to tread carefully and keep the children’s happiness always in mind. He’d said he wanted to kiss her again, but he’d never said he wanted anything more from her. He’d said that the kids wanted them to get married, not that he wanted that—though it was too soon to be thinking along those lines anyway, wasn’t it? Unless she counted the last four years. And it was hard for her heart not to count the last four years.

  Lou sniffed back her tears and shoved herself to her feet, moving around the kitchen, looking for something to do with her hands, something to clean, but the crew had left everything spotless. Inconsiderate bastards. Didn’t they know she was having an emotional crisis and needed to scrub something?

  It felt like she’d lost him. Not that she’d ever had him, but this time the missed opportunity was her own stupid fault.

  See where it goes. It sure as hell wasn’t moonlight and roses, but she could have said yes. She could have taken his hand, gazed into his eyes, confessed that she’d like that.

  She’d said no.

  And tomorrow beautiful Katya arrived. The swimsuit model who never, ever told Jack no.

  Lou groaned and buried her face in her hands. Crap. What had she done?

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  If Jackson Doyle married Katya No-Last-Name the Swimsuit Model, Lou was going to kill him. Slowly. With red hot pincers and boiling oil and whatever other medieval methods she could dig up. Where was an iron maiden when you needed one?

  The first thing Lou noticed when Katya walked through the door were the gravity-defying orbs of silicon attached to her chest. Her shirt was thin, clingy, and the neckline dropped down nearly to her belly-button to display more cleavage than Lou had ever seen outside an NC-17 movie. Her legs were approximately three miles long and crammed into designer jeans so tight she could barely walk—or maybe that deficiency was caused by the four-and-a-half inch crimson stilettos she’d crammed onto her dainty feet.

  Platinum blonde hair hung in thick, glorious waves all the way to her hips. They had to be extensions, but the artificial hair still gave Lou’s wispy dishwater blonde ponytail an inferiority complex—new highlights and layers notwithstanding.

  Katya clutched her designer handbag with long, elegant fingers, tipped with claw-like acrylic nails painted such a dark, bloody red Lou imagined she may have just come from ripping the throats out of her enemies.

  Her features were vaguely Slavic, with wide ice-blue eyes and delicate bones, but the piece de resistance were the lips. Giant, poofy, Angelina Jolie, why-yes-I-will-take-an-extra-injection-of-collagen Lips, with a capital “L”. Sure, men thought lips like those were the sexiest thing on earth, but Lou couldn’t help but think Jack kissing those babies would be like making out with a grouper.

  Okay, Lou was jealous. Neon green sparks of envy flying off in every direction jealous. The woman was disgustingly gorgeous. Did she have to be so damn perfect?

  Katya stepped into the foyer and paused, angling her head and posing for the cameras as she pretended to search for Jack—who was standing right beside Lou in plain view of Katya and everyone else. When the Russian supermodel finally saw him, she squealed and clapped her hands. “Jackie-boy!”

  Lou wondered if the producers would edit it out if she vomited all over Katya.

  Then Katya, the gravitationally improbable, caught sight of the kids standing next to Jack and her squeals reached a new decibel normally reserved for canines and torture devices. “Oh, are these them? Aren’t they just the cutest you’ve ever seen?”

  Lou wasn’t sure who Katya was asking, but no one answered as she teetered forward with a determined smile on those insanely huge lips. Emma tucked herself behind her father’s leg, her eyes wide.

  Katya bent down, her gravitationally-resistant orbs swaying precariously close to not-safe-for-primetime exposure. “Aren’t you just precious?” she cooed at Emma, who shrank back a little more. She then turned her silicone cannons in TJ’s direction. “You must be JT! Aren’t you a handsome little man? You’re gonna be a heartbreaker just like your daddy, aren’t you?”

  TJ just looked at his father uncertainly,
as if silently asking what planet Katya was from. Lou could have told him. Planet Hollywood. Or perhaps Planet Miami Beach.

  Jack smiled, for all the world as if he had no problem with Katya’s attire or the way she was scaring the bejeezus out of the children, and stepped forward to peck Katya on the cheek. “Welcome to Casa Doyle. I’ve got a great day planned. You’re gonna love it.”

  Katya batted her eyelashes at warp speed. “Oh, I know I’ll love it,” she simpered. “As long as we’re together.”

  Lou stomach turned. Jack could not have been taken in by this. Sure, it was like being hit on by Angelina Jolie’s tall, blonde, slightly-more-sexy sister, but still! How could he not see how fake she was?

  Then Katya leaned forward to return Jack’s peck, giving him a bird’s eye view straight down to her navel. Oh, yeah, that’s how.

  Jack gave a dazed smile. Lou somehow managed not to thump him upside the head on national television. She should get an Emmy for that alone.

  “Shall we get started?” he asked.

  Katya’s gaze flicked sideways to where Lou was standing, just slightly off to the side—the only family member she hadn’t greeted. “Are we all going?”

  Lou smiled, knowing the baring of teeth looked a little feral, but not nearly as good as Katya at manufacturing her expressions. “Oh, I thought I’d just tag along,” she said sweetly. “In case the kids get tired early.”

  Katya instantly brightened, megawatt radiance pouring off her. “Excellent!” She wrapped her talons around Jack’s biceps. “I can’t wait.” Then she seemed to realize she’d just said she hoped the children tired out so she quickly amended. “To see where we’re going! I just love surprises!”

  As they all headed out to pile into the cars along with multiple camera crews, Lou trailed behind, watching sweet Katya coo and paw at Jack. She kept angling herself and cocking her head and flicking her hair—constantly aware of which direction she was being shot from. Katya may love surprises, but Lou was willing to bet there was nothing she loved more than the limelight. Including Jack.