by Serena Bell
Brett spoke again, that low, steady voice, the same one he’d used on camera, the one that let New Yorkers know all was well, even if the Burmese python population in Florida was out of control. “I’ve taken care of it. When I come back to New York, I’m going to be with one woman exclusively. Serious, long-term, someone who people can get used to seeing me with.”
I’ve taken care of it.
Her feet and hands got cold.
Surely he didn’t mean that the way it sounded.
Right?
He didn’t mean he’d taken up with her on purpose as damage control.
Right?
But she could hear her heart beating in her ears, feel it pounding at her throat and wrists, a trapped thing in her chest. What if he did? Because—how convenient that would be for him. How convenient she was for him. The perfect solution. As soon as things had gone south with Celine, he must have known the network would hear about it. And he had seen her as an opportunity and pounced.
And she—
Well, she’d be an easy mark, primed as she’d been—for years—to fall for him.
She took a deep breath. No. She didn’t want to believe it. No one was that shallow or that opportunistic.
He couldn’t have said all those things and not meant them. I never want to stop. I’m not ready to give you up yet.
She’d felt such a surge of warmth, such a swell of love for him. Such an overwhelming wave of hope.
Except—a moment flashed in her head, in the cab, when he’d had all the right words for Celine. That was him—she’d said it herself—the man with the golden tongue. And those words? She’d said this herself, too—those words didn’t have to mean anything bigger than the moment.
Her mind was dark, swirling with panic.
He couldn’t have done what he did and not meant it.
Like a last stab at faith.
But he’d done it hundreds if not thousands of other times, exactly this way and for exactly this long, and not meant it.
If there was a man who could say it and not mean it, it was Brett Jordan.
She made herself get out of the bed and put on her clothes, as he finished up the call. She didn’t hear what he said, the words lost in the grim clench of her fear. She pulled on her panties and her pants, her bra and her tank top. She twisted up her hair and tied it in a knot.
She had her hand on the doorknob when he set down his phone. “Where are you going?” he asked, and there was something light in his voice. He was happy. Of course he was. He had gotten a stay of execution.
“To pack.”
“No. Stay and celebrate! I’m keeping my job, at least for now.”
“Glad to have been of some use to you.” The words felt like ice chips on her tongue.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Lise. What’s going on?”
She had to get away from him and away from herself. She had to give herself some room to think, to push back the heavy panic and make some sense of things. She slipped out the door, trying to push it shut behind her. He blocked it with his body, though, so she left it and fled down the hall.
He must have stopped only long enough to pull on shorts, because a moment later he dashed after her.
She pounded the elevator button with her thumb. Down, down, down. Get me out of here. Her thoughts had slowed and become elemental.
He stopped behind her. “C’mon, Lise. Tell me what’s going on?”
She took a deep breath. “Nothing. I’m—” I’m freaking out. I’m being crazy. You make me crazy.
“Whatever you think you heard me say on the phone—”
“You said you’d taken care of it. You said—” She was breathing hard. This is what she’d always been afraid of. This. This exactly. That one day her resolve would slip, and she would let him in. Then she would become a notch on his bedpost, and she would grasp and cling and flail but not be able to hold on to him.
She was just like the others. No better. No different. And Brett would always be Brett.
“You said, ‘I’ve taken care of it.’ Like I was something on a checklist.”
The words, spoken out loud, sounded so lunatic that she wanted to take them back. Shovel them into her mouth and clamp down.
He wasn’t looking at her like he thought she was crazy. He was looking at her with her own panic echoed in his eyes. “No. It’s not like that. You know it’s not.”
“I don’t know. I don’t. That’s the thing. That’s the point.”
“Lise, I swear, I didn’t mean it like that.”
She wanted to believe him. She should believe him.
She gave up on the elevator and strode for the stairs.
He caught up with her again, grabbed her arm. Twisted her around, hard. It hurt her shoulder, and she cried out.
“I’m sorry!” His eyes flashed surprise and alarm.
Laughter floated up to them, then footfalls, and they both froze. A couple came into view, their heads inclined toward each other, sharing low, intimate words. She flinched from it. The laughter and the conversation stopped when the couple spotted her and Brett, and she knew the space between them was charged with misery.
The couple moved past them silently.
We’ve infected them, she thought.
“It’s not like that.” He reached for her once more, his grip still too hard on her arms. “My wanting to be with you in New York has nothing to do with my job. Nothing.”
She’d hurt him, maybe made him angry. She could see it in the dark flash of his eyes and the set of his jaw.
“You have to believe that.” He shook her a little for emphasis. “Please, come on. Do you think I could fake that? What we just did? Put on an act like that, just to convince you to play my serious girlfriend? Is that how little you think of me? Jesus!”
He let her go, and she took a step back.
“Maybe I don’t have much relationship stamina,” he said. “Maybe I’m not obvious boyfriend material. But I’ve never lied to a woman about how I felt, or what I wanted from her.”
He turned away from her, and she saw that the cords in his neck stood out, that his hands were fisted. She heard his breath now, coming hard, the same way it did when they made love.
Her own breath sped up in response, and she hated herself for that. She was weak and needy. When she got out of here, she would find a way to get rid of that need, to totally erase it from who she was.
He tried to take her hand. She yanked it away.
“Lise.” His face softened.
“I was always in love with you.” After all these years, it was a great relief to say it, but at the same time, it made her terribly sad. Because it was too little, too late. “I fell in love with you the first night I met you. Before. Forever ago. In college. When we played Scrabble.”
He was surprised. Of course he was. She had been a genius at hiding her feelings. She had buried them so deep that most of the time she had not known how she felt.
“All those years, I was waiting. I waited until it wore a rut in my brain. But I was okay with that. That wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was—”
It was the look on his face now that she hated. Sympathy. Bordering on pity. But she couldn’t stop. She’d never said this part out loud, not even to herself. “When it finally happened. And I let myself think—and then—”
He opened his mouth, and she could tell he was going to apologize again, so she cut him off. “Stop. I know you’re sorry. But you’re sorry for all the wrong things. You’re sorry you went out with Julie. But what about the fact that after we kissed that night, you acted like it never happened? How do you think that made me feel?”
“I—”
“That kiss—”
But she couldn’t say it. Even now, two years late
r, despite everything that had passed between them, that kiss was something sacred to her. Something he’d given her and then taken away. She’d had him, and he’d snatched himself away, and she could not forgive him or forget the pain or convince herself that it would not happen again.
She turned away, not wanting him to see the tears welling. For a moment, she hovered. It would be so easy to take what he offered, to hang on for as long as she could. But her panic during that phone call, her misery now and her edge-of-reasonable behavior, had told her that she couldn’t. For her, there was no “then” and “now.” There was only the way she’d always felt. And she couldn’t do this again. Not the waiting, not the daring to hope, and not the part that came after. The moment when she realized that, for him, nothing had happened. Nothing would.
“It’s not you,” she said quietly. “It’s me. I can’t. I can’t do it.”
“Could you just try? One more time?” She almost couldn’t hear him.
“I did try, but you see how it is. I’m a mess. I’m not usually like this, but you make me like this. I make me like this, around you.”
He cupped his open hand around a clenched fist. His knuckles were white, the muscles in his arms ropy and tense. She wouldn’t let herself look at him, not at the planes of his stomach and chest, and not at what she knew had to be the pleading in his eyes. “I don’t know what to say.” His voice was low, rough, and so different from the tone he’d used on the phone. All of his certainty had been washed away in the flood of her emotions. “I’ve told you how I feel about you. I’m...This is big for me. I don’t say those things to anyone. And I’ve sworn I’ll never hurt you again. I feel like I’m offering you everything I have to offer. I don’t know what else to say.”
She didn’t speak, but she let herself look at him, at his beautiful green eyes, the crease between his brows, the slight downturn of his mouth, which even now, she wanted to lean close and taste.
“That’s the problem, right?” he said. “It’s not enough. I’m not enough.”
She wanted to say, again, “It’s not you,” but the thing was, the truth was, he was exactly right. What he could offer was not enough to silence her fears.
He waited, his eyes searching her face.
She shook her head. “I couldn’t ever trust you.”
The words echoed in the stairwell.
He turned away first.
She watched him for a moment, taking in the long, strong line of his neck; the muscles in his back that bunched, even when he was relatively still, with tension. Even now she wanted to ease her fingers into his soft hair. How easy it would be to take a step toward him, weave her fingers through his hair, rest her face against the broad, hard surface of his back. And he’d turn in her arms—she knew he would.
She fled down the stairs.
18
BY THE TIME Elisa had been back in New York for a week, the scandal had run its course—a few splashes of excitement on the internet, some blathering on the nightly entertainment shows, one photographic spread in a glossy weekly. Elisa had fielded many phone calls, even a few invitations to appear on TV, but at Haven’s request, she’d declined any comment or appearance. Any attempt to explain what happened that weekend would sound like blame-dodging, and that—even more than a botched boot camp weekend—would sully her business.
There were no pictures of her and Brett in the spreads or on the shows, as if they hadn’t been there at all. Sometimes when she opened a magazine and found not a single picture of her and Brett standing inappropriately close, she was disappointed.
Rendezvous was—well, it just was. Despite her own sense of failure, nothing dramatic happened. No one called her to tell her they were taking their business elsewhere. She actually got a few calls and emails from potential new clients who said they’d heard about her through the entertainment weeklies. Apparently they’d been more intrigued by the concept of a dating coach than disturbed by Elisa’s failure to reform the unreformable. She supposed it was further proof that there was no such thing as bad publicity.
She welcomed the new clients, met with them, did their intake interviews. But the truth was, she didn’t have the stomach for it. She was weepy and exhausted. She’d made her big bid for fame, and it had fallen flat. The situation might have been easier to handle if it had gone up in flames. Instead, she was left with her life, exactly as it had been before she’d flown to the Caribbean.
Well, not exactly as it had been. There was an absence that hadn’t been there before. Forcing herself not to think about Brett and the dozen small ways he’d rescued her, the tenderness with which he’d said her name and touched her hair, or how she’d felt as he’d moved inside her, was a full-time, all-out, whole-body effort. She had to be constantly vigilant, or the scent of early flowers as she passed a brownstone garden would knock her backward and leave her stunned.
It was her life, as it had been, only now it was loaded with minefields, and she tiptoed carefully around herself, stiff and awkward.
She had one more loose end to tie up from the weekend. She picked up the phone and called Morrow. They exchanged pleasantries and agreed on a kill fee for the videos, and then she said, “I can put your check in the mail, but I know you’re not far from here, and if you want to come pick it up, that’s fine, too. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long. I’ve been—busy.”
“Could use the walk. You be there another hour?”
She would, she told him, and they hung up.
She sat at her desk, but instead of focusing on the new workshop she was supposed to lead next weekend, she checked Twitter. Although she found the social media platform overwhelming, she’d begun tweeting here and there, tips and suggestions, mainly. Meanwhile, she’d been avoiding Facebook like the plague. The other day, as if to add insult to injury, Facebook had suggested again that she might want to be friends with Brett. “No,” she’d said aloud. “I don’t want to be friends with you. I don’t even want to be reminded that you exist.”
There was a knock on the outer office door, and she called Morrow in. He stood in front of her desk. “Hey,” he grunted.
“Hi there.” She took the check from her pocket and handed it to him.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. It was good working with you. Do you have an email address I can reach you at if I have other work for you?”
“Sure. Tomorrowsvideo at greatmail dot com.”
She found a pad and pen and started to write it down. She got as far as the M when her hand stalled, and she looked up at him. “Tomorrow’s Video, like Tomorrow’s News?”
Morrow’s facial expression got twitchy.
Her stomach twisted. Upon returning to New York, there hadn’t been nasty surprises waiting for her around every corner. Life had been surprisingly, almost stultifyingly, ordinary. But here was the other shoe, ready to drop.
“Morrow, did you send all those tweets about Celine?” She almost didn’t want to know. She wasn’t sure she had the energy to care.
“Shouldn’t have. Panicked.”
“What?”
“Thought you’d broken the exclusive. Wanted to get something out there before that other guy did. Sorry. Should’ve had more faith.”
She stared at his pimply, bald head and lime green polo shirt. This—this—vile little man...
“You’re Tomorrowsnews.”
“To Morrow’s News.” He said it in a tone that skated disturbingly close to proud.
She’d hired this guy, invited him into her weekend, given him an exclusive, and this was how he’d repaid her?
He’d tweeted horrible things about Celine as if he were Steve. He’d tricked them all, even caused Haven to leave her sick mom and fly to St. Barts. Maybe Elisa wouldn’t have been able to put the weekend back together, but Morrow’s actions had made it 100 percent certa
in that there had been no chance.
She had to take a deep breath because, if she didn’t, she was going to throttle the life out of his fat, pimply throat.
“You are the scum on the bottom of my shoe after a full day of trudging around New York,” she said. “Get out of here.”
“Please don’t tell anyone.”
“Out.”
“Should give this back.” Morrow extended the check.
She wouldn’t extend her hand to take it. He left it on the desk. Then he put something down on top of it, something small and gray, before slinking away. “Sorry. So sorry.”
Poor Steve. She’d been colossally, impossibly, outrageously wrong. She’d falsely accused an innocent man and ruined a relationship. If there had been a Hippocratic oath for dating coaches, she would have broken it.
She picked up the check and the small gray object. A thumb drive. Morrow had written on it in permanent marker, “St. Barts, Celine Carr.”
The footage from the weekend. The wreckage of her promo video, of her aspirations.
Of her heart.
She balanced the thumb drive in the palm of her hand.
One broken heart was enough. She still had a chance to redeem herself.
She picked up the phone.
* * *
STEVE FLYNN HAD a website, and his website had a phone number, and he answered the phone on the third ring. “Hey.”
“I am the last person you want to talk to,” Elisa said. Might as well get the prostrating and groveling over with.
“For $500, is that Elisa Henderson at the other end of the line?”
He hadn’t hung up. That was good. And shocking. “Yeah, it’s me.”
“Have you called with a really excellent reason why I should talk to you? Because I am very hard pressed to think of one.”
“I—I’m calling to apologize. I know it’s too little, too late but—”
“She won’t take my calls. She won’t communicate with me in any way, shape or form. I can’t even convince her publicist to pass her a note.”
Elisa wanted to cry, not out of self-pity but for this guy she’d so thoroughly wronged. She and Haven had been his judge, jury and executioner.