THE LOVE INTEREST
Kayley Loring
Contents
Half page title
Logo
1. EMMETT
2. JACK IRONS
3. EMMETT
4. WILLIAM DEXTER
5. FIONA
6. EMMETT
7. FIONA
8. EMMETT
9. FIONA
10. JACK IRONS
11. EMMETT
12. WILLIAM DEXTER
13. FIONA
14. WILLIAM DEXTER
15. FIONA
16. EMMETT
17. JACK IRONS
18. FIONA
19. EMMETT
20. EMMETT
Chapter 21
22. JACK IRONS
23. WILLIAM DEXTER
Chapter 24
25. JACK IRONS
26. WILLIAM DEXTER
27. FIONA
28. EMMETT
29. FIONA
30. EMMETT
31. FIONA
32. EMMETT
33. FIONA
34. EMMETT
35. FIONA
36. WILLIAM DEXTER
37. JACK IRONS
38. FIONA
39. EMMETT
40. FIONA
41. EMMETT
42. FIONA
43. EMMETT
EPILOGUE ONE – Jack Irons
EPILOGUE TWO – William Dexter
EPILOGUE THREE – Goliath the Cock
Acknowledgments
Connect with Kayley
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text Copyright © 2021 by Kayley Loring
All rights reserved.
COVER DESIGN: Kari March Designs
COVER PHOTO: © Miguelanxo https://www.instagram.com/miguelanxoph/
COVER MODEL: Fabian Castro
DEVELOPMENTAL EDITING: Jennifer Mirabelli
COPY EDITING: Jenny Rarden
PROOFREADING: Inky Pen Editorial Services
Dedication
To the members of Kayleyville: I love you, assholes.
1
EMMETT
Jack Irons needs a woman.
These five words have been haunting me like an annoying cartoon Scooby-Doo ghost for days now. Weeks? Months, maybe.
Jack Irons needs a woman.
It makes me uncomfortable. It’s unsettling. Like all unsettling things that haunt me and make me uncomfortable, it’s probably true.
My protagonist needs a woman.
I don’t need a woman.
I need inspiration.
Those are the only three true words that are applicable to me at this point in my life.
Well, here are eleven more: I need to turn in a fucking novel to my publisher.
“All you have to do is write one true sentence,” Hemingway said. “Write the truest sentence that you know.”
If I wrote those three true sentences into my Microsoft Word doc, I’d have a nineteen-word manuscript. Booyah. Nineteen down. Seventy-nine thousand nine hundred eighty-one to go.
Fuck you, Hemingway. With your short novels and your Paris and your four wives and your affairs. Some of us have seven-figure publishing contracts that specify word count ranges. Some of us are devoted New Yorkers. Some of us can actually manage to write novels without getting women all tangled up in our sordid literary obligations.
Some of us only fall in love once in a lifetime, because once is enough.
Too much, even.
And also, nowhere near enough…
But what kind of woman would Jack fall in love with?
A single mom stripper with a heart of gold who’s trying to complete a law degree.
A grumpy, foul-mouthed local cop who also happens to have a great pair of tits, a heart-shaped ass, and a love of big band-era jazz music.
The seductive cousin of his beloved deceased wife who may or may not be a serial killer.
That chick who plays Wonder Woman…
What would it take to make Jack Irons fall in love again?
To see himself as a man who deserves that kind of love from a good woman?
To want to share his life with another person again?
To fall asleep next to the same woman night after night, believing that he’ll wake up to her beautiful face every morning for the rest of their lives—and not feel guilty about it?
To dream about and plan with and talk about the overwhelming urge to bring another life into this world with her?
How the fuck would I know?
I don’t even believe it can happen more than once.
Why should it?
Why should something that magnificent be anything other than a once-in-a-lifetime event?
I wanted to marry Sophie.
I proposed to her when we were twenty-two, before either of us had any idea we wouldn’t live forever.
I still wanted to marry her when it became clear that she wouldn’t live much longer than a few months.
I wanted it on the record that I was Sophie’s husband and she was my wife.
She said she didn’t want to make me a widower.
“Marry someone who’ll make life beautiful for you again,” she said. “Marry someone who’ll live for you. Promise me you’ll be happy again.”
That was the only time I’d lied to her, when I made that promise. And I promised myself that I would never fall in love again. I’ve kept this silent promise to both of us, every single day, for over ten years.
I had made the decision to love and care for her, in sickness and in health, long before I’d actually proposed to her. If she’d let me marry her, I wouldn’t have said those words “till death do us part.” Fuck that parting shit. I lived for her, and I would have died for her. There’s no end to that kind of love.
Here’s one true sentence that I will never share with anyone: I’m starting to forget what it felt like to be in love with Sophie, and it’s like I’m losing her all over again.
Here are two more: I probably just need to get laid. I definitely need a drink.
And, as always: I’m going to write one more page before I do anything else.
JACK IRONS
Title TBD by Emmett Ford (The Jack Irons Series, Book Six) – Chapter One
Eggs. Jack Irons was staring at eggs when he realized it. Two eggs, sunny-side up, staring right back at him. He hadn’t even had his coffee yet—maybe that was why he wasn’t thinking clearly. Maybe that was why he wasn’t thinking about the news, or the bills that were due, or the song on the radio, or the five men he’d killed in Berlin two months ago.
I need a woman.
At first, he thought about sex. Then, he thought it would be nice to have someone to eat breakfast with. Then, he thought about sex again. Sex and breakfast with a woman. It had been years since he’d thought of having both with the same woman. He hadn’t even let a woman stay the night in this apartment before. Hadn’t offered any woman a glass or a mug that his wife had drunk from. They were the only things he’d had his sister pack up and send to him once he’d finally settled down in Oceanside—or disappeared here, rather. His wife’s favorite wineglass and coffee mug, unwashed since the last time she’d use them. Two things that still had traces of her lipstick and fingerprints on them.
After Marianne had died, Jack left their South Carolina hometown with nothing but the clothes he was wearing and a heart full of guilt and rage. Guilt, rage, and a love that wouldn’t die. A love that would not be forgotten, could not be replaced.
He had faced death on his own more tim
es than he could count by the time he’d reached the West Coast, but not once did the thought of losing his own life scare him as much as the thought of losing her had.
He’d only been with one woman in the last month. Not because she was special—because she’d kept calling him and he didn’t have the time or the energy to get to know anyone else. In bed, she had the enthusiasm and stamina of a spin class instructor. Out of bed, she was as mentally stimulating as watching the spin cycle of his washing machine.
Hold on there, hot shot.
Seriously?
What. The. Shit?
Fuck fuck fuck fuck ball sack cocksucker loser hack garbage sellout New York Times best-selling author piece of shit has-been.
That right there was better writing than what you just churned out. You’re joking, right? You think you can get away with this? I would never think this shit—not on page one. You call that a hook? You write thrillers. This is the exact opposite of thrilling. Your readers deserve better than this horseshit. That entire opening is weak, and those last two sentences are the worst sentences anyone has ever written.
Select all and delete.
Again.
What is this now—your fourteenth attempt at Chapter One?
Admit it. You have writer’s block. You know what writer’s block is? Life block. You’ve cock blocked yourself into a corner. Step away from the computer, man. Get out of that fancy loft. Get back out into the world again. Let the summer night air and the city of Manhattan into your lungs and your heart again. Think about something other than your deadline and me and Sophie. Talk to a living, breathing human being. A pretty one. A smart, pretty one. The kind you can really talk to. The kind who will make you smile again. Someone you can make love to. Someone you could fall in love with.
What are you so afraid of?
Another broken heart?
Pffft.
How are you even capable of writing a badass manly character like me, you fucking pussy?
Nut up.
Get. Out. There.
If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me.
Do it for my fans.
Okay, fine—do it for your fans.
Do it for your astonishing million-dollar advance and Ryan Gosling and the potential third installment of our film series.
Do it for your dick, because the only things in this place that have gotten any real action for the past three weeks are the food delivery app and your keyboard—and you haven’t even given me one decent first page yet.
Come back when you’re inspired and worthy of being the author of the international best-selling Jack Irons series, you thirty-five-year-old dried-up husk of a former man—and bring me a woman. Bring me a woman who will dazzle and confound me and bring me to my fucking knees. You hear me, Emmett Ford? Don’t bother typing another word until you’ve found her.
Go on.
Get the fuck out of here.
3
EMMETT
Fuck you, Jack.
He’s not the boss of me.
I’m out because I’m hungry. For food. I’m out because I need to move around and breathe in the summer night air and the city of Manhattan—because I want to. It’s a beautiful late-summer night. Surprisingly, it’s not too humid. Little Italy is quiet this time of night—quiet for Manhattan, anyway.
I walk up to Houston Street, toward the 24-hour diner. I won’t dine in. I’ll get takeout. It’s not about the diner, it’s about the walk. It’s about clearing my head and being out and about, among the living.
If I happen to see a woman who might inspire me to write one for Jack, then great. But that’s all it would be. That’s all it ever could be.
Not you, redhead in the rubber dress. Jack would never go for a lady in a rubber dress. Keep moving.
Not you either, appallingly young group of women. What are you even doing eye fucking an old guy like me? What are you—seventeen? Go home. Read a book. Jack would only fall for a woman he could have interesting conversations with. Someone with at least a little life experience.
Okay, maybe a little less life experience than you’ve had, leopard-print-coat lady with the wig on backward. Jesus. You would eat Jack Irons alive.
Christ. I should get out of the city. I could go to my cabin for a writing retreat, but maybe I need an even bigger change. How is it possible that there are over 1.6 million people living within twenty-three square miles of me—nearly four million in Manhattan on weekdays—and I’ve never fallen in love with one of them? Not even close.
In leaving Connecticut and all the memories it holds—of Sophie and love and death—I chose to disappear into a sea of people, only to drown myself in writing. I could do this anywhere. Maybe I should move somewhere else. Maybe I didn’t go far enough.
Still, I remember the promise of starting over when I’d first arrived here. I remember the anticipation and the hesitant yearning and the way the city welcomed me. My first night here, I walked into the restaurant that was across the street from my tiny apartment on the Lower East Side. While I was waiting for a table, a middle-aged man who was waiting for his wife started up a conversation with me. When I told him I’d just moved here, he immediately called out to the bartender and ordered me an Irish whiskey. He said, “Welcome to New York, son.”
My father prefers Scotch, so as a form of rebellion, I drink bourbon. That first sip of Irish whiskey was clean and smooth and profound. It tasted like a new beginning, aged in wood, flavored with something warm and familiar.
“There’s always something unexpected and remarkable happening here,” the man continued. “Every single thing that happens in this city is important. Everyone’s a hero. Now you’re a part of it. Congratulations. Don’t fuck it up.”
That was it. His wife came out of the ladies’ room, he paid for my drink, wished me luck, and left. I finished the glass, savored the burning sensation in my throat like a badass, and got seated at a table next to Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker. I had been christened a New Yorker and had not thought of my dead fiancée for ten whole minutes. That signature blend of optimism, gratitude, and guilt would stay with me for my entire first year here, and I vowed to welcome every new resident who crossed my path in the same way.
Less than three years later, I had already become a fairly successful asshole New Yorker. I wanted to tell everyone who had moved here that they were just bringing their memories and broken hearts with them and there wasn’t enough room in this town for mine and theirs.
Ten years since moving here, I’m an impossibly successful, jaded asshole New Yorker who doesn’t even see past five feet ahead of him. If I move somewhere else, I’d just be taking my past and my broken heart with me there too. The eloquent dissonance of this city has become my soundtrack. I don’t know if it’s my soul projected outward or if I’ve somehow embodied the numb electric shock of predictable chaos.
But New York, more specifically New York at night, is my home as much as any place could be without Sophie.
At least I have family here. At least there are three people on this island who have to love me. As if on cue, my phone vibrates in my pocket. I know, even before reaching for it, that it’s my sister.
Three a.m. is too late for a booty call when you’re thirty-five, even in New York, and only someone who is related to me would know that I’m up at this hour. The Fords are a family of night owls. Night owls who get shit done. Night owls who would just lie in bed thinking about all the things they never said to their loved ones if they weren’t so busy being productive and awesome.
I answer after the second ring. “Hello, Celeste.”
There’s a brief pause when she sucks in her breath, and then: “Holy shit, you scared me.”
“I know it must be startling when people see your name on their caller ID and actually accept the call.”
“Oh, fuck you. I was going to leave a message. I figured you’d be working.”
“I am working. Outside.”
“Ohhh. An in
spiration walk. How’s it going?”
“Fine.”
“You finish that first chapter yet?”
“What can I do for you, Celeste?”
“That bad, huh? Did Dad call you today?”
“No. Why?”
“Nothing. I mean, it’s not nothing, but he should be the one to tell you.”
“Tell me what? What happened?”
“Nothing happened. I mean, something might happen. He just has to talk to you about it. Something. It’s not bad. It’s actually a good thing. I think. Forget I mentioned it. He’ll probably call you tomorrow.”
“Great. Thanks for the heads-up.”
“This isn’t a heads-up. You have to talk to him.”
“Just tell me what he’s calling about.”
“I can’t—Oh hey, look who’s up!” I can hear her telling my niece that she’s on the phone with me. Bettina is seven. She’s my favorite person alive and currently suffering from insomnia. This wasn’t a huge problem in the middle of summer break, but Labor Day is just around the corner and she won’t be able to get up at noon on a school day.
The Love Interest Page 1