Twenty
WE WERE JUST starting to think we’d dodged getting caught at the hospital when a photo of Jack showed up on a gossip site.
And then ten minutes later? It was everywhere.
Sure enough, it was taken in the waiting room of the ER. And though it was from a distance, and it was more the side of his face than the front, it did look a lot like him.
The internet wasn’t sure, though. Articles started popping up like, “What’s World Famous Jack Stapleton Doing in Katy, Texas?” and “Stapleton Sighted in Nowheresville” and “Reclusive Superstar Takes Obscurity to a New Level.”
Enthusiastic internet sleuths found pictures of Jack taken at similar angles and posted them side by side, parsing each detail with Oliver Stone–like precision. Was this the true shape of Jack Stapleton’s earlobe? Was the dot on his neck a shadow or a freckle? Was this the same T-shirt he’d worn in a paparazzi shot two New Year’s Eves ago?
It was impressive work, actually. Glenn should recruit some of those people.
In the end, the internet broadly agreed: Yes, The Destroyer had been spotted in a random little hospital in a tiny Texas town. The question nobody seemed to have an answer to was why.
All to say: Jack being sort-of exposed bumped us up to threat level orange at last.
Maybe a light orange—more like a sherbet—but orange all the same.
The team had to evaluate more internet chatter and track a new explosion of “fans” who looked like they could cause trouble. I started putting on leggings and sneakers every day for “an afternoon run” to jog off the property for surveillance updates at headquarters.
It was just down the road, but it might as well have been a whole other world.
I didn’t love going.
And I loved it even less the day I found Glenn there, mid rant.
Doghouse was there, too, as were Taylor and Robby.
“I don’t care what your feelings are. Feelings have no place in this room!” Glenn was shouting. He banged his hand on the desk at those words.
“What’s going on?” I asked, closing the door behind me.
Glenn, looking pissed, pointed at me. “This is your fault, too.”
“My fault!” I said. “I just got here.”
“Twenty-five years I went without any of my agents sleeping with each other. Twenty-five years! Then you and Romeo over here break that rule, and now it’s a free-for-all.”
I looked over at Robby, who was staring at the floor. Then, Taylor. Who was staring straight ahead, her eyes red and her face puffy.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Did you know these two were sleeping together?” Glenn demanded.
I flared my nostrils. “Yes.”
“Well, now he’s dumped her,” Glenn announced, like it was somehow my fault. “And she can’t get any work done—and neither can anybody else—because she cannot stop crying.”
Did I feel a tiny flicker of triumph?
No comment.
“Does this mean I get London?” I asked. “Since he’s such a troublemaker?”
But Glenn was in no mood. “You’ve got your downsides, too.”
He wasn’t wrong. I turned to Robby. “You dumped her, huh?”
“Do you even need to ask?” Glenn demanded. “Look at her!”
Now there were fresh tears on Taylor’s face.
“You want a lesson on how to get dumped?” Glenn demanded of Taylor. “That,” he said, pointing right at me, “is how you get dumped! She’s the gold standard! This guy ripped her heart out on the night after her mother’s funeral, but she was back at work the next day like a goddamned superhero.”
Taylor was actively crying now.
“Ugh,” Glenn said, turning away in disgust. “Get out of here and pull yourself together. Go get some fresh air. Amadi, take her some water.”
Taylor scuttled out, and Amadi followed.
Glenn rounded on Robby then. “Just what are you and that horndog personality of yours trying to accomplish? Are you trying to drive me into bankruptcy? Is there one woman in this company you haven’t screwed?”
Kelly raised her hand cheerfully in the back corner. “He hasn’t screwed me!”
“Keep it that way,” Glenn growled.
“Yeah,” Doghouse added. “Keep it that way.”
“Yes, sirs,” Kelly said, saluting them both.
“Hey, Kelly,” I said with a wave.
“Hey.”
But Glenn wanted answers. “What are you doing?” he demanded of Robby. “What are you thinking?”
“I made a mistake,” Robby said.
“You sure as hell did.”
“No,” Robby said. “I made a mistake when I broke up with Hannah.”
“Oh God,” I said, smacking my hand on my forehead and walking toward the door. “Seriously?”
But Robby stopped me. “You can’t go.”
I gave Glenn a look. “Are you really gonna make me stay for this?”
Glenn tilted his head. “I believe we still have work to do. You remember work?”
“What am I supposed to do?” Robby demanded of Glenn, in a voice like there was no bigger victim in this room than him. “All day long, I have to watch these monitors.” Robby turned to me. “You know we put cameras everywhere, right? Whatever you two do outside, I’m watching it. If he gives you a piggyback ride. If he helps you in the garden. If he shows you tricks on the horse, or he teaches you how to do a handstand, or he stares at you when you aren’t looking. I see it all.”
Wait. Jack stared at me when I wasn’t looking?
Robby kept going. Back to Glenn: “You did this to torture me.”
Glenn didn’t even lift his eyebrows. “Absolutely.”
“Well, it’s working. It’s driving me insane.”
“Good. You deserve it.”
“Is this personal?”
“It’s life,” Glenn said. “And if you’re smart, you’ll use it to get stronger.”
I squinted at Robby. “Is this a caveman thing? Is this a chemical, knee-jerk, nobody-can-have-my-former-woman thing? Are you peeing on me to mark your territory?”
Kelly was still listening. “Please don’t let him pee on you.”
I gave her a look. “Metaphorically.”
But Robby shook his head. “I’m sorry, okay? I should never have let you go.”
“Let me go?” I said. “You didn’t let me go. You abandoned me.”
“I take it back.”
“There’s no taking it back.”
“Why not?”
“Because now I know who you really are.”
Robby pouted at that. Then he narrowed his eyes. “I know what this is. You think he likes you.”
I held very still.
“I see you with him,” Robby went on. “He’s got you convinced. But that can’t be right. You’re too smart for that. You can’t really think that a world-famous actor who could have any woman in the world picked you. Tell me you didn’t fall for that. Have you seen Kennedy Monroe? He’s playing with you! He’s bored! He’s not even that great an actor! Wake up. You’re choosing a fake relationship over me.”
I didn’t know what to say to most of that. But that last point was easy. “Wrong,” I said. “I’m choosing anything at all over you.”
“He doesn’t actually like you,” Robby said.
“I never said he did.”
“But you thought it.”
I had to hand it to Robby. A rare moment of insight.
Glenn was done here. “Get Taylor back,” he said, flinging his arm at Kelly. “Let’s have this stalker meeting and call it a day.”
Robby kept his eyes on me. “You asked me the other week why I was being such an ass.”
Wow, that was a hundred years ago. “You mean when you said I was not pretty enough for this assignment?” I said. “I guess I did.”
“Don’t you want to know the answer?”
I stopped and turned to look at him. “I know the answer already,” I said. “You were being an ass because you are an ass. Simple.”
But Robby grabbed my arm. “It’s because I wanted to get back together.”
That got my attention. “You wanted to—?”
“Even then, even that day.”
I tried to put it together. “You wanted to get back together … so you said I was ugly?”
“I panicked.”
“Is that what it’s called?”
“I missed you in Madrid.”
“You missed me in Madrid—while you were sleeping with my best friend?”
“I’ve wanted you back ever since we got home. But I felt guilty about Taylor.”
“Wait! Are you trying to seem like a good person?”
“I’m saying it’s complicated.”
“No. It’s very simple.”
Robby seemed to hold his breath for a second. “Because of Taylor?” he demanded, like I was being petty. “That was just an on-assignment thing.”
“Not because of Taylor,” I said. “Because you dumped me.” Then, for good measure, I added, “On the night after my mother’s funeral.”
Robby made a strangled noise as if we’d had this argument a million times. “When are you going to stop fixating on that?”
“Never,” I said. “That’s why we’re never getting back together. The Taylor thing was just another nail in a well-nailed coffin.”
“We were just bored,” Robby pleaded, like I was being unreasonable.
“Is that what Taylor would say?”
“I’m telling you, the person I wanted then—and want now—is you.”
“I’m pretty sure we never really liked each other all that much, anyway.”
I couldn’t believe I was being forced to have this conversation.
Yes, I was lonely. Yes, witnessing Robby and Taylor kissing had shredded me in ways I never knew were possible. But I wasn’t pathetic. “We’re not getting back together, Robby.”
“Why not?”
“Because you disqualified yourself.”
“You’d rather be alone forever than let me make it up to you?”
“Not sure those are my only options.”
“I just want a chance to make things right.”
“But there is no way to make things right. And even if there were, you wouldn’t know how.”
AFTER THE MEETING—AFTER Taylor was dragged back in to sit, catatonic, staring at the floor while Robby snuck resentful looks at me like I was the bad guy, and after Glenn went on another rant about how nobody in this company was allowed to have any sex at all for any reason ever again, and after we talked through all the details and ramifications and policy changes that the viral photo of Jack was going to mean for this assignment, I jogged back to the ranch in a daze, turning one simple, shocking thought over and over in my head.
Robby was right.
Leave it to Robby to suck the fun out of everything.
But he was right.
Liking Jack was a catastrophically bad idea.
I couldn’t believe I’d let it happen.
He was Jack Stapleton.
Letting myself fall for him was emotional suicide.
That’s exactly what I was thinking when I saw the god himself up ahead on the gravel road, walking in my direction.
When he saw me, he shifted into a jog, which gave the distinct impression that he was happy to see me.
So Method.
I didn’t slow down—just kept walking, even as he reached me—and so Jack had to U-turn to follow me.
“Hey!” he said, still jogging. “Welcome back.”
I didn’t answer.
He fell into pace beside me. “You okay?” he asked, trying to study my face. “You look tired.”
“Long meeting,” I said.
Jack wrinkled his nose. “About the stalker?”
“Yes. Apparently, she TP’d your house with pink toilet paper. And left a painting for you.”
“A painting?”
“A self-portrait. On canvas,” I said, as we arrived back in the yard. I pulled the photo up on my phone. We paused in Connie’s garden to take a look. “A nude,” I said, to prepare him. Then I added, “Self-Portrait with Corgis.”
Jack let out a low whistle. “It’s actually pretty good.”
I nodded. “She’s talented.”
“Maybe I should impregnate her.”
“Hey!” I said. “You’re not impregnating anybody on my watch!” Then, in case that was too strident, I added, “Unless you want to.”
There he was, again—laughing. “I missed you,” he said then.
“What?”
“Just now,” Jack said, gesturing back at HQ. “You were gone a long time.”
“We had a lot to discuss.”
“What do you think about that?”
“About what?”
“About me missing you.”
Maybe it was because Robby had just weaponized this whole setup against me, but now I couldn’t see anything Jack did as real. There he was, with a shy half smile, looking down at my sneakers and leaning in toward me—just textbook bashfully … and I could only see it as calculated, and constructed, and hollow, and fake. And the fact that he was faking it so well—that I hadn’t even been able to tell the frigging difference—was just humiliating.
He was acting. He’d been acting all along.
But I wasn’t.
Was I supposed to play along? I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. What did I think of him telling me he missed me? “I think you’re a much better actor than anybody gives you credit for,” I said. Not even trying to disguise the bitterness in my voice.
Jack winced at that—microscopically, but I felt it.
Fine. Good. Better that way.
Because something was hitting me then, surrounded by Connie’s fall garden, out in the middle of nowhere. I was not all that different from the Corgi Lady. I was living in a fantasy world, too.
My chances of winding up with Jack Stapleton were just as bad as hers.
Worse, maybe, even.
At least the Corgi Lady knew how to paint.