Flirting With Forever (17 page)

“Shit.” Jake hissed, his head still reeling. He pulled out his phone. “I’ve got to warn her.”

Erin was scrolling down entry after entry of news items. She showed Jake the screen. “You’re too late.”

There were pictures of local and national news affiliates setting up in front of Tara’s house. He tried her cellphone, but got nowhere. The house phone went straight to a voicemail box that was already full. The national affiliates were comparing the scandal to the more salacious tryst of General Petraeus and a Charlotte journalist who was married to some doctor. That was insane; Jake and Tara’s relationship wasn’t anywhere near the magnitude of a major national security breach, but on a slow news day, the right celebrity getting a parking ticket was blood in the water for the media sharks.

He threw a wad of cash on the table to pay for the meal and got up. “She’s not answering her phone.”

“Stop, Jake.” Now Erin was in full-blown obnoxious New Yorker mode. “You think going to her is going to fix this? You know better than that. Let the company take care of this.”

“No way, you’ll need someone to run crisis communications.”

“And you think you’re the person to solve that problem? You
are
the damn problem, Jake.” She flipped her phone around and jabbed her finger at his picture on the screen. “You riding into a little town like Charlotte on your white horse will only make things worse. The story will play for months until we get lucky and some major catastrophe takes you out of the news.”

“I can fix this.”

“I know you want to fix this, Jake.” Her tone softened a little. Erin was a good person, a good friend. “But you can’t. We’ll call in another agency. It will be expensive, but the company has a lot of money invested in Tara’s brand.”

“Is that all she is to you? A dollar sign?”

“Don’t look at me like that. It’s not just the money, Jake, and you know it. Tara waited her whole life for her writing career to take off; she’d almost given up on it ever happening. Taking that away from her is wrong on so many levels. And after everything she’s been through, it would break her.”

“Lou.” Jake said. “I’ll call Lou. She’s the best at this.”

“You just want to run it through her, so that you can have your fingers in this.” Jake had made the mistake of telling Erin about his internship after too many beers, trying to one up her in a game of Truth or Dare. Really there hadn’t been any dare to speak of, just a lot of gut spilling about stupid things they’d done before they turned thirty.

“I agree Lou’s the right person for this, Jake, but does Tara know about Lou?” Erin looked at him warily. He nodded. “And you think working with Lou is going to make her feel better? Oh, you are SO not getting anywhere near this fiasco, because you and I both know that is the stupidest possible thing you could do.”

“Okay, I have to get out of here.” Jake kissed her on the cheek. “You have to fix this, Erin. I love her.”

Erin stood there all gimpy with tears in her eyes and with no idea Jake was blowing smoke up her ass. He punched Tara’s numbers again, still no answer. He punched in the next number on his mental list and was glad US Air had a seat on the last flight out of LaGuardia to Atlanta. He didn’t bother going by his apartment. Almost everything he owned was in boxes anyway.

Jake hailed a cab, settled into the back seat. “LaGuardia,” he said. The cab driver nodded. He made the next call on his list.

“I was dying here, waiting to hear from you, Jake,” Lou said.

“I’m on my way.”

“Hauling her ass out of trouble is going to cost your ex-employer
and
you.”

“That’s why they call it crisis communications, and I don’t know anybody better at this than you.”

“It’ll take a lot more than flattery to get what you want, and you do realize there’s precious little ROI.”

Return On Investment? Tara was the fucking return on the investment. “Save your breath. Penguin’s already on board. You’re the other piece to make this right. I get in around midnight.”

“What you’re asking me to do, Jake, is expensive and exhausting. But you know that. You’ll do what I ask when I ask, but for the most part, you’re to sit on the sidelines. Speak when you’re spoken to. Otherwise, you can park your problem on someone else’s doorstep. Is that clear?”

“Crystal.” Jake needed to try Tara again. It ate at him what she must be going through right now. “I have to go.”

“I’ll see you soon.”

He paused, hating that he’d owe Lou Rosen, but there was no way around it. “Thanks, Lou.”

‡

I
’d told Jake
I was going to bed around eight-thirty and I did. After sitting around the hospital all day, I was worn out, but Jim’s surgery had gone well, and Jake and I were that much closer to being with Jake.

It was so early, I had trouble going to sleep. Around nine, I grabbed my laptop and went to my Yahoo page. Pictures I had taken of Jake and me were the top story with the headline A Happy Marriage in 30 Days, only the word marriage was X-ed out and the word Affair was inserted. But how in the hell had they gotten the pictures? I rifled through my briefcase and dumped my purse out onto my bed. My iPad was missing. Since I got out of the hospital, I hadn’t even missed it.

I heard an odd noise outside. “Jake?” I called softly. No answer. I padded to the front door and looked outside. A news truck was parked in my yard and the crew was setting up their satellite for the broadcast. Whatever this was, I knew I didn’t have much time before there’d be more vultures. I grabbed my cellphone, Jake’s black Wisconsin hoodie he’d left and slipped into his sweat pants, rolling the legs up so I didn’t kill myself. Two more trucks had just pulled down our steep driveway and someone was knocking on my front door when I slipped out the back door.

I walked to Marsha’s house knowing that if someone spotted me, they’d probably know I wasn’t a teenage boy wearing clothes that were four sizes too big. I didn’t have far to go, maybe fifty feet to get to Marsha’s. I disappeared into the wall of Leland cypresses that bordered the Lemieux’s yard and mine and then sprinted to Marsha’s back door.

The doorbell seemed louder than church bells. Marsha finally appeared from the dining room with a glass of wine, sauntering toward the back door until I gave her a look. She finally opened up, and I darted inside.

“I see you’re dressing yourself again,” Marsha quipped. Marsha quips a lot when she’s had a few glasses of wine, but I was in no mood for it.

“Close the curtains.” Both her house and mine had huge beautiful views of the lake.

“What’s wrong with you? You know the drapes are side panels. They’re just for show. Do you want a glass of wine?”

I hurried into the kitchen, which was probably the safest place to hide given it had plantation shutters and drapes that really closed, but I had no intention of getting anywhere near the windows. “Please Marsha, it’s the press. Go see for yourself.”

She walked into her living room and came hurrying back. “Oh my god, they have all their antenna thingies sticking up, and there’s a horde of people trampling your lawn.”

“It’s not my lawn I’m worried about.” I grabbed a glass and gave myself an extremely generous pour. “There are photos of me and Jake all over the news. I don’t know how they got them but they did.” The doorbell rang. “Tell Mike not to answer it.”

“Mike just left for the airport an hour ago, but honestly, how bad can the pictures be?” Marsha scrolled through the stories. “There’s nothing suggestive—Oh. My. God.”

Then I remembered being bored one day when Jake was out at the pool. I’d been curious as to what he was writing, but I figured he’d show it to me when he was ready. It wasn’t like he hid his writing from me, so I read it, over and over again. I’d even photographed certain parts, downloaded them to my iPad, and now they were all over the news.

“What am I going to do?”

Marsha’s lips were moving as she read one of the entries. “Honey, this is so freaking hot. Oh. My. God.”

Marsha’s house phone rang. I was jacked up on paranoia, praying the wine would take me down a few notches. “Don’t answer that.”

“It’s probably Mike,” Marsha said looking at the caller ID. “No, it’s a New York number.” She answered the phone. “Jake? She’s okay, she’s with me.”

I grabbed the phone. “Jake? I tried your cellphone, but it went straight to voicemail. Are you okay?”

“Yes, my phone’s dead. How did they get pictures?”

“I’m sorry. One of the hotel maids found your iPad and sold the pictures to TMZ. It’s my fault, I should have made sure I had it before I left for the hospital, but I was out of my mind when you got hurt.”

“It’s not your fault, Jake, but I don’t know what to do.”

“You did the smart thing. Got out of the house. I want to be with you, but Erin said it would only make things worse.”

“She saw the pictures too?”

“The whole world has. Penguin’s collaborating with an outside contractor to salvage your brand.” I could hear the tightness in his voice.

“It’s Lou, isn’t it?”

“Yes. And as much as you hate her, she’s the best person you can have on your team right now.”

“And you’re with her now?” There was a long pause.

“No. But I’m on my way to Atlanta.”

“No. Jake.”

“Tara, listen to me. I need to fix this, but Erin’s not going to let me anywhere near it.”

“That woman wants you.”

“Lou’s hypercompetitive. She was just trying to make you jealous.”

“Well, she did a damn good job.”

“Before I left Charlotte, you asked me to trust you, and I do. Now I’m asking you to do the same.”

“It’s not you I distrust.”

“Tara, I’ve seen how important your career is to you, how much you love it, and if our being together takes that away from you—”

“I don’t care.”

“Maybe not now, but later, I think you would. And I don’t want anything to come between us, not Lou, not Jim, and not this.”

Total silence. “Honey,” Marsha whispered, “he can’t hear you when you nod.”

“I love you, Jake.”

“And you trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Stay at Marsha’s tonight and then go to the hospital like you’d planned tomorrow. Don’t drive your car, take hers. I already notified the hospital so they can be prepared for the media onslaught. Jim’s in a private room, so you should be fine. Don’t talk to anybody except for me and Erin. Got that?”

“What about Marsha?”

“Okay. Yeah, you can talk to Marsha.” Jake laughed, but I wasn’t laughing. “Just trust me, Tara, everything’s going to be fine. We’re going to be together soon. I promise.”

“If she lays a hand on you—”

“We’re pulling away from the gate, they’re making me turn my phone off. I love you. Bye.”

The doorbell rang and Marsha decided it was best to answer it and play dumb about my whereabouts. She deserved an academy award for her performance when the reporters barked questions at her, the most frequent of which was, did she know where I was. She offered them a glass of wine and I almost peed my pants when she said they could wait inside her house. Of course every single one of them declined and slithered back over to my yard to ambush me.

Jake got to
Lou’s fancy Peachtree Street apartment just after midnight. It had been a long time, but he knew his way around her place.

“You didn’t bring any clothes, how delightful,” she said. She was dressed for bed in some sort of thin lingerie, but Jake wasn’t having any of it. “Oh, yes, I remember, you like to sleep in the raw too.”

“Okay. I’m only going to say this once. Cut the Mrs. Robinson shit. I’m here for Tara. I love her. That’s it.”

“But you need me.”

“For this, yes, but only for this.”

“I bet she loves that you’re here with me now, or doesn’t she know?”

“She knows,” Jake said. Although Tara didn’t know he was staying at Lou’s tonight.

“And does she know we might have to work through the night?”

“Let me put it this way. You’re going to get a lot of money from Penguin because I screwed up, but that’s all you’ll get. I’m here to help make things right for Tara. End of story.”

Lou could attempt to toy with him all she wanted, but in the end Jake knew that for her, it was all about the money. “All right then, Jake. Let’s get started.”

They plowed through the news stories first to know what they were dealing with. The photos of the notebook pages were the most salacious. The media were comparing Tara to James Frey who got in trouble for lying to Oprah about the book he’d written, only Tara had deceived the entire married public.

“You went to work fast, Jake,” Lou said, sifting through the date stamps on the photos.

“I didn’t take the job to get in her pants, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, it’s obvious she loves you, which explains the unprofessional display the last time I saw her.”

“You knew what you were doing.”

“Yes, Jake, but the most interesting thing that is you knew what I was doing too, and you didn’t stop me.”

Had he purposefully baited Tara, with Lou? He didn’t think he had, but he knew she was jealous from the minute he introduced the two of them.