The One That I Want (29 page)

Nia nodded.

Shar, who I knew already considered Nia to be her sister-in-law, despite the fact that Chance hadn’t yet popped the question officially, studied the young woman with heightened curiosity. “I haven’t heard this story…”

Nia waved her off. “It’s not really worth telling beyond the fact that it proved to me that ‘trusting your instincts’ and ‘following your heart’ aren’t just clichés. We need to do both when it comes to love.”

She sent me a warm, kind look. She might be younger than I was by a decade, but she was a wise young woman.

Shar’s attention was still on her, though. “Wait, are you saying you went out with Grant Jordan before you met my brother…or, um, simultaneously?”

Nia laughed. “We’re here to help
Julia
tonight,” she replied in a classic evasion maneuver that made me grin for the first time in hours. “But let’s just say that your brother wasn’t exempt from relationship fear or any less difficult to deal with just because he wasn’t a celebrity.”

Olivia and Rosemary, the only two in our group who were currently married, both nodded with vigor, muttering something to each other about their husbands. It was too low for me to hear, though.

Shar’s lips twisted in amusement. She pointed at Nia. “We’re not done with this conversation, but you’re right. Tonight is about Julia.” She turned to me. “I’ve been listening to you talk about Ben, Kristopher, and Dane in private all month. And all of us here have heard the public stuff, too. The late-night jokes about you and ‘the movie star.’ The tabloid insinuations.”

I cringed, but Shar and the other women around us looked at me with nothing but understanding and compassion.

“Every single one of us here knows that was unfair and had to suck,” Vicky said.

“It was complete sensationalistic trash,” Rosemary added. “I don’t even know you very well, Julia, but I know that.”

“And I know who’s to blame for it,” Elsie said with steel in her usually gentle voice.

This got my attention. “Who?” I asked.

“Bill from the Quest group is an extremely nice guy,” Elsie began. “He also spent fourteen years as a prosecuting attorney. He knows how to get confessions out of people.” She paused and took a deep breath. “He and I are friends from way back, and when I had my suspicions about the source of that witchy reporter’s information, I put him on the case. Turns out that your feelings of irritation toward Kristopher are justified. He was the one who contacted that Caryn woman from the
Tinseltown
Buzz
. The one who gave her your personal cell number. The one who told her those things about Analise, among other details.”

Honestly, given Kristopher’s bizarre actions, I couldn’t say I was shocked, but a murderous red flooded my internal vision all the same. “Did he have any idea how much damage—”

“He did,” Elsie said quietly. “That’s the really troubling part. Kristopher told Bill how jealous he’d been when he saw you drive off with Dane after the radio station interview. He wanted Dane Tyler out of your life. The reporter had given out her card to practically everyone in the place, so he had an easy way of reaching her.”

“That bastard,” Shar breathed. But I could tell this wasn’t news to her. It was why she’d insisted I come to Elsie’s tonight.

Elsie leaned forward. “I learned some other things about Kristopher from Bill, too. Apparently, he and his sister came from a very unhappy home. His dad wasn’t physically abusive, but he was verbally so. Bill found out that there had been some neighborhood complaints about yelling, even as recently as a few years ago. Did you know about that, Julia?”

“No. Although, looking back, it makes sense to me now, given how Kristopher always avoided talking about his parents or having me in the same place as them. Both he and his sister Tricia left home as soon as they could. And his father died three years ago. I’d already suspected that might be why he’d waited until well after the funeral to return to Mirabelle Harbor.”

“I’m sure that was a part of it, but it was more than that, too,” Elsie told us. “In Tulsa, Kristopher had a girlfriend. Bill was able to draw that information out of him, but it took him a few days to piece together the rest. It seemed Kristopher had begun to replicate his dad’s behavior in his own relationships but, unlike his mom, his girlfriend didn’t put up with it and wouldn’t just ‘forgive him’ when he apologized. She broke up with him, and he responded by hounding her. Constant texts and phone calls. Stopping by unannounced. Showing up unexpectedly in public places where he knew she’d be. She finally got a restraining order on him. He told Bill he was ‘embarrassed by the fuss she made,’ and that’s why he left Oklahoma. He still doesn’t acknowledge his culpability in that situation.”

This, too, made sense. I thought of that weird, unexpected visit he’d made to my house. His possessiveness and argumentativeness that day. His contempt toward Dane and toward me, too. And, yet, the bizarre way he expected me to just “let bygones be bygones” after he’d intentionally tried to destroy my reputation—it was as if he thought he could then swoop in and be my “rescuer.” The guy needed some serious therapy.

“Elsie, thank you,” I said. “It’s a lot to take in, and I’m not happy about it, but it makes several things that happened seem clearer to me. Please thank Bill for me, too. I will as well when I see him next.”

The older woman came over to me and hugged me tight. “We all thought you should know.”

“I appreciate it.” The other women in the room were looking at me with empathy, but I got the distinct sense there was more that they wanted to tell me. “What else?” I asked.

Vicky cleared her throat. “You know how you mentioned your college boyfriend Ben earlier?”

I remembered. I also remembered that she hadn’t looked pleased when I said his name. “Yeah. Dare I ask, what did he do?”

“I dug a little into his background for you,” Vicky said. “Once Shar told me that you’d heard from him in the middle of all the crazy press stuff this week and were thinking of, maybe, meeting him for drinks or something, I contacted several friends of mine from the college.”

“Is he a possessive stalker-type, too?”

She shook her head. “Not that, but he’s hardly as perfectly put together as he tried to appear during the reunion. I found out from one friend that Ben’s wife divorced him five years ago for allegations of multiple acts of infidelity. That he has two young sons who actively avoid him. And that he was tangled in a dicey scandal last year that the school district tried to hush up, involving a former student, who’s barely nineteen now. Someone other than the young blond woman, incidentally, who was hanging all over him at the reunion downtown.”

“Oh, great.”

Vicky sighed. “Maybe Ben would be upfront with you about all of this if the two of you got together in person. I don’t know. Or maybe there’s an explanation for the student scandal, but the divorce is a verified fact. And, unfortunately, so is the infidelity. One of my college friends was someone he’d slept with while he was still married. His wife was a detail he’d avoided telling my friend until after the fact.”

I buried my head in my palms. “I am obviously a terrible judge of character. You guys have proven your point—I shouldn’t be allowed to date
anyone
.”

“Now, that’s where you’re wrong,” Rosemary said. “I worked with Dane Tyler almost every day for over a month. He is as kind, as trustworthy, and as professional as they come. He’s very protective of his privacy, yes, but he’s been honest from the first about what he needed and why. He didn’t ask for much when he came into town to do this production, but he did insist upon excellent hotel security. So the breach at the hotel last week, particularly as it related to you, Julia, hit him very hard. He feels responsible for the pictures that were taken by the elevators and any information from the staff that may have been leaked, but I know for a fact it wasn’t his fault. Once the play ended, the Knightsbridge relaxed the security detail we’d had on him, which unfortunately opened the door to that tabloid reporter and her buddies.”

I glanced up at the stage manager and tried to form the question that had been haunting me ever since Caryn Dizinger’s article had been posted online. “I know the
Tinseltown
Buzz
lied outright about a lot of things, but they also quoted ‘sources’ from the Knightbridge crew. Someone who said Dane was flirting with all of the actresses in the cast and—”

Rosemary cut me off with a loud laugh. “Listen to me when I say this, I
know
actors. I’ve worked with them for decades. They can put on a spectacular front for hours at a time, but they can’t keep up an act indefinitely. Dane was nice to everyone, cast and crew alike. Lots of women, including a number of the actresses in the play and more than a few theater donors, flirted with the poor guy. A few women threw themselves at him in a way that was embarrassing to watch. He wasn’t rude to them, but he also didn’t encouraged them. Except for you, I never saw him invite anyone back to his hotel room. Except for you, I never even saw him entertaining someone else in his private dressing room. He was unfailingly professional. The only woman he so much as looked at with longing was you, Julia.
You
. And that’s the truth. His relationship with you wasn’t a game, at least not to him. I’d stake my career on it.”

“It wasn’t a game to me either,” I whispered.

“Then maybe you need to reassure him of that,” Rosemary said. “I talked with him on the phone early this morning, and he’s depressed as hell.”

I swallowed. I had a million unanswered questions. About where he was now. About what he was doing next. About anything else he may have said to Rosemary. Did she know about his daughter in New York? If she did, she hadn’t let on, although I got the sense that he trusted her more than most people. And, yet…I couldn’t help but believe that Dane had trusted me even more than that.

“What about Analise, though?” I asked the group. “She’s coming home from camp tomorrow. Even if Dane and I could work out some sort of long-distance relationship—which still just seems like an adolescent fantasy—nothing changes the fact that I’m a mom and can’t drag my daughter into such a chaotic lifestyle.”

“You know I have three boys at home,” Olivia piped up. “And I love them with my whole heart. I’d never do anything that might hurt them if I could prevent it.” She paused, bit her lip, and then smiled sweetly at me. “But children are more resilient than you and I might think. They usually can adapt to changes in the world around them faster than their parents. They just have to be assured that they’re loved, that their needs will be met, and that they can count on their mom or dad to help them work through whatever unknowns the future holds. A happy, well-adjusted, and emotionally healthy parent is the best advocate and best role model for his or her child. So, I think it’s our responsibility to show our kids that we value happiness, healthiness, and balance in our lives. You’ve shown Analise tremendous courage in the face of tragedy and loss, sweetie. Now you have the chance to show her the same courage in the face of love and hope.”

Tears filled my eyes. “I don’t know…” I murmured. “What if I try it, and it all falls apart?”

“What if you try it, and it
doesn’t?
” Shar said, reaching for my hand and grasping it tight. “You know better than anybody that there are no guarantees in life. But I know you wouldn’t wish away your wonderful years with Adam just because they ended too soon, would you?”

I shook my head.

“Then,” she said, “if you find happiness—no matter how unexpected the source—you need to grab ahold of it for however long you can. And, girlfriend, once you’ve got it, don’t let go.”

Chapter Twenty

My daughter rocketed herself into my arms the next afternoon, clinging to me the way a koala clings to a eucalyptus branch. For a long, long moment, we just held each other—time suspended—and let ourselves feel the reunion. Mother. Daughter. Our little family of two.

“I missed you so much, Mommy,” she whispered into my shoulder. Then Analise let go, stepped back, and smiled at me. “But camp was awesome,” she said. “You know, overall. Promise me I can go back next summer, okay?”

I swallowed back the lump in my throat and nodded. “Okay. You can go back. Are Brooke and Lindsay planning to go next summer, too?”

“Yeah! We talked about it on the drive home.”

Yvette, who’d been trying in earnest to be of help to me, had insisted that she and her husband could pick up all of the girls from Camp Willowgreen this morning. And I, admittedly, hadn’t wanted to be around a crowd of curious onlookers after all of the press intrusions of the past week. So I agreed, and thanked her profusely.

“Oh, Julia,” my neighbor had said. “Honestly, it’s the least I can do after the craziness you’ve been dealing with.” She squeezed my arm quick and blew me an air kiss before driving away.

And, with that simple exchange, I felt as though I’d reclaimed just a tiny bit of my trust in humanity again. I didn’t want to live in a world where I perpetually worried that someone sweet like Yvette would turn on me. Where a publication like the
Tinseltown Buzz
could strip me of my ability to have confidence in my own perceptions about people I’d known for years.

“I’m glad the three of you had so much fun together,” I said to my daughter now.

“It was great but—” Analise paused and my heart paused with her. “I didn’t
just
hang out with Lindsay and Brooke, you know. I made other friends, too. And they didn’t…I mean…they weren’t, um… Everyone I go to school with here knows all the details about Daddy dying. Most of the kids at camp didn’t know anything at all about it, unless I told them. So, it was really different being there.”