At the Heart of It Read online

  Kate turned to see a woman with a blue-blond pixie cut approaching from the right. Jonah stopped so fast that Kate nearly ran into him. She put a hand out to catch herself, grazing a shoulder blade that felt like flesh-covered steel.

  “Sure,” Jonah said to the blonde, fishing another business card out of his pocket. “Buster is a terrier-heeler mix, and he’s available for adoption at the Clearwater Animal Shelter.”

  “So sweet!” The blonde glanced at the card, then knelt down and stroked the dog’s ears, earning herself a lick on the cheek. She smiled up at Jonah, and Kate caught a smolder of suggestion in the woman’s eyes. “I’ve been thinking of getting a dog. Which days are you there if I wanted to come by and check out what you have?”

  “My schedule varies, but the shelter is open nine to five on weekdays and ten to four on weekends.”

  “What a sweet, sweet puppy.” The woman accepted a few more sloppy kisses while the dog wagged and wriggled and seemed genuinely thrilled at the attention.

  “So I’ll see you around,” she said to Jonah as she stood, beaming as she stole a quick glance at the broad expanse of his chest. She ignored Kate completely, probably assuming based on their mismatched attire that she was his boss or sister or parole officer. Kate straightened her skirt and watched her sashay away.

  When the blonde was out of earshot, Kate looked up at Jonah. “This must happen to you a lot?”

  He grunted and gave a curt nod. “That’s the idea.”

  “The idea?”

  He stooped down to adjust the dog’s Adopt Me! vest, then gave the little guy a quick booty scratch before straightening up.

  Since Jonah didn’t reply, Kate was forced to guess. “You’re whoring yourself out for dog adoptions?”

  “Pretty much.” He started walking again, putting an end to that line of questioning.

  “So why didn’t you mention it when we met?”

  “That I’m a shirtless dog walker?” He shrugged. “Didn’t seem relevant.”

  Kate rolled her eyes. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. You’re smarter than you’re pretending to be right now. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what the hell that’s about.”

  She thought she saw him flinch, but he kept walking, not missing a stride. He said nothing for a long time. She’d just decided it was pointless to keep pressing for information when his voice came out in a low rumble.

  “You’re asking why I didn’t mention I’m the co-author of a bestselling relationship guide?” he said. “You figure that’s the sort of thing that might have come up during several hours of conversation, followed by an hour of heavy petting?”

  “There was no heavy petting!” she argued, earning herself a startled look from the middle-aged joggers running past. She glared and lowered her voice. “You might have had your hand under my jacket—”

  “My jacket—”

  “But you certainly didn’t grope me or even—” She stopped and frowned up at him. “Wait. Are you trying to distract me?”

  Jonah sighed. “It was working until you decided to get technical. I may have learned a technique or two from four years married to America’s leading authority on communication strategies.”

  “Unfortunately for you, I’ve read all those books.”

  “That is unfortunate.”

  He walked a little faster, and Kate had to pick up her pace to keep up.

  “I’m just saying,” she continued, struggling not to sound too breathless. “That night in Ashland—we talked about literature and careers and even my breakup,” she said. “Hell, I even quoted from But Not Broken during dinner.”

  “You did,” he acknowledged. “Though I didn’t write anything for that book.”

  “But you were in it,” Kate argued. “You were part of her happily-ever-after at the end.”

  Jonah grunted but said nothing, and it occurred to Kate she was arguing the wrong point entirely. “Jonah, come on. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  He raked his fingers through his hair, but didn’t look at her. He kept walking, but his pace slowed just a little.

  “All right, fine. Look, I wasn’t thrilled with the way I was portrayed in the book.”

  “But Not Broken?”

  “No, On the Other Hand.”

  “The way you were portrayed?” She frowned. “Didn’t you write it?”

  “I wrote the sidebars. The comic relief. And yeah, the words were mine—mostly—but not the spin. The whole Average Joe thing—that wasn’t me at all.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Jonah shrugged and caught her hand. For a second she thought he was trying to hold it, but she realized he was guiding her around a puddle of spilled milkshake, saving her expensive Prada heels. He let go the instant they were past it, and Kate hated the small flutter of disappointment in her belly.

  “I did counterintelligence work in the Marines,” Jonah said slowly. “I was trained in elicitation techniques—ways of evoking trust and comfort in a subject to procure information.”

  “You mean like interrogating spies?”

  “Something like that. There’s more to it than that, but the bottom line is that I’ve studied communication techniques from some pretty unique angles. The book was supposed to reflect that. To give my insights from that perspective.”

  “It did mention you were a Marine,” she said. “Right inside the dust jacket, it said you were a military veteran.”

  “It didn’t say what I did in the military,” he pointed out. “Just that I was a Marine. And a football fan. And an avid fisherman. And a ‘handy guy’ who stomps around the house in a tool belt, fixing shit.” He cleared his throat and glanced over at her. “For the record, I don’t own a tool belt. And I haven’t been fishing since I was eight.”

  Kate frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m saying the publisher decided I was more marketable as an everyman. A regular fella. Not as a cerebral guy, but a blue-collar one. The all-American, Average Joe.”

  “You couldn’t be both?”

  She watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed, but he didn’t look at her. “Not according to the publisher.”

  “And you went along with it,” she said. “You pretended to be someone you weren’t.”

  He shrugged. “I was star-struck and love-struck and blinded by newlywed bliss,” he muttered. “The publisher said the book would sell better that way, and they were right.”

  Kate kept walking, trying to digest the new information. “So you’re saying you’re not really the guy in the book. The guy who wrote, ‘A relationship is like a fart: if you have to work real hard and strain and force things, it’s probably shit.’”

  Jonah laughed. “Actually, I liked that one. And it’s true.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  He sighed, but didn’t say anything. Kate was getting used to these long stretches of silence. In a way, it was nice knowing he cared enough to take the time to formulate a response instead of blurting out the first words that came to mind.

  They kept walking, passing a pair of twentysomething women on a park bench who cooed and leaned down to pet Buster. Jonah doled out the business cards and ran through his spiel about adoptable pets at Clearwater Animal Shelter. Kate watched him, mystified by these dual versions of the same guy.

  And by his abs. God Almighty, the man should never wear a shirt.

  They started walking again, and Kate waited, wondering if he’d pick up the conversation where they’d left it. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded defeated. “Look, I just can’t go back there.”

  “To that persona, you mean?”

  “The persona, the role—the relationship with Viv.”

  She felt a dull ache in her belly and a sharp pang in her chest. Physical manifestations of feelings she couldn’t quite name. Sympathy for him, maybe, and something a little like jealousy. That was dumb. It’s not like she had any claim on Jonah, or any reason to resent his ex-wife’s claim on hi
m.

  “Sit with the feelings!” Viv called in her brain, an echo from chapter five in But Not Broken. “You don’t need to analyze or categorize or judge them. Just feel them.”

  Kate took a deep breath and ordered herself to keep an impassive expression. “You still love Viv?”

  “God, no! Not like that, anyway. Don’t get me wrong, we’re still friendly. And I don’t hate her either, if that’s your next question.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “I’ve moved on. She’s moved on. It’s better that way for both of us.”

  “I see.”

  She was trying to see, anyway. Part of her wished he’d tell her more, that he’d explain the arc of his love affair with Viv and how they’d reached this point.

  But part of her—a tiny, jealous part—didn’t want details. Didn’t want to imagine the two of them together laughing, touching, exchanging loving glances across a crowded room.

  She was still thinking about it when Jonah spoke again. “What do you remember about the way Viv described me in But Not Broken?”

  His voice was so soft and the question so random that Kate thought she’d heard wrong at first. “Um—well.” She thought back to chapter twelve, the point in the book where Viv had healed her broken heart was getting to know the man who would become her husband. “She liked that you were rough around the edges,” Kate recalled. “That you were so different from the abusive asshole she’d been with before—that Ivy League professor?” She took a deep breath of salt-tinged air, feeling more than a little awkward. “She loved that your size and your strength made her feel safe instead of scared.”

  “Right,” Jonah said, glancing over at her. “Here was a man who’d served his country with dignity and honor,” he recited, startling Kate with the sound of Viv’s words spoken in the low rumble of the man they’d been written to describe. “A man who didn’t need cocktail parties or college lectures to validate his self-worth. A man who could sit for hours with my feet tucked under his thigh on the sofa, comfortably enjoying silence without needing to fill it with the sound of his own voice.”

  Tears pricked unexpectedly at the edges of Kate’s eyelids. She blinked hard, wanting to stay professional. “That’s beautiful,” she said. “I always thought so.”

  “It’s bullshit.”

  She turned and gave him a sharp look. “What?”

  “I mean she fell in love with an idealized version of me,” he said. “The opposite of her, the opposite of the guy she’d been with. But that wasn’t the whole me. It was a caricature.”

  Kate opened her mouth to protest. To defend Viv’s intentions or meaning. But Jonah got his words out first.

  “Look, I’m not saying she was the only one who screwed up,” he said. “I did the same damn thing. We both had this idea that our differences complemented each other. We liked the idea of each other, but not the day-to-day drudgery of it.”

  “I can see that, I guess.” Kate thought about her last relationship. How she’d started out fascinated by Anton’s passion for expensive Scotch and glamorous parties, but in the end, those were the things she’d grown to resent.

  “The only thing opposites really attract is misery,” Jonah said softly. “And I just can’t go back to that.”

  “Oh.”

  Well, hell. She couldn’t really argue with that. If the guy didn’t want to work with his ex, who was she to tell him he ought to? She couldn’t blame him. The thought of having to work with Anton made her stomach knot up in a big, sour ball.

  Still, the circumstances were a little different. Jonah might not know how different. She owed it to him to spell it out.

  “Look, Jonah. There’s something else you should know.”

  “What’s that?”

  “After you left Viv’s place, we had a meeting with some executives from the Empire network. She, uh—let them know you’re uncertain about being part of the show.”

  “Uncertain?” He frowned down at her. “What part of fuck no sounded uncertain to you?”

  “I’m just relaying what she said,” Kate replied evenly. “But I was also going to share what the executives told me after we left the meeting.”

  “Which is?”

  “They want you. Obviously. And they’re willing to pay handsomely to get you.”

  “I’m not hard up for money,” he said. “Between the royalties from On the Other Hand and profits at the bookstore, I’m doing just fine.”

  “I’m sure you are,” she said. “But the kind of money we’re talking about—it’s more than ‘just fine.’”

  He didn’t say anything to that, but she heard an invitation in the pause. Kate reached a hand into her purse and slid out a large stack of paper. She stopped walking, hoping he’d do the same. He got three steps ahead, then turned.

  “We worked up a series bible and budget before we approached you,” she said. “This afternoon, the network asked us to sit down and hammer out a new set of numbers. A budget that accounts for the possibility of you joining the lineup.”

  Jonah glanced at the sheaf of papers in her hand. “I assume that’s what you have there?”

  Kate nodded. She hesitated a moment, knowing this was a risky move. But the execs had told her to do what it took to get Average Joe on board. That’s what she was doing.

  “These documents are confidential,” she said. “I’m not allowed to distribute them at all. In fact, I was specifically asked not to show Viv at this stage in the game.”

  Jonah frowned and shoved his glasses up his nose. “But you’re offering to show me?”

  She hesitated, then nodded. “I think you should have all the information before you make up your mind.”

  Flipping the folder open, she let her gaze drift to the page on top of the stack. The word confidential was stamped in red ink across the top, and under that, the words Proposed talent budget for Relationship Reboot with Dr. Viv.

  She flipped to the page with his name at the top, then turned the folder around so he could see it. Then she looked up to watch his face. The amber-green eyes drifted slowly down the page, back and forth, taking in the information, the columns of numbers she’d seen for the first time only an hour ago.

  “Holy shit.” Jonah glanced up and locked eyes with her. “That’s per year, or—”

  “That’s per episode,” she told him, flipping the folder closed. “If the pilot takes off, the network intends to order fourteen episodes in the first season.”

  He stared at her. “But that’s insane. That’s more than ten times what I’ve made with On the Other Hand.”

  “I know. That’s why I wanted you to see what they’re proposing. This isn’t some third-tier programming on a no-name network. This is prime time, Jonah. The big leagues.”

  His hand drifted to the center of his chest and he scratched absently at the edge of one pectoral muscle. Kate ordered herself not to look. Not to let her gaze drop even an inch. Not even for a peek.

  “How much do you get?”

  Kate swallowed. “What do you mean?”

  “Are you being fairly compensated for this as well?”

  She nodded. “Fair enough.”

  “What else is in it for you?”

  She hesitated. “A chance to do something meaningful. These books—Dr. Viv’s whole outlook on things—they changed my life. Changed my outlook on relationships and the way I interact with the world.”

  He quirked an eyebrow at her. “That’s a lot of meaning to ascribe to a bunch of paperbacks you bought for five ninety-nine on Amazon.”

  “I bought them in hardback,” Kate shot back, pretty sure he was trying to distract her again. “Besides, this show would be a big feather in my cap career-wise. A chance to work with my favorite author. Authors.”

  He smiled. “That was never really my book. You know that.”

  “Your part in it was important. Just because you’re not the one with PhD behind your name doesn’t mean your contributions didn’t touch people.”
>
  Jonah cleared his throat. “Speaking of touching people, why didn’t you tell her?”

  She thought about pretending she didn’t know what he was talking about. But asking “Who?” or “What?” would just be a forestalling mechanism or a game, and she was too old for that.

  “I didn’t tell Viv about the kiss because it seemed irrelevant.”

  “Beeeep!” he shouted, making the dog’s ears prick to attention. “Incorrect answer. Try again.”

  She sighed. “Is this one of your spy-catching techniques from the Marines?”

  “Yeah. We’re trained to say beep when they lie to us,” he deadpanned. “Come on. The kiss was not irrelevant.”

  “Okay, you’re right,” she said. “Maybe it’s because it seemed entirely too relevant.”

  “How so?”

  “If Vivienne Brandt is considering inviting her ex-husband into her television program—into her home, for crying out loud—it’ll complicate things if she knows the producer and her ex played tonsil hockey once upon a time.”

  He nodded. “Now there’s an honest answer. A good one, too.”

  “So you agree. We probably shouldn’t mention one innocent little kiss?”

  Jonah snorted. “I was there, babe. That was no innocent kiss. And there wasn’t just one.”

  Kate shivered, but ordered herself to keep her composure. “Fine. But now that you’ve seen the numbers, is your interest piqued even a little?”

  He looked away, his gaze drifting out over Puget Sound. “A little.”

  Okay, so that was a start. Kate slid her hand into her bag and pulled out a business card. Since he wasn’t looking at her, she pressed the card into his palm and watched as his gaze swiveled back to hers.

  “All my contact information is here—my cell, my e-mail, everything,” she said. “And in case you want to talk privately, I’m staying at the Westin in Bellevue. Room 906.”

  Now why had she said that? It wasn’t on the card, and she hadn’t planned to just blurt it out. Jonah stared at her for a few beats, then looked down at the card.

  “If I say no, are they going to pull the plug on the show?”

  Kate looked at him, not sure how to answer. “Are you asking because you want to help her out, or because you like knowing you can kill your ex-wife’s TV show?”