Chapter Fifty-Nine
Jane moved to another window in an alcove in the east wing where she’d had a stash of crayons and coloring books. Teddy happily colored, while she watched as the paparazzi grazed on the front lawn. They’d been allowed inside the gates at Lark’s direction.
“What a shitshow,” Chance muttered and left the window he’d been spying out of. Instead of joining her at the better vantage point, he walked toward Teddy and dropped on the carpet as the little boy happily killed his blue crayon.
“That’s a good description,” she agreed. Gigi and Dax had given the photogs a few pictures and extolled the excitement of their campy vacation. Jane nearly gagged as they saw off a caravan of their staff, all now on paid vacation, with gleefully charitable waves.
Jane, however, was not on vacation. She and Chance would watch Teddy, and they would use the quiet time to concoct a viable escape plan. She watched Dax help Gigi into their favorite Range Rover. He waved to the paparazzi and pulled out the driveway.
“They’re gone.” She turned to her guys. Both were now coloring. Though Chance wasn’t as hard on the crayons as Teddy. “What are you drawing?”
“Ghost blocks in a field. The cows fall through them.” Teddy held up his paper.
Jane could make out a cow. Maybe two. “Very nice.”
“And you?”
Chance grinned and mimicked Teddy.
Her eyebrow arched. “A stick figure holding an umbrella?”
“Oh, come on.” Chance inspected his work of art. “It’s Mary Poppins.”
Teddy leaned over to look and nodded. “It’s Mary Poppins.”
Jane plopped next to them. Chance signed his name on the bottom corner and handed it to her. “For you, MP.”
She took the drawing but then kissed her man. Just a little peck.
“Are you going to get married?” Teddy squealed.
Heat rose to her face. “Kisses mean you care—”
“One day,” Chance said, giving Teddy a wink.
Her heart flipped, and her jaw fell.
Chance grinned, teasing her with the lift of his eyebrows. “And we’re gonna have enough kids to play football.”
“Cool!” Teddy picked up another crayon. “Can I play too?”
“Absolutely.”
Jane was absolutely one hundred percent in love with Chance. If they were alone, she’d tell him. But it would have to wait until bedtime. “I’m going to make dinner.”
“We’ll be up here,” Teddy explained. “Coloring.”
They were cute and content. Jane left them to their creations and headed for the kitchen. The doorbell rang, and the lyrical tone took Jane a minute to place. No one ever used the doorbell. The guardhouse would call up for guests who showed up without notice.
Then again, Lark had given the guardhouse the okay to let everyone in.
Jane groaned and ignored the door, but the bell chimed again.
She walked into the foyer, curious about who would drop in when Dax and Gigi had left.
The beveled, glazed front door glass didn’t show who was on the other side.
It was the first time she had needed to use a peephole, but the designer front door didn’t have one. The doorbell rang again.
The shadow on the other side knocked on the glass pane. “Jane Singleton?”
Her eyebrow crooked. Who knew her name? Weird, but not insane. Most gossip hounds would call with a bribe, not brazenly knock on the door.
“Jane? A little birdie told us you were home.”
She sighed. One day, she’d figure out how to get Lark back for every little headache.
If the reporters knew she was home, they’d keep at it until she opened the door.
Reluctantly, Jane cracked the door and saw a woman she recognized.
Then, she saw all of them. Most of the paparazzi hadn’t left, and several gossip reporters hurried toward the empty door.
“No one’s here,” Jane announced, stepping outside for all to hear.
“You know that. You saw them leave.” That didn’t make any difference.
She shielded her face. Hours had gone by, but her eyes were still puffy and her nose still red from her meltdown in the bathroom.
She didn’t want that recorded for posterity’s sake, no matter how happy she was in her own skin.
Jane backed inside the door, but a reporter caught it. The hair on Jane’s arms stood up. “Let go.” She readied to throw her weight against it, knowing if she cried out, Chance would fly down the stairs. “Let go. Or I’ll break your fingers when I close the door.”
“Jane,” a reporter called. “We don’t want them. We want to talk to you!”
She should have ignored the bait. After all, she had a thousand times before. But something in the woman’s voice gave Jane pause. She inched the door open. “Why?”
“I want to hear your side.”
The reporter’s faux sympathy prickled down Jane’s back. “On?”
“The Thanes’ vow renewal?”
She wasn’t sure if loathing or annoyance crossed her face, but Jane knew she hadn’t been able to completely mask her reaction. “People renew their vows all the time. I don’t care—”
“But not after your boyfriend sleeps with your boss.”
Jane froze, looking out into a sea of blinding flashbulbs. Boyfriend? “Excuse me?”
The reporter’s face twisted. Her expression was a strange mix of pity, sadistic enjoyment, and triumph—after all, Jane didn’t deny her claims, mostly because Jane couldn’t wrap her head around whatever Gigi and Lark had done now.
The reporter gave her phone to Jane. Her fingers trembled as she took it. The headline of a familiar entertainment news website exclaimed NEW BODYGUARD TURNED LOVER CAUSED THANE RIFT.
Horrorstruck, Jane scrolled down. Not bothering to read the fictitious article, she stopped on the photographs.
They were grainy, but they were still clear enough to see Chance and Gigi at the beach.
Jane scrolled down the page and froze, unable to look away from a picture of Gigi, topless and lounging, as Chance approached with a drink in hand.
The logical part of Jane’s brain screamed that she knew better. Chance wouldn’t touch Gigi. But the gossip-blog-reading part of her mind balked at the evidence on the screen.
“There’s more.” The reporter reached for the phone and opened another app, scrolling for Jane. “In bed.”
The images weren’t just grainy but dark and shadowed.
Still, that was Chance in the dark. Behind him, there was a shadowed woman, identifiable only by her long hair.
There was no question, though. That was Chance.
Jane knew the angles of his face, the broad reach of his shoulders.
Jane swallowed hard. Her hands trembled, and she forced the phone back into the reporter’s hand.
There had to be an explanation. But she couldn’t figure that out standing with a mob of reporters. Jane knew better! She did. She trusted Chance. Still, tears brimmed in her eyes. “No comment.”
This time, the reporter let her shut the door.
Jane staggered toward the living room.
“Hey, Jane,” Chance called from upstairs. “My boss is on the phone. Teddy’s coming your way.”
“Okay.” All the air left her lungs. She wanted to scream.
Or throw up. She dropped onto a couch, and her tears spilled, unable to shake the dark images from her head.
How could that have been the same man? Chance held her hand, he made love to her, whispered secrets at night, and made her feel like a queen. His queen.
“Janie?”
Shit. Jane fought against the cold lethargy that paralyzed her muscles and wiped her tears away. “Hi, honey. Sorry.”
Teddy dropped next to her on the couch. “Do they make you cry too?”
“I’m not crying,” she lied. “It’s nothing. Everything’s fine.”
Teddy wrapped his arms around her. “That’s what I say sometimes, too. Even when it’s not.”
Hell. Her tears welled again. “Oh, Teddy.” She returned his hug and stroked the back of his head, sniffling. “It’s different, but I’m so sorry.”
“How’s it different when mom and dad make you cry?”
Jane bit her lip to keep from falling apart. “It just is. Give me a second.” She swiped her cheeks dry. “And I’ll have dinner ready. Okay?”
“How about we have ice cream before dinner?” Teddy asked.
She laughed. “Boy, do you know the best time to ask.”
Teddy took her hand and pulled toward the kitchen. “For Chance too.”
Weakly, she agreed. Jane followed Teddy, thinking of the first night in this house with Chance.
With painfully vivid recollection, she recalled which walls they would redecorate.
The ones they wanted to tear down. Her thoughts spiraled.
She couldn’t believe they’d been upstairs, Chance drawing her pictures, minutes away from when everything would be called into question.
“I want mine on a cone.” Teddy tugged at her shirt. “Janie?”
“What? A cone? Sure.” She walked into the walk-in pantry and found two types. “Cake or cookie cone?”
“Both!”
“Ha, try again.” She decided on a cake cone for him and a cookie one for her.
“Cake—you already knew!”
“Wait a minute. How do you know this one is yours?” She hid the hurt in her voice and held up her cookie cone. “Maybe I want the cake cone.”
“No way. I know you. You’d never eat a cake cone. Never ever.”
She laughed. “True. You know me well.”
“What about Chance? Which cone does he want?”
Her stomach turned. “He’s on a work phone call.”
“You know him so well,” Teddy said. “What would he choose?”
Me. He would choose me. “I don’t know, honey.” Jane turned to the freezer and stopped cold. She knew Chance. She loved him, and while they hadn’t said the words, he loved her. He’d shared that with her in a hundred ways.
Her mind flashed through the pictures. She tried to set aside her disgust and recall the dark bedroom photographs.
Oh, God.
That hadn’t been Chance with Gigi. That was Chance and her. The night the camera crew barged into her cottage. But why?
Teddy nudged her hip. “Are we still having ice cream?”
“Yeah, baby.” Jane hurried to make Teddy’s cone. “And afterward, we’ll have a real dinner. Okay?”
She set him on the barstool with a scavenger hunt book and his ice cream cone. As he announced the items he found, Jane paced, waiting for Chance to wrap up his phone call.
His footsteps approached the hall. Jane pivoted to face him. She knew the headlines were bogus, that he wouldn’t lie or hurt her. The only thing she had to deal with now was her guilt—for faltering in her conviction of them.
Chance walked into the kitchen. The fury in his storming blue eyes confirmed everything Jane already knew. “Chance.” Her heart pounded. “I love you.”