Chapter 19 The Cyclone #2
“Only if you have time for us,” Kitty said, ramping up her signature passive aggression. “You don’t need your old parents derailing your plans.” Kitty glanced at Jack again. “Or your work. I can’t wait to hear about what fun projects you have on the go.”
“Fun” from her mother was not a compliment, but Blair ordered herself not to take the bait. Her priority now was getting them out of the house. “It’s Saturday tomorrow, so I’m not in the office. Why don’t we meet for breakfast at your hotel?”
“Are you sure? Breakfast isn’t too early?” Kitty looked around at the chaos of the house. “I’m surmising that you had a party here.” She rested a hand on Blair’s cheek. “You look tired.”
Blair felt the comment as the barb it was meant to be. She didn’t want to be the kind of woman who could be made to feel ashamed by something her mother said, but here she was. Tears prickled behind her eyes. She looked away so her mother wouldn’t see. “Breakfast isn’t too early.”
“We can amuse ourselves until you’re rested and ready.”
No. She was not this person. “Mother. Do you want to have breakfast or not?”
Kitty held her hands up like she was being robbed. “Of course we want to have breakfast. We didn’t fly here all the way from the Eastern time zone to not see you.”
Do not take the bait. “Let’s say eight, then.”
And with that, they were gone. Blair rested her back against the door after she closed it. She felt like she might crumple. Actually physically crumple. She didn’t like feeling that way. Weak and… young. The debutante daughter with her little projects.
The tingling was getting stronger.
“You don’t want them here,” Jack said, and for God’s sake, would he just leave already?
“No shit, Sherlock.” She closed her eyes. She had to stop swearing. “Sorry. It’s not you I’m mad at.”
“I don’t think you should go to breakfast with them tomorrow.”
As if he had any jurisdiction over her. She opened her eyes. “Noted.” Gah. She sounded like her mother, her tone, even though she’d uttered a mere word, dripping with condescension.
After looking at her for a long moment, Jack went back to his sweeping. And to his earlier question. “What happened here?”
“I broke some glasses.”
He looked up. “What really happened?”
“I broke some glasses.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Don’t lie to you?”
She was taking the bait. It might be the wrong bait from the wrong person, but the anger she’d been keeping leashed was breaking free of its restraints.
“All right, how about this: I lined up all these glasses in neat rows even though the catering company is coming to collect them tomorrow and it doesn’t matter one bit what state, or arrangement, they’re in.
I was doing that to try to distract myself from the overwhelming urge to hand-wash them, even though, once again, it doesn’t fucking matter. ”
There. What would he do with that info? Maybe finally leave?
Nope. It just made him set down his broom and look… tender? That was the opposite of what she’d been going for. She could handle his snobbery, his disdain; she’d grown practiced at that. She had no defenses, though, against kindness from this man.
“You have a compulsive disorder, don’t you?” he said gently. “Your compulsions stave off panic. Or you think they do.”
The assertion took her breath away.
“The part I don’t know is why.”
Blair suddenly found her voice. And some defenses. “What do you mean why? Why does anyone have anything wrong with them? Why is Cal allergic to shellfish?”
“That’s not the same thing, and you know it. Whatever is happening to you is bigger than that. It’s holding you back. You barely leave the house except to go to work.”
“You should talk.” She was trying to find her way back to anger. Anger was armor. “What else do you do besides work?”
He stepped out from behind the kitchen island. “We’re talking about you.” He was still speaking with wildly uncharacteristic gentleness. “You’re not like me. You’re ambitious and vibrant and I think, at your core, an extrovert.”
Tears gathered, suddenly, hovering just behind her eyeballs. Why had she thought Jack Branksome, with his unrelenting eye, wouldn’t notice what was happening to her?
“And it’s not just that,” he went on. “It’s Green Light.
You’ve produced dozens of movies. You’ve read hundreds of scripts, I’d imagine.
You’ve read hundreds, if not thousands, of novels.
You know books, and you know movies. You’re the perfect person to write the script for Green Light. But you won’t. Why not?”
“Because I am not a writer.” She had told him this so many times. She was reaching toward anger again, striving for a way to deflect his blows.
“That isn’t true. Or at least you won’t know if it’s true until you try.” He took a step toward her, his hands raised as if in surrender. She wanted to take a step back to compensate, but she was leaning against the door.
“You think you know me so well, don’t you?” She could hear how much she sounded like her mother, and though she had been trying to get mad, she didn’t love that version of mad.
He remained calm. Took another step. “Yes. In fact, I believe I’m the only one who knows you—right now, anyway.”
“What?”
“I did it backwards. I think that’s how it happened. Most people see the version of you that you decide to show them, with your armor up.”
“That’s—”
“I slid in the back door.” He pointed over his shoulder toward the kitchen. “Literally. For some reason you showed me the real you, not just the version of you that most people see. I don’t know why, but you did. So yes, I know you.”
“Wow, self-impressed much?” she tried, but the tears were really threatening now.
He smiled, which felt like more of a blow than the outrageous things he was saying. “I am self-impressed, generally. But in this case, it’s just a fact.”
“No, it’s your opinion, and you can keep it to yourself.” The anger had melted away again, leaving this line feeling like a line, like something she was saying that was part of a script she was reading from and not something she actually meant.
“The truth hurts sometimes, Blair.”
God, he was so relentless. Even when he was being “nice.” He was also still advancing on her. It wasn’t lost on her that her back was literally against the wall.
“You’re stuck in your house, and you won’t let anyone help you. I think maybe you’re stuck in your mind, too.” He gestured back toward the broken glass.
The tears started, but it didn’t stop him.
He kept talking, even as his hands, his always-warm hands, came to rest on her cheeks.
He used his thumbs to wipe her tears away.
“You say you’re in a new era, and maybe you are in terms of the external stuff—this house, the divorce, the empty nest, stopping the Botox.
But you. The real you”—he took one hand from her cheek and tapped it gently where her heart would be—“hasn’t made the leap yet.
You’re still standing on the precipice, and you’re afraid. ”
She started crying in earnest then. “Imagine you giving advice on how to be human,” she choked out through her tears.
“Imagine you telling me that it’s a bad idea to be too influenced by your parents.
” She was still reading lines from a script, her delivery completely off from the stage directions, which would have read in an angry tone.
“You’re the one who can’t write his book because he’s afraid of what his dad is going to think of it. ”
It was a low blow and she knew it, but it didn’t faze him. He just smiled and kept brushing away the tears that were now running down her face like someone had turned on tiny taps in her eyeballs.
And then he leaned down and kissed her forehead. Jack Branksome kissed her forehead.
It made the tears recede. It made everything recede. Everything except one thought: that there was one logical next step here.
All she had to do, given that he had his hands on her cheeks and his lips on her forehead, was tilt her head back.
So she did.
And then they were kissing.
She had wondered if this felt like the inevitable next step to him, too. It must have. Though she’d half expected him to push her away, he slid right into kissing her as if they did it all the time. Wrapped his arms around her and sighed into her mouth.