Page 99 of The Love Rematch
Even if you choose Cooper (which trust me, I get), I’ll be waiting for you for as long as it takes for you to come find me.
I love you.
Real answer.
Yours forever, Jake
With one last look, he settles the letter on her bedside table. Then he leaves her bedroom and walks quietly to the front door. Phil nearly falls off the dock when Jake emerges from the suite. Luckily, his camera is safely on the planks by his toes or it might be ten feet under right about now.
“Where did— How did—”
“Do you have a key to Trish’s bungalow?” Jake asks, ignoring the sputtered confusion. “I need to talk to her.”
“I do. But—”
“Great.”
Jake marches to the villa next door and waits for Phil to catch up.
“Were you in there all night?” the cameraman mutters as he fumbles for the key.
Jake ignores him, utterly focused on the task ahead.
Phil probably takes his silence for confirmation, which honestly, it is.
“How’d you get past me?” he asks, as he slides the fob before the scanner. The door clicks, and he grabs Jake’s arm. “I gotta know. Nina’s going to kill me for the missing footage.”
“I swam,” Jake tells him as he reaches for the door.
“Dammit.” Phil’s mouth drops open. His gaze darts to the distant shore on the other side of the lagoon. “You really swam?”
“I really swam.”
Then Jake is inside.
“Trish?” he calls.
“In here.”
She doesn’t sound surprised. If anything, she sounds as though she’s been expecting him. That suspicion is confirmed when he walks around the corner into the shared living room to find Trish, Nina, and Fred all waiting on the couches, the mood somber. A computer sits open on the coffee table. Nick and a network exec stare at him from across the globe.
“You already know,” Jake says into the silence.
No one bothers to respond.
“How?”
“Please,” Nina scoffs, her annoyance ripe. “Give us some credit. We read people for a living. And you’re not that stealthy,Jacob. We’ve known about your past with Emily since before we left LA. All I had to do was get ahold of her old yearbook and talk to some of her high school friends to verify it.”
“But you never said—”
“We hoped it would never come to this,” Trish intercedes.
“Yeah,” Nina adds. “Wehopedyou’d be able to keep it in your pants for six weeks.”
Trish cuts her a sharp look, and the producer drops back into the cushions with a frown. “You’re our colleague, Jake. Some would even call you a friend. We gave you ample opportunity to be honest with us, and when it became clear that wouldn’t happen, we decided to wait and give you the benefit of the doubt that your relationship with Miss Peters would remain professional. Obviously, if the information the resort security provided us with is accurate, that’s no longer the case. Did you spend the night in her room?”
“Yes.”
