Page 21 of Love Out Loud

She nodded, then stared at the photo on the wall over his right shoulder in order to not check out her new obsession: the freckle under his bottom lip.

“This is a very detailed outline.” He picked up the wrinkled pages that had not flung themselves overboard and scanned them.

She relaxed a bit. At least he recognized she’d put some work into the thing, even though she knew her prospect of successfully delivering the speech was a lost cause.Wait…She stared at the picture to the left of his shoulder, then the row of photos above it.Holy cow. Jane had told her that the guy had worked with loads of big celebrities and important political figures, but seeing pictures of his clients holding their Emmys and Oscars and Tony Awards took it to a whole different level…and now he was working with…yeah,her.

The puppy had begun to snore lightly. Usually, that would make Fiona relaxed and calm, but as she stared at the photos, all she could think about was running for the door. She didn’t belong here with a guy who coached the stars. Hell, she couldn’t even string a sentence together in front of a crowd.

He was still reading. Without looking up, he said. “Yeah, it’s super organized and detailed, but it’s totally unusable.”

Her discomfort, which had already been revving its engine, saw the checkered flag and screeched across the line. Heart hammering, she gently placed the puppy still wrapped in her blanket burrito into the bag. Then she rose from her chair and put the bag over her shoulder. “I, uh…”

He stood. “Is something wrong?”

“This is a mistake. I don’t belong here.”

“Look, when I said the outline was unusable, I didn’t mean it was bad. I meant it was not right for this event.”

“I’mnot right for this event.” As she started for the door, it struck her she was totally overreacting to the situation, but the insecurity snowball had started rolling down the hill and was moving too fast for her to catch it. “I’m not right as your client.”

“Is that why you ignored me today?” His tone was urgent.

Ignored him? She turned, surprised to see his drawn expression. She stared at him for a moment and realized that, just like her, he was operating from some weird place of insecurity. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I texted you, and you ignored me.”

Fiona was pretty sure nobody ignored Jacob Ward, which would explain his cold tone during the phone call. “Oh…” She set the bag down, then dug under the sleeping puppy and pulled out her phone. Sure enough, there were two texts and a call from him. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry, Jacob.”

He gave her a skeptical look.

She sighed and put the phone back in the bag. “I wasn’t blowing you off. I had patients all day after we left the dog show. I didn’t expect you to set up an appointment so soon, so it didn’t cross my mind to check my phone at the clinic.”

Honestly, she never looked at her phone at work because patients’ owners called the office phone, and the only people who texted or called that she wanted to talk to were Jane and Caitlin, and they had been there with her. No phone necessary.

And she’d been so busy after work caring for a puppy, writing the useless outline, and trying to make herself look…something other than a mess, she had never even thought to check it. She’d just moved it from her backpack to the shoulder bag on the way out the door. “I’m not a big phone person, really.”

His shoulders relaxed a bit, and she wondered if he was this wound up about returning calls and texts with everyone. Probably so, if he was on call for the kind of people in the photos all around his office. Geez, it was like a who’s-who of NYC.

She adjusted the bag on her shoulder. “I’m really sorry about not responding.” She shrugged, and the dog made a happynufflesound. “I appreciate your willingness to work with me, but really, it’s a mistake. It’s a waste of Jane’s money.”

…

Jake stood. “Please, don’t leave. Have a seat, and let’s talk about it.”

For a moment, he thought Fiona would bolt for the door. His chest loosened with relief when she flopped back into the chair with a frustrated huff. What in hell had set her off?

She’d said twice that this was a mistake, and he agreed with her 100 percent, but not for the same reason—whatever that was. He knew working with her was a mistake because he was frustratingly and irrationally drawn to her, which was a no-go. He was being paid to coach her, not kiss her, which was what was playing through his mind right now. That wasn’t fair to her—or to him, for that matter.

“Why did you say this was a mistake?”

She gestured with both arms awkwardly, like a windmill. “Look at this place.”

He stared around his small office with its single window and calm, beige walls. “And?”

She pointed to a picture of him and a soap opera star he’d worked with for her Emmy acceptance speech. “She’s like the goddess of daytime TV. Look at all of these people.Theseare your kind of people. Not me.”

In Jake’s mind, that’s where Fiona had it completely wrong.Shewas his kind of person, not these folks grinning back from the walls—and that was the heart of the problem…for him, anyway. Her problem was easier.

“Let me work with you. I can help you, and you need help.” She wasn’t convinced—he could tell by her pinched expression—so he went for what he knew was her Achilles’ heel. “It’s paid for. It would be a waste of Jane’s investment to quit.”

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