Page 109 of The Bodyguard

I didn’t slow down—just kept walking, even as he reached me—and so Jack had to U-turn to follow me.

“Hey!” he said, still jogging. “Welcome back.”

I didn’t answer.

He fell into pace beside me. “You okay?” he asked, trying to study my face. “You look tired.”

“Long meeting,” I said.

Jack wrinkled his nose. “About the stalker?”

“Yes. Apparently, she TP’d your house with pink toilet paper. And left a painting for you.”

“A painting?”

“A self-portrait. On canvas,” I said, as we arrived back in the yard. I pulled the photo up on my phone. We paused in Connie’s garden to take a look. “A nude,” I said, to prepare him. Then I added, “Self-Portrait with Corgis.”

Jack let out a low whistle. “It’s actually pretty good.”

I nodded. “She’s talented.”

“Maybe I should impregnate her.”

“Hey!” I said. “You’re not impregnating anybody on my watch!” Then, in case that was too strident, I added, “Unless you want to.”

There he was, again—laughing. “I missed you,” he said then.

“What?”

“Just now,” Jack said, gesturing back at HQ. “You were gone a long time.”

“We had a lot to discuss.”

“What do you think about that?”

“About what?”

“About me missing you.”

Maybe it was because Robby had just weaponized this whole setup against me, but now I couldn’t see anything Jack did as real. There he was, with a shy half smile, looking down at my sneakers and leaning in toward me—just textbook bashfully… and I could only see it as calculated, and constructed, and hollow, and fake. And the fact that he was faking it so well—that I hadn’t even been able to tell the frigging difference—was just humiliating.

He was acting. He’d been acting all along.

But I wasn’t.

Was I supposed to play along? I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. What did I think of him telling me he missed me? “I think you’re a much better actor than anybody gives you credit for,” I said. Not even trying to disguise the bitterness in my voice.

Jack winced at that—microscopically, but I felt it.

Fine. Good. Better that way.

Because something was hitting me then, surrounded by Connie’s fall garden, out in the middle of nowhere. I was not all that different from the Corgi Lady. I was living in a fantasy world, too.

My chances of winding up with Jack Stapleton were just as bad as hers.

Worse, maybe, even.

At least the Corgi Lady knew how to paint.

---