Page 19 of At the Heart of It
She was still thinking about it when Jonah spoke again. “What do you remember about the way Viv described me in But Not Broken?”
His voice was so soft and the question so random that Kate thought she’d heard wrong at first. “Um—well.” She thought back to chapter twelve, the point in the book where Viv had healed her broken heart was getting to know the man who would become her husband. “She liked that you were rough around the edges,” Kate recalled. “That you were so different from the abusive asshole she’d been with before—that Ivy League professor?” She took a deep breath of salt-tinged air, feeling more than a little awkward. “She loved that your size and your strength made her feel safe instead of scared.”
“Right,” Jonah said, glancing over at her. “‘Here was a man who’d served his country with dignity and honor,’” he recited, startling Kate with the sound of Viv’s words spoken in the low rumble of the man they’d been written to describe. “‘A man who didn’t need cocktail parties or college lectures to validate his self-worth. A man who could sit for hours with my feet tucked under his thigh on the sofa, comfortably enjoying silence without needing to fill it with the sound of his own voice.’”
Tears pricked unexpectedly at the edges of Kate’s eyelids. She blinked hard, wanting to stay professional. “That’s beautiful,” she said. “I always thought so.”
“It’s bullshit.”
She turned and gave him a sharp look. “What?”
“I mean she fell in love with an idealized version of me,” he said. “The opposite of her, the opposite of the guy she’d been with. But that wasn’t the whole me. It was a caricature.”
Kate opened her mouth to protest. To defend Viv’s intentions or meaning. But Jonah got his words out first.
“Look, I’m not saying she was the only one who screwed up,” he said. “I did the same damn thing. We both had this idea that our differences complemented each other. We liked the idea of each other, but not the day-to-day drudgery of it.”
“I can see that, I guess.” Kate thought about her last relationship. How she’d started out fascinated by Anton’s passion for expensive Scotch and glamorous parties, but in the end, those were the things she’d grown to resent.
“The only thing opposites really attract is misery,” Jonah said softly. “And I just can’t go back to that.”
“Oh.”
Well, hell. She couldn’t really argue with that. If the guy didn’t want to work with his ex, who was she to tell him he ought to? She couldn’t blame him. The thought of having to work with Anton made her stomach knot up in a big, sour ball.
Still, the circumstances were a little different. Jonah might not know how different. She owed it to him to spell it out.
“Look, Jonah. There’s something else you should know.”
“What’s that?”
“After you left Viv’s place, we had a meeting with some executives from the Empire Network. She, uh—let them know you’re uncertain about being part of the show.”
“Uncertain?” He frowned down at her. “What part of fuck no sounded uncertain to you?”
“I’m just relaying what she said,” Kate replied evenly. “But I was also going to share what the executives told me after we left the meeting.”
“Which is?”
“They want you. Badly. And they’re willing to pay handsomely to get you.”
“I’m not hard up for money,” he said. “Between the royalties from On the Other Hand and profits at the bookstore, I’m doing just fine.”
“I’m sure you are,” she said. “But the kind of money we’re talking about—it’s more than ‘just fine.’”
He didn’t say anything to that, but she heard an invitation in the pause. Kate reached a hand into her purse and slid out a large stack of paper. She stopped walking, hoping he’d do the same. He got three steps ahead, then turned.
Kate drew a breath. “We worked up a series bible and budget before we approached you. This afternoon, the network asked us to sit down and hammer out a new set of numbers. A budget that accounts for the possibility of you joining the lineup.”
Jonah glanced at the sheaf of papers in her hand. “I assume that’s what you have there?”
Kate nodded. She hesitated a moment, knowing this was a risky move. But the execs had told her to do what it took to get Average Joe on board. That’s what she was doing.
“These documents are confidential,” she said. “I’m not allowed to distribute them at all. In fact, I was specifically asked not to show Viv at this stage in the game.”
Jonah frowned and shoved his glasses up his nose. “But you’re offering to show me?”
She hesitated, then nodded. “I think you should have all the information before you make up your mind.”
