Page 90 of At the Heart of It
“For quoting my ex-wife in bed with you.”
“There’s nothing to forgive.” Still, the apology meant a lot to her. That he’d even thought to offer it. “It’s natural she’d still be in your brain all the time. Natural, even, for you to still have feelings for her.”
There. She’d put it out there. She was treading on dangerous turf, but she had to test the water, didn’t she? To find out how Jonah might react to Viv’s pursuit. It was her job as a producer, for the future of the show.
“Denial is the worst form of?—”
“Feelings?” Jonah bit into a spring roll and gave her a dubious look. “I hope you don’t mean that the way people usually mean it when they talk about having feelings for someone.”
“Would that be so far off the mark? You two were married, after all. You pledged to spend your lives together. You were so deliriously in love that you got matching infinity symbol tattoos.”
“God, I wish we hadn’t put that in the damn book,” he muttered. “Or gotten the damn tattoos in the first place. Actually, I take that back. The tattoo is pretty cool.”
“I know. I was admiring it the other night.”
Jonah sighed. “Kate. All those things you just said—the life plans, the marriage, the tattoos—the operative word in all of that is were. Past tense.”
His words flooded her with equal parts relief and guilt. What the hell was she doing here? Was this a fact-finding mission for Viv, or for herself?
“I’m just saying, don’t ever say never,” she said carefully. “Things change. People change.”
“Jesus, Kate.” Jonah frowned and stabbed a big hunk of chicken. “You’re starting to sound like Viv.”
Kate would have found that flattering under normal circumstances, but she could tell he didn’t mean it as a compliment. She started to pick at a spring roll, but stopped when Jonah spoke again. “Look, I appreciate what you’re trying to do.”
Kate felt her throat tighten. “What am I trying to do?”
“Reassure yourself that you didn’t betray your idol by sleeping with me,” he said. “But I can promise you there’s nothing between Viv and me anymore. Nothing but a reasonably cordial working relationship and a few good memories mixed with some not-so-good ones.”
“You’re positive?”
His eyes locked with hers, and Kate felt certain she’d never seen him look so earnest. “I am absolutely, positively, one million—percent sure that I will never reconcile with Vivienne Brandt,” he said. “It’s a certainty that eclipses any amount of certainty I felt when I said, ‘I do.’”
“Okay.” Kate swallowed and picked up her fork again. Guilt and relief swished around in her belly like oil and vinegar. Guilt from knowing Jonah’s certainty meant Vivienne’s heartache.
But relief because he’d misjudged why she’d been asking. He hadn’t guessed at her motive. More importantly, because it meant the man she was falling for wasn’t in love with someone else.
That counted for something, right?
Even if she couldn’t have him, even if they had no business sleeping together, at least she knew Jonah’s heart didn’t belong to someone else.
‘Someone else’ is Viv, she reminded herself. There went the guilt again.
She looked up again to see Jonah watching her. “I love spending time with you like this,” he said softly. “You know that? There’s no one else I’d rather share Thai food with.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, giving him a careful smile. “Are you going to eat that last spring roll?”
He laughed and picked up his beer. “Help yourself.”
She plucked it off his plate like they were old friends. Good friends. The kind of friends who shared spring rolls and old stories. Not the kind who shared anything else.
But as she bit into the spring roll and felt his eyes on her, felt her own body respond to his proximity, she knew that was a lie.
They could never be just friends.
It was almost eleven by the time Kate made it back to the hotel. As she slid her key card into the slot, she heard a door open across the hall.
“Kate.”
