Page 32 of At the Heart of It (The Can’t Have Hearts Club #4)

J onah felt all the blood drain from his head as he stood in the open door and stared at the unexpected visitor.

Footsteps thudded behind him, and he turned to see Kate running into the room with her shirt untucked and her feet still bare. “Amy! What a nice surprise! I thought we were meeting on-set this morning.”

Jonah—who’d been doing his best to keep his lower half hidden behind the door—took a step back as Amy pushed her way into the room. She surveyed him from head to toe and gave a cluck of approval.

“Oh, very nice.” She grinned. “No wonder everyone wants to get your shirt off.”

Jonah did an inward grimace, but ordered himself not to look down at his boxers. If his dick was hanging out the fly, there was no point drawing attention to it. “Amy,” he said. “Nice to see you again.”

Kate had somehow managed to tuck in her shirt while Amy ogled him. She stepped forward now, doing her best to divert the assistant producer’s attention. “What brings you by so early, Aim?”

Amy grinned and folded her arms over her chest. “My morning conference was canceled and you’re always up by five,” she said. “So I figured I’d grab my dress back and borrow your navy one for tonight?”

“Oh?” Kate’s voice sounded high and tight. “What’s tonight?”

He had to admire Kate’s attempt to divert Amy’s attention from the half-naked man in her room. But the look Amy shot him said she wouldn’t be easily distracted.

“My friend Allie is in town visiting her mother in prison, so I’m taking her out to get hammered.” Amy grinned. “Speaking of getting hammered, you must’ve had fun at the swingers’ club.”

“It’s not what it looks like.” Kate glanced at Jonah, and he lifted one eyebrow in response. “Okay. It’s kinda what it looks like.”

“Hey, no judgment.” Amy tucked her hands in the pockets of her sweatpants. “Sorry to catch you off guard. I obviously didn’t expect you to have company at this hour.”

Jonah sighed, wishing he’d at least thought to pull on his jeans. Maybe he could pretend they were reviewing promotional ideas or story arcs or?—

“So you’re sleeping together,” Amy said. She didn’t sound perturbed by it, but Jonah did a mental groan anyway.

“Just this once,” Kate said, and Jonah turned to look at her.

“Okay, twice,” she admitted. “Unless you count that last time when we just?—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Amy waved her hands in the air like an air traffic controller. “Please stop! I don’t need details.” Her gaze flicked back to Jonah’s chest and she gave a salacious grin. “Well, maybe a few details.”

“I think I’ll get dressed now.” Jonah spotted his jeans on the floor behind Kate, so he bent to retrieve them. “Stop looking at my ass,” he muttered.

“Sorry.”

The word was a chorus of two female voices, which almost made him smile.

But he’d prefer to just hit rewind on the whole morning.

Well, maybe not the whole morning. Not the moment where Kate leaned down and kissed his neck, baring her breasts through the opening in her robe. He’d kind of enjoyed that part.

Jonah finished buttoning his jeans and turned back to where Kate and Amy stood watching him. Spotting her dress on the back of a chair, Amy reached out and snagged it. “Thanks for this,” she said to Kate. “Looks like it saw more action than I’ve managed to give it.”

“I’ll, um—have it dry cleaned for you,” Kate said. “As for what’s happening here?—”

“You don’t have to explain,” Amy said. “The less I know, the better.”

Jonah found his shirt on the floor and tugged it on. “Is there any chance this could all stay right here in this room?”

Amy leaned against the edge of the bathroom door. “That sounds like a proposition for a threesome,” she said. “Not interested, but I do know this little swingers club?—”

“I know,” Jonah said. “And the fact that you left Kate there alone is kinda how I ended up here.”

“Ah, so it’s my fault you two bumped uglies?” She turned to Kate and grinned. “You’re welcome.”

Kate sighed. “Technically, doesn’t Chase Whitfield get credit? He’s the one who called you away.”

“I really think it’s best if we never mention your sex life and Chase Whitfield in the same breath,” Amy said.

“Agreed.”

Jonah cleared his throat. “So about keeping this quiet?—”

“It’s okay,” Kate said. “She knows how to keep a secret.”

Amy laughed and tossed her blond hair. “You don’t last long in show biz if you can’t. Besides, it was pretty obvious this was going to happen.”

“Obvious to whom?” Jonah asked.

“Obvious to me ,” Amy said. “Not to your ex-wife, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

It annoyed Jonah that anyone would think he cared about his ex-wife’s opinion on who he slept with.

It annoyed him a lot more that he did care.

Not about Viv, exactly. He cared about the working conditions on the show, and whether this might jeopardize his chances to earn the kind of money that would make a difference in Jossy’s life.

Christ. Maybe this was a mistake.

He looked at Kate again and felt his stomach flip over. Nope. Definitely not a mistake.

“We’ll be careful,” Kate said. “And it won’t happen again. Right, Jonah?”

She gave him a hopeful little smile and his heart skipped. He knew what the answer should be. He knew there was no future here, but still.

“Yeah,” he said, raking his fingers through his hair. “It was just a one-time thing.”

Was it his imagination, or did Kate’s smile falter just a little? She looked away and met Amy’s gaze again. “So we’re all good?”

“Never better,” Amy said. “And you two can act natural around each other on set?”

“I can,” Kate said. “Jonah?”

“Sure.” He nodded, doing his best to underscore his own belief in himself. “No problem.”

Kate smiled, and Jonah did his best to pretend he was glad, too. To pretend this whole thing didn’t feel like an icicle through the center of his chest.

“Sam, why don’t you tell Elena how you feel?”

Kate watched as Vivienne clasped her hands together atop her thighs and looked back and forth between the husband and wife who’d agreed to broadcast their marital woes on national television.

The husband cleared his throat and looked down at his feet. “When you nag me like that, you make me feel?—”

“Sam, remember what we talked about,” Viv interrupted gently. “No one makes you feel something. Using judgment words is only going to start the spiral of defensiveness.”

“Trust me on this, man,” Jonah added, crossing his arms over a green flannel shirt that brought out the color in his eyes. Not that Kate noticed.

“That shit goes on for a long damn time,” Jonah continued. “And you’ve got better things to do. Like watching reruns of The Man Show on YouTube.”

Vivienne nodded sagely. “What Jonah is saying is that you need to let her know how you feel, but do that independent of any judgment of her actions.”

“What Jonah is saying ,” Jonah interjected with a look of irritation at his ex-wife, “is that criticizing, blaming, or processing someone else’s actions through your own fucked-up filter is a surefire ticket to heartache. Is that what you want?”

Sam frowned. “But she’s wrong about?—”

“Buddy.” Jonah shook his head, and the compassion in his eyes made Kate’s chest ache. “You can be right or you can be married. What’s it gonna be?”

Next to Sam, Elena sat with tears shimmering in her eyes.

From across the room, Kate thought she saw a glint of emotion in Viv’s eyes, too.

Kate signaled Pete to zoom in, wanting that shot.

This was so important. For viewers to see how much the doctor really cared, to know these couples weren’t just names on a chart to her.

“I know you’re hurting.” Viv reached out and took one of Sam’s hands in her own.

“And you have a right to your feelings. You and Elena have both done things to wound each other, whether you did it on purpose or not. But wouldn’t it feel good right now to stop fighting?

To put down your sword and build a bridge instead? ”

Perfect , Kate thought. Insert a dramatic pause, maybe a close-up of Elena’s face, then of Sam’s, then cut to a commercial before we ? —

A movement in the corner of her eye caught Kate’s attention, and she glanced at the doorway to see Amy waving to her.

She cast a quick look at the center of the room, where Viv was putting an arm around Elena and offering her a tissue.

Jonah had his head bent low, talking close with Sam in a low tone she knew would be picked up by the gazillion mics they’d placed all over the room.

They had things covered. She’d see later how this ended.

Kate tiptoed out of the room and met Amy in the hallway. She pulled the door closed behind her.

“Is everything okay?” she whispered.

“Yeah,” Amy said. “I just talked with Chase. He reviewed our mock-ups of the promotional videos and went nuts. I wanted to give you some notes about a couple tweaks at the midpoint, but that’s not the most important thing.”

“What’s the most important thing?”

“He said this is almost certainly in the bag for us. Like unless one of the cast members dies or something, we’ve got it nailed.”

“That’s amazing!” Kate’s heart did a tap-dance on her ribs, and this time it had nothing to do with Jonah.

Reading her thoughts, Amy glanced back toward the door. “You doing okay in there?”

“I’m fine. Everything’s fine. The couple is endearing, Vivienne is intelligent and compassionate, and Jonah is?—”

She stopped, fumbling for an adjective that sounded professional and indifferent instead of like the words of a woman who’d spent the whole day remembering how his mouth moved over her breasts.

“You think you’ve got it bad for Jonah,” Amy muttered. “I swear Chase has a big, fat man crush on him.”

“How do you mean?”

“Chase won’t stop congratulating himself over coming up with the idea to pull Jonah into the show. He’s seriously going to dislocate his shoulder with all the time he spends patting himself on the back.”

“I’m glad he’s pleased with the decision.”