Page 134 of The Bodyguard

Whatever. It would be something I could never unsee.

“I just wanted to say hi,” Kennedy Monroe said then, turning back to the camera, “and I brought some friends along.”

And then she launched into the most vapid, pointless celebrity interview I’d ever seen in my life—comprised mostly of hair flips, giggles, accidental cleavage shots, and hard-hitting questions for Jack like, “Are you getting hotter?”

I will spare you the insulting details. I watched it so you don’t have to.

Actually, I rubbernecked it.

I couldn’t force myself to look away.

It was mostly Jack, of course—the sight of him was like a feast for my salivating eyes. But it was also Kennedy Monroe. Seeing her there, with him. Trying to imagine the two of them as a couple. Looking for any kind of spark or chemistry between them at all. Anything.

I’d kind of forgotten about her.

Jack was gracious and charming and relentlessly handsome.

But I realized something else as I watched him. He wasn’t attracted to her.

After all these weeks of feeling like my radar was off—like all the acting had scrambled all my signals—I suddenly realized I’d been underestimating myself.

I could read Jack just fine.

Kennedy Monroe was posing for the camera, and tossing her hair, and preening—and he was watching her and playing along. But the tilt of his head, the crook of his eyebrow, the squint of his eyes, the angle of his smile, the tension in his spine… they all said, Nope.

I’m paraphrasing, but still.

The point was, I could read him. What’s more, I could see the acting. All this time, I’d thought I couldn’t discern the truth about him. But it turned out I could read him as well as anybody else. Maybe better.

And one thing was clear as day. He was more attracted to that fiddle-leaf fig than he was to Kennedy Monroe.

Could this be a fake relationship, too?

When she flipped her hair, he barely noticed. When he smiled, it was mechanical. When she pulled his shirt to try to bring him in for a kiss, he twisted away like he thought he’d heard someone call his name.

“Jack,” Kennedy said then, turning back to the camera and looking straight into it. “I’m going to need your full attention.”

Jack turned back around. “Okay,” he said. “You’ve got it.”

“Because I’ve got a big question for you, and you don’t want to miss it.”

“Okay,” Jack said, putting his hands in his pockets. “Shoot.”

At last she turned away from the camera to meet Jack’s eyes. “My question,” she said, now leaning in closer, “is this.” She turned back to give the camera one more wink. Then she turned back to Jack and said, “Will you marry me?”

AT THOSE WORDS,I dropped my phone.

And by the time I picked it back up, the video was over.

Did I just see that? Did Kennedy Monroe just propose to Jack?

Suddenly, I felt a lot less sure of myself.

HadI been able to read him? Or had that all just been my own wishful thinking?

I rewound the ending, wanting to see Jack’s answer to the proposal. But my second watch was no more useful than the first. Apparently, they’d ended it on a cliff-hanger. Kennedy pops the question, then the camera zooms in on Jack staring at her, and then we’re done for the day.

I rewound it one more time. Just in case.