Sit...Stay...Beg(79)
From fear. From disbelief. From betrayal.
The relentless pounding stopped as the latch clicked, and he opened the door slowly, squinting at the silhouette outlined by the last rays of the setting sun. He barely had time to take a breath when a fist came at him like a bullet, cracking his jaw with so much force he stumbled backward and nearly fell.
And all he could think was… I deserved that.
For being stupid and trusting another woman. For loving another woman. Who, come to think of it in his rattled brain, had never said she loved him back.#p#分页标题#e#
* * *
Still scrambling to put her jeans on and pull her head through her tank top, Jessie stumbled through the hall, making it to the living room just as Garrett opened the front door.
And got sucker-punched in the face.
She gasped and froze in shock at the sight of a mountain of a man, a good six-four and muscular, with a craggy face and platinum-blond hair pulled into a long ponytail.
“I flew my jet three thousand miles to do that, you asswipe,” he said to Garrett, an Australian accent evident in every word. “You slept with my wife.”
“Actually, I didn’t.” He rubbed his jaw, straightening. “So get your facts straight before you swing, Jake.”
“You were married to her before I was! You expect me to believe you didn’t sleep with her.”
“Just like you help her by sending some sleaze-bucket website to smear my wife’s name all over the world?”
“What?” The word came out of Jessie’s mouth as barely more than a whisper, but both men whipped around to look at her, one with curiosity in his eyes, the other with agony. Disbelief. Disappointment. Nothing like the love she’d just seen.
“A website?” Garrett asked, still staring at her, though the question was directed at the other man. “Was it ITAL, by any chance?” There was enough sarcasm slicing through his voice to cut her.
“You know it was. You’re part of the whole thing. What are you trying to do? Wreck our marriage and get her back? Claim the kid is yours? What the hell is your endgame with this kind of publicity?”
Jessie felt lightheaded and lost. ITAL didn’t do this. She would know. She would—
“I don’t have an end game,” Garrett said, clearly getting his bearings now. “I gave my word to Claudia. And I kept my word.”
“You word is crap,” he spat. “Collaborating with some supermarket-rag tabloid to ambush my wife and—”
“He’s not collaborating!” she fired back. “No one is. ITAL isn’t covering that story!”
“Who are you?” Jake demanded.
She swayed for a moment. “My name is Jessie Curtis and—”
“Oh, the famous Jessica Jane Curtis. The one on the ‘East Coast angle’ of the story. The one who got him to admit everything.”
East Coast angle? What the hell was he talking about?
He snorted loudly, giving her a disgusted once-over. “Mercedes said you have legendary interview techniques. I’d say they’re pretty damn old school.”
Jessie actually had to put her hand on the wall to steady herself. Mercedes had talked to him?
“I don’t know how you could be any better than Mercedes, though,” he continued. “Tells us we’re some feature profile, drags in a video crew, gets us all set up and cozy on the couch, and wham! How did you feel when you learned your wife married another man in Vegas while she was pregnant?”
Jessie pressed her hand against her chest as white lights of disbelief exploded behind her eyes. “No. That’s impossible.”
“Want to see the film clip of that bitch joking about a chapel that was good enough for Mickey Rooney?”
“No!” Jessie groaned. “That’s not…no.” It couldn’t be possible. “I didn’t tell anybody anything.”
“Oh, really?” Jake said. “’Cause she was reading tender, heartfelt quotes from your interview about how he fed her saltines and love when she had morning sickness with my kid.”
She hadn’t written a word of that. Not one syllable of his story was on the page, she didn’t transcribe even one word. She looked at Garrett, whose jaw was clenched as tight as his fists, his eyes cast down to the ground.#p#分页标题#e#
Please don’t believe him, Garrett.
“How do you think it felt to be told another man was willing to take my kid as his?” Jake continued. “What was it? Legally, morally, and spiritually? Are you shitting me, Kilcannon?”
Garrett’s shoulders slumped and Jessie swallowed her next denial.
Sensing he’d won, Jake flattened Garrett with one last steely look. “If this story doesn’t get killed, I’ll weather the storm. But you and your family and all the PetPic employees who got shares will lose every one, along with whatever shreds of respectability they have for you.” He backed out the door that was still open behind him, shaking his head. “I hope you’re happy. I hope you can live with yourself now that you lost her. I know why you did this. To ruin what Claudia and I have. You can’t. But I can ruin you and your family and your name. And I will.”