Chamberlain turned around and walked away, leaving them in stone-cold silence.
Jessie’s nails dug into her palms as she stepped forward. “Garrett, I did not tell anyone anything.”
“No.” He shut her down with one low, slow, harsh syllable. “No lies. No explanations. No excuses. You did this, and you’ll fix it.”
“I did not! How can you stand there and call me a liar? Fifteen minutes ago you said you loved me.”
“Fifteen minutes ago I trusted you.” He finally looked at her, his expression a perfect reflection of the agony in her heart. “He quoted me, Jessie.”
“I don’t know how that happened. I’ll find out. I’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise.”
“You don’t know how? How about ‘nothing is off the record’? That’s as far to the bottom as I want to go with you.”
She inched back, his words as powerful as Jake Chamberlain’s fist. “You have to believe me.”
He exhaled, stabbing his hands through his hair. “What I have to do is talk to Shane.”
“You have to talk to me.”
“Like hell I do,” he fired back. “We’ve talked enough. I’ve said enough. You’ve broken enough walls, damn it! Now, go, Jessie. Just go and fix this.” He walked back into the living room, looking around for a moment, then finding his phone. “Goodbye, Jessie.”
For a moment, she stood there, jaw open, heartbroken, soul crushed.
He loved her? He wouldn’t even give her the slightest benefit of the doubt.
As he tapped his phone, she slipped back into his bedroom, scooped her bra off the bed, and then went back out to get her purse.
He was leaning against the kitchen counter, dragging his hand through his hair, the other holding his cell pressed to his ear. “Hey, Claudia? It’s me.”
She closed her eyes as the impact hit, actually jerking back. Without looking at him, she opened the front door and closed it silently behind her.
“What do you know?” she whispered to herself. “I’m number two again.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Mac never answered her calls and Jessie couldn’t get a flight to New York until early the next morning. Dragging her suitcase along with more questions than answers, Jessie marched into the ITAL offices itching for a fight.
“Oh, look who it is, the golden girl of ITAL On Air.”
She turned to see Mercedes coming down the hall, her old smug expression gone for the moment.
“How?” Jessie demanded. “How did you find out?”
Mercedes brows drew together in a frown, then relaxed. “Mac told me. But as far as I’m concerned, you won by default. My interview blew up in my face, thank you very much. My guess is you knew it would and set me up for a fall. And who knew the Prince of England would refuse to talk about his mum? Or his love life. Just a tour of some castle, which is not ITAL On Air worthy.”#p#分页标题#e#
Jessie shook her head, not caring about any of what she was rattling about. “How did you find out about Garrett’s marriage?”
She shrugged. “Mac sent me the transcript of your interview with that stupid plan to do something bicoastal and have both of us on the air. You knew it wouldn’t work, didn’t you?”
A transcript of the interview? A slow burn crept up her back. “No.” She shook her head, not able to even handle this news. “Never happened. No. No. I never wrote down a single word.”
“I should have known when he told me you were a hundred percent on board with sharing the first show with me and letting the viewers decide.” She snorted. “As if they’d rather look at you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jessie looked past her to the empty cubes and halls toward Mac’s office.
Mercedes reached into her pocket, and pulled out her phone, tapping the screen. “Here’s the email all about how we’d co-anchor and that was the only way to get it done, and that’s the attached transcript.”
With unsteady hands, she took Mercedes’s phone and skimmed Mac’s lies, then tapped the document at the bottom, her heart hammering as it opened.
The notes were stream-of-consciousness shorthand, but almost every word was taken directly from a private, intimate conversation. Not word for word, but close.
She was scared…terrified at the whole idea of being a single mother…thought I loved her…had to look at that man every single day and know he was the father of a child I was completely prepared to treat and raise as my own…such an arrogant prick, I honestly didn’t think that thing had been serious…