Kathy Jay - What If He’s the One

Alex was nowhere to be seen. Maggie ended the day ordering room service and crashing out ready for an early start the next morning. She had a night of fractured sleep. Three times she woke up sprawled in the king-size bed thinking she should get up and do the pregnancy test. She didn’t. She had a mental block so strong it was as if something physical was preventing her from doing what she needed to do.

If the insemination was a success, it was because her donor had knowingly made a decision to create a life without being there. Her father hadn’t made that choice. He’d been a summer romance. Her mum was sixteen when she’d fallen in love with the golden-haired surfer boy from Australia. By the time she realized she was pregnant he’d left, and by the time she tried to tell him he was a dad, it was too late.

Her mother’s pregnancy had been a minor scandal in their seaside village. By the time her grandmother had got over the embarrassment, got used to the idea of her daughter being a teen mum, and decided that they should track down surf-boy Sam, he was dead. A seventeen- year-old adrenaline junkie, happy-go-lucky Sam had surfed a notorious point break two days after he arrived home. Taken out by a freak wave, he’d drowned on the reef. His parents sent a clipping from their local newspaper reporting his death. Maggie’s mum kept it in a shoebox under her bed with a load of photos and a heart-shaped pebble he’d given her. When she went to work in Spain she left the box behind, along with Maggie.

Technically, her father had been a sperm donor. So why shouldn’t a donor-sperm baby grow up to be as strong and independent as she’d learned to be?

Finally she fell into deep sleep. She always dreamed when she was jet-lagged, but usually she had a vague sense that she was asleep and only dreaming. This time the dream was so real that she woke up all spaced-out and it took a minute or so to register that the blissful scenario she’d been so immersed in hadn’t actually happened.

And she thanked her lucky stars it hadn’t. Because in her dream she’d slept with Alex, and her heart thudded, wondering if that embarrassing little gem was going to be written on her face the minute she set eyes on him. He’d stirred up a mess of emotions. She hadn’t just been a little bit in love with him, she’d been head over heels, and right when she’d not been able to resist him a second longer, he’d upped and gone and vanished from her world. She’d thought she was oh-so-over him, but the deep down, buried truth was that she’d gone on being hooked on him for much too long after he’d left. No one measured up to him. The guys she’d dated never stood a chance by comparison, because she didn’t allow them to. When she got anywhere near starting a relationship she let it fizzle out. Fearing rejection somewhere down the line, she pushed men away. Until Marcus. Marcus had taken her over, organized her, a self-appointed personal drill sergeant. She’d trusted him completely.

She felt raw. It didn’t help that her hormones had begun to whoosh around uncontrollably like fallen leaves being whizzed into the air on a gust of autumn wind. She wasn’t just as susceptible to the charms of Alex Wells as every other fan of the show, she was more so. She’d known him before he shot to fame – that was the trouble.

Awkwardness set in the moment Alex arrived at the studio. Hannah popped out for some takeout coffees, leaving Maggie to dress Alex ahead of Nick and the two models who hadn’t shown up yet.

The dream memory returned. It seared her mind’s eye with an image of hot, tangled bodies, obliterating reasonable thought processes. A sensuous picture of soft, warm skin and hard muscles filled her imagination; her lips seeking his, his mouth devouring hers, hands clasped, bodies entwined.

Trapped in tongue-tied silence, Maggie forced herself to focus on the brick walls and wood floors of Hannah’s warehouse studio. They helped ground her. Samples of photographic work dotted about the place gave her something more appropriate to visualize. She picked out a photo of white sailboats afloat on glassy water against the Back Bay skyline with powder-puff clouds in an azure sky, and honed in on that.

Outside, Boston basked under just such a perfect blue sky.

“Great day for it.” He oozed confidence. His drawl set off those hopping hormones again. He could make reading aloud from the telephone directory sexy without even trying.

“Couldn’t be better.” She ignored the fact that he was attempting to snare her gaze. She resolved to avoid looking him in the eye, if at all possible. If she did, he’d be bound to see all the things she’d dreamed in the night swimming in her head. Utter torture.

“Good day yesterday?”

“Um. Busy. Getting this lot ready.” She turned her back to him and stood at the hanging rail shuffling the clothes about a bit on their hangers, pretending to be absorbed in her work. “You?”

“The usual. Interviews. The final series airs here next week. And the big question on everyone’s lips is “How does Jago die?”.”

“What did you say?” Maggie grabbed a pencil and over-acted the need to score off a couple of items on her to-do list.

“I told them Nick – sorry, Jarvis – ties me up in a string of garlic, and shoves me out in the sunlight with a stake through my heart.”

Maggie turned to face him. “So it was you that started the rumor?”

“Actually – it was you! But I liked it, so I borrowed it.”

She wrinkled her nose. “So what does happen to Jago? Maybe I’ve lost the plot, but I thought he was the bad guy in this set-up?” Her tone was deliberately blasé, as if she wasn’t really that interested.

“Nice try, Maggie. I’m afraid I can’t let you in on that secret.”

“Not strangled by your brother in the sunshine with the garlic, after all? Someone should invent a board game. I bet there’d be a market for it. Great merchandising opportunity. It’s sounding more like a whodunit and less like warring vampire twins every minute.”

Wry tension twitched in the corners of Alex’s mouth. “It’s war. Make no mistake.”

Maggie guessed he wasn’t talking about their TV characters. “What’s up?”

“It’s no secret that Nick wasn’t ready for Mercy to finish. But I was. My leaving was okayed with the powers that be. They told the writers to write me out. Then the studio did an about face and cancelled the show.”

“I suppose it’s a question of balance. Without the good-vampire-twin-bad-vampire-twin thing going on there wouldn’t be much drama left.” Maggie chewed on the end of her pencil.

Alex’s shoulders tensed. He watched Maggie with deep concentration, mesmerizing her with his eyes, and lowered his voice, “I’ll swear you to secrecy. There’s a big twist in the final episode. Turns out Jago isn’t evil after all. He’s the good vampire and Nick’s character is the one that’s mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”

“I’m guessing he’s not very happy with that.”

“Let’s just say that’s an understatement.” He sucked in a sharp breath and scraped his fingers through his hair. “It was time the series ended. It had a good run. If we’d gone on any longer the characters would have dried up. People would have lost interest. It’s better this way. We’re ending on a high.”

Alex’s tension filled the air in the empty studio. He stared off into space. “Nick doesn’t agree with you on that?”

He let out a grating laugh. “Nick blames me for the show being cancelled. He’s livid.”

“He’ll come round.”

“He has no choice. He’s going to LA to talk movies. I’m going to London to do theater.”

“Cool.”

“It’s time for us both to move on with our lives, and he knows it. Even if he’s not ready to admit it.”