“Good,” Brett said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “I guess, um, just let me know if you think of any information that might help the investigation.”
“Of course.” Madison nodded, pasted on a smile and wandered back to her desk, where she spent the rest of the day telling herself she was only imagining things.
There was no logical reason why Jack’s handwriting would have anything in common with Fired Up in Lovestruck’s—no reason whatsoever. She was a journalist, not a handwriting expert. She’d gotten it wrong; that was all. There was nothing to be worried about. She had a perfect romantic evening to look forward to, and she wasn’t going to let Brett’s ridiculous investigation ruin it.
Nor would she let Fired Up in Lovestruck interfere in her personal life. Hadn’t he caused her enough grief already?
But as the hours dragged until she was supposed to see Jack again, a slow burn of panic gathered deep in the pit of her stomach. And when at last she arrived at his cozy little cottage, she placed a chaste kiss on his cheek, then without a word of greeting, walked straight to the easy chair in the living room and inspected the stack of crossword puzzles on the table beside it.
Jack followed, watching her with an open curiosity that changed to an expression of masked alarm as she studied the lettering on the newsprint pages.
He cleared his throat. “Madison?”
The handwriting in the little boxes was an unmistakable match, even to her untrained eye. She noticed similarities beyond the cross hatches on the z’s—like the way the closure of the o’s overlapped, just like the ones in Fired Up in Lovestruck’s letters. Brett had tried to tell her that particular characteristic was indicative of someone who liked to keep secrets, and she’d actually laughed.
She wasn’t laughing anymore.
“Madison, talk to me, sweetheart,” Jack said, and his voice should have sounded like the time he’d asked her to talk to him on the bench outside the fire station, but it didn’t. There was a vague tremor of unease in his tone this time, and that was when she really knew.
It was him.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” she whispered. Please, please tell me. Lie to me if you have to. One last time. I promise I’ll believe. “Tell me you’re not Fired Up in Lovestruck.”
Jack just looked at her, and his blue eyes seemed bottomless all of a sudden. Two luminous pools of grief.
“I wish I could, but I can’t.” He pressed a shaking hand to his chest. “It’s me.”
Chapter Fifteen
Oh, my God.
Madison felt paralyzed. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t think, she couldn’t even take a full breath. She covered her heart with her hands, and the crossword puzzle she’d been holding floated to the floor. She stared at it as she tried to take a deep inhale, but her head seemed to be enveloped in a thick fog of noise. Words that she’d read again and again were spinning in her mind faster than she could grab hold of them.
Bitter to the point of being inedible.
I must ask why a professional journalist insists on writing her material in this annoying list format.
Honestly, this latest attempt at journalism is so egregious...
She blinked up at Jack, trying to force his image into proper focus—trying to see him as the arrogant, judgmental troll who’d nearly sent her to the unemployment line before making her into a household name, famous for diaper bedazzling and terrible maternal instincts. She just couldn’t do it. Somehow, he still looked like the man who’d knelt beside the bathtub with her and told her she’d make a wonderful mother someday. He couldn’t be, though—not if he’d been writing letters to her boss all this time about what a disaster she was.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, and the ache in his voice was unbearable.
Madison shook her head. “No. No, no, no.”
She couldn’t stop saying it. It was too unbelievable...too awful to think about, much less say it out loud. All this time, Jack had been Fired Up in Lovestruck. He’d been the one writing all those letters to the paper. He’d mocked her column since the very first day she’d worked at the Bee. He’d tried to get her fired.
Those things had been bad enough, but the really devastating part had been when he’d implied that she didn’t care about children. She’d cried over that particular letter, because what he’d written had tapped into her deepest, darkest insecurities about her upbringing and her belief that growing up motherless made her somehow unlovable. Unable to mother. Unable to have a normal life at all.
Why did it have to be Jack that had written those words? Him, of all people?
“Madison, please.” Jack’s voice broke when he said her name. And the anguish in his tone brought tears to her eyes, which made her even more furious at him than ever.
She’d never cried over a man in her life, and now here she was, practically falling apart over the one who’d hurt her in ways she could have never imagined. What would her father say if he could see her now?
“Let me explain,” Jack said. “Please.”
“Okay, fine. Explain away.” She crossed her arms and glared at him, trying her best to stay strong. Stoic.
But just looking at him grieved her down to her core. Those lovely blue eyes that somehow saw her in a way that no one else could suddenly seemed like the eyes of a complete and total stranger. And those hands—those big, beautiful hands that had held her so close last night had been the same hands that wielded her nemesis’s pen. The only reason she could wrap her head around it was because deep down, this was exactly the sort of heartbreak she’d expected all along. It was why she’d tried her best to ignore the fact that she’d been falling for him since day one. Loving a person seemed
