J

"She was arrested, Jennie. There's nothing I can do. Her mug shot is public record now," Trish explained. I didn't care. It had been four days since the incident; every tabloid and news outlet was circulating and publishing the picture of her bruised and tinged with blood and I wanted them to end.

I hid in the far corner of the bar office to make sure Lisa couldn't accidentally overhear my conversation, even though the last time I saw her she was still in bed. That was at one o'clock. I was feeling like I was at the end of my rope. "I know. Lisa's lawyer called. Even if they get the charge dropped the picture is still out there. She's not taking this very well, Trish."

She sighed. "I wanted to talk to her, see if she wants me to spin this, but she won't take my calls. She's not the first celebrity who's had their mug shot posted. Either we counter with positive press or just let it naturally blow over, which it will."

"Yeah well, right now the press is having a field day." I was starting to pick up Lisa's forehead-rubbing habit. "Lisa's lawyer alerted us that the photographer has hired counsel. He's attempting to sue us for a million. Can you believe the bastard wants us to pay for the lost income she would have made selling pictures of us to the media?"

"I believe it."

"Lisa's not herself anymore. This has pushed her into such a depression; I don't know what to do. She's even lost weight. She's barely eating. All she wants to do is sleep or lie on the sofa. She's becoming a recluse."

"Let her have a few days to get it together. Her ego has taken a blow."

I chewed on my fingernail. "This isn't just about her ego. She says she's retiring."

"What?" Trish shrieked. "No. Bad idea. Bad. That will kill her career. Comebacks in this business are hard to make. She's at the top of her game right now. She pulls out and you can kiss her box-office draw goodbye."

"Trish, the guy had over a thousand photos of us. The cops found soda bottles filled with pee in the neighbor's yard. She'd been wearing this camo netting stuff to blend in with the damn tree! Who knows how long he'd been up there."

"Oh, boy. I've heard of him. They call him 'Fast Freddy.' He freelances for one of the largest celebrity photo agencies in L.A. He's the idiot that almost got Bieber into an accident two weeks ago, chasing him down the Santa Monica Freeway for a shot. These guys know no boundaries."

"They're like jackals." I looked at the calendar in my hand, wondering what I could do to get Lisa back into the swing of things.

"Why don't you two go on vacation? Get out of there for a few days?"

"I've suggested it but she doesn't want to deal with airports or any place that's public. I told her that hiding is not the answer and that she should show the world she's fine and doing her thing but it's like talking to a brick wall. I've had reporters and press staked out in my pub since we got back. I have two guys working the door because we've been inundated with curious fans. It's crazy. I need to get her away from here but she refuses to go."

Trish sighed. "I hate to even bring it up, but I heard about Marla's latest stunt."

I took a deep breath, cringing from just hearing that woman's name. "I don't know how she thinks she could get away with overcharging us. I'd like to stick her lawsuit up her ass."

Fred peered around the office door, waving his cell at me. "Jen, Lisa's calling for you."

I quickly ended my call with Trish and tucked my cell in my pocket. Lisa refused to set foot in the bar, saying that it caused too many problems for my business for her to be seen. Her fans just didn't know when to quit. It was getting to be assumed that if I was here then she was, too. There were spotters watching out for me now.

Lisa frowned at me when I came through the apartment door. "Why aren't you answering your cell?"

"I was talking on it."

"Oh. Who were you talking to?"

"I was dealing with something. Why?"

Shoulders that used to stand tall and firm were hunched as if she'd been defeated. She hadn't done anything more than shower and run a hand through her hair. She had on a torn T-shirt and a pair of threadbare cotton shorts, looking more like a homeless person than a multimillionaire celebrity.

She rubbed her eye with her knuckle. "Nothing. I woke up and didn't know where you were, that's all."

I hated seeing her reduced to this state of despondency. "Are you hungry? You want some lunch?"

She shrugged, shuffling barefoot down the hall to her second-favorite place: the left side of the couch.

I sat next to her and tried to snuggle up. She seemed less agitated when I was under her protective wing. "You still have those pictures of places you wanted to see that you gave me at Christmas?"

She scratched her bare feet together while she flipped through the television channels. "They should still be in the drawer in the bedroom under my T-shirts. Why?"

"I think we should pick one and go someplace. Get the hell out of here for a few days. Fun? Sun? What do you think?"

She took a big sip off one of the many cups of water she had stashed around the apartment. At least in her depression she hadn't started drinking. "Jen, we talked about this. How many times do I have to tell you that I don't want to go anywhere right now? Can't we just stay put for once? Please babe? I feel as though I've been around the world eighty times. I just want to relax."

She slid into the couch, wedging deeper into her depression.

I understood her desire for taking a break, but this was beyond her normal behavior. She hadn't been out of the apartment since we got here.

"What ever happened to those sketches you did of our massive home?"

"They're in my messenger bag. Why?"

I got up, tired of watching her flip through one hundred channels over and over again. I set her drawings next to my laptop and turned on the printer. First thing I searched for was a copper farm sink I saw in a magazine once. I found one that I liked, printed it out, and taped it to another blank page in her tablet. I knew she was watching me so I pretended to ignore her.

Curiosity eventually won out. "What are you doing?"

Trying to get you thinking of other things, like our future. "I found something I wanted to add."

She leaned on the back of the couch, studying her impressive sketches. "Maybe I'll go back to college, finish my degree."

And just like that she frowned.

"Who am I kidding? I can't go back on an open campus." She tossed the sketch pad onto the table and moped back to her spot on the couch. I hated this. I hated seeing her so withdrawn. Even our sex life had taken a hit. Her passion was gone.

It was time for something drastic. I hurried down the hall, hanging our little DO NOT DISTURB sign on the apartment door so Hyunji or Mike wouldn't come in unexpectedly, and took off my clothes in the bedroom.

She at least gave me some attention with a questioning glance when I came back into the living room wearing nothing but my white bikini underwear. I grabbed the remote out of her hand, turned off the television, and straddled her.

"What are you doing?" she breathed out her question with a hint of admonishment, as if me being mostly naked and on her lap needed a reason or clarification.

"I want my Lisa back."

Her lips twisted into a frown, and then her expression rolled into what scarily resembled rejection.

"Talk to me."

Her hands slipped around my hips, tensed, and seemed to push back and up, raising me a smidgen off her crotch. "You had to get naked to talk to me?"

"I figured it was a good way to get your undivided attention. We should be on a beach somewhere having a grand time, making love, having fun, being young, enjoying life. You've been so closed down. You don't want to talk to me. You barely touch me anymore. It's scaring me."

Her hands pushed my hips back, a definite sign of her unwillingness to further this conversation. I grasped her forearms, unwilling to let her push me aside.

Desperation clawed at my throat. "Please don't push me away. Please. I can't take it anymore." Her despondence was taking its toll on my heart.

She tried to squirm out from underneath me and just like that a new fissure cracked into my patchwork heart. "Lisa, don't. Oh God, please don't. You promised me!"

She resigned back into the couch. "What do you want?"

Her momentary rejection unnerved me. I'd been down this road once before and I'd be damned if I was going to let history repeat itself. Fucking people giving me false hope and promises that they so easily yanked back when it was convenient. Well fuck that!

"You're breaking my heart! Don't you see that? Is that what you want? You want me off of you, pushing me away like that? Is that what you want?" I knew my voice had risen in volume but damn she was pissing me off.

"I just want to chill. That's it. Is that so hard to understand?"

I glared at her for a moment, shocked at her harsh tone. "Fine. You want to chill, have at it." I started to climb off her lap but her hands clamped my thighs.

"Where you going?"

"I'm getting off of you and going to live my life. You're not chilling, you're rotting away here, letting that shit in your head fester and eat you alive. You don't want to talk to me, get it out and move forward, then you can sit here and continue to chill on your own. Let me know when you're done."

"Stop," she groaned.

"Why? A second ago you were pushing me off of you."

She studied me for bit, her eyes scrunched and pained with so much mental poison. "I'm sorry."

I picked up one of her hands, curling it in my own and pressing it between my exposed breasts, pulling it as close to my heart as it could go. "Don't be sorry, babe. Talk to me."

She shook her head, fighting it, not able to find the courage or the words.

"Tell me," I pleaded softly. She was tight-lipped and scowling. "You said once that a man should own up to her situation. You also said we'd always talk it out. You promised. Talk to me!"

Lisa was so forlorn. "I can't shut it off. Can't shake it."

I placed soft kisses on her fingers, patiently waiting, trying to encourage her to go on.

"God, you're so fucking beautiful," she said softly but with so much conviction. Her eyes drifted downward, landing on my stomach while she pondered. I let her take her time, glad she was at least touching me again.

"You would have been seven months pregnant by now." Her fingers drifted over my flat belly button.

"Oh, honey . . ." I breathed out my warning plea for her not to go there.

"I think about it all the time. I wonder if our daughter would have had our brown eyes or if our son would have taken on some of my traits. What their face might have looked like."

I wished I could hush her sadness by kissing her skin. "We'll have beautiful babies . . . when we're meant to bring them into the world. I promise."

She tapped the tip of her finger lightly on my tummy, seeming to disagree. "That was our first and I took that from you. My career"—she sneered as if the word was dirty—"took that from us."

I tipped her chin up, aching from seeing her look so lost. "No. Stop, Lisa. Things happen for a reason. Things that you have no control over. We would have managed, but we weren't ready for a baby. We need to be strong together before we bring a child into this world. What happened to me—you can't take that on your shoulders. You can't. I won't let you."

Lisa disagreed again, stuck in something powerful. "There was so much blood when you lost the pregnancy. I thought you were dying on me." She bit into her bottom lip while her eyes got watery.

"I'm here." I nuzzled her hand. "I'm right here, baby."

She stared at my thigh, tracing an invisible line with her fingertip. "Sometimes I forget how strong you are. Resilient may be a better word. Life keeps throwing you punches and no matter what, you keep getting back up."

I laced our fingers together. "That's because I have something worth fighting for. You. A promise of forever. You make me want to be stronger."

She snorted and squirmed underneath me. "That's because I'm doing such a bang-up job keeping you safe. What a great job I've done."

I clutched her neck and pressed her shoulders back into the couch. "Stop it. Don't say that. I have never felt as protected and cared for as I have by you."

Her head swayed, defeated.

"You're letting them win."

I combed my hands through her hair, tugging until I had her eyes back on me. I took her mouth with desperate longing, kissing her as if I could break the wicked spell that was pulling her under. "Fight with me," I breathed on her lips, which seemed to refuse me passion. "Please, baby. I can't do this without you. I need you. I need you."

Her jaw tensed as the pain she'd been holding in so tightly finally cracked. A soft sob slid up her throat.

"I'm so tired, Jennie," she croaked, her voice stuttering from trying to keep it in check. But the hurt had nowhere else to go except out. "So tired. All I do is bring us pain."

A tear slid down her cheek. And then another. I knew it was killing her to show me this much weakness but it all needed to be purged, excised from her system like a soul-sucking demon. Seeing her cry was my undoing. She'd finally succumbed to the pressure and that made me mad.

"No you do not! You are the love of my life and my best friend! No matter what life throws at us, we take the good with the bad, Lisa—the good with the bad. We roll with it because that's how we roll."

She pulled me down to her chest, clutching me as if she needed me to get her air back.

I held her head while she buried her face in my neck. "Oh, babe. We'll get through this. Honey, you know how to fix this. You stopped taking your medicine."

She frowned, sniffing. "I'm not taking shit, Jen. No pills."

"Lisa, you've tossed your body into confusion. You can't just suddenly stop taking them."

"Pills to cope . . . What's next? Pills to sleep? Pills to keep awake? That's a sure way to die. You know how much I hate that shit, Jen!"

I held her face in my hands. "Lisa, look at me. I did a lot of research when the doctor put me on antidepressants after the accident. My situation was temporary. You've suffered from anxiety attacks for a long time, even before all of this. It's when you stop taking them that your system gets out of whack."

Resistance to that slipped over her face. "I don't want to rely on drugs, Jen. I don't."

I wiped her cheeks with my thumbs, erasing the physical evidence of her stress. "Doesn't matter. You need them. You need to regulate the serotonin. It's not a sign of weakness, Lisa. And it doesn't make you any less of a person. It's a body imbalance, that's all. There's no shame in that."

She closed her eyes. "I tried to work through it on my own but I feel like I can't shake it. It's like a never-ending loop. Seeing the disappointment on my father's face when they put me in that squad car; I know it broke his heart. I did that to him. Me." Lisa rubbed her palm over the center of her breast plate.

"It presses in on me, right here. Like I have an elephant sitting on my chest. Sometimes it's hard to breathe."

"I know, but we can change that. You don't have an addictive bone in your body, Lisa. You need to take one little pill to regulate your body chemistry. That's all."

"Okay," she whispered, conceding. "I'll start taking them again. I can't live like this."

"I'll make an appointment for you to see my doctor. We'll get your smile back. I promise."

It was Monday. We'd been back in Seaport for two weeks when my birth father called again. Lisa, Mike, Hyunji, and I were at Seaport's Sandy Cove Beach enjoying the hot weather and gorgeous day. Lisa and Mike were tossing a football back and forth while from the comforts of our beach chairs Hyunji and I enjoyed the incredible sights of them.

It was pure elation seeing Lisa smiling and having a great time. It was like she'd been totally rejuvenated. She was on new medication for hypothyroidism, and the differences were almost night and day.

I waved at Lisa to come over.

She opened the cooler lid, grabbed two bottles of ice-cold water, tossed one at Mike, and used the cooler as a seat. "What's up?"

"I just talked to Joe."

Lisa pushed her sunglasses up on her head, looking at me quizzically. "And?"

"He'd like us to come out to Lake Tahoe."

He made that audible exhale noise, seeming none too pleased with that idea. "I don't know."

Okay, so she wasn't even in the same ballpark with my enthusiasm. We had a silent standoff until Lisa said, "I've got to be honest. I'm not seeing the benefit here. The man hasn't been in your life at all and I'm inclined to keep it that way."

I was momentarily distracted watching Mike, who was holding his hand out for Hyunji. I felt my heart flutter just from the look he wore on his face. He tugged her up from her chair and, without saying a word, walked off with her as if she were a prize, holding her hand as he did. I couldn't help but fall in love watching them enjoying each other, walking in the surf, bumping into each other, Hyunji gripping on to his muscular arm with both hands. Her beaming up at him and him beaming right back. It was like watching the best part of a love story.

"They make a great couple."

Lisa glanced over her shoulder and then back to me. "They have what we have." she smirked.

I smiled. "I know."

Shw tossed her chin. "It's a much better fit for both of them."

I was so damn happy seeing their love blossoming, it was hard to contain it. "I agree."

Lisa's smile fell. "Back to this Joe business. Jennie, I want to trim all the variables off. Things are finally getting back on track for us and I'm not looking to add any crazy onto the pile. You want to meet him, we'll set it up, but not without me being there. First sign of potential bullshit, I'm pulling you out and we're on a plane."

"I want to meet him."

Lisa chewed on her bottom lip. "Did he come clean with his wife?"

"Yes. He said she was understanding about it and she and the girls want to meet me."

Lisa nodded before putting me back under her scrutinizing gaze. "This really a road you want to go down?"

I knew she was just trying to shield me from further hurt. "Yes. If I don't, I'll always wonder. I need to put that part of me to rest, Lisa."

She reluctantly agreed. "Okay, if that's what you need, I'll get our flights booked."

I grinned at her. She didn't need to utter the "I love you" words for me to know how much she did.

"Thank you, babe."

She dropped her shades back down. "Fred going to be all right managing the bar while we're gone?"

I reviewed my mental calendar. We had the Teen Choice Awards coming up, and then Lisa had to do some fittings in L.A. for the third Seaside film.

I nodded, quite confident that I'd made the right decision. He'd lost all of the bookings he had for the summer, having to sub out the work to another guy, so he was more than thankful for the job. "He'll be just fine. He's been helping me for a long time, so he knows what needs to be done."

"Tammy seems happier, too."

I recalled the talk she and I had the other day, ironing out some of our issues. She and Hyunji were still walking wide circles around each other to avoid confrontations, but for the most part, Hyunji was over it.

Having Mike tell her to get her ass in his bed every night, even though his bed was my guest bed, was helping to soften Tammy's betrayal. "We're going to try serving a limited menu in the pub. See how that works out before we go further. Maybe she'll name a sandwich after you."

Lisa rolled her eyes.

I glanced at my cell to see the time. "We've got to get going. We meet the builder in two hours."

Lisa stood, straightened her dog tag necklace—the one with my name written on it so she could "keep me close to her heart at all times"—and tried to see where Mike and Hyunji had gotten to. "You okay with the addition we talked about?"

I watched Mike whirl Hyunji around in the surf, and wished Gary could see how much happier she was.

Her callousness deserved a bit of retribution. "Is Mike?"

"My head of security needs a command center and I'm thinking I'd sleep better at night knowing your new guardian was conveniently located."

As much as I loved that idea, she was presuming a lot. "She just took a course, Lisa. Who knows where that will take her."

Her wry grin told me she had info she wasn't sharing.

"What do you know that I don't?" I asked, grinning right back at her.

Lisa casually shrugged. "Let's just say whatever it is we've got planned, you two ladies can't do shit about it." She held out her hand. "Come on. If you want to meet Joe, we've got to book a side trip to Lake Tahoe."