Jack rarely heard the word “no” from anyone; she was certain of that. Yet, in this case, the no remained a total necessity. Mayonnaise was not invited to the grocery store.
“She just doesn’t do well in public,” April went on. “Maybe Rachel will let me borrow one of her dogs?”
Rachel was April’s assistant and Jack’s sister—that’s how they’d connected. Rachel had started doing executive assistant work for April, and then she’d introduced her to Jack. Then Jack mentioned her to the CEO of his social influencer management company and things took off from there.
Rachel also had two golden retrievers that were rambunctious, but at least they had solid bladder control.
“Good call,” Jack said, offhandedly. “I’ll figure something out.” There was more shuffling on his end, followed by a muffled, “We need a dog for the shoot. Get Rachel on the line.”
“I’ll have to add the new dog to the blog, podcasts, social media.” Tension infused April’s words as she spoke. No way was this going to work.
“April.” Jack was back. Jack and his no-nonsense, make-things-happen energy. The energy that had gotten April to sign with his firm. “I solve problems; it’s what I do. I’ve got this. We’ll get through the video, then we’ll deal with the rest. One thing at a time.”
Great. Okay, this was good.Everything’s fine.
“I’ll be watching. Monitoring the comments,” he said, his words so smooth, they could melt the glaze clean off a doughnut—the glazed kind with chocolate frosting and little pink sprinkles. Not that April was picky about her doughnut choice.
Except, fine, she was totally picky about her doughnut choice.
Mostly, she had to be, because she rarely ate doughnuts. Until recently. “Recently” being a year ago when her husband—ex-husband—abandoned their family in favor of his midlife crisis skydiving instructor.
She had learned two lessons from her divorce. One, go with your gut before you saunter down the aisle with the wrong man. Even if you’re positive you love him and he loves you. That little niggle of doubt? Trust it.
And two, if you don’t and do it anyway, then ensure your name is oneverything. Or he’ll be able to take it all with him when he walks away.
“I’ve got this.” She kept the smile in her voice, even as her peripheral vision caught her five-year-old son, Rohan, lapping up Goldfish crackers with his tongue from the garage floor near her van.
He did a leapfrog hop as he flicked his tongue to the nearest cracker.
“This is going to make your career,” Jack assured. “Trust me.”
“I’m leaving.” She averted her gaze from her frog-loving son so she could focus on Jack. “Getting the kids loaded.”
As soon as she got the floor-cracker out of her son’s mouth.
The kids shopping with her was part of the deal with the promotion she’d agreed on. A simple ditty following a peace-filled single mom as she joyfully shops for organic carrots with her well-adjusted children and pretend dog. Today’s little side gig Jack had booked for her would be enough to pay her mortgage that month and, hopefully, lead to more.
More being the self-sufficiency she craved.
“I’ll call you after,” Jack said like the hotshot mogul he totally was. Then he rehashed the specifics and reminders about what she needed to say, not say, do, and not do.
Her muscles tensed at the number of his instructions. She exhaled and focused on progressively relaxing the muscles in her back. This was only a video. One video. Nothing more. She’d done videos before. Everything would be hunky-dory.
“Ribbit,” Rohan said, his enormous eyes looking up at her.
April turned back to him, catching him mid-tongue-flick with another cracker from the floor.
Dammit.
Rohan was processing his dad’s betrayal by pretending he was a frog. This had concerned her at first, but the professionals assured her he wouldn’t be an imaginary amphibian forever. He’d come around; he just needed to know he was loved and life would continue even without his jackass of a dad.
Not that she thought about her ex often anymore. She didn’t see him in the faces of their three kids like she used to. The sparse amount of time he spent with them made this task easier.
“April?” Jack asked. “Are you with me?”
Crud, what had he been saying? “Yes, of course. All good.”
Hopefully, he couldn’t tell she was only yea far from a total freak-out.
