Brooklyn Monroe Wants It All by Karen Booth

Chapter Twelve

Alec’sfirst meeting in the news department wasn’t quite what he’d hoped for. Robin Ortiz ran the hour-long session, showing at all times that she was vibrant, smart, and incredibly driven. She was everything you could want in a colleague. She also didn’t seem to like being saddled with the middle-aged dude from the talk show. “I hope you know that things are very different in our department. The work is both slow and fast, which can be a real challenge for some people.”

Some people. “I can handle whatever you throw my way.”

“You have to act and react quickly, but you also need the stamina for long hours, and a sharp attention to detail.”

Stamina. Nice one. “I worked in a newsroom in college and some in my early twenties. I’m familiar with the pace.”

“Oh, right. Of course. When was that, again?”

Alec cleared his throat. “Twenty years ago.”

She arched both eyebrows and smiled wide at him. “So things have changed a bit since then, I’m guessing.”

You’re guessing. “I’ll get up to speed. Don’t worry about me.” He kept an eagle eye on the clock. Brooklyn was about to be done filming her segment with Lela. “Anything else we need to go over?”

“Nope. Just keep me posted on your progress with interview prep.”

Alec gathered his things and walked out of Robin’s office. All he wanted to do was get downstairs, say hello to Brooklyn, then change into street clothes and walk home so he could dive back into his research on Barry Millner and prove to everyone, including himself, that he could still do this. But he didn’t get very far.

“Did you hear what happened on Good Day?” a woman asked another as they passed each other in the hall.

“Do you think it was a stunt? Some people will do anything to promote a movie.”

A stunt?Alec hustled to the stairs and jogged down four flights to the ground floor. As soon as he was out of the stairwell, there was more hubbub. Things were always busy after the show had wrapped, but there was a noticeable buzz today. Something had happened. Alec whizzed by the guest dressing room Lela used, but it was empty.

“Oh, Alec.” Stacia appeared out of nowhere. “Brooklyn Monroe was on the show while you were in your meeting. She wanted me to tell you hi.”

“Did she leave already?”

“She did.”

Alec was eager for more intel on what had happened, so he decided to go straight to the source of all gossip—Jerome and Maddie in security.

“Mr. Trakas, you missed all of the excitement,” Maddie said when he reached their desk.

“So I gathered. I was hoping you could fill me in.”

“Lavaman tanked my bets in the pools. I’m about to be out seventy bucks,” Jerome said.

Alec leaned on the desk. “Jerome. You know you guys aren’t supposed to be doing that.”

Jerome shrugged. “What are they going to do? Fire me? I’ve been here forever. I know everyone’s secrets.”

Maddie simply nodded in agreement. “Anything he doesn’t know, I do.”

Alec thought that sounded like a great insurance policy and made a mental note to start paying better attention to people’s secrets. “So what’s the bet?”

“Whether Ms. Monroe will fall in love and get pregnant,” Jerome said. “I was sure it was going to be a no on both counts. Now I’m nervous.”

Alec’s brain became like an old beater car, sputtering to a stop and exhaling a plume of steam. “Because of Jason Adams?”

“He asked Ms. Monroe to be his date for his premiere. She said yes, of course,” Maddie answered. “Who could say no to him? Nobody, that’s who. I saw them together, and I’m telling you, there was chemistry. Big time.”

“You’re saying that because it works for your line in the pools,” Jerome sniped.

“You don’t have a nose for romance,” Maddie countered. “I had a feeling something good was going to happen for her. The timing is pretty uncanny. She and I were just talking about how she could be pregnant by Christmas. How amazing would that be? It would be the best gift ever. Plus, she and Jason Adams would have very pretty babies.”

Alec didn’t know what to say. He only knew that it felt like his heart was currently residing under the soles of his shoes. Just that morning, he’d sent Brooklyn flowers. Now how much of an idiot did he look like? For some unknown reason, he continued to listen to the naive part of his brain that was saying he should try building a bridge to her. But it always seemed to crumble. And now he had to compete with Jason Adams? Knowing Jason’s effect on women, he’d probably only have to look at Brooklyn to get her pregnant.

“Thanks for the scoop, guys. I’m going to head home.”

“We’re going to miss you if you end up in news, Mr. Trakas. We won’t see you as much. Those folks always breeze right past us and head straight up the elevator,” Maddie said.

“You know about that?” Alec had done everything he could to keep it quiet. If he flopped, he could tell people that it was just a one-off.

“We know it all,” Jerome said.

“Well, let’s put it this way. Nothing has been decided yet.”

As planned, Alec changed and walked home, then headed straight to his home office. He dove right into work and managed several hours of research before his body waved the white flag of surrender. He couldn’t cram in any more details of Barry Millner’s life of private jets, exotic vacations, and expensive cars on other people’s dime.

But now that he wasn’t immersed in reading, his brain returned to the other pressing matter, finding out what exactly had happened on his show while he’d been upstairs getting a hard time from Robin. More important, he had to see Brooklyn and Jason together. If Maddie was right, and there was chemistry, he was prepared to blow off the premiere. Strong recommendation from the network or not, Alec wasn’t about to endure that sort of punishment.

Steeling himself, he pulled up the Good Day website. It took no searching at all to find the segment. The network’s digital team had already put it front and center on the homepage. He pressed play and sat back in his chair, running his hand through his hair. After waiting through a commercial for laundry detergent, he was greeted by Tilly Ann’s intro to the segment, followed by several minutes of fun banter and makeup tips between Lela and Brooklyn. Alec wasn’t even particularly bothered by the part where Brooklyn gave an update on her quest to become a mom. “Exploring her options” seemed like a perfectly reasonable response to the question.

But as soon as they reached the end of their segment and Tilly Ann called out Jason Adams, Alec couldn’t help but cringe. He’d endured so many similar situations on the show, where the producers are grasping at straws to make something make sense. Since the network and the film studio were owned by the same media conglomerate, it was clear to Alec that somebody, somewhere, demanded Jason Adams be given full reign on Good Day USA to do whatever the hell he wanted.

Even so, Alec saw the chemistry Maddie had mentioned, and it made his stomach pitch like a restless sea. Brooklyn’s eyes sparkled, her cheeks flushed with brilliant pink. She smiled and laughed at Jason, and then she accepted his invitation. I’d love to. The whole thing felt like a punch to the gut, but it also left Alec with a few questions. If Jason simply wanted to ask Brooklyn out, why not get her number and call her? Why ambush her on national TV?

He closed down his computer, now plagued with even more unknowns, none of them having to do with Barry Millner. What if Jason Adams was Brooklyn’s one perfect guy? The phoenix rising out of the ashes? What if they became a thing? A couple. No matter how you sliced it, Alec was going to end up feeling responsible for that particular twist in Brooklyn’s life. He’d begged her to come on the show in the first place, which was what made her return segment possible. It was Alec’s fault that Brooklyn and Jason Adams had met.

That wasn’t the fickle finger of fate. It was all on him.

Alec’s stomach growled angrily, so he stumbled into his kitchen, made himself a peanut butter sandwich, and ate while leaning against the counter. The clock on the microwave said that it was a little after six. When his phone rang, he had to dash for his home office—he’d left it on the desk.

“Hello?” he croaked, his mouth still sticky from peanut butter.

“Alec? It’s Brooklyn. I feel terrible.”

Was she going to tell him that accepting Jason’s invitation had been a mistake? God, he hoped so. “Why? What’s going on? Are you okay?”

“You sent me flowers. But I didn’t know they were from you, so I gave them to my doorman and told him to bring them home to his wife.”

So that was what had happened. “Don’t worry about it. It’s just some flowers. I sent them because I wasn’t sure you understood my appreciation for what you did to help me.”

“I understood it, Alec. I got that message loud and clear when we talked.”

“Oh, good. I wasn’t sure. You’re always joking around.” He wandered back to the kitchen, his phone pinned between his ear and shoulder.

“That’s just my self-defense mechanism. I laugh stuff off when it gets serious. You should know that by now.”

Only a few steps into this conversation, he realized that his line about making sure she knew that he appreciated her was an excuse. It was another lame-ass attempt at bridge-building. He’d be tempted to try a bolder approach if these smaller gestures weren’t falling short. And he still wasn’t sure he couldn’t give her what she wanted. “Well, I hope your doorman’s wife likes the flowers.”

“Your card was nice. I saw it when I got home. Cy had saved it for me.”

“I’m glad you liked it.” He found it hard to swallow, and not just because of the peanut butter. It had taken him nearly a half-hour to compose the message for the card, trying to walk the line between expressing gratitude and not laying it on too thick. Brooklyn had a nose for a line. She could sniff out anything inauthentic.

Dear Brooklyn, Thanks again for your help. Your generosity means the world to me. Don’t stop being you. Love, Alec

“I’m sorry I missed you at the studio today. I was in the meeting from hell.”

“Did you hear what happened?”

“How could I not? Everyone was talking about it.”

“It’s weird, isn’t it? Why would a guy like Jason Adams ask me out? I mean, seriously. Have you looked at him?”

Alec did think it was odd, but he wasn’t about to let on. He was more concerned with turning around Brooklyn’s thinking. “Brook, Jason Adams would be one lucky dude if you were interested in him.”

“That’s sweet, but let’s be realistic, okay? He can have any woman in the world. Anyone he wants.”

“That’s a myth. Nobody can have anyone they want. People thought that about me when that magazine called me ‘America’s early morning silver fox’, and it did very little to help me in the romance department.”

“Umm. Not true. You asked me out right after that happened and I said yes, didn’t I?”

Alec’s mind flashed to the night he and Brooklyn met at a mutual friend’s cocktail party. Exceptionally bad at the art of mingling, he’d never loved social events that hinged on walking up to people you barely knew and making chit chat. The only upside of being vaguely famous in a setting like that was that people will introduce themselves and you don’t have to explain what you do. The downside is that they often just want selfies or for you to sign something, usually for their mom. Brooklyn wasn’t like that at all. She’d entranced him that night. From the word “go”. “But that wasn’t the reason you went out with me, was it?” he asked.

“Of course not. But it laid the foundation. I was super excited when you came up to me and started flirting.”

He smiled. His version of flirting wasn’t particularly deft. It involved bringing over a glass of champagne, smiling, immediate flattery, and if he was lucky, a completely spontaneous joke that was actually funny. “That was a huge party.” He shut off the kitchen light and trailed down the central hall of his Brownstone to the stairs. It was late for him. He had to be up before four.

“Tell me about it. There were way too many absurdly beautiful women there. It was like a herd of supermodels. Or a gaggle. It’s probably a gaggle, isn’t it?”

Alec laughed. “I suppose.” Step by step, he climbed to the second floor to go to bed, all the while thinking that this had been his destination with Brooklyn that night everything got so confused. A place they’d visited dozens and dozens of times together. “So, in that scenario, why do you think you were the one I chose to talk to? Do you even know what made me come up to you?” In his room, he put Brooklyn on speaker and set his phone on his nightstand. He took off his jeans and flung them over the chair, then threw back the duvet and climbed into bed.

“I don’t.”

He picked up his cell and switched back to normal call mode. He preferred having her voice delivered straight into his ear. “You never thought about it? Not once?”

“Honestly, I just thought that I was lucky. Or that you’d struck out before you got to me.”

“Do you seriously think that little of yourself? I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s not that I don’t have self-confidence. I do have that. Some, at least. It’s mostly that I’ve never felt like anything particularly special.”

This conversation was slowly killing him. “It was your laugh, Brooklyn. I heard it across the room and there was something so purely joyful about it. I had to investigate.” Pointing out Brooklyn’s amazing attributes was only reminding him of every mistake he’d made with her. And how something or someone was always stepping between them.

“I’d always thought my laugh sounded more like a cackle.”

“Not to me. And then I saw you, and the way your eyes light up when you’re enjoying yourself, and all I could think was that there was no way I was leaving that party without talking to you.”

“That was a fun night, wasn’t it?”

“It’s the first time I remember being happy after my dad died.”

Brooklyn was slow to respond. “Alec. That’s so sad. You never told me that.”

“Of course I didn’t.” A single mention of it and he could feel the outer edges of the low place he’d been after losing his dad. He didn’t want to revisit it, but there were times when it was unavoidable. When grief came back in a wave and he simply had to ride it out. “When you’ve been sad for a long time and you finally get a break, you’ll do anything to grab that moment of happiness and hold on to it. You have no clue how long it will last.”

“Of course. I’m so sorry.”

“I also didn’t mention it because anything having to do with grief makes a pretty bad pick-up line.”

“I suppose it would.” She sighed. “Alec, it’s so late for you. Don’t you need to get to bed?”

“I’m actually already in bed.”

“We were having phone sex this whole time and I didn’t know it?”

He grinned. “I’m too tired for phone sex, Brooklyn. But it was good to catch up. It’s always nice to talk to you.”

“Thank you again for the flowers. Will I see you at the premiere on Friday? I heard Tilly Ann say that everyone from the show will be there.”

As much as he was dreading it, he knew he had to go. “I will be present and accounted for.”

“Perfect. I’ll see you then.”

“And Brooklyn…”

“Yes?”

“I don’t want you to go into your date with Jason thinking that he’s better than you. He’s definitely not. Despite the superhero suit, he’s just a guy.”

“Thanks, Alec. I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

Alec hung up, knowing the one thing he wished he could do—giving the Lavaman premiere a wide berth—was not an option. He needed to be there and be on high alert. If Jason made one misstep, Alec was going to be there to catch it. At this point, protecting Brooklyn was the only thing he could do, but he’d have to be sly about it. She would kill him if he interfered.