“The police should be here soon,” he continued, taking in the impeccably neat space. His glance landed on the one object in the room that didn’t look almost painfully ordered; the refrigerator she used for a bulletin board. The front and what was exposed of the sides were covered with postcards, pictures of children and magnets holding up reminders to herself to do whatever it was she apparently knew she’d forget without a note.
“Mr. Garrett…”
“Ben.”
“Ben,” she conceded, as anxious to distract him from his perusal of what she thought important as she was to get his advice, “how do I get rid of them? You said yesterday that you were here to stop them from invading my life. That’s what they’re doing, so…please,” she said, stepping back to clear his path to the front door, “stop them.”
He remained right where he was, partway between her round white dining table with its vase of bright-yellow sunflowers and the back of the sofa that cut the open area in half.
“What I said is that my job is to help you with them. And I will,” he assured her over the voices of a television talk show. “We just need to talk first.”
“About what?”
“About what you want to say to them.”
“I don’t want to say anything to them. I want them to go away!”
His forehead pleated as he motioned to the entertainment center. “Can we turn that down?”
She turned on her heel. She had the distinct feeling that this would have all been easier if she’d let him help her yesterday. No doubt he’d had something preemptive in mind. But it was clearly too late to beat anyone to the punch. Just as clear, from the level way he regarded her after she’d hit Mute on the remote control and turned back to him, was that he would be a gentleman and not point that out.
Grudgingly grateful for that courtesy, she watched his focus shift from the V of the pale coral T-shirt she wore with brown linen capris to the closed drapes by the barrel chairs.
She supposed she should ask him if he wanted to sit. As agitated as she felt, she much preferred to stand herself.
“The best way to get rid of reporters is to give them what they want,” he advised, before she could make the offer. “What they want are answers to their questions. Or a statement. If you’d like, I can help you write one.”
“I don’t have anything to say. How I feel about William Kendrick is private. What happened between William and me is private. So is what happened between him and my mother.
“I don’t even know that much about what went on with them,” she admitted. “What little I do know I’m certainly not going to share with rest of the world. I don’t want my mom’s name dragged through the dirt. And it will be,” she insisted as the sense of urgency she felt identified itself. “My mother was the ‘other woman.” ’
She had no idea what to make of the way Ben’s eyes narrowed on her. In some ways he reminded her of a predator calculating his prey, biding his time until a weakness or lack of guard betrayed itself. She didn’t doubt for a moment that behind that sharp, intelligent gaze, he was processing everything she’d said and figuring out the perfect way to get around it, or use it to his advantage.
Turning from those unnerving prospects, she closed her eyes and snagged her hair back with both hands. She’d barely considered just how unmerciful the public might be when she felt the weight of his hands settle on her shoulders.
Without a word, he aimed her toward one of the slat-backed chairs at the table, pulled it out and turned her around.
He had felt her stiffen the moment he’d touched her. Dismissing the odd disappointment he felt at that, he nudged her down to the seat. More conscious than he should be of how fragile her bones felt beneath his fingers, of the softness of her hair brushing his hands, he deliberately drew away.
He’d caught her fresh, provocative scent the moment he’d come up behind her. He could have sworn he caught a whiff of coconut in there, too. In her hair, maybe. From her shampoo.
Uncomfortably aware of the effects she seemed to have on his body, he pulled out the chair next to her, swung it around to face her and sat down himself. Leaning forward, he clasped his hands between his knees.
“Jillian,” he said, practically leaking the patient control he prided himself on maintaining, “if it’s your mother you’re concerned about, you’ll have far more control over how the public views her if you speak about her first. The same goes for how you will be perceived yourself. Public perception is very much about first impressions. You can get by with a ‘no comment’ today, but you’ll be better off in the long run to come up with some tidbit for the press before they put their own slant on your silence. And they will. I promise you that.”
He’d promised yesterday that the press would find her.
She held the certainty in his eyes only long enough to feel her stomach knot. She needed time. Time to digest what he’d said. Time to decide what she could possibly say to defend her mom when she knew in her heart that the only defense her mother had for sleeping with a married man was that she’d loved him. And that was no defense at all.
The thought of talking to the press made her positively queasy.
“They’ll go away if I just say ‘no comment’?”
“You’ll have to give them a little more than that,” he conceded. “You’ll have to tell them you’ll be available for an interview tomorrow. Or that you’ll give them a statement then,” he added, holding up his hand to stop her when she started to protest. “If they know they don’t have a chance of getting anything today, the big guys will go home.”
“The big guys?’
“The networks and their affiliates. They’re the ones out there with news vans and camera crews. They might leave a reporter behind to see if he can catch you leaving, but the stations will probably send their crews on to other stories. It’s hard to say what the newspaper reporters will do. It depends on how close they are to deadline and what else they need to turn in.” His mouth momentarily thinned. “The paparazzi won’t go anywhere. I don’t know how many are out there, but you have at least one that’s been on your tail since this morning.”
“The guy in the black sedan,” she concluded. The one with the wiry red hair who’d been photographing her bedroom.
Ben gave a confirming nod. “Schroeder…the guard who took up his post about midnight,” he clarified, “spotted him when you left for school this morning.
“There will be more,” he told her, utter certainty in the calm tones of his voice. “The first pictures of you will be worth a small fortune, so you can count on paparazzi doing everything short of dropping down your chimney to get those shots.”
He could have told her it would be worse if she was reclusive. The harder a target tried to escape the prying lenses of the cameras and the fewer pictures there were to sell, the more valuable the target became. From the way her soft-brown eyes held his, he had the feeling he didn’t need to mention that inescapable fact. She’d already figured it out.
She couldn’t seem to stay still. Chair legs scraped against beige linoleum as she rose to move away. From him. From the situation.
“So,” she said, seeming to weigh all she’d just heard, “if I do that…if I tell them I’ll give them a statement tomorrow, the news crews will stop bothering my neighbors?”
“Unfortunately, no. They want information about you, and your neighbors are the logical first source.”
“But the police…”
“All the police can do is cite them if they park illegally or ticket someone for trespassing if someone in the neighborhood phones in a specific complaint. Worse comes to worst, they can probably block off your street to all but residents