This should’ve been a good thing. It was a path forward, and he could understand how a place as a physician correspondent on Lana’s show aligned with her mission. But he’d seen how badly being under severe public scrutiny had affected her. Had watched her suffer. The idea of her being under a magnifying glass all the time, not just by virtue of her connection with the Adelmans, but through reach that exceeded her own, terrified him.
“This is good, right?” Mal said hesitantly. “I mean. It’s an incredible opportunity. But it’s also a lot of exposure. Are you sure it’s what you want?” He wondered if she could hear his silent, tenseWill you be okay?
Jo kissed him, gently, on the cheek.
“It’ll be different. I’ll have you.” She shuddered, chuckling to herself. “Blegh. Gross. Can’t believe I said that out loud. Your sappiness is rubbing off on me.”
Mal laughed, but her assurances eased his anxiety some.
“Should’ve warned you that it was contagious,” he admitted. Then, more seriously: “But how do you think it will be different? Lana’s audience is massive.”
“Well, for one, I’ll be teaching,” Jo said. “You said it, remember, at Il Latini. It’s what I’m good at, and it’s what I like. It’s what I’ve always liked about medicine. Talking to people, helping them navigate and take charge of their own health. And it’s why I think I’m struggling to go back to clinical practice, because that isn’t always incentivized or encouraged there.” She inhaled, but she sounded excited, the way she had when they’d sat across from each other at the coffee shop, planning out her shoot for the Tantra. “But I couldn’t help it. So I tried hard to make that a big part of Dr.Jojo. But my engagement was always higher when I made it less about facts and more about me. My opinions. My life. My vulnerabilities. I was selling access to myself, not to my knowledge. Lana, on the other hand...”
“Doesn’t sell herself,” Mal finished, understanding. “She sells topics.”
Jo sat up fully, her grin vibrant.
“Yes,” she said. “Lana is funny. She’s beautiful. She’s magnetic. But what do we know about her? I mean, if we looked her up, we’d probably find some personal details, but mostly we’ll learn about who and what she’s discussed. She’s a public figure in the truest sense. If I could eventually do something like that, but with health care, where I talk to different specialists, cover a disease process, or a patient’s story, it would be perfect. Call it something like Ambulatory...”
“You could start off as a correspondent, like she’s asking,” Mal continued, “and if all goes well...”
He almost laughed. It was a brilliant plan. Ambitious, sure, but this was Jo, and so it was possible. He told her as much.
Jo put her laptop aside, then draped herself over him, nuzzling her nose against his. He laughed, roping his arms around her, relieved to find that, for once, her happiness didn’t seem filtered through a layer of melancholy. She kissed him, once, twice, cradling his face between her hands.
“I couldn’t have gotten to this point without you, you wise old man,” she said.
“Yes, you would’ve,” Mal said. He believed it. “You were already extraordinary. I just provided a little support.”
Jo laughed, and then her gaze grew tender, her thumbs tracing a path around the angles of his jaw.
“I love you, Malcolm Waters,” she said, and Mal froze.
That Jo loved him wasn’t news, exactly. She’d skated past the words themselves, found ways to show him that fell just short of a declaration. But now she was saying them out loud, and he understood just how much she meant them. They weren’t justI love you, but alsoI trust you, I accept you, I understand you.Not just afeeling, but a choice, because nothing Josephine Boateng said or did was ever without intention.
And that intention surged something inside of him, crackling through him like a lightning bolt. Suddenly he felt powerful, capable. He could do more than just sit and hope for the noise to settle. He could force the quiet to come.
“I love you too,” Mal said, and later, when Jo settled in to sleep at his side, he sent his own email, this time addressed to Renata Kovalenko.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Mal
“Malcolm Waters,” Amelia said, barely holding back the fury in her voice. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
It had taken Amelia approximately nine hours and forty-five minutes to blow up his phone, about nine hours and forty-four minutes longer than he’d expected, considering the nature of the email he had sent to Renata and the En Garde team.I try not to involve my personal life in matters of business,he’d written.But unfortunately, I can’t in good conscience move forward with this agreement while my affiliation with your family is causing harm to someone I love.
Renata’s response had been prompt, a quickAre you free to discuss tomorrow afternoon?followed by a note to her assistant to clear her schedule for him.
“I’ll pay back your percentage if I have to,” Mal said to his irate agent. “And don’t worry. I’ll make you more money later. I can write you a second book. And then a third.” The door to Renata’s office opened, and a reedy man that Mal recognized from his last visit stepped through to tell him that “she’s ready for you.” Malstood. “Sorry, Amelia, I’m about to go into the meeting. I’ll call you after.”
The last time Mal had entered Renata Kovalenko’s office, he’d done so with a great deal of unease. He’d looked at her long conference table with trepidation, stared through her massive floor-to-ceiling glass windows and thought,How is it possible that I’m here right now?Renata herself he had regarded like he might a biblical angel, with a pounding heart and an averted gaze. But this time, when the model-turned-reality-TV-judge-turned-entrepreneur stood to greet him, he looked at her and saw a human being who was not doing enough.
“Hello, Malcolm,” Renata said, gesturing toward the seat across from her. “I’m sorry that we’re meeting again under these circumstances. Please, sit.”
“Me too, but it is what it is,” Mal said. He crossed his legs and waited for her to speak. Renata looked, as always, annoyingly perfect, not a dark circle under her eyes to indicate sleep lost, not a lock of hair out of place, even her white sheath dress bright and unblemished.
“This is about Jo, isn’t it?” Renata said. “How is she doing? I haven’t been able to reach her.”
