Forgetting Jack Cooper: The Soulmate Edition Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prequel: Ruth

  Chapter One: Jack

  Chapter Two: Ruth

  Chapter Three: Jack

  Chapter Four: Ruth

  Chapter Five: Jack

  Chapter Six: Ruth

  Chapter Seven: Jack

  Chapter Eight: Ruth

  Chapter Nine: Jack

  Chapter Ten: Ruth

  Chapter Eleven: Jack

  Chapter Twelve: Ruth

  Chapter Thirteen: Jack

  Forgetting Jack Cooper: The Whole Series

  Forgetting Jack Cooper: The Soulmate Edition.

  Copyright © 2017 Elizabeth Bemis

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights reserved under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  To Jenn, BFF first and foremost, but also an amazing editor, without whom this book would still not be finished. Also, thanks for helping it not be a steaming pile of doodie.

  To Tag, who has restored my belief in romance. There’s not a day that passes that I’m not grateful that you’re in my life!

  To Erin, the two Jennifers and the other Lizzie. Thanks for Forgetting Jack Cooper with me!

  Forgetting Jack Cooper:

  The Soulmate Edition

  by Elizabeth Bemis

  Having led a charmed life practically since birth, Hollywood heartthrob, Jack Cooper, has never had to ask forgiveness for anything…even when he should have. But with a new movie role that might skyrocket his career, Jack gets a second chance to clear the air for some long-ago errors in judgment, and to score some publicity points along the way. He sets off on a round-the-country tour to make amends to those whose lives he’s inadvertently harmed.

  What makes the tour even sweeter? The studio’s director of Public Relations, Ruth Miller, is spearheading the effort. Though she’s shy, quiet, and more than a little attention-averse, there’s something about Ruth that keeps Jack searching for ways to make her smile.

  For Ruth, those smiles are harder and harder to come by. After a lifetime of trying to please dear old Mom, a former Hollywood starlet who is now Ruth’s boss, Ruth scarcely knows what it takes to please herself anymore. And no matter how unexpectedly flirtatious Jack Cooper is, she knows that falling for him before she has her own head on straight would be a disaster.

  Then Ruth and Jack hit the road, and she sees an entirely different side to the playboy. They have more shared interests and unexpected connections than she would have thought possible, and with each new stop on the tour, she finds how her own strengths mesh with his…and he helps her see how special she truly is.

  Unfortunately, before Ruth can drum up the courage to ask for what she really wants, it may already be too late. Because with the enormously popular “Forgiveness Tour” coming to an end, Ruth realizes that Forgetting Jack Cooper may be impossible after all.

  Prequel: Ruth

  If you’ve already read the prequel, click here to jump to Chapter One!

  “Hey, Mom. Ralph said you were looking for me?”

  The cool blonde behind the granite desk glanced up, assessing me with her equally cool eyes. Every hair perfectly in place. Her berry colored lipstick looked as if it had been just applied by a professional makeup artist, as did the rest of her cosmetics. Heather Miller’s mascara would never dare clump. And of course, there wasn’t a single sign of her most recent, extremely expensive “procedure” with the esteemed Dr. Stanley Greenup, plastic surgeon to the stars. Which would make that procedure a success, since one shouldn’t ever be able to tell that a woman has had “work” done.

  She sighed when she saw me. There was no amount of work that could fix what I had going on, which suited me just fine.

  I bumped my glasses up my nose, then tucked a lock of my curly hair behind my ear. Never mind that it sproinged back after a hot second. That tuck counted as an official attempt at grooming as far as I was concerned.

  My mother’s gaze rested on the offending curl for a long moment, then returned to the rest of my ensemble. “What are you wearing?” she asked.

  I glanced down, frowning. Ok. I’ll admit the skirt wasn’t that flattering. No one was going to take me for having the figure of a super-model, but I was perfectly within an acceptable weight, even by Hollywood standards. Still, the ruffling at the top of the black skirt, which looked insanely cute on the plastic mannequin sporting this very look when I walked into Macy’s last week, left me looking a little… chubby. I was probably too short-waisted for the blouse, or maybe I’d bought both items a size too big. I wasn’t really into form fitting clothes.

  “Ruth. Really.”

  “We can’t all be former Hollywood sex symbols,” I replied, more unkindly than I meant to.

  It was a low blow. She hated the reminder most people still saw her as a blonde bubble-head, her signature acting role having been that of a vampy sexpot in a night-time soap opera during the eighties. Since then, she’d worked hard to become an Academy Award winning producer and studio owner and to leave her former persona behind. Unfortunately for her, the public’s memory was surprisingly long. Also, unfortunately for her, twenty-seven years of disappointing her tended to make me pricklier than I should let it.

  She frowned at me, and I felt instant remorse for my words.

  She cleared her throat. “I just wanted to make sure you were ready for the meeting with Jack Cooper,” she said. “This is an important film. We need to make sure we get as much publicity for this movie in advance as we can.”

  My remorse dissipated quickly.

  Mom was always doing this to me. She’d been a typical stage mom, during my childhood, trotting me through acting lessons, singing lessons, guitar and piano lessons, ballet, tap and contemporary dance. I think she believed that if she just cultivated the right talent, I’d become a natural performer. She finally gave up when, at age eleven, I sat down in the middle of the stage during a recital and refused to dance. Or, for that matter, do anything other than cry.

  Unfortunately, while I won the battle of not becoming Heather Miller two-point-oh, from that point on, she kind of looked on me with disappointment and maybe a little bit of pity. I was suddenly worried that the only reason I had this job was that she didn’t think I could make it in the real world without it. I was good at my job. I wasn’t confident about a lot in my life, but I was an excellent Director of Public Relations for the studio.

  “Don’t worry, I’m completely aware of the importance of this film. When you promoted me last year, I really thought maybe you’d finally started to see that I knew what I was doing.”

  “Ruthie,” she said, reaching a long elegant hand toward me.

  This was how it always went. The cut and then the Band-Aid, but it wasn’t enough anymore—it hadn’t been enough for a while. I should leave the studio and go do something else and yet…I didn’t. I kept thinking that maybe after the next movie Mom would suddenly acknowledge my worth. To the studio, and to her. I sighed. Maybe this would be the project where I’d either find her approval, or maybe where I’d just grow a backbone.

  I shrugged. “We’re meeting Jack Cooper in the
big conference room in thirty minutes. See you there.”

  I turned on my heel, and nearly tripped over my own feet, ruining my exit. I didn’t turn around to see if she’d noticed.

  I already know she had.

  She always noticed when I screwed up.

  I marched toward the conference room, taking a moment to duck into my office for my laptop and found that Ralph Blitstein, mom’s third ex-husband, business partner, and the closest thing I’d ever had to a father, had made himself at home behind my desk.

  “You ready for this, kiddo?”

  On the tail end of the conversation with Mom, Ralph calling me “kiddo” was a serious tactical error. Not that I would have expected him to call me me “Miss Miller,” even in front of a bigwig, but “Ruth” would have been a better choice.

  “I’ve got this,” I said between gritted teeth.

  His eyes showed his momentary surprise at my tone, and honestly, I wanted to kick myself. Ralph also knew what it was like to be at the receiving end of mom’s disappointment. It wasn’t his fault that I was feeling like a complete screw up.

  Case in point—this entire mess of a publicity tour that I had no idea what to do about. Because from everything I’d learned about Jack Cooper, he was the most miscast human being in film history for a movie about screwing up. The guy was like my polar opposite. He never made mistakes, he never showed up with two different colored shoes, he’d never drink his cereal straight from the bowl…and he probably never made his former step-dad crinkle his forehead at him in dismay for a snippy comment. Ralph had a nice forehead. It shouldn’t crinkle like that.

  “Sorry, Ralph. It’s been a long day already.”

  “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. You’ve got a lot on your plate, but I know you’ll make it happen. You’re fantastic that way.”

  The knot in my stomach eased. See, asking for forgiveness wasn’t that hard…

  Annnnd Boom. I had my idea.

  “So, Forgive Me is a movie about making amends. The lead character, Bobby, is an alcoholic working his twelve steps and trying to get his brother, sister, parents, estranged wife and young daughter to forgive him.”

  Ralph nodded. Obviously, he knew this but he also recognized that this was a test run of my presentation.

  “Jack Cooper, who’s playing Bobby, is an up and coming actor who seems to have lived a fairly charmed life. To the best of my knowledge, he doesn’t have any bad habits. He doesn’t smoke. Rarely drinks. No one reports that he’s been difficult to work with. He’s never lost his temper on set… and he’s worked on a lot of random projects with some of the most difficult actors and actresses in Hollywood, and there’ve never been any rumors of on-set friction. I’ve scoured the darkest corners of the internet to find any dirt on him, and there’s shockingly little. Not even TMZ has found anything more interesting than a rumor of a minor B&E in high school… and his rumored co-conspirator took full responsibility for it. There have been a couple of romances that faded early, but his exes all pretty much state that he was a good time fellow, and they weren’t broken hearted when it ended. And that’s all great, but it’s also…seriously…boring. Everyone in the world loves a redemption story, but we gotta show people that here’s a guy who knows what it means to be redeemed.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Ralph asked, leaning forward.

  “What if, in order to get into the role, he finds the people that he’s wronged in life and makes amends?”

  “How do you know he has wronged people?”

  “Ralph. He’s in his late twenties. And he’s a Hollywood soon-to-be star. No way could he have made it this far, in this business, without wronging someone. Probably a lot of someones, especially when he was younger and didn’t know how to go about it all that well.”

  “Fair.” Ralph stroked his chin for a moment. “So, he goes out and redeems himself. How does this give the film publicity?”

  “We record the whole thing. Make it a press event.”

  “An apology tour…” He nodded as he thought it over. “That could work.”

  “Exactly.” I bit my lip. “Think he’ll go for it?”

  The voice behind me was every bit as silky smooth as the silver screen portrayed it. “Only if you are the one coordinating it,” Jack Cooper said as I spun around.

  I literally lost my breath for a second. Jack Cooper, in addition to being the anti-me from a life choices standpoint, he was also one of the most beautiful, put-together men I’d ever seen up close and personal. And I’d worked in Hollywood for the last seven years. The only thing asymmetrical about him was his grin, which was just a tiny bit lopsided. He even had dimples in both cheeks. He had bright blue eyes, brown hair that had enough of a tendency to curl that it made a girl want to run her fingers through it.

  I felt a pure rush of something that was probably hormonal streak through my entire body. It effected my heart rate, breathing rate, blood pressure and made me tingle in places that hadn’t tingled in quite a while.

  Holy Moly.

  That was it. I had to pull this off. I didn’t want to fall flat on my face in front of one the hottest men in Hollywood.

  I shook my head. No! This was about business. About proving my worth. To my mother and to myself. This was not about Jack Cooper, except as far as he was the object of this publicity campaign.

  Moreover, Jack Cooper could never know that at that moment, he’d likely stolen my heart.

  Chapter One: Jack

  “Mr. Cooper, you’re early.” The smiling receptionist stood up from her desk and gave me a smile.

  Twenty minutes early, to be exact, which could really tick off the more obsessive-compulsive studio weasels out there. But the truth was, early in my career I’d scored any number of roles because I’d been the first person to arrive for a casting call, and therefore the first person to audition before a million faces blurred together in the casting director’s mind. Arriving ahead of schedule gave me the inside track, and I was more than happy to take that pole position.

  I shrugged, going for charmingly abashed. “I have a habit of that.”

  “It’s no problem at all.”

  Without further comment, she stood and led me down the hall. I’d already begun logging the names and faces of the pictures framed on the wall when I heard my name spoken by a husky female voice.

  “Jack Cooper…”

  Well, heellll-llllooooo.

  The voice sounded like some combination of a young Kathleen Turner and Sophia Bush with a little Emma Stone thrown in for good measure. I had an instant desire to hear it whispered directly into my ear… preferably while lying across the 800-thread count, white Egyptian cotton of my pillow case.

  It kept going, too.

  “…who’s playing Bobby, is an up-and-coming actor who seems to have lived a fairly charmed life.”

  Fair assessment. I was grateful for the breaks life had given me, and I recognized that I’d been born under a lucky star. I turned to the receptionist with a finger to my lips, giving her a wink. She nodded, clearly used to the antics of actors. She waggled her fingers flirtatiously in my direction, then headed back to her desk.

  The plaque beside the open door read “Ruth Miller”, but when I glanced inside the room, it was Ralph Bilstein who sat behind the desk. He’d been a Hollywood mover and shaker for decades, and his face was nearly as recognizable as my own. I leaned in to catch what the woman said, while continuing to appreciate the unreasonably sexy timbre of her voice.

  “To the best of my knowledge, he doesn’t have any bad habits. He doesn’t smoke. Rarely drinks. No one reports that he’s been difficult to work with. He’s never lost his temper on set… and he’s worked on a lot of random projects with some of the most difficult actors and actresses in Hollywood, and there’ve never been any rumors of on-set friction.”

  Also true. And deliberate. Hollywood was a den of bad habits and big egos, and it paid to keep a clear head and a kind word. Though clearly, she hadn’t happen
ed upon anyone who’d been at the wrap-up party for Dax Scott: Edge of Vengeance in Amsterdam, where Dame Agatha Kelly had passed around a lit joint. Pot wasn’t my thing, but it would have been churlish to say no to a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

  Besides, it was Amsterdam.

  “I’ve scoured the darkest corners of the internet to find any dirt on him, and there’s shockingly little. Not even TMZ has found anything more interesting than a rumor of a minor B&E in high school… and his rumored co-conspirator took full responsibility for it.”

  I still felt bad about that. But I hadn’t realized Chantal had actually gone to jail over that stunt until days later. By then, the charges had been dropped, so it seemed unwise to confess my own culpability.

  I still couldn’t see the face of the woman with the whiskey-laced tones who’d apparently spent some quality time cyber-stalking me lately. She had riotously curly brown hair which she wore around her shoulders and —I think—a cute figure. The black, ruffled skirt wasn’t particularly flattering, at least not from the back, but she had cute ankles and calves in her short black pumps.

  I shook my head. If the sight of a random woman’s ankles was getting me hot and bothered, maybe it was time to get back in the dating game. Of course, the ankles were just a bonus. It was the voice that really had me going.

  “There have been a couple of romances that faded early, but his exes all pretty much state that he was a good-time fellow, and they weren’t broken-hearted when it ended. And that’s all great, but it’s also…seriously boring.”

  I straightened. Boring?

  “Everyone in the world loves a redemption story, but we gotta show people that here’s a guy who knows what it means to be redeemed.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Ralph asked, leaning forward. I also edged a little farther into the room. Ralph’s attention was fully on the woman, so he didn’t so much as flick his glance my way.

  “What if, in order to get into the role, he finds the people that he’s wronged in life and makes amends?”