Текст книги "Busted"

Автор книги: Shiloh Walker

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

He smiled thinly at Nadine. “Might have been harder to pull off if you’d done a live interview, I’m thinking.” Planting himself at Trey’s side, Travis glanced over at Ressa. “So . . . laptop?”

Ressa frowned. “I didn’t bring my laptop. It’s back at my house.”

“Hmmm. Okay. That simplifies it.” Travis shrugged. “Trey, that means if she did that online interview, it was from here. They said it was an exclusive online interview, obtained early yesterday . . . although, damn . . .”

Travis tsked. “You and your aunt were on the road, right? Were you typing and driving or what? Those are some hellaciously long interview questions.”

“Trav.” Trey bared his teeth. “Please feel free to check my computers. Ressa, would you let him check your phone?”

“That doesn’t prove—” Nadine stopped, sucked in a breath.

“Come off it,” Ressa suggested. “We all know. Thanks for almost costing me my job, by the way. I really appreciate that.”

Nadine shot a look to the left, then the right, before looking at Trey. “You really think I could do this?” she whispered.

“I didn’t want to. But the answer is pretty clear. What I don’t know is why?”

Nadine sniffed and moved to the door. “I can’t believe you think I’d . . .” Abruptly, she froze and her voice went tight. Slowly, she turned and the uncertain, nervous female just . . . faded. “I did it because I waited. All this time. I waited for you to see me and you never did.”

Then she spun back around and jerked the door open, half falling out in her determination to leave.

Travis sighed and shook his head. “I’ll make sure she gets home okay.”

“Behave,” Trey warned.

“I always do.” He shot them a wicked grin. “But for your sake, I’ll behave nicely.”

He slid out the door.

Trey went to shut it and the rush of voices caught his attention. Wincing, he glanced outside and saw that in the past few minutes, the two vans had multiplied to five.

“And here I was thinking I would be the one catching their attention,” Sebastian said from the living room, glancing around the arched doorway.

“Shut up or I’ll drag your scrawny ass out there.” Sighing, Trey reached down and caught Ressa’s hand. “You trust me?”

Her eyes flew wide.

“You aren’t serious.”

“I’m just going to address it, real quick,” he said. “They won’t go away until I give them something.”

She winced, look down at herself. “I’m a mess. I don’t have makeup on. My hair is probably a wreck. I’m wearing your shirt . . . I don’t have makeup on. I barely remembered to put a bra on!”

“You didn’t have to do that on my account,” Sebastian offered.

“I’m killing you when I’m done,” Trey warned. Then he reached up, smoothed her hair down. “They aren’t going to focus on any of that. You look beautiful.”

He pressed a kiss to her lips, remained there. “Trust me?”

“I might kill you for this,” she whispered against his mouth. “Fine.”

*   *   *

Ressa gulped at the sudden flash of cameras, the rush of questions. There were only a few people, she’d thought. Now it seemed like dozens.

Stunned into silence, she gripped Trey’s hand and held tight.

“Mr. Barnes! Mr. Barnes! Is it true that you’re also writing erotic sexy stories under another name? What does your family think about this?”

“They are romance books,” he said. How could he sound so calm. “And knowing my mom? She’s probably going to be mad I didn’t let her know already so she could read them. She loves romance.”

There was a faint pause and then the next rush of questions, most of them running over each other.

One finally distinguished itself from another. “Is this Ressa Bliss? Your former girlfriend? Why do you think she gave that interview?”

“Does she look like a former girlfriend?” He laughed. “This is Ms. Bliss but let me make it clear. We are still dating. I can’t explain what happened with that interview but the interviewer didn’t bother to verify their source. Ressa didn’t give the interview. She’s spent the past few days with me or traveling with family. She hasn’t had time to give an interview.”

Now there was another flurry, but when Trey opened his mouth to answer, Ressa squeezed his hand and answered herself. “No, we are not claiming that I didn’t give the interview,” she said, her voice like ice. “We are stating that. Whoever did that interview wasn’t talking to me.”

The reporters paused, but it was so brief, it couldn’t even be measured by breaths.

“Are things serious between you two?”

Instead of answering that, Trey turned to Ressa and cupped her face in his hands. She stood there as he closed his mouth over hers, but slowly, she relaxed against him, her hands gripping his waist.

He broke away after a moment and hooked his arm around her neck. As he led her into the house, he said over his shoulder, “No comment.”

*   *   *

“You didn’t even pause when you read that.” Ressa stood in his office, staring at bookshelf after bookshelf. Trey sat at his desk, pounding furiously away at his keyboard. “You believed in me. Just like that.”

He paused at her words and looked up. “Of course I did.”

Of course I did.

She thought about everything that had unfolded over the span of the past day—all the secrets she’d been afraid to tell him . . . and the one huge fear that had lingered over her head. All of it was out in the open.

Of course I did.

“You’re doing it again.”

She opened her eyes and turned her head to meet his gaze.

“Doing what?”

“Worrying.” He looked back at his computer.

“No.” She moved to him then, coming around the desk. She stared at the headline on his monitor. It was yet another prominent blog, one that focused on books and authors. It read:

BUSTED!

It referenced the news about Trey and his alter ego, but it also included snippets from that so-called interview. There was also a link to the trial. She skimmed some of the e-mail he was writing and caught his wrists. “Dial it back, baby. They didn’t do anything—and hell, the woman is just re-posting some of what she read. She didn’t do anything.”

He flexed his hands, stared at the computer. “I’m pissed off.”

“So am I. But not at anybody online . . . well, except the person who didn’t bother to make sure she was actually talking to me.” She pressed her lips to his temple. “You already talked to your publicist. The site in question has already pulled it and a retraction will be up this afternoon. Although . . . the horror . . . you now have to give a real interview.”

He slid her a narrow look. “I think I should give it to you. What better place to put it than Blissed Out On Books. People are tanking you and your blog.”

“Better idea.” She nodded to the monitor. “Give it to them. Start your e-mail over, give the bloggers enough info to explain what mostly happened without getting personal and ask if they’d like to help you with a real interview. They’re bigger than I am. You want the word out? Do it that way.”

He blew out a breath, then shrugged. “If I do it that way, will you quit worrying so much?”

“I’m not worrying. I’m thinking.” She draped her arms around his shoulders and pressed a kiss to the sensitive spot below his ear. His body tensed.

“If you want me doing anything besides pressing you up against a wall, you shouldn’t do that.”

Things in her belly went low and tight, but despite the temptation, she went still and read the e-mail. Once he sent it off, he spun in the chair. He pulled her into his lap and she wiggled, tried to adjust to the confines of the chair. “I’m thinking,” she said again. “This is all so simple to you. I called Farrah back. She spoke with Thompkins—he’s still furious, but he’s agreed to give it a few days and see what happens.”

Studying Trey’s face, she smoothed a finger across his mouth. “Farrah apologized—she was—is—sorry but she thought I’d done it . . . for a few minutes at least. Trey, you would have had every right to at least ask.”

“No.” He hooked his arm around her neck and pulled her in against him. “No, I wouldn’t. Because the woman I fell in love with isn’t the woman who would do that. I knew it, without even thinking about it.”

“Details.” She remembered what her aunt had told her. Okay, yeah, she and Trey had some crazy . . . details, but he’d just proven to her, beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had faith. Not just in her, but in them.

“What?”

Tipping her head back, she pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Mama Ang told me that if we had love, everything else was just details. She was right. When I’m with you, I forget about all the crazy things, the complicated things. I forget about Kiara and every reason why this is a bad idea.”

She laughed wryly. “This . . . today . . . that’s exactly why I’ve been so afraid to try anything with you because this would happen. People would find out. And . . .”

“And the world didn’t end.” He wrapped his arms around her. “We’re still here. The world can’t mess us up unless we let it. I think we’ve already proven we’ve got what matters.”

“Yeah.” That solid, warm weight of her had his entire body sighing in satisfaction. As he brushed his lips against her brow, she said, “They’re all just details.”

Twisting her head, she caught his mouth. “We just might be crazy, going after this.”

“We’d be crazier not to. Life doesn’t always give you a second chance to be happy, Ressa.” He angled the chair back and she yelped as she ended up sprawled against his chest. He took her mouth in a slow, leisurely kiss. It was the first time all over again, slow and gentle, tasting her, learning every hollow, every crevice of her mouth.

When it ended, Trey pressed to her and murmured, “Crazy or not, I haven’t felt whole like this in . . . too long. It may be crazy, but it’s right. You feel it, too.”

“I feel it, too.”

He lifted his head, studied her eyes. “Then the rest is just details. We’ll handle them.”

“Yeah.” Ressa smiled then, leaning in to rub her lips against his. “I never really thought about it, but I’m pretty good at handling details.”

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