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The fact that no one was speaking unnerved Reese. “Tell me.”
Morgan put the TV on mute, but didn’t turn it off. “You didn’t already hear?”
“Isn’t this your job?” Sterling asked.
Reese tried not to show the way his harsh tone cut into her. Since the conversation they’d had backstage when she said yes to going to LA, their relationship had gone right back to where it was, as though her freak-out over Morgan in his bed hadn’t happened. Now he was acting worse than he had when he first saw her on the tour bus. It made her angry.
“Contrary to popular belief, I’m not a machine, up all night monitoring what the internet is saying about Sterling James,” she snapped.
“Sterling,” Morgan said, shooting him a look. He crossed his arms. Morgan looked back at Reese. “There’s a girl—woman, I guess. Girl would be worse.” She gave a harsh laugh. “She claims that Sterling is the father of her unborn child.”
Reese pulled out her laptop while Morgan talked. She sat down at the table across from Sterling, wishing for more space between them. From the look on his face, you’d think this whole thing was her fault. She was going to get whiplash from how quickly he changed moods toward her.
But even his angry face was attractive. Reese realized that she had on non-matching pajamas from Target, no bra, and no makeup. A hand flew to her hair, half-falling out of a messy bun. She cleared her throat and looked at Morgan. “Fill me in. I’m pulling up sites now. DNA test?”
“No baby yet. She’s pregnant.”
“They can do in utero tests.” Reese said. “Right? Can’t they?” She realized that for the most part, her knowledge about pregnancy and babies came from television shows and medical dramas. Her sister Rachel didn’t talk to her that often and hadn’t shared a lot of pregnancy details with her. Plus, it wasn’t like she and her husband had been concerned about DNA tests when she was pregnant.
Morgan sighed. “They can, but any of those kinds of tests have added risks during pregnancy. She’s refusing.”
“You’ve already talked to her?”
“I reached out to her people,” Morgan said.
Reese nodded. “Good. The fact that she has people is the first sign that this isn’t for real. It’s something else.” It took three seconds to find a slew of articles and social posts. “Wow, she went straight to Talk Life, huh? Classy.”
Of all the tabloids, Talk Life was the one that took on the most absurd and usually untrue stories. They were constantly fighting legal battles. No one really believed their stories, but that didn’t matter. Talk Life acted simply as the gateway for rumors. And they made bank on taking these risks. Once stories moved through that gate, they flooded social media and smaller sites and became the things that everyone was talking about.
“Okay, we can handle this. There are worse things. Right? And I mean, it’s not true. Do we know it’s not true?” Reese risked a look at Sterling. “I have to ask. Sorry.”
His dark look intensified, sending a shudder through her that she hoped he didn’t see. “I’ve never seen her before in my life. I definitely did not sleep with her.”
Reese tried not to think about the relief she felt hearing his answer. She scanned the article while braiding her hair into something that would look a little more polished.
“You’re doing hair right now? Really?” Sterling said. Whatever she had imagined passed between them earlier was gone. He spoke with a harsh disdain that squeezed her heart with disappointment.
She thought about calling him on it, just asking him why he was being such a jerk. But she needed to focus on this right now, not her relationship with Sterling. Any minute now, Kevin would be calling and she wanted to have a plan. She couldn’t show Sterling how much it hurt that he flipped the switch. Not for the first time, she thought about how accurate the Night and Day Sterling moniker was.
“I’m multitasking,” Reese said, flicking her eyes back to the screen.
“We can fight the whole DNA thing once the baby’s born if she refuses to do it now,” Morgan said. “But it will hang over us until then, right? This chick is everywhere, not just Talk Life. Money says she’s on all the morning talk shows. She has pictures.”
“Which is impossible, since I’ve never met the girl,” Sterling said, his voice practically a growl.
“Give me a minute,” Reese said. She finished reading the Life Talk article and then flipped around the internet for a bit, taking mental notes. “These are clearly photoshopped.” She turned the computer sideways so Sterling could see and angled her chair a little closer to him. Morgan got up and stood by them, looking on. On the screen was a picture of the girl, making a kissy face next to Sterling. He was smiling and had his arm around her.
“How?” Morgan said. “I believe you, but this looks real to me.”
Reese pointed to Sterling’s jaw. His strong, manly, attractive jaw. Focus.
“See the light there? Now look at her face. The lighting is off. Check his hand on her shoulder. It’s small since it’s in the background, but that looks like a woman’s hand. It’s well done. She either knows her way around these programs or she hired someone. She’s a party planner, so I’m guessing she hired someone.”
“Why does that matter that she’s a party planner?” Sterling asked, for the first time not in a snippy tone of voice.
“It may not, but some jobs would make knowing how to do that easier. I could do that, for example. If she was a photographer or big blogger or worked in design or something, I’d be more certain she did it herself because many of those people are familiar with the programs. This is looking more and more like a pro job. She planned it and she hired it out. Or someone hired her.”
“People do that?” Sterling asked.
