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“It wasn’t me. I don’t…I don’t know how…” She moves quickly to my desk and holds out her phone, shaking it in front of me. “Oh, God.”
She’s worked up, in a tizzy as my mother used to say, and the phone is moving so much I can’t see what she’s trying to show me before the screen goes black.
“Scarlett, use your words.”
“You and me. We’re on social media. As a couple. I don’t know how that happened.” She pulled the phone back to her and pressed it, then put it in front of me. “See.” She shoved a finger at it.
Shit. “Scarlett—”
“Photos. Of you and me.”
I start to rise. “Scarlett, you—”
“It wasn’t me. I’m sorry! It’s somehow out there. Please don’t fire me.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Scarlett
I’m freaking out. I know this and I can’t stop. The sun beats down on me through the window, pummeling into me, it feels like. I know it isn’t doing that. But I can’t shake that hot seat, spotlight feeling and it isn’t helping by Hudson rising to his feet, and coming around to face me.
My breath comes short and fast and not just from fear. He rounds the desk and comes up to me, hands large and warm and firm as he takes hold of my upper arms.
“It had to be last night. We shouldn’t have…I know you want to keep everything as much on the downlow or a needs to know level, even with upping the ante. You hate the media, and it’s there. And I’m there.”
Mystery woman.
What even is that?
There’s a part of me that wants it to shout my name, but why would they? I’m nobody. Worse, if they did, what a can of worms. Already my heart is jumping because what if his friend, Sarah’s cousin, sees it?
They’re not close, I know that. Not Sarah and Bixby, and not Bixby and Hudson. Not to mention this is in New York based gossip pages.
But we live in a global community, one that loves getting in other people’s business.
I swallow hard, my skin alive and blood hot in my veins at Hudson’s touch. And I remember everything we did last night. In the living room downstairs, on all those stairs, against his floor’s wall, the bed…
With great effort, I push that all away. I’d rather not, it’s way more pleasant than thinking about the pictures and the little article.
It’s all out of hand. Things are out there. He’ll blame me. He’ll find out the truth. Then he’ll come for me and my brother. And—
“Scarlett?”
I blink. He’s not morphing into a wrathful creature from hell. He’s not angry. His dark blue gaze is warm, not full of fire. There’s not even a hint of brimstone. Hudson’s mouth turns up in the slightest of smiles and I stare up at him.
“Yes?”
“Oh, good, you’re back.”
“I was thinking of escaping to the ether, but you’ve tethered me down by your manhandling.”
Hudson laughs. Actually, for real, laughs. I’m not shocked because it’s at my feeble joke or that he can do that. I know he can. It’s the fact he’s doing it now.
“This isn’t manhandling,” he says, the tone light. “Now, have you calmed?”
“A smidge. Why are you so calm? Did you break your brain?”
He lets me go and leans back against his desk, crossing his arms over his chest. He’s not wearing his jacket, just the dove gray shirt and slate gray vest and trousers. And as he crosses his ankles, I catch a flash of an emerald-green sock. The man has hidden and unexpected depths. But I knew that.
