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‘I know how bad this is,’ he growled, dragging a hand through his hair. ‘That’s why I have to go. I have to fix it.’
‘I knew this was a bad idea.’ Her voice was a thread above a whisper, but he heard it.
‘What was a bad idea?’
‘Us.’ She glanced around his cousin’s apartment at the still full wine glasses on the bench, the uncorked bottle. She felt like soiled goods all over again. ‘This.’
She had known it would be a mistake and she’d done it anyway so she had no one else to blame but herself.
Cassidy shook her head. What they had was a first-class mess. ‘It doesn’t matter now. Go.’ She waved her hand in the air. ‘I know you’re desperate to get this under control.’
‘I am. I will. Then we’ll talk about what happens next.’
As far as Cassidy was concerned, she already knew what happened next.
‘Your Majesty, I’m sorry to interrupt but—’ Lukas stepped back into the room, his eyes on Logan ‘—Her Majesty is on the line.’
‘Fine.’ Taking a deep breath, Logan turned back to Cassidy.
Unable to stop herself, Cassidy reached out and pushed a lock of his hair back from his forehead.
‘Wait for me.’
She shook her head. ‘This isn’t my home.’
Tension was stamped all over his handsome face. ‘Lukas, I want you to personally take Miss Ryan back to the palace and make sure she’s secure. Do not let anyone see her enter. I don’t want to fan any more flames about this until I have it under control.’
Cassidy swallowed heavily. Of course he would be ashamed for anyone to keep associating them together when he had to correct this latest disaster. Her father had felt the same way when he’d returned home from work, asking if it was true that she had sent revealing photos to a boy at school. Having tried to weather the storm of her mother’s desertion and Peta becoming a teenage mother, her mistake had been the straw that had finally broken the camel’s back. And it only made her more resolved about her next move.
‘Your Majesty.’ A secret service agent in a black suit stopped beside him. ‘The helicopter is ready when you are.’
Logan nodded, his eyes never leaving her.
Close to tears, Cassidy sniffed, her hungry gaze sweeping his face one last time, committing every one of his beautiful features to memory.
‘Go,’ she whispered. Go, before the hot tears scalding her eyes leaked out and revealed what she had only, in this awful moment, come to fully understand. That she did love him. Completely, and against all common sense.
She also knew that he needed to go into damage control for his family. That he would do his best to stifle this latest scandal and protect them. And she would do the same for him, and for her family.
She’d go home.
Logan paced his office, his shoulders tight, the muscles in his back aching. This had taken hours to pull together. Hours to ensure that every international outlet had agreed to pull the stories about Cassidy and her family in exchange for a bigger story.
Once that was done he’d put the world on notice.
Okay, his methods hadn’t been entirely conventional, but neither was Todd Greene’s revolting exposé.
But now he was drained and exhausted. He didn’t think he’d fought for anything harder, or longer, than he had to ensure that Cassidy’s decision to sleep with him did not completely destroy her reputation, or that of her family. He knew how important that would be to her. He knew how upsetting if he failed.
But finally it was done. His team had pulled off a miracle—for the most part.
The only tiny element of doubt in the whole thing was how Cassidy would react to the method he had used to close everything down. How she would react when he told her, and whether he could convince her that he’d done the right thing.
He’d never been this uncertain of anything in his life and he hated the voice in his head that said he’d overstepped. That this could backfire sensationally on him.
As his mother had angrily promised that it would. She didn’t agree with the strategy he had come up with. In fact, she had turned around and walked out after she’d heard it, telling him that he was just like his father.
That had hurt.
