by Joanne Rock
Damn it. Keith should have addressed the tough questions last night with Josie instead of letting the moment wash over him like a hot riptide. He’d gladly put aside the larger issues for the sake of passion, thinking they’d have more time to prepare for the potential obstacles before they arose.
Thanks to Brooke, that was no longer an option. And didn’t that change the whole complexion of the issue? Perhaps the old rules no longer applied. Josie hadn’t wanted any interference from his press staff. But he’d been blindsided, put in an untenable position—as had she. What choice did he have?
“Sir?” someone at the table prompted, while the guy closest to him shifted in his seat. “Should we proceed with our ideas or—”
“No.” Keith needed to act fast. Trust his gut. Make the hard call that Josie wasn’t ready to confront. “We’re going to mount a large-scale media offensive and we need it by the end of the day.”
With any luck, he would reach her before his counterstory hit the press. Because—no doubt about it—she wouldn’t be happy to hear what he had in mind. He just prayed he could scrounge up enough persuasive skills to show her he’d chosen the only viable option. The only strategy he could think of that had a chance of saving both their businesses—and a chance at a future together.
13
JOSIE STARED AT THE street below her building, knowing she couldn’t possibly escape without being seen by the media hounds clustered in a pack out front, hungrily waiting to pounce.
Marlena had left for Chatham to work on Chase’s boat before the earliest of the gossipmongers had arrived, but by midafternoon there was a definite crowd. At first, Josie had thought the few folks milling around her stoop were just taking a smoke break from one of the local stores. Now, there could be no denying the group waited for her.
Anger burned through her veins. She hadn’t gotten any work done all day, distracted and furious by turns that she was back in the same hot water that had turned her life upside down three years earlier. Maybe Keith was right that running wasn’t a good response. But it had bought her enough time that she’d hoped the story would have faded from public interest.
She resented the feeling of being a prisoner here. There was no hope of seeing Keith tonight at his place—he wouldn’t want to see her now. He was probably busy trying to save his growing business from this debacle.
What would the media nightmare do to his company? Guilt twisted in her chest. She knew how hard he’d worked to achieve success that was separate from his family’s fortune, and she admired him for that. If it hadn’t been for her, if she hadn’t stumbled onto the wrong sailboat in the first place, none of this would be happening. Of course, then she never would have met him, either, and she found that a whole lot tougher to regret.
Above her desk, the intercom from the downstairs lobby buzzed, its ring distinctive from the chime made by the one outside the building. Had a camera-wielding vulture managed to enter the lobby? She had very few neighbors, and to her knowledge, none of them had ever let strangers inside.
Tentatively, she went over to the intercom and pressed Talk, just in case it was some kind of legitimate business—a package delivery, maybe.
“Chinese for dinner,” said a recognizable male voice that had filled her dreams. “Can you get me up there on the elevator?”
Keith.
A thrill went through her to think he’d gotten inside and was on his way to wait out a different kind of storm with her. At least, she hoped that’s why he’d arrived.
“Absolutely.” She pressed a button that would clear the lift all the way to the top floor. “Hop in and make sure you’re alone.”
Anticipation made it the longest thirty-second wait of her life. What if he was upset with her? For all she knew, he could be furious about the scandal and ready to break off with her completely. She hadn’t been able to gauge his tone over the intercom.
When the elevator door opened, he stood there holding a huge bag of food labeled with the name of the Chinese restaurant next door. The temptation to fling herself into his arms was too much to resist, so she didn’t try. She ran at him as he walked into the loft, sliding her hands beneath his suit jacket to hug his waist. With her head tipped into his chest, she knew her first moment’s peace since he’d walked out of the studio that morning.
“Remind me to bring you dinner more often.” Kissing the top of her head, he leaned to set the food on the table in the entryway. “Who knew Chinese food would go over so well?”
He wrapped his arms around her, and she felt her heart rate slow, her breathing steady. Who knew she would become addicted to his touch—to him—in such a short time?
“I can’t believe you made it in here without anyone noticing.” Tensing, she edged back to peer up at him. “At least, I didn’t hear any commotion outside.”
“No one saw me,” he assured her, smoothing her hair with a broad palm, his green eyes a safe harbor. “I went through the back entrance of the Chinese restaurant and told them I was picking up the usual dinner order for your studio.”
She grinned. “Marlena and I have been known to order in a few times when we’re working late.”
“They handed me a bag a few minutes later, and the delivery kid knew how to access your second floor from their fire escape. After that, I just took the stairs down to the lobby to beg access to the penthouse suite, and here I am.”
Her smile faded as new security worries cropped up. “I’m surprised they would be so quick to help you find your way in here. What if one of the bloodsucking reporters tries the same thing?”
“First of all, they’re watching news coverage from Beijing in the restaurant, so I don’t think anyone over there is aware you’re a media star today.” He plucked the bag up again and steered her toward the living area in the back. “Second, I gave the delivery kid a tip to offer egg rolls at a discount to the throng in front of your building, so I think they’re going to make a killing off you. And I may have slipped him a few bucks to ensure he doesn’t show anyone else the way he showed me. But even so, no one’s getting up here on the elevator unless you want them to.”
She followed him into her dining room off the kitchen and unpacked the takeout containers.
“Devious and brilliant all at the same time.” She handed him the fried rice and grilled chicken that Marlena always ordered. “So what do you think of this mess we’re in? I worried all day that you were going to put as much distance between yourself and this chaos as possible. For which, by the way, I would not have blamed you.”
He sat, but didn’t open the cartons of food, his hands folded on the glass-topped table she’d picked up at a salvage sale after a local furniture company flooded.
“That’s not my M.O.,” he reminded her quietly as she seated herself, his gaze steady. “And I would’ve liked to have been able to reassure you on that score, but I couldn’t reach you all day.”
His tone was perfectly reasonable. And yet something in it—or maybe in his stillness—gave her pause.
“I couldn’t begin to formulate a response to all the calls and messages.” Starving, she dipped a spoon into the steaming container of wonton soup and let the broth cool. “I just decided to shut things down and unplug until I can figure out my next move. I tried to call soon after you left—”
“I probably hadn’t turned my phone on yet.” He threaded his fingers together, his silk tie falling perfectly straight down his crisp cotton shirt despite a trip over a fire escape rail and through a second story window. “I wasn’t ready for my vacation to end.”
Memories of making love in the shower this morning and their heartfelt goodbye kiss returned with a vengeance. Warmth rushed through her in a way that didn’t have a damn thing to do with wonton soup.
“Believe me, I’m sorry we had to come back early, too. If we were sailing down to Charleston on the Vesta right now, none of this would have happened.”
They could be undressing each other in candlelight and playing sexy pirate gam
es.
“But it did and we need to talk about where to go from here.” Inside his jacket pocket, his phone buzzed. He pulled the phone out, studying the screen for a moment before dropping the device back into his pocket.
She’d set aside those reminders of the outside world all day, but now that Keith was here, it seemed she couldn’t disregard the truth of the scandal any longer.
“I know my method of dealing with this isn’t what you would have chosen—”
“What method of dealing with it?” he inquired, lifting a dark brow. “You’ve shut off connections with the outside world and locked yourself in a virtual tower, complete with goblins and fairies. To say that’s living in a fantasyland wouldn’t be off the mark.”
Okay, that hurt. She blinked in surprise that he could deliver such a blow while seated before her so calmly.
“You’re angry,” she stated, trying to get a bead on the situation that she’d apparently misread. “When you arrived bearing dinner, I just assumed…”
Her cheeks heated and she cursed the emotions that bubbled up and made her too damn easy to read.
“Josie, I’ve been dying to see you—even just to talk to you—all day.” The words seemed warm. Caring. But she knew anger and judgment lurked beneath them. “It’s been a wrenching, hard-as-hell marathon at the office, and it sucked even worse that I couldn’t touch base with you to know how you were doing during all this.”
“I’m fine,” she asserted with perhaps a bit too much force. Belatedly, she realized she’d said it through gritted teeth. Taking a deep breath, she tried again. “Perhaps I’m not fine at the moment, but I will be. I’ll figure out what to do about this situation. I just needed some time to gather my thoughts—”
“And what happens in the meantime? The stories grow more tawdry because the tabloid media is forced to speculate, and you don’t come to your own defense?”
“Wouldn’t it be worse to say the wrong thing?”
“Which is why I wanted to lend you a hand in crafting the right statement—”
She made the time-out sign to cut off that line of thinking.
“Keith, this will never work if you view me as someone you need to bail out of trouble, someone to rescue, someone to—”
“Help?” he offered. “Josie, that’s what people who care about each other do. They help one another. It’s no different than when you took over the helm on the Vesta because I couldn’t put out the storm sails and steer at the same time.”
“It is different.” Too restless to sit across a table from him and have this conversation in a reasonable, rational tone, she paced the dining room. “That’s a case of lending an actual, literal hand. You’re talking about bailing me out with resources well beyond my means, and I’m not going to live up to the media image of me as the pampered socialite princess who holds her hand out and assumes money will solve all her problems.”
“So you’d rather close yourself off from the world and wait for the problems to go away on their own?” He stood, trying to intercept her in her pacing, but his phone went off again, distracting him.
“Yes,” she retorted fiercely, pointing to his buzzing, vibrating pocket. “And that’s why. We can’t even have a conversation without the past intruding every two minutes. What’s the sense of getting updates on a crisis when you don’t know how to handle it or where to turn next?”
Her chest tightened as she thought about what this scandal could cost her. She’d been semisuccessful in shoving the worry aside all day, but now, with Keith here forcing the issue, she felt as if she was going to hyperventilate from the stress of it.
“I do know how to handle it,” he assured her, that confident voice of his winding past her defenses and soothing her like the stroke of a hand.
“Is that so?” She wanted to believe he had a great idea for a way out of this mess, but his grim expression didn’t give her much hope.
“I didn’t have the option of turning off the phones at my office today. It was imperative I come up with a plan, and without your input, I was forced to develop a strategy that I thought would work best for both of us.”
She frowned. “You didn’t need to worry about me—”
“We are irrevocably tied in the media, so whatever I did was bound to have an effect on you. You have to see that.” His voice was cool and distant and it made her anxiety spike.
Her neck itched.
“What are you saying?” she asked softly, wondering if it had been a mistake to not watch the news all day.
“I issued a statement to the media on our behalf.” He withdrew a sheet of folded paper from his jacket pocket and laid it on the glass tabletop.
Her eyes flashed to his. “You knew I did not want you to intervene on my—”
“It says we’ve been quietly dating for months,” Keith continued. “That shouldn’t be a conflict for you, since you weren’t dating anyone else during that time.”
Confused, she couldn’t understand why telling people they’d dated for months would help their situation. She watched in silence as he reached in his jacket pocket again.
And came out with a ring?
“The statement also went on to say we’re engaged.” Keith plunked a one-karat diamond on the table, his expression grim. “Congratulations, Josie. All of Boston is thrilled for us.”
IF LOOKS COULD KILL, Keith imagined he’d be strung up from the loft rafters, swinging on a pendant lamp.
Or maybe she would have used two hands to push him out the window so he could land amid the “bloodsucking” reporters. Either way, Josie’s dark eyes didn’t convey any kind of relief, humor or—heaven forbid—joy to think of herself as his fiancée.
But instead of tossing the wonton soup in his face, she backed up an unsteady step and sank heavily onto her chair.
“What have you done?” She blinked up at him, the anger fading from her eyes as quickly as it had arrived.
“Damage control,” he asserted, refusing to feel guilty about it. “Josie, you don’t have to back up the story if you don’t want to. Or you can claim you returned the ring after the media spotlight was too much for the relationship. But if you wear the ring around town for a month, what’s it going to hurt?”
“I didn’t want you to do this.” She stared at the princess-cut diamond as if it were a vial of snake venom. “You might not have known how I felt about the scandal when it broke, but we talked about the chances—”
“Someone needed to take action.”
“So you twisted something special into a sham?” Her voice sounded close to breaking, and he wondered if he’d read her wrong. Was she mad? Or hurt?
He settled into the chair across from her again, figuring the only thing he could do now was try to justify his position.
“It’s not a sham. It’s protection for you—for both of us—from a lot of sordid innuendo. If you wear this, interest in the congressman scandal will vanish. This is a new story.” He shoved the ring closer to her, demanding she acknowledge it. “A different story. And a broken engagement isn’t half as salacious as a politician sneaking around with a sexy heiress.”
Finally, she picked up the ring, her hands trembling just a little. From anger? Frustration? He knew she hadn’t wanted him to take charge with the media, and he’d done so anyway. But what choice had she given him?
“Is this what it takes to save the Wholesome Branding deal?” she finally asked, turning the ring this way and that.
“I don’t know if this will salvage it, but I can promise you that wasn’t my main goal.”
“No?” She ran a finger over the diamonds that circled the band. “But it was one of the goals.”
“No, damn it.” He wished she knew him better than that, but maybe their time together hadn’t given her the same faith in him that he already felt in her. “I wanted to protect your business, my business and a relationship that I feel really good about, and not necessarily in that order.”
“I appreciate what you tried to do
.” She set the ring on the table and lifted her gaze to meet his. “But I can’t wear a lie. You were right that I can’t keep running from this mess, but I’m not sure how to handle it yet.”
The certainty in her dark eyes drilled a hollow place in his chest.
“So fine. We’ll say you gave the ring back after the tabloid interest became too intense, and it drove us apart.” That sounded reasonable in theory, a cover story his publicity team had fed him this afternoon when they were trying to cover all the bases.
But, in fact, it felt like crap.
She nodded, agreeing too damn easily.
Jamming the diamond back in his jacket pocket, he ground his teeth together. “Where does that leave us?” he muttered darkly, sensing a rift between them that he wasn’t even sure he understood.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head, her dark hair grazing her shoulders in a silky sweep. “Things were complicated enough and I hadn’t even processed the first part of the scandal. With this new development, it’s a lot to digest.”
She’d refused his plan. Refused the ring. Why would he think she’d want to forget all their problems in a make-out session in the kitchen? Frustration flooded his veins, but didn’t begin to clear out the regret.
“You need more time,” he guessed, unable to halt the hint of sarcasm that crept into his voice. But it was tough not to act out when she’d as good as kicked him to the curb.
“I guess I do,” she admitted quietly, nodding.
“We set a new record for celebrity engagements.” Standing, he recognized that she wanted him gone. “I blinked and it was over.”
14
SITTING ALONE AT THE TABLE, Josie listened to Keith’s footsteps as he retreated from her living quarters and headed toward the elevator.
A sexy, fantastic guy had proposed to her with the most beautiful ring ever. But while the rock had been real, the sentiment behind it had all been fake, and he’d done it only out of a need to save her from herself.