Sawyer shoved his glasses back on his face. “I’m just saying that it’s unlikely Riley would know if this guy snores because...well, um...”
“Yes?” Riley asked helpfully, enjoying Sawyer’s discomfort.
“Because you always fall asleep so early,” he finished lamely.
“Nice save,” she whispered.
Luckily, Claudia seemed oblivious. “By the way, thank you so much for all of your New York suggestions, Riley.”
Riley smiled. “Did you and the hubby have a good time?”
“It was wonderful. I’ve always wanted to visit at Christmastime.” She glanced down at her watch. “Oh, shoot. I didn’t realize the time. We have that budget meeting in a couple minutes.”
Sawyer groaned.
Claudia laughed. “Did you get the latest numbers I emailed?”
“Darn,” Sawyer said. “I left them on my desk. But I want to run to the restroom before the meeting.”
“I’ll grab them,” Riley offered, popping up. “I need to get that story you edited for me anyway.”
“Thanks, Ri.”
As she moved from behind the cubicle, Sawyer lingered, allowing his hand to brush against her arm. It was the lightest of touches that shot a surge of awareness through her system. Her breath caught in her throat.
“You’re welcome,” she whispered. She desperately hoped no one detected the breathy quality to her voice.
But Sawyer did. He grinned and winked at her. Riley made her way quickly across the room and stepped into Sawyer’s office.
She crossed to his desk and found her article. Her nose crinkled as she took in all of the red-pen markings. Another editing job by He Who Loved the Red Pen.
Scanning the rest of the large desk, she located the budget numbers from Claudia. As she reached for them, she bumped the mouse and Sawyer’s computer sprang to life. She couldn’t help but read the words that filled the screen. It was an email from Dan Melwood to Sawyer.
Riley’s mouth dropped open. Holy smokes. Dan was offering to become an investor of the paper.
She wanted to throw her fist in the air in triumph. This would solve all of the Bugle’s financial problems. She felt so happy for Sawyer. He must be ecstatic.
But as she continued to scan the email, the hair on the back of her neck stood up.
In exchange for financial backing, the terms of which are laid out in attachment 3, the investor shall retain the right to full disclosure and transparency, including employee salaries, bonuses and legal names.
She reread that paragraph three times. What did he mean by legal names? It wasn’t like anyone used a pen name. After all, they weren’t writing fiction or some salacious novel or...
A secret gossip blog. Oh no.
Riley froze, her breath whooshing out of her as if someone had punched her in the gut. She didn’t know how long she stood there, staring at the computer screen, willing it to morph into something else. At some point, the papers in her hands fell to the ground.
Try as hard as she might, every time she reread Dan’s words, they were the same.
Sawyer was planning on outing her as the Bayside Blogger to get help with the Bugle. He was going to sacrifice her anonymity to protect the newspaper.
And why did Dan even need to know she wrote the blog? Why did he care? But, most importantly, how could Sawyer do this to her?
Once again, she wasn’t important enough.
Not to mention that she knew Sawyer had been talking to Dan Melwood for a couple weeks now. This whole thing must have been planned even before they went to the conference. Before they became lovers.
A wave of nausea passed through her. She had to put a hand on the back of Sawyer’s desk chair to steady herself. He’d been talking about this before he slept with her.
A sound slipped out from between her clenched lips. It was a pathetic whimper as she realized that he had no regard for her. How could he?
“Ri, what’s taking so long?”
She snapped to attention when Sawyer spoke from the doorway. Seeing him brought about two very different emotions. Anger and sadness. She didn’t know which one of them to focus on.
Anger won out. Big-time.
“How dare you?”
“What?” His gaze swept over her face in question.
She pointed at the computer screen. “This.”
In two strides he was across the room. She put a hand up to halt him before he moved around the desk. Instead, she started reading.
“‘The investor shall retain the right to full disclosure and transparency, including employee salaries, bonuses and legal names.’ Sound familiar?”
He crossed the room and pulled the blinds so they wouldn’t have an audience.
Sawyer pointed at his computer. “That’s not what you think.”
“Really? Because I think Dan Melwood offered you financial help and part of the agreement is revealing that I write the Bayside Blogger column.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Okay, that’s pretty close. Dan does want to become an investor—”
“But what?” she interrupted. “How could you even consider this? You made me a promise when I first started doing this that it would stay between me and you.”
“You told Elle and Carissa.”
Her mouth fell open. “You can’t compare me telling my two best friends with this.” She pointed at the screen, once again reading the hurtful words typed there.
Sawyer started skirting the desk, but she moved to the other side of the room. “Riley, please?”
“Please what? Please get on board with the whole town finding out I’ve been gossiping about them for years? Why does he even care?”
“Apparently you wrote something about him that pissed him off.”
Her chin jutted out. “I never write anything that’s not true. You know that.”
“Of course.”
She glared at him. “You were going to humiliate me, Sawyer. And after everything we—you and I—we’ve been together.” A pained expression marred his handsome face, but she didn’t care. With a sweeping of her arm, she tried to encompass all of the people on the other side of the door. “What would they have thought? They’re my coworkers and they respect me. You know I’ve already been through a bad situation with coworkers. And with a guy.” Her voice caught on that.
“This isn’t the same situation as what you dealt with in New York.”
“No? Because it’s feeling pretty damn similar. Man I lo—” She stopped herself just in time. Sawyer didn’t deserve to know her true feelings. Not now. “The man I like sells me out.”
He stepped toward her. “Riley, it wasn’t like that. I mean, it wasn’t going to be. I hadn’t made any decisions yet. Not really.”
She threw her hands into the air. “Oh, well. You hadn’t definitely decided to rat me out.” She crossed the room and got in his face. With her index finger, she poked him in the middle of the chest. “But the fact that you even considered it is more than enough.”
“Riley, please,” he repeated, the desperation evident in his voice. He grabbed her finger, pulling her hand so her palm was flat against his heart.
“You were going to tell the whole town that I’m the Bayside Blogger.” Tears were welling up in her eyes. She took a long, deep breath, willing them not to fall.
“Dan offered me a proposal that would save the entire paper. It would keep me from having to lay off staff.”
She tried to free her hand, but he hung on tight. “Save the paper at the expense of my reputation. I trusted you.”
“Ri...” No other words came out. Just one syllable of her name in a weak, defeated voice.
“I thought that after this last week, things had changed between us.”
“They had. This week has been amazing.”
She could
n’t agree more. That’s why this hurt so much. “You opened up to me. You told me so much. What I don’t understand is why you didn’t tell me about this. Were you just going to let me be blindsided?”
The expression on his face was all the answer she needed.
Again. Just like Connor in New York. That thought was enough to have her yanking her hand away from him. Riley needed space and she needed it now.
“Sawyer, I can’t.”
“You can’t what?” As she retreated toward the door, he followed. “Don’t leave. Not like this. We need to talk about this.”
She stopped when she reached the door, but she didn’t face him. She couldn’t. So, as she looked at the fake wood paneling of the door, she gathered herself.
“There is no we. There is no us.”
“Riley,” he muttered.
But she didn’t listen. She wrenched the door open and left without looking back.
Chapter Fourteen
Janna Goldsmith @JGolds
Hey @BSBlogger—everyone is wondering why Riley Hudson ran through the square with tears in her eyes. No less than 100 people saw her. Got the deets?
Riley quickly weaved her way through the cubicles of the Bugle and flew out the front door.
All she knew was that her heart was breaking and she wanted to crawl into a deep, dark hole and hide for the rest of her life.
She ran across the town square, bypassing The Brewside, and made a dash for the door of her apartment building.
Huffing and puffing, she got out of the elevator on her floor and headed to her apartment. When she reached it, she pulled up short, a gasp escaping her lips.
Elle and Carissa were standing outside her door.
“Wh-what are you doing here?” she asked through a strangled breath, which at this point was half sobbing.
“Riley, what in the world happened?” Carissa asked.
All she could do was cry harder at the questions. At seeing her two friends who she’d missed so much.
“Oh, Ri-Ri, come on.” Placing an arm around her shoulders, Elle urged Riley forward. She gently took Riley’s key from her hand and opened the door. All three of them entered the apartment.
Riley moved to the couch and sank down. Exhausted. Spent. But, to her disgust, the tears wouldn’t stop.
She curled up into a ball and let herself cry.
All she could think about was the deep hurt and betrayal she felt. In the distance, she heard Elle say, “That’s it. Let it out, honey.”
She had no idea how long she stayed like that, scrunched up on the couch with her eyes firmly shut. When she finally did open them again, she had been covered up with a blanket. Elle sat on the other end of the couch and Carissa was in her oversize chair. There was a box of tissues on the coffee table in front of her, as well as a mug of what smelled like her favorite tea, a bottle of wine, a glass of water, a jumbo bag of potato chips and a box of cookies.
She sat up, adjusting the blanket around her. “What’s all this?” Her voice was scratchy. Had she cried herself to sleep? “Did I fall asleep?”
Elle nodded. “For about an hour.”
Carissa gestured to the coffee table. “We didn’t know what you would want so we tried to cover all bases. There’s ice cream in the freezer, too.”
“I don’t have any ice cream. I haven’t been to the store.”
“I went for you. You’re stocked up now,” Carissa said, and quickly looked down at her folded hands.
“You did?” She was overwhelmed. “Why?”
Carissa scooched forward. “Because you were upset.”
Elle wrapped a hand around Riley’s foot and shook it. “Because we love you.”
It only took a moment for more tears to surface.
“No, no, no more crying. At least not for a little while,” Carissa said.
“But I ruined your lives by being the Bayside Blogger and here you are being so nice to me.”
Carissa and Elle exchanged a glance. It seemed like they were silently saying, You go first. No, you.
Finally Elle relented. “You didn’t ruin our lives, Ri.”
Riley sneaked a peek at Carissa.
Carissa sighed. “You didn’t ruin my life. But I was pissed at you.”
“I know,” Riley said.
“We’ve wanted to talk to you for days, but you disappeared on us. I called the Bugle and they said you and Sawyer went off to a conference. After you got back, we just didn’t see you anywhere.”
She’d been too busy hibernating with Sawyer. Playing house. Only that had turned out to be a big fat lie.
Carissa cleared her throat. “We missed you, Ri.”
She wanted to weep but for an entirely different reason. “Really? I missed you guys so much. And I’m so sorry that I didn’t tell you about the Bayside Blogger. And I’m sorry I wrote about you. Really, truly, I didn’t mean to hurt you in any way. Please forgive me.”
“I do,” Carissa said.
“Me, too,” Elle agreed.
Then the three of them piled onto the couch for a long group hug. Riley felt lighter than she had in weeks. Well, until she remembered Sawyer and what she’d found on his computer earlier.
“Now that that’s settled, want to tell us what got you so upset?” Elle asked. “When we saw that tweet about you running through the square crying today, it was clear that something horrible had happened.
She nodded. “But, first, I think I’ll take some of that ice cream. What kind did you get?”
Carissa laughed as she rose and walked toward the kitchen. “Mint chocolate chip, cookie dough and basic chocolate. Which one do you want?”
“Yes,” Riley said firmly.
“All three it is.”
Not bothering with bowls, Carissa brought all three cartons and three spoons to the couch. After they’d each sampled the different flavors, Riley finally began to tell them her story. She started with her time in New York and didn’t stop until she’d revealed everything about her short relationship with Sawyer.
When she was finished, she collapsed back against the couch cushion, taking the carton of mint chocolate chip with her.
“Um, wow,” Elle said.
“Wow is right,” Carissa agreed. “I don’t even know where to start.”
Riley shoved a huge spoonful of ice cream into her mouth, reveling in the minty chocolaty goodness. “We could start with how I’m an idiot. How I continue to fall for the same kind of guy who is intent on making me into a total fool.”
“You’re not an idiot,” Carissa said loyally. “And I don’t get why you think you were the foolish one in New York. You didn’t make a mistake there. That lame-wad Connor did. How were you to know that the guy you were seeing was a two-timing bastard?”
“But I...” She paused. “My coworkers wouldn’t talk to me and...”
“Your coworkers sound horrible. Why in the world would they blame you for that situation? Couldn’t they see you were the victim?”
Elle piped up. “Not when Connor got to them first. Still, pretty shortsighted and judgy of them, in my opinion.”
“Totally.”
Hmm, she supposed her friends had a point. All these years she’d been blaming herself. She’d felt so disgusting thinking she’d dated an engaged man that she never stopped to admit that she’d been the victim in the situation.
Sawyer had tried to point that out, though.
Just thinking about him made her stomach clench. She still couldn’t believe what she’d seen on his computer that morning.
“You’re right,” she told her friends. “That situation wasn’t my fault. But it still happened and it was still a pretty awful time in my life. And that leads us to me coming home with my tail between my legs and working for Sawyer.”
“And then doing other things with Saw
yer,” Carissa said with a wink. “I wish we could spill the dirt on the sexy times. More reason for me to be mad at Sawyer for ruining that, too.”
“Sawyer didn’t deny it when you spoke to him this morning?” Elle asked. “He really considered outing you to this guy.”
Hearing it out loud made Riley want to cry. She fought the urge to grab the ice cream again.
Carissa looked perplexed. “I still don’t get it. I know Sawyer. He’s one of the kindest men on the planet. Why would he be willing to reveal your identity and cause you that much pain and embarrassment?”
Riley sucked in a breath as she tried to decide how much to tell her friends. In the end, she knew she needed their opinions.
“I get why.”
“You do?” Elle asked, astonishment on her face.
Riley nodded. “The Bugle is in financial trouble. Sawyer has been faced with the possibility of laying off employees.”
Suddenly she remembered her conversation with him. She gasped and her hand flew to her mouth as realization dawned.
“What is it?” Elle asked.
He’d hinted at this offer. Hadn’t he told her someone had presented a way out but he didn’t want to take it? She racked her brain to remember the details of that particular conversation. Sawyer had said there was something holding him back from accepting help. And she’d encouraged him to take it anyway.
As of today, he still hadn’t said yes to Dan. For her.
“He loves me,” she whispered.
“Hold on, everybody. The merry-go-round just made a sharp left,” Carissa said. “What is this now?”
He was going to protect her over the entire rest of the staff. “I’m such an idiot.”
Elle scratched her head. “I have to admit, I’m no longer following, either.”
Riley quickly filled them in. “Don’t you see? The Bugle is his family’s legacy. He can’t let it fail.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
Buoyed by a new determination, Riley rose.
“I’m going to help him.”
Simone Graves @SimGrav
Come on @BSBlogger. We’re dying. What’s up with Riley Hudson?
Bayside's Most Unexpected Bride Page 15