Public Relations

by Tibby Armstrong

  “Safest?” She frowned at him. “Why would you want to protect me?”

  He dropped his hand and stared out the window for a long minute.

  “Because I was pretty sure he was falling in love with you, and Peter needs someone to love.” He shrugged and met her eyes with a look of longing so intense it stopped her breath. Understanding of something important hovered just out of reach as Carl continued, “He has for as long as I’ve known him.”

  How was she supposed to reply to that? Turned out she didn’t have to, at least not right away, because Carl kept talking.

  “I hoped you’d tell him and that it’d work out.” Again with the eye rubbing, after which he popped his glasses on and obscured the handsome crests of his cheekbones. “He can be…understanding, you know.”

  She shook her head slowly. “Not about this, he won’t be.”

  “You’re probably right.” Carl sighed. “But he deserves to hear the truth from you. If he hears it from anyone else, it’ll wreck him for relationships for good.”

  Georgia cocked her head to study Carl more closely. The man didn’t just seem sad about the fact that she was about to stomp on Peter’s heart with the news of her betrayal. He seemed…bereft. And she’d never known one man to take care of another in the way Carl took care of Peter. He looked out for him like an older brother, except he wasn’t protective quite in the same way. He was attentive. Caring. Like a…like a…

  “You’re in love with him,” Georgia said as all the gears tumbled into place.

  Color rushed into Carl’s face. His cheeks burned bright as if he’d been slapped.

  “Except you’re in a relationship with a woman.” She leaned in, wanting to be of some comfort but not knowing how. “Why?”

  “It’d look bad for Peter.” Carl cleared his throat and looked anywhere but at her. “I’m his PR guy. I need to be above reproach.”

  “Christ on a crutch, Carl.” Georgia shook her head, horrified. “I doubt anyone would care. Even if they did, he’d never want that for you. You have to tell him.”

  Carl’s answering laugh was at once bitter and a little unhinged. “If you think you can blackmail me into withholding your secrets—”

  “What? No!” Georgia shot to her feet. “I’m going to tell him about the column. I’d resolved on it days ago. I was going to do it this morning, but I overslept and then you were here.”

  Puffing out her cheeks with a frustrated exhale, Georgia ran both hands through her hair. Her fingers caught in the sex snarls at the back, and she had to jerk free.

  “Look, Carl, you can’t go around pretending to be someone you’re not”—she trailed off as she ran headlong into a brick wall made of irony, then finished with—“any more than I can.”

  She headed for the door, needing her phone and craving a conversation with Sid.

  “What are you going to do?” Carl asked.

  “What I have to,” she answered, pausing to face him. “And so are you.”

  * * * *

  Georgia plunked the pile of Christmas packages on Sid’s kitchen table and flopped into one of his rickety vinyl chairs while he gave her the hairy eyeball.

  “He’s going to dump you, and you just spent at least five bills on him?”

  Mopping her brow with her scarf, she pursed her lips and glared up at him. “Some of it’s for you. Unless you’d rather I…”

  “No.” He held up both hands in mock surrender. “It’s fine. As long as you didn’t leave out yours truly.”

  “I thought you might see it that way.” She shrugged out of her coat as Sid opened the fridge.

  “Cola?” He held up a can and tossed it in her direction before she replied.

  She caught the cold beverage one-handed, then popped it open and took a long swallow. Fizzy sweetness bathed her tonsils as she chugged most of the can. Sid’s newly bleached brows popped up at the display. What? So she was thirsty.

  “Did you bleach your eyebrows?” she asked, lowering the can and cocking her head.

  Sid grinned and cracked open his own soda.

  “Yeah.” He waggled his brows. “You like?”

  “Um? Its…different?”

  “I’ll have you know it’s totally hip.” Sliding into the chair opposite hers, he toyed with one of the bag handles, pretending to peek inside.

  “That one’s not yours.”

  Sid dropped his hand and sat back. He took another sip of his drink, then licked his lips.

  “Oh!” He gestured to her with the red-and-white can. “I forgot. Your father’s solicitor called the office today. Said he’s been trying to get in touch with you.”

  “Oh shit.” Georgia remembered the call from London and weeded through her handbag for her phone. Taking it out, she dialed her voice mail while giving Sid a rueful look. “I hate checking these stupid messages.”

  “I know.” The look Sid gave her reminded her that she’d failed to respond to some urgent calls from him once or twice.

  As the cheerful woman’s voice told her she had six messages, Sid’s cell buzzed. He stood to answer and walked out of the room while she continued weeding out her voice mail messages. Five calls were from a telemarketer trying to sell her a cruise. She deleted each one of them with a growl and muttered, “As if I’d purchase something from a company who wants to torture me with ads.”

  The last call was from her father’s lawyer.

  “Lady Montrose, we’re so sorry to leave this message over voice mail, but your father has suffered a stroke. We will need to speak with you as soon as possible about arrangements.”

  If she hadn’t already been sitting, she would’ve found the nearest chair and collapsed. Memories of the stilted holiday conversations and rare occasions when she’d seen the earl over the past ten years bubbled to the surface. They’d never been close. So she shouldn’t feel this sense of doom and loss, but she did. Though the accompanying sadness was for everything she would never have, not what she had a sixth sense she was about to lose.

  Sid returned to the kitchen, his cell clutched in one hand, frowning. He opened his mouth to say something, then caught a glimpse of Georgia’s face. She supposed she appeared pale, probably a little shell-shocked.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She cleared her throat and forced her spine straighter. “My father’s ill. His solicitor needs direction from me.”

  Sid blinked, and Georgia saw him quickly process everything he knew about her relationship with her male parent. Like her, he was unsure exactly how to feel about this information.

  “Are you okay?” His tone was tentative.

  “Yeah.” Perhaps a little more emphatically than necessary, she nodded. “Yes.” She glanced at the pile of packages, her mind already turning toward the arrangements she’d have to make. “Though probably I’m going to have to ask you to wrap these and give them to Peter to take to his parents.”

  “Sure, yeah, whatever you need, Georgie.” Sid reached over to squeeze her shoulder. “But do you think you can come to the office first? There’s an all-staff meeting.”

  “I suppose I can book my flight on my cell on the way.” Georgia started, breaking from her reverie to frown up at him. “But an all-staff meeting on such short notice?”

  “Yeah. That was Peter’s PA.” He held up his phone in explanation.

  “Oh.” She paused, considered the implications, then amended her original statement with “Crap.”

  “It might be nothing,” Sid offered.

  Georgia gave a wry laugh. “They say it comes in threes.”

  “Well, let’s hope if this is what you think it is, that it counts as two and three.”

  She closed her eyes, said a little prayer, and stood, though she didn’t know how, given the crushing weight on her heart. Why was it that just when she’d found the family she’d always dreamed of, the world seemed determined to take everything away?

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The look on Carl’s face couldn’t bode anything good.
Standing at the head of the conference table, behind and just out of view of Peter, he met Georgia’s eyes as she entered with Sid. The slight shake of Carl’s head when she met his gaze might’ve meant anything, except the almost imperceptible motion was delivered with a gravity she implicitly understood.

  She was screwed. They all were.

  Peter didn’t look up from his handheld as she and Sid made their way to the back of the room. It was standing-room only, with most of the rest of the staff already gathered at the table and along the wall by the door. A stack of manila folders occupied the chair to Peter’s right. From this distance she couldn’t tell what was written on the protruding tabs, but suspected they were names.

  “Does anyone have anything to say?” Peter swept the room with his gaze, conveniently skipping Georgia at the back.

  Shit. Her stomach plummeted. He knew. He definitely knew. How had he found out? Had Carl told him? No one spoke, and her fear built to panic. Someone here had to give her up right this minute. If they did, he’d only fire her and nobody else.

  She elbowed Sid and hissed, “Tell him.”

  Are you sure? Sid mouthed.

  Swallowing hard, Georgia nodded once.

  Sid stepped forward, and Peter held up a hand. “Not you, Mr. Deloitte.”

  Georgia closed her eyes. Clearly, he wanted her to say it. Wanted her to make the admission. If she did, would it save their jobs? Not hers, of course, but everyone else’s?

  Fabric rustled, and chairs squeaked with their occupants’ restless motions. When she opened her eyes, everyone’s gazes were locked on her. Some appeared sympathetic, others fearful. One journalist shook his head. She didn’t have to do this, he seemed to be saying.

  But she did. Even if she didn’t owe the truth to Peter, she owed it to her coworkers to save their livelihoods if she could. Though, knowing the man as she now did, she was certain only hers and Sid’s jobs were on the line. He wouldn’t shut down the paper and fire everyone two days before Christmas just because of her.

  “Peter…”

  He slammed his fist on the table, and everyone, including herself, jumped.

  “It’s Mr. Wells, Lady Montrose.” He spat her name like an invective, and her heart fractured from the center outward.

  Oh God, he was angry. Angrier than she could’ve envisioned. His eyes had gone stone-cold—hard and dead—as if he’d already walled himself off from her for good. Which, of course, he must have.

  “Mr. Wells.” She tried again, walking toward him as she spoke, attempting not to notice the way his jaw muscles bunched. “I don’t have any justification, not anymore. If I ever did.” She reached his side, and he stood to face her, fists balled and gaze unwavering. “But I wrote the column.” His right eye gave a little tic, the only sign her words had any effect on him. Had he hoped she might deny it? Come up with some improbable truth that would save her? Save them? She lifted her chin to bolster her courage. “I was never an assistant to anyone before you. I’m…so sorry.” The rest of her confession stuck in her throat, and she closed her eyes to force out, “As you discovered, I’m Gigi Montrose.”

  When she opened her eyes, he’d already moved. Away from her and toward the folders on the chair.

  “When I call your name, please come forward,” he said, his back to her. “Albertson.”

  Josh Albertson, the paper’s sportswriter, stepped forward and took the folder with a mumbled “Thanks.”

  “Please,” she said, knowing what had to be inside that folder. “Don’t do this to them. It’s not their fault.”

  He ignored her and kept reading names, pausing as he got to D.

  “Donner,” he said quietly.

  Carl’s chin snapped up, shock written on his face. He seemed to hold Peter’s gaze a moment, then nodded in acceptance.

  “I’m sorry, Peter,” he said quietly and took his folder.

  “Me too, Carl.” The term bitter disappointment found new definition in Peter’s reply.

  Peter continued on without calling Sid’s name. Someone had apparently misalphabetized the files. He looked around and said, “Fumonti.”

  “Stop it!” Georgia hollered. No longer able to stand that these people—so many innocent, good people—were suffering the demise of a career and the loss of a paper they truly loved all because of her. Hysteria welled, and tears soon followed. “Don’t do this to them!”

  Ignoring her, Peter called, “Grimsby.”

  She flew at Peter, wrenching his arm back and tearing the folder from his fingers. Papers fluttered to the floor, and she jabbed her opposite thumb at her chest.

  “It was me!” Tears ran down her cheeks in scalding rivers. “I told you the first day.” And she had, in a matter of speaking. “Don’t do this! Not to them. They don’t deserve it.”

  Her accent had gone full British, she knew, but she didn’t care. She was past hiding. Past caring that he hated her. If nothing else, she had to make this right for everyone else, though she couldn’t save herself. Peter looked right through her, his gaze impassive. Uncaring. His anger she could’ve stomached. This, though—the complete annihilation of every feeling, as if he’d never known her—this was her undoing.

  “Don’t. Do. This.” The whispered plea abraded the sensitive tissues at the hollow of her throat. “These are good people.”

  “Is this hurting you?” he asked, unblinking.

  She nodded and swiped both palms over her cheeks, trying in vain to stem the tide of tears.

  “Are you humiliated?” This question he voiced more quietly than the first, and she swore she detected a hint of sorrow.

  “No,” she said, glad to finally have his attention on her rather than on sacking her coworkers. “I’m ashamed of what I’ve done to you and to them.”

  There was a difference between humiliation and shame. The first, Peter would’ve done to her, the other she’d done to herself.

  “I would’ve preferred humiliated, but shame will do.” His icy stare made her wonder if the sorrow she’d seen before had only been a figment of her imagination.

  “Why?” she asked, aghast.

  “Because”—he turned away and held out a folder to the paper’s paid college intern—“then you’d know exactly how I feel.”

  Amazingly, her tears crawled back up her ducts and evaporated. “That’d mean you were capable of feeling.”

  Peter jerked, then turned slowly to face her, a new shade of livid making an ugly mask of his face.

  “Careful,” he said, “or you and Sid won’t be the only two employees I fire.”

  “Isn’t that what you’re doing?” She placed her hands on her hips and tilted her head toward the employees who openly gawped at their argument. “Sacking us all? Getting petty revenge on your serfs for failing to bow to your whims?”

  “Why, Lady Montrose”—he mocked her with a sweeping bow—“I didn’t know you cared about the plebs.”

  “They’re not plebs,” she shot back. “And of course I care. More than you do.”

  “Now why do I doubt that?” He drew a file from the bottom of the stack and handed it to her. “Take this and get out. Both you and Sid.”

  “Tell me first what you’re doing to them.” She indicated her coworkers with a nod of her chin.

  “I suggest you worry more about what I’m going to do to you.” He snapped his fingers over her shoulder as he spoke.

  A burly man she’d seen on the sidelines with him at public functions stepped from shadows she hadn’t known existed and took her arm to escort her from the building.

  * * * *

  “I can’t believe he had a security escort waiting.” Georgia pushed the drunken noodles around her plate with her chopsticks. The shimmery pasta slithered over the white porcelain much like the regret churning her stomach, making it impossible to eat.

  “I can.” Carl, tie and shirt rumpled, blazer shed, appeared the picture of corporate dejection.

  It was the first time he’d spoken since she and Sid had in
sisted he come with them to dinner. They’d chosen a high-end establishment with shoji-screen partitions that made a private dining room of each table so they could eat in solitude.

  “I’m so sorry, Carl.” Georgia squeezed his forearm before letting her hand drop away and taking up her chopsticks once more. “I know he was your biggest client and…your friend.”

  Just alluding to Peter’s existence made her heart falter to within a millimeter of stopping. She couldn’t imagine what actually saying his name might do to her.

  Carl’s answering laugh sounded rueful. “He was my only client.”

  “What?” Sid paused, chopsticks poised with a pile of brown rice balanced on top. “Does he know that?”

  “No.” Carl never looked up from his green tea.

  Sid and Georgia exchanged glances; then he pointed to her plate. “Are you going to eat that?”

  She glanced down. “No.”

  “Well, aren’t we a jolly bunch.” Sid pulled Georgia’s plate toward him. “I say we go into business together.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Carl said. “I could retire on what Peter put in that folder.”

  “What?” Napkin at her lips, Georgia slowly lowered her hand. “The only thing in my folder was a ‘you are being sued for fraud and defamation of character’ letter.”

  Though she knew the suit wouldn’t stick, the lawyer fees would be exorbitant. Peter would make sure of it, she knew. Out of the three of them, Sid stood to lose the most. God, she wished she’d never gotten him into this.

  “Me too.” Sid shuddered. “He can sue, but I doubt he’ll win anything more than pocket lint from me.”

  “He won’t want money.” Carl poured more tea. “He’ll sue for a very public apology and a retraction.”

  Georgia took the pot from Carl and topped off her cup, trying to ignore the aching hole in her heart. The one person she needed more than anything to get her through the twin pains of loss and well-deserved self-recrimination was Peter. Barring that, only grim determination and time would do.

  “I don’t know where he thinks a retraction is going to be printed, since he fired everyone,” she observed.