Chapter 30
Thirty
Faye
“What about this one?” Kailey asks, holding up the wallpaper sample.
It’s freaking adorable, a parade of forest creatures from foxes to bears to colorful little birds on a cream and sage green background.
Luna’s nose wrinkles. “Maybe a little less…animal kingdom and a little more…aesthetic.”
“How is it that she’s both so lovely and so good at giving insults?” Harper asks dryly, flicking through the samples one-by-one, trying to find one with the right aesthetic.
“It’s a gift,” Bri says.
“Well, I think it’s perfect,” Kailey murmurs.
“Not for my nursery,” Luns says as she continues flipping.
“No,” Kailey agrees, “But it’s going to be perfect for mine.”
For a moment, nobody moves.
Then we’re all moving at once. Luna get to her first, sweeping Kailey up into a tight hug. “Congratulations!” she squeals.
“I didn’t think it would happen for us,” Kailey says once we’ve all gotten our hugs and exchanged our good wishes. The wallpaper is forgotten as we gather around her. “We tried for so long that I thought it wasn’t happening for us.” Sadness in her pretty green eyes.
“Oh, honey,” Luna says. “I had no idea. I’m sorry I—”
“None of this is your fault,” she says firmly. “No one knew because I wanted it that way. I just…I wasn’t ready to talk about it.” A sigh. “And then when I finally was, I…” A tear slips free of her lashes, glides down her cheek. “I found out I was expecting.”
Harper lifts her hand, pauses.
Kailey nods.
“How far along are you?” she asks, gently settling her palm on Kailey’s still-flat stomach.
“Fourteen weeks,” Kailey whispers. “I wanted to wait until it was a bit more certain in case…”
“That’s completely understandable.” I touch her hand. “I’m so thrilled for you.”
“We’re thrilled for you,” Luns says.
“How’s Smitty taking it?”
Kailey’s face goes soft and it’s so full of love, it sucks all the breath from my lungs. Beautiful—maybe the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. “He’s thrilled.” Her mouth hitches up. “I swear, it’s killing him to not announce it to the world.”
“I didn’t think he’d have it in him,” Luna says.
“He’d do anything for you.”
My heart squeezes and Luna sniffs. “Sorry.” She waves her hand in front of her face. “Ignore me and my pregnancy hormones.”
But Kailey’s sniffing too and then they’re hugging, holding back tears as they murmur to each other.
I smile at them but when I transfer that smile to Harper, I see something like pain in her eyes.
Only it’s there and gone so quickly, and Luna and Kailey are breaking apart and turning toward us, Luna demanding that we start shopping “immediately” that I’m distracted.
And I forget about it.
Until much later.
“Okay,” my publicist, Marie, says, stacking her papers and setting them aside. She glances at her notepad then up at me through the camera. “There’s just one more thing I wanted to talk about today.”
I nod, finish up a note on my own pad, my mind more on the adjuster I met with this morning. My insurance company is dragging their heels and it’s making me crazy.
I want to move forward.
Want to see something that’s not the shell of my house next door.
Because as lovely and beautiful and soul-fulfilling as this time with Gray has been…my home, my memories, my past are all of thirty feet away.
And they need attention too.
“It’s about the fire,” Marie says and I snap to attention.
“I turned in my manuscript already,” I say. “And I’m making good progress on my newest project, so it hasn’t delayed me on that front.”
“That’s great, but it’s not what I wanted to discuss.”
I frown, but fall quiet, trying to read her expression through the video feed on my laptop. There’s something in her tone that has my nape prickling.
“I presume you’ve seen the videos that have gone viral about Gray Roberts and you—though you haven’t been named in them.”
Small miracles, that.
Though, I suppose it’s only a matter of time.
All it will take is one person looking into property records and putting the pieces together.
“I’ve seen them,” I say, and I know Gray has too.
Same as I know he hates them, the tension ratcheting up through his body every time one pops up on our feeds or someone mentions it during an interview.
“I don’t comment on my personal life,” is the only response he’s given.
“I think we can use the videos to our advantage. Leverage them into some fresh coverage for your new release, see if we can’t get the hockey romance fans salivating for the real-life story of the romance writer and the hockey captain.”
My mouth falls open, surprise and disgust ricocheting through me.
I know Marie hustles for me, know she’s good at her job.
But…
Ew.
And it feels even more disgusting after all the negative press Gray endured the previous couple of seasons, the sports bloggers and influencers taking pot shots at him, the media taking every opportunity to dissect his relationship.
“Think about it,” she says, hands spreading through the air like she’s one of those Hollywood producers trying to pitch a movie. “You’ll be huge. You’ll get all sorts of new readers. Gray is a household name and if you use that—”
Use him.
“No,” I say.
“We might even be able to get a TV or movie—”
“Fuck no,” I say more loudly.
“I can go back to the publisher, pitch a couple more books, see about getting a bigger advance—”
“Marie!”
She stops, mouth half open, eyes wide.
And I know it’s partly because her brain is mid-exciting new book opportunity. But it’s also partly because I don’t think I’ve ever raised my voice with her.
“No,” I say. “And I don’t mean no, as in you’ll be able to bring this up a dozen more times and wear me down,” I add when it looks as though she’s going to interject. “I mean no, as in no I will never ever use Gray that way. He saved my life and I know if I asked him to do this for me, he would—”
She inhales, eyes lighting up with publicist glee.
“But I will never—ever—ask him to do this for me. I care about him too much to ask that of him, and I’m warning you that if ‘someone’”—I make air quotes as I fix her in place with my stare—“lets what happened slip then I’ll be looking for a new publicist.”
“Faye,” she murmurs, horror drifting across her face.
I don’t relent. “We’ve been working together a long time and I can’t imagine not having you at my side…but there will be no using Gray—not for this book, not if we’re going viral, not fucking ever.” A beat. “Do you understand me?”
She nods.
“Good,” I say. “I’ll send you the stuff on my list as soon as possible and will send you a couple of dates and times for our next check-in.”
“Faye,” she begins.
I pause, lift my brows.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just don’t ever fuck with my man again.”