Chapter Twenty-Eight
Derek
“Come again?” Donovan’s staring at me like I’ve gone crazy, and I probably have.
My mind is spinning, leaving me dizzy as I stand in the middle of my suite and try to process everything that hits me all at once. All of the evidence I’ve been missing right under my nose.
I have to talk through things out loud if I’m going to figure out if this is a psychotic break or a revelation, and I would prefer if Donovan stopped looking at me like I’m losing my mind. “You’ve talked to Hunter enough to know that he’ll protect me from anything, right?”
Donovan rolls her eyes. “It’s not his job to look after your emotional needs as well as your physical, but yeah. He cares about you, Derek.”
“Right.” I’m not over the idea that he’s been lying to me, but I push the betrayal down for later. His heart was in the right place. I think. “So if he knew that Janie’s been giving Hot Scoop tidbits of my life, it would stand to reason that he would have done something about it. Right?”
She shrugs. “I guess? But he can only do so much, and sites like Hot Scoop are usually pretty untouchable.”
“I’m not insisting he should have shut down that cesspool of a website,” I say, maybe a little too sharply, and I start pacing again in the hopes of getting my mind moving. “But why didn’t he tell me about Janie? If she was hurting me, why did he let her do it?”
Donovan’s eyebrows pull low, and she sits up straighter. She’s attractive no matter what, but the way she narrows her eyes and purses her lips when she’s connecting the dots is downright mouthwatering. And incredibly distracting. “He knew she wasn’t hurting you.”
“Exactly,” I say with reluctance and keep pacing before I start thinking about kissing Donovan instead of figuring this mess out. “Hunter’s not perfect, but he’s the best bodyguard I’ve ever had. He once changed a lightbulb because he thought it was bothering my eyes.”
“You and I live very different lives,” Donovan mutters and looks like she’s trying not to laugh. “Okay, so Janie isn’t hurting you, or Hunter would have done something about it. Which means she wasn’t sending anyone—”
“Oh, she has definitely been sending Hot Scoop information.” Now that I’ve pushed aside the betrayal of it all, past articles are flashing back to my mind.
Things the writers shouldn’t know but I chalked up to lucky guesses or tidbits I dropped in overheard conversations.
My preferred shampoo, the three months I switched to oat milk, the way I would rather read a book than watch a movie if I have downtime.
Donovan cocks her head, studying me. “But nothing that can be turned against you,” she guesses.
I nod. “Enough to satisfy a desperate tabloid without giving them what they really want.”
“Which is what? To knock the great Derek Riley off his pedestal?”
I laugh despite the insanity of this situation and run my hand through my hair.
“They’ve only ever done the opposite. Now I know why.
” At least, I know part of the reason. The underlying motivation is still something I need to figure out.
For Hot Scoop and for Janie. “Why spend so much energy building me up when I want nothing to do with them? Why tear down my friends when they’re almost as famous as me?
There has to be a reason Janie felt the need to give them information, but if they were paying her, wouldn’t she give them better intel?
So either it was extortion, or she was willingly doing it, but then why—”
“Derek.” Donovan stands and comes over to me, pausing my steps.
She looks out of place in my opulent suite, with her worn tank top and thin shorts, but then again, so do I.
Neither of us has showered in six days unless we count bathing in a muddy river.
(I don’t.) And yet I couldn’t care less what I look like as long as she has that heated look in her eyes.
She stands toe to toe with me and lifts her chin, and my whole body hums with anticipation, ready to repeat the moment in the pavilion that was so rudely interrupted by paparazzi.
Do I want to solve this major problem in front of me?
Absolutely. Would I rather lock lips with my childhood crush and pretend reality can’t reach me?
More than ever.
Donovan places her hand on my chest, rising to her toes as I take her by the hips.
Right as our mouths are about to crash together, she grins and drops back to her heels, snickering when I gape at her, dumbstruck.
“That’s better. Wanna loop me in to the madness in your head before you hurt yourself, Superman? ”
She’s going to be the death of me, and a growl escapes my throat before I can rein myself in. “Why do I like you?”
“We’ll never know. Start at the beginning, when Hot Scoop became a problem.”
I frown, though I am grateful she stopped me from getting lost in my questions. I’d still rather kiss her, but she’s right. I can’t figure this out by myself. “When I hired Janie,” I say with a sigh.
“How did she end up working for you?”
I put my hand over Donovan’s, hoping for some strength in the contact.
“At that point, I knew better than to let just anyone into my life, and I was incredibly careful with the hiring process, using an anonymous agency so applicants wouldn’t know who they’d be working for until they got hired.
Hunter did a thorough background check, Janie went through multiple interviews before ever talking to me, and she was hired to work remotely at first so she wouldn’t have unnecessary access to me or my house.
She only started working in person a year ago, but even virtually she was the best assistant I’d ever had and even helped me deal with some of the messes Hot Scoop caused for my friends. ”
My eyes flick to the door because it’s apparently synonymous with Janie in my head now. She told Hunter that she thought she was helping me. Without knowing exactly what she was doing when it comes to Hot Scoop, it’s hard to know how to feel about her involvement in all this. Who to trust.
Donovan hums, pulling my attention back to her as she chews her lip in thought. “So either she’s really good at double crossing, or there’s more at play here.”
I nod, feeling queasy. “My mom’s at play here.” She has to be.
“You think she’s connected to that Hot Scoop article?”
“I think that quote came from my mom. The one you said was nice.”
She tilts her head and seems to be trying to see my thoughts by staring into my eyes. “Why?”
“I’ve never talked about my family. Not in an interview, not with coworkers, not even with my friends.
” My stomach lurches at that last admission.
For all my perfectionist tendencies, I’ve been a pretty terrible friend.
Why have they stuck around when they know next to nothing about me?
“Literally no one can claim I have any good feelings toward my family. Besides, there were things in that article that very few people knew about me. Things my mom would know, though.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
Maybe I’m reaching, but the timing of everything is too neatly packed together to be coincidental.
“I went years as a household name before Hot Scoop posted that story about me and decided to fixate,” I say.
“A week before Janie started working for me but after I’d hired her.
My mom contacted Janie less than a month into Janie’s employment.
A couple of months later, the tabloid turned Liam’s new friendship with Kasey into a scandal, at the same time painting me as some sort of victim of his propensity to get into trouble. ”
Donovan nods, silently telling me to keep talking. I love that she’s willing to listen to everything, no matter how crazy.
“A few months after that, Bonnie and I broke off our relationship, and Hot Scoop did their best to tear her down and get her out of my life.”
“I remember that one,” Donovan says with a frown. “Mostly because I’m a fan of Henry McAllister’s books, and I felt so bad for him getting dragged into the spotlight. Sympathy pains. He handled it way better than I would have.”
I smile despite the seriousness of the conversation. “You know he’s married to one of my best friends, right? You could meet him.”
“Later,” she says, smiling along with me. “You were on a roll.”
Maybe, but this isn’t exactly fun. “Last spring, the tabloid hit Cole and Carissa hard when Cole was already having a rough time, and I nearly lost my mind trying to help them. He’s my oldest friend, and there were moments when I thought he would never get out from under the pressure and the stress.
I was terrified that I had lost the friend I knew and that he would be only a shell of himself forever. ”
I shudder at the memory of those days and how painful it was to watch him struggle, but I force myself to continue.
Maybe if I lay it all out, one of us will find some answers.
“Freya never let tabloids get to her, but as soon as Elliot came into the picture, Hot Scoop turned almost manic. Like it was desperation instead of partial truths driving their stories. That was the first time Hot Scoop said anything bad about me, and then they revealed that Elliot and I…”
A thought hits me, and I swear under my breath as I realize something I hadn’t connected to all of this yet. “It was when I met Elliot.”
Donovan frowns, glancing at my chest because she probably feels how tense I just got. “What was?”
“All of this,” I gasp. “Hot Scoop, my mom, this whole nightmare started when I went to my uncle’s funeral a year and a half ago.
” Dizziness washes over me, and I drop my arms from around Donovan so I can stumble back to the couch and sink onto it.
“I happened upon his obituary and had a gut feeling I should go even though I had no good reason to like the guy.”
“I mean, he did have an affair with his brother’s wife,” Donovan says as she settles next to me. “I wouldn’t like him either.”