He opens his arms, and I slide onto his lap, curling my legs up as he wraps his arms around me. I bring up the document on my phone and hand it to him.
He strokes gentle circles over my ribs with his thumb as he reads. I watch him, holding my breath.
“It’s great,” he says finally.
“Really?”
“Hallie, it’s great,” he repeats, smiling.
“Okay. We’re really doing this.”
He chuckles before pressing a kiss to my forehead. “We sure are.”
“What’s going on?” Sterling clips as we slide into the backseat of the car that’s come to collect us from the aircraft hangar. Denver’s behind the wheel and Killian is sitting in the front passenger seat with a grim expression.
“We have a situation,” Denver says, his eyes meeting Sterling’s in the rearview mirror. “As of forty-five minutes ago, the press knows about your relationship. And they know about Vegas, too.”
“Oh, god,” I murmur.
I glance at Sterling’s taut profile as he threads his fingers through mine. We spent the last hour of the flight in the onboard bedroom together, coming out just in time for landing. Neither of us have had time to check our phones.
“Someone tipped them off,” Sterling hisses, running a hand over his jaw. “How bad is it?”
“Jenson’s waiting at your place. He said there’re around twenty journalists there.”
“Twenty?” I echo.
My stomach drops. This is what I feared. The whole world is going to know. My clients will see it in some gossipy headline instead of hearing it from me.
“It’s okay, Hallie,” Sterling soothes. But his brow is pinched as he keeps his eyes forward, deep in thought.
I pull out my phone and bring up a New York news site. It’s not the top story, so there’s that at least. But my breath catches at the photograph of the two of us getting into the car to catch the flight to London. Sterling’s hand is low on my back and I’m beaming at him like a woman who’s head over heels in love. In his other hand is the personalized carry-on luggage he bought for me. There’s a smaller, zoomed in picture of the ‘HB’.
Halliday Burton or Halliday Beaufort? Do we hear wedding bells for widower, Sterling Beaufort, with his thirty-year-old dating coach?
I squeeze Sterling’s hand and show him my phone. His nostrils flare.
I’ve dragged him into this. It’s what I never wanted to happen.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
He runs his thumb over my knuckles. “It’s not your fault. We’ll deal with it. It’ll all be fine.”
I sit and stare out of the window as he talks with Denver and Killian about tracing who leaked it to the press. But it doesn’t matter, it’s done now. And we have to deal with it, like he says. I wish I could believe him that it will all be fine. But as we pull up outside his building and raised voices call to us from the sidewalk, my faith falters.
“I’ve got you. Let’s go,” Sterling says.
He holds my hand firm in his as Denver gets out and opens the rear door for us. Then he and Killian walk either side of us like a shield, blocking long-angled lenses and microphones that are shoved in our direction. I put a hand in front of my face and keep my gaze down.
“Mr. Beaufort, what does your family think about you dating your daughter’s friend?”
“Was it your baby Miss Burton was shopping with Sinclair for? Is that why she fainted? Did you get a woman twenty years your junior pregnant?”
“Miss Burton, is it true you’ve been divorced once already?”
Jenson’s waiting by the entrance and he opens the door for us as we approach, ushering us inside.
“Oh my god, this is so much worse than I thought it could be.” I’ve still got my face covered as Sterling sweeps me into the foyer.
