“Next, on Entertainment Now. Supermodel Isabella de Bont tells us exclusively about her new swimsuit line, her love life, and those rumors everyone’s been talking about.”
The video clip of Walker’s gorgeous ex-wife strolling along a beach flashes across the screen.
Walker reaches for the remote to change the channel.
“Wait.” My hand closes over his. “Don't change it.”
“Sadie.” His voice is low. A warning. “Whatever she's about to say, you don't want to hear it. Everything she does is engineered to draw more attention to herself.”
“I want to hear it.”
Reluctantly, he puts the remote back down.
The shot cuts to Isabella being interviewed. Blonde hair slicked back in a perfect clean-girl bun, grey eyes wide. She’s gorgeous. I've always known it, but seeing her perfect face and perfect body and perfect everything in full 4K high definition, sitting next the man who used to be married to her, makes my stomach twist unpleasantly.
“I couldn't believe it when I heard,” Isabella says on-screen. Her voice is soft and wounded. Entirely convincing if you don't look at her eyes. “My ex-husband. With the nanny. Parading around in front of our child like that.”
Walker goes rigid beside me.
On screen, her manicured hand clutches at her chest. “Shock. That's what I felt. Shock and disgust. Walker Rhodes is many things. But I didn't think he was that kind of man. So I have to assume…” There’s a delicate pause, perfectly timed. “Well, I have to assume that this girl came in with a plan. Women like that, they know what they're doing. And there's a child involved.” Her eyes tighten at the corners like she’s about to cry, though no tears actually fall. “My poor baby. Caught in the middle. That’s what keeps me up at night. You just want to protect your child, you know?”
Walker shuts off the TV and the room goes silent, but my heart is pounding.
Walker is already reaching for his phone. I see the name on the screen before he puts it to his ear.
His lawyer.
“Hey. You've seen it?” He gets up from the couch, jaw tight, voice dropping to the controlled quiet that means he's furious. “I need you to…” He moves toward the kitchen, already three steps into handling it, already in the mode he goes into when something needs fixing.
I sit on the couch.
Women like that, they know what they’re doing. They come in with a plan.
I did have a plan, when I drove past the gates of Wild Rose Ranch this June. A simple plan. It was a summer job. Money for New York. Nothing more complicated than that.
But it got complicated, didn’t it?
As for the idea that I know what I’m doing…
I have never been more lost in my entire life.
I used to always have a plan. A path.
And now I’m finding that I want to take a different one.
One that I don’t have to walk alone. One where I hold the hand of a cowboy on one side, and a little boy on the other.
Walker comes back into the room. He sits back down and pulls me back against his side and presses his mouth to my hair.
“You okay?” he says.
“Fine.”
“My lawyer's already on it,” Walker says. His thumb moves slow along my shoulder, back and forth. I can tell he’s torn between his anger and his need to make sure I'm okay. “Cease and desist by morning. If she says anything else, anything at all, we take it further.”
I nod. I'm looking at the TV, the screen black now, but still seeing that perfect face as she pretends to tear up while tearing me down.
“Hey,” he says softly. “Talk to me, darlin’.”
