Dominic was trying to get a rise out of me, I knew he was.
The problem was that it was working.
I could viscerally recall the moment I’d opened the door of Emily Albright’s Olympic Village room with her cradled in my arms. I could remember the fresh laundry smell of the blanket I’d wrapped her in, and underneath it, the sharp scents of mint toothpaste and food-poisoning-induced sick. The two speed skaters had been naked behind me, panicked and speaking in rapid-fire Dutch, which had sounded enough like English to be incredibly distracting—as if all the nakedness wasn’t distracting on its own while I was also trying to rescue a puking figure skater.
And then the flash of a phone camera.
The flash that had been the beginning of the end of Nolan Shaw and Emily Albright both.
How Dominic Diamond had gotten into the village, I neverfound out, given that I had to leverage quite a few Nolan Shaw smiles and selfies myself to be let in, and it was still a near thing. I also never learned how he knew to linger outside Emily’s door. But linger he did, and as I opened the door to carry her out and down to the clinic, he captured her glassy-eyed and half-naked in my arms, with the two fullynaked speed skaters behind us.
He’d posted that picture the moment he could, then recorded the speed skaters wrestling for his phone. He’d managed to capture the inside of Emily’s village room—a room that had transparently been the site of an athletic fuckfest, with strewn sheets and condom wrappers everywhere, including on top of the minitrampoline.
With a few taps of his fingers, Dominic ruined the career of a talented athlete whose only crime was horniness (and eating an iffy fish dinner before taking two speed skaters up to her room to work off a little steam).
He hadn’t been so worried about respect then.
I took a deep breath and then calmly offered my hand to Bee to help her stand. She wobbled for a moment on her skates, clutching my arm, and Dominic gave us a reptilian smile as he lifted his phone. “What a charming pair you make. Any comment on that? Is Bee your next Emily?”
A chill sluiced down my spine. I had the sudden vision of Dominic digging into Bee’s past and finding Bianca von Honey; I had the sudden vision of Bee’s past work being smeared all over the press and the internet, of her career being spun as something immoral or tawdry, when it was neither of those things.
Her non-Bianca career would be over. Teddy’s Christmas movie attempt would be over.
Andmycareer... well. The optics would not be Steph’s favorite. If Steph would even keep me after the truth came out and my name was irrevocably tied to porn.
“What do you want, Dominic?” I asked, too sharply.
His smile spread wider across his face. “What I’ve always wanted, Nolan. For the world to know the real you.”
“They have Wikipedia for that,” I said, and then with a hand on Bee’s back—her upper back, pure coworker territory—I nudged her toward the rink entrance so we could escape from Dominic and his phone.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” asked Bee as we walked back to the inn in the chilly dark. From the town square, we could hear the faint strains of music and laughter coming from the Christmas fair that had popped up overnight and would stay for another two days until Christmas Eve.
“I’m fine,” I said, a little glumly. I wished I could hold her hand. Or kiss her. Or press her against a wall and shove my hand up her cute little sweaterdress. But I couldn’t do any of those things, and I especially couldn’t do themnow, not when the press and Dominic were this eager to juice up the sex tape news with some fresh Nolan Shaw misbehavior. Already the first wave of articles had hit the internet, gleefully dredging up all my past sins and musing about what future scandals I might start.
And I was straining every fiber, cell, and mitochondrion in my body toward the hope that myDuke the Hallscostarwould remain a gossip afterthought. All it would take was one person who loved celebrity gossipandprogressive porn to recognize Bee.
“I hope Dominic doesn’t do something that makes things crappier for Kallum,” said Bee as we reached the inn.
“Me too, although Kallum has a way of landing on his feet.” We tromped up the salted path to the inn’s front door. “And while his mom isn’t happy about any of this, the internet is. Apparently Kallum is our Dad Bod Messiah and has come to save us from our thirst. Or something.”
“Mm-hmm,” Bee said, maybe a little too appreciatively, and I gave her a look as I opened the door.
“No Dad Bod Kallum for you, missy.”
Her pout was cute enough to lift my mood as we stepped inside the inn—at least until I saw Steph sitting in the dark bar, her face underlit by her phone like she was about to tell a ghost story. The dusty jar of cherries was open on the table in front of her.
“Nolan,” Steph called. “I need you for a minute.”
No sense in delaying the inevitable. I turned to Bee as she turned to me, and then we both seemed to realize in the same instant that we couldn’t kiss good night, or hug, or do anything else that wasn’t strictly coworkerly.
And it hurt. It hurt not kissing her good night.
Fuck.
“Good night,” I managed to murmur.
“Night,” she murmured back. And then added, “It’s just until we wrap, Nolan. Only until then.”
