I exhaled, hoping he could be trusted. “Can I get that in writing?”
“Are you shitting me? Jo, you work for me. Remember?”
I wanted to punch him in the face, but I needed the paycheck. And the health insurance.
“Do I have your word at least?” Desperation colored my voice. If I lost Eden’s trust, I’d never get it back.
I prayed Micah would forgive me for what I was fixing to do. He’d always been so open to the media. Of the two of them, Micah would be less bent out of shape from overexposure.
“Sure.” He crossed his arms. “So Eden’s pregnant?”
I nodded. The blood drained from my face. I couldn’t believe I was betraying Eden to keep her story from coming out sooner.
“How long have you known?”
I looked at my feet. “A week.”
“Jesus, Jo. I should fire you.”
My chin jutted out, and I stood a little straighter, daring him to try that. I’d love to write that report up for HR. “Fired for failing to expose secrets shared in confidence.”
Andy ran his tongue across his teeth. “Is she married?”
“That’s not part of the bargain.”
His lips puckered. “Fine. Who’s Micah dating?”
I’d promised him, but that didn’t make it easier to take the plunge—I was wagering a relationship that hadn’t quite gotten airborne, and on top of that, I was about to become the story. But what could I do? Andy left me no choice, so I gritted my teeth and said, “Me.”
His mouth slowly twisted into an approximation of happy. “Wow. I thought it would take more than that to get an admission from you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You two have been seen all over Brooklyn. But I couldn’t confirm anything. Not until you just did.”
My mind raced through every gesture, every kiss. “You’ve been following me?”
“I’d hardly need to. From the online traffic alone, we could have run a speculative piece. But this is better.”
I didn’t know how. But whatever worked. In fact, if he was going to run it anyway, I felt like I’d at least used the little influence I had for good. Micah and I hadn’t done anything in public that I wouldn’t want my mom to see in the papers. “Great. So you’ll run that and hold off on Eden, right?”
“Yeah.”
Crisis averted as much as possible, I relaxed. “Thanks, Andy.”
He grinned, and I swore his teeth looked razor sharp. “No problem.”
Chapter 23
The entire staff watched me as I exited Andy’s office. I wanted to call Micah to give him a heads-up, but more urgently, I needed to contact Eden immediately to warn her that Andy knew, but I certainly didn’t want the hungry wolves to overhear my conversation with her, so I jumped in the elevator down to the lobby, searching for her contact info in our email chain.
When I got out to the street, I dialed the number, but as I was about to hit Send, a man approached me. “Jo Wilder?”
I looked up from my phone and squinted at him, trying to place where I knew him from. All at once I recognized him as one of the paparazzi from a competing newspaper, but I couldn’t remember his name. We’d met at some event or another, jockeying for the same photos. “Yes?”
He snapped my picture. “When did you first sleep with Micah Sinclair?”
“What?”
