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Not that he was allowed to think she was hot anymore, so he was just going to have to come up with a different image.
“I take it you heard,” Alex said.
“I had about”—she pulled out her phone and looked down at the screen—“twenty-two calls on my way here. Luckily the first one was from Hana so I knew not to answer the rest. Though I’m forced to wonder why there wasn’t one from you.”
“I swear Gardner told me about five minutes ago. I wanted to tell you face-to-face, not over the phone.”
“Can I see the pictures?”
Alex sighed and opened his e-mail. Found the message marked urgent from Gardner and clicked on the link. He swung the laptop around as the browser opened. Maggie walked over, studied the images.
Her lips thinned. “Fuck,” she muttered.
“I think we’ve covered that part,” Lucas said. “So now we need to figure out what this means.”
Maggie ignored him, looking instead at Alex. “Do you know where the pictures came from?”
“Gardner’s looking into it.”
“I didn’t see any press last night. Which means that someone had to be following me.”
“I’m guessing Sutter was digging for dirt.”
“That’s what I figure too.” She stared down at the pictures. “He really is a prick.”
“I guess you’re feeling better about picking us, at least.”
She nailed him with a stare. “Actually I’m feeling that I wished I’d gone to Harvard and done a Ph.D. in English literature or something and forgotten I ever knew anything about baseball.”
Lucas made a sympathetic noise. “This sucks and the tabloid press can rot in hell, but we still have to deal with the situation. We’re trying to hold our numbers here, and there’ll be owners who aren’t too impressed that Alex waltzed in and seduced Tom’s daughter.” He glanced at Alex, then at Maggie. “For that matter, I can’t imagine that Tom is going to be too happy about it either.”
Alex felt his stomach drop. Tom. He hadn’t even thought about him. Great. Another complication. They needed Tom on their side.
“It’s none of their business,” Maggie said.
“No,” Mal agreed. “But that never stopped anyone from having an opinion about something. Either they’re going to think that Alex is an evil bastard or they’re going to think that you’re screwing him to keep your place here at the Saints or they’re going to come up with some other equally crazy explanation.”
“Then we’ll tell them that Alex and I are just friends.”
“No one who looks at these pictures is going to believe that.”
“It’s the truth.”
“You’re not sleeping together?” Mal asked.
“Not anymore,” Maggie said sharply.
“Oh no,” Lucas said. “Nope. We can’t go with that. ‘We shagged a few times and moved on’ is not going to fly right now. Sorry, Maggie.”
“I doubt there’s anything we can say that’s going to make a good impression, so why does it matter? We’ll make it clear that Alex and I are happy to work together and they shouldn’t care about anything else.
“Shouldn’t but they will,” Alex said. “Mal’s right about that. Though there is one interpretation that might swing them in our favor.”
“Which is?”
“We tell them we’re head over heels in love,” Alex said bluntly.
“Have you completely lost your mind?” Maggie demanded, staring at Alex. Did he think they were back in the nineteenth century? “Next thing you’re going to be telling me we should have a fake engagement.”
