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My cell dinged and I checked my messages.
LARA: Oh, God... Usually, the station would have come to me for comment or the chance to kill the story with a nice juicy payment, but I guess not.
Lara was right. If we had known that the station had the video, we could have stopped the video from going public. Obviously, the news station felt the video would earn them much more in advertising dollars and publicity than any money I could pay them to stop its release.
DRAKE: What is our response?
LARA: I'm busy but I'll call you later. Take it easy, Drake. I'll take care of this. Don't stress too much, for your sake. You don't need anything else on top of what you already have on your plate. I don't want you stroking out over this.
Again, Lara was the voice of wisdom.
DRAKE: You're right of course. I'll shut off the television and relax. You can call me with anything you think I need to know.
LARA: Good man. Go, and hug your baby. Kiss Kate. Sleep.
I put my cell away and turned off the computer and the television as Lara suggested.
"What are you doing?" Kate asked, wide-eyed.
"I'm taking my lawyer's advice and turning off the computer and television. I don't need this," I said and went to her, my hands cupping her face, which was pale with concern. "Neither of us need this. Lara will formulate a response. You go to your studio and paint, and I'll rest while Karen takes Sophie for the afternoon. This will all soon be over and we'll be back to the way things were before all this happened."
I kissed Kate and she closed her eyes and leaned into my arms.
"You're right," she said softly.
I hoped I was.
* * *
Kate and I ate a quiet lunch, our talk limited to our planned trip to Bahamas, to the hotel we stayed at that first weekend.
"I want to go scuba diving again," Kate said, smiling. "This time, maybe we should buy me a proper wetsuit so we won't have any problems with overheating."
I smiled. "I still remember how hard it made me to help you squeeze those breasts into that children's suit."
Kate smiled, a gleam in her eyes. "Dr. Morgan, by the way you're talking about that, I might think you love me only because of my breasts and not because of my mind or heart."
"Mind, heart, breasts," I said and reached over to stroke her cheek. "I love it all."
"I love you, Dr. Morgan. Every inch of you."
"Don't talk like that or I won't be able to rest this afternoon," I said. "I really should wait two weeks before we start up again."
"I'm sorry," she said and made a mock pout. "I don't want to make it worse."
"You could never make it worse," I said and leaned over to kiss her.
For the next two hours, while we waited for Karen Mills to arrive, we sat on the sofa with music playing and watched Sophie play with her toys on the living room carpet. We studiously avoided talking about the video or the case. It wasn't easy. I know both our minds were trying hard to go back to both, just because it was such a big looming part of our lives, but the music did help soothe me.
My cell rang when Kate was in the bathroom getting things ready for Karen. I checked the call display and saw that it was Dave.
"Hey, how are you?"
"Fine, all things considered. What's up?"
He hesitated. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I can't delay it any longer. Three of our big funders cancelled their support today in the wake of the recent publicity. That takes a huge chunk of our revenues. We have to cancel a number of projects we had planned in the future and maybe cut short a few projects in the works right now if we can't find replacement funding."
I sighed. "Let me guess. Fundraising hasn't been all that stellar since this all started."
