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“…what?” I cry.
She heads through the doorway, storming out. I’m right on her tail. When I try to grab her hand, she rounds on me.
“Keir, I know you’re not trying to control me by stopping me with your much bigger body. Right?”
I freeze. I feel out of my element, suddenly. And my go-to reaction of anger does not seem to be helping me out much.
“Ella…” I say, not sure where I’m going with it.
She whirls and heads through the living room, leaving me to trail helplessly behind her. When she hits the hallway, she skips over the elevator and exits down the stairs.
It’s a long, silent descent. Clearly after four floors it becomes a bit harder for her to manage in her high heels. She slows way down and seems conscious of my eyes on her back. But she sticks it out through another twenty floors anyway, even though by the time we hit the ground floor she has a noticeable limp.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Ella lifts her chin and walks to the door, limping through into the all-white granite lobby.
I keep trying to help her, because I feel some sense of duty I guess. “Why don’t you let me—”
A man dressed head to toe in black with a bald head and heavy black eyeglasses steps out from behind a plant. He wears a press badge around his neck and holds a phone upright, clearly filming.
“Hello, Lord Grayrose.”
I immediately put myself between the stranger and Ella, who seems most interested in getting out of the lobby.
“Ken Jeong, New York Daily News Star. How are you two tonight?”
Ella frowns and moves around him.
“Fuck off,” I tell the reporter. “This is private property. One more word and I’ll call the police.”
“Really? Even though I’m the only person that can stop the release of a sex tape featuring you two?”
Acid starts to burn a hole through my stomach. “What did you just say to me?”
Ella freezes and her head whips around. Her lips compress into a thin line but to her credit, she doesn’t say a damn thing.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I continue. “She is my child’s nanny. Right, Ella?”
Ella looks at me for a heart pounding second and then she nods. “That’s right.”
The reporter crosses his arms and grins. “My tape is brand spanking new, made tonight. And it will blow the lid off of your little fling. That’ll be hard to explain to the Mrs., won’t it, Keiran?”
Ella’s eyes widen. She looks at me like she just found out that I’m a serial killer.
“Fuck off,” I tell the reporter. “You haven’t got anything because there is no sex tape. There was never any inappropriate contact between the young lady and myself.”
He grins. “Did she tell you who she is, Lord Grayrose? She’s Ella Washington, the former ballerina.”
“We’re done here.” I stand herding Ella toward the door.
“Her father is Malcolm Washington. He’s a former news anchor with your NewsCorp network. You fired him four years ago for embezzlement.”
I look at Ella, trying to see if that part is true. Ella is red in the face and looking determinedly toward the door.
Not that it really matters. The guy is trying to trap us. No way was there a recording device upstairs.
Except in the next second, the journalist starts playing a recording from his phone. He swivels it toward us and I can see two people who look very much like Ella and I on the screen. The journalist unmutes the sound and Ella groans loudly.
