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“I’m using Hale’s word for her,” Chloe defended. “That’s what he called her when she pulled that shit with Sam.”
He didn’t remember the words he used, he just remembered how outrageously pissed he’d been at the time, so he didn’t doubt he’d used them. But the bulk of that had not been aimed at Elsa. It had been at his mother.
In turn, he used Elsa’s words. “She’s course corrected.”
“She showed Blake’s breast on one of her episodes,” Chloe countered.
Hale glanced at Alex and carefully shared, “Blake sold her that picture herself.” He gave that a second then said, “And it wasn’t the first time.”
Rix’s eyes widened in shock just as Alex muttered on a heavy sigh, “This is a surprise, but it isn’t a big one.”
“She’s course corrected too,” Hale pointed out.
Alex nodded, but then again, she knew more than everyone Blake had changed.
“She might have gone legit, for lack of a better word,” Chloe said. “But she’s still about gossip.”
“Did you see the coverage she gave Blazing the Trail?” Hale asked.
“Just because she covered a charity event, that she was invited to attend gratis, I will add, doesn’t make her a decent person,” Chloe scoffed.
“She had a webpage dedicated to the clothes people wore. It wasn’t a best dressed list. It wasn’t a worst dressed list. It was just a webpage full of pictures of people with short, snappy, but positive comments on every one of them, and not a single designer’s name was mentioned, so she wasn’t pimping for sponsorship or any other reason. She also wasn’t putting anyone down or elevating anyone else. You’ve lived it your whole life, Chloe. People are interested in the rich and famous. When I noticed she didn’t qualify her fashion list, I did a search. She doesn’t have a worst dressed list on her entire site. It might be subtle. People might miss it. But what does that say about her?”
Chloe didn’t have a response to that.
Hale pressed his advantage.
“She doesn’t have a TV in her living room. But she does have stacks of books. She doesn’t cook, but she didn’t chill out at home while I went out and got our food. She came with me. It’s safe to say I’ve got money, she still argued with me about who would buy dinner. Yesterday, she somehow managed to post full coverage of the gala, and still had time to clean her whole apartment before I showed. We never run out of shit to talk about. She doesn’t simper and preen to get my attention. She is who she is, and you take her as she is, or you don’t get her at all. And I’ve never, not once, not in my entire life, met a woman like that. They’re all out to impress, for one reason or another. And it’s goddamned refreshing that on my side of things, I neither intimidate nor impress her just because I’m Hale Wheeler, Corey Szabo’s son and worth a shit ton of money.”
“Okay, so she might have some pros,” Chloe allowed.
“She reached out to me after Alex and I got back from Blake’s non-wedding,” Rix put in and everyone looked to him. “Peri had approached her to tell her side of the story.”
“Oh my God,” Chloe whispered irately.
Considering Peri was Rix’s ex-fiancée, and she’d dumped him after he’d lost both of his legs fighting a fire, irate was an appropriate response.
“Elsa had put a fair amount of effort into the interview,” Rix continued. “Including talking to one of my buds in the department as well as a friend of mine who’s relocated to Florida since my accident. She sent me the clip and left it up to me whether she would air it. It eviscerated Peri, by the way. It wasn’t vicious. But Peri opened the door, being Peri, and Elsa walked through. I killed the story. Elsa didn’t make a peep. She just didn’t air it.”
“Do you still have it?” Chloe asked curiously.
Rix dug out his phone.
But Hale was feeling less annoyed at Chloe’s sweet, but aggravating, protective streak, and he was feeling something else, and it was all about Elsa.
“Is this why you invited her to the gala?” Hale asked.
After handing his phone over to Chloe, Rix nodded at Hale. “She didn’t ask for it, she’s never approached me again. But I figured one good turn deserved another. She sat at our table, and I’ll admit, I didn’t have high expectations, regardless of what she did with the Peri interview. But I liked her. She sat next to Alex, and it was like she cottoned on to how Al is. They talked a lot, she kept Alex company, but she also took over as hostess of the table, keeping conversation flowing, so Al didn’t have to do that. And I gotta say, we both appreciated it.”
Alex wasn’t shy, but she was an introvert. She didn’t like big gatherings and was extremely uncomfortable mingling.
And Elsa was sharp as a tack. He wasn’t surprised she’d tagged this about Alex.
Though he was surprised, and pleased, she did something about it, because Rix was a gregarious guy, but he was no host of a table that cost the people sitting at it collectively nine thousand dollars for the privilege of sitting there.
Judge and Chloe were huddled over Rix’s phone, with Cadence having gotten up to lean over the back of the sofa they were on to watch it, and you could hear the sound playing.
But it was Tom’s attention that caught Hale’s.
