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HOLLYWOOD HUNK, NOAH JENNINGS,
SEEN WITH MYSTERY REDHEAD.
He scrolled through it. A fuzzy and pixelated image showed two people on the deck of a boat in an embrace. He had his arms folded around my naked torso, blocking out any appearance of my breasts while my head was thrown back and his lips were on my throat. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, and we weren’t identifiable. Noah scrolled down the page where there was another picture. The same photo zoomed out, the yacht’s name on display while a garish red circle highlighted the two of us on the deck.
Tapping the screen a couple of times, he pulled up another site. The header was a picture of the two of us fully dressed and laughing as we hugged. The headline for this one was:
NOAH JENNINGS: THE NEWEST VICTIM
OF HOLLYWOOD’S LOVE BUG?
It went on and on. Speculation spread over almost every gossip page and tabloid. There was even an image of Kenzie and me on one of the stories, where they speculated that Kenzie had introduced us. They’d also dug up my college bio, minus my time with Eric. Some asshole had leaked a picture of me at a party that I hadn’t even known had been taken. Emblazoned below was:
WHO IS AMBER RANDALL?
“Is this a joke?” I asked, finally sliding the phone from Noah’s hand and reading the article a little deeper. The unknown source they’d spoken to hadn’t known me if the quotes were any judge.
“Sadly, this is the Hollywood machine,” Bo answered, sliding his phone from my fingers and putting it to sleep before pushing it into his pocket. “We haven’t confirmed or denied anything. Scott put out a statement saying that you’d comment on it when you were ready, and until then to respect your privacy.”
“As always, they took that seriously,” Noah grunted.
“It’ll blow over.”
Noah reached out, running fingers along my jaw, his eyes full of silent apology. “It’s not me I’m worried about.”
“Kenzie has been calling,” Bo said, his eyes crinkling at the corner.
Since we stepped off the water and onto land, for the first time, I felt my lips tug into a smile. “She give you a hard time?”
“She demanded to talk to you. I told her it was impossible.”
“How did she take that?”
“She laughed at me.”
I rolled my eyes in humor and dropped my cheek to Noah’s shoulder, debating whether I should get my phone out or not. The spell we’d been under was already broken. Reality already impeding that warm glow of intimacy we’d had only thirty minutes earlier.
“What comes next?” I asked.
“We can’t take any of it back, so we use a rudder, steer ourselves down shit creek, and we work this to our advantage.” Noah shifted and kissed the top of my head before patting my ass and backing away to open the door of his BMW for me.
“What do you want me to tell Scott and Michael?”
“Tell them I’ll call them later.”
“Noah—” The words fell off when Noah snapped his head in Bo’s direction, no hint of humor in his eyes. I slipped inside the car then, missing Noah’s retort as he closed the door and leaned into Bo, who looked more uncomfortable than I’d ever seen him.
Trying not to stare, I finally pulled out my phone and powered it up, wincing at the sheer volume of calls, texts, and messages from Kenzie. There were a couple from Aliyah, too, and only one from Riley. I started with Riley’s, which was a short message telling me how proud she was. I rolled my eyes, unable to help the smile as I moved to Aliyah’s, all of which held a tone of concern. She worried about how I was dealing with it all. Kenzie’s were almost all the same, and I’d given up reading through them by the time Noah got in the car.
I opened up my voicemail feature and stared down at the only name not belonging to my parents or Kenzie, and I put my phone to sleep.
Eric.
“You okay?” Noah asked, oblivious to the turmoil now riding through my body and squeezing my heart.
“Fine.”
“Elmer—”
