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Shiiiiiit.
Shit!
It hadn’t been an act. None of it.
No con.
She was probably someone people tried to con.
My fucking sister—no. I couldn’t blame Shannon for this. This was on me. My fuckup. My serious and very real fuckup. I really did need to step back and get my sister’s scheming out of my head. It wasn’t right to live this way.
“What’s going on now?” Kim indicated my face with her finger circling in the air. “Something just happened in that head of yours. Clue me in.”
“No.” I grunted. They didn’t get my personal life. I’d made that a boundary early on. They’d found out about my brother. Knew about my sister. It was Shannon herself who’d reached out for interviews. She’d liked getting paid, until I started suing the tabloids and websites because they were printing lies. It took a while, but eventually the media learned not to take my sister’s calls. They also learned that I was relentless. I had to be, because my sister was a shark, always looking for someone’s blood.
“Do you have suggestions on how to fix this clusterfuck?” Kim asked.
The video was only a hot item now because of the other two clips. Backtrack two weeks, and a video like that wouldn’t even get an email in acknowledgement, much less a phone call, a call to the office, and a whole sit down. Kim was right. This was because of Willow Harm’s effect, not mine.
I was seriously a dick.
“Look, I don’t have anything for you,” I told her. “I have no clue how to get ahold of Miss Harm. We didn’t exchange numbers. Or anything else,” I added at her look.
“They’re asking for a statement on this video,” she informed me. “We’re going to put something out.”
The team’s stance on drama was that none existed. For them to want to respond said a lot.
“Is that necessary?” I asked.
“It’ll help stop the video from getting any more attention. In this situation, we need to say something. Of course we’ll deny the insinuations. But Brett, you need to tell me if anything else will come from this. It’s apparent you pissed these guys off, and they’re claiming their fifteen minutes of fame.”
I swore, because hell, there could be.
“What?” she asked immediately.
I told her about the guys’ initial question, about Kade and his woman.
“Samantha Kade? Or Strattan? She was an Olympic runner, wasn’t she?”
I nodded. “She competed three times.”
“What’s the answer to their question?”
“No. There’s no rivalry where she is concerned. Mason and Sam were together in high school. I stepped in on a situation to help Sam once, but that was it. She was wifed up already with Kade, even back then.”
Kim mulled over what I’d said, her mouth twisted in a snarl. “I don’t like it, but—” Her finger came up as if I was going to interrupt her. I wasn’t. “—Kade is almost as bad as you are about putting out statements. He’ll handle press if he has to, but the only thing I can think of is that they might go to him, put a twist on what was said, and see if they can get a rise out of him.” She thought another moment. “There’s no bad blood there? I watched their documentary. Your towns were rivals.”
“We had dinner after the Super Bowl.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
She grunted. “Okay. We’ll consider this whole fuckup no longer a fuckup, as long as it dies down. And these little assholes will receive a threatening letter to cease and desist their games or be slapped with a lawsuit.” Her grin was wolfish. “What I’d do to see their faces when they read it. The room will smell of their piss, and I’ll love knowing I was the driving force behind it.” She nodded and finally seemed more relaxed. “Off you go. You have tapes to watch.”
5
BILLIE
