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Didn’t people sleep with escorts?
“Aren’t escorts just high-class hook—”
“Escorts will do as you ask.” Damon had guessed what I was about to say and put me straight on the matter. “If it’s just to attend a gala or charity dinner, that’s all they do. Not all of them give extras, and I never asked for any.”
I was puzzled as to why Damon went to so much trouble. His wife had died, but he tried hard to keep his private life under wraps.
“Why be so cautious?” I asked curiously.
Damon screwed up his mouth again and sighed. “Alexis. She’s the reason for everything. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to protect her from anything—nothing more so than the crappy paparazzi.”
“Ohhh! Now I get you. I must’ve had one of those dumb moments. I never put her into the equation,” I replied, feeling a little stupid that I hadn’t done so before. I had focused on why he didn’t rather than why he wouldn’t.
“Come on,” I said in a jovial voice. I kicked off the sheet and couldn’t resist a glance at Damon’s hot body in the process. Yummy!
He swung his legs off the bed and slipped into a baggy T-shirt and a pair of sexy shorts. “Where are we going?” he asked.
“My treat. It can be my turn to make the coffee,” I replied, slipping into one of his old T-shirts and a pair of panties.
I decided to make breakfast as well as coffee. Nothing heavy, just a couple sunny-side ups and a few slices of plain toast. I flicked the switch on the coffee machine as the eggs sizzled away in the skillet. Damon readied the table. It felt like we were a real couple. We sat and began eating.
When Damon’s phone vibrated on the counter, he stood and reached for it. He stared at the screen and then raised his eyes to look at me. Something was wrong.
“Check if the paper’s been delivered,” he said.
I trotted to the front door and saw the rolled-up newspaper sitting in full view at my feet. I unrolled it as I heard Damon’s voice from the table, and my eyes fell to the headline.
TECH RICH KID BEDS HIS NANNY!
“What the hell’s all this?” I snapped in amazement as I reached the table.
Damon explained without looking at the front page that it was a full spread on him. Or more plainly, it was a full spread on us.
“I can see that. What does it mean?”
“It means a few things,” he replied as he started to scour the front-page article. “It doesn’t bode well for the company.”
Oh, dear god!
“I’m sure you can talk your way out of it,” I said. “The question is how the hell’s the media latched onto it? I haven’t been explicit about us with anyone.”
Damon raised his head from the newspaper. He looked at me sheepishly and explained that he’d accidentally let something slip to Eric, his best friend. He dialed a number on his cell.
“Eric, I’ve seen the paper.” Damon stood and walked across the living room in a huff. “What the fuck have you gone and done?”
Damon paced back and forth and raised a hand every now and again as he listened to Eric. He turned to me on occasion, his eyes unfocused as Eric fill him in on what had happened.
After a few minutes, Damon pulled his phone from his ear and ended the call. Shaking his head, he threw his cell on the couch and ambled back to to the table with his shoulders slumped. He sipped from his cup and started to explain.
“Apparently, Eric got drunk and was approached by a fabulous redhead. Eric thought he was on a winner, so he further wined and dined the girl to the point where she asked him about me.” He looked at me with a serious face. “Eric, being none the wiser and who was more interested in her cleavage than what his mouth was saying, mentioned that I was getting close to my nanny—you. So basically, Eric spilled his guts about our coming together to keep the redhead interested until he could tempt her into sharing a cab back to his place.”
It was clear the redhead had manipulated the entire conversation to glean every bit of information she could get her hands on.
“Who was she?” I asked.
“She’s a journalist for one of the major tabloids. Eric only found out this morning when she left his apartment and said she had a deadline to meet.”
“She’s what?” Shocked and understandably angry, I searched for words. What the heck could I say? The story was already plastered everywhere. Damon had apologized. It wasn’t his fault to a certain extent. However, he didn’t have to tell Eric everything. “What’re we going to do?” I asked him.
Damon closed the newspaper and pushed it across the table. “We’d better lay low for a while. Hopefully we can shrug it off and show the press it’s not true.”
