Busted

Sliding Ressa a look from under his lashes, he asked, “Who is Thompkins?”

“What?” She stared at him. Her eyes looked too dark, almost stu

“Who is Thompkins?”

She blinked and then rubbed the back of her hand over her mouth. “Technically, my boss. Or one of them. He’s in administration, but I never really see him.”

*   *   *

Staring at the phone Trey still held, Ressa rose.

At some point, Sebastian and Travis had left the room, but she didn’t know when.

She couldn’t think.

Every time she tried to get a concrete thought in her head, her mind spun right back to that headline.

The secret side to one of America’s most popular authors.

She didn’t even have to read the article to get it. The L. Forrester book was side by side with Trey’s latest, the two covers so completely at odds with each other.

“Hello . . . would this be Farrah?”

The sound of Trey’s voice, hard and flat, dragged her attention back to the present and she jumped up, gaping at him.

He stared at her.

She made a grab for the phone.

He moved out of her reach, evading her with an ease that was almost pathetic. Steaming, she tried again while listening to one side of the conversation. “I understand somebody wants to talk with Ressa. . . . yes, I assume it’s about the article that went live earlier today . . . ? Yeah, thought so. So, there’s a problem . . . , no. No. That’s not the problem. Here’s the thing—you’re talking to Trey Barnes and there’s no way Ressa did that interview.”

She gaped at him. “Give me my damn phone. This is my problem.”

“No.” He lifted his phone away from his ear for a minute. “You got pulled into something because of me. I don’t know why but that makes it my problem, too.”

“This is not how people make relationships work.” She glared at him, chin raised. She wanted to punch him.

He caught her chin in his hand and then, while she continued to glare at him, he kissed her.

“Okay, so we are in a relationship? Good.” He broke away long enough to ask that question and then he kissed her again—hard and fast.

She was balling up her hand to punch him when he moved away. “We also don’t make relationships work while letting one person handle a problem that the other person somehow caused. You’re not getting fired because of me, Ressa, and I’m not going to watch somebody drag you through the dirt, either. Deal with it.”

Then he turned his back on her.

“Arrrghhh!” She grabbed a pillow from the bed and swung it at his head.

He caught it halfway through the next swing, approaching her with a glint sparking in his eyes.

“Yes, I’m aware of what the article says, but there’s a problem with all of that, because Ressa has spent pretty much every second of the past thirty-six hours either with me or traveling. She hasn’t had time to do any sort of interview on this.”

Another pause and Ressa held out her hand. He cocked a brow. “No . . . but I’ll find out,” he said. “You can pass that on to whoever wants to talk to her. She didn’t do shit so don’t try to pass this off on her.”

Then he ended the call and tossed it on the bed.

“You still wa

She grab another pillow and threw it at him. “I would have handled it!”

As she reached for another pillow, he tackled her and took her to the bed.

Breathless, trapped under one hundred eighty pounds of hard, lean male, she tried to hold onto the anger. Tried not to think about the fact that a robe, her panties, the shirt he’d all but tucked her into earlier and his jeans were the only things separating them.

“What was I supposed to do . . . let you get raked over the coals because somebody was screwing with me?” he asked. He dipped his head and pressed a kiss to the skin bared by the open vee of his robe. “Let somebody try to fire you? I don’t think so.”

“I don’t believe in having a guy fight my battles.”

“But this wasn’t your battle—it involves both of us so that makes it ours,” he said, dragging his lips up. “Also . . . you said relationship. Ressa, does that mean we still have one?”

She froze.

She had said that.

He stared down at her.

Neither of them spoke and he sighed, lowered his head back to hers, rubbed his lips over her cheek. “Ressa, have I ever told you how much I love the way you smell?” He went to kiss her and she bit his lip. “Ouch!”

Jerking his head back, he glared at her and touched his throbbing lip with his tongue.

“Stop trying to distract me.”

“You’re distracting me.” He gave her a quick kiss and then rolled off. Drawing his knees up, he hooked his elbows around them. “It’s not just your fight. It’s about both of us and I figure there were two ways to handle that and you wouldn’t like either of them. I could either tell whoever that was that you didn’t have shit to do with that so-called interview, or I could go with you when you leave. You’d bellow at me about either one.”

“Damn straight.”

He shrugged and looked away. “So you’re mad either way. But I’m not going to say I’m sorry. If you had been involved, this would be a different discussion, but you weren’t. That means it has to do with me. Why should you bear the brunt of it?”

She opened her mouth, then snapped it shut with an audible click of her jaw. “I don’t much like the fact that you’re being logical about this.”

“Yeah. It always pissed my brothers off, too.”

With a withering stare, she climbed off the bed and started to get dressed.

He was moderately mollified by the fact that she pulled the black button-down back on over her bra. Watching her fingers dance over the buttons, covering up all that lovely skin seemed to be a crime. “What are you going to do?” he asked, dragging his gaze up to meet hers.

She narrowed her eyes. “Men,” she muttered.

He gri

“I don’t even know how to answer that.” She sighed and caught her hair, dragged it out of the collar of the shirt, then looked for her jeans.

He snagged them from the floor by the bed and tossed them to her, watched as she shimmied into them.

“Trey!”

The sound of Travis shouting his name up the steps had him flopping back on the bed and throwing his elbow over his eyes.

“What?” he bellowed back, the habit of shouting back and forth across a house something he’d never really forgotten.

There wasn’t an immediate answer and he shook his head. “You know, it’s a beautiful morning. I’ve got a beautiful woman with me. I’d really like to be in my bed making love to her . . . but nooooo. . . .”

Travis appeared in the doorway. “Your neighbor is at the door,” he said, his voice curiously flat.

Trey stared at him, puzzled. “I don’t have time for this,” he said, shaking his head.

“Make time,” Travis suggested.

Trey headed out the door, muttering under his breath.

But when Ressa went to follow, Travis caught her elbow and held her back.

*   *   *

“Trey . . .”

He opened the door and wasn’t surprised when Nadine slid inside, moving past him as though he’d flung it opened and welcomed her with open arms.

The sight behind her was a little more disturbing—and it had him gritting his teeth. Two news vans. One reporter was all set up, the other still fumbling with her equipment, but the second they saw him, they both started shouting questions.

He slammed the door shut and put his back to it.

Not again. He’d never been as good at this as his brothers. He could handle it, yeah. But he hated it.

“I’m so sorry,” Nadine said, her voice soft. Sympathy filled her voice and she twisted the pearls at her neck.