I run a hand through my hair and grimace. “We’re making a statement. I’m fixing this. For Rue’s sake, if no one else’s.”
“And what happened to the honesty train?” Tani murmurs as she helps me straighten my collar.
“Temporarily down for repairs. This will work. Trust me.”
“I trust you. But once this is over, I might be asking you to do the same for me.”
I narrow my eyes. “Ominous. Can we solve this crisis first? I can only take so much before my head explodes. After that I’m yours.”
“Deal. Now tell me what you want me to do.”
Chapter Fifteen
Elliot
He’s handled it.
I’m nursing a beer in a basement microbrewery I didn’t know existed the last time I came to this pub. Sitting at a bistro table at the end of a row of large metal tanks full of beer while several other men mill around me and gossip like hens. What am I doing here?
“The girls are together and fine. None of the news has touched them and it’s not going to.”
I look up as a man the size of a linebacker with a shock of red hair squeezes past some equipment and joins me at the small table they dragged down for the occasion. His name is Brady Finn. He’s one of the security guys from the building and the pub owner’s cousin.
“I appreciate it.” Or I do now. At first when they showed up at the warehouse, I wanted to deck both Brady and his partner, Ken Tanaka, for sticking their nose in my business. Then they got George on the phone. And Mr. Gordon. And now Joan, Rue, Adria, and even my reluctant mother are spending the night visiting with the senator’s wife and sister, along with their children. They’re safe from the swarm of reporters, and I’m drinking beer with strangers in a brewery that feels more like a bomb shelter, considering the situation.
Rue couldn’t stop laughing when I talked to her on the phone. She’s having a blast. I’m glad one of us is enjoying this bullshit.
Yeah, I still kind of want to deck these guys.
And Joey, now that you mention it.
“Don’t touch anything, Ken,” Seamus grumbles at the long-haired security expert who apparently owns my building. I watch the slender man pull his hand back from a computer control panel mounted on a pedestal next to a squat steel tank. “You don’t know the kind of shit I’ll get from Thor if any of his numbers are off.”
“You’d think he’d be too distracted with the twins on the way to notice,” Brady says with a smirk. He glances over at Ken, shaking his head and mouthing the words, “No touching.”
“He’ll notice,” the owner of Finn’s mutters. “Thoreau notices everything.”
I don’t know who they’re talking about, so I look down at my phone again, staring at the text message for the eightieth time. As if it’s going to magically change.
Joey: It’s handled. Stick to the story. Sorry we had to cut it short.
That’s it? Sorry we had to cut it short?
What the fuck kind of goodbye is that? I didn’t kiss him before he left. I didn’t hold him. But that was my last chance because it’s over now. It’s been “cut short.”
The hell of it is, from a publicity standpoint, he handled the play exactly right. I saw a repeat of the interview. His arm was draped casually over Tanisha’s shoulders, his smile one of confused amusement as he spoke, and his words gave me the out I imagine he thought I wanted. Like the one he gave me after our first kiss. The one we tried to give each other after the elevator.
This time, the story was that I’d come to his agency after a suggestion from a mutual friend. Upon discovering I had a daughter that I hadn’t known about, I’d returned home to “stay with my mother” until I found the best care available. Since I was a special client with a special case, the owners of J&T Nanny Placement took on my case personally.
He lied for me.
In the denial, he managed to promote his nanny agency and cast me as a heroic figure and a paragon of fatherhood, while also slipping in my upcoming nonprofit venture.
From what he said, they’ll all believe it was a business arrangement.
He completely and decisively explained away our reasons for being seen together in public. And a lot of what he said was close enough to the truth to pass a basic inspection.
My manager is thrilled. Everyone is thrilled.
I’m pissed.
And Ken Tanaka is on my side, apparently.
“Green told me his brother was a natural fixer. I should have had Calamity sit on him,” he complains as he plops down next to Brady and leans against the larger man’s side with a familiarity that instantly clarifies their relationship. “Or Bex.”