James’s mother wasn’t as public with her opinions as Sylvia had been, but they were still one and the same. Would Kallie always be considered inferior by mothers of her partners? Was that something she would have to come to terms with? She felt Ash stroking her back. She felt him unclip her hair before he ran his fingers through it. She relaxed into him, her cheek pressed to his chest.
She could feel his rhythmic heartbeat underneath his soft shirt.
“Forget whatever you’re thinking,” Ash said. “You’re wonderful, and beautiful, and a much better human being than my mother ever could be.”
His words were sweet, but Kallie still felt a nagging sense of inadequacy and disappointment deep within her gut.
“Come on. Why don’t we go lie down for a little bit?” Ash asked.
The next thing Kallie knew, she was waking up in his arms. Curled around his body with her work clothes from the previous day still on. She stretched and looked at the clock, smiling when she saw it was almost ten in the morning. She still had two hours before she needed to be in her office, and it felt good to be able to settle back into Ash’s grasp. He pulled her close and nuzzled into her neck before she drifted back off to sleep. And when the two of them woke up again, it was a little after eleven.
“You're late,” Ash said.
“Nope. I cleared my morning,” Kallie said.
She felt him smile into her neck before peppering it with kisses.
“We didn’t eat dinner,” he said.
“I think we were both pretty drained from the festivities of last night.”
“Forget about her. My mother’s opinion has no bearing on me.”
“Nice to know, because I don’t think she was very impressed,” I said.
“My mother’s never impressed. It’s a personality trait of hers.”
“How charming,” she said flatly.
She lay there in bed until the last possible second. Staring into Ash’s beautiful hazel orbs and getting lost in his smile. A passionate make out session at the door sent her off to work with a fuzzy feeling in the pit of her gut, and she almost forgot about the storm brewing outside.
Almost.
Just as Kallie opened up her office door, a text message was sent to her phone. From Eris. All it had was a clickable link, and Kallie almost ignored it. For all she knew, Eris’s phone had spam on it and whatever she clicked would infect her phone as well.
But her curiosity got the best of her and she opened it up anyway.
The second James’s face popped up on her phone screen she felt her stomach lurch. She shut her office door behind her and watched the interview as a tagline appeared below the screen. Tears rose to her eyes and fell down her cheeks as she pressed her back into the doorway. She slid to her ass, her heart stopping in her chest as her hand gripped the phone.
Gold Digger Digs Claws into Worthington Heir.
“Oh no,” she said with a whisper.
The picture of her and James kissing popped up on the screen and she thought she was going to be sick. Her hands were shaking violently, and she couldn't stand to her feet. She heard a videoconference coming in through her laptop, but she couldn't get there. She couldn’t get to the person she had agreed to help because she needed help.
Out of the frying pan and into the fucking fire.
Only this time, Kallie didn’t know what the fallout would be.
Chapter 23
Ash
His social media feed was blowing up. Scores of people tagged him in Twitter feeds and people on Instagram were showering his pictures with nasty messages. That fucking video. James fucking Rathbone. A damn tell-all interview exposing Kallie as a fraud, a liar, and a gold digger.
Fuck.
He sat on his couch and watched the interview, and it was disgusting. The things he was saying were hard to dispute, and Ash felt himself being torn. On the one hand, he believed Kallie about that picture. James Rathbone looked like the kind of asshole who would manipulate a situation to get his way.
But it was a fucking national interview.
There had to be some merit to it.
“So what made you want to bring this to the public’s attention, Mr. Rathbone?”
“Simple,” James said. “Women like Kallie have always been after money and attention. My family warned me time and time again about her gold-digging ways, but I didn’t listen. I was in love with her. Head over heels. I was ready to move anywhere I needed to be and support her in any way necessary. And then Kallie left me at the altar.”