“Not yet,” he said and left it at that, making Gina wonder if the money situation at the ranch was more dire than he was even letting on.
She didn’t press. It wasn’t any of her business. Besides, she didn’t have any sage advice to dole out. Don’t get accused of screwing someone else’s spouse or you’ll lose everything.
Gina slid the lamb in the oven to bake for an hour and got started on steaming the couscous using one of Sawyer’s colanders snugly fitted over a pot. In her Malibu kitchen she would’ve used a traditional couscoussier to steam the wheat semolina. But here she had to improvise.
Sawyer rested his elbows on the counter and followed her step-by-step. Even though millions of viewers tuned in every day to see her cook, something about him watching so closely unnerved her. It was as if he knew she was a colossal phony and he wanted to catch her using the wrong ingredient or burning something.
“Anything new from ChefAid?” he asked, handing her the small box of star anise as she reached for it.
“Like what? I told you we were meeting in September.”
“Just wondered…you know, after the latest.”
“What latest?”
“You didn’t hear?”
Gina cut him a look and his face went slightly pale.
Shit.
She lunged for his laptop.
He rested his hand on the top before she could grab it.
“Hear what?” she yelled, her pulse doing a tap dance. It was a pretty good guess that whatever Sawyer was talking about was more bad news. Perhaps staying off the internet to avoid the haters wasn’t such a good idea.
She searched through her handbag for her phone. It had only been four or five hours since she’d last scrolled through her messages. But she’d seen lives ruined in the mere click of a keyboard.
She tapped on her phone and sure enough, she had five missed calls, ten texts, and at least six emails marked urgent. She sat on one of the stools, girding herself for whatever new crisis was about to get thrown at her, reading each message.
Sawyer stood over her shoulder. “Sorry, I thought by now you would’ve heard. But this time you’re not sticking me with the dishes.”
Chapter 5
Gina DeRose was a walking disaster. Like an eight on the Richter scale of calamities. While some men—like Sawyer’s two cousins—ran to women in trouble, he looked for the nearest exit. Unfortunately, in this case that would mean leaving his own house, which he’d actually considered the minute she’d gotten the news and subsequently blew up like a bottle rocket.
She’d hightailed it into his bedroom and for the last twenty minutes had been yelling at someone—maybe his mother—on the phone. From the kitchen, he tried to listen, but was having trouble following the conversation.
He’d give Gina credit, though. She’d rattled off a litany of curse words that he, a lauded wordsmith, would never have thought to string together in quite the way she had.
Impressive.
An entertainment magazine had gotten hold of her and Danny’s text messages and had plastered screenshots of them, including a picture of Danny’s dick, all over the internet.
Who the hell did that? Sawyer had sexted a time or two, or even three. Especially when he was away on assignment and in the throes of a new relationship. Who hadn’t? But why would anyone on God’s green earth commemorate his junk in a picture and then hit the send button?
Hey, here’s a shot of my penis. Wish you were here.
What Sawyer did know was that the dick pic and the texts, which he’d read and were pretty raunchy, weren’t going to play well with the ChefAid suits.
Not well at all.
Sawyer’s mother had her work cut out for her. And Gina would have to continue hiding here, coming in and out of his house like it was a revolving door. He wasn’t too thrilled about that, but at least he’d eat well.
He checked the oven to make sure the lamb wasn’t burning. The whole house smelled like Moroccan spices, which for some reason reminded him of Christmas. Maybe it was the cinnamon. The aroma made his mouth water and his stomach growl. He didn’t know whether the couscous was overcooking, but decided to leave it alone.
“Can you freaking believe this?” Gina came back into the kitchen, waving her phone in the air.
“I learned a long time ago to never put anything in writing that you didn’t want people to see. Privacy is a myth.”
She started to say something and seemed to reconsider. Then, because she had to have the last word, said, “You would know, being a professional bloodsucker.”
“According to those text messages, I’m not the only one who’s sucking, if you know what I mean.”
She flipped him off and turned to the stove. “The couscous is going to taste like mush.”
“Was that my mom on the phone?” He returned to his seat at the island.
She let out a breath. “My agent, my manager, my assistant. Cynthia Grossman, my publicist, who I’m about to fire.”
“What’d she do?”
“Nothing. That’s the problem.”
Sawyer laughed, though what was she supposed to do? The texts spoke for themselves. “How do you think they leaked out?”
“Obviously not from me.”
There was nothing obvious about it. Anyone who had access to her phone, which he assumed her staff did, could be the culprit, but he didn’t say anything. Surely someone in her position was smart enough to realize that. “So you think it came from Danny Clay, huh?”
“That would be…I have no idea. All I know is someone is out to get me.”
Sawyer had to keep from rolling his eyes. Wasn’t that just like a narcissist? She has an affair with another woman’s husband, yet someone was out to get her? What a piece of work.
“What?” She squinted her eyes at him.
“I didn’t say a word.”
“You don’t have to. I can hear your judgment from here.”
He stood up and leaned his hip against the counter. “Yeah, what am I thinking, then?”
“That I’m a terrible person. But you don’t know the first thing about me.”
“Nope.” Nor did he want to—too much to unpack, he thought, as his eyes did a covert slide down her body. “Hey, I’m staying in my lane. No judgment.” Which wasn’t altogether true.
“Good, because you don’t have a clue of what’s going on here.”
A lot of bumping and grinding, according to her texts. Hell, she’d sounded like a veritable sex machine.
Really, he didn’t know why he was even getting involved. He wrote about peoples’ problems for a living, he didn’t need to do it in his spare time. But something about her made him want to figure her out. She was like the Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle, a challenge. And there was nothing Sawyer loved more than a challenge. Even one who was a full-time pain in the ass.
They wound up eating her lamb tagine between phone calls and temper tantrums. He could only imagine how she must’ve reacted to the photo, which he’d finally gotten around to searching on the internet. It had been your typical paparazzi wide-lens beach shot. Grainy but clear enough to make