Crazy in Love (Blue Lake #3)(48)

“Lady-killer Cole Turner moves from model beauty to small town bimbo,” he read aloud. “Juicy secrets of his love life revealed inside.”

No effing way.

Rita snatched the device from Cole’s cold hands. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” She read quickly and then nailed him with a grim expression that meant to kill. “I ask you to focus, Cole, that’s all. Is it too much to ask? You break up with Tori West on stage like a freaking dumb ass, refuse to make a public statement about her psychotic attitude, making her look like the damsel in distress, and now this?”

“Where’d it come from?” he asked.

“You tell me!” Rita spun on Rachael and held up the iPad for her to see. “It’s the two of you in a lip-lock in the middle of her kitchen. Looks like they’ve already mocked up the cover for tomorrow’s online magazine. Want to know what it reads?”

“Oh God.” Rachael looked pale as she held her hand to her mouth. “I can guess from the headline. Cole, I’m so sorry.“

With a curse, Cole scrubbed his hands through his hair. “How’d they get the picture?”

Rita whirled on Rachael. “Just what I’d like to know.”

“Hey wait a minute,” Rachael said, putting up her hands. “This isn’t my fault.”

What the devil was happening? How could his reputation swirl down the tubes so fast? Why wasn’t the media focused on his singing and the tour rather than who he was kissing?

Rita planted her hands on her hips. “If it’s not your fault, whose is it?”

“Cool it, Rita.” He stepped between them. “Let’s all take a chill pill for a second.”

Rita pointed at Rachael over Cole’s shoulder. “You probably set this whole thing up and hired someone down at the watering hole to take a picture of the two of you.”

“Look at the picture!” Rachael screeched, tugging at the ends of her hair. “It’s not like I was mauling an innocent bystander. He was kissing me!”

“You can’t pull the wool over my eyes, sweetie,” Rita rambled on. “You wouldn’t have to dangle much in front of Cole to get him to stick his tongue down your throat.”

Rachael recoiled.

“Rita, that’s enough.” Cole faced Rita and braced her shoulders. “No more.”

She grimaced. “How am I supposed to build your reputation when you seem hell bent on flushing it down the toilet?”

“Aren’t you exaggerating?” Rachael mumbled. “I thought bad press was good press.”

“Yes, bad press can be good press, as long as the talent continues to produce good, solid talent,” Rita said simply. “If a singer can’t perform to standard, all that remains is the garbage in his personal life, and then once that goes bland, there’s nothing left. If Cole flushes another concert and—“

“Nobody’s flushing anything.” Cole rolled his eyes.

As he said the words, he knew they were wrong. Rita was right. His career could be ruined if he continued to botch concerts, and for what? A psycho ex-girlfriend who wanted a connection where there was none? A sexy innkeeper from a small town that he was leaving tomorrow?

“I want her gone,” Rita gritted between clenched teeth. “Tomorrow morning that article is going to be all over the Internet and we’re going to have to answer a hell of a lot of questions. If more pictures circulate of you with her, it’ll kill any chance you have of coming out of this.”


“I didn’t mean to cause any trouble,” Rachael said from behind him.