I Married a Billionaire: Lost and Found(20)

I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard the door buzz.

I advanced towards it cautiously, finally reaching the peephole and peering out. There was a young woman standing in the hallway. I hardly recognized her at first, until I realized that it was the same girl from his last interview - but with her hair pulled back severely, and wearing a sharp suit and standing with her shoulders drawn back. I was determined to turn and walk away, but a part of me was morbidly curious to find out how much she knew - and how. And besides, she was reaching for the buzzer again, and I didn't want to find out what was going to happen if she woke Daniel.




I yanked the door open. The girl was taken slightly aback.

"Oh, hello," she said, looking me up and down. I was wearing some baggy yoga clothes I'd pulled on after rolling out of bed, no makeup, and hadn't bothered to brush my hair. I couldn't wait to see how they'd describe me in the inevitable sidebar blurb.

I just had to make sure the visit didn't warrant an entire article.

"What brings you here on this beautiful morning?" I asked, with the most wan smile I could muster. She kept standing there, a few feet away, looking at me like she thought I must smell bad.

"I…is Mr. Thorne home? I was just hoping to get few comments from him on the recent events."

"And he'd love nothing more than to relive the nightmare for your readers' entertainment, I'm sure," I said, smoothly. "But Daniel's sleeping at the moment, so you'll have to come back some other time. Or, better yet, don't."

Her eyes were sharp and unforgiving. Part of me was thrilled that I was right about her previous behavior all being an act designed to put Daniel off his guard, but I had to admit - if only to myself - that there was something a tad bit intimidating about her. Maybe it was just the complete transformation from innocent young reporter to the hard-nosed journalist I now saw in front of me.

"Well, that’s just fine." Her lips were slightly pursed. "I'm going to write the story either way. I just thought it would be better to get it from the horse's mouth, but I can fill in the blanks on my own."

"That sounds an awful lot like a threat," I said. She was peering over my shoulder, like she thought she was going to see him lurking behind me.

"Oh, it's not a threat at all," she said, finally retreating. "It's just a statement of fact. Thank you very much for your cooperation, Mrs. Thorne."

I slammed the door in her face.

***

A few days passed, and I'd almost forgotten about the encounter. So far, she was the only one who actually had the proverbial balls to come to the apartment. Daniel's phone had stopped ringing off the hook since he put his tech guys on the task of blocking the numbers of every single journalist he had in his contacts, which made things almost preternaturally calm. If I let my mind wander, I could almost forget for a moment that we were a household in crisis.

But just for a moment.

As I walked into the living room one day, Daniel actually looked up at me. That was either a good sign, or a bad sign. Probably bad.

"You didn't tell me someone came here."

The statement was vague enough that I could have played dumb, but there wasn't any point.

"I didn't think it was worthwhile," I said. "You were asleep and I wasn't going to wake you up. I didn't tell her anything."

He silently spun his computer around so I could see the screen.

It was a gossip blog, an offshoot of one of the big papers. It was headed off with a giant picture of me, obviously snapped from the other side of the street while I was headed home from yoga. I looked like a complete mess, of course.

Underneath was the text - not long enough to qualify as an article, really, as I'd suspected. But they still managed to spin it into something. I couldn't bring myself to read the whole thing from top to bottom, but the words that jumped out at me were bad enough:

…disheveled and disgruntled, refusing to wake Mr. Thorne for a comment on the current events. She slammed the door in our reporter's face…

"Oh my God, are they serious?" I shook my head at the screen, turning away when I couldn't stand to read anymore.

"I wondered the same thing," said Daniel, flatly. "Did you really slam the door in her face?"

"She wouldn't leave," I said, frowning. "Are you really going to blame this on me?"

"You have to treat these people with kid gloves," said Daniel, in a tone that suggested I was just a bit stupid for not already knowing this. "They can destroy you. It doesn't matter if they're rude to you, you can't be rude to them."

"Sure I can! People do it all the time," I insisted.

"Yes, but you're not Russell Crowe. And neither am I, for that matter." He slammed the laptop shut and got to his feet. "In the future, just let me deal with the journalists, all right?"

"She came to the front f*cking door!" I found myself shouting. "Of the place where I live! I'm supposed to just what, ignore that? Or wake you up, when you're finally sleeping peacefully for the first time in weeks and weeks? I just thought you should get a good night's sleep for once!"

"Once again, just let me handle it. Whatever 'it' is. Don't try to figure it out yourself, don't question whether or not it demands my attention. Just assume that it does."