My heart raced in my chest as my head filled with worst-case scenarios. Only my years of experience prevented me from letting my worry fuck with my concentration, and I finally nailed the scene. As soon as the director called cut, I rushed over to Shawn’s side.
“What is it? What's wrong?” I asked.
“It's Morgan.” I must have looked as frantic as I felt because he rushed to add in a whisper-soft voice, “She's okay, but the gossip rags have figured out that she has a new man in her life. They’re jumping all over the story, and it’s everywhere already.”
I hurried off set and stalked into my dressing room. As soon as the door shut behind us, Shawn handed me his phone with one of the articles pulled up. I quickly skimmed the story, my jaw clenching hard enough to make a low popping sound as they speculated about who she might’ve been visiting while in Georgia. They were tossing around the names of top athletes and successful businessmen who lived near Atlanta, some of whom were already in established relationships. I hadn’t made the list, and it pissed me the fuck off to see people linking Morgan’s name with other guys . . . especially when it was the mark I’d left on her neck that had sparked the conversation in the first place.
“You probably shouldn’t have left a huge hickey where someone might see it,” Shawn pointed out when he leaned over my shoulder and saw the picture I was staring at. Someone had gotten a shot of her as she walked up the steps to the plane. It looked like it’d been taken from quite a distance, but since her hair had been up, the hickey on the back of her neck was clearly visible. I scrolled past it and found another image of her, this time she was blowing a kiss at the limo I’d been sitting in. The windows were tinted black, though, so nobody knew I was the one back there.
“Everyone’s wondering who the mystery man in her life is. Especially since she’s been in the limelight more lately because of her award nominations and Golden Globe win. It also doesn’t help that the assumption for years has been that she and Jasper Conrad were a couple.”
“You’re not exactly being helpful here,” I growled, irritated at the mention of yet another man with whom my woman’s name had been linked publicly. It wasn’t like I thought any of these guys were a threat to what I was building with Morgan; we were solid together. I was just pissed because the only person I wanted her name to be linked romantically with was mine—even though I’d actively avoided that my entire adult life. I quickly realized I was taking the situation out on Shawn when he’d done nothing wrong. “Shit. Sorry, I shouldn’t have snapped at you. None of this is your fault. If anyone’s responsible, it’s me.”
“No worries, man. I get it.” Shawn clapped me on the shoulder. “And don’t beat yourself up too hard. All you did was fall in love.”
Fall in love. Shawn’s matter-of-fact statement was like a wake-up call for me. I knew my feelings for Morgan were unlike anything I’d experienced before, but I hadn’t thought in terms of the L-word . . . until Shawn put the idea into my head. But it wasn’t the right time or place to work out the extent of my feelings. That could wait. Right now, I needed to come up with a plan for how to handle the shitstorm swirling around Morgan.
Running my hand through my hair, I groaned, “What the fuck am I going to do?”
“Call Mario,” Shawn suggested. “He’s been blowing up both our phones since the story first hit, and I’ve been putting him off to wait until you were on your last shot for the day.”
I dropped down onto the couch and reached up to snag my phone when Shawn tossed it to me. Then I pulled up Mario in my contacts and hit the button to dial him. The call barely connected when he picked up in the middle of the first ring and barked, “Where the hell have you been?”
“I was right where I was supposed to be—on set, in the middle of filming. You know how intense it can get when I’m shooting a Hunting Evil film,” I reminded him. “It’s not like Shawn can interrupt me for just anything.”
“This isn’t just anything,” Mario retorted. “You just told me yesterday that we needed to come up with a plan for how to tackle telling the world that you’re dating Morgan Kelly—a relationship you’d kept hidden from me—and I’m already seeing stories about a hickey you gave her. If you aren’t careful here, your connection to her is going to become public knowledge before we have the chance to control the narrative. When were those photos taken? Why didn’t you let me know she was flying out to see you so I could have prepared for damage control? What are the chances anyone is going to connect the dots and figure out that you’re the mystery man in the back of the limo?”