“Please tell Mia I’m inside when she’s done with pictures. Tell her not to talk to any of the reporters, but if asked, deny we are here together.”
Her red eyebrows drew together. “Maybe that ‘fuck off’ I was going to deliver to Jason should go to you as well.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw one of the photographers point to him. There was no time for explanations now. “Please, just give her that message.” He entered the structure through the back door, which opened into a sunroom.
He dialed Jacob and asked him to come get him ASAP, then he called his brothers to initiate damage control in case anyone asked about a business deal with Jason Tipton.
The best way to handle this would be to take it head on and go talk to the photographers. All he needed to do was put out any rumors linking him with Jason and throw them off Mia’s scent until he could gradually work her in publicly so she didn’t get caught in the blowback from his playboy reputation.
“Why’d you take off so fast?” Jason asked, striding into the sunroom.
“I don’t want to be in a picture with you.”
His clothes were only slightly wrinkled, probably from poor packing, but his eyes were bloodshot and his lids swollen, and Michael expected that he was sporting a hellacious headache. At least he hoped so.
Jason threw his arms out in the perfect picture of innocence. “What picture?”
“You called the tabloids with the promise of news of a new business venture.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, let’s talk about that because I—”
Michael crossed the room in three strides and grabbed Jason’s collar. “Let’s get this straight here and now. The only thing I’d participate in with you is a fistfight. Are we clear?”
Jason held his hands up in surrender. “Uh…yeah.”
“And if you perpetuate this rumor, I’ll add a lawsuit to it as well.”
“Gotcha. Please let go.”
From the corner of his eye, Michael saw the camera in the window, followed by the unmistakable sound of a shutter snapping. He released Jason with a hard shove, rather than the punch he was itching to throw. “You’ve done your damnedest to destroy your friends’ wedding and you hurt a damned fine woman. Two of them, actually. Disappear to your room now, and don’t come out until Mia and I have left.”
Without hesitation, Jason scurried from the room. Michael was relieved he had that much sense.
After collecting his and Mia’s things, Michael paced the lobby with Clancy, feeling like a caged animal. His carefully crafted reputation had caught up with him, and Mia was going to get hurt in the blowback. The tabloids would call her all kinds of things. Unkind, untrue things. And to make it worse, with her self-deprecating tendencies, she might believe what they print: that she was just another in a long string of Anderson’s women.
But she wasn’t. She was his only woman. The only one he’d ever really wanted.
He could fix this. He could control it.
Once Jacob arrived with the limo, he would have Mia run to where it waited in the front, while he spoke with the reporters in the back. He could get her out of there safe and sound.
“I just don’t want the press to make this thing between me and Mia into something it’s not,” he told Clancy.
“And exactly what would that be, Michael?”
He spun to find Mia in the door from the sunroom, gorgeous in her cinnamon gown. The expression on her face wasn’t gorgeous, though. Her lips were drawn tight and she was pale—haunted. And Michael realized at that moment not only had he lost control of the situation, he may have just lost Mia as well.
…
Stunned, Mia replayed Michael’s words in her head. “I just don’t want the press to make this thing between me and Mia into something it’s not.”
He didn’t want them to link him to her. To hurt his playboy reputation. When Kelli had delivered his message about denying they were there together, she thought that surely there had been some mistake. Obviously not. He could tell a dog the truth, but not her.
The walls seemed to close in as gooseflesh crept across her skin. He was just like Jason and her other lovers after all— embarrassed by her. She wasn’t enough.
Nausea flooded her belly and she covered her mouth. He’d had her, and now he was done and didn’t want the press to pick up on the relationship.
The entire time they had spent together had been nothing but an elaborate game to him. He had negotiated brilliantly and fooled her completely. Mighty Michael Anderson had closed another deal.
“Never mind,” she said holding up a hand when he opened his mouth to speak. “Don’t answer my question. I know the answer.”
He dropped Clancy’s leash and took several steps closer. “I don’t think you do.”
She eyed the luggage. Evidently, he wasn’t even willing to hang with her one more night. He was ending the bargain early. “I thought we were staying until tomorrow.”