Page 78 of Sapphire Storm

He was trying to do both when his phone lit up with a text.It was Donnie.

Woah man. This should make yr lives interesting. wut doesRoman say???

The main body of the text was a link to a news story on agossip site with the headlineNFL hunk and Peyton fiancé caught in hot bi3way with CW star and girlfriend.

The image attached was a grainy screen cap from what wasobviously a sex tape. Two slightly blurry male faces pressed together in asloppy kiss above a grinning woman who must have been the one holding the phoneout to one side to capture the image. One of the men was clearly Scott Bryant.

He read the article. No surprises. It was all in theheadline. Just as Diana Peyton had feared, Scott had been reckless—drunk andreckless, if the censored clips of the video he was able to watch were anyindicator—and now he’d brought scandal down on the wedding.

And now Roman was gone.

Shock and rage turned to a dull confusion. But now, insteadof galvanized by anger, he was paralyzed.

A call came through on his phone. Someone was ringing himfrom the box downstairs.

He went to the built-in screen inside his front door and hitthe button to give him a view of who was waiting for him.

Not Roman. A petite woman in huge sunglasses, the hood ofher sweater pulled up over her baseball cap. But he’d seen that large,expressive mouth before—a few days earlier at Sapphire Cove and several timesbefore on various television shows.

A second later, Rachel Peyton was stepping through his frontdoor.

“He’s not here,” Ethan said, hating the thin and reedy soundof his voice.

“I know.” She removed her sunglasses. Her eyes lookedbloodshot and tired. “So there’s a story that’s about to—”

“It broke,” he said and handed her his phone.

Shaking her head, she scrolled and read. After a tensesilence, she handed the phone back to him. “Well, crap. I was hoping to beat ithere, but whatever. I’m supposed to do a jilted woman walk past the paparazziat some point. Guess I’ll do it when I go home. They’ll all be camped outsidethe Castle then.” He’d closed the door behind her, and for a moment they stoodawkwardly staring at each other. “I hope this is okay. He told me where you lived.”

“When?”

“Tuesday, when I was at the hotel. We talked about you abunch.” She smiled as if this were a compliment.

Her easy nature suggested she wasn’t aware of what had gonedown that morning, but she seemed poised to add details to the larger events ofthe day, so he gestured for her to take a seat at one of the barstools alonghis kitchen island. To get as much information out of her as he could, heneeded to play it cool. Keep the day’s terrible marriage of anger and hurtveiled. “So I take it the wedding’s off?” he asked, rinsing out Tupperwarecontainers he’d already emptied.

“Not really,” she said. “It’s being recast. With my trainer.He didn’t tell you because he’s probably afraid of her.”

His hands went still. “Roman?”

Rachel nodded.

“You’re going to marryRomanin a month?”

She nodded.

“Where is he now?”

“On my mother’s plane. They’re headed overseas somewhere tohide out from the media and regroup. I’m supposed to meet them in a few daysfor our big20/20interview. That’s when we announce to the world thatScott and I have been in trouble for a while but we didn’t want to make ourseparation public, and during that time Romy and I got even closer and fell in loveand that’s whyweare now getting married at Sapphire Cove in amonth.”

Did the green texts mean he’d turned his phone off becausehe was somewhere over the Atlantic? Or the Pacific?

“It’s not too big of a stretch,” she continued. “I mean, we’vebeen in a bunch of magazines together. Shopping, training on the beach. Or atleast that’s how it’ll look now.”

“Why not just cancel?”

Rachel looked away, but he figured she was measuring hernext words, not studying his apartment. “It’s very important to my mother thatthis wedding proceed,” she finally muttered, as if she was quoting words thatturned her stomach.

“I can see that, but why?”

---