Page 72 of The Fantasy League
“Scarlett, dear! Lovely of you to come in on the weekend. I hope I wasn’t interrupting any fun plans?” she inquired.
I shook my head. “Hi, G. How’s the girl?”
“Threatening her entrance into the world with each passing minute.” She waved for me to sit in the chair across from her. “Sit. Sit.”
“Okay, I’ll keep this short. Here are the final photos that the team has chosen for the book. Glorious, aren’t they?” I shuffled through some of the pictures in the stack she handed over to me.
They were, in fact, glorious.
A million times better than the measly ones I took on my two-hundred-dollar camera and self-edited.
“They’re amazing.” I beamed up at her.
“Email Seraphina if you have any questions. Obviously, this process has gone quickly for you, primarily due to the fact that most of the content had already been written and lightly edited for the blog. We will begin the marketing campaign in a month and the public relations team will be in contact with you about some press interviews that they’ve set up.”
“When will it be out?”
“The first Tuesday in February.”
Four years ago, when I started that silly little blog, I never would’ve imagined I’d have hundreds of thousands of followers or a freaking book deal.
I couldn’t wait to video call Abel later to tell him about it, although I was a little disappointed at the fact that this meetingdefinitelycould’ve been an email. Not that Gina knew I flew in from across the country to make it, but either way, it totally could’ve been an email.
“Alright, dear, skedaddle on out of here and enjoy the rest of your weekend! I’ll be sure to send you a photo of the girl once she arrives, but for now, she’s dancing on my bladder so I have to run.”
I muttered my goodbyes and well wishes as she waddled out of her office in front of me.
To celebrate the good news, I had the driver stop by the grocery store on our way home so that I could grab a few things for a new recipe I was planning to try tonight.
Back at the pool house, just as I was in the middle of gathering together the other ingredients for the recipe, the special ringtone I had set for Lea blared from across the counter. I paused the latest audiobook I was listening to about a broody Mafia boss who fell in love with a girl twenty years younger than him.
“Lea!” I exclaimed, answering her call with a giant smile. Our schedules hadn’t overlapped for weeks now and we kept barely missing each other. “I was just about to call you to see what your thoughts were on throwing a surprise birthday party for Mae in a few weeks. Maybe we could do something small, not a lot of people. A nice dinner or some—“
“Scarlett.” Lea’s curt tone cut me off from blabbering further. “Are you sitting down?”
“I can be…” I dropped down onto the only barstool that wasn’t taken over by packages. “What’s wrong? Mae’s okay, right?”
I saw her car in the driveway when I came home, but all of the lights were off in the house so I assumed she was either asleep or out to dinner with friends.
“I-I don’t know how to tell you this…” Lea’s voice trembled as the next words spilled from her mouth. “But there’s an article coming out about Abel in twenty minutes and you’re going to want to read it before it does.”
“What do you mean?” I furrowed my brows.
What was so bad about this article that Lea, of all people, was calling me with a shaky voice?
“That girl you told me about. You know the one who showed up to his house that one time?” I nodded, although she couldn’t see me on the other end of the line “…they were seen together on a date last night.”
What. The. Absolute. Freaking. Hell.
I knew he said that they weren’t together and gave me an ominous answer about how he couldn’t tell me about her right now, but “he would when he could.”
Deep down in my gut, I knew something hadn’t been right with me about the whole situation, yet I still jumped into his bed hours later without questioning him further.
God, was I really that big of an idiot?
I trusted him. I really did. But what could he possibly be hiding with her that he not only “couldn’t tell me about,” but also had him having secret dinners with the girl?
“You know they own the house together, right? The one you just stayed at.”
