Page 12 of 7 Nights of Sin

"Hi," I said, offering her a smile.

"Oh. Hi," she replied, closing her laptop with a snap.

"Something interesting?"

"I don't know if I'd go that far. Christine has been talking to more of the press."

Immediately, I could feel my mood sour. I knew we had to talk about her because she was the cause of this whole problem, and the problem was the only reason I had to talk to Caro at all, but I wasn't in the mood to rehash this shit for the millionth time.

"Yeah?" I said, sounding tired to my own ears. "What shit is she shoveling now?"

"More of the same," Caro said crisply. "Oh, except now she's adding that she thinks you're a bit unhinged."

"Great. Always nice to have more bad things to add to the list." I slumped down in my chair, folding my arms.

I could feel Caro casting a critical gaze over me, but I didn't care. I was sick of dealing with Christine already.

"We have to move quickly," she said. "Christine is being very vocal, with pretty much no discretion about who she talks to, and you've been mostly silent on the matter. Which can seem like an admission of guilt. That's not what we want. Luckily, you've managed to keep it in your pants for the last few days, so it's not like there's any fresh scandal for them to drag up and make this worse."

I shot her a glare. "I am capable of behaving."

"Hm. The internet seems to think differently. Did you know there's a thing going around social media where women from all over the country talk about the experiences they may or may not have had with you?"

"Wonderful," I muttered, rolling my eyes.

"In any other situation, I'm sure it would be very flattering. They make you sound like some kind of sex god, and the while I'm sure most of it is just wishful thinking for whatever reason, it's not doing you any favors now."

I latched onto one part of that because it was the easiest thing to deal with at the moment. "What do you mean 'for whatever reason'? If you'll recall, you were once--"

"Do not," she said, holding up a hand and cutting me off with a stern look. "That is not what we're here to talk about."

"Then what are we here to talk about?" I asked, exasperated. "Because if it's just to go over a list of all the shitty things people are saying about me online, I'd like to take a pass. I have other things I could be doing that are way more enjoyable. Slamming my dick in a door, for example."

It was her turn to roll her eyes, and she leveled a cool stare at me. "Very mature. Let me ask you something, Kevin. Why did you get married?"

That was not what I was expecting to hear from her, and I frowned, thinking it over. "Can I blame it on being young and stupid?"

She snorted and shook her head. "No. Because you weren't that much younger than you are now, and I knew you when you were in your prime 'young and stupid' days, and you would never have done something like that back then."

Her tone was carefully neutral, and I frowned harder, wondering what that was about. But it was clear she wanted an answer to her question, so I sighed and tried to come up with one. "You want the truth?"

"I generally don't expect to be lied to when I ask things," she replied.

I drummed my fingers on the table. "It seemed like the thing to do. My career was going great and just getting better. We went to the World Series, you know? I felt like I had accomplished a lot of the stuff I wanted to accomplish. So getting married seemed like the next thing to tackle."

"Why her?"

I shrugged. "She was pretty and interested?"

She looked at me, like she expected there to be more, but honestly, I didn't know what else to say, and when there wasn't anything forthcoming, she made a disgusted sound. "That's it? You married someone because they were pretty and interested in you? Not because you actually cared about her?"

I shrugged again. "I don't know what you want me to say here, Caro. There's no love story if that's what you're waiting for. I knew her from parties and stuff, and she caught my attention. I caught hers back. We both thought it would be a good idea."

"And now she's slandering your name to anyone who will listen," Caro said. "Good choice."

"It's libel if it's printed," I shot back, mimicking her own words to me.

Caro didn't look fazed. "All I'm saying is you should maybe take some care in who you pick next time. I can pull this out of the water and keep you from losing everything that's so important to you, but only once. You don't get another chance at this."

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