Page 39 of Love In The Spotlight

“Well, guess I can’t announce my engagement the way I wanted,” West said, walking into their mother’s living room the next day.

Laken had stayed the night at her mother’s along with a few of her other siblings. Braylon and Lily were at a hotel and West and Abby were at the little ranch house they’d lived in when she was younger.

This morning she’d gotten up early and helped her mother with the cooking. More like she prepared things while her mother cooked because she didn’t have the best reputation when it came to kitchen duties.

She wasn’t distracted like she normally was at home and trying to do twenty things at once.

“What happened?” Laken asked.

They’d worked so hard to keep West’s engagement private until he was ready to make the announcement. Not even telling Jamie when she’d seen the confusion over her hiring West’s girlfriend to start the first of the year. She couldn’t very well say it was West’s fiancée when no one outside of the family knew that.

“Celia just texted me. You know she’d never bother me on a holiday, so I knew there was a problem when her name came up.”

Celia was West’s publicist.

West moved over to Abby. “Oh man. That’s not even a good picture,” Abby said.

“What is it?” Braylon asked.

West tossed his phone and her brother caught it, then looked. “That’s a good picture,” Braylon said.

Laken rushed over to look at it too.

It was Lily and Abby sitting next to each other at the hockey game last week they all attended when Lily’s family was in town. Braylon on one side of Lily, West on the other side of Abby. Abby was brushing her hair from her face and there was a brief glimpse of a ring, but you couldn’t see anything else.

The headline said, “Did The Billionaire Get Engaged To His Cinderella?”

“It’s not really announcing it,” Braylon said.

“Nope,” West said. “I told Celia to ignore it. She’s been getting emails and texts from the press.”

“It’s the holiday,” Abby said. “They should leave her alone. Why does anyone care about it?”

“Let me see the picture,” her mother said, taking the phone out of her hand. “Oh, it is a lovely picture of you two girls. Why don’t you like it, Abby? You’ve got matching shirts on.”

“We do,” Abby said. “It is a good picture, but I expected something else if they were going to find out. I knew I shouldn’t have had my ring on.”

“You should wear it,” Lily said. “It’s a symbol. Who cares what other people think or say about it.”

“Well said,” Laken said. “So now what? You told Celia not to respond. That will buy a day.”

“Guess I need to decide what picture we want to release today,” West said, laughing.

Yesterday West and Abby had engagement pictures taken for the announcement of their engagement. Then more family pictures were included. Lily was in those pictures along with Abby’s father, Trevor, who flew here for the holiday too.

She had a feeling another brother was going to take the plunge soon.

“You know you’re going to get calls for an exclusive,” Braylon said.

“I am. That is why I asked Celia to keep it low key. No one knows but family at this point.”

She’d been told Abby didn’t wear her ring to work for her last few weeks.

She had mixed feelings about that and wasn’t sure why.

Yes, the ring was only a symbol, as Lily said and she agreed. But it was a symbol of love and commitment.

Her mother still wore her wedding ring on a chain around her neck. She’d only taken it off a few years ago when it had slipped off and her mother almost lost it.

---