Page 55 of Power Play

“So what about this bee?”

“I woke up because I heard a bee buzzing outside my window. I looked outside the window and saw them.”

“Who?”

“More people with cameras.” She pointed towards the windows where I had the curtains drawn against the sunlight. “Mike made them back up.”

Crap. Paps. This business with my brother and Sydney? Or more Daddy Liam nonsense?

“Come on,” I said, getting up and out of bed. I was practically fully dressed. A pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. Just in case Tess came into my room. I hadn’t worn so much to bed since my first week in the OHL and I’d been braced for razing by the hockey team.

Tess followed me down the hall to the living room where I saw she’d made a little camp for herself. There was a blanket and a pillow from her bed.

Graham crackers. Shit.

“How long have you been awake?” I asked.

“A while.”

She made herself at home again in her nest and I walked down the hallway and opened my front door to a flurry of photographers standing at the edge of my driveway. Just off my property. Fuckers.

The shouts came from the distance, but I could still hear them.

“Do you have any comment on Wyatt’s marriage to Sydney Malloy?”

“Is it true they’ve been secretly dating for years?”

“Liam! Who is that little girl in your house? Is she your daughter?”

I turned to Mike who was sitting vigil, utterly unbothered by the throng of reporters.

“Cops have been called,” he said. “They’re disturbing my peace.”

I closed the door without dignifying their questions with an answer.

So the answer to the question, were the paps here because of me or my brother – was both.

Wyatt had taken Sydney up to his cabin to try and get away from these vultures. So they’d just pointed their cameras my way as if I would give them anything.

In the living room, Tess was eating graham crackers and turning pages of her book.

“You okay?” I asked her.

Her shrug broke my heart. The curtains were drawn and the room was dark and shady. She was probably planning for another day stuck in the house.

Yeah. I thought. This wasn’t going to work. It wasn’t going to work for Tess and it really wasn’t going to work for me. I was not an indoor cat.

“Hey,” I said. “You want to go on a trip?”

“Where?”

“Do you like cats?”

She perked right up. Perfect.

Now, all I needed was the nanny.

Kit

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