Page 101 of Summer Love

"So this would be out of character for her?" he asked carefully.

I felt his gaze on the side of my face. "What if I never knew her at all? What if I let a woman in, and she just used me for her career?"

"You knew her better than any of us. What's your heart saying?"

"That I love her." I should be with her, talking to her right now and not my brother.

"Do you think it's worth having a conversation with her? I'm just as pissed off as you are, but I'm not so sure everything is as it seems."

"I don't know." I wasn't prepared to do that now.

"You should talk to her. Give her the benefit of the doubt. If you still don't trust her after talking to her, then that's different. But right now, you're operating on anger."

"I thought she wasit,you know. The one for me."

Shep shook his head. "I can't pretend I understand what that's like, but if you find someone like that, you shouldn't let them go so easily."

I couldn't believe I was taking advice from Shep on relationships, but maybe Mom was right. He deserved more credit than we gave him.

ChapterTwenty-Three

ELENA

"I'm going to have to let you go. There's a picture of you kissing Hudson, one of the bachelors. It's getting more views than what I posted."

I knew this was a possibility, but I still couldn't believe it was happening. I was powerless to stop our relationship from developing or resisting Hudson. "The article was a success. You said yourself that views and comments on social media are blowing up. Everyone wants to know the Kingston brothers."

"And you're dating one of the bachelors. That makes him not so eligible, doesn't it?" Valerie sneered. "You ruined everything."

"There are four other brothers in the article," I said lamely.

"The post blowing up on social media is the one with you and Hudson kissing on the beach with the headline 'Journalist Hooks Up with Most Eligible Bachelor.'You'rethe story. Not the article or the poll about which brother is the hottest. You." Valerie emphasized each word.

"I'm so sorry, Valerie. That was never my intention. I figured we could keep it quiet until after the article came out. The publicity would die down, and then we could go public."

"You were wrong. And you weren't exactly hiding anything. You were kissing him on the beach where anyone could see you."

That moment on the beach was private. My personal life had been thrust into the public eye. An intimate moment had been exploited. And the worst part was that Hudson didn't trust me anymore. He thought I was involved in the social-media posts and the publicity surrounding the story. The longer I stood here with Valerie, the farther away Hudson was getting from me. "I never intended for any of this to happen."

"Well, you should have thought of that before you hooked up with Hudson. You ruined your own story. No one will hire you after this. You're toxic."

The thing that could hurt me was that negative publicity was affiliated with my name on a byline. And it was a fluff piece, not what I wanted to do with my career. It could poison me for more serious journalistic opportunities. But I knew that when I took the job. I just wanted something to fill the time and pay for me to be near my grandmother. "You should have told me you were planning a social-media campaign. And you could have given me a warning about the changes to the article."

"I don't have to do anything."

"It would have been the right thing to do. I don't want to work with someone who would do something like this."

"I fired you."

I stepped back. "That's for the best. A good boss would have discussed all of this with me first.”

Before Valerie could say anything further, I moved away from her, and out the back door. I didn't want to talk to anyone else. I needed time to myself to figure out what just happened.

There were the social-media posts that whipped people into a frenzy over the brothers. Then the picture of me kissing Hudson. Apparently, women wanted to believe that the Kingston brothers were single. There were a lot of negative comments about me.

Then there was Hudson. He felt hurt and betrayed by the posts and the change in the article. He knew that I didn't have the final say, but I don't think either of us anticipated that she would change things so drastically.

It read more like a dating app profile than a personal interest story on the Kingstons. I was so embarrassed that I'd trusted Valerie. She'd taken my story and made it into something else entirely.

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