Page 41 of Writing Mr. Wrong

When he didn’t reply, she lowered her voice. “I know it’s probably not good, but let’s get it over with so we can move on with our day.”

That wasn’t how he handled bad news. But this was Gemma—tear off the bandage and deal with it. He took a deep breath and opened the text stream.

Terrance:I hear there was an altercation

You could call it that.

Terrance:Have you seen the photos?

Mason winced.

A string of photos followed. The first two were Mason and Gemma walking into the restaurant, and damn they looked good. Well, she looked good. Fucking amazing, in that dress, her curls blowing in the breeze, her chin lifted, smile radiating confidence. And he looked fine. Okay, better than fine, but mostly because of her. They made a good pair. “Striking,” that was the word. They made a striking pair.

Then came the next one. Mason with wine on his shirt, Gemma looking horrified, jumping up with a napkin.

His gut plummeted at the memory.

“Mason?” Gemma murmured. “If it’s bad, we’ll deal with it. Or our publicists can. They signed off on the idea.”

He nodded, and with great reluctance, he scrolled to the last photo. Then he stopped.

Shit.

He enlarged the photo. It’d been snapped at the moment the drunk kid took a swing. An action shot of Gemma leaping between them and Mason reaching to yank her out of the way of that punch. In this one, it was his turn to look horrified. All he could see, though, was her expression. It wasfire. Fire in her eyes, fire in the set of her mouth and her jaw.

Goddamn.She looked magnificent.

Terrance:They love that last shot. You defended her at the interview and now she’s throwing herself in front of some drunk frat boy for you? Protecting a f’ing hockey enforcer? People love it.

Those texts had all come earlier. The next few from Terrance were all knocks at his virtual door, trying to get a response. So he sent one.

Mason:This is good, right?

Terrance:This is f’ing amazing. They love it, and it puts them on your side. No one is cheering for the drunken frat boy, especially when he nearly KO’d a schoolteacher

Mason looked over at Gemma and started to smile.

Her brows shot up. “Not that bad?”

“Not bad at all.”

He showed her the text portions, watching her expression, savoring it.

“That’s…” She blinked and then looked up at him and grinned, and he was trying to decide whether he could go for a celebratory hug when her phone chirped with a message.

She looked down at it. “Seems my publicist decided she’s let me sleep late enough. She’s been tracking the online coverage, too.”

“Is it good?”

“Either that or the exclamation mark on her keyboard is stuck. She says—Oh, it seems we have a hashtag. ‘Romancing the Mace’? Uh…”

He snorted. “Not everyone can be a writer. Are they mentioning your book? That’s the main thing. Connecting us to your book.”

“Well, according to her, the hashtag is trending, andA Highland Flingis climbing the online charts.” She quickly added, “In Canada, at least, but it’s starting to spread.”

“That’s good, right?”

She exhaled. “It’s good.”

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