Page 68 of Crocodile Tears
“Somebody needs to call Deacon,” Mom urged.
“This is all that bastard’s fault,” Hawk growled. “He pulled Dove into this and threw her to the fucking wolves. He?—”
The door opened before Hawk could finish that thought and Deacon rushed in. “I’m here.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Deacon
My heartbeat drummed in my ears. My whole body shook in silent rage as the phone rang and rang and rang and Cody never answered.
Finally, I got one text message: I quit.
Reading that message was like being smacked with a wall of ice.
No, no, no. This couldn’t be happening. How could he do this to me? After all these years?
I gripped my phone so tightly I thought I might break it as I left the house still yanking my T-shirt on. I stormed across the gravel road and up the hill toward the zoo, finding a suspicious number of boats in the harbor as I went.
Shit.I’d been afraid this would happen. I had wanted a slow, controlled announcement of our relationship. Instead, Cody hadmutinied me. Luca was already on the phone with my lawyer. I was going to sue the shit out of that son of a bitch.
But lawsuits could wait. My first concern was warning Dove before she saw any of the vitriol being printed about her. Running barefoot up the cold pavement, I braced against the morning chill as steam curled from my lips. I ran up the front steps of the old house—the one filled with thousands of memories—as Evelyn’s old dog, Phoebe, announced my arrival with a chorus of barks.
“I’m here.” I threw open the door, not bothering to knock, and tumbled into the kitchen to find five members of the Lachlan clan staring daggers at me and, behind them, Dove with red-rimmed eyes. My heart shattered at the sight of her.
A white-hot knot lodged in my throat. “Can I talk to you?” My chest rose and fell in heaves. “Cody just rage quit and released a bunch of nonsense to the media, and we’re hiring a crisis PR team and going to sue his ass and we’re going to deal with it?—”
Hawk took a step forward, crossing his arms tightly across his chest, his eyes filled with the kind of rage that made me take a step back. He was definitely about to punch me. “Did you sleep with Lynx Madigan?”
All the blood drained from my face at that question. “What? I . . . How did you . . .”
Finch tossed her phone to me and on the screen was a grainy video of twenty-three-year-old me kissing Lynx Madigan on a not-so-private Queensland beach.
“That son of a bitch,” I growled. “How could he do this to me? I thought he’d killed that story years ago. But of course, he kept it just in case he ever needed it.”
I hadn’t realized I’d said all of that out loud until the group around me collectively grumbled, inching closer, as if they might mob me like a troop of baboons. I looked at Dove pleadingly. “It was a long time ago. We?—”
“I think you should leave, Deacon,” Finch snarled, rising an inch, and I wondered if she was thinking about all the ways she could kill me and make it look like an accident.
“No,” I choked out. “Dove, please, talk to me.”
Hawk took another step, and I was certain then that I was about to get my ass kicked, when Dove barked, “Stop.” She moved around her brother, eyes downcast, not meeting mine. “It’s fine, guys. Let’s just talk outside.”
I thanked every spirit in existence for that as I followed her quietly out the door and down the main path, away from view of her inevitably prying family.
“I am so sorry about these stories,” I said. “I promise they’ll all die down in a week or two. Luca is already on top of it. We’ll have a new team hired in the next hour and—” I reached for her, and when she stepped away, it felt like someone cleaved my chest in half.
She wiped angry tears from her eyes. “Explain the Madigan thing to me,” she demanded. “Youknewmy family hated them. How did your paths ever even cross? Unless it’s true you have a weird fetish thing for zookeepers.”
“Dove,” I begged. “It’s not like that. We met on a photoshoot when I was touring Australia as Lucky Role,” I explained, scrubbing a hand down my face. “It was an Australian tourism campaign. I was still making a name for myself and it was good money and?—”
“Did you sleep with her?”
“I . . .”
“That’s not a no,” she said tightly. “So that’s how it is.”
“It was five years ago.” I reached out and again she stepped away. “Just a one-night thing. It meant nothing. I was a rock star, for fuck’s sake. I mean, we’ve both had other people.”
