Page 56 of Jake

Jake held her tight to him the whole time and they posed for a few photo ops. Catherine had tried to get her to block her mother, knowing that the drama would never stop, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Possibly, she could after her mother found out about this.

She’d also met Jenna tonight, who was amazing. She was Owen’s wife, and they hadn’t been married that long, but she understood Lauren’s hesitancy since she had also come from a lot less money than her husband.

They’d all gathered at Jake’s after talking to the reporters, where everyone else in the “Boy’s Club,” as Catherine called it, was already waiting. Now the men sat at the table, playing poker of some sort, and she, Catherine, and Jenna were sitting on the sofa, gossiping like high schoolers.

“You guys are so cute together,” Jenna told her.

“I keep telling her that, but she’s all hung up on not having money and that nonsense,” Catherine added.

“It’s a big deal to me. I don’t want to be seen by anyone as a gold digger,” she defended herself, again.

“It wouldn’t matter if you had money. People are going to say what they’re going to say and then it dies down. If Catherine managed to get Ryker to get his act together and she got with him, there would be people who would say the same about her,” Jenna said a little too loudly for Catherine’s liking.

“Girl, shut up,” Catherine fussed.

“They aren’t listening. Well, Jake might be, but it’s not exactly a secret.” Jenna swirled the ice in her drink before looking back at Lauren. “Plenty of people said that about me, but it didn’t matter. Owen is the only person I want to be with, and everyone else can fuck right the hell off.”

Lauren laughed, shocked at Jenna’s bluntness. She had a point though. Her phone rang before she could tell her.

“It’s my mom.” She held the screen up for them to see.

“Don’t answer that,” Catherine told her. “It’s just more bullshit.”

“I want her to know I’m done with her shit.” Lauren stood and carried the phone into the bedroom before answering.

“Hello?” She braced for her nonsense.

“You moved?” her mother asked.

“I did a few weeks ago, why?” Please don’t let her have caused any drama at the old apartment. She didn’t need any more fires to put out. Lauren pinched the bridge of her nose as she took a calming breath.

“You didn’t tell me!” her mother yelled like she had some right to know.

“I didn’t feel like it mattered. We don’t talk often.”

“Still, you should have at least left a forwarding address.”

“I did, with the post office. What do you want?”

“Did you think any more about what I said?” she asked, blunt as ever.

Someone hadn’t been online tonight and it showed. Jake walked in, softly closing the door behind him. Lauren pulled the phone away from her ear and put it on speaker so Jake could listen too.

“I did. I decided I won’t let you extort me or Jake and I’m not playing into your games.” She felt better than she had in years talking to her mother. It was great getting that out in the open.

Jake smiled at her as they waited for her mother to stop sputtering and recover her voice.

“Honestly, I thought you were smarter than that. Every man leaves you at some point. Smart women get the money first, but I guess you aren’t one of those.”

Before she could react, Jake grabbed the phone out of her hand and raised it to his mouth to speak.

“Lauren is one of the smartest women I know, and that means she’s smart enough not to fall for your shit. You can continue to make threats to me, I’ll laugh and move on, but if you threaten to extort Lauren or to do anything else to her, I’ll have you so tied up in court you won’t know which was is up.”

“This was a private conversation. One you had no business listening in on!” she screamed through the phone.

“I put you on speaker for him to listen. You were threatening him too,” Lauren came to the defense.

“You had no right. This was private between you and me!” she continued to yell.

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