Page 40 of The American

“What?” A great weight clenched at the bottom of her stomach.

“He felt like you would tell the press.” His mouth quirked in a half grin. “Which you have done.” He looked out the window for a moment. “And so I gave him pieces of a fake plan to save your career. It would have all made sense to everyone later, once we made our announcement to the press.”

“But the wedding?”

“I was going to talk to you about it. St. Patrick’s seemed as good a place as any, and once I knew I wanted to marry you, I didn’t want to have to wait too long.” He shrugged. “If you were opposed, we naturally would have changed things.” He ran a hand through his hair and his face took on such a pained expression she considered what he said with greater attention.

And then the weight of what she had just done sunk in. “So you weren’t in collusion with Zachary, riding me along, using your charms to seduce and trick me into marrying you in a public way so that you could unethically make millions of dollars?”

He shook his head. “No. But I don’t want you to take my word for it. I never want this to be a point of confusion between us, or distrust.”

A feather of hope tickled at her conscious. She had never felt equal parts happy anticipation and dread. If he was everything she thought him to be originally, then she had just destroyed him with the press and the gravity of what she’d done, started to sink in. On the other hand, he was here, so he seemed willing to forgive.

“Thad, I hope.” She cleared the catch in her throat. “I hope you can forgive my hasty response. I was responding to the greatest hurt of my life.” Her eyes filled with tears before she could stop them.

He pulled her into his arms. “Oh Sage. It is I who must beg forgiveness.” They pulled to a stop along the river front, the bridge where they leapt off together towering above them. Then he opened a laptop, and proceeded to show her email after email to Zachary, proof of how he was setting their original plan in motion, the email when Zachary was ready to cut Sage loose in a non-complimentary way, and then his response to hold off, that he would talk to him in the morning. That he had new news to tell him. They were not colluding. Zachary didn’t even know the plan until Sage had overheard them talking about it.

She turned to Thad, ready to apologize again. But he covered her mouth with his own. And she clung to him. He was real. His love was real. She could still have him in her life. But slower. She stopped. “Thad. Would it be alright if…”

“We slowed down a little bit?”

She nodded, smiling through her tears. “You agree?”

“I think we need to spend some quality time on dates with no one else present, while I explore the softness of your mouth.” He winked and would have starting kissing her again, but then he stopped. “I’m willing to slow down, court you properly, as they say, but don’t doubt my sincerity or my plans. I have one purpose only and that is to convince you to marry me, as soon as possible.”

She laughed. “Understood.”

Then he opened up the video app. “Now, I think we have an announcement to make to all our adoring fans.”

“Thad, I’m sure they hate us.”

“But they won’t in just a few minutes, because what they hate most of all is being manipulated. They hate having a hunch, reporting it, and then finding out they were wrong or misled. But Sage, they were right all along. We are everything they thought. And they got to experience our first real fight and now let’s show them the make-up.”

And so, with tears still watering her eyes, her mascara less than perfect, they recorded a video up to YouTube, explaining the rest of the story. They got out of the car, video still running and with the bridge in the background, Thad kissed her in front of their 2 million followers. Then they sent the link to Thad’s personal assistant who would take care of getting it out to all the presses.

As they drove back down the streets of NYC, with nowhere to go, sure their apartments were swamped with the press, Thad suggested they slip in to a Broadway show, and Sage couldn’t have been happier.

* * *