Page 74 of Most Eligible
“That’s enough.” Rhett’s voice echoes through the room.
Lainey grabs her paintball gun, looking to the door of the kitchen as Rhett walks in, hands outstretched like he’s approaching a rabid animal.
“Rhett, what the hell are you doing?” Lainey asks.
“You have to stop,” he says, glancing between me and Lainey. “This is way too far.”
“We were just having a little chat,” she says, smoothing the front of her blazer. “Don’t forget what we talked about, hmm?” With one last look at me, she stalks out of the room.
As soon as she’s gone, I collapse back against the counter, then slide to the floor.
“Are you okay?” Rhett crouches down and takes my hand in his. “What happened?”
I snatch my hand back, shaking my head.What happenedis that I got what I came here for: proof that Lainey Williams is a sadistic, evil producer. Proof that Roland failed dope tests and hid it. Proof that I meant nothing to Rhett. A sob forces its way out of my throat and I bury my face in my arms.
“Talk to me,” Rhett says. “What did she do?”
I sniffle, wipe my nose. “Nothing. It’s—nothing.” It’s what she said that shook me to my core. Her words, so like Serena’s, even if they were about a different man:I’d think he would want someone a little more sure of herself.I raise my head, look into Rhett’s worried eyes.
He wants someone who knows who she is.
That isn’t me.
And now I’m in far too deep.
“Georgia,” he says again. “I want to help.”
Another sob breaks through, and he leans forward, takes my face between his hands, and brushes his thumb across my cheek.
“Can I do anything?”
“Haven’t you done enough?” I snap.
“What are you talking about?”
“You told Lainey about me—my phone.”
Rhett’s eyes widen and he drops his hands. “I didn’t.”
“I heard you talking to her on the veranda—you told her it was mine.”
He shakes his head. “I was talking about when she found your…undergarmentsin my room.” He whispers the word, leaning forward and making me blush despite my tears. “I said you came in trying to start something and I shut it down. I told her you’d been drinking—that you weren’t thinking straight.”
I sniffle a laugh. “What, ‘Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off’ or something like that?”
He drops his hand to my bare knee and smiles. Heat shoots up my leg. “Thought you didn’t like country music.” He’s so close I can smell him, woodsy and calm.
“It’s a classic.” I shrug, wipe my eyes. When I turn my gaze back to Rhett, his is already on me, hot and intense, boring a hole back through space and time. It’s like I’m unraveling into him all over again, gathered in his arms, his mouth on my neck, melting into well-worn sheets.
“I told her the phone was mine,” he says.
“You—what?”
“It’s not like she can fire me. She didn’t believe it was Nina’s, so I told her it was mine.”
My heart sinks. If what he’s saying is true—that he was protecting me, that he took the fall for me… then I’ve completelymisjudged him. He’s saved me multiple times, and all I’ve done is lie and sell him out.
“And you told her… about us?”
