Page 32 of Mistletoe Mistake
“I have no idea what you're talking about.” When would she stop dancing around the issue? I still didn't understand what the point of any of this was.
“Okay, let me spell it out. Gemma used to be engaged to a man named Edwin Matheson, who's the son of another Earl. Not quite an arranged marriage, but close enough. They were engaged for six years.”
Six years? That seemed like a ridiculously long engagement, and Gemma couldn't be much more than twenty-five. They must have gotten together very young, and I recognized the name: Edwin Matheson was the man we ran into at the park earlier. Finally, things were starting to come together.
"Used to be engaged," I repeated. "Fine. Then what?"
“He had an affair with one of the women on thisKnightsbridgeshow, a Lady Annabel Clarkson. The whole thing was documented on the show. The whole country watched Gemma's fiancé complain about their sex life on national TV, cheat on her, and eventually dump her.”
That protective urge that had hit me back in the park suddenly returned with full force. Had Gemma really gone through that? It seemed almost impossible to imagine the vibrant woman I had gotten to know being treated that way, and I wanted to spare her from it, even though it had already happened. I wanted to make anyone who had hurt her pay for it.
Where the fuck did all of those feelings come from?
“That's why they care, Cole,” Nellie concluded. “The press painted her as an uptight, sexually unadventurous prude, and now, they think you're dating her.”
~Gemma~
When I got home, I had a consultation over the phone with Holly to try to decide how to handle the potential fallout from the tabloid stories. She had also just walked in the door when I called, fresh from her drinks with Jackson. They enjoyed each other's company at the pub, but it hadn't gone any further than that, at least not that night. She certainly didn’t seem opposed to the idea that it might eventually.
As for the press, I wasn’t sure what we should do. When the whole Annabel/Edwin story had broken earlier that year, we managed to avoid any association with our business. Our friends and colleagues knew about it, but the general public never made the association. Most of the papers stuck to referring to me as Edwin's rejected ex; or, if they did use my name, they used my legal name. That helped sell the story anyway: the fact that they got to humiliate the daughter of one of the country's oldest families along the way. Thankfully, none of them seemed to care about my business.
I had never been so happy with my decision to take a separate name for my professional career.
However, if any of the paparazzi had actually gotten a decent picture of me, people might recognize me as not just Gemma Redvers, but also as Gemma Sudlow, architect with Anchor Design, right as our star was rising thanks to the Mayfair Mews opening. And although Holly argued that there was no such thing as bad publicity, I would rather do without it.
I still didn't tell Holly that I'd gone to Cole's room, telling her only that we had been photographed getting out of the taxi together. I couldn't really explain why I didn't want to tell her. Usually, we shared almost everything, and she knew all about my attraction to him. After all, she had been the one who encouraged me to pursue him. And I certainly didn’t feel any embarrassment over the fact that we had slept together.
When I tried to pin down the reason for my reluctance, I supposed it simply came down to the fact that our whole connection, the time Cole and I had shared, was something so fragile, so unstable, that if I told anyone else about it, it might just shatter entirely.
“Is there any chance we can borrow Cole's publicist?” she asked, only half-joking.
“I doubt it, but maybe we should look at hiring someone for some freelance PR work, just in case?”
We agreed to look into it first thing in the morning, and after I'd hung up, I quickly checked my phone for any other messages. Cole had replied to me when I was still in the car, telling me that he would be available the next night for my planned activity, with the implied understanding that I would return to his hotel again. Would he change his mind once he found out about all of my drama? It actually surprised me that he hadn't found out already. I kept waiting for my phone to buzz with his cancellation.
When I finally crawled into my own bed, I expected the swirling thoughts in my head to keep me up half the night. Instead, I thought back to my time with Cole, and remembering the soothing, blissful feeling of surrendering to him helped me to relax. Before I knew it, my alarm buzzed in my ear, urging me to get ready and face another day.
The first thing I had to do was check on the damage that had been done. Seeing no point in putting it off, I grabbed my phone while I was still in bed, my fingers trembling as I brought up a search for Gemma Redvers. Sure enough, there were photos of Cole and I the night before, but to my immense relief, none of them got a clear shot of me. From one angle, I had my face turned away from the camera, and in another, Cole's arm was around me, shielding me from view. Looking at the photo, I could almost feel his arm encircling me again, and it made me feel safe, like he’d protected me even though he hadn't had any idea what he needed to protect me from.
As I scrolled through the story, a text popped up on my phone, and my stomach dropped. Speak of the devil: there was Cole, texting me at six in the morning. Obviously, he had seen the photos, so his message would likely be the cancellation I had been expecting.
I closed my eyes briefly to steel myself before opening the text, but to my surprise, he wasn't cancelling. Instead, his message was brief and to the point.
Meet me for breakfast? C
Breakfast had never come up before, so I could only guess that he wanted to talk to me about everything, and I couldn't blame him. We should get it all out in the open.
I'm up now,I responded.Where and when?
Your office. Whenever you're ready.
The suggestion surprised me, but I suppose any other location might be risky. Going out somewhere in public meant that we might be seen.
I'll text you when I'm nearly there.
Although I would have liked to spend a bit more time getting ready for the day, I didn’t want to put the conversation off any longer than necessary. I couldn't imagine that it would be particularly pleasant. As quickly as I reasonably could, I got ready and called myself a taxi to the Anchor offices. When I was ten minutes away, I texted Cole to let him know and he replied that he would leave the Lytton in a few minutes and be with me soon.
After the taxi dropped me off, I stopped at Pret to pick up some things for breakfast, and set about making some tea when I arrived at the office. No sooner had the kettle boiled than my phone buzzed one more time.
