Sarah is still asleep when I wake up, so I slide gingerly out of her bed and grab my clothes before padding into the kitchen. As always, my first order of business in the morning is to open my laptop and find out what was going on in the business world while I was asleep. I suppose Sarah’s friend Jenna would call that being a workaholic, but I figure I deserve it after taking an entire weekend off.

Nothing earth-shattering in the markets, so I flip to the social media sites to see what the Monday buzz is. It’s amazing how much business gossip happens via people with anonymous accounts who share things they really shouldn’t. I’ve used it many times to determine my next acquisition.

I raise my coffee to my lips just as I come across the hashtag #PinkBook. Then again. And again. Then I see a photo of Sarah and me kissing beside the Preston estate pool. Thirty seconds later, the cup is still hovering below my mouth, untasted.

Shit. This isn’t good.

“Hey, you,” Sarah says sleepily as she enters the kitchen. She’s in a tank top and pink satin shorts that give me a thrill down there despite the seriousness of the situation.

“Morning.” I try not to let my concern show. “You should probably grab some coffee and come look at this. There’s something going on you need to see.”

She gives me a look but does as I ask. Once she’s next to me, I point to what I’ve been reading on the screen and she scans it for a full thirty seconds. Her brow pulls down further with each passing second.

“What the hell is going on?”

“It looks like that photo of us made the rounds and some people took it as a sign that I’m getting involved in PinkBook.”

Her eyes narrow on the screen. “’Secret deal?’ What? That’s ridiculous! ‘Leveraged buyout’? Oh, come on!”

“I know, it’s crazy. You really should get out in front of this.”

“Wait a minute,” she says and grabs her phone from the counter. A few seconds later she thumbs the screen, peers at it for a moment and snarls.

“That son of a bitch.” She turns the screen to me. “Darryl Lawrence apparently didn’t like my response to him yesterday.”

She brings me up to speed on the exchange between them and the board, and my gut clenches. I warned her about Lawrence, but she’s still not taking him seriously. But do I say anything to her? Sarah built PinkBook, and she’s as smart as anyone I’ve ever met.

“These rumors have people talking about a sell-off,” I say.

“Who’s saying that?”

“Anonymous business accounts on social media. They’re pretty much gossip columnists for the high roller crowd. Think Perez Hilton if he owned a corporation and hung out with executives instead of reality TV stars.”

“So what, then?” Her fists are on her hips. “They’ve been talking to Darryl?”

“He’s the most likely source. From what I can piece together here, there’s already been a few major shareholders shopping their PinkBook stock around on the QT.”

Sarah’s eyes are blazing, but she simply shrugs.

“So they sell stocks. Someone will buy them. That’s how business works.”

Except that’s not really how it works. When rumors fly, people get nervous and start selling shares at bargain basement prices. That’s when guys like me swoop in and pick them up for pennies on the dollar. But I hold my tongue and go back to my screen.

I scan a few news sites, and suddenly I wish I had just grabbed Sarah and taken her back to bed instead.

“Ah, shit. This isn’t good.”

Her eyes widen. “What? Tell me.”

“One of the top bloggers is saying that an anonymous source told him the Pinkbook user data showed up in a search of the database of a criminal third party that’s under investigation by the FBI.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” she snaps. “That’s crazy! I’m the CEO and I haven’t heard anything about that!”

I stroke her leg in an attempt to calm her down. “I know it’s all rumors, babe, but you really should get out in front if it all. As crazy as it sounds, emotions can have a serious effect on the markets. And it could really affect PinkBook’s new subscriber numbers.”

“How am I supposed to do that? The FBI won’t comment on an active investigation like this. They wouldn’t even tell me if there is an investigation. Besides, you said it yourself: this is all rumors.”

“True, but in this era of instant communication, a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth gets its shoes on. Maybe a news conference—”

“I’m not doing that,” she says flatly. “I’ll meet with my staff today and tell them what’s going on, and we’ll put all our focus on rolling out the new content we’ve been working on. Once we get that out there, our brand will solidify again. It’s all a timing issue; we went too long without anything new coming out. That’s a classic mistake for online media, but companies recover from it every day.”

She’s right, but other companies collapse under those circumstances. I know from personal experience: a lot of the companies I recycle started out as rising stars, but a series of missteps pulled them out of the sky and smashed them against the hard ground. That’s how I found them and put them out of their misery.

Sarah has commandeered my laptop and is scanning the sites herself. She’s holding it in, but her eyes tell me she’s ready to kick ass and take names over this. It’s her natural response when she’s challenged to a fight, and I’m pretty sure it goes back to when she was a girl getting pushed around by her brother. But there’s no way I’m going to say that. Stella used to always tell me that the best way to get through life without getting beaten up was to keep your fingers away from other people’s buttons.

But I can’t just sit back and let this thing take her down with it. If she handles this the right way, PinkBook can weather it, but if she doesn’t… I don’t want to think about what could happen to the company that she put her heart and soul into. Especially if my suspicions about what’s really happening here are true: Lawrence is creating all of this chaos in the hopes of buying up PinkBook shares at fire sale prices via a shell corporation. It’s a shell game con that he thinks will save him when I finally take over his company.

And, of course, it’s revenge against the two of us for having the audacity to defy him.

“Look, Sarah, I’m just suggesting that you approach these bloggers and give them your side of the story. The sooner you do it, the sooner these rumors can be—”

“I said I’m not doing that.” She levels a cool gaze at me. “I’m not going to give credence to these rumors by addressing them. My GrandMa-Ma used to tell me that when you pitch mud, you get just as much on yourself as on the other person. So I’m going to go into the office today with my head held high, rally the troops and get to work. Is that all right with you?”

My gut twinges at that last comment. I know she’s under a lot of stress and she’s not trying to be hurtful, but that doesn’t change how it landed. The challenge in her stare is obvious, but under that I can also see fear. What am I supposed to do here? Keep pushing to fix her problem, or let her deal with it herself? It’s like that old story about the lady and the tiger, where you lose no matter which choice you make.

Finally, I nod. “You’re right, you know what PinkBook needs. And I know you don’t need some white knight riding in to save the damsel in distress.” I give her a half-grin. “You can’t blame a guy for trying.”

The relief on her face is obvious as she runs a palm along my stubbly cheek.

“Thank you,” she says. “And I appreciate your concern. But I’ve got this.”

I lay my hand on top of hers. “I know. Just remember, you’ve got me, too.”

Her eyes glisten in the morning sun streaming in through the kitchen window, and her smile makes me want to take her back to bed and lay her down, softly and gently. But now isn’t the time. She’s got a company to save, and I have to let her go do it.

I just hope we both don’t end up regretting the choices we just made.