Over the next couple of weeks, Jake, Tate, and I had settled into a sort of routine. Jake, when he wasn’t traveling, would drive Tate to school early in the morning. Then I would leave the office a little early to pick him up and bring him to Jake’s apartment.

Weird wasn’t exactly the word to describe how I felt, picking up a boy that wasn’t even mine from school, helping him with his homework, cooking for him and Jake, and generally playing mom. On the other hand, it felt all too natural. Sometimes, when Jake had a three o’clock game, we would watch him on TV, Tate’s eyes glued to the screen.

And then there were the, ahem, late-night activities.

I couldn’t wait to get this Friday at work over with and have an entire weekend with my boys. As I sat at my office desk sipping my morning coffee, Steve came by and put his hand on my shoulder, materializing out of nowhere like he always did.

“Good morning, Andrea.”

“Morning!” I said, perhaps a little too chirpy. But that was how I felt.

“Well, you’re certainly chipper today. Your skin looks like its glowing.”

I swallowed. “I’ve been using this new lotion.”

Was it that obvious that the amount of orgasms I’d had in the past two weeks were more than I’d had in the past two decades combined?

“Well, whatever it is, it’s working. Hell of a job you’ve been doing on Jake’s re-branding. I have to say, I doubted you at first. But yesterday, Mr. Yerac sent me an email saying he’s been noticing the lack of, uh, pictures of Jake with adult beverages on any of his social media platforms. Not to mention no fights or other shady activities. And those Little League pictures of him coaching those South Side kids—I’ll be damned if that wasn’t a stroke of genius I had to have you go and do that.”

I swallowed, debating if I should challenge him on the big mistake he just made. “The idea that you had?” I asked, for clarification.

He scrunched his eyebrows together like I’d just told him the moon actually was made of cheese. “Yeah, of course. It was my idea that you follow him and see where he was going, right? Anyways, Mr. Yerac has been spreading the word about our PR genius. It wasn’t like this had been my plan or anything, but it turns out that individual re-branding is something our firm could capitalize on. The board is very excited. Well, I gotta run. Keep it up.”

Once Steve left, I exhaled.

“Congratulations. You just got ‘Steved.’” Amy appeared behind me. I spun my chair around to face her.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

She leaned against the wall of my cubicle. “After working here for three years, I can always tell when Steve is about to drop one of his ‘complement-but-really-letting-you-know-that-he’s-taking-credit-for-something-you-did’ bombshells.”

I sighed. “Yeah, that’s a bunch of bull. Bullshit.”

Amy’s eyes widened. “Did you just say...bullshit?”

“Yeah. So?” I returned, still disgruntled.

“So, you don’t swear. You’re the wholesome Tennessee girl. Wow. You must be pretty pissed if you are using that kind of language.”

“Apparently hanging out with a baseball player who swears like a sailor is rubbing off on me.”

Amy’s already wide eyes bugged out. “You’ve been hanging out with The Big Unit? Oh my God, it all makes sense now why you’ve been cutting out of here early. Tell me! I’ve been missing our happy hour together.”

“Oh, it’s not like that,” I said, trying to deflect. “Just been putting in some extra hours, brushing up on my old undergraduate texts, that kind of thing.”

What was I even saying? It was funny that I hadn’t minded sharing details about my relationship with Jake back when we’d just been this casual, undefined thing. But now that I was starting to really care about him, it didn’t seem right to go kissing and telling. There was also the part about us basically raising a foster kid together for the past two weeks. Tate’s aunt was still in a coma, and we’d been visiting her a few times a week. Jake and I had been discussing a long-term plan concerning Tate, but we couldn’t keep Tate indefinitely. So far, we were friends of the family, and that was working, for now.

Amy cleared her throat to get my attention and rolled her eyes at me. She tilted her head toward one shoulder.

“All right. So, if you haven’t been stepping up your relationship with Jake, then who are you seeing?”

That took me by surprise. “What do you mean?” I asked, cautiously. “There’s no one else…”

She motioned to my right hand, at the ring I was wearing.

“Your claddagh ring. The point of the heart is pointed toward your wrist.” She raised a brow and smiled. “Or was that a fashion oversight this morning?”

I blushed. The way I’d unconsciously put it on this morning indicated that I was in a relationship. I didn’t wear much jewelry other than my cross pendant, but the ring had been my mother’s. She’d given it to me when I was young, before the divorce, when she still believed in love. I hadn’t worn it since Grant and I broke up, and I’d started wearing it again after meeting Jake. I guess I was feeling…romantic, or something.

“Look, Andrea, I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble here. I’m just asking for you to throw me a little true-life romance.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’ve been reading enough romance novels lately to get my book boyfriend fix, but I need something real.”

I nodded. “Sorry. I should know better than to bullshit a bullshitter.”

She smiled at that.

“Well, how about this,” I started, trying to suppress a huge grin. “I hardly get any sleep these days because The Big Unit keeps me up all night.”

Amy looked up at the ceiling, as if saying a silent prayer.

“Doesn’t he have any brothers? Anything?” she asked, pleading with me. I thought for a moment. Jake had told me about the seventeen children his father had, but that was for my ears only.

“Sorry, he’s only got a sister. She sounds pretty badass though, from what I’ve heard.”

Amy nodded and pursed her lips.

“A sister? Hmm. Well, maybe...” She looked at me, gauging my reaction.

“You thinking about playing for the other team?” I ribbed. By now, I knew her tricks.

“Just kidding around. Although with my boy problems, sometimes I wish I didn’t have to deal with men. But what can I say? I do like them for some reason, God only knows why. Anyway, I gotta run,” Amy said. “Let me know when you can finally have a happy hour and tell me about how perfect Jake’s abs are again. Bring pics. And videos.”

I rolled my eyes. She was shameless, and in a way, her honesty was refreshing to someone like me who came from such a repressed background. Maybe I was a free spirit at heart.

My phone buzzed on my desk. I slid my finger over the screen to open it. My stomach dropped when I saw the name on the screen.

Grant: Hey. How’s your new boyfriend?

I hesitated. I thought I’d blocked him. And this wasn’t a conversation I wanted to be having.

Me: How’s your new girlfriend?

Grant: Don’t evade the question. So you think you know him pretty well?

Me: Why are you even talking to me? You know we’re done.

Grant: I thought that was what you would say. Go to The Yawper Sports Gossip site.

Me: Why should I?

Grant: Fine. Don’t. You’ll have to deal with it eventually though…

Hesitantly, I pulled up the site in my browser. The headline I saw made me want to jump out of my skin.

Jake “The Big Unit” Napleton: Community Hero, or Child Kidnapper? The byline underneath was, The answer might surprise you.

The page view counter was 500,000 and rising every second.

On the main page, there was a picture of Jake dropping Tate off at school in the morning. There wasn’t even any substantive content in the short paragraph. Something about Tate’s aunt and that his family was looking for him. His family? Since when? Tate hadn’t been able to recall any other family members other than his cousin. Marissa had been helping us locate that cousin and his aunt’s boyfriend for information, but she had found nothing so far.

My phone buzzed. It was Grant’s number. As much as I didn’t want to talk with him, I had to pick up and find out what he was up to. I slid my hand across the touchscreen and put the phone to my ear.

“Grant, you’re a fucking asshole,” I said, seething.

“Honey. Baby. Don’t say that. You know we’re destined to be together. And I’m not an asshole—Jake’s the asshole. You don’t believe he really enjoys doing any of that community service shit, do you? It’s all an act. The guy’s a scumbag gangbanger.”

My blood boiled at Grant’s nerve. “You wouldn’t know jack shit about Jake. Just like you don’t know jack shit about me.”

“Whoa, honey. I don’t think you should be talking like that. That’s not very ladylike of you.”

“I don’t understand why you think I still give a damn what you think, Grant.”

Still on the phone, I scrolled farther down the article, trying to find the author’s name. These damn Yawper articles were the worst. They pretended they were above the tabloids, but no reputable journalist would ever put their name on them. Finally, I saw a source name.

Frankie F.

Where had I seen that name before?

My blood suddenly ran cold.

One of Grant’s fraternity brothers in college was named Frank Feathers. They’d been tight for years. The guy was as obnoxious as Grant.

“Grant, did you…was this your doing?”

I heard him chuckle through the phone, a low, maniacal laugh.

“Andrea, honey, you haven’t been seeing things my way for a while. So I used some of the connections I had to make you see things my way. Jake Napleton is a fraud. You need to face the facts. I’m the guy you’re meant to be with, not him.”

“You have no idea what you’ve done,” I whispered, horrified at how truly delusional Grant was, that he’d destroy another man’s reputation, his life. And with it, mine.

“Just come back to me, Andrea, and we won’t release any more dirt,” he cajoled. “What are you doing next week? I’m going to be in town for my—”

I hung up the phone, vibrating with anger, but also with helplessness. If I didn’t go back to Grant, he’d make up more bullshit about Jake and make sure everyone knew about it. There had to be a way to fix this. But how?

Fuck him.

Fuck Grant Newman.

I stood up when I started hearing a loud murmur break out in the office and phones starting to ring like crazy. I peered over the wall of my cubicle, catching Amy’s shocked gaze from where her cubicle was on the other end of the office. She pointed behind me. I turned and saw Steve, face redder and angrier than I’d ever witnessed, literally running toward me.

“Andrea, what the hell is this! Are these pictures for real?” he shouted. “Child kidnapper? And is that you and Jake kissing?!”

What? I tried to remain calm, but I was just as panicked as Steve, and still reeling from my conversation with Grant. “I can explain…” I leaned over my computer and scrolled down to the bottom of the page. I hadn’t thought this could get any worse, but it did. There was a picture of Jake and me from our night at Charlie’s Bar.

And it didn’t show a professional setting at all. Not to mention the fact that my outfit the next morning had been noted by my co-workers, and now they knew why I’d dressed so sexy when I usually dressed conservatively for work. The image itself was clearly from a phone camera and shot at a weird angle.

I knew there was something out of place with that asshole sitting at Charlie’s Bar that night.

Had he been trailing me for a picture? How had he even known I’d be there with Jake? Could it have been Charlie? Somehow I knew it wasn’t. This was deliberate. And the fact that Grant had texted me about this…

“Well?” Steve said, impatient.

I looked Steve right in the eye. “You’re not going to believe this, but—”

“You’re right, I won’t. This is pointless,” Steve said, cutting me off. “I’m done listening to you. You’re done here. I want you gone immediately.”

I sat down, stunned, still trying to process all of this. “Seriously, Steve, I—”

“This is an utter disaster,” Steve went on, shouting at me and drawing the attention of everyone on the floor. “Not only are you done here at Green PR, good luck finding a PR firm in this city that’ll hire you.”

Steve rubbed his face, still livid. “Like I said, I want you out of this office, effective immediately. Or I’ll have security escort you down.”

I nodded at his retreating back, the wind completely knocked out of me.