Roman-2(Lane Brothers, Book 5)(167)
Her stomach clenched. She stood and opened the curtains to be confronted with the sight of the paparazzi filing down her street in pursuit of Thomas. His beautiful face was contorted with anguish. As soon as the paps noticed her peering from the window, camera lights began flashing. She ducked back out of view, her heart racing.
What is he doing here?
She heard him knock at the door.
“Sasha,” he called. “We need to talk. Please.”
She went to the door and pressed her eye to the peep hole. The paps were going crazy, taking photo after photo of the scene like hungry vultures pecking at a carcass.
“Go away. You’re causing a scene. Or is that the point?”
Thomas looked crestfallen. “You think I want any of this?”
“I don’t know what to think, but I’m pretty sure you don’t hate it. In fact, I’d go as far as to say you thrive off it. You took that photo in the restaurant yourself, didn’t you?”
“No! Sasha, this is what the media is like. This is what they do. They take something and twist it and blow it all out of proportion. For all I know, Alicia could have planted that bloody fake camera last time she—”
“You took Alicia to your house?”
Thomas snapped his mouth shut.
“You said she didn’t mean anything to you,” Sasha stammered. “But you still took her to your house?”
“That isn’t the point. I didn’t do it. I didn’t trick you.”
“If it wasn’t you, then who was it? Your servant? Oh wait, you’re too fucking humble for one of them.”
“You have to believe me.”
“Why should I believe anything you say?
“Because there’s another video! Taken in the bedroom. You know I would never….”
The scars. Thomas would never show the world his scars, never in a million years.
“Sasha, someone’s out to get us,” he added. “Someone’s doing this to drive us apart. I don’t know how it happened, but you have to believe me.”
Sasha pulled her phone out of her pocket. It took her less than a minute to find proof that what Thomas was saying was real. There was the second sex tape. Accompanying it were a thousand cruel articles about Thomas, calling him Quasimodo, The Elephant Man…
Sasha opened the door. Thomas tumbled in. Then she slammed it shut, blocking out the paparazzi.
Thomas swept her into his arms and pressed his mouth against hers.
“God I’ve missed you,” he said. “Please know I would never do anything to hurt you.”
Sasha’s breath was ragged. “But who did it? Who would do this to you?”
A sudden moment of recognition sparked in Thomas’s eyes. He looked at her and said simply, “Crystal.”
Sasha gasped. “Of course,” she said under her breath.
Crystal seemed to know her brother’s every whereabouts. If she’d found him in the hotel during his interviews was it so far-fetched to think she’d tipped off the media about his presence at the restaurant? Two hundred dollars for a photo, Thomas had said. Pretty tempting for a junky. And she must have been on her way in to get her secretly planted cameras when she’d bumped into her yesterday morning.
“Now do you believe me?” Thomas said exasperated. He took Sasha’s hands in his and squeezed them.
“Yes.”
Just then the stairs creaked. Chris had appeared on the landing, a suitcase in either hand. “Ready?” he said.
Thomas looked up. His face blanched. Sasha’s stomach plummeted to her feet, as the only two men she’d ever had sex with stood staring at her.
Chapter Eight
“Well this is awkward.”
Thomas Lloyd lent his back against the wall. With his expensive suit and perfectly coiffed hair, the English actor looked completely out of place in Sasha’s shabby hallway. Meanwhile, Chris, her high school sweetheart, stood at the top of the staircase, wearing a devastated expression.
Sasha looked from one man to the other, from the man she’d once loved to the man who had made her feel things she never knew she could. They couldn’t have been more different.
Just moments earlier, she’d told Chris she would leave Chicago with him, go back to her mother’s home and escape the media circus that her leaked sex tape with Thomas had created. But then Thomas had turned up on her door step and she’d learned that he hadn’t leaked the tape for publicity at all, but that his junky sister had done it for money.
Now everything had changed.
The paps started banging on the door and calling out Thomas’s name. He hardly seemed to notice. His gaze was fixed on Chris.
“This is the ex boyfriend, I presume,” he said coolly in his suave English accent.