He normally didn’t have any patience for the troubles of the children of the city’s elite. Connor and Vivi had been the exceptions that had slowly brought him around to a different view. They hadn’t sat on their trust funds or relied on family connections to coast through in a perfect life. They’d worked hard: Connor with his music career and Vivi with her art gallery and work with every non-profit organization in the parish. That he respected.
If Lorelei had hit him with anything else …
Damn. He felt himself buckling. When had he become such a sucker for a damsel in distress?
“Who did the write-up?”
Lorelei looked relieved as he relented. She glanced at the article for its byline. “Evelyn Jones.”
He knew Evelyn slightly through the newspaper. Her true calling was in tabloid gossip, and the New Orleans society pages were the closest she’d gotten. “Was she a guest at the wedding?”
Lorelei seemed to be thinking. “She was there. I’m pretty sure she left after the cake-cutting, though.”
“Then she’s reporting hearsay. Everyone in the bar that night was just as far gone as we were.”
“Except for the servers—”
“And the one who gave up that little tidbit probably got a nice fat tip for the story.”
“That’s a terrible—”
He shrugged off her outrage. “That’s the way it works. For a hundred bucks I could get a source to swear they once saw Mother Theresa doing keg stands. Times are tough all around. Money talks.”
Lorelei looked outraged. “That’s dishonest.”
“That’s tabloid journalism for you.”
“And you wonder why—”
“I don’t wonder anything, Lorelei. It is what it is.”
“So you’d sell someone’s reputation out just for money?” She looked worried. He assumed she’d only just now realized that he now had quite the story about her to sell. He wouldn’t even have to lie or embellish it, either.
“Calm down. I see no need to spread the news, and I certainly don’t need the money.”
Lorelei shot him a look he couldn’t decipher. Then she sighed and sank back onto the couch. “So how do I disprove something when I don’t know how much of it is true? I’m not a very good liar.” The corners of her mouth turned down as she confessed that like it was a character flaw.
“We did not engage in any PDA at the bar. It was later that …” He trailed off as Lorelei flushed that rosy color. “We laugh it off. That’s it. We and the others were just having a good time—as one does at a party—and any other claims have been exaggerated for effect.”
Lorelei started to nod, but caught herself. “Wait a second …” A suspicious look began to pull her eyebrows together. “How are you so certain that there was no PDA in the bar? You told me it was all fuzzy from the tequila.”
Damn. She’d caught that. “Fuzzy, yes. Total blackout … no.”
“So you do … remember?” The suspicion on her face turned to horror, and then that rosy embarrassed color she’d had since he’d brought up PDA deepened to an amazing shade of red. She crossed her arms over her chest again, but this time it was more a gesture of modesty, like he could see through her clothes. “Oh, my God. It was bad enough to know it happened even though I didn’t remember it. But to know that you do and I don’t …”
Now he felt like some kind of pervert, which made absolutely no sense at all. And he had no idea what he should say to take that vulnerable, disgusted-with-herself look off her face.
“Did I—? Did we …?” Lorelei pushed to her feet and picked up her purse. “Oh, God. I have to leave now.”
“It was just sex, Lorelei.”
“Oh, well, that completely alleviates my mind. Thank you.”
“You want a rundown? A play-by-play?”
Her eyes widened. “You could provide that?”
He let his silence answer her question.
She swallowed hard and cleared her throat. “Oh, this just keeps getting better and better.”
Now he felt like a twisted pervert. “Lorelei …”
She squared her shoulders. “I think you’re right, Donovan. We should just ignore the innuendo and laugh it off if anyone has the bad manners to bring it up. Forgetting it ever happened doesn’t seem to be an option anymore—at least for you—but we’ll go with pretending it didn’t.” Lorelei grabbed her purse from the couch and a bitter laugh escaped. “I mean, who’s really going to believe it, right? Me and you? Please. I can barely believe it. It’s absurd.”