28. Chapter 28

Chapter 28

A week later Cleo was playing Backgammon after breakfast with her mom when her phone started ringing. She ignored it, but when it immediately began to ring again she got up and checked who it was. Bea was calling.

“What’s up, Bumble Bea?” she asked cheerily.

Bea’s voice was low and hard. “Cleo. Have you seen it yet?”

“Seen what?”

“Hold on, I’m texting you a link.”

Cleo stood, her heart pounding double-time as she waited for a link to come through. She fumbled clicking on it and froze when she read the title: American Heiress Jilts Fiance? at the Altar. Where Does She Disappear To, and With Whom? Below it was a picture of her at a party that must have been taken last New Year’s Eve; she recognized the silver dress she’d worn. She had a champagne flute raised in a toast, but the angle made her look like she was the only one boozing it up.

Cleo barely registered Patty coming to stand beside her, putting her arm around her in support. She didn’t ask any questions, just held her while Cleo felt unsteady on her feet.

Cleo’s eyes flew across the words, each one a punch to her gut. Phrases jumped out at her. Claudette Gilbert became engaged to Jameson Kellerman against her will … forced into it by her overbearing father … just before the ceremony she bolted…no one has heard from her since. What followed were plenty of speculations as to where she was, from a report she was hiding out in a bodega in South America to a “friend” who said she was sure that Megan and Harry had taken her in. It was true Cleo had met Megan and Harry before, but they were hardly people Cleo would run to for help.

Cleo checked the byline to see who wrote the article and who was printing it. No surprise that it was a tabloid, one that had made her life difficult in the past. It was the name of the author that robbed the breath from her lungs.

Clark Collins.

Was that her Clark? She quickly googled his name, and a picture of an unsmiling face she knew well appeared. Cleo’s knees gave out; her mother all but carried her to the couch to sit down.

The realization hit her like a 200-pound mastiff: Clark was a journalist. For tabloids. He’d worked on more serious news pieces as the articles she’d read earlier proved, but his main shtick was probably writing salacious tabloid articles about people like Cleo. People he had no way of knowing intimate details about except by tricking them into exposing their life history to him. He’d known who she was from the start. Cleo knew that now. He’d recognized her in the taxi and saw an opportunity to make a lot of money in a once-in-a-lifetime expose? that no one else could get. He hadn’t been going to Texas for any personal reason; he’d gone along to wheedle information out of Cleo that he could send home to his boss.

Cleo gripped her phone, not realizing Bea was still talking to her until her mom took it from her hand and told Bea she’d have Cleo call her back. The second she ended the call and set it on the couch, it began ringing again. Cleo closed her eyes, already anticipating who it was. She glanced down to see his name flashing on the screen. Her traitorous heart leapt at the sight, only to clunk to the bottom of her chest as she realized what this meant.

Patty moved to grab the phone, but Cleo got to it first. Maybe this was all just a bad dream and Clark didn’t have anything to do with this article. His calling her now was just a coincidence.

She answered. “Is your last name Collins?” She’d meant to give him the benefit of the doubt, but in the end she just had to know the truth.

“Cleo. It’s not what you think.” So, this was no coincidence.

“Answer my question.”

“Yes, it’s Collins…”

“Then it’s exactly what I think. You sold me out.”

“No, I didn’t. Rather, I didn’t mean to. Oh, this is a nightmare.”

Cleo huffed. “Did you or did you not write those words?”

There was a pause before Clark responded, “I did write some of them.”

“Some of them?”

“They were never supposed to get printed.”

“You, a tabloid journalist, were hired to get a story out of a mark–”

“–you weren’t a mark! And I’m not a tabloid writer!”

“–which you did, yet the story wasn’t supposed to be printed? What am I missing here, Clark? The truth, please.” If you’re capable of that , she didn’t add.

“The truth is…complicated.” He sighed. “Yes, I recognized you when I first saw you in the cab and knew what kind of story I had on my hands. So I made a quick decision to take you to the airport and then followed you to the car rental and finagled my way into joining you on your road trip.”

It was exactly as she feared. “With what intention?”

“With the intention of using your story for my benefit.”

“I guess I don’t see what I’m missing then.” She felt so fired up she wouldn’t be surprised if her hair suddenly ignited.

“In the end I never intended to sell it. After I got to know you, I knew I couldn’t.”

“So how did these intimate details of my life end up on the front page of The Whistler ?”

Clark blew out a breath. “That’s where it gets complicated.”

Cleo was certainly not interested in complicated right now. She didn’t want excuses that might vindicate him. “You know what? I don’t want to know. The story is out; it doesn’t really matter how. I hope you got well paid for it, because it just cost you this friendship.”

“Cleo, wait–!” Cleo didn’t wait. She ended the call, then turned off her phone and tossed it across the room. There was nothing Clark could say that would fix this. He could tell her he had a gun to his head if he didn’t hand over her story and it wouldn’t matter. He made the choices that led to this outcome, and she wasn’t going to let him explain why he had to do it. He’d made the proverbial bed; she didn’t feel sorry for him when he didn’t like how lumpy and uncomfortable it was, now that he had to lie in it.

Cleo’s face fell into her hands as she realized the vault door she’d just slammed on a relationship she had come to value above almost all others. The betrayal cut sharp, cleaving a person out of Cleo’s life that she thought might become a permanent part of it. Now she was going to have to face a future without Clark in it. As Cleo’s mom’s arms wrapped around her shoulders, her body began to shake. Why did every good thing that came to Cleo end up failing her somehow? At least she had one of those good things back in her life again, and she was determined to hold on to this one.