Blitz (Blast Brothers #3) - Sabrina Stark Page 0,97

be alone."

I tried to laugh. "So it wasn't because of the hammer?"

"You mean your dad's?" he said with a laugh. "Nah. It'll take more than a hammer to scare me off."

Now this, I believed.

And speaking of believing things, I decided right then and there, I was going to forget everything I'd just read in that book.

I didn't know Angelique. But I did know Chase. And in spite of his reputation, he'd been nothing but wonderful – well, ever since becoming my boyfriend, anyway.

It was time for me to return the favor – to give him the benefit of the doubt and to defend him the way he'd defended my sister.

Unfortunately, after the book's release, this became more difficult than I ever would've imagined – and Chase wasn't making it any easier.

Chapter 65

Chase

I fucking hated this.

The book had been out for nearly two weeks now, but the media storm wasn't dying down. For myself, I didn’t give two shits what the reporters thought of me.

But for Mina's sake, I cared plenty.

By now, it was early July, and Mina had spent the last two weekends fielding questions that had nothing to do with the campaign or the festivals. Instead, the reporters had been asking her about orgies and harems and fuck knows what else.

For this, I had no one to blame but myself

I should've known better. I should have never taken up with someone like Angelique Delmonico in the first place. But that wasn't why I was kicking myself tonight. I was kicking myself because of my own asinine idea to make Mina the campaign spokesperson.

Yeah, she was doing a stellar job, but I still hated to see her hassled, especially when I was the one who'd thrown her to the wolves.

It was a mistake I was trying to correct, but Mina wasn't having it. Just now in the hotel room, I'd told her that it was time to consider bringing in someone else to field the questions.

She asked, "What do you mean?"

It was near midnight, and both of us were tired and ticked-off. Or more accurately, she was tired, and I was ticked. On the TV in our hotel room, we'd just watched Mina being grilled on the local eleven o'clock news.

The segment had been filmed earlier from the Ardmore County fairgrounds. And even though Mina had done a nice job of steering the conversation back to the festival, it hurt like hell to see her face whenever she was asked about the book.

It bothered her, which meant it bothered me.

In the hotel room, I told her, "It's time to bring in someone else, like I just said."

"But who?"

"I'll find someone. Don't worry."

She shook her head. "So…you're firing me?"

"No. You're being promoted."

She gave me a skeptical look. "To what position?"

"I don't know. I'll think of one."

"So it's not a promotion at all," she said. "Admit it. You just don’t like me doing interviews."

"No kidding."

She made a sound of frustration. "But if that's the case, why did you choose me in the first place?"

"Because I thought they'd be asking you about festivals, not my sex life."

"Oh, come on," she said. "That's not true. You remember back in the beginning, right? You told me up-front about the book. You even warned me that the going might get tough."

"Yeah, so?"

"So you can't exactly claim that you weren't expecting this."

She was right.

And she was wrong.

Yeah, I'd been expecting the tough questions, but I hadn't expected to feel so pissed off on her behalf.

I wanted to protect her. And now, to watch her trying to protect me, well, it just seemed wrong, that's all.

I told her, "Alright. If you don't want me to hire someone else, I'll handle the questions."

She shook her head. "But you can't. Remember in the beginning? We agreed that it was better to have the spokesperson deal with it, not you personally."

"Yeah, well, I was wrong."

"No, you weren't," she said. "Come on, Chase. Just think about it. You know I'm doing a good job."

She was right. She was doing a good job. The audience loved her, and not only because of her sweet face and honest blue eyes. Whenever a reporter hammered Mina too hard, the reporter looked bad, not Mina – which meant that I looked better by association.

If Mina didn't mean something to me, I'd say the campaign was working out perfectly. But I cared about her, maybe more than I was willing to admit.

Don't get me wrong. I wasn't in love or anything. That was for other guys, not