Dirty Sexy Alphas (Twenty Book Box Set) - Hannah Ford Page 0,252

it, and he’d even said that it was real. And I was more confused than ever.

Worse, I realized I was totally in love with Leo Armstrong. I was in love with a man that everyone in the world knew as The Panty Dropper. What was I supposed to do with that?

Once dressed, Leo took my hand. “Want something to drink? Water, wine?”

“Water,” I said.

I sat on the couch out in the living room, looking out the window at the twinkling view. Leo brought me a glass of water and I took a sip and set it on the coffee table.

I decided now was a good moment to bring up my new status to Leo.

“Did you hear that it’s official?” I asked as he sat down beside me. “I’m now known as Leo Armstrong’s mystery women. My picture was up online yesterday.”

“That grainy thing?” he said. “That was nothing. Doesn’t bother me. How are you feeling about it?” He tucked my hair behind my ear.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s weird.”

“Those tabloid vultures trying to get a piece of my private life,” he said with clear disdain. “We can be more careful, if it makes you uncomfortable, but I try not to let them rule my life.”

“No, it’s fine,” I mumbled, a sense of extreme guilt piercing the armor of my chest. I was one of those tabloid vultures, as much as I didn’t want to be. And here he was, trying to offer me protection from the very thing I’d become.

“Come here,” he said, pulling me close to him.

My head rested comfortably on his chest, my leg wrapped over his. He brushed my hair off my forehead and kissed me there, something he’d done before and that I loved so much. I snuggled in closer to him.

“You should come over every night,” he said.

“I can come back tomorrow night.”

“Come back every night,” he said. Leo kissed me again and whispered, “Stay tonight.”

I wanted to, with every inch of my being. I didn’t want to leave his side. But I knew I needed to get home. I wanted to stay in the foggy afterglow of lovemaking with Leo but I needed to step out and clear my head and figure out what, exactly, I was doing. My feelings for him had clearly grown into something that felt unstoppable, and I had to figure out what that meant in terms of my job—and my entire life.

“I’m going to go home,” I said. “But not right now. That okay?”

He squeezed me tight and said, “Stay as long as you like.”

We ended up in his bed—sleeping. Our bodies tangled, our faces close, breathing in each other. I’d never slept so peacefully in my life. Little did I know, it was all about to change.

Chapter 18

“It’s been long enough,” Kait said. “Time to write.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, scrambling through the papers on my desk to find the drive-in story. For the past couple of weeks at work, Kait had me doing total low-level work—coming up with cover lines, writing the snappy one-lines in the table of contents, and fact checking beauty product spellings. “I still have Pam’s notes. I can polish what I have with her marks in mind.”

“What are you talking about?” Kait said. She always spoke to me like I was her younger, annoying sister—the one she had absolutely no love for.

“My New Girl story? The drive-in piece?”

“I told you. That’s scrapped.”

“But I thought since no one…”

She leaned closer to me. “The Leo story. Jesus, the one thing I’ve asked you to focus on. Our next issue goes to press at the end of the week so it’s time to get all your little notes and mementos and whatever else you’ve been saving, and write the story.”

“Does this story have to be for this issue? Can’t it go in a future edition?” I asked, hoping against hope for a reprieve, a pardon from the warden. Anything to stop this from happening right now.

Kait gave me a death glare. “I know you’re stalling, Sophie. But it’s become more than clear to me that whatever little grains of information Leo Armstrong’s giving you are not improving with time. He’s obviously grown bored of you, he’s stringing you along and there’s nothing to hold out for.”

“I’m doing my best,” I say, my tone more defensive than I intended it to be. Of course, it was a lie. I hadn’t done my best for Kait and the magazine—I’d left out all the juicy stuff and tried to