The Pool Boy - Nikki Sloane Page 0,88

naïvely hoped he’d tell me I was wrong, that it wasn’t true.

But I was met with nothing but silence.

My tone was pure bitterness. “If you need help jogging your memory, go check TMZ.”

He sounded desperate. “Okay, yeah. I went back to her place, but you need to believe me—nothing happened.”

I wasn’t Erika Graham anymore because I’d become a volcano of fury. “Are you fucking kidding me? You just lied, and now you’re asking me to believe you?”

It hurt to breathe. He was supposed to be better than Clark. Troy had told me he didn’t understand people who cheated, but . . . had it just been bullshit? I should have known better. He’d lied to his mom so many times, lying had to come easy for him now. And I hadn’t just participated in lying with him, I’d actively encouraged it.

God, I was so stupid.

“Where are you?” There was louder rustling as he scurried out of bed. “Warbler? I’m coming over.”

The agent side of me stepped in and took control. “No. We’re not discussing this while I’m at work.”

His tone was gruff. “See you in twenty minutes.”

The call disconnected before I could protest. I dropped my phone onto my desktop, clenched my fists, and paced my office. The image of him leaving Stella’s house this morning was burned into my brain, but if I needed to reference it again, the notification from TMZ was right there on my lock screen.

I had no choice but to read the article, and then critically examine both his and Stella’s posts on social media to glean all the facts I could. I needed to know in case he planned to feed me more lies.

As soon as I heard heavy footsteps marching up the front porch and the main door push open, I put on a stern expression and came out of my office.

Troy looked . . . disheveled. His t-shirt had wrinkles like he’d scooped it up off his bedroom floor and pulled it on, along with the khaki shorts he wore. His hair was wild—flattened on one side and sticking up in other places. Dark circles hung beneath his tired eyes.

Despite it, he still looked so damn good to me. This rumpled styling was caused by an urgent need to see me, and it was hard not to respond to it. But the business side of me had a very different reaction.

Charlotte lifted her head and blinked in surprise. “Oh, hey, Troy.”

He didn’t acknowledge her at all. His gaze swept the room, found me, and locked on.

I flung a finger at the door he’d just come through. “Outside with me.”

It was overcast today, and there was electricity in the air. Rain would be coming at any second, and it gave me a good excuse to get him back in his car and out of sight.

“Erika—”

My voice was clipped and professional. “We’ll talk in your Jeep.”

Frustration etched his face, but he agreed to it by leading me down the sidewalk to where he’d parked. I said nothing when he held open the passenger door for me, I just climbed in. He closed the door with a loud thump, then rounded the backend of the SUV and got seated behind the wheel.

The moment his door was shut, speckles of rain dotted his windshield, like the storm had politely held off for us.

“I’m not your agent or manager anymore,” I said, “but you cannot ever go out in public again looking like this, you understand? The tabloids will be all over you now because of this story. The last guy Stella dated—”

“Stop.” He turned in his seat as much as he could to face me. “When the bar closed last night, the party was still going, so Stella invited us back to her place. That’s all this was. We hung out in her studio, playing music and talking about the industry.” His brow furrowed. “It got so late, she said it was cool if I wanted to crash in one of her guest rooms.”

I had no idea what expression I was making, but the concern in his blue eyes deepened.

“I’ll prove it. Her guest room has these huge fucking silver curtains and the bed’s one of those memory foam ones where it’s hard as a rock until you sink down in.”

I blinked slowly, considering his story, but was skeptical. He’d said Stella had invited us and not me. The only photo published of someone leaving her house this morning was him, but that didn’t necessarily mean