CHAPTER FOUR
"Why do you push him away like that?" Blythe asked before Tor got a chance to say anything to her, or even wonder how she'd taken what she'd overheard.
Tor frowned. "I don't push him away."
"I think you do."
"You are entitled to your opinion." Which he had come to realize she would give, whether asked for it, or not.
"You just don't share it." Blythe looked at him like she was trying to figure Tor out. "Why did you decide not to date Lisette?"
"You really don't get the boundary between friendship and friend of the family, do you?" he asked, presently more amused than annoyed by that fact.
Right now, he appreciated Blythe's nosiness and concern for his whole family too much to take issue with it, even in his own head.
"I think I bought the right to ask a few questions by coming to you first."
"You might be right," Tor acknowledged. "I overheard her talking to a friend." He'd gotten an earful and another lesson in trust.
Blythe made a continuing motion with her hand. "Go on."
He rolled his eyes at her. "You really are inquisitive."
"Tell me something I don't know, like what Lisette said that turned you off her," Blythe pressed, her blue eyes filled with curiosity.
"She'd mapped out our relationship before it even happened. The scandalous beginning while I'm still with Else, the tumultuous but short liaison, followed by selling her story to the highest bidder, her social media blowing up and making her an it girl and maybe even a book deal." If his tone was just a tad bitter while he sarcastically listed off Lisette's plans, Tor wasn't sorry for it.
He'd almost fallen for the act, believing Lisette hadn't known who he was when they ran into each other that first class.
The shy glances. The subtle flirting.
All of it.
And he'd been attracted to her, when no one else but Blythe had attracted him since meeting the Travel Vlogger.
"That's really disgusting," Blythe said with a moue of distaste.
"You think? I have always been, and will always be, a target. Letting myself forget that for even a little while was dangerous. Not to mention stupid." He would not repeat that mistake, however.
"You should be able to trust that people are in your life for the reason they say they are." There was a wealth of feeling in Blythe's voice Tor did not think was all for him.
"You make your living behind the camera," he reminded her, refusing to believe her world was any less cutthroat, in its own way. "You know that's not true."
Blythe sighed. "Yes, but it's different when I hear about something like this. She targeted you."
"And my family through me, yes I know." If Blythe hadn't caught wind of Lisette's plans, the schemer would have succeeded in her plans to gain fame via involving his family in a scandal that could have hurt them all.
"You can't be feeling guilty." Blythe surged up from her chair and then stood there like she wasn't sure what she wanted to do. "You did nothing wrong."
"Stupid. Wrong. What's the difference?"
"You weren't stupid either," she insisted passionately. "You were trusting."
"Were being the operative word."
Blythe reached out and touched his arm. "I'm sorry."
Predictably, Tor's body responded to that slight touch way out of proportion. It was all he could do not to growl with impatience at his own folly.