Imaginary Lines (New York Leopards 3)

“Um, expose shady dealings? Why are you so mad? You knew what I was writing about.”

“I didn’t realize how far you were taking it.”

I wasn’t aware I was taking it anywhere unexpected. Loft and the Leopards were conspiring to keep Loft’s bad ratings out of the public eye in order to keep their deal for the athletics facility from falling through; seemed like the expected thing was to expose that. “So what?”

“So!” He raked his hand through his hair. “So I finally found you, and now you’re trying to throw it all away!”

It was my turn to utterly still with incomprehensibility. “What?”

“Don’t you get it? This will piss off everyone.”

“It’ll blow over.”

“I don’t think you get it, Tamar. What the repercussions of publishing this will be.”

I studied him. “Well, hopefully it will be the athletic facility deal falling through.”

“And for you? You’ll have both the Leopards and Loft pissed at you. Do you know what that means? They’ll revoke your press privileges and they’ll slap a heavy fine on anyone who’s caught talking to anyone from Today News.” His eyes were steady. “I’ve seen it before.”

I dropped onto the sofa. “You’re kidding. It’s just one story.”

He stepped up before me. “One story that said two multimillion-dollar industries are cutting underhand deals and ignoring people’s health.”

“Which is true.”

“Yes. But they don’t want that highlighted.”

I stared at him. “So what is boils down to—it boils down to not that the NFL and Loft won’t be allowed to speak with Today Media, but that you won’t be allowed to speak with me. You won’t be allowed to be seen with me. We’re—we’ll be in a public feud.”

He crouched down before me and took my hands in his. “But not a private one.”

I let my head fall forward. “Then what am I supposed to do?”

He stared up at me. I tried to read the brown-black of his eyes, but he finally shut them.

I felt sick. He was going to tell me to scrap the story. I couldn’t scrap it, but how could I run it when it would ruin us? How could I run it when it meant we had to break up?

How could I not run it?

He stood, and I stood too, clinging to his hands. If he told me not to run it, what then? I had to. How could I be with him if he told me to bury this?

But I couldn’t be with him if I didn’t bury this.

So this was checkmate.

He dragged his eyes open. “You run the story. You have to.”

I let out a deep rush of air and my shoulders relaxed. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. “I know.”

He curved one hand around my cheek and tilted my head up. “I’m not letting go of you,” he said fiercely. “We’re going to figure this out.”

I tried to smile. “Are we?”

He groaned, and then his hands pulled me against him and his lips were on mine. Anxiety and fear weighed on us, but I pushed that aside and threw myself into the kiss. Heat ran threw me, a blazing wave of heightened emotion, all combined into a fireball I barely understood.

I drove my hands through his hair, wanting to keep him as close to me as possible, wanting to keep him from ever leaving, wanting nothing to be between us, no space or problems or articles on entire organizations. And if we were close enough physically, maybe I could forget the rest.

His hands trailed down my back, and then came up to frame my face. “I will never give you up.”