“Anyway,” she adds thoughtfully. “There’s no way this kid will be anything but hot. Whether it’s Wyatt’s or Grayson’s, the potential gene pool is frankly almost unfairly attractive to the rest of us.”
“Please, stop talking.”
“It’s true,” she insists. “You’ll end up with the cutest spawn on planet earth. Your eyes, Wyatt’s hair… your spunk, his smile… Can you imagine?”
Yes. I can, actually. That’s what makes this so hard.
“Don’t worry, babe.” Masters catches her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Our kids will be cuter.”
She blanches. “We’ve been together a month. You have to stop saying things like that.”
“Nah,” he says, merging left onto the highway. “Don’t think I will.”
I giggle.
She tosses her hands up. “He’s impossible.”
I start to say something else, but my words are drowned out by the sound of an engine revving close behind us. We turn around to look through the back windshield and spot a man on a motorcycle racing toward our bumper, a large camera strapped to his saddlebag. His features are concealed by a visored black helmet.
“What the hell?” I mutter, totally at a loss as the man comes up alongside us, trying to peer into the backseat.
“Is hechasing us?” Harper exclaims.
Masters doesn’t say anything, but I notice his hands are gripping the steering wheel a bit tighter. He presses down on the gas pedal to increase our speed, attempting to lose the paparazzo as we race down a stretch of four-lane highway. We turn to watch as the motorcycle falls behind, but a moment later the rider’s gloves curl around the handlebars and he rockets forward again. He swerves and shifts lanes without signaling, trying to come up on our opposite flank. Two cars beep angrily, braking hard to avoid a collision as he cuts across the highway like a madman.
“Oh my god, he is!” Harper hisses, sounding excited. “He’s chasing us!”
“I don’t know what he expects to see.” I shrug as if my heart isn’t pounding twice its normal speed within my chest. “The windows are tinted.”
“He probably wants to be the first one on the scene when we pull up at the studio. Really gives a new meaning to the phasechasing down a lead, doesn’t it?” She snorts.
I, for one, see very little humor in the situation as we careen too fast around a bend, the SUV leaning at a precarious angle, the motorcycle keeping pace with us despite Masters’ evasive maneuvers.
“This is my mother’s fault. She’s been stirring the press into a frenzy with all these stories about me and Grayson and ourdecade-long love affair.” I shake my head. “There’s a new tabloid story out every day.”
“I thought you didn’t bother reading those?” Harper asks.
“I don’t, usually. But I was checking to see if there was anything new about Helena.”
“Have you heard from Grayson?”
“Not a word.” I wince at the thought. “Today will be the first time seeing him since that night atLimbo. Hopefully he got Helena some help. When we saw her she was…”
“Emulating Angelina Jolie inGirl, Interrupted?” Harper supplies.
“Basically, yes.”
Masters hits the gas pedal again and I feel my stomach lurch as we take a sudden exit off the highway. The motorcycle, not anticipating our departure, misses the turn and flies past our left side.
“Lost him,” Masters mutters.
“Yeah, well, I almost just lost my lunch all over your seats,” Harper grumbles. “Can we please focus on getting there in one piece? We’ve got a baby on board for god’s sake.”
I roll my eyes. “The tiny dictator is just fine.”
“That’s my god-baby grape, in there.” She gestures at my stomach.
“I don’t technically think godmother duties start until after the in-utero part of the program.”