Franco texted back.
Sorry man. Worried about a particular other woman seeing it?
He stared at that a moment, wondering again whether Franco was being a jerk.
Or being a friend.
With Franco, half the time the two were synonymous.
He sat there, paralyzed with fury and panic.
Three seconds later he got another text from Franco.
If she really loves you, you can’t lose her.
Wow.
Franco must have waitedyearsfor a chance to say that. It was almost cinematically timed. He might be Irish, but he could hold a grudge like a mafioso.
Thing was... J. T. might not have actually been wrong when he’d said it the first time.
Maybe he wasn’t entirely clueless after all.
And if these photos shot straight to hell whatever remaining chance with Britt he had, so be it.
And he might be out of his mind. But like he’d told Britt about his truck, he didn’t like to give up on things.
Maybe he should remind her she’d said the very same thing.
“This is not what I ordered,” Casey said firmly, pushing away a Glennburger with cheese and bacon.
Britt had heard this sentence quite a bit all day.
“Oh, Casey, I’m so sorry.”
She’d been sayingthatsentence a lot all day, too.
Britt snatched up the plate so quickly the pickle wedge rolled off the edge and thumped onto the table. As if it, too, were scrambling to get away from her.
Who knew misery came in such wide and surprising varieties and had infinite strata?
Those two photos on TMZ were all but stamped on her corneas, and it was like she was trying to see around them as she moved about the restaurant.
Just when she’d told her sister J. T. was a good guy, too.
So much for that. It was almosthilarioushow wrong she’d been.
He might be the only guy in the world who’d drunk-texted a dying orchid to a woman.
And she might be the only woman in the world stupid enough to fall for it.
The other possibility, of course, was that she might have driven him right into the clutches of Rebecca Corday with her... what was the word Laine used—ah, yes: pigheadedness.
Allpossibilities were awful.
J. T. had made her feel like a fool, whether or not he knew he was being photographed.
She was just pivoting to dart back to the grill with the botched order in her hands when Casey clamped her hand on her arm and held her fast.