Page 44 of Making the Save

Like a ball shot from a cannon, Wyatt sat up. “What?!”

Beatrice was so startled she tripped back a few steps.

“Sorry to wake you, but you’re needed for an emergency,” she explained.

“Why are you here so early?” he grumbled.

“I’m here when I’m needed.” She pulled out a white robe from the bag she’d brought to the couch. “Put this on, please.”

“A robe?” Wyatt looked over at me.

“You’ll see,” I told him. “It’s very comfortable.”

“Or you could get used to seeing me half dressed,” he said, but he took the robe.

“Oh, I’m pretty sure that’s not something I would ever getusedto.”

“Stop flattering him,” Beatrice scolded me. “It will go to his head.”

“My wife can flatter me if she wants,” Wyatt snapped. He shoved his arms through the sleeves of the robe and tied it around his waist. “Okay, this is actually really soft.”

“Told you. I have the same one. We can be twinsies,” I told him.

“I wouldn’t hold on to that hope,” he said. “What’s that noise?”

Beatrice walked over to the sliding glass doors and nudged one of the curtains open. There was an explosion of flashes. Through the glass we could hear them yelling. They were positioned down on the sand on the other side of the closed gate that led to her deck.

“What the fuck?!” Wyatt said.

“It’s the new situation,” Bea said, and let the curtains fall shut again.

“There are like…twenty people out there. With cameras!”

“It was Tricia’s interview,” I explained. “She basically called us out as fakes and now it’s an even bigger story than the shotgun wedding itself. P&P’s started showing up this morning.”

“P&P’s?” he asked.

“Press and Paps.”

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” he said. He stepped forward and opened the curtain again. More yelling. More flashing.

“You’re going to want to stop doing that,” Bea said.

“After everything that happened last night, I wanted you to rest. There’s nothing to do but wait them out,” I said.

He gave them all the finger. Bea groaned. I laughed, because the number of times I’d wished I could do that was in the millions.

Why didn’t I? I wondered. Why didn’t I just give all those assholes the finger and tell them to fuck themselves?

Because someone once told me it would be bad and the last thing I wanted to be was bad. Funny how it seemed to happen anyway.

“They like a reaction,” Bea told him. “It only spurs them on.”

“Yeah, well, fuck them.” He frowned and let the curtain close. Returning the room to its hushed and glowing coziness. Maybe the solution was we kept the curtains closed and just holed up here. It wouldn’t be the worst thing.

Though, the professional athlete might get bored.

I poured him a cup of coffee from the pot I’d made and thought about what he’d had in his coffee back in Vegas. “Cream and sugar?”