Free Twenty One (Love by Numbers Book 2) by E.S. Carter Page A

Jake catches my eye.
    “Is that Jake on the front page? Let’s have a look.” I hold out my hand for the now ruined paper but Liam totally ignores me and continues to gather up all the pages, scrunching them into balls, covering his hands in ink.
    “Hey, Tabloid murderer, stop with the massacre, I wanted to read that.”
    I reach out to grab the crumpled bits of newspaper from his arms and he turns his back on me, clutching them pathetically close to his chest.
    “Liam, What the fuck? Stop being childish.” I reach around his back to grab them from him and he begins to twist and turn, trying his best to evade my manoeuvres.
    “Em, just leave it be.” He ducks around my grasping hands and stalks towards the shredder. His use of my first name, instead of his nickname for me, immediately sobers me.
    “You just called me Em.” I stand rigid to the spot looking at his back; he remains motionless with his hands poised over the shredder and the first page ready to be destroyed.
    “Just drop it Jules, seriously. It’s nothing you need to see. Jake warned us all about the shit they print in the gossip rags.”
    My stomach plummets, my mind raging with fantastical headlines, all concerning Jake.
    “Let me see. I’m a big girl Liam and if there is nothing for me to worry about let me see.”
    He sighs heavily, “Jules …..”
    “No Liam, stop trying to protect me. Either you let me see or I walk straight out of here to the nearest supermarket and buy my own copy. Your choice.”
    He hesitates for just a moment, before dropping the majority of the crinkled up balls on the floor and turning around to give me the sheet that he was just about to shred.
    “Just use your head Jules, give him chance to explain and either confirm or deny it. Don’t believe every word you read.”
    I stare into his eyes and see the worry lines form on his brow. He looks sad but also resigned.
    “It’s bad isn’t it?” I’ve yet to reach for the paper he is offering me.
    “Well….. it’s not a glowing article if that’s what you mean but I know my brother Jules and if he tells you this is all lies, trust him. He might be many things but a liar has never been one of them.”
    I can see he believes his own words, believes in his brothers honesty. Trouble is whatever that paper he has in his hands tells me, it’s going to change everything.
    I shakily reach out for the paper and gently extract it from his hand. My stomach twists and turns and I’m sure I’m making this worse by drawing it out.
    In one determined move I look down at the front page of The Daily Saturn and my eyes are met with headline,
    ‘ BAD BOY FOX KNOCKS UP MARRIED WOMAN’.
     
    W hat. The. Fuck.
    The headline is splashed above a shot of Jake being mobbed on his return to the UK, at Heathrow Airport. He looks every inch the bad boy the headline proclaims him to be, with his devilish good looks and pissed off demeanour.
    Just below his picture is a smaller one of a stunning, dark headed woman, with poker straight hair and exotic features.
    It’s the bitch from the club the first night we met. The one who shoved her tongue down his throat, while he was holding my hand.
     
    “I t’s bullshit.”
    These are the only words I can form to speak out loud. I’ve been so engrossed in devouring every piece of the article in front of me, that I forget Liam is even here.
    I look up at him, his face worryingly blank.
    “I know this tart” I poke my finger viciously at her one dimensional face, “and I’m telling you I know this story is fucking bullshit.”
    He doesn’t react to the anger in my voice; he just stands there looking at me totally mute.
    I read back over the few words at the start of the article.
    This Vanessa Havers claims that she has been in an extra marital relationship with Jake for months, she states she is four months pregnant with his child and has left her husband in order to be the one to nurse him back to health after he got lost at sea.
    The