No Time Like Mardi Gras by Kimberly Lang Page B

as if the world was spinning out of control, with no one to lean on for support, his future in jeopardy and too many people looking to him to sort out their problems.
    He sincerely doubted Jamie’s situation was anywhere near as dire, but she seemed to believe it was, and he couldn’t be a party to sabotaging anyone’s attempts to straighten their life out and rebuild. He leaned back against his desk and sighed. “Fine. You just keep denying it’s you to anyone who asks—and don’t show them your elbows—and I’ll get the word out that the mystery lady has been found. In Utah or something. I have some blogger friends who might be able to help spread that news.”
    Jamie seemed to slump a little in relief. “Thank you. I appreciate that.” After a moment of silence, she cleared her throat. “Look, Colin—”
    This whole conversation bordered on insane, and it wasn’t helping his blood pressure any, either. “Unless there’s something else,” he interrupted, “I’m going to get back to work.”
    “Right. Thanks. Bye, Colin.” With a half smile that looked strained at best, she left.
    Well, so much for Callie’s fairy-tale dreams. After all that buildup, this result was both anticlimactic and frustrating. What was crazy was that he almost felt disappointed it had turned out like this.
    Hell, he was just lucky it wasn’t worse somehow.
    * * *
    Jamie wanted to kick herself. She’d acted like a cold bitch—a persona she’d perfected over the last few months—but she felt terrible about it. Both because she could tell she’d hurt Colin’s feelings the other night—which only partly excused his piss-poor attitude—and because she got the weird feeling she was walking away from something she shouldn’t.
    Something important. Which made no sense at all.
    She hadn’t been prepared for the very visceral reaction she’d had to seeing him again. She’d played him down in her head as much as she could, convincing herself she’d just been caught up in the party atmosphere and fueled by cheap beer.
    And it had been working—until about fifteen minutes ago, when he’d turned around looking even yummier than she remembered and causing her to wobble dangerously on her shoes. She’d been this close to crawling across his desk.
    Thank God she hadn’t, because none of that charm she remembered had been on display today. In fact, Colin had a bit of a dickish streak she hadn’t seen before.
    So everything seemed to be stacking up to tell her this wasn’t a good idea. Even if she wanted to ignore the messages the universe had sent by separating them that evening, now they were notorious.
    She just wanted to be a private citizen again, because notoriety sucked. She’d had a taste of it as Joey’s fiancée—once he’d gone pro in such a big way, she’d been on his arm at some pretty major, and heavily photographed, events. That had led to a small interest by a few paparazzi and blogs, but only on slow news days. But then the scandal had broken. The investigation, the allegations, the whole dirty mess had played out far too publicly, and she’d been dragged straight into the middle of the mess.
    Then the same press that’d posted what she was wearing and where she was lunching had turned on her. First mocking her for naïveté when she defended Joey, then vilifying her when she turned against him.
    She wasn’t willingly going to insert herself into any kind of media anything. She just needed to work on her acting skills and learn how to laugh off the Cinderella question—if it came up again—and hopefully the news that Ex-Man’s Cinderella was happily up in Utah now might slow some of that down.
    Ugh. Who’d want to be Cinderella anyway? She hated all those stupid fairy tales—simpering little princesses who just waited around for a prince to come solve all their problems for them.
    It was insulting, really.
    She’d spent too much of her life acting like one of those princesses, letting things happen