Lovely Pink, Raine Miller [highly recommended books txt] 📗

social media, and unfortunately for our privacy, word spreads fast when someone with a name like mine ends up in a public place such as a hospital. I’d been dealing with my name for thirty-three years so I was used to the attention in a resigned sort of way. Grayson Lash could have been substituted for Ronald Reagan or Woodrow Wilson and received the same notice from people. I had a president’s name and a president’s blood running through my veins.

As did Reese.

Nothing was going to change that fact for either of us.

It didn’t help that people got pictures, and most likely video, as we stepped out of the ER and into the waiting Uber, looking like a bride and groom leaving the church. I had to admit, Reese in the wedding gown, and me in my gray Brioni were going to appear legit in the pictures that would be posted on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and every other celebrity news outlet that feasted on such things.

Reese was quiet beside me in the back seat of the Uber car, looking like a princess in her white lacy dress I’d had the pleasure of taking off her tonight. But when she had to put the dress back on again to leave the hospital, she asked me to step out behind the curtain because she did not need my help. Or didn’t want it.

I knew she was furious with me.

We needed to talk so badly, but we couldn’t yet. At least during the time it took for the driver to navigate the Saturday night traffic to Reese’s place in Georgetown, we would have to keep a lid on it. Both of us were hyper-aware of our situation—that we were still out in public for all to judge. I’d already started working on damage control by tapping out an official statement on my phone to be posted in the morning from my office in Columbia:

South Carolina Attorney General, Grayson Lash III, attended a Halloween party at the Washington, DC home of a close friend last night. During the event, he was called upon to aid party guest, Reese Pinkarver, who required immediate medical treatment for an asthma-related condition. Ms. Pinkarver was accompanied by Mr. Lash via ambulance to George Washington University Hospital Emergency Services where she was treated and later released.

I passed her my phone so she could read it, watching for her reaction to what I’d decided to share with the public about us. The decision to include Reese’s name, as well as the reason for her medical treatment, was a calculated one. If her name had been withheld, the press would ID her photo within hours anyway, and the speculation behind the reason for secrecy would only be intensified. If her medical condition wasn’t disclosed, the suspicion of illegal drug use would come next. I even debated including that we were both in costume for the party, but decided that part could be revealed later if more of an explanation became necessary.

It was at times like this that holding a public office was annoyingly invasive. The media was going to run this story regardless, because it was too tantalizing to pass up. I felt it was better to give them some truthful details, than nothing at all. The press might be marginally kinder in their reporting, but you could never predict how a story like this one would play out no matter what your official statement was.

“That sounds good to me,” she said when she was finished reading. I could hear the exhaustion in her voice.

“Tired, baby?”

“So tired, Gray.”

“Rest your head on my shoulder and close your eyes if you want,” I offered, not sure if she would take me up on it.

She did though.

And it felt fucking wonderful having her leaning on me, the flowery scent of her perfume floating up to me so I could breathe her in with each and every inhale.

Fucking. Wonderful.

Reese slept until the driver dropped us in front of the historic row house she’d called home ever since her move to Georgetown. I’d been to her place to pick her up just one other time, on the occasion of my first proposal of marriage.

The first time I asked was too soon after her breakup. She wasn’t ready to move on then, but I did not sense Dr. Doolittle was an issue for her any longer. Thank you, sweet baby Jesus. This was very welcome news for me. I would take any positive sign from Reese and use it to help my cause.

What was my cause, exactly?

To be married before we celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday as husband and wife.

Sometimes when I had business in DC, we would meet for dinner to catch up with each other. The only time we didn’t, was when she was with he-who-must-not-be-named. I also learned how much I missed having Reese in my life during that time. It was an evolution more than any one thing. A slow evolution of my Neanderthal brain once it clued to the fact she’d be beneath the furs of another man in the cave.

Our night together nearly two months ago, had also been an epic clusterfuck—with not quite the seriousness of tonight’s ER visit—but a clusterfuck just the same.

It had also been the best night of my life.

Chapter Six GRAY

Two months ago…

“Are you ever going to marry me, Pink?”

She looked so beautiful sitting across from me poured into a sexy black dress. A little black dress bent on filling my head with the filthy thoughts of what I’d do after taking it off her.

Please say yes.

But I knew she wouldn’t. Her hand shook a tiny bit as she brought the wineglass to her lovely lips and finished what was in it. The only small tell visible enough for me to know she was still hurting. Reese could play the Steel Magnolia role very well, which ironically, was part of the reason why she was so