She was going to have to start staging her interviews in a different location. She couldn’t stop the X-rated images from filtering through her thoughts.
“He is fun.” Toni scooted closer to Reagan, her nearly empty beverage clasped between her hands. Maybe she’d have more luck keeping on track while interviewing a woman. She hadn’t planned on doing any additional interviews, having decided Dare’s advice to just talk to them was her best move, but now that she felt she needed to prove herself to Logan as well as her mother and Susan, Toni decided she should at least attempt all the preplanned formal interviews, even if they didn’t amount to much.
“We can finally have that girl talk,” Reagan said, grabbing the bottle out of Toni’s hands and taking a drink.
Toni cringed, thinking that if Reagan knew where her mouth had just been, she would not want to share.
“What’s that face?” Reagan said, lowering the bottle and eyeing her with suspicious gray-blue eyes.
Toni shook her head. “N-nothing.”
“Did you just suck Logan’s dick or something?”
Heat flooded Toni’s face. “Maybe.”
Reagan crinkled her nose and shoved the nearly empty bottle into Toni’s chest. “And you let me drink after you?”
“I’m sorry.”
Reagan shook her head and went still when her gaze landed on something on the floor. “And you just leave your sex toys lying around on the carpet?”
So much for her interview with Reagan staying on track. “I found that under the sofa when I was hunting for my pen.”
“Sure you did.”
Toni was so embarrassed that she didn’t know whether to hide under the cushions or cry, so she laughed uneasily. “Honest. I didn’t even know what that thing was until Logan explained it to me.”
Reagan cocked her head at her, her dirty-blond bangs sliding over her face to cover one eye. “So are you two serious or just having a good time?”
Toni wasn’t sure how to answer that. She wanted them to be serious, and he made her feel like he was serious about her, but she was pretty sure she was just clueless about these things and reading more into his actions and words than was really there.
Reagan touched the back of Toni’s hand, and Toni looked up into a pair of concerned eyes. “Don’t let him play you unless you’re playing him right back.”
“I don’t know if he’s playing me. And I wouldn’t know how to play him if I had an instruction manual and a tutor. Not that I want to play him.” She just wanted to love him. She shook her head and planted her face in her palms. It was much too soon for that. Even she realized that.
“Oh, honey, you didn’t do something as stupid as fall in love with him, did you?”
Toni nodded miserably.
“Because falling for someone too quickly . . .”
Toni steeled her heart for the advice she knew would follow. She knew the coming words were true. She just didn’t want the truth voiced aloud, because that would make it real and then she’d have to face it.
“. . . is the most amazing experience ever!” Reagan said.
Thinking she needed to clean out her ears, Toni lifted her face from her hands and arched a brow at Reagan. “Huh?”
“Are you recording this?” Reagan nodded to the recorder on the table.
Toni shook her head.
“This is just between you and me, okay? Don’t go selling it to the tabloids or printing it in your book.”
Toni nodded mutely.
“I fell in love with Trey so fast—like soooo fast it was ridiculous and I convinced myself it was hormones—because the guy is sex on a stick.”
Toni nodded.
“But it’s so much deeper than that. It was from the first moment we met. Sometimes you just click with someone”—Reagan snapped her fingers—“and you know on a biological and psychological level that this is the one. Or the two . . .” Reagan’s gaze shifted to the wall and she cleared her throat. “So if you feel that instantaneous connection with Logan, don’t immediately discredit it. Just because it’s a fast-burning love doesn’t mean it can’t be a long-lasting love. You just have to keep fueling the fire. Right?”
Toni had no idea. “I guess.”
“Right.” Reagan slapped her on the arm.
“How do I go about fueling the fire, exactly?” Toni asked. Sex? The answer had to be sex. Maybe anal sex. She still wasn’t keen on the idea, but if that was what it took to keep Logan’s interest, she’d allow it.
“You have to make him feel like he’s important to you.”
Well, that would be easy enough. She could see herself overdoing it, though. “But then won’t he think I’m being clingy? Or obsessed?”
“You don’t have to be all up in his face about it.”
Reagan’s nose was suddenly an inch from Toni’s as she peered into her eyes. Toni laughed at the irony. She’d never met anyone as in your face—both literally and figuratively—as Reagan Elliot.
“Even little things can make a big difference,” Reagan said.
“But what if he doesn’t feel as strongly about me as I do about him?”
“Just keep being marvelous, sweetie. He’ll come around.”
She sure hoped so.
“So are we going to do this interview or what?”
“Can I ask you something first? Completely off the record.” Toni’s curiosity had gotten the better of her. She couldn’t keep this question to herself for another second.
“Sure.”
“Are you cheating on Trey with your bodyguard?”
Reagan gaped at her. Toni couldn’t tell if she was shocked because her secret had been discovered or because someone thought she was capable of being unfaithful.
“No,” she said flatly.
Either Reagan was lying or Toni’s power of observation was less honed than she realized.
“I’m sorry if I offended you.”
“I dated Ethan before I met Trey.”
“So I guess Ethan still has feelings for you. I’ve seen the way he looks at you.” She’d also seen the way he looked at Trey, but she was obviously reading that incorrectly. Though she had been around enough gay guys to recognize attraction between two men and there was definitely attraction between those two men. Unless . . . “Wait,” Toni said as something overtly sneaky occurred to her. “Are you a cover for a relationship between Trey and Ethan?” But that didn’t explain all she’d seen either. The intimacy she’d witnessed between Trey and Reagan was obviously not fabricated.
“Wrong again.” Reagan grinned. “Can you keep a secret?”
Toni’s heart thudded, and she nodded eagerly.
“What am I saying? Of course, you can’t keep a secret,” Reagan said. “You’re a fucking journalist.”
“Except I’m not,” Toni said. “At all.”
“And that’s why you’re doing interviews and recording footage and sticking your nose in everyone’s business.”
Toni shouldn’t have felt hurt that Reagan didn’t trust her—she completely understood why Reagan would have reservations about sharing personal information—but she wanted Reagan to feel that she could confide in her and believe that Toni would keep her promises. Her integrity was worth more to her than a few lines in a tabloid or a few dollars for an incriminating picture.
“I don’t mean to be intrusive,” Toni said. “I’m just trying to get an inside look at the lives of the members of Exodus End and share that look with the world. I absolutely do not want anything in the book that could hurt any of you. I haven’t known you all long, but I consider you my friends, and I would never betray a friend’s trust.”
Reagan eyed her warily and then sighed. “Normally if a member of the media spouted that kind of nonsense in my direction, I wouldn’t hesitate to call them a liar—”
Toni cringed.
“—but for some reason, I don’t think you’re capable of being a vindictive bitch, so I’ll tell you, and you can either affirm my faith in humanity or get the shit beat out of you for betraying my trust.”
Toni swallowed hard. She wouldn’t betray Reagan’s trust, not because of Reagan’s violent threats—fabricated as they seemed—but because to be counted among the back-stabbing bitches of the world would eat Toni alive from the inside out.