CEO's Runaway Mate and Her Cubs

Gracelyn Clayton would have taken any chance to stay in the limelight and profit from any event. Knowing that her daughter was entangled with the unreachable CEO Woods was a temptation she couldn\'t resist.

As such, Lara didn\'t think much of it. What worried her was another thing: if someone knew she was the Claytons\' daughter, they could easily find out about her cubs. Or, at least, about how she had left home while pregnant.

That part was left out in the interview. Seemingly, Gracelyn still wanted to attempt a connection with her lost daughter and her partner.

«Do you think this is the end?» she wondered.

«Knowing the press, it is not. After this interview, even the other reporters will run to your mother,» Nate said.

They were eating pancakes and reading the article, contemplating what to do.

«This is just the beginning,» he said. «Even if this reporter seems uninterested in finding out more than this, the rest will stop at nothing. They will find out everything about you. It will be difficult, but I\'ll make sure every one of them pays for any information they publish about you. Starting from this one. Whoever he is.»

«I thought they were going to publish about Samantha again,» Lara said. «How odd... There\'s nothing about her. She\'s not as interesting anymore?»

«They\'re keeping the information for later. When the scandal settles down, they will publish something new and light it up again. It\'s all a computation to sell more copies overall.»

«Do I really sell so much, though?» she chuckled.

Then, she remembered the reason she was in the tabloids in the first place.

«Oh, wait. It\'s not me but you. You sell so much, Nate. Who knows how many bored housewives buy tabloids to check what you were wearing at the last gala? Oh, I\'m dying to check it out as well. I should have taken inspiration from Scarlet and collected your pictures since the start!»

«Hey,» Nate complained. «You have me here. Why collect pictures?»

And why those from the tabloids? He could give her better ones. Maybe, from newspapers. He liked those more: there was no love affair implied, no rumours. Just the deals he signed and his successes.

He would have preferred Lara kept safe those articles and not the gossip.

«I\'m glad you\'re taking it well,» he added. «If you feel bad, by the way, you can tell me! We can talk about it... Only if you want.»

«For the moment, I am fine,» she said. «I\'m worried about the moment the world knows about the twins. That will be worse. How do we explain it without making everyone judge them?»

«Judge? Why?»

«They were born out of marriage. I don\'t want everyone to point at them and see my mistakes. It wouldn\'t be fair...»

«It won\'t happen,» Nate said. «It wasn\'t a mistake, Lara. We are destined to be together, aren\'t we? Also, we can get married now and solve it all.»

He wasn\'t serious. His was only an attempt to hearten her a bit. He wanted to show her that the solution was simple and easy. However, until they needed it, he wasn\'t going to press her into marrying him. He didn\'t want her to panic; nor did he want to see her lost expression. He had hated the way she would pretend not to hear what he said the first days after they had met again.

There was something wrong with the way Lara acted with him, but he couldn\'t find the reason of it. It was him, in some way. Or, maybe, the trauma of being abandoned by her family.

Whatever the reason, he knew that marrying out of the blue wasn\'t the right strategy. Lara seemed to like their relationship, no matter how undefined it was.

They lived together, ate together, shared the bed... What else could they need? Even the kids seemed happy to have a normal family. The pack had accepted Lara, and she was adapting to her role without batting an eye.

Everything was perfect as long as no one tried giving any name to it.

Their relationship was odd, but it didn\'t matter. Only when they tried defining it, he could see Lara\'s expression change. Her worries would resurface, and her body would stiffen. As such, he had learnt not to mention it anymore.

He could live like that forever, if not for Lara\'s panic attacks.

«Don\'t say something like this with such a tone!» Lara said, in fact. She chuckled, and Nate\'s heart hurt a little.

«Sure, I won\'t,» he sighed.

«Let\'s hope it doesn\'t come to that,» she added.

Nate nodded. What else could he do but agree with her? At least until they found out whether Lara\'s mood was influenced by the thought of marriage and a stable relationship other than her hidden fears.

«Do you want me to do something with this tabloid?»

«There\'s nothing wrong here, Nate. If we react, they will sense there\'s something we want to hide. It\'s better to pretend we never saw it. For the moment. They might publish something else, but let\'s bear with it. If enough time passes, they will forget me.

Won\'t they? We just need to wait for another scandal to happen, and no one will wonder about me anymore.»

«Yes, sure,» Nate said. «We\'ll do as you wish. But you can tell me if you feel bad because of this. I will listen to you.»

«I\'m fine, Nate. It doesn\'t affect me, for some reason. Maybe, I\'m improving,» she chuckled. Still, she hugged him as a sign of thanks.

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His worries didn\'t feel so bad, all in all. She didn\'t dislike that someone cared enough to ask her.

«Thank you, Nate. Love you.»

Nate\'s brain broke again, and he lost another good chance to reply to her confession. Lara didn\'t seem to mind, but he felt weak and a coward.

If only he had been smarter, he could have said those words first. Why was life so difficult all of a sudden?

Oh, but who cared? She loved him!