He shrugged. “Either. Both.” I supposed this was information he needed before being bombarded. “Yes, I kept your ring on, as it will never leave my finger, but no, I did not allow the repugnant thieves to make their living off of our happiness. I kept my hand tucked in my pocket.” He nodded once. “Yeah, well, keep that in mind,” he said on his way to answer the door.

Marla Sullivan, Ryan’s icy publicist, greeted me with a half smile, half snarl as she charged into the living room of our suite.

Even though it was early in the morning, she was already dressed in a crisp designer business suit. Her short black hair was equally as tailored. An oversized black bag dangled from her red, pointy fingernails.

“Sit,” she ordered.

Ryan glared at her for a moment and then pulled out a chair at the large dining table.

“Weekly Reporter, CV Magazine . . .” she announced in a scathing tone, dropping printed sheets of paper on the table in front of him. “You’re on all of them. I suppose this is why you’ve been avoiding my phone calls for the last four days.”

Ryan barely glanced at them. He slumped back in his chair and started to rub his forehead, pushing the paper away with his other hand. “I’ve seen them already. So what.” I edged my body closer. That’s when I saw for the very first time the grainy, dark pictures of Ryan standing on top of a very familiar round oak table and another dark picture of him kneeling in front of me. Candid shots from Saturday night when he proposed to me publicly in my pub were now plastered all over the tabloids. My heart sank in my chest from their blatant exploitation.

“‘So what’? Ryan, you were standing on a table in the middle of a bar! What were you thinking?” She scolded him like he was a child.

Ryan rested his elbows on his knees while he bowed his head, refraining from giving her an answer.

“Well, this certainly counters the shots they got of her standing in the middle of the street in Miami two weeks ago,” she said callously, nodding her pointy chin in my direction.

Leave it to Marla to remind me of the huge idiot I made of myself when I stood in the downpour staring at what I thought was Ryan cheating on me with his co-star, Lauren Delaney, when in fact they were still on location filming.

Ryan straightened and scoffed harshly at her comment. “Don’t even go there,” he warned through his teeth, giving her an angry glare.

It didn’t matter that Kyle Trent, my former bodyguard, and Lauren Delaney, Ryan’s co-star and former girlfriend, conspired together, forming an awkward alli-ance to insidiously destroy our relationship.

The only thing that the press was concerned about was the photographic evidence of my mental breakdown from Ryan’s supposed infidelity. CAUGHT CHEATING! all of the headlines announced.

And now, all of the headlines flashed ENGAGED!

Two weeks of ups and downs and aggravating media scrutiny—

Ryan and Lauren are together, Taryn catches Ryan cheating, Ry-an and Taryn call it quits, Ryan’s secret flight to Seaport, Rhode Island—were now topped off with new photographic evidence that he actually climbed on top of a table.

“Ryan, we’ve had these discussions. Do you want to destroy your career?” She waved her hand in my direction. It was apparent that she meant I was the one destroying his career.

“No! Of course not!” he bellowed.

Marla huffed and poked her finger on one of the papers. “Well, I told you to keep this inane decision of yours private. So much for that.”

I gasped in shock.

Inane? Is she really standing there lecturing my fiancé and implying with the tact of a wrecking ball that his decision to propose to me was stupid and asinine?

“Do you think you could have at least warned me first that you actually went through with it?” She slapped one of the sheets down on the table in front of him. “I come back from Monterey to be completely blindsided by this, too?”

I rolled my eyes at her comment and her overdramatic little meltdown. Her shiny, black patent leather high heels captured my attention. I surmised that her shoes must match the color of her heart today.

“I got caught up in the moment. It’s my business,” Ryan grumbled, taking the submissive position to this domineering bitch. It was the first time I saw him bow down to anyone. This was not the “fuck you, no bullshit” posture he took with the rest of the world. This woman was making him fold like a house of cards in the wind. I pressed my lips into a hard line, holding my tongue.

“Caught up in the moment?” Marla questioned incredulously. “Is that your excuse?” Ryan shot her a dirty look and sprang up from his chair when there was another knock at the door. “David,” he said flatly, his eyes refusing to look up when his manager came into our suite. David slowly shook his head at Ryan, showing his displeasure at being summoned.

My heart rate picked up as I processed David’s overall demeanor. Now both of Ry-an’s “handlers” were here to gang up on him.

The Witch and the little Slime Ball, here to tag-team him and beat him further into submission.

I’ll be damned before I let them make him feel like crap for proposing to me. I felt my hands curl into tight fists, bracing for what appeared to be a pending battle.

“David,” Marla greeted Ryan’s manager.

“Well,” she huffed, annoyed, “let’s talk about damage control.” She uncrossed her bony arms and picked up a few of the printouts, tossing them in David’s direction. “There are two videos of him singing on YouTube as well.”

“I know,” David admitted. “You really know how to stir up a media shitstorm, my friend,” he chuckled out lightly as he feigned looking at the photos. I’m sure by this point he was intimately familiar with them.

Ryan was too busy stewing and staring at the floor to respond. It took a split second after that for David to redirect his glare at me. This was not the first time Ryan’s manager had issues with me and it was starting to become apparent that we all might never get along. This was so not good.

“I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal about this,” Ryan bit out before casting his glance my way.

“I don’t, either,” I added, giving him my support. If this was how they handled happy news, I’d hate to see how they handled a majorly bad shitstorm.

David sort of shrugged it off. “It’s not really, Taryn. What you have to understand is that Ryan’s career is potentially riding on how well Reparation premieres. This is his first major motion picture lead role outside of the Seaside franchise, and the critics, the major studios—everyone is waiting to see if he can carry a film on his own. This premiere is big, and it’s all about image control, that’s all. This is nothing new, Ryan.”