Page 92 of A Witch in Notting Hill

Anger pricked the back of my neck like a thousand tiny needles. Didn’t they realize she was a human being? How could they treat someone this way? How could I have let this happen?

“Miss James, what about Kit Hayes?”

I narrowed my eyes at the exact moment Willow widened hers. “I thought there was no Kit?”

“There isn’t.”

“So why are the reporters asking about him?”

“I don’t know, Oliver,” she snapped, and I realized now was not the time for this conversation.

“Are you having an affair?”

“Who’s the dark-haired gentleman?”

“Is this why you’ve run off to London?”

“An affair?” she said. “Jesus Christ.”

“And you’ve no idea why they think this?”

“Don’t you think I’d have told you if I did?”

“I don’t know what to think,” I said. “About any of this. But I do know if we’re going to think at all, they need to get the fuck out of the garden.”

Before she could stop me, I closed the bedroom door behind me and stormed toward the front. I knew it was probably better not to provoke them, but I couldn’t let this carry on. I had too much momentum to slow down. Even with Willow calling to me from her bedroom.

When I flung the door open, I was met with blinding camera flashes and incoherent shouting.

“Sir, over here!”

“Are you and Miss James having an affair?”

“Where’s Kit Hayes?”

“You have about thirty seconds to get the fuck out of the garden before the police arrive,” I lied. “So if no one wants a trespassing arrest, I suggest you leg it. Now.”

One by one, they dragged their sorry arses from the garden, muttering to one another and spewing obscenities in my direction as they left. When they finally all cleared out and I turned back around, I saw Willow standing in her doorway. Arms crossed, wearing my shirt, leaning on the doorjamb like a bloody painting.

“I hope you’re prepared to be all over the media,” she said. “Shirtless. Shouting at paparazzi to get the fuck out of the garden.”

“Are you mad?”

“Grateful,” she said. “And maybe a little mad. I would have liked to have handled it without a scene, so our night wouldn’t end up all over the internet. But I am glad they’re gone. ”

“I’m sorry, Willow. I just couldn’t sit around while they harassed you like that.”

“Now they’re going to be harassingyou, too,” she said.

“Hell if I care.” And it was the truth. I only cared about Willow. They could say whatever they wanted about me. I doubted I’d even see it in the first place. “They can say whatever they want about me. But they can’t be banging on your door and shouting accusations and thinking that’s okay.”

“It never stops,” she said. “They’re gone now, and I’m grateful for that, but now they know where I am. They know who you are. Or at the very least that you’re someone I was kissing in the middle of the night in the woods at a full moon festival. How am I going to explain any of this?”

“Don’t you have a team for that?”

“She’s a cat!” Willow threw her hands in the air and collapsed back onto the bed. “Which I know you don’t believe, so you probably think I’m an idiot, but I’m serious, Oliver. And now I have to navigate this mess on top of that mess. And I’m not blaming you. I know I also created this. But we could have done without the shirtless shouting at the crack of dawn.”

“I don’t think you’re an idiot.”