Nobody Dare Dumps This Curvy B*tch

Chapter 8

Gabby

The sound that woke me wasn’t my alarm; it was the sharp, relentless chatter of camera shutters outside my window, accompanied by a blinding flash of white light cutting through my blinds. I jolted upright in bed, my heart thudding against my ribs like a trapped bird as the muffled noise of a growing crowd filtered up from the street.

Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I reached for my phone on the nightstand, intending to check the time, but the screen was practically frozen, overflowing with hundreds of text messages, missed calls, and endless push notifications. Headlines were flashing across every major news app in bold, grotesque letters: Who is the Curvy Mystery Woman Who Stole Nathan Vanny’s Heart? and Billionaire Nathan Vanny Engaged to Unknown Catering Chef.

My throat went bone-dry. Before I could even begin to process the sheer scale of the chaos, my front door slammed open. Khloe burst straight into my bedroom, holding a brown paper bag of fresh bagels in one hand and pointing her phone at me like a loaded weapon with the other.

“Gabby! Have you lost your actual, collective mind?!” Khloe shouted, her eyes wide with frantic energy as she dropped the bag onto my bedside table. “Look outside your window right now! There are at least thirty paparazzi reporters, three news vans, and a dozen neighborhood gawkers camped on your lawn! My phone has been ringing off the hook since six in the morning! What on earth happened after you left that church yesterday?”

I dragged myself out of bed, pulling a thick silk robe around my voluptuous frame, and cautiously peeked through the slats of the blinds. Down on the sidewalk, a small army of reporters and cameramen were waiting, their heavy lenses trained squarely on my front porch.

“It was just supposed to be a temporary thing, Khloe!” I said, my voice rising in a spike of pure panic as I began to pace my bedroom floor. “I paid him one thousand dollars to act like my date for three hours! How was I supposed to know he was Nathan Vanny, Joel’s billionaire cousin? And then his psychotic ex showed up, and he just... dropped to one knee with that absurd diamond ring in front of everyone! I was trapped!”

“Well, the entire tri-state area currently thinks you’re getting married to New York’s most eligible bachelor,” Khloe said, throwing her hands in the air and shaking her head. “We need to fix this right now before your catering clients start canceling contracts out of sheer confusion. Put on some real clothes, Gabby. We’re going to walk out those front doors, stand in front of those hungry cameras, and clear the air once and for all. We’ll tell them it was a staged publicity prank, an act, a total misunderstanding—anything to make them pack up their cameras and leave.”

I took a deep, shaky breath and nodded, setting my jaw. “You’re right. I’m not playing a billionaire’s fake fiancée. I have a business to run. Let's go out there and end this right now.”

I hurried across the room to my closet, throwing on a pair of high-waisted dark jeans and a fitted black wrap top that hugged my waist and full bust, trying to look as professional and grounded as possible. I squared my shoulders, smoothed down my golden hair, and headed out of the bedroom and down the carpeted stairs with Khloe trailing right behind my heels.

The moment I pushed open the heavy front door of the apartment building, the morning air was swallowed by a deafening barrage of camera flashes that temporarily blinded me. A wall of shouting reporters lunged toward the bottom steps, shoving microphones forward like weapons.

“Gabby! Are you really engaged to Nathan Vanny?!”

“Is it true you met him outside a church yesterday afternoon?!”

“Are you just after his real estate fortune?!”

I took a firm step down to the top landing, clearing my throat loudly to project my voice over the noise. “Everyone, please! Just listen to me for one second! It was all a massive misunderstanding! What you saw yesterday was an act—”

The sharp, high-pitched screech of heavy tires burning against asphalt cut me off mid-sentence.

A massive, matte-black Tesla Cybertruck pulled violently up to the curb, mounting the sidewalk just enough to shatter the line of media cameras and block the reporters' view of the steps. The sleek, angular driver's door swung open with a heavy mechanical thud, and out stepped Nathan Vanny.

He looked towering, broad, and impossibly imposing in a tailored charcoal suit, his dark brown eyes sweeping over the scattered media crowd with absolute, icy authority. The paparazzi froze in unison, instantly re-keying their massive camera lenses toward him in a frantic flurry of shutters.

Nathan walked straight up the concrete steps, completely ignoring the reporters bellowing his name. Before I could utter a single word of protest or warning, his broad, warm hand reached out, wrapping firmly around my waist and pulling my back flush against his broad, solid chest with a sudden, overwhelming possessiveness that knocked the breath clean out of my lungs.

He leaned his dark head down, his warm breath tickling the sensitive skin of my ear as his grip tightened around my hips, holding me securely against him. Then, turning his sharp, angular jawline directly toward the sea of flashing cameras and open microphones, his deep baritone voice cut through the morning noise like a razor through silk.

“Clear the area,” Nathan commanded smoothly, his dark eyes locking onto the lead reporter with dangerous calm. “And let’s set the record straight once and for all. This is no act, and there is no misunderstanding. Gabby Eni is truly my fiancée.”

Before my brain could register his colossal lie, or before my mouth could open to dispute it, Nathan slid his other arm beneath my knees and swept me effortlessly off my feet. He carried me down the steps and straight toward the open passenger door of his Cybertruck while the media behind us erupted into absolute, hysterical madness.