“I don’t have to try and do anything. You did that all on your own.”
“Ashton and I have never had a problem working together until you came along.”
“So it must be my fault he sees you for what you are.”
“And what would that be?”
I leaned forward. “A spoiled, self-centered, self-serving, rich asshole, alpha dude who walks around like his shit doesn’t stink. You don’t get to do whatever you want and say anything you want and just walk away. There are consequences to your actions. This is why people tell you to fuck off and walk away from you.”
“I don’t do whatever I want.”
“Yes, you do, Jameson. You do what you want and you say what you want. You don’t ever expect anyone to have a differing opinion or to go against what you say. Well, guess what? Other people matter.”
“I didn’t say he didn’t matter!”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Don’t you dare try to make me out to be some complete asshole. I didn’t do shit to him. He butted his nose into my private business. It doesn’t belong in my personal life.”
“What about me, Jameson? Do I belong in your personal life or am I in your professional life? I guess that’s where the lines blur. I’m technically your employee.”
“I never said you were my employee. We have a business arrangement. Nothing more.”
And there it was. He still saw me as a transaction. The sex meant nothing to him.
“Jameson, fuck off.” I started toward the subway before stopping and turning around. “I’ll you see Thursday, boss.”
I ignored his calls for me to get my ass back over there and talk to him like an adult. I wasn’t feeling very adult. I wanted to kick and scream at him for being so callous. It was sad because he didn’t even know he was doing it.
He was so far up his own ass, he couldn’t see how rude he was to the people around him. I didn’t have the energy or the desire to try and make him see the truth. If Ashton wanted to stick around and be his conscience, more power to him.
I was not going to do it. I was going to get through the next few weeks and then I was saying goodbye to this chapter of my life as well. I was closing the book on Jay. I had a new life ahead of me. I was going to get to teach kids music. It was only a job at the community center, but I was hoping to inspire some young little minds. I wanted one of them to grow up and be a successful musician and thank me for giving them what they needed to get started down that road.
By the time I got home, I was certain I worked through all the Jay drama. I needed to harden my heart against him. I could separate sex from emotion. It was an act that meant nothing. I enjoyed it, he enjoyed it, and that was that.
I was absolutely determined to have my own room in London. He could book my room under a fake name, but I was not going to sleep in the same bed with him. I was not going to share a room with him. I would do the one dinner, one party, and that was that.
Jay didn’t get to buy me. He didn’t get to use me and discard me once I was no longer useful to him. Technically, that was exactly what I agreed to, but I never agreed to give him my heart. He did not get to take up real estate in my head. I was saving my headspace for positive influences. I wanted to fill my mind with happy thoughts and music.
I sat down on the couch with a glass of wine and my keyboard. I was still working on the song he inspired. The lyrics were a little too close to home. He would know the song was about him if he ever heard it, which was why he could never hear the lyrics.
I was confident in the melody and was already planning to submit it to a few producers. It was a song I wanted sung but not by me. Once I purged the emotions connected to that song, I was letting it go. I was giving it to someone else to take over from then on.
Chapter 35
Jameson
I didn’t want to sound like a whiney little bitch, but I was really feeling like everyone was turning on me. I didn’t see what I did to earn such hate from them.
Paislee knew what she was getting into. Ashton knew about it because I was nice enough to tell him. I certainly didn’t owe him any explanations about what I did with my life. He was acting like I committed a horrific crime.
It was sex. “Sex!” I said and slammed my palm against the steering wheel.
Ashton wasn’t a fucking saint himself. It wasn’t like he was celibate. I didn’t see why I had to be celibate. I liked sex, and I liked having it with beautiful women. That didn’t exactly make me a monster. I didn’t understand why they were turning on me. I needed to regain control. I needed an ally.
This was one of those moments I imagined I would have years down the road. It was the moment I looked left and right to find no one beside me. No one to lean on. I worked my ass to the ground and never made time for people.
It was a recurring nightmare I had been dealing with for about as long as I had been the head of the company. I would wake up in a cold sweat and feel alone. In my nightmare, my parents were dead and gone. I was an old man with no family. I had no one in my life except the people I paid to take care of me.
There was one person. I started the car and drove to our property in the city. I knew Julia was back from Jamaica and staying in her usual suite at the hotel. This was her vacation after a vacation. The woman lived a pampered life. I wasn’t necessarily jealous but it did get on my nerves sometimes.
I knocked on the hotel door and waited. When she answered the door, she was wearing one of the complimentary white fluffy robes with a green paste slathered all over her face. Her hair was piled up on her head.
“What are you doing here in the middle of the day?” she asked.
“It’s five o’clock. That’s not the middle of the day.”
“It’s the middle of your day.”
“Are you going to let me in? You’re going to scare the guests with that shit on your face.”
She opened the door. “I’ll have you know I’m working here.”
“Yes, it looks like it,” I said, taking in the glass of champagne on the side table with an assortment of chocolates on a tray.
“I am. This mask is part of a new line one of our vendors is offering. We can’t offer it in our hotels unless it’s been tested.”
“And you’re such a generous person, you agreed to test it.”
“Hey, this could go very wrong for me,” she argued.
“Sure.”
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“Don’t be mean. I cannot handle any more meanness today.”
She giggled and took a drink of her champagne. “Are you pouting? Is there a bully picking on you? Should I go after them?”
“Stop, this is serious.”
She looked me up and down. “You look like someone just ran over your puppy.”
“Close. I need a drink. Please tell me you haven’t emptied the mini bar.”
I opened the fridge and pulled out two of the mini bottles of Jack. I would have a driver take me home. I needed to dull the pain I was feeling. I didn’t like this feeling at all. It was icky and uncomfortable and not at all familiar. For good measure, I grabbed the bottle of Jim Beam as well.
Julia was already stretched out on the chaise with her eyes closed and her feet resting on a pillow. I wished I could feel that relaxed. “You’re staring at me,” she said without opening her eyes.
“Do you do this all the time?”
“I do it as often as I can. I don’t want wrinkles like you. I believe in pampering myself.”
“No shit,” I muttered and opened the first bottle.
“If you came here to insult me, go away.”
“I came here because I need some advice.”
She opened her eyes and sat up. It was really hard to take her seriously with the green shit all over her face. “Don’t tell me you still haven’t made up with Paislee?”
Before I could get the advice I so desperately needed, she had to hear the story. Her advice to date was based on the idea we
were actually an engaged couple. I was missing the mark and needed to regroup and reassess.
“No, I haven’t but it isn’t what you think.”
“Oh god, don’t tell me you cheated on her.”
“No. Listen, I’m going to tell you something but you can’t tell anyone else. This needs to stay between us.”
“If you cheated on her, I will not keep your secret.”
“I didn’t fucking cheat on her! I can’t cheat on someone I’m not really with.”
She looked at me with confusion. “What?”
“Paislee isn’t my fiancée. I don’t even really know her.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m serious. She works at a grocery store. She slammed her car into mine and totaled hers and almost mine. The accident was one-hundred percent her fault. She couldn’t afford to pay for the repairs to my car, so I made her an offer.”
Julia was staring at me. “I don’t know if I want to hear the rest.”
“Too bad, you’re going to hear it because I’m in shit now and I can’t find a way out.”
“What did you do, Jay?” she said with a sigh.
“I asked her to pretend to be my fiancée for three months to get Mom off my ass. If she agreed to do it, I would not make her pay for the car. As an added bonus, I paid her hospital bill. She didn’t have insurance.”
Her mouth dropped. “You forced her into slavery?”
“No! Damn. Why does everyone jump to me forcing her? She had a choice. I made the offer and she accepted. She could have said no.”
“Could she? Could she have really said no?”
“Yes!”
“She’s poor?”
“Yes.”
“The story about her being an orphan is true?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“So you took advantage of a literal poor orphan?”
I scowled at her before opening the second bottle and chugging it. “When you say it like that, it sounds bad.”
“Hey, dipshit, it is bad.”
“Are you going to help me or what?”
“Why would you do something so stupid?”
I shrugged. “Because Mom is always hounding me about settling down. I wanted to have a little peace. I wanted to eat a meal without her trying to set me up with someone.”
“So you bought a fiancée?”
“I haven’t paid her.”
She held up a finger. “You bribed a woman to be your fiancée. You are so hard up, you actually had to buy a woman. Oh my gosh, this is rich.”
She burst into laughter. Her arms went around her belly as she bent forward and laughed her ass off. I opened the third bottle and slammed it down. My eyes burned along with a trail of fire running from my lips to my guts.
I waited until she was through. When she finally sat up, tears were streaming down her cheeks, cutting jagged lines through the green mask. “Are you done?”
“You ruined my mask.”
“I’m so glad my misery has provided you with entertainment. I’m going home now. Thanks for nothing.”
“No, sit down. This is too good.”
“This isn’t funny, Julia! She is furious with me. Ashton is furious with me. They both told me to fuck off!”
She burst into laughter again. “Oh, my stomach hurts. Stop.”
“I’m trying to tell you I have a real problem here and you’re laughing at me.”
“You are such an asshole!”
“Fuck it,” I said and jumped up. “I don’t need this.”
“Stop!” she said and grabbed my sleeve.
I looked down with my lip curled. “Gross. You just slimed me.”
She wiped her face with the back of her hand. The mask was slimy and smeared across her face. She looked like a goblin. This was not how I imagined this conversation going. “Sit down. Let me get a towel and get this off my face.”
“I don’t want to hear your jokes,” I said. “This is serious and you are laughing at it. I just lost my fake fiancée and my assistant.”
She walked out of the room. “I get it. I’m sorry you’re having such a hard time. It must be hard being human.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
She returned to the room with one of the hotel’s pristine white towels in her hand. She was wiping off the green mask and forever ruining the towel. “It means you are human. I thought you were one of those fancy artificial intelligence things. You’re always so robotic. I had no idea you could actually feel human emotions.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You are into this girl. I won’t be so bold as to say you love her, but you really like her. You can say it’s just a fake arrangement, but you’re full of shit. I saw the way you looked at her. You are really into her.”
I was about to deny it when it hit me. I did care about her. The emotions felt weird. I liked her and I wanted her and I had no idea how to make that happen. If I didn’t ask it or demand it, how would she know?
“Let’s say you are right. What do I do?”
She smiled and I thought she was going to start laughing again. If I had any pride left after being told to fuck off by my assistant and then my fake fiancée, she’d just stomped all over it. “You stop being an asshole, for starters.”
“I wasn’t trying to be an asshole.”
“No, that comes pretty naturally to you.”
“Julia, dammit! Will you please focus? I’m in a bind here. She’s pissed at me. What do I do?”
“Do you like her?” she teased.
She was going to make me say it. I wasn’t sure why I came to her for help. Yes, I did. She was the only other person in my life that gave two shits about me. “I like her.”
She cupped a hand to her ear. “I didn’t hear that, what?”
“I said I like her. I care about her. Maybe I love her. I don’t know. I don’t know what that feels like but I know I’m pretty fucking miserable without her.”
Her face beamed. Like actually beamed green. I didn’t think that was healthy. “You love her! I knew it. I saw you when she was playing the piano. You know that melody was about you.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Oh, yes it was. I felt the anger. She was pissed at you, but then I felt it when she softened and realized she cared about you.”
I knew exactly what she was talking about. When she opened her eyes and met mine after playing that piece, I thought I saw something there. I didn’t understand what it was, but I did now. “I want her to look at me like she did that night,” I said.
“Then you need to grovel,” she said with a firm nod.
“Grovel?”
“Yep. Kiss her ass and apologize for being such a jerk. Tell her how bad you feel. And make sure you are recording all this groveling because I have to see this in action.”
I shook my head as I walked to the door. I wasn’t a groveler but I was going to try. I knew without a doubt I wanted her in my life, and if that meant crawling on the ground to get her, I would do it.
I paused at the door. “Julia?”
“Yes, Jay?” she said with a smile.
She was expecting me to thank her. I wasn’t that nice. “Don’t you dare put that shit in my hotels. You should probably book an appointment with one of your beauty places. Your face is green.”
She slapped a hand to her cheek. “No!”
I got the last laugh as I closed the door behind me. I heard her shrieking from all the way down the hall.
That was just a little satisfying.
Chapter 36
Paislee
I woke up later than usual. I didn’t have to work at the grocery store. I didn’t have to hop two buses and ride the subway to get to work. My work was just a short jaunt away. I could walk to the community center if I wanted to.
I smiled as I got up and went into the bathroom. For the first time in forever, I was looking forward to going to work. How exciting would it be to get paid to do something I loved?
<
br /> I wasn’t going to get rich, but wealth wasn’t always counted in dollars. I was going to build a good life for myself. Jay would be gone from my life soon enough and I could go back to just being me. I wouldn’t have to think about him or wonder if he was with another woman. I wouldn’t have to accept his kisses and know they were just pretend.
When I walked into the kitchen, it was impossible to miss the huge bouquet of sunflowers sitting in the middle of our kitchen table. Bella had a yellow tint to her hair and face as she sat at the table and was caught in the glow of the magnificent flowers.
“Uh, what’s that?” I asked her.
“I believe those are called sunflowers. Aren’t those your favorite?”
I looked at the bright yellow flowers with the dark round middles. “I do like sunflowers.”
“Apparently, someone else knows that.”
My heart skipped a beat. Jay. It had to be Jay. I tried to remember when I told him I liked sunflowers. It was when we were flipping through my sketchbook one night. I had doodled a field of sunflowers. It certainly wasn’t my best work, but I did remember telling him I loved how bright and sunny they were.
“No way.”
“There’s a card.”
I snatched it from the plastic holder. “They made me think of you,” I read aloud. It wasn’t signed. It didn’t have to be signed.
“I would say Mr. Jay is trying to get back in your good graces.”
I looked at the flowers and remembered the encounter yesterday. “Too bad,” I said. I reached for the shiny black vase, fully prepared to throw the whole thing in the trash, but stopped myself. The flowers hadn’t done anything. They were too pretty to be tossed out.
“You’re still mad.”
“I’m still furious. I just want to get through this London trip. I’m going to tell him that’s three. I’ve paid my debt. Three events and it’s over. I’m ready to get back to my life.”
She laughed. “Sure, you are.”
Pay Up Hot Stuff: A Billionaire Fake Fiancée Romance Page 22
