HEAT: A Bad Boy Romance

by Jess Bentley

  I don’t, of course. I’m not actually a crazy person.

  None of the staff can afford a day off, so, I’m making the best of a bad situation. Spring cleaning it is. All the nooks and crannies that never get the attention they need. With the water shut down, the flooding in the kitchen has stopped. No one saw anything, of course. That would be too easy. I’m certain someone in my kitchen has been paid off, but what can I do? Fire them all?

  It will take three days for a plumber to come in. Luckily, I know a plumber, though he’s about two hours away. Imagine that. My pipe busts at the precise moment that every single plumber in town is mysteriously busy for the next week.

  The two events are linked in my mind, and even if they had nothing to do with one another, I can’t separate them now. Worse, I keep thinking about Jake Ferry showing up at my lounge when his father’s place is right across the street, and the fact that I turned him down. And right when this crisis comes down, who do I see peeking at me, smoking a cigarette like a smug bastard?

  Jake. Fucking. Ferry.

  Once, when I was about thirteen, I was experimenting with a recipe. I had read about using lemon and orange zest, but all I had in the house were grapefruits, so I used grapefruit zest. At first, it actually tasted pretty good. So good that I added a little more, and then a little more. A whole bag of zested grapefruits, in fact.

  I cooked the dish, and poured the sauce over it, and was surprised when it actually tasted really good. So good I had two helpings.

  Then, I got sick.

  Weeks later, I went to cut a grapefruit in half. I got a whiff of the skin and like some Pavlovian reflex my stomach turned over and I was sick again. I haven’t touched a grapefruit since.

  If Jake Ferry was under my skin before, well… now, he’s a grapefruit. Problem solved. Right?

  He walks out of Ferry Lights as I watch the doors, stumbling down the broad stairs to the curb where he chucks the new valet on the shoulder and laughs. I should be sick to my stomach. Instead I’m watching his easy humor and the way he actually talks with the kid instead of just treating him like shrubbery like most of the guests do. How can a man like that do a thing like this?

  Well, he probably didn’t do it himself. Must have been one of the Ferry thugs, but surely Jake knew about it. Had it happened that night he visited? When I was distracted?

  What was it about Jake that had me so attracted to him? I’m not a shallow girl. Well—I’m just as switched on by a hot guy as any other girl with eyes, but I’m not in short supply for suitors and wannabe boytoys. So why Jake?

  The valet leaves to get his car, and returns in a low, sleek yellow Jaguar that I can hear idling even from behind closed doors. Ridiculous. Jake passes the kid a tip, and then peels out.

  Look at the kid, staring after Jake Ferry like he’s just met his hero.

  What the hell is wrong with me?

  I glance over my shoulder, at the staff inside busy vacuuming and dusting and scrubbing tables and chairs. No one’s looking at me just now, so I take the moment while I have it.

  Through the doors, down the sidewalk and then around the side of the building to a little nook in the wall that’s hidden by tall bushes. There’s a pile of cigarette butts in one corner. Guess I’m not the only one who knows about this little spot. I’ll have to talk to someone about that, maybe put an ashtray here.

  It’s out of the way, and that’s all I need right now.

  I get as far as letting my eyes burn with almost-tears. My throat tightens and aches, and I can feel so much more underneath—but this is as far as it gets. Leaning against my building, I hang suspended in the near release of what I know would be a cathartic crying session if I could only get it started. It’s supposed to be therapeutic, they say.

  My rational mind steps in, though, and short-circuits my emotional one like it always does. I’m overreacting. I’m above this. Janie Hall doesn’t cry; she gets to work.

  The pipe will get fixed, and I’ll be back in business. Already texts and emails are coming in with messages of support, my higher-profile clientele all talking about having a back-in-business soirée. Hell, maybe it would be a good night to roll out the hot sauce samples and make it a big event.

  And that thought is the one that sends me back up, out of the depression and the doubt for a little bit. That’s what I’ll do. Get the place open, announce the event when I do… it might take a little longer to get the samples produced, but I can spin the back-in-business event to market the big reveal, and maybe even roll out some of the chef’s new dishes in advance. It would take a few extra catering staff. Maybe Chester could come up with some shots or cocktails using the milder hot sauces.

  Then again, that assumes I’ll make it that far. I want to be confident; I want to believe that I can do this no matter what I have to overcome. I’ve already gotten so far and believe me, I had a hell of a lot of hurdles to leap and hoops to dive through.

  But none of those hurdles was ever a petty billionaire with a vicious streak and a bone to pick with me.

  Chapter 9

  Jake

  As if busting a pipe in the kitchen wasn’t enough, Reginald smirks at me as he reveals the two in the one-two punch he plans to deliver against Janie Hall and her establishment.

  “Nothing hurts public image worse for a woman like Miss Hall than finding out she slept her way to the top,” he says, laughing like he’s made some kind of joke.

  My stomach clenches briefly. Janie Hall? I never would have guessed it. “Where are you getting this information? Are you connected to one of her investors?”

  My father looks at me like I’m too stupid to live. “What investors? No, Jake... Christ, you never pay attention, do you? Nobody cares if she actually slept with anyone; they care about the story. The suggestion that she might have. She’s a woman! Once word gets out, it’ll catch fire.”

  “You’re just going to put out a story saying she slept with an investor?” I ask, incredulous. It’s not exactly a new low—Reginald has done this kind of thing before—but it seems like overkill. He could just wait to see how she handles the lost business.

  But it isn’t enough for him to destroy Red Hall. No. He wants to destroy the woman behind it, wants to make sure she doesn’t just move shop and open up another joint in a year when she’s recovered from the loss of her current business.

  “A silent investor,” he says. “No one specific, of course. Unless I can find out if she did. She doesn’t strike me as the type, though.” He pops a grape into his mouth, thoughtful for a moment.

  “Better, we’ll say the silent investor was married,” he says after a while, nodding slowly to himself. “Nothing worse than a slut who can’t get her own man and has to take someone else’s, am I right?”

  I refrain from pointing out that this demographic encompasses literally all of my father’s ex-wives and extramarital “friends.” It would be lost on him anyway.

  “Sounds like a plan,” I tell him, standing from the uncomfortable chair. “Let me know how it goes.”

  He laughs. “Just look for the ‘closed for business’ sign on the front of that shitty excuse for a lounge she threw together.”

  My laugh is forced, but my father doesn’t notice. When you don’t have to care what anyone thinks, you don’t have to be aware of whether they’re being sincere or not. Reginald doesn’t rely on things like that. He relies on leverage.

  What I plan on the walk to the garage is probably the sort of thing that would get me cut out of the will, my credit cards canceled, and my trust fund pulled. But there’s something inside me that can’t, or won’t, just let him ruin Janie like that. Undercutting her business with whatever seedy underworld tactics he typically uses is one thing. Previous competitors Reginald has crushed were able to leave town, set up shop somewhere else. In the case of one tech startup, they left the country.

  This was different. This wasn’t just cruel, it was criminal. Although that word means something different to people like Reg
inald. And, I suppose, to me.

  Once out of the house and on the road, I pull over and make a call. My heart pounds in my chest just dialing the number, much less handing down the edict. Social media management is the main function I serve for my father’s many businesses, so my network of bloggers and amateur journalists is wider than his, though Reginald’s network extends to places like the Washington Post and the New York Times.

  When it’s time to smear a presidential candidate or a congressperson who isn’t voting his way, Reginald has me beat. No doubt about that. When it comes to the hottest bloggers, people with millions of readers, on the other hand... that’s the arena where I win, and it’s the arena where this feud is going to play out.

  “You sure about this?” my contact, Jeffrey Shipton, asks me nervously. “I… don’t want to get into trouble with your dad, man. He’s bad news for a guy like me.”

  “Don’t mention his name,” I say. “And when he has his people call you to pull the story, do it—just make sure it’s been shared and spread around first. He gets a briefing about whatever he’s working on, so he’ll find out, but Reginald doesn’t understand how the internet works. It just needs to be out there in people’s feeds. That’s all. You can do that?”

  “Yeah man,” Jeffrey assures me, “I can get about five or six thousand shares by people who can get… maybe two or three hundred a piece, maybe more if it hits a chord.”

  “Play up the fact that she’s a woman,” I tell him. “See if you can get it shared onto some feminist blogs, women in business, as professionals—whatever you can find.”

  “Will do,” he says. There’s a pause. He’s nervous about this. Hell, so am I. “If this gets back to you—”

  “It won’t,” I tell him. “Not from you, not from anyone. If someone demands a source, say it was one of Janie’s clientele; she’s got celebrities that are loyal to her. Reginald will just assume it came from one of them.”

  Another pause. Keys are tapping rapidly on Jeffrey’s end. “Gotcha. I’ll have it up in a few hours.”

  “Thanks for this Jeffrey,” I breathe. “I owe you.”

  “I think I still owe you, buddy, but… we’ll call this an installment, how about that?”

  “You’re a good man, Jeffrey. Make sure I get a link.”

  “Done and done, my friend.”

  He hangs up, and I take a moment to calm my panic. It’s the first time I’ve acted directly against my father’s interests. The chances he’ll find out it was me that circulated the story are slim. But once it’s out there that Janie Hall is being specifically targeted because she’s a successful single woman, everything else that comes out against her after will be suspect, and will only support the story Jeffrey puts out there.

  It only takes a piece off the board, though, as far as Reginald is concerned. Still, he’ll have to be more careful. Once the story circulates for a while and has time to simmer in the public mind, he’ll be in a tough position—if it ever comes out that he’s responsible for trying to cut Janie down, the backlash would be serious.

  The link comes in about three hours later. In another two, it’s had over ten thousand likes and more than six thousand shares. The major feminist blogs are on fire, and there are even people calling for blood.

  I’m happy about that, and proud, but I can’t calm my worries. Still, done is done. You can’t take anything back from the internet and that’s the truth. It feels surprisingly good, and I want to go tell Janie what I did for her, but…

  There’s no way she’d believe me. Instead, I go to Ferry Lights, like it was any other evening, and calm my nerves with whiskey. It’s just the start of the evening, and it’s incomplete. What I need is a hot piece of ass to take my mind off all of this. Off of Reginald and his thug tactics, off of my own strangling inability to tell him off to his face instead of running around behind his back, off of Janie Hall and her… everything.

  Like flies to rotting fruit, the women descend upon me—many of them are the same ones that do so every night and I’m even pretty sure one or two are women I’ve slept with before. They don’t make a point of mentioning that. I’m certain they remember, especially if I do, but if I’m not going to admit to knowing them then they’re perfectly happy playing that game to win.

  One after the other I send them away. It’s like fishing for trout. One after the other the wrong one nibbles the bait and either gives it up or I throw them back. God, how long has it been since I went fishing? Maybe I should take the yacht out soon. My father loves to fish. Once, when I was a kid he took me…

  But no; I’m five drinks in and remembering that wrong. It wasn’t Reginald—it was the guy he hired to take me out on the ocean, a longtime champion swordfish guy. He was nice enough, almost fatherly in fact, but something about the presence of my bodyguards tainted the experience with an expectation of danger. Back then, Reginald had a lot of enemies. That was a while ago.

  I wonder if Janie likes to fish? She doesn’t seem the type, but then again she doesn’t seem like the sort of person who cares for hard work in general and yet there Red Hall stands, right? She’s not the sort of girl you can judge by her appearance. Those fitted dresses and sharp heels, that mane of thick hair that frames her face just right, those lips…

  Dozens of women, and not one of them catches my interest for even long enough to get me to a hotel room or, hell, even the back of the Maserati I drove here for a blow job. None of them are Janie Hall.

  It’s got to be that old classic, right? Every guy wants what he can’t have. I don’t remember the last time a woman played hard to get with me. I’ve been in the public eye so long now—since I was ten—that there’s never been a girl in my life who didn’t start out knowing who I was. Even Janie knew. But Janie didn’t try to sink her hooks into me.

  I had my father to thank for that. And I suppose, myself. If I had just said no, for once… who knows what might have been?

  Chapter 10

  Janie

  “I can’t stop myself from waiting for the other shoe to drop,” I tell my best friend, Sahara, over the phone while I pace the plush rug in my living room. Over the last three years, it’s developed a slightly faded track near the edges. It’s a good rug for pacing on, and I pace a lot. That’s pretty much how I choose a rug.

  Sahara takes the sudden table turn between us in stride, God bless her; normally she’s the one calling me, bitching and moaning about one boy or another and the tiny things about them that bother her—or the major things that bother her, sometimes. It’s like my own personal ringside seat to the longest reality dating show in history.

  “Girl, I know you are not in a panic right now,” Sahara says.

  I can almost see her face. No one has been a more vocal supporter of me that Sahara since we were roommates in college. She literally thinks I can do anything. I used to think that too, but… it’s slipping. That’s why I called.

  “This isn’t just a dip in business,” I insist. “This is someone intentionally out to get me. I knew that, but… I mean, did you see the piece that just came out?”

  “I saw it. You think it was about Reginald Ferry?”

  “And his son, Jake. That rat bastard walked right into Red Hall and asked me to dance, Sahara.” I scoff and shut down the image of Jake’s smile in my mind. “To dance. Well, we’re certainly dancing now.”

  “That article is getting hard press. Want me to go comment on a bunch of the reposts pointing fingers? I’ll do it.”

  “I know you would,” I say. And for all I know it would help. But… “Leave it. I don’t want to play his game. That’s not what I want to be known for, and if it got back that my best friend was commenting it would look like I asked you to sling mud on my account, and… that’s just as bad as doing it myself. But, what am I going to do? I don’t have any idea.”

  “Listen to me,” Sahara says, putting on the big girl panties I must have taken off at some point, “this is nothing. A busted pipe is not going to ruin your bu
siness. Not with everything going on right now. It’ll be forgotten about in a week once you’re open again. You’re too good a person to be broken down by this complete nonsense, okay?”

  “I hope you’re right,” I mutter. My throat is a little tight. “I wish you were here.”

  “I know you do,” she says. “Trust that I am hugging you through the Force day and night, okay?”

  I chuckle. “Nerd.”

  “Always.” She sighs. “Keep your head up. You’ve got something neither of the Ferry jerks have, baby and that’s dignity. Capital D on that.”

  “And all they’ve got is billions of dollars, and, I suspect, some kind of criminal network of spies and saboteurs.”

  “Stop it,” she warns me. “Just stop. You know what you need? A day off. The plumber doesn’t come until Thursday, right?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “But I need to help bring in the new inventory and—”

  She makes a rude noise over the phone. “Nope. I forbid you to work tomorrow. Take a day off, Janie. Go to the spa. Treat yo’ self, woman. Or I will order strippers and naughty massage therapists and send them to your apartment one after the other until you are relaxed and packed to the gills with sweaty, sexy, gyrating men.”

  I don’t doubt for even a moment that she would do it, too.

  Saying the words is like pushing against some kind of latex wall; I can feel the tension resisting as I push through it and make the decision and very nearly get bounced right back. But if I can just say the words, it’ll start to be real. “I… guess…” Deep breath. “Chester could probably handle inventory with Lacey’s help. Gloria is almost useless, but she can at least write numbers down.”

  “How many people does this job take?”

  “I normally do it myself but—”