Scandalous

by Tilly Bagshawe

  “You bitch,” he hissed at her. “You set me up!”

  “I did no such thing.” Sasha walked into the living room, keeping her cool. “This was a good deal for all sides.”

  “Don’t give me that shit!” he roared. “It was a good deal for you, at Wrexall’s expense. My expense.”

  “Don’t take it so personally.” Sasha sat down on the couch. “It was business.”

  “It was blackmail! And don’t tell me not to take it personally. You flew out to my house and turned my own parents against me. You call me unethical, but what the hell kind of a stunt is that?” He was still pacing, his arms flailing wildly, as if looking for a suitable object to punch. “The old man only did it to hurt me. To try to claw back some of his power, his glory days.”

  Sasha was shocked at the vitriol in Jackson’s voice. “That’s not true. Your father read the memo very carefully. He signed because he thought it was the best outcome for Wrexall Dupree, under the circumstances.”

  “And what circumstances were those? The circumstance of you sticking a dirty great knife in all our backs? You disgust me. You’re a total hypocrite.”

  Stung, but not wanting to show him how hurt she was, Sasha lashed out.

  “You know, your father did say that he hoped this might act as a wake-up call. That it might get you to start taking your role at Wrexall more seriously.”

  “What do you mean by that? I take my role very seriously. Just because I play hard doesn’t mean I don’t work hard.”

  “You think your father doesn’t know you were AWOL in some hooker’s bed in Utah, enjoying yourself while Rome burned? You think the entire board doesn’t know? I didn’t ‘set you up,’ Jackson. You set yourself up. All you had to do was answer your phone and none of this would have happened.”

  Furious because he knew it was true—yes, Sasha had pulled a fast one, but he’d allowed it to happen, been the architect of his own undoing—Jackson instinctively drew back his fist. Sasha flinched, cowering against the wall. Jackson felt shame creep over his skin like hives. What the hell is wrong with me? What, I’m going to hit a woman now? Spinning around, he slammed his fist repeatedly in the opposite wall until his knuckles bled.

  “I think you should go.” Sasha’s voice was firm, but he could hear the tremble beneath. “Please leave.”

  “I gave you a job,” said Jackson. “I brought you into this company. I made you, Sasha. And how do you repay me? You turn on me like a viper.”

  “Bullshit! Yes, you gave me a job, and in return I made you a fortune. You’re lazy and arrogant, Jackson. Loyalty is something you earn, you can’t just demand it. My team is loyal to me because they see me work my ass off for them every single day. That’s one of the most exciting things about Ceres. It’s a real team effort.”

  Jackson stepped closer to her, so close that Sasha could feel his warm breath on her collarbone. She was aware of her heart racing, a combination of physical fear—he still might try and hit her—and something else, something too disturbing for her to name. When he reached out and touched her hair, his strong hand gripping the back of her neck, she thought she might faint. He dropped his voice to a whisper.

  “I’m going to crush you, Sasha. I’m going to blow Ceres out of the water. Obliterate it into so many pieces, it’ll be like it never existed.”

  His closeness, his physical presence, made it hard for Sasha to breathe. Tightening his grip on her neck, Jackson pulled her toward him and kissed her, once, on the mouth. Shocked, and horribly excited, Sasha squirmed away.

  “Get out of my apartment.”

  “Good luck,” said Jackson as he walked out the door. “You’re going to need it.”

  Out on the sidewalk, the cool night air brought Jackson to his senses, as if waking from a dream. He tried to process his feelings, but it was impossible. Did I really just kiss her? Part of him hated Sasha, loathed her enough to want to hit her, to hurt her. Not just for today and what she’d done to him: landing a body blow to Wrexall and turning the board, and even his own father, against him on what ought to have been his, Jackson’s, day of triumph. But for all the bickering and sparring and fury of the last few years. Once upon a time she’d tried to destroy Theo Dexter’s career and failed. Now, it appeared, it was Jackson’s turn. What kind of a psycho was this woman?

  But another part of him, a part he’d been denying since the day Sasha rejected him at Harvard all those years ago, another part wanted her so badly it made Jackson want to cry. It’s not love, he told himself. It’s lust. The competitor in him wanted to beat Sasha, wanted to win. He knew that the only way he would ever truly win was when he had her in his bed, naked and longing, begging him for more. Just picturing it now was giving him an incipient hard-on that only added to his fury.

  In his head, Sasha’s voice taunted him:

  You set yourself up.

  You’re lazy and arrogant.

  You think the board doesn’t know?

  Too wound up to go home, he headed to the nearest bar.

  Lottie sat at the kitchen table in her Brooklyn apartment, checking her messages on Facebook. “Update your status!” the home page invited her. “What are you doing right now?” After the words “Charlotte Grainger is,” Lottie typed “…wondering if it’s ever going to end.”

  It was Friday night, so officially her weekus horribilis had ended. But the aftershocks kept coming. Her kiss with Jackson—the kiss—had only been four days ago, but already it felt like a lifetime. Lottie hadn’t seen him this afternoon since he got back. Understandably, he had bigger fish to fry. Like trying to strangle Sasha with the nearest electric cord, presumably. Lottie was torn about the MBO and Ceres’s violent birth. On the one hand she saw what a huge opportunity it was for Sasha. For some reason that Lottie had never understood, Sasha was obsessed with making money. Not just massive-salary-great-apartment-wardrobe-full-of-designer-clothes amounts of money. But serious, game-changing, corporation-controlling amounts of money. Enough money to wield “real power,” that was how Sasha described it. But power over what? Over whom? In any event, Ceres clearly represented a giant leap in the right direction, and to that extent Lottie was pleased for her friend.

  On the other hand it meant that the two girls would no longer work together. And then of course there was Jackson. Lottie tried to believe that Sasha’s coup had not been intended to wound Jackson personally. But given their history, she wasn’t sure. What she was sure of was that the whole Ceres debacle had damaged Jackson’s standing at Wrexall. Folk stories about exactly where Wrexall’s not-so-golden boy had been while his former employee was busy taking apart his company had already begun doing the rounds on Wall Street. One of them involved a pair of Czech twins and a pet poodle. Another featured Senator Davis’s soon-to-be-ex-wife, Alana, a chalet hot tub, and an overeager paparazzi. All of the stories left poor Lottie feeling as if she were undergoing open-heart surgery without anesthesia.

  Closing down Facebook, Lottie clicked on to Outlook and was astonished to see a new mail from Sasha flashing at the top of her inbox. Shouldn’t she be on her way to a TV studio somewhere, or sipping champagne with that sleazeball Foman, toasting Ceres’s future success?

  In typical Sasha style, the e-mail was two words long. It simply read, “Join us?” A few moments later, a second message arrived: “Name your price. S xoxo.”

  Lottie flushed with pleasure, as if she’d just done something naughty but wonderful. Of course, she hadn’t actually done anything. I didn’t say yes. I just read it. She was flattered to be asked, and tempted, not just by the idea of working for Sasha but by the “name your price” part. That had an excellent ring to it! But of course it would mean leaving Wrexall and the chance to work every day alongside Jackson as the new Park City ski resort took shape.

  Shutting her computer, Lottie put her coat on. A walk would help to clear her head. Even in March, the grayest and drabbest of months, neither winter nor spring, Lottie adored her Brooklyn neighborhood. Her apartment was t
he top two floors of a once-grand old brownstone on a broad, leafy street that seemed light-years away from the Sturm und Drang of Manhattan. She’d first moved across the bridge in her early twenties, when it was all she could afford. Now she easily earned enough to move to the West Village or some trendy loft in the meatpacking district, but you couldn’t have paid Lottie to leave Brooklyn. As much as New York ever could be, it was home.

  Turning the corner, she pulled up the hood of her jacket against the biting wind and trudged in the direction of the 7-Eleven, keeping her head down.

  “Look where you’re going, would you?”

  She’d collided with a drunk, heading down the hill toward the subway.

  “Sorry,” she began. “I didn’t see you. I…Jackson? Is that you?”

  “Lottie. Hello, Lottie!” Jackson grinned down at her like a simpleton. Dangerously underdressed for the weather in jeans and a crumpled Spurr shirt, he reeked of whisky, swaying from side to side like a seasick sailor. “I was trying to find your street, butIgodabidlost,” he slurred. “But you’re here. Thass amazing! I must be getting warm, right?”

  Not sure whether to feel excited (that he’d come to find her) or depressed (that he only ever seemed to come to find her when he was three sheets to the wind), Lottie wrapped a steadying arm around his waist and led him back to her place.

  “It’s not much,” she mumbled awkwardly, kicking a pile of mail off the floor in the entryway and moving a cold, half-drunk mug of this morning’s coffee off the stairs before Jackson sent it flying. “But at least we can warm you up. I’ll make you some coffee.” She led a shivering Jackson into the kitchen and left him there while she disappeared to find a blanket. She returned to find him standing exactly where she’d left him, like a lost child at a railway station. “Here.” She wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and pulled out a chair. “Sit down. Tell me what happened.”

  While Lottie brewed some fresh coffee, Jackson poured his heart out. About Sasha and what a fool she’d made of him. About his father taking Sasha’s side and going behind his back. Finally, he spoke about his own guilt, and fury at himself for not having been on the ball.

  “I know I party too hard. I’m not stupid,” he said, chewing idly on a stick of stale French bread that Lottie had left lying around. “I guess I just thought, after my big success in Park City, I could kick back a little, you know. Is that so terrible?”

  “Hmmm,” said Lottie. You mean our big success in Park City. I was the one who clinched us that deal. But you didn’t see me “kicking back.” It’s back to work as normal for the rest of us lesser mortals.

  Reading her face, Jackson said, “You think I’m arrogant, don’t you?”

  Lottie poured the milk. “Well, I…maybe a little. Sometimes.”

  “You think I’m arrogant and lazy and I don’t care about my team.”

  Lottie blushed. “Sugar?”

  “Oh God.” Jackson put his head in his hands. “That’s what hurts the most. Everything that bitch Sasha said to me is true. I set myself up. I did. I let this happen, and all for a few hours of lousy sex with a pair of…”

  “OK, enough.” Lottie clamped both hands over her ears. “I don’t want to know.”

  Jackson looked taken aback.

  “I’ll try to be your friend and to listen. I’ll try to give you advice, if that’s what you want, not that you ever listen to it, and I’ll happily make you coffee and lend you my blanket, but I will not stand here in my own kitchen while you talk about your…your”—she struggled for the appropriate word—“your sexploits with God knows who, twins or whatever ridiculous thing it was, I mean, really. Really. I don’t want to know.”

  She was so awkward and outraged and sweet, Jackson couldn’t bear it. He moved toward her, an unmistakably predatory look in his eye. “You’re lovely.”

  “No.” Lottie backed away. “Stop it. You’re drunk. This isn’t fair.”

  “I am drunk,” Jackson admitted. “But I’m drunk for the last time. As of today, I’m gonna be a changed man. No more booze. No more partying. No more sexploits.” He was still moving closer. Lottie pressed her back against the kitchen counter.

  “I’m happy to hear that, Jackson, I really am. But…”

  He kissed her. “I think we should be together.” Lottie started to protest, but he stopped her. “Please, hear me out. You’re good for me. When I’m around you I feel calm. I feel content.”

  And when I’m around you I feel like I’m about to burst into flames. Oh God, Jackson, I want you so much, can’t you see it?

  “I thought you said you’d make a lousy husband?” Lottie whispered. Jackson’s body was pressed against hers now. She could feel what little resolve she’d had crumbling like stale wedding cake.

  “We’ll work up to the husband part.” He grinned. “One step at a time.” Slipping a hand under Lottie’s sweater, he reached for her bra strap, unclasping it with consummate ease. Lottie tried not to think about how many times he’d done that before and with how many women. There were a hundred and one reasons not to do this: Jackson was her boss, he was drunk, he was vulnerable, he was an inveterate womanizer who would sleep with her once, regret it, and move on. Then his other hand slipped beneath her panties and none of the reasons meant anything.

  “Jesus.” He looked up at her, startled. “When did you get that done?”

  Lottie blushed. She’d forgotten about the rather extreme Brazilian wax she’d had in Park City, the same day she dyed her hair. She’d been on such a high that day. But perhaps it was a bit slutty. “Don’t you like it?”

  Jackson grinned. “Are you kidding? I love it. It wasn’t what I was expecting, that’s all.”

  Lottie closed her eyes and surrendered herself to the heavenly feelings washing over her. “That makes two of us!” she gasped.

  Those were the last words either of them spoke that night.

  Across town, Sasha lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, whip-sawed with frustration. It should have been one of the happiest nights of her life, the start of an exciting new chapter. But instead of focusing on her bright future, Sasha’s head was full of images of two men.

  Professor Theo Dexter: still happy, still rich and famous and successful, still living the dream that he stole from her.

  And Jackson Amory Dupree, who’d kissed her, whose lips she could still taste on her own, whose body heat still burned every inch of her skin. Jackson who had threatened to destroy her.

  “I’m going to crush you. I’m go to blow Ceres out of the water.”

  Sasha closed her eyes and said a silent prayer, the same prayer she’d said every night for the last ten years. Help me, Lord. Help me to destroy Theo Dexter. But this time she added a codicil. And if it’s not too much trouble, Lord, help me forget about Jackson Dupree.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Tokyo, five years later

  Theo Dexter looked straight at camera, raising one eyebrow like Roger Moore’s Bond and smoldering as only he knew how.

  “Driven,” he whispered huskily, holding up a bottle of cheap-looking cologne. “The smell of success.” He stood for five more seconds, his face frozen midsmolder, till the energetic Japanese director yelled, “Cut!” Instantly Theo’s features relaxed into their more familiar petulant scowl.

  “Very good, very good.” The director clapped his hands enthusiastically, and the Japanese crew did the same. “All finish. Very good take, all finish.”

  Thank Christ for that. Theo loathed Japan. A few years ago, Asia had excited him with its otherworldliness, its air of adventure. But by this point in his career, the novelty had well and truly worn off. If he closed his eyes and said the word “Asia”, four things sprang to mind. Humidity, cockroaches, stinking traffic, and carbohydrates. (How the Japanese stayed so thin was a mystery to Theo. They seemed to eat rice or noodles with everything. He’d even come across a chicken noodle toothpaste, although that might have been intended as a joke item. You could never
tell in Japan.) Despite staying at the uberluxurious Park Hyatt, the hotel featured in the movie Lost in Translation, in a penthouse suite with spectacular views across the city all the way to Mount Fuji, he felt distinctly hard done by. Not least because Dita and the children were with him.

  “Just think of the money,” Ed Gilliam told him cheerfully. Now in his seventies and richer than ever thanks to his star client, Theo’s agent still had the hunger for the next big deal. “This commercial’s earning you more than your entire last season’s paycheck on Dexter’s Universe, and three times what you made on Space Suits.”

  Mentioning the name of Theo’s last, ill-fated, straight-to-DVD feature film put him in an even worse mood. That was another thing he had to blame Dita for, pushing him into movies like some goddamn dancing monkey.

  “I don’t care. It’s embarrassing. I feel like a used-car salesman.”

  “Yes, well, get over it,” said Ed. “All the big stars endorse over here. Clooney, Pitt, Cruise.”

  “Maybe. But they don’t have to live with Dita while they’re doing it.”

  After seven years with Dita, six of them married, the novelty of her celebrity had well and truly worn off. Not that Theo didn’t still revel in the attention, the ubiquitous paparazzi who followed them everywhere, the throngs of screaming fans. But he resented the fact that his fame and Dita’s had become so inextricably linked in the public imagination. Being one-half of Hollywood’s golden couple was wearing, particularly when the reality of Theo and Dita’s domestic life was, at best, strained.

  Sexually Dita could still do it for him. Unlike most exceptionally beautiful women, Dita was good in bed, a skilled and exciting lover. But although she remained a huge box-office draw, physically she was past her prime. The tabloids and gossip magazines ruthlessly scrutinized her every tiny flaw, photographing her at point-blank range, then printing the shots with red circles drawn around every incipient laughter line or prominent vein. Already deeply insecure, such criticism sent Dita into a frenzy of panicked exercising, Botox injecting, and sarong buying. It also made her more than usually demanding of Theo’s attention, a surefire way for her to lose it.