Crowd Pleaser

by Marie James

  “Randi was just telling me how much she’s hurting since Jake cheated on her last night.”

  Glaring at Ellis, I barely refrain from throwing an eyeshadow pallet at his face.

  “Cheating?” Jas looks confused and a little smug. “Can porn stars cheat? I thought that was just called work.”

  “Can we talk about something else, please?”

  “In a minute,” Jas says as he sits beside Ellis on the sofa. “First, let’s talk about what you’re planning to do about Jake.”

  Sitting back in the recliner, I cross my arms over my chest, knowing that they’ll never let the subject go until it’s been fully exhausted and beat to death.

  “I’m doing it.”

  “You’re ignoring it,” Ellis huffs.

  “Exactly.”

  “I don’t think that’s the best plan,” Jas says as he shuffles through a stack of envelopes.

  “Is that my mail?”

  “Yep. Grabbed it while I was walking the devil dog.”

  Holding my hand out to him, I flex my fingers. “Give it to me.”

  “In a minute.” His head comes up, and the confused look from earlier is replaced with seriousness. Ellis calls it his court face, and I know the look well. “You love that boy. When you can admit that, then you’ll know what you have to do.”

  Remaining silent, I work through my thoughts before speaking. “Jake made this choice, not me. I’m not going to confess anything. I’m going to go on about my life like Jake Kortright never even walked into it.”

  “Kortright?” A smile spreads Ellis’ face. “As in Jacob Eckley Rothwell Kortright?”

  “I don’t know his fucking middle name. Jake Kortright, that’s what I know.”

  “He told you his name was Jake Kortright?” Ellis prods.

  “Damn it,” I mumble as I sweep my hands down my face, uncaring of the makeup I recently applied. “One of his housemates told me his last name. What the hell does it matter anyway? He’s just another frat boy banging any chick he wants.”

  Ignoring me, Ellis busies himself typing something on his phone. “I fucking knew he looked familiar.”

  “Havoc, bad dog!” I hiss when he begins nosing around the makeup on the coffee table. I swat at him, but he’s faster than me and moves away before I can make contact. “Go eat panties or something. The cosmetics are off limits.”

  Turning his phone for Jas to see the screen, Ellis looks back up at me.

  “For someone who has always been adamant about leaving the political life behind, you sure do know how to end up right back in the middle of it.”

  Ellis passes his phone to me. At first, I just stare at the device as if touching it will give me the plague. Avoiding politics and all East Coast, blueblood bullshit is almost like a full-time job, especially right after an election year. With a new president in office, everyone and their mother seems to think they’re politically savvy. Social media blows up with it. Memes are everywhere. It’s hard as hell to stay clear of it. Continuing to stare at the phone in Ellis’ hand, I just know something about my dad or brother is going to be there, and even as curious as I am some days, I don’t want to deal with that shit today, of all days.

  “Take it,” he urges as he hitches it closer.

  “His initials spell JERK,” Jas says with a grin.

  “Fitting,” I murmur as I take the waving phone from Ellis.

  “So?” Jas asks. “What do you think?”

  Looking down at the picture, I get lost in Jake’s bright blue eyes. The lump that’s been growing in my throat since I walked in and saw Karen grinding her bare cunt on his leg last night grows even more.

  “Porn stars have an IMDB profile?”

  “Jake does, but read the description. I don’t think he has one on there because of his recent foray into adult movies.”

  Following Ellis’ suggestion, I click on the small bio and begin to read.

  Jacob Eckley Rothwell Kortright, only son of Senator Ethan Eckley Kortright…

  I don’t bother reading any further. I squeeze the phone so tight, I’m surprised when I don’t crack the screen.

  “You’ve been fucking a senator’s son,” Jas whispers as if I didn’t just read the words myself.

  “Why did you leave the east coast?” Ellis asks.

  “Because my dad was trying to force me to marry a senator’s son,” I answer immediately.

  “What has been your mantra since you arrived in the best state in the US?”

  With trembling hands, I give Ellis his phone back. “Don’t fuck a politician because they’ll fuck you even hard—”

  “Technically,” Jas interrupts as he types away on his own phone, “he’s not a politician. From the looks of it, he’s done everything in his power to ruin any aspirations of following in daddy’s footsteps.”

  My head begins to throb as he reads off a list of offenses Jake has been accused of over the last five or six years.

  “Cocaine use, pregnancy scandals, wild parties, criminal mischief.” Looking up from his phone, Jas watches my face for my reaction.

  “You can pull up my full name and find most of the same stuff.”

  “Drug use and teen pregnancy?” Ellis tilts his head, waiting for the full story.

  “Minor drug use,” I specify. “And I didn’t have a pregnancy scandal, but two chicks on separate occasions alleged my brother got them pregnant.”

  “Rich people,” Jas mutters as he stuffs his phone back into his jeans pocket.

  “Which is exactly why I had to get away from all of them.” Twisting my hands in my lap, I try to calm my racing thoughts. I knew Jake came from a similar background that I did, but I didn’t realize just how alike our childhoods were. “You don’t know who to trust. Everyone has an agenda. Politics is like a sewer. It’s filthy and evil, yet all the players are wearing designer suits and sinning with smiles on their faces.”

  “Sin is no fun if it’s done with a frown,” Ellis teases, which earns him a shoulder nudge from Jas.

  “I didn’t think your dad was a politician,” he says after glaring at his partner.

  It almost makes me smile. The differences between these two guys are night and day. Ellis is a goof-off ninety-nine percent of the time whereas Jas is serious that same percentage, but somehow they make it work.

  “He’s an attorney, working as a legal consultant for one of the congressmen in Rhode Island,” I explain.

  “Which one? Dunbar or Hayes?”

  Jas and I both stare at Ellis.

  “Hayes,” I answer. “How the hell do you know the Congressman?”

  He shrugs and taps his temple with his finger. “We just came out of an election year. My brain is full of useless shit.”

  “Yet pulling clothes from the dryer is impossible,” Jas teases with a grin.

  “Which guy did he want you to marry?” Ellis holds his phone up, waiting for me to respond.

  “Why?”

  “I want to see how he compares to Jake.”

  “Magnus Finnegan Pomeroy III.”

  Jas and I both chuckle when Ellis cringes as he types in the name. “Who names their children something like that?”

  “Bluebloods,” I respond as he swipes through his phone.

  “Yet, you’re named Randi?” Jas asks.

  “My dad wanted a boy named Randolph. My family is wealthy, but they aren’t considered bluebloods. It’s why he wanted me to marry into an uber-rich family.”

  “He’s not bad looking,” Ellis says as he angles the phone so Jas can see. “Son of Virginia Senator Magnus Finnegan Pomeroy Jr.”

  “Virginia?” Jas scoffs with a faux hair flip. “Can you even consider anyone below the Mason-Dixon a blue blood?”

  Grateful for the distraction, I chuckle. “They’re Delaware natives, but Pomeroy Senior settled in Virginia.”

  “He’s super cute in this one.” I shudder at the sight of Magnus when he turns the phone around. The familiar smile and devilish, hazel eyes make me une
asy.

  “He liked to wear diapers and suck on a pacifier.”

  “Not your kink then?” Jas asks with a wide grin.

  “Not even close.” Sighing, I glare at both of them. “So can we talk about something else?”

  “We can table the topic for now, but only because you have mail.”

  Snapping the stack of envelopes from his hand when he offers them, I begin to shuffle through them slowly. Taking my time on something as menial as sorting junk mail is better than discussing everything I left behind, and the fact that even as far as I’ve traveled, I know I’ll never be able to get away from that world completely.

  “Seriously?” I snap holding up the envelope with the familiar MGA logo in the top left corner. “All of this damn talk about politics and this was sitting in your lap?”

  “You act like we can’t cover both at the same time?”

  “Are you going to open it?” Ellis prods when all I do is hold the envelope in my trembling hands.

  “I’m scared,” I admit. “What if I didn’t get the slot?”

  “Then,” Jas says placing a hand over mine, “you try again or move on to bigger and better things.”

  Nodding, I run my finger under the flap and pull out the single sheet of paper. I skip past the first two paragraphs thanking me for entering to get to the meat of the rejection letter.

  “I didn’t get it.” Tears fall from my eyes, hitting the print of the document before Ellis pulls it from my hands. “With the way my week has gone, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  Ellis clears his throat to get our attention. “Although all slots for the traveling cosmetology team have been filled, the Miss Gay America enterprise is extremely interested in commissioning your line of Simm-ply Fabulous cosmetics.”

  “What?” I shake my head, sure I heard him wrong.

  “They want your makeup,” Jas clarifies.

  “That’s wh—”

  “That was your end goal!” Ellis squeals and practically jumps in my lap to wrap his arms around my neck. Havoc responds in kind and barks as if he understands exactly what this means for me.

  “Get off of her. There’s a number on here for you to call.” Jas holds the paper close to my face as Ellis backs off.

  Ellis, still smiling, hands me my phone as Jas tries to calm the dog.

  “Call right now?”

  They both nod. “I think now is perfect.”

  “I have to calm down first. This is business, but the news is so new all I want to do is celebrate.”

  Unlocking my phone, I run through notifications and try to calm my heart rate. Ignoring social media, I open the email app.

  FIRED!

  The subject line of an email from Vic catches my eye. Opening this email twenty minutes ago, before getting the MGA letter would’ve crushed me. Today, however, I smile as I open the email and begin to read.

  The tremble in my hands is renewed with every word I read.

  “I’m fired from SCP,” I begin. “Jake got fired, too.”

  “Why are you both fired?” Ellis asks as he stands and comes around the back of the recliner to read over my shoulder.

  “Neither one of us made a video last night,” I tell Jas who’s waiting for me to answer Ellis’ question. “He didn’t sleep with Karen.”

  Chapter 32

  Jake

  “You have some damn nerve showing up here.”

  “Good to see you too, Pop.” I grin when the grimace wrinkles his forehead.

  Father is what he’s always insisted I call him, yet I fuck with him any chance I get.

  Walking in like I own the place, I plop down on the leather sofa in the sitting area of his over-sized home office. Staring at my father, I pay no mind to the handful of people gawking at me for interrupting their meeting. I shift my gaze from dear old Dad to Cynthia. The narrowing of her eyes and the pink rising in her cheeks tells me she’s not interested in any form of antics from me either. Just the sight of me is enough to increase her blood pressure.

  Regaining the composure he lost at my unannounced entrance with the simple act of straightening his tie, Ethan Kortright addresses his audience. “We should pick this up again next weekend.”

  The brusk tone of his voice leaves no room for argument, and it doesn’t matter if some of these people may have traveled thousands of miles for this meeting. They all stand, shake hands, issue their goodbyes, and leave without argument. If people believe that politicians take the weekend off, they’re mistaken. Most of the deals my father brokers are off the Senate floor and behind the scenes. It eliminates people from listening in that aren’t privy to the information.

  “Politics aren’t for the weak, son,” he’s told me too many times to count. “Most people don’t have the stomach to do what needs to be done to keep things in working order.”

  Cynthia, ever diligent in her duties, closes the heavy double doors to the office on her way out. Dad paces back and forth until the commercial, five-line phone on his desk beeps. It’s always been this way, waiting until prying eyes and ears clear out of the house completely before his real personality emerges.

  Only this time, he doesn’t explode. He doesn’t rain threats like I expected. Instead, he calms his pacing and sits behind the massive, antique oak desk that always frightened me as a child. He picks up a pen after shuffling a few papers, studiously ignoring me like he did for the first half of my life. The silent disregard irritates me more now than it did back then. I never garnered his attention until I hit high school and started acting out. I was doing it to get his attention because I discovered it was the only thing that worked. Negative attention from my father was better than no attention at all.

  His response was putting me in therapy where I was told to work through my rich-boy issues. I countered that by fucking the therapist’s daughter. The even bigger scandal behind that was Hunter getting involved and sleeping with that same therapist’s son. Always my wingman, Hunter didn’t even bat a mascaraed eyelash at my suggestion.

  That incident landed both of us in boarding school in Switzerland and ended with a pregnancy scandal of some girl I never even slept with. Combined with the social coke use and the Swiss’ penchant for aggressive paparazzi, we didn’t stay there long.

  “I’ve missed you,” I lie.

  “I don’t have time for interruptions,” he says without even raising his eyes from his work.

  Standing, I cross the room and pour a massive glass of what I know is his most expensive bourbon. With no plans to even drink the entire glass, I ignore the sloshes of amber liquid as it trickles over my hand on my way back to the couch.

  “I had time to do some interesting reading on the short flight back this morning.”

  He grunts, more of a response than I expected.

  “Failed rehabilitations, continued drug use, deviant friends, using tough love,” I cite from memory. “You told The New York Times that you’ve disowned me.”

  “Better than the truth,” he says finally looking up.

  “And that’s what exactly?”

  “You’re a spoiled fucking brat who’s so hell-bent on ruining your life and mine, you started making porn.” I smile at the angry twitch just above his left eye. It only pops out in the direst arguments. Clearly, he’s been seething for weeks for it to appear so soon after my arrival. “I imagine it’s just a matter of time before I see you on the show that follows the addicts around and gets them on video while they’re shooting up low-quality heroin.”

  I chuckle. “There are a few holes in that theory. First, Intervention requires there to be people around who want to help you get clean. Second, I don’t use drugs. Third, if I did, I would raid the stash you keep for your constituents and the escorts you hire who have to be high to stomach fucking all your old asses.”

  The clench of his jaw makes everything I’ve done to piss him off worth it.

  “I don’t give a shit what you do, but getting involved with Randi Simms is low even for you.”


  Choking on the bourbon I just took a sip of, I glare at my father. “How the hell do you know anything about her?”

  Cocking his head to the side, he looks at me like I can’t be serious to ask such a silly question.

  “She’s a low-class whore.” His dismissal of someone so important to me is enough to get me on my feet and leaning across the desk I was never allowed to touch as a kid.

  “I love her,” I hiss leaning in so close I know he can smell the liquor on my breath.

  “Good,” he replies calmly but rolls his chair a few inches further back, wiping at the spittle that flew from my mouth. “If that’s the case, I have another solution. Marry her. We can tell everyone you guys were experimenting with exhibitionism.”

  “Nice spin,” I mutter and head back across the room to my nearly empty glass of bourbon. “But Randi and I are over.”

  “Look how easy you give up on love,” he mocks.

  “What do you know about love? Just a damn second ago you were insulting her. What was it you used to tell me as a teenager? ‘Fuck the skanks in private, but always marry within your class.’”

  “She’s not ideal. I can admit that,” he replies dismissively as if he’s having to pick between two different thread count sheets. “But her dad being as close to Congressman Hayes is valuable to a plan I have.”

  “Always about fucking politics.” I turn up the glass and drain it.

  “Like I was saying,” he continues without acknowledging me, “you tell everyone that you two aren’t porn stars but a couple in love who got caught on camera.”

  “Ridiculous.” Closing my eyes, I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Besides, your plan would never work. She made other videos before me.”

  Opening my eyes, I see his attention is back on whatever paperwork is on his desk. “That’s just as well. The tough love, heroin addict story is already in the works anyway. Sticking with it saves me time.”

  Nodding, I look away, hating the pain I feel at the hands of this man. “So just like that, I’m disowned?”

  “I see no other way around it,” he replies.

  My laugh, so out of character with the topic of conversation, draws his head up.

  “Disowned?” I chuckle again. “Such a weird word for a man who doesn’t have as much power as he thinks he does.”