by JA Huss
I just have to trust in him. Have faith. That when he’s finally done with me, he’ll toss me aside gently and I will walk away with enough pride to keep my head up and my self-worth intact.
THE dawn breaks far too soon after a night of being well-fucked and dined to perfection. And I’d like nothing more than to stay in bed and feed my delusions of Vaughn professing his undying love for me. But I have daily meetings with the future Mrs. Blazen for the next two weeks until the wedding. Today we’re going to the Botanical Gardens to look at flowers.
Why aren’t we visiting florists like normal people? I have no idea. But the Big Guys told me to give her whatever she wants. This is a big deal to them and the people of Denver.
They actually said that. The people of Denver. Like the soon-to-be Mrs. Blazen is the goddamned First Lady of this town.
They take their football seriously here. Personally, the only reason I know of any Bronco football players is because some of them own car dealerships and have billboards up all over town. But Kristi Almost-Blazen seemed nice when I met her yesterday, so I’m going to tuck away the cynical side of me and just give her the benefit of the doubt.
She’s picking me up, so I’m waiting outside my office building at ten sharp when my phone buzzes and a message from Vaughn comes through.
Fabulous time last night. I’m still internally reliving parts as I have breakfast with Russell Mame.
Oh, fuck.
How do I process this? He’s thinking about me. Does it mean anything? Does it mean he likes me? Or that he just wishes he was fucking me again?
I’m hopeless. I’m going to be reading between every line there is. Every word will be scrutinized. Every text pored over. Every phone call revisited in my mind at the end of the day. Every touch cherished. Everything about him will stay with me.
I’m going to be obsessive, I just know it.
Russell Mame is his co-star in IM2. He’s the bad guy. Or the good guy, if you think the Invisible Man is the bad guy. Either way, he’s the adversary and he’s another Hollywood legend. I wish I was in that restaurant right now. I wish I could meet his friends and listen in on their conversations.
Am I crazy?
Jesus. This is not starting well at all.
Twitter tonight at eight mountain time.
That little bit of reality pulls me back from the edge of my fantasyland cliff. He’s real, Grace. I pinch myself and then wince. I’m just about to text back when the white Mercedes SUV pulls up. Kristi rolls down the passenger window and slides her sunglasses down with a smile. “Hop in, girlfriend! We have flowers to choose!”
She’s entirely too chirpy for me this morning, but that’s my own damn fault. I’m so mad at Vaughn for making me love him. Damn him. Damn him to hell. Why did he have to be so perfect last night? Why does he have to text me this morning and make me read into things? Make me wish for more than just sex. For…
Don’t think it, Grace.
“What’s wrong?” Kristi asks as I get in and pull my seatbelt across my chest.
I sigh. “A guy.”
“Oh,” she says with sympathy that I’m not sure is real. “I completely understand.”
I highly doubt that, since she’s engaged and the only reason we’re spending time together is because I’m her wedding planner.
“I would try and put it on the back burner, ya know? Just forget about the bad and focus on life. Because whatever it is he’s doing” —she looks over at me and lowers her sunglasses again—”it’s his problem, not yours.”
“Maybe,” I say back. “But I’m letting him do it. I gave him permission. So really, it’s all my fault I’m so…” So what? What am I really feeling? “Sad, I guess.”
She puts a hand on my shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “I really do get it. And I don’t blame you if you can’t let it go, so go ahead, you can mope today. I don’t mind being a listener if you need it.”
Well, that was nice of her. “Thanks, Kristi. I appreciate that. But no, I’m not going to let him affect my days. He might be able to turn my nights upside down, but my days belong to me.” I reach in to my purse and turn my phone on silent, then toss it back into my bag. “I’m incommunicado today. So there!”
“That’s the spirit, girlfriend!”
That lasts for like thirty minutes, because the second Kristi goes to the restroom in the visitor center of the Botanical Gardens, I check my phone. My heart skips—like literally skips—when I see the message from Vaughn.
Prepare. In nine hours I blow your mind with surprises.
Surprises, hmmm. He left all sorts of surprises in my apartment last night as well. Boxes and boxes of gifts, and the new bedsheets and comforter did not escape me either. It might’ve been my best night of sleep ever. I’m just not sure if it’s because I was fucked unconscious, because of the new bedding, or because living a fantasy is exhausting. But either way, dragging my butt up out of bed was difficult.
I text back, I can’t help it.
You’re #OnMyMind, is that good or bad?
I press send and then immediately wish I could take it back. I should not discuss my feelings with him. He’s made it very clear we’re just fucking, and the fact that I’m having feelings is going to put an end to this as soon as he figures it out. In fact he might be debating that right now. Should I cancel our tweet date? he’s probably wondering. Is she getting clingy already?
Way to go, Grace.
My phone buzzes and I look down.
I’m smiling, Grace. You made me smile.
What’s that mean?
And then my phone dings a noise I’ve never heard before and an alert comes through.
FaceTime, Accept?
I didn’t even know I had FaceTime. I press accept and a view of Los Angeles appears. “Are you alone?” Vaughn asks.
“Yes,” I giggle back.
His face comes into view and he grins at me. “You look nice today. What are you up to?”
I bite my lip and look around. I’m fucking FaceTiming with Vaughn Asher in public. “Um…” And then I spot Kristi coming out of the bathroom. “I’m looking at flowers with a client. And she’s coming back from the restroom, so I can’t really talk.”
“Mmmmm,” he says back. “I want to fuck you right now.”
“Shhh,” I say, looking around to make sure no one can hear him.
“Tweet me something special when you ditch the friend.” And then the screen goes black and cycles back to home.
“Who’re you talking to?” Kristi asks when she rejoins me at near the ticket line.
“Oh, no one. I got a call from the office but it’s nothing important.” We get our tickets and make our way through the gardens. It’s a lovely place, and Kristi is quite knowledgeable, pointing out all sorts of plants that have absolutely nothing to do with weddings. I do my very best to pay attention, but most of the time I’m tuning her out.
Vaughn is the only thing on my mind. Vaughn is the only person I have room for today. And the impromptu FaceTime break only makes it worse. My mind is spinning with questions. What does he really want from me? What do I really want from him?
I think about that all morning and by the time I’m finally able to ditch my client and concentrate on the movie star pursuing me, I have to accept what’s real.
I like him. I want him. I want more than sex, I want feelings. And these small gestures that probably mean nothing to him are going to drive me mad. Because it’s impossible for me not to read into it. When a man leaves you gifts and pays attention to you during a workday, that typically means he likes you. He wants you. And yes, I know Vaughn likes and wants me, but it’s only for sex.
I don’t want him only for sex, I want him in every way imaginable. I want him to love me.
That thought stops me dead as I step off the elevator on the fifth floor of Big Guys. No, no, no, no, no. That’s the worst possible thing that can happen to me.
“Grace?” Flora asks from her reception desk. “Are you OK
?”
I shake myself out of it and start walking again. “Yeah, sure, I just remembered that I forgot something.” I flash her a smile and try to get to my office as fast as I can.
“Oh, Grace, wait!”
I turn and she’s holding out a message.
“Your banker came by. He said you need to stop by and see him.”
I take the message and call out a cheerful, “Thanks,” over my shoulder. When I finally reach my office I close the door and sit down.
I cannot fall in love with this asshole movie star. I just can’t. He’s going to use me up and throw me away. It’s a done deal. I need to get a grip on these feelings fast.
I resolve to do that. I make a firm commitment to accept this arrangement for what it is, but in that very instant, my desktop computer dings a new email from my work account.
It’s from The Invisible Man.
I click on it.
It’s a picture of me at the Botanical Gardens. I’m leaning down to smell a rogue daisy in a greenhouse filled with rare hothouse orchids.
The message reads:
You are the white daisy in that greenhouse. Your beauty is simple, your confidence strong, your feelings genuine. I love it.
What the fuck?
Is he stalking me from LA? How is that possible? How did he get that picture? How did he get this email? Jesus, is he crazy? I get out my phone and press the number he called from earlier. He picks up on the second ring.
“I already know what you’re going to say, Grace. I’m sorry.”
“You damn well better be, mister. What the hell is going on?”
“It was too much, wasn’t it? The message was too personal. I apologize.”
“The message?” I’m confused. “You mean the picture. And the fact that you have my work email and I never gave it to you.”
“The picture?” Now it’s his turn to be confused. He chuckles. “Darling. I have security on you. They send me updates. It was in the agreement. If you’re mine, you have to have security and I can ask for an update any time I want.”
“You’re spying on me.”
“No, I’m keeping track of you. Spying would imply I’m doing it secretly. And please, your email at Big Guys is [email protected]. It was not that difficult.”
He’s fucking spying on me.
I end the call and sit back in my chair. Well, that takes care of my movie-star crush. I’m so over that crush. He can kiss my ass, thinking he can have people follow me around and take pictures. It’s invasive. It’s degrading. It’s manipulative. It’s—
My email dings again and it’s another message from Vaughn. I click open and there’s a selfie picture of him standing in front of his view of LA holding a white daisy to his nose. He has the most adorable boyish smile on his face. This message says:
Now we’re even.
And then another one comes in as soon as I finish reading that one.
You can call it whatever you want, but I’m not going to stop. I like getting updated. I like knowing what you’re up to. I want to know more about you, Grace.
How much more?
Shit. What if he starts digging?
I call him back and he picks up on the first ring this time. “Miss Kinsella.”
“Mr. Asher, I don’t want to be spied on. I don’t want you fishing around for information on me. I don’t want to get these creepy feelings everywhere I go, wondering if I’m being watched.”
“You are being watched, and that condition is non-negotiable.” He says this in his authoritative tone, but there’s an edge to it that causes me to hesitate in my retaliation. “Grace, if the media ever finds out about you, you will be a target. I’m being very careful, but they are relentless motherfuckers and I have a movie coming out in two weeks. They want dirt. They want filth. They want proof that I’m some abusive prick and they want nothing more than to plaster pictures of whatever they can find out all over the tabloids. This is a security issue for me and for you. I will not give in on this point. I won’t. And I don’t want to hear about how you’ll walk away, because Grace, I have a whole night of erotic spankings planned.”
I laugh and then cover my mouth and try to compose myself so I can spar properly. “Mr. Asher, I will be polite and accommodating and call the spying ‘security’, but you have to stop looking in my past. If I want you to know personal things, I’ll tell you.”
He’s silent for a few moments and my mind is spinning with thoughts and questions. Will he back off? Will that make him look harder? Will he demand answers? Will he send me to therapy?
Where the hell did that come from?
“OK,” he finally says, letting out a sigh of resignation. “OK, no more digging. But the security stays.”
“I accept that deal.”
“But Grace” —he pauses for a moment—”is it bad? Your past? Is it bad?”
I have to sit down for that question. Because his voice is not filled with pity, he doesn’t know what happened to my parents, so that’s not it. But the sympathy catches me off-guard. And I’ve never told this story to anyone. Not anyone. Oh, Bebe pieced together most of it, but that just excused me from ever saying the words out loud.
“You can tell me, sweets. I can keep a secret too. And I don’t judge. I’m a good listener.”
“It’s nothing, Asher,” I say back, minus the melancholy threatening to take over. “Really, just back off and let it be. You’re getting your way about so many things, please just let me have my way about this.”
Chapter Thirty-Three - Vaughn
#DamageControl
IT surprises me how affected I am by this turn of events with Grace. Plenty of submissives over the years have had personal problems, and while I would listen if they brought these troubles up, I never cared to understand what the issues were about or how they affected the woman I was fucking.
But Grace pleading with me to allow her some privacy about her past, in combination with the fact that it’s missing from all public record—that’s… odd. And troubling. And it makes me worry. Not about me. But about her.
What kind of indiscretion could it be? Should I allow her to keep that secret? Or should I go digging and break my promise? Will me not knowing affect her protection, should the media ever discover her?
Well, the good thing about that is if I’m having a hard time finding out about her past, so will they. But the bad thing is, what if they do find out and they take her by surprise?
I speed-dial Felicity. I know she’s in school and she hates me bothering her on the weekdays, but I need absolute discretion in this matter and she’s the only one I can trust.
It goes to voicemail, so I leave a message, hang up, and then access the picture the security team sent me from the Botanical Gardens.
Grace is so sweet in this image. And she is like a daisy surrounded by rows and rows of orchids. Because her beauty doesn’t need to be cultivated. She doesn’t need special conditions to thrive. She’s what people in the biz call a natural beauty. No makeup, no hair products, no fancy clothes required. Just her in whatever she throws on. Her straight honey-colored hair and her flawless peach skin.
But the tremble in her voice just now, when I asked her about her past and she retaliated by calling me Asher… that concerns me.
My phone buzzes in my hand and I feel relief when Felicity’s face appears on my screen. “I need you to dig up Grace Kinsella’s past.”
“Oh, I totally forgot to tell you, V. I did, but all her juvenile records have been sealed. It’s very difficult to find those because they are expunged, and lots of places don’t have the juvenile records digitized after they are sealed.”
“So you can’t do it?”
She laughs. “Please, I can do it. It’s just a big deal. How bad do you really want it? Because it will take a significant amount of time and planning. And probably bribes,” she adds.
“How long if you start now?”
“I dunno, weeks?”
“Start n
ow. If it gets too difficult, let me know, but I think it’s very important that I know. And Felicity?”
“Yeah?”
“If someone knew about her sealed records—knew where to find them, for instance—how hard would they be to get?”
“Well, in LA, probably pretty hard. But in Colorado? Who knows how they run things out there. Could be really easy. Like maybe one person has complete access and there’s no paper trail when you go into the file room. Or it could be just as tight as here.”
“OK.” Yeah, that’s not good. “Please do this for me and make it a priority.”
“No problem, V. I’m on it.”
The line disconnects but I’m too deep in thought to bother putting my phone away, so I just stare out across the valley and suddenly wish I could fly back to Denver tonight. I speed-dial my office. “Janet, can I cancel my day tomorrow?”
I have to pull the phone away from my ear, that’s how abrupt her laugh is.
“Mr. Asher, you have a fundraising meeting with your father at eight AM, remember?”
I sigh. “Never mind.” I pocket my phone and walk over to the glass wall that lines the terrace, resting my forearms on the thin ledge, as I ponder my feelings.
She’s fine. Nothing’s going to happen to her. I’m careful. I’ve been doing this for years and no one has ever gotten a speck of dirt on me. They won’t find her. I’ve only been to see her once.
Which means, even if my day was clear tomorrow, I can’t go. I need to keep the distance between us because if the media finds out about her, we have to call it quits.
That’s always been the rule, and even though I’ve never had to put it in practice, I will if necessary.
My phone buzzes again and I’m surprised to see Conner’s face lighting up my screen.
