Public Relations

by Tibby Armstrong

  More cover rustling before his voice came louder over the speaker. “Gimme the highlights. I’ll have to get the paper to the printer in…damn. It’d have to be there in an hour. We give our dead three days before we bury them, and you’re only giving us an hour to pull off a miracle. You ever heard of sleep, Georgie? It’s up there with food as a necessity. Right now? I feel like a zombie. I haven’t even had enough sleep to throw wood. Oh my God! Do I have a pulse?” Sheets rustled, and the mattress squeaked.

  She laughed despite her dour mood. “Fine. Just the highlights then. The Wells Foundation funded a children’s summer camp. The man of the hour gathered his date before the announcement. They disappeared into the private reading room, where she proved she had more unnatural flexibility than a circus performer. He paid her a substantial sum before lecturing her on getting too close to him. His advice? Keep in mind it was all a business arrangement.”

  Sid choked so hard she wondered if he’d swallowed his tongue. “Business arrangement? As in a…a…a hooker?”

  “I do believe the more expensive women are referred to as escorts, perhaps even mistress, but yes. In spirit? Same thing.” She frowned at the sound of water falling on water. “Are you using the loo?”

  “You’re the one putting my ass on deadline for a paper I already put to bed.” Flushing and gurgling prevailed for a moment. “Don’t bitch.”

  “Men are vile.” The lot of them. Even Sid. At least tonight. At least until she got this column out of her system.

  The more uncomfortable physical traces of her Gigi persona banished, Georgia moved into the little library she used as both a reading space and an office. She popped out her colored contacts and put them in their case as she settled into her desk chair. Later she’d scrub off the clever makeup and ritzy nail polish. The jewelry would go back in the safe before bed. Presently, she had work to do. “I’ve never understood the allure of paying for sex. I suppose it’s a bit like test-driving a Bentley compared to a Nissan, right?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I take the subway.” Rustling and static overtook the conversation as Sid grabbed his phone and took it off speaker. His tone changed, morphing from best friend to managing editor in under three seconds. “So you’ll have the piece in on time? This is a huge thing to ask. If I fuck it up… The paper’s already in the financial crapper. You’ve got to get this right. Fast.” Anxiety threaded his voice.

  They knew each other so well that she could perfectly imagine the way his brows, shades darker than his lovely blond hair, had winged down in a harsh V. He’d be staring at the clock. “About the piece. What’s the flavor?”

  “Well, I’m not sure.” The next words were so caustic she wouldn’t have batted a single eyelash if her tone melted the case on her phone. “I suppose that all depends on whether or not Peter paid his lovely date to swallow before I arrived.”

  “Holy. Fuck.” The choked laughter and irreverent awe were tempered by open concern. “He really got to you, didn’t he?”

  She snatched up her cell and took it off speaker. “Not even Peter Wells has that much money, Sid.”

  “Good luck. Just…”

  “What?”

  “Get the piece to me pronto.”

  She knew those words were surrogates for his original statement. It didn’t matter. Not really. Her mind was shifting, moving toward the task ahead.

  Georgia Whitcomb, alter ego to the anonymously infamous Gigi, Lady Montrose, had an article to write, and one very unsuspecting playboy to bring down.

  Chapter Three

  5:56 a.m.

  The blinking blue dots of the alarm clock kept beat with Peter’s rapid pulse as he watched the digits flick to 5:57. Three minutes until his alarm went off, and he’d been staring at the stupid thing for at least a half hour wondering why drinking so much last night seemed like a good idea.

  He switched off the alarm and let his gaze drift to the bank of bedroom windows. Trees mummified in a layer of ice-covered snow glittered along Central Park. Above the saw-toothed skyline of the Upper East Side, dawn edged the horizon in a pearly gray wash of lingering clouds.

  After a bracing walk and what should’ve been an oblivion-inducing amount of alcohol, he’d been unable to evict that spoiled socialite from his head. Gigi Montrose. London expat. He’d discovered a brief mention of her in a New York society column but little else as he’d sat at his computer into the wee hours taxing his liver and his dubious search-engine prowess. It seemed his little socialite liked to fly under the radar.

  With a name that fell off his tongue with all the haughty sparkle of a Tiffany’s bauble, she shouldn’t have interested him. Definitely she shouldn’t have fascinated him to the point he’d declined Chastity’s company in favor of a quick work over in the shower with his own hand. Yet there it was, infatuation, staring him in the face like he was a goddamned teenager with nothing better to do than fantasize about tits and ass.

  Peeling back the covers, he slipped from the bed with as little movement of his head as possible. The room wobbled, and he gritted his teeth. He never drank to excess. Trouble. He was in big, big trouble. The kind that saw a man married and shackled with a couple of kids before his wife left him for her tennis trainer or the pool boy.

  He shrugged on his robe and lifted his cell from the nightstand as he left the warm pile carpet for the ebony wood floors. The kitchen light flickered on as he entered the expansive space. Chrome everywhere. Spotless. Too early for Mrs. Simms to be there. He’d have to make his own tea.

  Actually, it felt kind of nice, puttering around his kitchen, filling the kettle, setting it on the stove. No servants hovering to fawn all over him. Servants he paid, he reminded himself. He’d hired them so he’d have more time to attend to things that really mattered. His work, his charities, and—he glanced to the series of photos he’d hung with magnets on the fridge despite Mrs. Simms’s disapproval—building his yacht.

  Photos of a wooden, three-masted schooner he someday intended to replicate with his own two hands dotted the industrial fridge with color. Peter grabbed the milk and crossed gray slate flooring to the stove. All the earth tones had seemed like a good idea at the time, but today, at least, the decor lacked a warmth he sought. That homey feeling.

  He poured water from the kettle and dunked the tea ball a few times. As he watched the liquid darken, he recalled there were reasons he’d created a simple personal life. While servants took care of his home, having a decorator fuss with flowers and changing fabrics all the time meant hours away from his work, doing things he really didn’t care much about. Or at least he hadn’t thought he cared about them. Until now.

  Milk splashed into his tea, clouding the clear brown liquid before he set down the carton. Maybe he was developing some sort of early midlife crisis? Not good. Next thing he knew, he’d be planning a nursery, and his mother would be here fussing over her grandson. Peter shuddered, pressed the cap on the milk, and put it away. God help him. Please. All he needed was work and sex. Money from the former provided the latter and just about everything else he required.

  Except companionship, a voice whispered across his mind, bringing with it visions of impossibly green eyes and pale English features. With curves as lush as a 1940s movie star’s, Gigi had bewitched him. Plain and simple. Witchcraft remained the only explanation. Shoving the woman out of his mind for the umpteenth time, he stalked from the kitchen, clutching his tea.

  A pile of newspapers already lay on his desk when he entered the walnut-paneled study. The decorator had said something about wanting to give him warmth while he worked. He harrumphed and plunked down in his leather desk chair, the act of putting down his tea settling his mind into work mode.

  He reached for the paper on top with one hand, drawing it into his lap as he turned on his laptop with the other. A remote to his left activated three televisions on the opposite wall. He glanced at them, then at his e-mail. Scroll, scroll, scroll. Nothing appeared to be on fire, which meant he could enjoy his tea and
his papers—the best part of his Sunday.

  He began with the lesser newspapers. They contained only smatterings of local news he might be able to use in brainstorming a new business idea, while the Journal he saved for last, when he was caffeinated and could give it his full attention. While he could’ve used a news service or read the papers on his tablet, something about the dry newsprint beneath his fingers felt real. Solid. Unlike so much else.

  Scanning the index, he saw a line about last night’s charity gala and automatically turned to that page. While he didn’t relish seeing his name splashed throughout the article, he needed to be prepared to respond to questions.

  He glanced to the television and saw a flash of the front of his high-rise. Flicking on the volume, he looked down at the paper. The gossip section. With his picture? He didn’t remember any of the gossip columnists on the invite list being part of this paper’s staff. Pausing the television, he scanned the so-called article.

  PETER WELLS: MAN OF MYSTERY, MONEY, AND MATTERS OF CONVENIENCE

  America’s favorite billionaire playboy proved tonight that there are few things money can’t buy. Interior decor fit for a king? One hundred thousand greenbacks surely isn’t too much. Public approval? Several million via a charitable donation. Drop in the hat. Affection? That’s hard to tell with any surety as call-girl rates are highly protected. However, I did witness what was a very large, though assumedly private, cash transaction following his tête-à-tête with a svelte blonde. I’d be most interested to know how he classifies his entertainment for the IRS, and mark my words—Mr. Wells was intimately entertained.

  The event hosted at the New York Public Library’s Rose Room was a lavish affair…

  One moment he was in his chair looking forward to his customary hour of leisurely reading. Next he punched numbers into his phone, receiver clenched in his hand, as tea dripped from a puddle over the edge of the desk. Three rings. It took the president of his public relations firm three rings to answer his goddamned phone.

  “Donner,” Carl Donner mumbled.

  “Have you seen the paper this morning?” Peter knew very well he’d just woken the man on a Sunday, but a perverse need to make someone else’s morning as fucked-up as his own prodded him into asking the question anyway.

  The shifting of covers and murmur of his girlfriend’s voice preceded Carl’s “No Peter. I haven’t. What’s up?”

  Peter paced behind the desk. The phone cord brought him up short. “Fuck. I should’ve called you on my cell.”

  “Let me get the—which paper is it?”

  He glanced at the top of the page. “The Daily Dispatch.”

  “I’ll call you back on your cell.” Carl’s resigned sigh ended the conversation, and Peter hung up.

  Unmuting the television, he backed up to his chair but didn’t sit. Rather, he stood in frozen horror, watching as news vans circled his block like sharks. Six long minutes and several creative television renditions of his biography later, Peter’s phone vibrated in a puddle of tea. He snatched it up and wiped it on his robe. “Wells.”

  “Good God, Peter.” Carl sounded flummoxed. Flummoxed couldn’t be good. Not from a PR professional who’d won all the top industry awards.

  “I’m suing the paper.” The cell creaked as Peter clenched it harder. “Do you hear me?”

  “Calm down. We’ll handle it.”

  “Calm down?” The chair met his backside as he sat hard, then immediately stood to pace. “How am I supposed to calm down when I’ve got—” He paused, hand in his hair midrake, and eyed the television. “When I’ve got reporters camped outside my building, and a scandal sheet burning a hole in my life? What are my parents going to think?”

  The rustle of newspaper and the sound of coffee pouring into a cup said Carl wasn’t taking this close to seriously enough.

  “Carl!”

  “Sorry, Peter. I didn’t know you were finished.”

  “I’m finished all right.” Finished with the whole damned female sex.

  “Peter?”

  “What?” He rubbed his temple with two fingers and squeezed his eyes shut.

  “It’s just a news story. It’ll blow over.” Carl ostensibly slurped his coffee, and Peter pictured him gesticulating with the cup when he continued. “We’ll get you on Leno and let him poke fun at you. People will feel they’ve laughed with you instead of at you, and it’ll all blow over.”

  Panic spiked through his middle. “My parents watch Leno.”

  God, how was he going to explain this to his mother? And his brothers? They were going to have a field day at his expense. He’d be lucky if they didn’t fill his stocking with flavored condoms. No. Ma would kill them if they did that. He sat on the leather love seat and flicked off the television.

  “Peter, it’s really no big deal. It’s free press. A blip on the radar. Here, then gone.”

  “Tell me, Carl?” Peter asked, his voice going deadly calm. “What do I pay you for?”

  Carl cleared his throat. “To make you look good.”

  “Do I look good right now?”

  A long pause ensued. Peter pulled the cell away from his ear and glared at it.

  “Well, no, but…” Carl finally answered.

  Peter put the phone back to his ear. “Are you going to make me look good?”

  “If you don’t want to make a statement—and believe me, you don’t—and you don’t want to go on Leno to make a joke of it, I’m not sure what we can do, to be honest.”

  He couldn’t have heard that right. “You’re telling me I have to just wait for this to blow over?”

  “If it’s true? Then, yes.” Carl’s toaster dinged, and a knife clinked against a glass jar.

  “We can’t create some other news to overshadow it?”

  “To overshadow a story that suggests the last however many women you’ve been photographed with have been, well, executive escorts?” Toast crunched, and Carl chewed, speaking around the food. “You? The man voted most eligible bachelor three years running?”

  “Jesus!” When put that way, it sounded worse than bad. Maybe Leno would… No. No way. “I’m going to have that gossip columnist’s head on a silver fucking platter.”

  “Who is she? Or he?” Newspaper rustled over the receiver as Carl searched for the answer to his own question. “Huh. No byline?”

  Peter crossed the room and snatched up the somewhat sodden paper. God, he needed a cup of coffee. Screw what his nutritionist said. In ten minutes he was having a double espresso. This was what came of hiring people for everything in his life—headaches. He was a goddamned grownup and could choose his own goddamned food. Scanning the article again, he saw no byline.

  “Looks like it’s a regular column.” Tucking the phone between his ear and shoulder, he reached for last Sunday’s paper from the stack he kept on his credenza and flipped it open. Another column, this one skewering a visiting dignitary on his free-roaming hands. Again, no byline. Given the tone of the pieces, however, he’d have put money on a woman. “Find out who she is. You have one hour.”

  He hung up. A red light blinked at him as he thumbed the Off button on his cell. Immediately the device began to vibrate, and a name he recognized as belonging to one of the entertainment news show executives flashed on the display. Silencing the phone, he slipped it into his robe pocket and stalked to the kitchen. Emma, his personal assistant, and Miles, his butler-cum-valet sat at the table.

  In place of his customary good morning, he snarled, “Coffee.”

  The two exchanged glances before Emma rose to make the coffee and Miles raised one brow in his direction. Peter didn’t bother to answer the unspoken question. He leaned back against the counter and folded his arms.

  “There’s a woman newly on my private payroll,” he said to Miles. From the corner of his eye, he saw Emma pause midpour. “Pay out her contract. Tell her that her services are no longer required.”

  “Very good, sir,” Miles intoned, but not without a little sniff.
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  Peter suppressed an eye roll. The man was twenty-six going on sixty with his overly starched collars and prep-school manners.

  “And from you,” he said as he took the mug of coffee from Emma’s hands, “I want the name of every Daily Dispatch employee before ten a.m.”

  “Sure.” She paused on her way out the door to look over her shoulder. “You do know it’s Sunday, right?”

  Usually they jogged together on Sunday. Kibitzed and shared breakfast while they talked over the work week ahead. Relaxed and friendly were not on his menu today, however.

  He managed to force the snarl off his face, but the glare he shot across the room still made her flinch. “Just get me the information.”

  Shock and hurt mingled behind studious glasses he knew she’d adopted as a shield from the world.

  Pride stinging, he waved his hand at her. “Go. When you’re done, we’ll talk about that vacation you wanted.”

  Alone again, he sat and placed his mug and elbows on the table. Face in his hands, he breathed deep. He’d come so far. Done so much. Without a whiff of scandal. The world’s last honest businessman, they’d dubbed him. The debonair billionaire. He snorted. Yeah. Right. One stupid decision and he’d let everyone down. Again. Shoving aside regret, he went to the study, grabbed his laptop, and decided to do what he always did when he wanted to forget. He worked.

  An hour later, he was elbows-deep in financial statements when Carl strode into the kitchen and dropped his laptop bag on the table.

  “What do you have?” Peter asked without lifting his gaze. All he’d been able to discover was a flaky deal inked by a subsidiary of Wells Industries’ financial group, giving the paper a substantial loan.

  Carl poured a cup of coffee. “Not much. Just that the fourth estate still protects its own.”