“I miss having one too.” I sighed. “Oh, wait. I never had a secretary.”
“That’s cute,” he said, reaching down and grabbing the phone. “Very cute. Double R Energy Ranch. This is Ryan Reines speaking. How can I help you? … Jeff, how are you? I almost forgot I had an appointment today. There’s been a lot going on here. Could you hold on for a second? Thanks.”
He put the line on hold and looked over at me smiling. That charming smile kicked me right in the gut every single time. I was pretty sure he could have told me it was the Pope, and I wouldn’t have batted an eye.
“It’s a journalist,” he said. “The call might take a minute. I can ask them to call me back for the interview.”
“Nah,” I said, shaking my head and sitting down in one of the chairs. “I would love to hear an exclusive interview with a billionaire. I’m sure it’ll be titillating.”
He rolled his eyes and chuckled, reaching over and clicking the button, putting the call on speakerphone. He was so confident and so smooth in his motions, and it sent chills up the back of my neck. I would have been a nervous wreck to talk to a reporter, but it seemed second nature to him.
“Jeff,” he said. “You still there?”
“I’m here,” the reporter said.
“All right, shoot.”
“How’s everything going out there?” he said with a chuckle.
“It’s great,” Ryan said seamlessly. “We’re really making some headway with everything.”
I listened, impressed with his easy demeanor and instant answers to questions. I could only assume that with a project like this, they were trying to get it out to the media and show some love to the company. He had probably done dozens of interviews already.
“So, you’ve been pegged as a technological genius. Why this project?”
“Well, this project has been something in the making long before anyone knew my name,” he said. “Green energy is the future, and not only is it good for the planet, reducing greenhouse gases, but it’s just good business too. It’s a way to own a responsible company, do something that means something for the people of this world, and make a living doing it.”
“Now, let me ask you this,” he said. “How is the project’s popularity faring amongst the most recent allegations brought by Natasha Noborov and how she—?”
Before the journalist could finish the sentence, Ryan had quickly leaned forward and grabbed the handset, taking it off speakerphone. He glanced up at me, looking nervous for a moment and then leaned back in the chair, trying to play it off. I could tell something was up, though.
“My office has already commented on that subject,” he said. “Thanks for taking the time to interview us here and let my PR rep know if there’s anything else we can do to help. Thanks.”
I was instantly intrigued, especially since he jumped to end that conversation so quickly. What allegations was the journalist talking about? And that name, Natasha someone, it sounded almost familiar in my mind. I never had a lot of time for the media, not really interested in social media, not the girl who surfed the web very often, and even television wasn’t on my priority list. I had gone days, sometimes over a week, before I turned on the television, and that was usually for some noise when I was working. Alison was a different story. She was obsessed with the media. She would sit and scroll through social media for hours, reading out the latest and greatest trends going on. I, on the other hand, spent most of my time on my practice and with the horses at the charity.
Distractions were something I tried to stay away from as much as possible. There were enough things in my life that I had passion for that I didn’t need to fill my time with useless crap that didn’t concern me. I had been like that all my life, staying as far away from the rumor mill as possible, which was probably why I didn’t have a ton of friends. Social media didn’t interest me in the least, and I got enough information from Alison to satisfy any curiosity that might creep into my brain. Even social gatherings weren’t really my thing, and the few friends I’d acquired when I was younger had moved away from small-town life as soon as they had the chance. It was rare to find girls like me and Alison who were happy living in the small-town Oregon landscape.
I turned my attention back to Ryan, but before I could open my mouth to ask the question about Natasha and the allegations, he was standing in front of me, grabbing my hands and pulling me to my feet. It was hard to even choke out my words when I was standing that close to him.
“I need to pay you back for coming to my rescue today.” He laughed. “Why don’t you come out to dinner with me at the town’s only other restaurant?”
There were so many thoughts floating through my head all at once. The phone call with the journalist had my mind doing overtime, but it was hard to focus when Ryan was standing there paying me such close attention. I tried to think of what to say, but I was completely distracted when Ryan bent down and pressed his lips softly against mine. He was gentle and careful, lingering for a moment before pulling away.
“Dinner? Tonight?” I said, watching him nod his head. “Yes, of course.”
I had agreed without even thinking about it. On my way home afterward, I drove along with the music playing lightly and my mind completely in the clouds. Ryan had a way of doing that to me. I glanced down up at the rearview mirror, and my heart started to pump fast and hard, seeing flashing blue lights behind me. I pulled over to the side of the road and watched in the side mirror as Gary, the deputy, pulled behind me and rolled out of the car. He pulled his belt up higher on his fat belly and walked to my window.
“Why are you pulling me over?” I asked. “I was definitely not speeding.”
“You’re pretty far away from home or the stables,” he said, looking behind me in the van. “What are you doing all the way out in this direction?”
“I didn’t know it was a crime to be out here,” I growled. “I had a call about an injured animal, so I came out to take care of it. I’ll be filing the report with the city like I’m supposed to.”
“Right.” He chuckled. “One of them city animals injured.”
“Excuse me?” I said, narrowing my eyes.
“Don’t play dumb,” he said, looking at me with a straight face. “I know exactly where you were, and soon, Janson will too.”
“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?” I asked. “What does Janson have to do with any of this?”
“Janson is only going to tolerate you pushing so far,” he said, eyeing me. “Before he pushes back that is.”
He tapped my window hard with his hand and nodded his head, turning and walking back to his car. I watched him climb inside and pull out, speeding away down the road toward the town. I leaned my back against the chair and breathed deeply, shaking my head. I could feel a hole in the pit of my stomach, and I knew Janson had been watching me. Everything had settled down, or at least I’d thought it had, but as soon as I thought I had a good thing going, there was Janson swooping in and fucking it up as fast as he could. This was starting to get dangerous.
Chapter 13
Ryan
I pulled off my boots and set them by the door, trying not to get the dirt everywhere. After doing a few more tasks and running a couple of tests, I had come back to my room to get ready for the impromptu date I’d scheduled with Sara. I wanted to take her out, but the date was a way for me to get her mind off the questions I knew she wanted to ask after hearing that part of the interview. I was a bit annoyed that I couldn’t even take an interview in front of Sara without the media bringing up questions about Natasha and the past. I had done several interviews with Jeff before, and he’d sideswiped me with that question, knowing full well I wasn’t interested in discussing that bullshit anymore. I had panicked when I heard Natasha’s name and ended the interview right then and there, which I knew wasn’t going to make my PR rep very happy at all.
Hell, I had done fifty interviews about Natasha, and these new interviews were supposed to change all of that.
The interviews that I agreed to were to help me move past all that bullshit, not drudge it up over and over to sell papers. I knew it was their job to ask the questions, and I had always been very patient with the media, knowing they had a huge pull on my client base and my investors’ thoughts on projects, but it was getting to the point where every time I turned around, I was answering questions about that whole nightmare back in New York. I was looking forward to the day when I could take an interview and answer stupid questions like how I felt about the Mets versus the Yankees, questions that celebrities got asked during fun interviews. Instead, I got the same ones over and over again.
I changed my clothes, slinging my cell phone on the dresser and sitting down on the bed. Running my hands through my hair and groaning, it occurred to me I wasn’t going to get out of this without answering to Sara and that was the last thing I wanted to have to do. Natasha was my ex, the one I had told Sara about the night she’d opened up about the sheriff. The thing was, I had barely scratched the surface of that whole giant disaster. Most of the time, I tried to not even think about it, much less talk about it. What had happened kept me awake for weeks, and it definitely kept my PR rep busy trying to field all of the questions and try to get some kind of good press going for me. It had been a disaster in the making from the first moment I’d laid eyes on Natasha. She was the spoiled little rich girl I’d described to Sara, but even worse, she was devious and had her own agendas hidden behind sexy smiles and a whole lot of seduction.
Alec had warned me about her from the beginning before I’d even approached her. He’d told me she was bad news, that she was looking for more than what she was letting on. I was stupid, though, blinded by her seductive ways, that mouth, the way she seemed to be able to talk anyone into just about anything with a blink of her eyes. The thing was, though, no matter how deceitful and devious Natasha was, her father was ten times worse. She’d learned her ways from him, and when Alec was busy warning me about her, he should have been warning me about her father. I kicked myself in the ass every day for getting so caught up in that world. I was rich, yes, but they were much richer and involved in a lifestyle I had never experienced before. It was hypnotizing and drew you in deep before you even realized you were drowning.
Peter Noborov was her father’s name, a rich Russian ex-pat whose business dealings ran deep in New York City. He poured his money into real estate development, sometimes winning and sometimes losing. I hadn’t yet realized that was just on the surface of it all. In the end, Noborov always won, no matter what the cost. I look back at that time and almost cringe for being so stupid, so blind to what was going on around me. I thought I’d had it all figured out and didn’t heed a bit of Alec’s or anyone else’s warnings. I’d almost completely ruined everything I had worked so hard for.
Peter doted on his daughter, thought of her as the most important piece of his life. He had no sons, and he wanted to make sure his money went somewhere safe. He had big plans for her, plans he had put into motion even before she was born. She was to marry into one of the storied American dynasties, giving her the old-world money and him the sovereignty of an American bloodline. Like everything else in Peter’s life, no matter how much he loved her, she was a pawn in a bigger game. I was a new billionaire, new money, and neither he nor the rich society looked kindly upon that. I never realized there were tiers to the rich man’s club until I was standing at the door trying to get in. I was the lowest of the low to them, not much above the peasants from which they made their fortunes. Peter saw Natasha with me and looked at it as her slumming, despite the billions I had in the bank. It would never have been enough for him, and nothing I could do or say would have ever changed his mind.
I didn’t care about that, though. I had the hot Russian chick with the legs that went on for days and an accent that drove me wild. It was like being in some movie where the new guy got the girl, only I had forgotten to think about how those movies ended with the good guy getting the bullet too. I just wanted to have a good time, though, and at first, I knew Natasha was dating me to piss off her dad. I didn’t give a shit. I was getting laid, going to the hottest parties, and men wanted to be me for the first time in my life. I got caught up in it like I had always told myself I wouldn’t. But, before long, I realized things were starting to change. Natasha was getting needy, wanting more, pushing me to be around her all the time, talking about a future I had never even given two thoughts. I knew Natasha wasn’t the girl for me, but she didn’t seem to understand that in the least. She had her eye set on higher things, and she knew exactly what she wanted. She wanted me for life.
She wanted the forever fairy tale she thought she deserved to have, the American man giving into every single one of her desires, taking care of her, making her his wife. She wanted the fancy house, the cars, the clothes, and eventually the children to boot. She wanted to secure herself a future on her own terms, not her fathers, and she had picked me to do it with, figuring the new guy in the rich world wouldn’t think two ways about it. That wasn’t true, though. Beneath the haze of vodka and money that I had been traveling through since meeting her, I still was the same guy with the same dreams. I didn’t want to settle down or at least not with Natasha. Playing house when she stayed with me was one thing, but truly committing to a life tied to the Nabokovs and with a girl I didn’t love in the least was not in the cards for me. Even beyond the aversion to being tied down was the fact that Natasha did nothing for me beyond the sex and the booze.
I had plans to break it off with her, especially when she started talking about getting engaged, buying a place together, and moving in permanently to the penthouse. Before I could, though, everything had come crashing down like a ton of bricks. The media broke a story about Peter’s involvement with the Russian oligarchy, and the words dirty money were splashed over every paper in the city. The man had used his real estate as a cover, which anyone not drowned in Natasha’s charms would have seen right off the bat, but I fucked up, and I was in too deep.
As soon as the story broke, my phone began ringing off the hook, and I was getting calls from everyone including my investors and my PR team. My business reputation was in danger of guilt by association, and I knew what I had to do. I remember that day so clearly, grabbing Natasha out of the bed and taking her into the living room, sitting her down, and showing her the headlines. I had to break it off with her. There was no question. It was either going to be her or my company, and I knew without a doubt which one I wanted more. She was pissed, hurt, and very angry when I told her it was over. There was a lot of screaming, a lot of Russian, and whole lot of threats on her side. She wasn’t going to take this lying down. She got everything she wanted in life, and if she didn’t, she made damn sure that whoever was working against her got the shit end of the stick. She had stormed out of the penthouse that morning, and I’d thought that would be it. She would be pissed and never talk to me again, maybe keep me from going to certain clubs, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
She went straight to the papers, alleging that I was involved in several investments with her father. I had never been involved in his investments, not even for a second. Hell, I couldn’t even sit in the same room with the man without him cussing at me in Russian and telling me I would never have his daughter. On top of that, she continued alleging that I knew where the money was coming from, that I willingly let that kind of illegal, treasonous activity happen and didn’t say a word about it. It was ridiculous in every way, but the media lapped it up, spreading the word faster than I could dial my PR rep’s phone number. I had already been the guy no one wanted to talk to in high society since my money was new, but this whole thing drove me even further out of that circle. I didn’t really care about those people on a personal level, but on a business level, their support had been paramount to the future success of my company. They were the investors, the brokers, the money line to the future. That was where it all came from, and they were looking at me like a pariah.
Luc
kily, I had one of the best PR companies in the world on my side, and they went to work, building a team to help me out. Of course, there were questions from the feds, and I complied with everything, handing over all my paperwork and telling them everything I knew, which wasn’t much. It didn’t take long for them to see I had no connection other than to be the poor sap who’d dated his daughter. After that, the reputation-rebuilding PR tour commenced, and I hadn’t done that many interviews in such a short amount of time, and I was pretty sure no one ever had.
I sighed and got up off the bed, pulling my shoes on and heading out to the car. My frustration over the whole situation was at its peak, but there was nothing I could do about it at that point. However, I found that the closer I got to Sara, the more that frustration began to melt away, dropping off and awarding me some deep breaths of air. I hated how it felt to be in the center of that bullshit. It was suffocating. I was going to see Sara again, though, and that was all that mattered to me in that moment. It wasn’t like my pull to Natasha that had been completely on the surface. Sara made me calmer, made me feel like everything was going to be okay, like there were still good people out there in the world. I knew I shouldn’t keep seeing her, that it was going to suck when I left in a week, but I couldn’t help myself.
When I pulled up, she was standing outside waiting for me, looking more beautiful than ever. She climbed into the car and smiled casually. On the way to the restaurant, I noticed she was a bit stiff, so I tried to lighten things by talking to her about her day. She answered shortly and kept her eyes forward on the road. Something was up, but I didn’t know what it was. We went to a barbecue restaurant that night, and the food was great, but Sara was still almost silent the whole time. I tried again to lighten the mood, telling her a story about the only barbeque Alec had hosted at his mansion in the Hamptons. Alec had spent thousands on the perfect barbecue setup only to discover it was a bit harder than it looked on television.
My Last First Kiss Page 33
