“You did?” she said in a small voice.
I nodded. “Yeah. Tried to contact that Dave prick. He directed me to some hooker named Anya out of revenge for what I did to him that night.”
She gave me a half-smile, and I continued. “Anyway, like I said…I get it. You don’t need to believe me or trust me just yet. But we’re related now, and we’re working together, so how about we try to concentrate on that?”
“On work?”
“Well, yeah, but I meant it more like…we could try to be friends. It’ll make working together a lot easier. So what d’ya say?”
Truth be told, I wanted to be a lot more than friends with her, but I was willing to take what I could get. Even if all I ever got from her from this point on was friendship, that was far better than not having her in my life at all.
She hesitated for a moment before replying. “Okay. I guess we can try to be friends. But just friends. I don’t want to hear any sleazy ‘friends with benefits’ crap from you.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. Scou—“
“If you say ‘scout’s honor’ again, I’ll actually slap you.”
I chuckled. “Fine. You’re right, you know. I was never a Boy Scout.”
She smiled again, this time a little wider. “So what should we do?”
“Well, you went to so much trouble coming up with all those idea outlines in that file of yours. How about we take another look at them?”
“Hm…I’ve got a better idea. How about I expand on those outlines while you clean this place up? Seriously, it’s really gross in here, Cam. I’m surprised any woman would ever want to come here to see you, let alone sleep with you.”
“Hey, you’re here, aren’t you?” I said with a wink.
She laughed softly. “Oh, very funny. I thought I said no more sleazy jokes.”
“C’mon, you laughed. You totally think I’m hilarious. Anyway, fine—I’ll clean up and leave you to work for a while. Need to borrow my computer?”
She shook her head. “No, thanks. I brought my laptop.”
“Cool.”
I went and put a T-shirt on and then set about cleaning the apartment up while Anya quietly typed away on her laptop. She was right; the place was fucking gross, and I needed to get off my ass and fix that.
Empty takeout containers littered the place, and about two weeks’ worth of dirty laundry was strewn across the floor in random locations. After clearing away most of the clutter and dirty clothes, I found my Roomba vacuum cleaner at its docking station and replaced its battery before setting it free in the lounge room. Anya was concentrating so hard on work that she didn’t notice until the thing was sliding right past her feet, and she shrieked and jumped, almost sending her laptop flying off her knees.
“What the…?”
“It’s a robot vacuum cleaner,” I said with a grin. “I forgot you don’t like jump scares.”
She blushed and ignored me, abruptly turning her head back to her computer. I knew why. She was thinking about those moments when we’d been watching the horror movie in my room on that first night, and she’d used the jump scares in the film as a cute excuse to snuggle up to me.
I stacked the dishwasher, finished wiping down the kitchen counters and then sighed with relief as I sat down across from her. “Well, that’s good enough for now. Any updates?” I asked.
She arched an eyebrow. “It’s only been half an hour.”
“So you haven’t fixed my image and saved my career in the thirty whole minutes I just gave you?” I teased.
She rolled her eyes. “Nope. I don’t think even thirty years and a vat of antiseptic could clean your image up, but I’ll try anyway. Hey, have you ever done a marathon?”
“Nope.”
“I just saw this,” she said, turning her laptop around so I could see the screen. “It’s a charity fun run thing. The Color Run. Have you heard of it?”
“Vaguely.”
“Well, it’s a race. You wear white, and at stations along the way, you get covered in colored powders and paints. By the end you look like a rainbow.”
“What do I win if I finish first?”
She rolled her eyes again. “Nothing. There are no prizes. The more people that participate, the more money corporate sponsors donate to charities. You can also set up a webpage asking people to sponsor you to do it, and whatever you raise from that, you donate that directly to the featured charity.”
“I see. I thought you wanted me to do it just to show off my amazing fitness skills.”
“You wish. So does it sound like something you could do? It’s in two and a half weeks, so not long after we get back from the Hamptons. I think it could help your image a bit.”
“Sure. I have a lot of Facebook and Instagram followers. I could ask them to donate. What’s the featured charity?”
She turned the laptop back to herself and peered at the screen. “This year it’s a children’s hospital. And speaking of Facebook and Instagram—I’ll need the passwords to your fan page accounts.”
“What? Why? So you can stalk through my messages?”
She gave me a sarcastic smile. “Sure, Cam, that’s exactly why. I’m secretly obsessed with you and want to stalk your messages,” she replied. “Seriously, though, part of this image overhaul involves cleaning up your social media presence, and…um…”
She typed something and then turned the screen back to me before continuing. “Something tells me this doesn’t help.”
On my Instagram feed, there were countless uploaded pictures of me out at bars, drunk off my skull.
“Fine. I’ll give you my passwords,” I grumbled. “But if I catch you going through my messages, you’re fired!”
“Good luck firing me. Your Dad’s the one who hired me, not you.”
“Oh, I’ll figure out a way. I’ll tell him you’ve been subjecting me to sexual harassment in the workplace.”
She snorted. “Again, you wish.”
An alert popped up on the bottom of the computer screen; a message from some site I’d never heard of. Elune! You haven’t posted a new stream in ages…when are you coming back?
“What’s this?” I asked. “What’s Elune?”
Her face turned scarlet, and she snatched the laptop from me again. “Nothing,” she said hurriedly. “It’s just some…project thing for a class I have. Anyway, I’ll get started on curating your social media pages.”
“Curating, huh? You make me sound like a museum.”
“A horror museum, maybe,” she replied, a mischievous look crossing her face.
“Watch it. I’ll put on a horror movie if you aren’t careful.”
The dishwasher started beeping for some reason, and I let Anya focus on her work again while I went and checked the kitchen. She looked so cute sitting over there, furiously typing away and scrolling through endless web pages.
I had to admit, I was impressed by her attitude. Even before we’d reached our tentative agreement to be friends, she’d put a lot of effort into getting my image overhaul started. To me, that showed maturity. She hadn’t liked me or wanted to be near me, but she’d put that aside for the sake of my career and her internship. I felt bad for calling her childish earlier.
As she squinted at something on her screen, I called out to her. “Want a drink or something?”
“Yes, please. Also, do you have any snacks?”
“Um…let me check.”
I got her a glass of juice and then rummaged through my cupboards, fridge and freezer before flashing her a sheepish smile. “I haven’t had groceries delivered in a while. Looks like all I have is steak. In the mood for some meat?”
“I swear to god, if this is some kind of penis joke, I’ll actually throw you off the balcony.”
I chuckled. “Nah, there’s really meat here. So do you want a steak or what?”
“Sure. Kinda weird snack, but whatever.”
I cooked up the steaks as she continued to work, and half an hour later, I presented her
with her plate. She thanked me and set her laptop aside before politely cutting a chunk of medium-rare meat off her main strip and tasting it.
“Mm…this is good. You aren’t as useless as male nipples after all. You can cook!”
“It’s just steak,” I said with a grin. “But thanks.”
I dug into my food, and she watched me with fascination.
“Are you a wolf?” she asked a moment later. “You practically devoured that hunk of meat in thirty seconds! I only just finished my second bite.”
“I’m a growing boy.”
“Idiot.”
After finishing her food, she licked her lips and closed her laptop. “Sorry to dine and dash, but I have some stuff to do back at my dorm.”
“No worries. Thanks for coming around today.”
“I’ll probably do some more of this work tomorrow, and I’ll either call or email you if I need to tell you anything.”
“Okay. Let me just give you my number and email address.”
She shook her head. “Your Dad already gave me your details. He thought it was weird that I didn’t have them because we said we were old friends last night, but I said my phone suddenly screwed up and deleted everything. Anyway, I’ll text you my number…just gimme a sec.”
I chuckled at the story she’d invented for my Dad’s sake. “Cool,” I replied as she played with her phone. “Maybe we could do lunch or something, if you aren’t busy? Or even breakfast, if you’re up early.”
I sounded a bit desperate, but eh…whatever. I wanted to see her again as soon as possible; so sue me.
She hesitated for a second. “Um…okay, I guess we could do that. For work, of course. But won’t you still be in bed with whatever girl you drag home with you tonight?”
I detected a tiny hint of jealousy in her voice, and I smiled. “Nah. I’m actually not seeing anyone at the moment, and I’ve got no plans to go out tonight.”
“Oh.”
“You’re the only woman in my life right now,” I said in a joking tone. “In a platonic way, of course.”
Her shoulders visibly sagged with relief, and something inside me jumped for joy. I was right. She had been jealous, and she’d totally used the whole, ‘oh, won’t you have a girl here?’ line on me to suss out whether or not I was seeing anyone.
“Well, seeing as you couldn’t decide between breakfast and lunch, maybe we could compromise and have brunch after my ten A.M. class?” she said.
“Sounds good. If I think of anything that might help with your job, I’ll write down some notes and bring them.”
“That’d be great. Anyway, I’ll get out of your hair now.”
I walked her over to the elevator, and she went to press the button at the exact same time I did. As our hands collided, I felt a bolt of energy shoot up my arm, and Anya jerked away, her cheeks even redder than before.
“Sorry,” she mumbled. “I…um…”
Fuck, she was so sexy when she was embarrassed. Actually, scratch that—she was sexy all the time, no matter what she was doing. She could be flailing around in a puddle of mud in a pigsty and I’d probably still think she was the hottest woman on earth.
Suddenly, I couldn’t resist her any longer, even though I’d sworn I’d only be friends with her for now. I grabbed the sides of her face and leaned down, pressing my lips to hers, and she gasped and drew back before slapping me away.
“Cam!”
Even though she’d slapped me, I knew there was no way she hadn’t felt what I had just then; the simmering tension which had boiled over between us the second our lips had touched. She couldn’t deny it any more than I could.
I rubbed my cheek where she’d slapped me. “Okay, I guess you needed to get that out of your system,” I said. “Now I’m going to count to three, and if you don’t kiss me back, then I guess I’ll just go to my room and die of shame from rejection.”
She didn’t move or say a word, but her eyes widened slightly.
“One…two…”
Still no movement or sound.
“Three.”
Nothing. She didn’t even blink.
“Um….four?”
With that, she rolled her eyes and then stepped forward, yanking on my shirt as she pulled me down to her level again. Her soft lips closed over mine, and I voraciously kissed her back. My arms twined around her waist, and her hands slid under my shirt, roaming over the hard muscles of my back.
“Shit,” she panted, pulling away a moment later. “No, no, no. That was wrong. We shouldn’t have…”
“Shouldn’t have what? Done what we’ve both wanted to do since we first saw each other again?”
She shook her head and looked down at the floor. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I’m still not sure I can trust you. That was a mistake. You were right earlier. We should just concentrate on being friends for now.”
I held my hands up, palms facing her. “Okay, okay. You’re right. Sorry. Look, I swear, I’m gonna do what it takes to prove that I’m not the total ass you think I am, so you can start to trust me again, but I get why you can’t do that right now. Just promise me you’ll at least try to trust me.”
She nodded weakly. “Okay. I’ll try. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Just as she went to press the elevator button again, it beeped and the doors slid open.
“Cam, I’m horny, and you’ve totally been avoiding…wait, who’s this?” a shrill, feminine voice said.
Oh, shit.
It was Jana Langford. She was a vapid model-slash-socialite who I’d hooked up with a few times over the last six months. She lived in the same building, seven floors below me, so it was sort of a matter of convenience for the both of us, seeing as I’d never needed to buzz her into the building or clear her with the doorman. When either of us had felt a bit lonely in the past, she’d call me or I’d call her, and then she’d come up to my penthouse. There was a special passcode that could be keyed in to make the elevator open onto my floor if a keycard wasn’t presented, and I’d given it that passcode to her to make things easier. In hindsight, that had been a mistake.
During the aforementioned encounters, Jana and I would spend a few torrid hours together before parting ways for another few weeks. It had never been all that satisfying; she was shallow, dull, and always talked about her supposedly crazy ex-boyfriend while we were in bed. Besides that, she was just like every other girl…she wasn’t Anya.
I hadn’t seen her in a couple of months because I’d completely lost interest in sleeping with her again and started avoiding her phone calls a while back, and after my reunion with Anya, she was the last person I wanted to see…especially seeing as Anya would likely get the wrong idea and think Jana was an actual girlfriend or regular fuck-buddy.
Shit, and I’d just told her I wasn’t seeing anyone at the moment. Considering Jana’s first words when she stepped out of the elevator, it looked like I’d been lying about that.
So much for getting Anya to trust me.
“Anya, I—”
She cut me off with a mumble and a wave of her hand as she slipped past Jana and pressed the ground-floor button in the elevator. The doors closed, and the last thing I saw was her sad eyes, looking at Jana before staring back at me.
“Bye, Cam,” she said softly.
Then the doors finally closed, and she was gone.
Chapter 7
Anya
How many times did I have to tell myself not to trust that man?
Once again, I’d been left feeling like a complete idiot. I was an idiot. Cam had lied right to my face and tricked me into thinking he was secretly a nice guy…again! God, what was wrong with me? It was as if my mind just melted whenever I was around him; like he was so attractive that I was willing to believe anything just to have a chance to touch him again.
Only stupid girls did that, though. I wasn’t going to be stupid again. Nope, from now on, I wouldn’t trust anything he had to say.
Part of me was mad at myself for even bei
ng upset in the first place. I’d agreed to be friends with him and nothing else. Why the hell did I even care if he’d lied to me about whether he was seeing girls or not?
Duh, a voice in my head said. You just kissed him, so clearly you don’t just want to be friends. You wanted to believe him when he said he wasn’t seeing anyone. You wanted to trust him…because you want him.
Okay, so that was one-hundred percent true, as much as I hated to admit it. When he’d told me that the stuff with Tiffany had never really happened, I’d wanted to believe him so badly. I’d silently prayed that he was telling the truth, and that maybe one day we could work things out and make a real go of things.
Unfortunately, no amount of prayer and wishful thinking changed the fact that he was a deceitful player. I’d been right to not immediately trust him when he’d asked me if I believed him, because clearly, he was a freaking liar.
I stormed down the street outside his building, fuming as I made my way to the nearest subway station. My phone pinged in my bag a moment later, and I regretted giving Cam my number the second I clicked on the screen.
I swear, that wasn’t what it looked like. Come back. Please, let me explain.
It wasn’t what it looked like? He was a walking, talking, living cliché.
Before I could even consider sending back a haughty reply, he sent another message.
I know what you’re thinking. It’s a cliché. But it really wasn’t what it looked like. I know it looked bad, but that was a girl I used to see. She doesn’t mean anything to me, and I didn’t invite her over. She just showed up. I haven’t seen her in ages, and I didn’t even want to see her.
Sure, sure. If that were true, then how did she get in the building? To get into his building, you either had to live there, be previously-cleared by the doorman and other security staff, or be a guest accompanying someone who lived there. The only other way to see someone who lived in the building was to buzz them from the outside vestibule and wait for them to let you up.
And that girl had definitely not been buzzed up.
I’d been cleared by Pierce that morning; he’d couriered over a keycard which I’d had to show to the doorman and scan in the elevator to get onto his floor. Whoever that girl who’d sashayed into Cam’s apartment was—she must’ve had the same thing. And why would a girl who meant nothing to Cam have clearance and a keycard from him?
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