by Ivy Smoak
As I stood up, I accidentally bumped my head on the table. No, bumped wasn’t the right word. Slammed. Because everything went black.
I woke up a second later with the most handsome man in the world cradling my head. His deep brown eyes stared at me through his glasses.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I…” What the hell just happened?
He looked at one of his assistants. “We need an ice pack.” Then he turned back to me. “Do you remember your name?”
“Ash. Ashley Cooper.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ashley. You hit your head against the table and knocked yourself out.”
Then it all came flooding back to me. My new job. The presentation. My stalker walking in pretending to be named Tanner Rhodes instead of Ryder Storm. Me hiding behind ANOTHER glass table and then knocking myself out like a total idiot. God, why did I always have to be so embarrassing? I could feel my face turning red. Everyone in the room was gathered around staring at me. I laughed awkwardly. “I’m fine. I meant to do that.”
“You meant to knock yourself out?” asked Tanner. He looked confused. And very concerned.
I nodded. Then, just loud enough for him to hear, I whispered, “I wanted to snuggle with you again. Last night ended too soon.” I added a saucy wink for good measure.
And he gave me the most puzzled look in the world. It was like I was speaking another language. Oh no. Had I started talking in German? One time I read about an Italian guy who hit his head and then only knew how to talk in French. Or was that a weird sex dream I had? I mean…it is kind of sexy to think about. An Italian stallion with a French accent? Yes please.
Tanner handed me the bag of frozen peas that his assistant had fetched. “Here, this should help. You should still probably see a doctor, though.”
“Am I going to die?”
He laughed. “No, but you may have a nasty bruise.”
Chastity knelt down next to me. “Don’t worry, Mr. Rhodes. I’ll look after her tonight.” She brushed his arm and gave him her best seductive smile.
Hey, slut! That’s my man! I needed to separate them ASAP. “You know what? I feel all better. Let’s just get on with the presentation.” So that everyone can stop staring at me.
“Are you sure?” asked Tanner. “We can always postpone it for another day.”
“Really, I’m fine.” I pulled myself to my feet and plopped unceremoniously into my chair before I fell over. The room was the thing spinning, not me. Or was it me? Am I spinning right now?
Chastity began the presentation as the room settled around me. I kept sneaking glances at my stalker, but he seemed to be focused on the presentation. Or maybe he was just focused on Chastity. As always, she looked amazing. I had never competed with Chastity for a man before, but I hated the thought of it. There was no way I stood a chance against her showstopping beauty and world-class flirting skills. After the presentation I’d tell her that Tanner Rhodes was actually my stalker and that I’d called dibs. And thanks to Single Girl Rule #31 (A girl who calls dibs has 2 weeks to close the deal), she’d be forced to back off. I snuck another glance at him. Mine!
Something didn’t feel right, though. Why was he dressed so differently than usual? When he stalked me, he was always wearing colorful suits and had his hair up in a bun type thing. But today he was dressed in a crisp black suit and his hair was pushed to one side. And he was wearing glasses. I could easily explain away the glasses by telling myself that he wore contacts during stalking because stalking was difficult work and no one needed their glasses falling off their face while they were perched in a tree outside your window.
But the change in suit preference hardly made sense. He was a freaking billionaire. He could wear whatever the hell he wanted and no one would say a word. He could have shown up to the meeting in a pair of his stupid Crocs and a man thong and no one would have flinched. He’d be able to pull that combo off way better than Brett Favre had in that sext. I pictured it in my head. My stalker, not Brett Favre. I couldn’t decide if it was a good look or not. I mean, on one hand, his package looked amazing. It was like someone had stuffed an anaconda into a spandex sock. Sorry, bad analogy. But you get the point. His junk looked great. The Crocs were kind of throwing me off though. I mean, why was he wearing them? Was he an old lady gardening or a little boy on the beach?
Someone shook me.
“Ash?” asked Chastity.
I snapped my head around to pretend like I hadn’t been staring directly at my stalker for the past five minutes. “Huh? What? Sorry, still a little dazed from hitting my head.” Please don’t make me talk in front of all these people. What the hell was she thinking? She knew public speaking was my 5th biggest fear.
“I was hoping you could elaborate on this slide about our Facebook ad strategy?”
“I uh, sure.” I stood up and started stumbling through the slide.
Tanner chimed in halfway through. “I’ve heard enough.”
Shit. Was me talking for two seconds really bad enough to blow the whole deal?
“I think BIMG would be a great fit for us. We’re happy to sign the deal.” Tanner stood up to shake hands with Bee and Mason.
I let out a sigh of relief. I didn’t blow it after all. I took a step toward Tanner as he disengaged from Mason. Not only had we had the perfect night together, but now he’d saved me from public speaking. I was in love. I waited for him to come congratulate me and whisper something sexy in my ear about meeting up later that night, but instead he just turned and left the conference room.
What the hell?
“Ah!” squealed Chastity. “We did it!”
“Well done,” said Bee. “I hate to ask this of you, but can you have copy and graphics for the Mills Winery campaign done by the end of the week? I really want to show Mr. Rhodes that he’s making the right choice.”
We agreed. Then Madison rushed over to me. She brushed her hand against where I hit my head. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“I didn’t know you had so much game,” said Chastity. “Pretending to hurt yourself so that Tanner would get all worried about you. Clever.”
“That wasn’t what I was doing. I was hiding. He’s my stalker.”
Chastity shook her head. “Say what now? You can’t just get dibs on Tanner by claiming that he’s your stalker.”
“No, really. He is.”
“But you said your stalker wore colorful suits and had a man bun. Tanner only wears black suits. And I don’t even know if his hair is long enough to put up in a bun.”
“It’s definitely him.”
“And I thought you said his name was Ryder Storm?”
I knew what was going on here. Duh. “That’s his Society name. Kind of like how I’m Raven Black. He must want anonymity in the Society because he’s so well known. It’s him. It has to be him. It has to be. Why else would he have spared me from doing part of the presentation?”
“Uh…because I had already done such a kickass job?” suggested Chastity.
“Or maybe he felt bad for you because you just hit your head,” added Madison.
No. No! It had to be him. Otherwise… Oh God. Why did I have to go and whisper that thing about last night and snuggling? And had I winked at him? Saucily? Why did I keep acting so saucy recently? I was out of control. Now Tanner’s look of utter confusion was seared in my brain. It was so clear that he had no idea what I was saying. Despite that, though…I still kind of thought it was him. Just like I knew my stalker had been stalking me. I had a sixth sense about these things.
Oh! “Maybe he didn’t recognize me with my red hair. I was wearing a black wig last night.”
“Well,” said Chastity. “We need to sort this out immediately. Because if it is your stalker, that means you have dibs on him. But if he’s not, then we’ll have to find a different way to settle it.”
“And how do we figure it out?” I asked.
Chastity gav
e me a mischievous grin. “We stalk your stalker. Just like you’ve been doing for the past several months.”
I pressed my lips together. He’s stalking me. But the particulars didn’t really matter right now. I needed dibs on Tanner Rhodes. So if I had to stoop to his stalking levels, so be it. Besides, I already knew a ton about him from my observations while I watched him stalk me. And he’d told me a lot about himself last night too. This was going to be so freaking easy. Move over, Chastity. He’s mine. Time to get my stalk on.
Chapter 23 - Two Rude Surprises
Wednesday
We went straight from work back to my apartment to stalk my stalker. I didn’t even bother to change out of Chastity’s slutty clothes before plopping onto the couch with my laptop. I couldn’t wait another second to learn everything about my stalker.
I started by googling Tanner Rhodes.
The first result was a Wikipedia article. Fancy. I clicked on it. There was no picture and only one sentence:
“Tanner Rhodes is an American billionaire businessman from New York City.”
I read it again. Billionaire. With a B. I couldn’t even imagine that much money. Chastity had said he was a billionaire, but I didn’t realize she meant he was for-realsies a billionaire. I thought she was just throwing out the highest number she could think of and had forgotten the word bajillion.
Just to confirm, I went back and clicked on the second link, Tanner’s profile on Forbes:
#413 Tanner Rhodes
Net Worth: $4.3B
- Tanner Rhodes is the founder and chairman of Rhodes Venture Capital, a private investment firm based in New York City.
- Rhodes VC is most notable for being an early investor in Tesla and Shopify, which is where the bulk of Rhodes’ net worth is derived.
STATS:
Age - 28 (estimated)
Source of Wealth - Rhodes Venture Capital, Self-Made
Residence - New York, New York
Citizenship - United States
Marital Status - Unknown
Children - Unknown
Education - Unknown
Unknown, unknown, unknown. Gah! What kind of shoddy operation were they running over at Forbes? Their whole purpose in life was to know about rich people, and they didn’t even know where Tanner went to college? Hell, they weren’t even sure about his age. No wonder the owner of Forbes wasn’t even a billionaire…he sucked at his job. They needed to hire better stalkers. Or journalists. Or whatever politically correct term they were going by these days. I did a quick Google search to make sure that the owner of Forbes really wasn’t a billionaire. Boom. Steve Forbes’ net worth was only $430 million. Million! What a complete and utter loser. The small sum in my bank account started to wander into my thoughts but I kicked it back where it belonged. In the toilet. Because all the money I had would literally fit in a toilet.
Anyway, back to Tanner. The only thing of real value in the whole article was the picture of him. But it was kind of blurry. Classic Forbes. So incompetent.
“Booyah, found a picture of him,” I said.
“For real?” asked Chastity. “I’ve been looking for weeks now and haven’t been able to find a thing. The guy is a ghost on social media.”
“It was on the second search result.”
“Oh, the Forbes one? I never look at that. That website is trash.”
“I know, right?”
We both laughed.
“Send me that real quick,” said Madison. A minute later she turned her laptop for us to see. She’d transferred the picture into MS Paint and sketched a man bun onto him. “Does that look more like Ryder?”
I shook my head. “Uh, not really.”
Chastity lit up. “Boom. That’s proof that Tanner’s not the same person as Ryder. The sex muffin billionaire is mine!”
“I mean…she used MS Paint to draw that,” I said. “Cool your loins, woman.”
“Well right now that’s about the only evidence we have to go on.”
“Then let me get back to work.” I tuned her out and went back to searching. All real estate transactions were public records, so all it took was a few quick searches on the NYC Department of Finance website and I had the names of every person who owned an apartment in One57. Er…kind of. It was more like a list of LLCs that owned apartments in One57. Apparently billionaires weren’t fond of their addresses being publicly available. Steve Forbes, on the other hand, probably didn’t even know what an LLC was. Stupid millionaire. Such a basic bitch.
I almost gave up on the real estate angle, but then I realized that as the official marketers of Rhodes VC, we had just gained access to lots of private files. Including a list of all the businesses they owned. I cross-referenced that list with the list of One57 owners.
“Got him!” I yelled.
“Bullshit,” said Chastity.
“Tanner Rhodes is the proud owner of apartment 89 at One57. Which means he’s my stalker.”
“Or it means that they’re twins and Tanner’s been kind enough to buy his little brother a baller-ass apartment.”
“That’s a solid theory,” agreed Madison.
“What? No it isn’t. And why is Ryder his little brother? I thought they were twins in this scenario.”
“One still has to come out first,” said Chastity. “And it was definitely Tanner.”
“Maybe this will help to clear it up,” said Madison. She pointed to an Instagram picture on her laptop of some beautiful model posing at a party.
“Uh…how will that help us?” I asked. “Is that an escort we can hire to get all his secrets?”
“No,” said Madison. “And way to judge her just because of her looks. Evie Martin’s not a prostitute. She’s a successful businesswoman.”
“And that helps us how, exactly?”
Madison rolled her eyes. “She’s Tanner’s personal assistant. You literally met her like four hours ago.”
I did? I guess there had been a girl by Tanner’s side, but I didn’t remember her looking like that. Because she’d been dressed professionally, unlike me. I looked down at my outfit and cringed.
“If you’d stop slut-shaming her for two seconds and opened your eyes, you’d see that Tanner is in the background of lots of her photos. Single Girl Rule #26: Slut-shaming a fellow single girl is unforgivable.”
That was the only Single Girl Rule Madison ever quoted. I was trying to get Chastity to dump that rule, but she always insisted she hadn’t made them up. Lies. I squinted and got closer to the screen. It was hard to be sure, but a guy in the background did kind of look like Tanner.
“What’s he doing going to parties with his PA?” I asked. Images of Joe banging Sierra flashed through my mind. And then they morphed into Tanner and Evie. “They’re probably having sex. I hate Tanner. He’s dead to me. He’s basically just like Joe.”
“Well that seems a bit extreme,” said Chastity. “Tanner is nothing like Joe.”
Madison made a gross noise with her throat. “All men are the worst.”
Chastity zoomed up on Evie’s hand in the picture. “Well she’s not wearing a ring. So even if they are banging, he hasn’t proposed yet.”
Madison stood up. “Now that you guys are over Tanner, what should we do?”
“Uh, did you miss the part about him being a billionaire?” asked Chastity.
“So what?” asked Madison. “We don’t need to rely on men for money. We’re all strong, beautiful, independent women.”
“Psssh,” scoffed Chastity. “You don’t know what you’re missing. Having Daddy’s credit card was the best thing ever.”
Was. Chastity grew up rich, but her dad lost all his money in bad real estate. Her fancy apartment, fancy clothes, and fancy lifestyle had gone poof overnight. I knew she missed it. But she was being a trooper. I didn’t even believe her whenever she talked about marrying a man just for his money. She was just joking. I think.
“And Daddy’s working on a new real estate deal, did I tell you guys? I think it
’s going to be big.”
Gross. “How many times do I have to tell you that a grown woman should never use the word Daddy? Unless it’s like a weird sexy roleplaying thing. Actually, scratch that. Doing it as part of sex just makes it worse. Especially if they’re having sex with their real daddy.”
Chastity shrugged. “I can’t help it. I’m a daddy’s girl.”
Madison and Chastity continued to debate the ethical implications of having a sugar daddy while I went back to my computer. Now that I’d thought about Sierra, I couldn’t stop myself from checking all her social media accounts. Yeah, I knew it wasn’t healthy. But what can I say? I had a sickness.
I typed “Sierra Vega” into Facebook and clicked on her. And WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?! Her relationship status had changed to IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH JOE DICKSON. I’d already thought they were together, but now it was Facebook official. That was next level. And it was soul-crushing. Like it actually felt like a brick had fallen from the ceiling right onto my chest.
I was over Joe. I didn’t want him back. I didn’t want to ever see him again. But I hated that he was so happy with her and her big stupid eyes and perfect bone structure and huge boobs. Why did he deserve happiness? He was the one that cheated on me. And then blackmailed me with my freaking sex tape. I should have been the one to find happiness while Joe got molested by a homeless dude.
“You okay, Ash?” asked Madison. “You look really pale.”
I barely heard her through the cloud of depression that surrounded me. “Huh? I uh…” A knock on the door saved me from having to answer. “That must be the pizza.” I wandered over to the door, still in a daze. It barely even registered when I opened the door and the guy standing there didn’t have a pizza. Not that I had even ordered one. Wait, no, I had. But this wasn’t it.
“Hey,” said Dr. Lyons.
“Fuck me!” I yelled involuntarily as I slammed the door in his face. Oh God, oh God, oh God. What is he doing here?! God, did I just ask him to fuck me? Stupid whore mouth!
“Did you just ask the pizza guy to fuck you?” called Chastity from across the room.
I took a deep breath and opened the door again. “Dr. Lyons,” I said calmly in a weirdly low professional voice. Stop being weird. “What brings you to my humble abode this evening?” What? Why am I talking like this? Don’t try to rape him this time!
