by Jess Bentley
“All right,” is all she says.
“Wear something sexy,” I advise her.
She thrusts her chin defiantly a little higher in the air. “Certainly. I can hardly wait."
Just before I back away, I stop and look her over once more. She's quite the contradiction: willingness battling against some kind of natural hostility. I don't understand it, but I find myself eager to explore it more thoroughly.
I am intrigued, I suppose. Well, that's something, at least. Most people do not arouse my interest.
“Til then,” I smile, meaning goodbye.
“Yes,” is her simple answer.
I walk away thinking how nice it is when women answer yes before I've even asked the question.
CHAPTER 4
Emmet
Hannah's office door is closed, I notice as I get off the elevator. Still, her receptionist twitches when she sees me, her eyes automatically rising to meet mine and then slicing diagonally away. She doesn't want to look at me. She's probably been privy to enough email threads that she's worried any interaction with me will damage her career. Like I'm pollution. Or some kind of strange virus.
Which, at this point, I'm too exhausted to care about anymore. The last few months have been harrowing, with paparazzi and reporters dogging my every step. After the first few pictures showed up on TMZ, the story caught fire. Everybody wanted a piece of it. We couldn't even get away.
But still, it's my goddamned company. I think I deserve a little respect. I set my jaw and stride past her, never letting my eyes waver. I can see her breath rate accelerating, and watch her cleavage heave in that designer blouse she can afford because of me.
They all seem to forget that. Everybody on their high horse forgets just who bought the fleet of horses.
But whatever. She keeps her eyes down and types frantically as I pass by her, strolling into my office and closing the door behind me. Some part of me wants to go back out there and ask her to do some stupid task just to antagonize her little bit more, but that would be petty. What am I going to win by antagonizing a receptionist, for chrissakes?
I’m going to need a better sparring partner.
Frankly, I'm not sure why I'm in the building anyway. I squint around my spacious office, trying to remember the last time I was here. A month? No, it has to be longer than that. It was only three weeks ago when Hannah suggested I take an extended vacation, at least from being physically present in the office. Too much press roaming the halls was making people jumpy.
In all likelihood, she was trying to protect Dillon and me from some eager reporter running into an intern or business development executive whose feelings we might have hurt along the way. Probably trying to save us from whatever stories they might be tempted to tell.
That's Hannah for you, always a team player. Always looking out for me. Even when she aggravates the ever-living piss right out of me.
So it's definitely more than a month, maybe two? I head for the Barcelona chairs by the wide, bright windows and sink into one. My Italian loafer heels naturally drop onto the coffee table in front of me, a huge slab of granite with a polished top. Chopped right out of the mountain, just for us. Swirling patterns of beige and pink and burgundy that somehow look like a quilt made out of vaginas.
Probably my favorite possession.
This is all mine, at least for now. I try to remind myself that everything I can see out this window is because we built this company. Well, maybe we didn’t build it. But we kept it running after our father died, and we changed from something stuffy and old-fashioned into one of the top media outlets in North America. All of North America, from the top of Manitoba down to the ass crack of Peru.
I mean, can't a guy get a little credit?
But in a few weeks, this is all going to be over. All I have to do is keep treading water until the merger, and then strap on my golden parachute and get the fuck out of here. If the press wants to follow me, they can hang glide with their zoom lenses over our yacht outside Ibiza, the way God intended. No more showing up at our condo at three in the morning, asking for the names of everybody in the place. No more dangling over the edge of the roof, trying to get a picture of us…
I make a fist, driving my knuckle between my eyebrows. I don't want to think about that. Why am I thinking about it? None of it even really matters to me. So a bunch of gossip rags need salacious crap to keep their readers happy. So what? That's basically what our company does too, isn't it? It’s all the same game, just on a different level. I mean, it's only fair that Dillon and I should be on the receiving end of it every once in a while, right? Turnabout being fair play and all that?
Right.
I take a few deep breaths, waiting for that ocher-colored fog in my belly to settle. I just want everything to go back to being calm. Back to normal. I just want some privacy and the luxury of feeling that all of this hubbub is behind me.
Hubbub. It's kind of a silly word.
Anyway, it's fine. This is how life has always been. I’m not complaining. It has its perks, being a Riordan. But everything is both light and shadow. You have to take the good with the bad.
“Knock knock,” Hannah says, opening door without, in fact, knocking.
I don't turn around. Why should I? She’ll be over here in just a moment.
I hear the slip of her heels on the textured carpet as she strides toward the window. She crosses her thin arms and looks out, admiring the view that's not very different from the one in her office. I see a lot more of Lake Michigan from here, is all. Her view is slightly angled toward the river. It's like she looks back on all the people, while I look out to the horizon. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, but I'm not a writer. What the fuck do I know?
“I should have taken this office,” she mutters, shifting her weight from one hip to the other. She has a beautiful ass, currently stretching the seams of a cream colored skirt with a slit so high up one thigh that I can almost swear that I see her panties when she walks. It's probably just an illusion, but still. It makes me want to slip my hand in there and pull.
Her weight shifts again. She drums her fingertips against her elbow, sort of a warning twitch. Like a cat swishing the tip of its tail back and forth, letting you know some shit is about to go down.
“You can have my office. How about now, Hannah?” I offer, silently promising the granite coffee table that it's coming with me. “I barely use it. You should get to enjoy the view.”
The fingertips continue drumming.
“No, no big changes, Emmet. I think we should just try to make everything as normal as possible, don't you? No more… upheavals,” she replies tersely.
“Oh, who's gonna know? Live a little, Hannah. In a few weeks you won't be able to take anybody up on this offer. The new guys will be in here with their decorators and assistants and contractors, probably tearing out the entire executive wing. I hear that's what they do, these Google types. Turn everything into the tech equivalent of a dairy farm, right? Stalls and everything?”
She pivots toward me on her stiletto heel, dropping the toe of her shoe onto the carpet with a snap.
“Emmet, we’re going to be lucky to even make it that far,” she growls, venom in every word.
I shake my head. What is she even talking about?
“Look, I'm here, aren't I? You told me to leave; I left. You told me to return; here I am. It’s all going according to plan. Everything is going to be fine.”
“You don't know that,” she shoots back.
I sigh, waving my hand in front of me. I don't need this.
“You worry too much, you know that?”
“I worry too much?” she repeats incredulously, the tone of her voice spiraling upward with every word. “I worry too much? Are you kidding me?”
My chin drops into my the palm of my hand. I am not going to miss this corporate nonsense one bit.
“Fine, forget I said that. You worry exactly the right amount. Okay? Are we done now?”
“No, we’re not done now, Emmet! We haven't even started!”
She starts pacing back and forth, her slender ankles flexing dangerously from side to side as she strides. I almost smell her anger: that fuming, boiling acid.
My hands go up automatically, palms out. I don't need her like this. I need her calm and in control, like she is supposed to be. She's the goddamn CEO. She is supposed to be walking around with iced tea in her veins, not yelling like a cornered bobcat.
“All right, all right. Just tell me what you want to do,” I tell her reasonably.
“I don't even know if there's anything we can do anymore,” she mutters to me, but not exactly in my direction. Her eyes keep floating up to the ceiling, as though there's some magical answer written up there in the plaster.
“Hey, you're the one who told me to get lost for a month, remember? That was your idea. I could've been here, handling things for you. Team meetings, whatever. I could've been useful.”
“Useful?” she repeats, her voice pitched somewhere close to air raid siren levels. “Useful? Are you kidding me? How inspiring was that hashtag? Tell me that, Emmet!”
I feel a smirk coming on. I don't want to smirk, but I can't help it. #RiordanTwofer, that was the hashtag. We trended on Twitter for a whole week.
“Oh, come on. Settle. There's no such thing as bad publicity,” I quip.
She unfolds her arms and her palms slap against her hips in frustration. Despite myself, find her overwhelmingly hot right now. She’s uptight as fuck, but maybe she has a secret side. I mean, I've never banged the CEO and I’m pretty sure Dillon never did either, but if we are all out of here in just a few weeks…. Why not?
“There is definitely such a thing as bad publicity, Emmet!”
I roll my eyes, noting that she doesn’t even want to look at me. “So some paparazzi got some blurry pictures from a telephoto lens hidden in the bushes or whatever. So what? Kept us in the news, didn't it? I bet those Google guys are just wetting themselves over us.”
“No! No, Emmet that's not how this works!” She shakes her head incredulously. “This isn’t a buyout, this is a merger. You and Dillon, the whole Riordan brand, is what we are selling. It's like a marriage, and you guys went and… I don't even know… I can't even come up with a good metaphor, I'm so angry at you!”
The toes of her heels stamp against the carpet, and her little frail hands ball into fists. She reminds me of a pissed off kitten. One who hasn’t had a lot of practice. Everyone else seems to take her seriously, but I just can’t.
But, okay, I guess this is serious. She really does seem angry, and I guess she means it. It feels like an overreaction to me but she's legitimately upset. It’s not just the usual boys-will-be-boys kind of scolding that we get from her overly proper, school-principal-shaped mouth. Like seriously pissed, as far as I can tell.
“You're seriously upset about the hashtag trending?”
Her mouth opens, then closes. Her cheeks are so pink that each of her freckles stands out like a little cartoon warning sign. Her eyes burn into mine like lasers.
“What I'm seriously upset about is seeing you and Dillon,” she says slowly in a low, dangerous voice, “buried balls-deep in a married woman. A married Congresswoman.”
I shrug. “But she didn't tell us she was married,” I mumble.
“Both of you,” she continues like she didn't hear me. “Both of you. Both dicks. Which I never should have seen. Inside the same Congresswoman.”
I smile. I can't help it. She was hot. Seriously hot. Really a beautiful piece of ass, in or out of Congress.
“The same married Congresswoman!”
Long red hair, real tits, and that whole angry librarian thing. Basically, she was asking for it. Kind of like Hannah right now, come to think of it.
“At the same time!”
“You know what? I don't think my personal life is really anybody's business,” I sniff.
She strides toward me, stabbing toward my solar plexus with her sharpened index finger now. “You know what, neither do I! So I'd really appreciate it if you stopped broadcasting your personal life all over the goddamned internet!”
She’s so close, leaning over, that I see straight down between her tits all the way to her navel. She's got a little bit of a golden treasure trail there. It's adorable.
“Okay, fine.”
Her nostrils are flared, and a swoosh of ginger hair has come stubbornly undone and is dangling in front of her tortoiseshell glasses. I want to take a finger and tuck the strands behind her ear. Then pull her head close, and kiss her until she shuts the fuck up.
“You're going to fix this,” she snarls. Seriously. Is she trying to turn me on deliberately, or what? Will banging her fix this? Because I'll do her right here on the granite. I'll fuck her so good, she’ll be fucked for life. Now, that's the Riordan brand.
“Yes, ma'am.”
She straightens, pushing that bit of hair back into her updo and taking a deep breath.
“I'm serious.”
“So am I,” I shrug.
“I need you to… I need both of you… to just try to hold your shit together for three weeks until I close this deal, okay? I have a plan.”
“Consider our shit safely packaged and held together,” I smile. Her narrowed eyes indicate she's not finding our banter nearly as amusing as I am.
“I need you on message, and on brand. At all times, is that understood?”
“Completely.”
“Just let me do my job, and then we can all get on with their lives. You and Dillon can be as… unconventional as you want.”
I smirk at her, watching her face for signs. She's picturing it, I know. She's wondering how we both got all up inside the Congresswoman at the same time. Not everybody wants to try it, but it's amazing. The look on her face, with Dillon and I both plunged to the hilt inside of her, her knees jutting out to either side, her head thrown back, her eyes practically rolled up in her head…
Well, that was a gifted photographer, that's for sure. I can’t imagine how he got the angle right.
And right now, Hannah Bonham, the conservative CEO of Riordan Publishing is imagining all of it, right there in her pretty little ginger skull.
I shift in the leather easy chair, waiting for her eyes to track down toward my package.
“So… I'm going to be very good for you…” I start.
“Yes!” she snaps, her eyes suddenly focusing back on mine and away from my crotch, which is a pity. “You guys can act like normal, upstanding, relatively moral billionaires. You think you can do that?”
“Shouldn’t be too hard,” I yawn. Now I'm just telling her what she wants to hear. If this is the only reason that I'm here in the office, I feel like I can leave now. I bet you I still get eighteen holes in before lunch, if I call ahead to the Gold Coast club.
“So… The Copper. Eight o'clock, tomorrow,” she mutters, looking down at her phone. I see her hands flex as her thumbs move the screen back and forth. Then she looks up at me, waiting.
“I'm sorry… what?” I ask, sensing that I'm missing something.
“The Copper!” she drawls out, frustrated. “Eight o'clock. Remember?"
Remember? How would I remember something that hasn't happened yet? But at the risk of pissing her off even further, I nod.
“The Copper, of course. Can't believe that slipped my mind. I'll be there.”
“Damn straight you will,” she mumbles. “Bella isn’t the kind who’s gonna stand around waiting for you either. Don't pull any of your bullshit billionaire games on her, you got that?”
What is she talking about? Did I really zone out that long? But now, I have to admit I'm a little afraid to ask questions.
“Absolutely no games,” I assure her. “Bella's going to have the time of her life, I promise.”
“That's good,” she sniffs. “And it'll be good for you too. Bella's not one of those bimbos you like to parade around the front your yacht for the cameras. She's brilliant, y
ou understand? One of my oldest friends. You should consider yourself lucky she's agreed to date you after all of your shenanigans.”
Date me? Is that what this is supposed to be?
I just smile like a good boy, nodding and waiting for her to get tired of pushing me around like I'm a mouse she caught and dragged inside or something. I just want her out of my hair, so I can go back to fantasizing about what life will be like when this is all behind me.
Because no matter what she says, in three weeks I'm not marrying Google. I'm divorcing this business entirely. I'm out of here, with or without Dillon. With or without anybody's blessing or so much as a bon voyage.
Wait a second… did I just agree to going out on a date? Who is this Bella?
CHAPTER 5
Bella
What's awesome about being a writer is the sheer slackness of it. Words come out of my head, plop, and magically appear on the page, swoosh. I don’t even type. I dictate everything. Just a bunch of blah blah blah, all grammatically corrected by the software, sprouting on the page like little fairy footprints.
That's the theory, anyway.
In reality, it is not just a bunch of creative a-ha moments one right after another, stretching out for days on end. It's actually like ninety-five percent turning in meaningless circles while pelted with darts of self-doubt. That’s all punctuated by brief periods of actual work, and then I fill the rest of my waking moments with anxiety.
Actually, my sleeping moments too. I have dreams like you would not believe.
But still, it's not digging ditches, right? As my grandma would say, you gotta remember to be grateful. Cannot complain so much. Just think of the starving children in…
Oh, who am I kidding? It's tough. That's what I'm saying.
These are the thoughts that I've been thinking over and over again for the past day, stretched out of my sofa, balancing between doing one thing and doing another thing. Should I be getting dressed or undressed? Should I be eating or exercising? Should I be sleeping or awake?
I don't know. I really don't know.
