Dirty News (Dirty Network Book 1)

by Michelle Love

  I had to wonder how I’d do that.

  Mr. Wolfe raised his hand then stood up front to face us. “I’d like to take this opportunity to offer a bit of advice. Ashton came up with this idea to help counteract any type of attraction at the workplace, and I thought it was a good idea. Why not simply look for a relationship with someone outside of work? That way you won’t be tempted by anyone you work with.”

  But the professor shut down our boss’s idea. “Mr. Wolfe, while that might seem like a perfectly good idea, not everyone is in the same phase of life, or is looking for the same things. It’s likely that not everyone in this room even desires being in a relationship right now. Even if that were the case, not everyone has the opportunity to do what you suggest.”

  Mr. Wolfe looked a little defeated. “It was just an idea, is all.” He took his seat and began to write notes. Apparently, he hadn’t thought things all the way through.

  “So, back we go to how harassment works,” Professor Higgins went on. “A casual hello is not harassing. But a hello that includes physical contact, other than a handshake, like even a small hug with a kiss on the cheek, can make some people uncomfortable. It’s best to avoid those kinds of things, especially in the workplace. These are not your close friends. These are people who simply have to show up at the same place you do, and that’s all.”

  Nina raised her hand and asked, “So, are we also to avoid forming friendships with our fellow employees?”

  She’d asked a question I hadn’t even thought of. The professor shook his head, telling us that wasn’t the case at all. “Friendships are fine. Even between the opposite sex.” He looked at Mr. Wolfe, as if telling him personally that friendships couldn’t be stopped. “It’s important to have comradery with people you work with.”

  Mr. Wolfe nodded then jotted that down, which made me wonder just how much he’d thought about things before making such demanding rules—rules that would be hard to navigate and stick to.

  Nina elbowed me, then whispered, “Seems we can be friends, Lila.”

  “Seems so,” I whispered back. “You’re my first one in New York.”

  “You’re my first one at work.” She wiggled her eyebrows as she grinned at me.

  The first few hours passed quickly enough, but then the last few went by slowly. My ass ached from sitting on the hard seat for so long. I’d lost interest in listening to the ongoing lecture. Scenario after scenario was presented to illustrate how to act and how not to act.

  Nina and I began to whisper back and forth, wondering about different things. She said, “There are so many different departments. We don’t all work together. What if we like someone we don’t even work with?”

  “Like if they’re in a different department and you never work with them?” I asked, intrigued by the thought.

  “Yeah,” she said with a nod. “Like, for instance, you’ll work with the nightly news team, but you won’t really be interacting with the rest of the news teams. Unless you get that morning gig too. But even then, you’ll have only a handful of people you work with on each show. What if you and some guy from one of the other news shows hit it off? Why would that be wrong?”

  I couldn’t stop my thoughts from going back to Duke—even though I doubted he’d ever want to date me. But if he and I worked on different shows, then we could if we wanted to. If Mr. Wolfe allowed that, that is. I was skeptical, since he’d said no dating within the entire WOLF staff.

  The professor had shut him down where friendships were concerned, though. Maybe this would be the best place to ask this question, with the professor around to shut Mr. Wolfe down if needed.

  “I’m going to ask about that, Nina.” I raised my hand and found Professor Higgins giving me a nod. “Sir, I’d like to ask about a hypothetical situation if I may.”

  “Of course,” he told me as he nodded.

  I found not only his attention on me, but everyone else in the class as well. I could feel Duke’s blue eyes on me—like I could feel his touch just through his gaze. My body heated automatically, and I had to ignore the way my pulse sped up.

  “Okay, at WOLF we have different teams we’ll be working with. We don’t all work together. For instance, I’m on the nightly news team. What would be wrong with me seeing someone from, another team or department at WOLF that I would never work directly with, or even interact with? Say, for instance, someone in accounting?”

  The professor seemed to be mulling that over before answering me. “In my opinion, I don’t think that would be a problem. But Mr. Wolfe has said he wants no relationships between any of his employees. I suppose if you find yourself attracted to someone in another department, you’d have to get your boss’s permission before you even made any advances.”

  “Which I would deny.” Mr. Wolfe stood up to let us all know. “You see, I’ve told a couple of people about my reason for wanting to have such strict rules about this. Maybe you should all know. Maybe then you’ll understand what I’m trying to do here.”

  Duke’s eyes were still on me. They twinkled as he looked at me. Then he mouthed, “Nice try.”

  I didn’t know what to mouth back. My stomach went all fluttery inside, heat pooling between my legs, and my heart pounded so hard I was afraid everyone could hear it.

  The man was on the other side of the large room, and had only mouthed a couple silly words to me, and here I was all but falling apart over him. Thank God I wouldn’t have to work with him.

  What a distraction he’d be.

  Chapter Eight

  Duke

  The lecture on bullying the next day was broken up into a morning and afternoon session, giving us an hour and a half break for lunch in between. I’d found myself thinking a lot about why Lila had asked her question during the class on sexual harassment.

  Had she been thinking about me?

  I had no real reason to think that—she and I were competing for the same job, after all—but I couldn’t shake the thought from my mind. The girl was savvy—I had to give her that. But Artimus wasn’t about to give in on any of his rules. In time, I had a feeling he’d have to adjust to how reality worked—it’d be impossible to maintain that much control over people’s personal lives and desires. But in the beginning, he’d try hard to keep his rules in place.

  When I walked into the lecture hall that morning, I noticed Lila was already there. The seat next to hers was empty, too. Heading her way without her knowing, I surprised her when I sat in the chair next to her. “Morning, Lila.”

  She’d been talking to Nina, who sat on the other side of her. Her head swung around, and her pretty sky-blue eyes went wide. “Duke!”

  “Yep, that’s me.” Placing my pad of paper and pen on the table in front of me, I leaned back in my chair. “How’d you enjoy the eight hours of boring shit yesterday?”

  She smiled a devastating smile that made my heart lurch just as much as my cock. Clad in only jeans and a T-shirt, I really had to watch my excitement level with her today. After the harassment class, I knew letting a hard-on show up was a definite no-no.

  “Oh, I loved it,” she joked. “Didn’t you?”

  “Boy, did I.” Sarcasm coated my words. “So now onto bullying. You ever get bullied when you were a kid, Lila?”

  “Well, there was this one girl in the third grade who didn’t like me at all. I have no idea why …”

  I had to interrupt. “Probably because she was jealous of you.”

  She stopped and looked into my eyes. “That’s what my mother said at the time, too. I don’t see why she would’ve been jealous.”

  “Because of your shiny blonde hair and pretty blue eyes. That’s enough to make an insecure little girl turn jealous and mean.” My hand moved of its own accord, reaching out to stroke her hair. Thankfully, my brain worked fast, and I ran it through my own instead.

  Lila’s cheeks turned a darker shade of red. Her makeup was different from the previous days I’d seen her. Her blouse was black, her skirt white, and she wore
makeup to match that color scheme. The blush on her cheeks was more red than pink, and her lipstick matched as always. The ruby red color made her lips look more kissable somehow.

  “This may surprise you, Duke, but I wasn’t always as put together as I am now. I had a fair amount of freckles from being out in the New Mexico sunshine so much.” She ducked her head a bit as she seemed to be remembering her less attractive years. Her red-painted nails trailed a small path over her right eye. “My sister was swinging a yo-yo around one day, and I wasn’t paying any attention and walked right into the thing. I had this little scar. It’s faded away now, but it was still kind of gnarly back then. And Gina Witherspoon had to point that out all the time.” Her fingers rested above her eyebrow. “Especially in front of the boys in our class. She’d call me Scar-Face and Mutant, along with freckles and fat bottom lip.” Her fingers moved to trace her lower lip. “See, it’s bigger than the top one is.”

  “I can see that.” I tried hard not to pull my own lower lip between my teeth as I watched her do the same thing. “Most people have a larger lower lip than top lip. Everything you’re saying just confirms to me that she was jealous of your good looks. I’m sure even in your awkward years you were still a cut above the rest.”

  “I don’t know.” She looked away shyly, something that didn’t seem in character for her. But perhaps thinking about a bad time in her life, when a mean little girl had made fun of her and embarrassed her, had her feeling slightly inadequate.

  So, she is human after all.

  I’d kind of pegged her as a superhuman, with powers beyond my imagination. A woman who was capable of sweeping the rug out from under me and taking the job I wanted.

  But there she was, looking all human and shit.

  She’d flipped things around on me. “And were you ever bullied?”

  I had to laugh. Me, bullied? No way in hell!

  But I couldn’t say that and sound like an asshole in front of her. “No, I wasn’t bullied. Mostly because I didn’t take any shit. If a guy came at me sideways, I dealt with him right away.”

  “Would you consider yourself a bully then?” Her eyes sparkled as she asked me the question. Almost tauntingly, it seemed.

  “No.” I shook my head. “Just because you’re quick to stand up for yourself doesn’t make you a bully, does it?”

  “I suppose not. I guess this class will soon let us know the answer to that.” She smiled and jotted the question down on her notepad. “I’ll be sure to ask. That way you can know for sure if you’re a bully or not.”

  “I have a feeling you think I might just be one. And I have a feeling it has to do with me being a football player. One who pushed people around to win a game.” I was onto her. She was working on making me feel bad about myself. So, I pointed out how that in itself was also bullying. I made a note about that to ask the teacher myself.

  She looked over at what I’d written and read it out loud, “If a person tries to make someone feel bad about themselves for things that were out of their control, does that make them a bully?” She looked at me. “Do you think I was trying to do that to you just now?”

  “Weren’t you?” I shook my head as I said the words. “I can read you pretty good, Lila. Just so you know.”

  “Well, you’re not doing a good job of that so far. I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad about anything. I was just asking you a question.” She shrugged. “Do you always get so defensive, or are you only this way with me, Duke?”

  I was only this way with her. But I’d be damned if I gave her the satisfaction of knowing that. “Defensive? I’m not defensive, Lila. This is just me having a productive conversation is all. And by the way, if you use this same approach to asking questions during interviews that you’re using on me, you’ll probably provoke your subjects too. You should work on that.”

  “Provoke?” She grinned like she’d just won an argument. “Hmm, if you felt provoked by me then you were reacting defensively. Funny how you can’t be honest with yourself. If you can’t be that way with yourself, how can you be honest with others? I find that interesting.”

  “I bet you do.” I clenched my jaw.

  “On another note, Nina told me that Ashton took our videos to the boss early this morning.” She looked at Nina. “Did they say anything about when they’d be making a decision?”

  “Soon.” Nina’s head jerked as Ashton took the place beside her. “Hi!”

  “Hey,” Ashton greeted her then looked at Lila and me. “Hi, there. Ready for another fun-filled day?”

  “Sure,” came Lila’s unenthusiastic reply.

  I decided to try to make the day more interesting. “Hey, let’s all write down a bunch of questions to keep things going. The lecture yesterday is what made it all so stale. Maybe we can keep this interactive and the time will pass faster than it did with the other class.”

  Ashton was on board. “Great idea, Duke.”

  We all got busy writing down questions. Lila sat back first. I caught her reading over my shoulder. Cocking my head to the side to look at her, I asked, “You trying to cheat?”

  “Cheat?” She waved her hand as if waving the idea away. “You can’t cheat at this, Duke. Do you think everything is a competition?”

  “Most things are. And you and I are definitely in one.” I stopped writing, having already come up with ten great questions.

  “And if we weren’t?” she asked with a thoughtful expression. “Then could we be friends?”

  All I could do was blink. She’d stumped me. “You want to be my friend?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t really know you. Not when you’re not trying to beat me at something, at least. You seem to get along well with everyone else, so I guess it’s only me who rubs you the wrong way.” She looked down then back up, holding her head high, her jaw firm. “You can be honest with me, Duke. I won’t break. I’m not a child.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m not myself with you because you’re the competition.”

  “The enemy,” she added.

  I didn’t like to think in those terms. “Not the enemy. Just the competition. I don’t dislike you—I just want the same thing you do. We’re competing, not going to war to kill each other. And I really hope you can be a good sport if you don’t win.”

  “And vice versa.” She winked at me. “And for the record, in the spirit of honesty, I’m not entirely my normal self with you either. This competition has me in uncharted territory, I’m afraid. Competing isn’t really my thing. I’m the kind of person who’s always looking out to help others. The kind that will stop running a race to help another runner who’s fallen. Fuck the race; he’s down and he needs help, you know?”

  She is superhuman after all.

  “I’ll try not to fall so you don’t have to throw in the towel, Lila. And for the record, I will be a good sport if you win. I’ve always been a good sport. The alternative wasn’t tolerated by any of my coaches. Win or lose, when the game is over you shake every opponent’s hand and thank them for a good game. I’ll do that too once this is decided.” I hoped that made her feel better about things.

  “I can see why everyone likes you, Duke.” She gave me her big, sunny smile. “You are a nice guy underneath it all. But for now, you’re my opponent, and things just have to be the way they are, I guess. And please try not to fall, because I wouldn’t be able to help myself. I’d have to help you up.” The smile stayed on her face and melted my heart. The girl was too good to be true.

  Or was that a ploy too?

  She’d said she felt she was in uncharted territory in this competition, but this was uncharted territory for me too. I wasn’t used to bright-eyed smiles and promises of help from my opponents—I was used to being smacked in the face with competition, sometimes literally.

  One thing was for sure—I had to watch myself with her.

  The first half of class went by pretty fast, and we were dismissed for lunch. My cell dinged, and I saw that Mrs. Baker had left me a m
essage. She wanted to let me know that a dinner meeting had been set for me, her, and Artimus that evening. As I looked at the message, I knew it probably meant I’d gotten the job.

  Walking just behind Lila on the way out, I reached out and touched her arm. She stopped and looked at me. “Hey, I’ve just gotten a message from the boss. They want to meet with me for dinner tonight. I think we’ve both got a pretty good idea what it’s about, so I just wanted to say one more time that I hope there are no hard feelings if I get the job. I would like to be friends when this is over.”

  “Cool, me too.” Her smile was wide—too wide to have heard such grim news. “I’ve got lunch with them both in half an hour. See ya.”

  I was frozen in place as she left me standing there.

  What the hell just happened?

  Chapter Nine

  Lila

  I stopped off at the hotel to freshen up before heading to Greenwich Village to meet Artimus and Mrs. Baker at Il Mulino for our lunch meeting. Hopping out of the cab, I hurried to get inside. I was only one minute late, but that was one minute too long in my book.

  “Artimus Wolfe’s table, please,” I told the maître d. As he led me through the restaurant, which was far fancier than any place I’d ever dined in, I had little time to admire the surroundings, but I tried to anyway. “Oh, my goodness, that’s Taylor Swift right there!”

  He said nothing as he hurried me along. “Here you are, madam.”

  “Thank you.” He stepped out of the way, and there was Duke Cofield, sitting in the chair next to the one the maître d had pulled out for me.

  “Hi there.” Duke smiled as if he belonged there, which I knew he didn’t.

  “Hi.” I took my seat and tried not to act surprised or pissed, which was a challenge.