I watched as Jason Tollison made his way over to their table. You better go for Andi, I thought. I'd rather have to throw Noah out of the club for beating Jason to a pulp than to have me be arrested and make the club look bad because I've beaten him up for hitting on Natalie.
As Jason bent over and gave his signature smile to Natalie, I had just the right angle to be able to see her look at him in surprise, and then smile back. It wasn't that full wattage smile that I had seen on occasion, but it was enough that someone like Jason would take that as a cue.
"Fuck."
"So that thing between you and Natalie that you said was nothing—"
"It is nothing." I said, trying to unclench my fists and instead rested my hands on my waist.
“You look like you want to beat the shit out of him."
"I often do. He causes a lot of trouble in here and I’d hate for him to cause trouble with Ryan's wife." See, I could pretend like this had nothing to do with Natalie.
Natalie rose from her chair and walked with Jason out to the dance floor. It was a fast song so as they started dancing, there was enough space between them that I felt I could hold it together and watch from here. But soon Jason was inching closer to her and then he put his hand on her waist. Either Natalie didn't feel it because she was clearly lost in the music as her hips swayed to the beat, or she didn't care. The problem was that I cared.
I strode out of the security room and towards the dance floor, my brain going on the blitz as I tried to figure out the best way to intervene without making a scene.
Finally, when I reached them, I grabbed Jason on the shoulder and yanked him back. "Mind if I cut in?"
Jason looked up at me. "Hey man, I've been behaving. You can't kick me out."
I looked down at him. "I own this place. I can do whatever I want. Why don’t you go find somebody else to hit on?" I stepped in front of him blocking him from Natalie. I looked down at her.
Her eyes blazed hot as she glared up at me. "What's your problem?"
I gritted my teeth. "I'm trying to save you from the embarrassment of making a fool of yourself."
Her eyes narrowed at me. "It's a little too late for that, don't you think? Why do you care anyway? I'm sure you've already picked out your next bimbo to take home."
"No —"
"Oh, that's right you don't take them home, you take them to hotels. You fuck ‘em and leave ‘em, don't you, Hunter?"
I didn't like that I was the one looking like the asshole here when she was the one that came striding into my club flaunting her curves all over my dance floor.
"What are you doing here anyway?" I asked.
"This is a free country. I can go wherever I want."
"So, this is just another one in your plans? You come in here with your barely there dress shaking your ass thinking that's going to change my mind about you?"
She lifted her hand as if she was going to slap me. For a minute I was going to let her because somewhere inside me, I thought I deserved it.
But she stopped herself. Her expression was a mixture of hatred and pain, and again I felt like the biggest asshole ever. What the hell was I missing?
"You are a self-centered ass. It was Andi’s idea to come here. She wanted to have some time with her friends, and she decided on this place. If it were me, I would've gone anywhere else because you are the one person in the world I never want to see again.”
She turned away from me and headed to the bar. The rational side of me said to let her go. Looking over at the corner where Andi and Kellie sat watching me intently, I realized that perhaps Natalie was telling the truth. Maybe she hadn't come here to flaunt herself in my face. But of course, anger and adrenaline had other ideas. I followed her to the bar where I overheard her ordering a shot.
"It's not a good idea to drink alone," I said.
She slanted her eyes at me. Then she turned back to the bartender. "Give him one too."
The bartender, Eddie, looked at me, unsure of what to do. I gave him a curt nod to let him know that I would take a shot as well. When he put the shots in front of us. Natalie held up her drink towards me.
"Here's to bad decisions and bad ideas." She downed the shot.
I downed mine as well, setting the empty shot glass on the bar. "Feeling better now princess?"
She gritted her teeth and turned back to the bartender. “I want another one."
"Don't do anything you're going to regret tomorrow."
"I've already done a bunch of stuff I regretted the next day. All of it involved you. There's almost nothing I can do now to make me feel worse than that."
Her words hit me right where she wanted them to. I was her regret. Of course, she was mine. So why the fuck did I want to grab her and kiss her senseless, and then drag her out of here to my loft and make love to her until she stopped looking at me with that smirk and instead gave me that sweet smile she'd given Jason over at the table?
This time she didn't wait for me. She downed the shot. I took mine and drank it as well. Then we glared at each other. Each second of our stalemate, I grew more and more likely to follow through on my bonehead thought to grab her and kiss her.
A hand patted my shoulder. "You've had enough, Hunter, don't you think?" Noah said.
My eyes narrowed at Natalie. "I have had enough."
Andi and Kellie appeared too.
"Come on honey, let's go home," Kellie said. She didn't look at me, but Andi gave me her you’re-being-a-jerk expression.
Angry at all of them, I jerked my shoulder out from under Noah's and I strode out of the club.
I decided to head to my loft. The two shots that I had drunk along with the two other glasses of alcohol did little to curb my anger and frustration.
"Hey Hunter," Noah's voice called from behind me. I didn't stop to look, but I could hear his feet as he trotted up and finally came up beside me.
"I'm not in the mood, Noah."
"No shit, Sherlock."
A part of me thought him and Andi would be perfect together, because they both had smart mouths.
Although in this case he kept his shut and just walked alongside me until we arrived at my loft. I went into the building and made my way up the stairs, every now and then glancing over at him with an expression that should've told him I didn't want him there with me. He just stared at me back with an expression of “too bad.”
When we got inside, I headed straight to the bar.
"Don’t you think you've had enough?" Noah asked.
"I'm still standing here, so clearly I haven't had enough."
"What if I make you some coffee and you can tell me what the fuck is going on with you."
"I don't want coffee. I want to get drunk. You can join me, or you can go."
Noah shrugged and came over to the bar grabbing a glass and holding it out for me to pour for him. I poured him a couple of fingers and then took the bottle with me to the couch.
Noah sat on the other couch across from me. He rested one arm over the back as he took a sip of his drink, his eyes watching me over the rim of the glass.
"I get it that you don't want to tell me what is going on. But that thing that just happened at your club, chances are someone filmed that, and I know how much you hate to have your bullshit on the Internet.”
I scraped my hand over my face. "Fuck."
"So, what is it about Natalie that has you going nuts? Are you in love with her?"
"No." I pointed at him for emphasis, "I'm not in love with her." I sipped my drink because my heart was rolling around my chest as if it was calling me a liar.
"Is it because that bullshit in the magazine?"
"She set me up."
Noah frowned. "How did she manage that? Why would she manage that?"
I shrugged. "Why do they all try to manage it?"
"You really are one cynical son of a bitch, aren’t you?"
"If you're going to stay here and drink with me, just drink. I don't want to talk about all this."
I woke up feeling like somebody was jack hammering in my head and had scraped my mouth out with sandpaper. And God dammit my chest still hurt.
I dug the heels of my palms into my eye sockets. I opened my eyes and saw Ryan sitting where Noah had been last night.
"The coffee is brewing. There's a glass of water and some pain reliever for you to take now."
"What happened to Noah?" I managed to sit up, but with the room spinning, it was hard to tell.
"Noah felt perfectly capable of drinking with you, but not able to sit here with you when you woke up in the aftermath."
I sought my brain wondering what aftermath beyond the fact that Natalie screwed me over, and we made a scene in my club. Had I done something else?
"He thinks you are suffering from a broken heart,” Ryan said.
"Fuck."
"Is he right?" Ryan asked.
"It doesn't matter what I'm feeling, she fucked me over."
"You know Natalie strikes me as a smart girl, and someone who is passionate about her art, so why would she put herself in a situation in which her art is completely dismissed and her prospects are completely ruined?"
Why was he on her side? “Why are you here, Ryan? I hope it's not to try and talk me into changing my mind about Natalie."
"No. I don’t want to change your mind about Natalie. I want to make sure you stay the fuck away from her."
I tried to smirk but for all I knew it was a grimace. "Are you mad because I slept with your sister-in-law?"
Ryan was always a low-key kinda guy, but as he leaned forward and rested his arms on his forearms, he looked at me with such venom, I recoiled.
"No, I'm not mad about that. You're both adults. What I'm mad about is how you are blaming her for your inability to keep it in your pants."
I seethed inside, but didn’t say anything. Maybe if I didn’t respond, he’d leave.
“So, there's an article making you look like a womanizer. If you didn't act like one, there’d be nothing to publish about you. What is the big deal anyway? But that’s not the issue. I cannot for the life of me figure out how you think Natalie could set this all up. In what world does that end well for her? I can't decide if you're a moron or a monster."
I flinched and couldn't respond because I was so shocked to have Ryan talking to me like that.
"What's the worst that happens to you because of this article? People talk about you. So what?”
That was easy for him. He didn’t have his business plastered online again. Humiliating him.
“You still have your work. You still have your club and your gallery. What does Natalie have? Let me tell you. She has nothing." He stood and began to pace as if he was trying to calm down but apparently it didn't work because he whirled around on me again. "I should've never encouraged Kellie to have her take that job. Natalie was a young, vibrant woman with a promising career and now it's all gone. All of it because I suggested that she go to work for you. The only thing that keeps me from beating the shit out of you is that I’m to blame too.”
Feeling backed in a corner, my only option was to come out swinging. But when I went to stand up, my brain rattled around in my skull and I ended up sinking back down on the couch.
"You have something to say about that?" Ryan asked.
"How would they have known to catch us at the hotels if she didn't tell them?" That made sense when I thought it, but as the words came out, I sounded like a pathetic jerk.
Ryan stood looking at me for a moment, his hands on his hips and it made me squirm. "Gee, I don't know, Hunter. Maybe they were following you around. Everybody knows where to find you. They don’t care about Natalie. They're all out to get a picture of you and your mistress. It would've been better off if you'd been fucking somebody else. Natalie is a nice talented girl who's lost everything."
Needing something to do. I took the pills and the water Ryan had gotten for me and downed them. “She has talent. She’ll bounce back —"
"You don't know that. Hunter, not only has everyone dismissed her work as just being something that her sugar daddy helped pay for her, she’s also stopped painting."
My eyes jerked up to him. "What do you mean?"
"Last night when Kellie went to visit with her, Natalie said she didn't feel like painting and then this morning when Kellie went to check on her before going to the office, Natalie had covered all of her artwork up with a sheet."
Oh fuck. I was worse than an asshole. I was a moron and a monster.
"And it hasn't gone unnoticed that she's not at work. I swear to God Hunter, if you fired her after all —"
"I didn't fire her. She quit."
"I hope that's true because if you fired her, she does have a reason for a lawsuit, and I would vote to have you removed if that's what it took to get you out of the company.”
Jesus. I couldn’t believe he was saying that.
“Now Noah seems to think maybe you have feelings for her, and if that's true, you better do something to fix this." He let out a growl and then went to my kitchen. I could hear him getting a coffee.
He brought it back out and set it in front of me. "You're my brother, Hunter, and I love you, but you have got to get your shit together. I don’t understand what your problem is when it comes to women, but you need to do something about it. At the very least, you need to fix this thing with Natalie. And by fix, I don't mean fucking again. I would prefer that you fix this problem, make amends with her, and then stay the hell away from her. Because clearly you're not good enough for her." He turned and strode out of the house leaving me sitting alone hungover on my couch.
His words were tough and hurtful, and I wanted to lash out at him, but deep down I knew he was right. Hadn’t Natalie told me how damaging this situation could be to her career when the first bit of gossip came out? But when I saw that magazine article, everything that was rational flew out of my head and all I could think about was years ago when I was made a laughing stock at the expense of a woman.
Ryan was right that I needed to get my shit together. I managed to get up and get into the shower. An hour later, I walked into Strong Incorporated, and called my brothers, along with Kellie and Andi into the conference room. The way they glared at me from around the table, I know that they are on Ryan's side in this controversy. But hopefully they would help me put it right.
I tossed the magazine on the table. "We need to do something about this article. It's completely unfair to Natalie. We need to find a way to make sure that people know that she is a talented artist."
"So, it's true?" Carter asked as he looked at the magazine.
“It's not exactly true,” I said.
"What part isn't true?" Noah asked. "Because it's pretty clear the part about you and her sleeping together is true. "
I stood at the end of the table with my head down as my brothers and Andi and Kellie looked at me with disappointment. I felt shame, but also, I was beginning to feel clearer. Like the clouds were dissipating and I had a better view of the situation and what needed to be done.
"That part is true but it's not the whole truth. Until I can talk to Natalie, though, I can’t talk to you about it."
Kellie's brow arched, like she was suspicious of me. "If you hurt my sister again —"
I shook my head. "I'm not going to hurt her, at least not on purpose. I’m going to make amends. Somehow."
"Did she interview for this?" Carter asked, as he read the article.
"Yes, but she says that none of the stuff in there is what they talked about."
"I can talk with the legal team and see if we might have something that we can do there," Carter said.
"And I'll contact the PR people to see if maybe we can put something out that offsets this article,” Ryan said.
“It’s important tha
t the solution doesn’t make things worse for her,” I said remembering what I was told the last time.
Ryan nodded. “I think if we are able to find an outlet that is more reputable that will highlight her talent, it will make the other one look like a gossip rag and not an art magazine.”
After the asswhooping he’d given me that morning, I was appreciative of his support. “Thank you.”
"That is a nice picture she’s sketched of you," Noah said looking at the magazine over Carter’s shoulder. “Worse comes to worse, she can put it on eBay and maybe make a couple of bucks."
I looked at Noah, wanting him to tell him to shut the fuck up, but until I cleaned my mess up, I figured I was going to have to put up with him.
"I'm taking the rest of the day off, but you can talk to Gavin about the European campaign if you need information on it," I told Ryan.
He gave me a nod. Having said all that I had to say, I exited the conference room. I let out a breath with some relief at getting that done. But I knew that the next step was going to be harder. In fact, it was probably going to be the hardest thing I'd ever done, and at the same time the most important thing I'd ever done as well.
But first, I had to take care of a couple of tasks.
26
Natalie
Kellie and Andi offered to stay with me after they dropped me off from our girls night out, but I didn't want them to watch me in my misery, so I sent them home and went to bed. The next morning, I woke feeling like I'd been run over by a truck, but I couldn't be sure if that was from a hangover or heart ache and anger at what happened with Hunter.
I managed to get out of bed and into the bathroom. Looking in the mirror, I didn't like what I saw. I was a hot mess, and it wasn't just because of my bleary eyes, dark circles, and bedhead hair. My eyes held a dullness to them as if someone had blown the light out of them. Another little flicker of anger ignited in me at that, but not enough to propel me out into the world. No, I would need to wallow for a little while longer.
I made my way out to the living room where I saw my makeshift studio in the corner. For a moment I looked at it, waiting for inspiration to strike, but there was nothing. I went to the kitchen and brewed myself a cup of coffee. With my steaming hot cup of joe in hand, I went back to the living room and again looked over at my studio. The paint and canvases sat there teasing and taunting me. Unable to bear it, I put my mug down on the table and went to the closet for a sheet. I pushed all my art materials together in the corner and covered it all, cursing Hunter Strong for killing my passion and stealing my dream.
Giving In To Love: A Friends with Benefits Office Romance (Strong Brothers Book 2) Page 16