by Lila Monroe
“Bad news.” He cleared his throat. Why couldn’t he look me in the eye? For a few seconds I thought he wasn’t going to elaborate further, and then he went on, as though each word were stuck in his throat. “A tape. There’s—a tape. A sex one. It just leaked.”
“Of us?!”
My mind reeled. How the hell could that have happened? We’ve only had sex this night, and that one time in his hallway—did he have cameras—did someone spy on us—
“No, no. No. A girl I…dated…last year.”
“Oh,” I said. My relief at not starring in an inadvertent porn shoot was quickly replaced with the reality of the situation.
A sex tape. Of him. With somebody else.
I could feel the floor beginning to fall out from under me.
“Who was she?”
“Well.” The words seemed reluctant to leave Grant’s mouth. “Well, it’s not just her. There are two girls. Whom I…dated…concurrently.”
“You can say the word ‘fucked,’ Grant,” I snapped. “I’m not going to faint.”
He reeled backwards from me, a hurt look on his face, as if I’d hit him. I wasn’t being fair, oh God I knew I wasn’t being fair and I felt guilty as hell seeing that lost puppy look on his face, but I couldn’t let him see how shocked and insecure I felt. I couldn’t.
Oh God. He had a threesome with someone else. Plural. And now everybody knew it!
I pulled the blanket tighter around my ample form, wondering what those two girls had looked like. Probably glossy blonde, deeply tanned. Probably thinner.
Certainly thinner.
They’d probably been daring and adventurous and hadn’t constantly demanded that he put in time and work and commitment and responsibility when he didn’t even love—
No, no, no. There was no time for this self-pity. There was work to do.
“Don’t give me that puppy dog look,” I said. I stood, turned my back to him, and started hunting for my clothes. “There’s no time for that. What did they say? How many people know?”
“It’s…on YouTube,” Grant said from behind me. “Every time they take it down, it comes back up.” He added almost shyly, like a peace offering, “There’s already an auto-tune parody.”
If he thought I was going to find that funny, with everything at stake—
I found my dress and pulled it over my head. Well, there’d be no secrets about what we had done last night, but no time to worry about that now. “And Jennings? Does he know?”
I could hear Grant swallow. His foot scuffed along the floor. “He’s been calling the company every five minutes.”
I pressed my hand against my forehead. Took a deep breath. Oh God. After all our work to remake his image, this comes along, showing him to be the exact kind of reckless playboy everyone believed he was.
It wasn’t just his reputation on the line, it was the fate of the entire company.
Our jobs. My future.
This could undo everything.
What was I going to do?
TO BE CONTINUED…
Can Lacey fix things, or is her not-so-fake relationship with Grant over before its even begun? The next book in the series THE BILLIONAIRE SECRET is available now!
BILLIONAIRE: BOOK 2
THE BILLIONAIRE SECRET
It was a deal made in the boardroom and sealed in the bedroom.
It all seemed so simple: I pretend to be his fianceé, his company share prices stabilize, and everyone wins. It’s all just for show.
So why does he keep kissing me? And why do I let him? Grant Devlin is the bane of my existence — not the man of my dreams. But now the lines are getting blurred, and between the kissing and the champagne (and did I mention the kissing?) I’m getting way too comfortable as the future Mrs Devlin.
Something’s got to give, and it better not be my self-control…
The Billionaire Series:
1. The Billionaire Bargain
2. The Billionaire Secret
3. The Billionaire Game
4. The Billionaire Prize
5. Billionaire with a Twist
6. Billionaire on the Rocks
21
I couldn’t face work, not now, not with everyone knowing about that video, so Grant agreed to take us back to ‘our’ apartment and try to run damage control from there.
As soon as I’d changed into formless jeans and a billowy T-shirt—I wanted to hide my body, wanted to hide it even from myself so I wouldn’t think about what I had done with him—I started pulling up the news sites and the gossip blogs.
I could hear Grant talking on the phone while in the kitchen—ordering food? Another peace gesture. Damn the man for being sweet to me at this moment. It made it so hard to be angry at him for his poor judgment.
Not that anyone else seemed to find his judgment poor—at least, not last year’s judgment. The comments sections were full of statements like “dam lukkit the rack on that blond” and “WTF is he doing porking that butterface when he can pull tail like this LMAO.”
The whole internet seemed to be laughing at me. My mouse hovered over the video. Don’t click, I told myself. Don’t do it. You don’t care what he did with them. You don’t care what he liked about them. You don’t—
I clicked.
I heard Grant’s footsteps and quickly exited the page, dashing the tears from my eyes. I was torn between relief that the video had barely started, and anger at myself for clicking Play in the first place. What the hell had I been thinking? That it would all be some sort of hilarious mistake?
Those were the kind of girls Grant wanted. Not me.
“Are you all right?” Grant sat down on the couch next to me, put his arm around my shoulder. “Don’t let it get to you, Lacey.”
“I’m fine,” I said stiffly.
“Bollocks,” Grant said. Then, more softly, his hand stroking my arm: “I’m sorry. You’re miserable, and it’s all my fault for putting you in this position. I never wanted to hurt you.”
“I know,” I said. Funny how I kept letting him do that anyway.
“Look, as someone who’s weathered a scandal or two?” His lips brushed my cheek and I could feel the beginnings of a smile, as if he were trying to coax one out of me as well. “For this first bit, things just have to run their course. There’s nothing we can do that won’t make it worse. All we can do is take care of ourselves. So…let me take care of you.”
His voice was so soft, so soothing. I wanted to lay my head on his shoulder and fall asleep and forget I ever even knew the definition of the word ‘trouble.’ He squeezed my shoulder tight.
“Let me take you somewhere fun, where we can think about something else for awhile.”
His fingers traced a figure eight on the skin of my forearm, and in that moment, I would have gone for a picnic in hell if he’d promised to be there with sandwiches and lemonade.
Ocean Beach may not be the best place to surf or catch a tan, but I’ve always loved it. I could feel my blood pressure going down the second Grant and I stepped from the car, and my anxiety seemed to seep away as we shed our shoes and walked along the coast, sinking our toes into the silky warm sand.
It was a windy, overcast day, which seemed to have driven the rest of the beach goers indoors, but something about the tranquil blues and greys of the sky and sea calmed me. It was as if the world was telling me that life goes on, that we are so small in the grand scheme of things and beyond our pretty trials and tribulations, the ocean always endures. Or whatever.
Grant scuffed his foot along the line of kelp, and spotting a hint of white, swooped down to find an unbroken sea dollar. He handed it to me with that shy smile that made my heart feel several sizes too big for my chest.
“Feeling better?” he asked.
“Much,” I said, trying to give him a smile back. “How did you know I love this beach?”
“I do listen to you when you talk, Lacey,” Grant said. “All evidence to the contrary.”
I didn’t even
remember telling him.
We came upon a beautiful spot, high in the sand dunes but sheltered from the wind, and he spread the picnic blanket and took out our food—Trouble didn’t typically offer food to go, but it’s funny how quickly one flash of that Grant Devlin smile and a fifty under the table had changed that policy.
There were coconuts with holes bored into them, just needing a slight tap for the plug to come out before sticking in a straw and sucking up their sweet juice. There was toast slathered in peanut butter and honey, and—
“Here, try this,” Grant said, guiding a bit of toast into my mouth.
Sweet cinnamon exploded across my tastebuds, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut in ecstasy as I moaned. “Damn, that is like crack.”
“If you make sounds like that every time you eat it, I’ll have to bring you one every morning,” Grant said. “Wait—you’re shivering.”
“It’s nothing,” I said, and I meant it. It wasn’t the sunniest day, but it was lovely nonetheless, and I didn’t want anything to spoil this moment or make it end.
“Nonsense,” Grant said, and pulled me towards him. “Here. What body heat I have, is yours.”
“Words every girl dreams of,” I said, relaxing back into his chest as his arms settled comfortably around my stomach. This really was much better. I snuggled into his warmth and watched the seagulls circle and swirl above us.
“I thought I’d try this ‘consideration’ business,” he said dryly. “I’ve heard it’s quite popular with the young ladies these days.”
“You romantic, you,” I said, chuckling and play-swatting his thigh.
He kissed my temple, one of his hands coming up to rub my back, unkinking the tension of the past several hours with sure, practiced caresses. “I can but try.”
I reached up and squeezed his other hand. “I do appreciate it. The trying.”
He pressed his lips to my temple again, lingering for a second longer there, and continued rubbing my back. We sat in contemplation there by the sea for what could have been hours or minutes; I was unaware of the time, only the steady rise and fall of the slate-grey ocean waves, and the feel of Grant holding me tight, occasionally reaching out to feed me another piece of slowly cooling toast, or offering me a sip of coconut water.
“We can stay as long as you want,” he said. “As long as you need.”
He was making it way too easy to fall in love with him, and right now, that was the very last thing I needed.
22
Tornados are not a terribly common natural disaster in San Francisco, and so I was somewhat shocked at the state of affairs when I walked into the damage control meeting the next day. We really should have called the weather channel to report this unique phenomenon; I had never realized it was possible for so many people to rapidly whirl around you without them being propelled by a cyclone.
“Where have you—”
“—seven different news stations—”
“—employee morale at an all-time low!”
“Is the wedding still—”
“—potentially devastating for the company, not to mention—”
“—been trying to get into contact with you—”
“We’ve been saying ‘no comment,’ but—”
“Jennings is the critical—”
“—have to get in front of this!”
Faced with a bunch of near-screaming hyperactive businessmen hopped up on sugar, caffeine, and I-didn’t-want-to-know-what, I did the only thing I could do.
I clapped my hands like a goddamn kindergarten teacher.
Surprisingly, this worked, either because of the bone-deep memory of kindergarten disciplinarians or because everyone was just shocked that I had dared treat them like children.
Before anyone could ponder that too deeply, I took a breath, and also, control of the meeting. “First things first. What have we tried so far?”
There was some shuffling of feet, and after some teeth-pulling it turned out the answer was ‘not much.’ There had been a noncommittal official statement about the separation between personal and private lives, but with Grant and me both going incommunicado, no one had been willing to step up to bat and risk proposing some big gesture.
I felt guilt twist my stomach as I remembered those long, lazy hours at the beach, while these people had been sweating bullets.
That sympathy evaporated, though, with the devious suggestions that began pouring out of these people’s mouths like sewage out of storm drains:
“Deny, deny, deny—”
“—know an actor who’d take some cash to say it was him—”
“—we can get a background check on these girls, dig up some dirt on those sluts and throw the limelight on them—”
“—he goes up onstage, makes a tearful speech about how he regrets framing Mr. Devlin—”
“—call the press and make it clear that if coverage doesn’t cease, donations to their newspaper will be!”
“Stop it!” I threw my hands up in the air. “None of these are doable. Setting aside the fact that they’re all morally reprehensible, none of them would work on Jennings. He’s not going to be fooled by any half-assed smokescreen. Now, tell me, does anyone have an idea that might work for him?”
Silence. Then, in a small voice: “We can contend that Mr. Devlin was drugged—”
“No,” Grant said, “not that.” Then he wavered. “Well, maybe—I mean—dammit, we have to do something. Anything, but—oh, damn it all to hell, no! We’re not saying that!” He slammed his fist down on the table, before whirling to his feet and out the door.
I was after him like a flash, but I was too late to save the section of the wall his fist was already hammering into dust.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid, corrupt—”
I grabbed his arm, and he sagged immediately to avoid pulling me into the wall with his fist.
“Hey,” I said softly. “Hey. Stop it. You’re hurting yourself.”
“How could I have been so stupid?” he whispered. “It was just supposed to be a bit of fun, I knew they had the camera but I didn’t think, I just didn’t think, I never think and it all goes to hell—”
“You can’t blame yourself, Grant—”
“How can I not blame myself? My stupid need to get my dick wet is threatening hundreds of jobs.” He sagged, almost fell forward, letting his forehead rest against the edge of the hole he’d made in the wall. “You told me to take it seriously, and now I do, and I don’t know what to do. How do people live like this? How do they care about things all the time and not go stark raving mad?”
“Well, sometimes they do go mad,” I said, reaching up to rub his back slowly. “But most of the time, they talk to their friends, and they help each other see that nothing is insurmountable.”
“This feels insurmountable,” he said, but his eyes closed as I rubbed his back, and his voice relaxed, slipping into its broad Australian vowels. It made him sound so young. “How do we distract from something this big? Jennings isn’t going to listen to some song and dance while our house is on fire.”
And somehow, just like that, I knew what to do.
“We don’t distract,” I said, feeling the warm glow that spreads through your body when you come up with an idea you just know is right. “We don’t dodge. That’s what everyone expects us to do, the sleaze move.”
“If we don’t do that, what can we do?”
“We can get in front of it.” I was so excited I hugged him, reaching up on my tiptoes to plant a smacking kiss on his cheek. “You’ll face the music! Own up to your mistakes. Oh, Grant, don’t you see? Call Jennings, ask for a meeting to show him you have nothing to hide. You made a mistake, a regrettable one with humiliating consequences, but you’re moving forward and that’s all that matters. That’ll prove you’re not the person the media’s making you out to be.”
Grant’s eyes opened, and he stood up straight, looking down on me as if I were the eighth wonder of the world.
“Y
ou have the best ideas in whole damn universe,” he said, and kissed me.
His lips were rough, burning, possessive, as if he were claiming a trophy he had won in combat, and all I wanted to do was grab onto him and kiss him back until our clothes spontaneously combusted and we didn’t even care.
I pushed him away. “Less smooches, more calling Jennings!”
Grant made a pained face but pulled his cell from his pocket. His voice when the other end picked up was upbeat and plain, like a Boy Scout called to testify in a court of law.
“Sir, I know you’ve seen the news and I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you, but as you can imagine, I’ve been trying to take care of Lacey and make sure her needs are met through all this. She doesn’t deserve this shit-storm, if you’ll pardon my French, and I’m trying to do right by her.” A pause as he listened. “You’re right to be wary, and I want to talk about all your misgivings. Would you join me at our building tomorrow for lunch? I want to hash this out with you. You’ll see I have nothing to hide.” His eyebrow quirked in surprise at something, but his voice stayed even. “Yes, Lacey will be there too. I promise.”
Lunch was exquisite: artisan baguettes, a platter covered with slices of prosciutto, crisp slices of Asian pear topped with blue cheese crumbles and drizzles of honey, lavender-rosemary Madeleine's. And no one in the room was taking a bite.
“—and that’s the whole truth, sir,” Grant finished. “I’m not proud of what I’ve done, but I’m not going to lie about it either. It’s all in the past, and Lacey—” he reached across to me, taking my hand—“is my future.”
He sounded so sincere even I almost believed he saw me that way. Still, Jennings kept his poker face firmly attached, and there was a pregnant pause before he opened his mouth to speak.
And then an intern burst through the door. “Mr. Devlin, this call, they keep insisting on speaking to nobody but you, I didn’t know what to—”