by West, Harper
This job was just a stepping stone. It would be over soon enough, and I would have other clients. I would use it to get what I needed, and then I'd be done with it. Simple as that.
But when I glanced up again, Kevin was smiling at me, flashing those dimples, and I put the menu down with a snap.
"What?"
“What?” he echoed, head tipped to one side.
I fought the urge to scowl. He got under my skin something terrible, but I didn’t have to let him know that. I could be neutral about it all. I could.
“You’re staring at me,” I said, and I softened my tone.
He snorted. “You’ve got to be used to that by now, Caro. You’re beautiful.”
Dammit. I could feel my cheeks getting hot. I never handled compliments well. It wasn’t the sort of thing I was used to in the office, since most of the men I worked with only saw me as a woman when it came to keeping me from making upward progress. In the whole time I’d worked for the firm, none of my coworkers had ever awkwardly hit on me. Which was a blessing, but it left me flustered whenever someone else did it.
I picked up my menu again and tried to stare at it, but the words weren't going in. I was just too aware of him and the flush on my face and the way my heart was beating faster and how much I hated it.
"You seem tense," Kevin commented, and I huffed a breath.
"I'm fine." That did come out sounding snappish, but there wasn't much I could do about that. My hackles were up, and of course we couldn't even have a nice dinner together without things getting in the way. It was probably stupid to have thought that we could.
"Can I ask you something?" he said, and then barreled on before I could answer. "What did I do? To make you hate me so much? Or to piss you off or whatever. Every single time we're in the same room you get like this, and I know you well enough to know you're not always like this."
"You don't know me," I muttered.
He frowned. "It's been a while, but you haven't changed that much."
"And neither have you," I snapped. "You're still the same self-centered jackass that you were before." I kept my voice lowered, not trying to make a scene in the fancy restaurant because that would undo plenty of the progress we'd made, and I didn't want to get dragged into the media circus as one of Kevin's conquests or whatever. "You only think about yourself. You always have."
When I looked at him, he had a slightly hurt look on his face, and I rolled my eyes. I wasn't believing that. He was just trying to manipulate my emotions. To make me believe that he was some soft, wounded thing, when really he was the reason for whatever problems we were having.
"What are you talking about?" he asked.
I stared at him for a second and then shook my head. "I'm talking about how you don't care who you hurt as long as you get your own way. As long as you can be happy, fuck everyone else, right? You know what you did."
"I don't," he insisted.
And that was the last straw. My temper broke, and I put both hands on the table like I was about to use it for leverage to get up and walk the hell out.
"You broke my heart," I hissed. And it was the first time I'd ever said it out loud. Every time I had cause to tell the story, I always downplayed it, made it sound like it had been just a blip on my radar.
Honestly, if he wasn't back in my life, reminding me of what happened with everything he did, then I might have been able to leave it buried.
I searched his face for a hint of emotion. For some shred of remorse or understanding. But he just looked confused.
"I just did what I thought was best," he said. "For both of us. You had dreams, too. You had just as many goals as I did. You were going to do the same thing."
For a second I just gaped at him, unable to make his words make sense in my head. I was going to do the same thing? He actually thought that I was going to do the same fucking thing?
"No, I wasn't," I said. "I was...I can't believe you..." My voice shook as I tried to get the words out. "I was driving myself crazy trying to think of how to keep you. How to make sure we both got what we wanted out of life without losing each other. Because that's how much you meant to me, you fucking asshole. I wanted you. I..."
I shook my head. I wasn't going to say it. He didn't deserve to hear it.
Then it was his turn to gape at me, mouth slightly open, and eyes wide. He just stared for a long moment, and then all of a sudden, I couldn't be there anymore.
My stomach was roiling, and the thought of eating just made me feel nauseous.
"I can't do this," I said, getting up and gathering my things. "I'm not hungry anymore."
I expected Kevin to say something, to ask me to wait, to want to talk it out, but he just sat there, still looking like someone had hit him across the head with a bat, so I walked out, leaving him behind.
The next morning, all I felt was regret. I'd gone for so long without letting my emotions get the better of me, but leave it to Kevin goddamned Porter to come along and ruin all of that.
When I checked my phone there were missed calls and texts from him, but I deleted the texts without even reading them, and ignored the calls.
Instead I sent a quick message to his agent, telling her I would be dealing with Kevin through her until the completion of the job.
She didn't ask any questions, just agreed, and I had to wonder if she was used to people wanting to be done with her charge.
It didn't matter either way.
I was almost finished.
Most of the brands who had been considering dropping him were placated by the burst of positive press, and there were just a couple more interviews that Kevin needed to do, along with some public appearances.
And then we would be done. He could go back to his life, doing whatever it was he did when he wasn't making my life a living hell, and I would take my promotion and move on with my life.
We never had to see each other again.
Except for when I turned on the television during baseball season or went too far into the city and had to see massive billboards of his face, but other than that, he would be out of sight and out of mind.
For about a week and a half, I got status updates from Kathleen, and she was the one to go with him to the interviews. I watched them later, just to make sure he hadn't screwed them up, but it all seemed to be going fine.
"He's toeing the line," she said when we talked. "Taking it all more seriously than I would have given him credit for before. So I gave him leave to go on a little vacation. I think he's earned it."
I held my tongue about that. Kevin could do whatever he wanted, after all.
At the same time, that little voice in the back of my head started up again, this time warning me that a Kevin left to his own devices was probably a Kevin that was going to get up to some shit, but I pushed it to the side. Probably it would be fine.
It wasn't fine.
Two days later, I woke up to every online publication, gossip site, and pretty much all of social media screaming about Kevin's Wild Night.
The accompanying pictures were of him, clearly mostly naked, in a hot tub with a bevy of busty, attractive women, a bottle in his hand, and a look of happy abandon on his face.
None of the pictures were very clear, and they were all taken at a distance, but it was him alright. Straight from some beach house in Hawaii, ignoring everything I had told him and trying to ruin his own fucking life.
I couldn't believe it.
After all the hard work I'd put in. After everything I'd done to try and turn things around. He went and did something so incredibly stupid.
And it wasn't like I could just abandon him to his fate. No, I was still under contract to fix his mess, so I had to deal with it. I had to somehow manage to turn this around, and I could only hope that the positive momentum I'd started would be enough to help.
I called his agent.
"Where is he?" I demanded.
She sighed and gave me an address in O'ahu. "I'll take care of booking the fl
ight," she told me. "Since this is sort of an emergency."
"He's an emergency," I muttered.
"You're not wrong."
By the end of the call, I had a flight out for the next day, and I used my anger to get me up and packing, throwing things into a suitcase while I called my boss to explain the situation.
Sam answered, and I gave her the short version.
"What an idiot," she said.
"Tell me about it."
I had half a mind to punch him right in his stupid face when I saw him.
Chapter 10
Kevin
O’ahu was beautiful. The locals were friendly, the food was amazing, and the beaches were gorgeous.
I'd found myself a nice beach house that was really more a sprawling villa than a house, and I'd rented it for a week and a half, just to have some time away.
I'd made a few friends, gone to and hosted some parties, chatted up tourists and signed some autographs. It was flattering that even out here, pretty much as far from New York as I could be and still be in the country, people knew who I was and admired my playing.
It made me feel a little bit bad about what I was doing, but I trusted Caro to take care of it.
I hadn't been able to stop thinking about what she'd told me at the disaster that was our non-dinner together.
She'd had a plan. She was in the middle of finals and graduating and trying to get everything together, and she'd had plan to keep us from having to break up.
The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Caro was the kind of person who didn't like to admit defeat. She only walked away from something when it was clear there was no other choice.
And she hadn't wanted to walk away from me. She'd wanted to keep me, to stay together.
That had never even entered my mind as an option, and I wondered what that said about me.
Either way, there wasn't anything I could do about that now. The past was the past, and all I could do was try to make some changes going forward.
After the media circus around my latest batch of being 'the bad boy of baseball' died down, of course.
The afternoon that the pictures were splashed all over the internet, I got a very angry call from Kathleen. Because of course I did.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she demanded as soon as I picked up the phone. "Do you have a head injury? Are you going senile before you even hit thirty? If you are, please tell me, because I've been sitting here, wracking my brain, trying to come up with a reason why you've done this, and all I can think of is that you're a self-destructive idiot."
"It's going to be fine, Kath," I said. "I have a plan."
"You have a plan? You have a plan." She laughed, and it was a harsh sound. "You don't have two brain cells to rub together, apparently. You're so fucking stupid. And Carolyn has been working her ass off trying to clean up your messes, and here you are making her job harder than it needs to be. Do you have any idea how much we're going to have to pay her when this is done?"
"It'll be worth it," I replied.
She made a noise of frustration. "She's coming out there. To try and calm things down. I swear to god, Kevin, if you make this worse, I'm going to come down there, too, and you don't want that."
"No, I don't," I agreed. "I'll work with Caro. It'll be fine, Kath."
I said it with the usual confidence that Kath was used to hearing from me, but when I hung up, I sighed.
All I could think about was how Caro had looked at the restaurant. And how upset she'd been.
And when I wasn't thinking about that, I was thinking about wasted time and how if we'd stayed together, maybe we would have still been together. None of this media shit would have been an issue because I never would have married someone selfish and horrible like Christine. I could have been with someone who understood my ambitions and had her own and would have worked with me instead of against me.
At the time, I couldn't even picture something like that. I didn't know if I wanted it, even.
I had worked myself up to do things alone because I thought I had to. I thought that was how success worked.
But it didn't have to be like that, and thinking about it too much made me sad, so I shoved those thoughts down and thought about what I was going to do to fix it.
Caro had her task, and I had mine.
She showed up the next day, bag in hand, scowl on her face, and she was clearly pissed off.
I came out to greet her with a sheepish smile on my face.
"You're a fucking moron," was the first thing she said to me. "I can't believe you had so little understanding how this works. What were you thinking? I thought your career mattered to you! I thought you were willing to do whatever it took to keep it, but clearly if it means behaving for a few weeks, that's beyond you."
"It's nice to see you, too, Caro," I said.
"Fuck off," she snapped. "It's not nice to see you. I had to drag my ass all the way out here to fix another of your messes because you're too stupid and thoughtless to know how to stay out of trouble. You're a pain in the ass.
I winced slightly at the anger in her tone. It was clear she had worked herself up into a frenzy, and I couldn’t really blame her. "I'm sorry," I said, and I actually meant it.
"No, you're not. You get to have your fun and do whatever the hell you want with whoever the hell you want, and then I have to come along and clean up after you, so you don't have to take any responsibility for yourself or your actions. I'm sure you're having a great time."
"I'm not—”
She lifted a hand and cut me off. "I don't actually care, Kevin. I'm not here to listen to your excuses. I'm not here to talk to you at all. I'm here to calm things down and try to keep you from undoing all the work I busted my ass to do. I need to get a hotel, and then I have to get to work."
“You don’t need a hotel,” I told her. “There’s a perfectly good beach house right here.”
She rolled her eyes. "Kevin, I have absolutely no desire to stay here while you host your topless hot tub parties. I can't believe you'd even think that was an option."
"I'm not doing that anymore," I said, lifting a hand. "Scout's honor."
"You weren't a scout," she said. "It's fine. I'm sure there's any number of nice hotels on this island. Ones that won't be filled with you having sex with who knows how many women."
I winced, a little hurt that she thought so little of me, but I couldn't really blame her. "There won't be any of that," I promised. "And just for the record, I didn't sleep with any of those women."
"Okay."
"I didn't!" I insisted. It was important that she knew that. I hadn't so much as touched them when they were all piled into the hot tub, because ever surrounded by a bevy of gorgeous women who were barely clothed, I was thinking about Caro the whole time.
"Fine, Kevin," she said. "I don't care either way. I'm not here to tell you who can and can't sleep with. I'm here to tell you to be fucking discreet about it until I've finished making sure your sponsors don't drop you like a fucking hot potato. But apparently that's too hard a concept for you."
"It's not," I said. "And I'm sorry you had to come all the way out here. Let me make it up to you by offering you a room in this very nice house I rented. I'll stay out of your way and be on my best behavior. I promise."
I looked at her, sincerity in my tone and on my face, willing her to believe me. I was being completely honest, but I knew Caro was a skeptic, and I hadn't exactly given her much reason to trust that I was being sincere. But I needed her to be here for things to work out the way I wanted them to, and if she went to a hotel, it would all be for nothing.
Finally she sighed, and I could see she looked tired. It was a long flight from New York to Hawaii, and she was probably dealing with the aftermath of my shenanigans before she even got on the plane.
I felt guilty about that. "Here," I told her. "Let me get your bags. I'll show you to a bedroom. You look like you could use a nap."
"I don't have tim
e for a nap," she muttered, and she kept a hold on her bags, walking up towards the house.
I watched her for a second, taking in the way that even exhausted and worn down, she was still straight-backed and clear-eyed. She rarely let things get her down. Not even me being an idiot.
I'd always admired that about her.
"You don't know where you're going," I called after her, turning to follow.
"I can figure it out," she snapped back.
It was going to be a long week.
Chapter 11
Caro
There was something so supremely annoying about being in Hawaii, a beautiful place I'd always wanted to visit someday, and having to work my ass off because of an idiot like Kevin.
The beach the house was on had that luscious white sand, and the water was crystal clear and sparkling. And even though it was cold back in New York, the weather was moderate enough that I didn't need more than a light jacket just to be on the safe side.
It was gorgeous, and if I wasn't working, I'd have liked nothing more than to curl up in a beach chair with a book and listen to the sound of the waves.
But no. I didn't get to do that because this wasn't a vacation for me. I was working. I was going to media outlets and calling sponsors and doing whatever I could to make sure Kevin's little stunt didn't ruin the progress I'd already made.
And it was working, for the most part. I put a spin on it, siting that he was entitled to blow off a little steam. I brought up his career record and how hard he worked and how he was rewarded for it by having his ex-wife come after his character in a way that would stress anyone out.
I painted a sympathetic picture and sent the statement to anyone who was asking for it, spending most of that first day at a coffee shop in town, using their internet and stepping outside to make phone calls.
By the time the sun was setting, I was worn out. I was still jet lagged from the flight, but publicity didn't wait, and if I wanted to make any kind of an impact on things, I had to strike while things were still hot.