by Zoey Parker
“Right now?”
“I have to talk to you. It’s important.”
“Don’t you just want me to come over there? I have some things for you anyway. Katia, you’ll need to go through your closets and pick out some things to donate. Remember, the Youth Charity auction is coming up! Last year, those shoes you wore in the Vogue photo-shoot landed over three hundred thousand dollars, remember?”
I had to laugh. Anya’s excitement, though not infectious, reminded me again how great at her job she was.
“Okay,” I replied. “I mean, coffee first. Then maybe you can come over, and we’ll pick out some stuff for the auction, okay?”
“Okay.” Anya paused. “I’m downtown. Feel like meeting me at The Coffee Shack?”
“I’ll be there,” I said dryly. “See you in twenty.”
Chapter Twelve
Katia
I paced nervously back and forth inside of The Coffee Shack waiting for Anya. Dante was standing guard outside, not even trying to look discreet. He had one hand clapped to the gun holster at his side, and he was prowling around like he owned the place. I licked my dry lips as he crossed from one corner of the street to the other.
“Hi!” I turned around to see Anya standing there, breathless and holding about a million packages. She set them down on the floor, then tried cramming them under the table where I was sitting sat with my most recent designer handbag purchase.
“Hi,” I said. “How are you?”
Anya frowned. She wiped her hand against her forehead and sighed. Her brown hair was tied back in a messy ponytail, and the only makeup she wore was a swipe of terracotta lipstick on her mouth.
“I’m not great. Look, Katia, there’s something we have to talk about.”
“I know.” I nodded. “That’s exactly why I called you here.”
Anya frowned again. “I’m not sure you understand.” I stared at her. What the hell was going on? Was my personal assistant suddenly my personal psychic?
“Okay,” I said nervously. “What did you want to talk about? Besides the charity auction, of course.”
Anya rifled through her oversized cloth purse and handed me a folder. “This came this morning. Someone left it on the seat of my car when I was out earlier getting coffee.”
I glanced over my shoulder. Dante was still there, strolling around with his thumbs hooked in his belt loops. Between his oversized, mirrored sunglasses and his trucker cap, I could barely read his expression. As I watched, he took out a cigarette from a silver case in his hip pocket and lit it with a butane lighter. I frowned again. He was trying too hard to be casual. Was it possible that, somehow, he was actually nervous?
“So, what is it?”
Anya slid the folder over towards me. She bit her lower lip, her brown eyes trembling. “Katia, what the hell is going on with you and Dante?”
“Nothing, nothing,” I told her. I slid my fingernail under the seal of clear tape holding the folder shut. A couple of glossy photographs fell into my lap once the folder had opened, and I felt my jaw drop as I pulled one of the pictures closer, examining it with hawk eyes.
It was a photo of Dante and me. Well, to be precise, a photo of us in bed. In my bed. It was from this morning because I could see my lingerie from the night before spread out over the carpet. Dante and I were both naked, and a flash of my breast was visible in the corner of the photo. The room was dark, but the photo was strangely illuminated, almost as if someone had used a flash or lightened it in Photoshop.
I gasped. “What the hell?” My hand holding the photo had begun to shake so badly that I dropped the glossy sheet of paper in my lap. “What is this, Anya?”
Anya crossed her arms over her round chest. Suddenly, she looked much more like a matronly aunt than my close friend and personal assistant. Anya was a little older than me, mid-thirties to my twenty-seven, and right now, she looked every inch of those years.
“I should be the one asking you that,” Anya hissed under her breath. “Katia, I can’t believe you! What the hell have you been doing?”
“That’s none of your business,” I said loftily.
Inside, my heart sank as I realized I wouldn’t exactly be able to tell Anya how I felt about Dante. Not now, not when she was condemning me for having a relationship with him. Furthermore, I was terrified. I felt icy cold from the tips of my fingers and my toes all the way inside my chest. My heart was beating slowly like a wrecking ball swinging into an old house.
“Katia, I know this is scary, but you have to deal with this.”
“I’m trying!” I wrapped my fingers around my mug of sugar-free hot cocoa, desperately trying to get the blood pumping. It wasn’t even cold inside of the coffee shop, but I felt like I was going to freeze into a huge block of ice just trying to listen to Anya.
Outside, Dante was prowling back and forth. I noticed that he was getting a lot of stares, especially admiring ones from girls passing back and forth. I rolled my eyes. Part of me wanted to run outside and pull him into a deep, passionate kiss, but the other part of me wanted to go outside and tell him that we were done and that we’d never be intimate again.
“How was this taken?” In an effort to distract myself, I picked the photo up from my lap and stared at it as clinically as I could. “They must have used a serious lens to get this kind of image.”
“That’s the thing,” Anya said. I glanced up, and though I couldn’t be sure, somehow her voice seemed to tremble as she spoke. “Katia, I don’t think they were taken from outside your condo.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“I think they were taken from the inside of the house,” Anya said softly. She plucked the photo from my hands and stared at it. “Katia, someone had access to your home.”
The panic I’d been feeling very quickly turned to dread.
“And all of that aside, Katia, what the hell are you thinking sneaking around with Dante like this?” Anya glared at me. She tucked the photo back into the folder and slipped it into her purse. I groaned inwardly; the way she was chastising me was making me feel like I was her child and she was my mother.
“I’m not sneaking around with him,” I said. My voice sounded as petulant as a child’s, too. “I’m doing everything I can to stay safe.”
Anya raised her eyebrows. “By sleeping with him? You’re an adult, and even though you’re used to being spoiled, you know it’s not always possible for you to get your way.”
“What the hell are you saying?” I was so offended that, for a moment, I was tempted to stand up and walk right out of there. “Are you calling me stupid and immature?”
“Katia, I just know that you’re not exactly used to dealing with all of this heavy stuff.” Anya sighed. “I’m not trying to insult you—God, I hope you’d know me better than that!”
“It feels like I’m being attacked,” I said in a small voice. “I don’t know what to do anymore, Anya.”
“Well, I don’t know how to keep helping you if you keep sleeping with the help!”
I glared at her. “Dante is not the help.” I reached down and took a sip of my cocoa, barely tasting it as I swallowed. The words I’d just said were stuck in my mouth. I realized how snobby it sounded; to even use the phrase ‘the help’ was probably one of the worst things I’d done in the past decade.
“So?” Anya rolled her eyes. “Katia, you’ve spent years building this image. You know what you are to your public. They need to see you as a single beauty queen, independent and always having fun.” She shook her head bitterly. “And if you keep sleeping with random guys, that’s really going to ruin your image.”
I stared. “I’m twenty-seven,” I said slowly. “Don’t you think I should be allowed to have some fun now and then?”
“It’s not about what I think.”
I winced. I didn’t want to admit it, but I knew Anya was right. Deep down, she didn’t give a shit whether or not I was sleeping with my bodyguard. But she had to care because
I had to care because my public had to care.
“I’ve slept with other guys,” I said, skirting the issue. “And you didn’t mind then!”
“Well, some of those guys were famous in their own right,” Anya replied. “Jake Jones—he’s an A-list movie star! And even Colton Todd is a big name in the comedy world now. It did loads for your reputation to be able to date those men.”
“We weren’t dating,” I told her honestly. “We were just sleeping together.” I wrinkled my nose. “Especially Colton, God, who’d want to date him? He’s a total pig!”
I cringed at the memory of Colton Todd. We’d met two years ago, at a benefit for the Disabled Youth of Los Angeles. I’d been so charmed by him. He wasn’t conventionally handsome and was about a foot shorter than me, but he’d been so funny and sweet that I’d immediately accepted his dinner invitation.
We’d only been on one date before having really raunchy sex in the back of his SUV. Our little affair had only lasted a couple of weeks, but I’d enjoyed every dirty second. At least, I’d enjoyed it before Colton had mentioned me in a stand-up special. He’d called me frigid, and joked about needing to melt the ice off his dick before he could go out with another girl.
I’d been so hurt that I’d cried for a week, but Anya had convinced me that it was for the best. “After all,” she said. “You wouldn’t want him to get out there and talk about how you were good in bed. That would have been even worse!”
I hated it. There was nothing more frustrating than living in L.A. as a single woman and watching men have all the fun. Men got to do everything they wanted: eat a ton of food in public, get wasted at L.A.’s hottest bars, and sleep around with models, actresses, and beauty queens like myself. It wasn’t fair. It was the twenty-first century, and women couldn’t do any of that stuff without getting called slutty or fat or lazy or even worse, desperate.
I’d been called a lot of things in my life, but thankfully, desperate had never been one of them.
“I just don’t see why I can’t act like a single woman,” I said as I picked listlessly at a scone that Anya had pushed in front of me. I frowned. “Is this gluten-free? You know I’m trying to stay on that diet.”
“That’s another thing, Katia,” Anya said. “You’re looking a little puffy.” She reached out and touched me on the cheek. “Have you been eating dairy again?”
The memory of perfect omelets in the kitchen flashed back into my mind, and I groaned. “It was just once. I had to make an exception. Dante cooked for me this morning.”
Anya’s jaw dropped, and her eyes rolled back in her head. “Are you kidding me?” She frowned. “Are you even listening to yourself right now?”
“Why?” I took a bigger bite of the scone, savoring the taste of sugar-crusted blueberries on my tongue. “What’s so weird about that?” I snorted. “I eat other people’s cooking all the time.” I raised my eyebrows at her. “It’s not so strange. Remember, we haven’t been able to find another chef who would do Paleo and gluten-free.”
Anya rolled her eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she repeated. “Dante cooked breakfast for you. And you think that’s normal?”
I swallowed hard. Suddenly, I didn’t like where this was going. I felt dangerously close to revealing my true feelings to Anya. Sure, it was the reason why I’d wanted to meet up with her in the first place, but now I couldn’t tell her. At least, I didn’t want to tell her.
“I do,” I said. Shifting in my seat, I tried to look as casual as possible while glancing over my shoulder to see what Dante was doing outside. “I mean, it’s normal for us.”
“Us?” Anya repeated, making finger quotes in the air as she spoke. “Katia, I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m really worried about you.” Her forehead creased. She sighed, ripping out her ponytail with a savage hand and twining the rubber band between her fingers. “This isn’t like you at all. You’re not usually the kind of girl who forms attachments like that!”
“Well, this is different.” I sniffed. “I know it’s just temporary. But I like him, Anya.”
“You like him?”
I swallowed hard and nodded. “Of course I do. He’s grown on me.”
Anya shook her head. “Katia, I don’t think that’s the way this is playing out at all. It’s not just about you liking him. You want more, don’t you?”
I sighed. I hated the way she could read me like a book. Our interactions had always been like this; it was typical for Anya to anticipate my needs before I could even bring them up myself. I’d always appreciated this in the past, but right now I couldn’t deal. It was too much.
“I like him a lot,” I added quickly. “But that’s all it is.” I huffed as I looked out the window and caught a particularly beautiful young blonde girl checking out Dante’s ass as she walked by. He didn’t even notice, but I knew it was only a matter of time. He was a red-blooded man, the kind of guy who’d notice every single woman who walked past. I knew he was distracted because of the phone call that morning.
When I thought of telling him about the photographs, I cringed. Deep down, I worried that Dante wouldn’t want to put his hands on me again after knowing just how much danger we’d both be in. Thinking about it made me start to sweat all over again. Someone had broken into my condo and photographed me while I was sleeping.
“Are you sure?” Anya leaned forward and pulled the rest of the scone from my hands. I stared at her. I’d lost my appetite, anyway. Between thinking about a stalker sneaking around in my bedroom and Anya’s obvious disdain for me at the moment, I wanted to go bury my head in the sand beneath the Santa Monica Pier.
“No,” I said. I leaned back in my chair and pulled my Gucci sunglasses down from my head. Wearing them made me feel like I had a little bit of armor, at least. Still, I felt like Anya could see right through whatever attempts I was making at being casual.
Anya rolled her eyes. “That’s what I thought,” she mumbled. “Katia, this is the absolute last thing we need to be dealing with right now.” She shook her head. “Imagine how it’s going to feel when you have to fire Dante because he won’t stop coming on to you. I knew this was a bad idea. We should have hired someone from a firm, instead of a freelance guard like Dante. Those bikers are all the same.”
“What?” I wrinkled my nose at her. “What are you talking about?”
“Katia, I would have thought that was obvious by now,” Anya said slowly. “Dante’s growing too fond of you, and you obviously indulged him.” She tapped the envelope resting on the table containing the photographs of Dante and me in bed together. “And now you’re going to have to let him go.”
My heart was clanging in my chest. I wanted to be real with Anya, to tell her the truth about what was really going on. On the other hand, I could have burst out laughing. Of course, Anya would have made the assumption that Dante was obsessed with me, not the other way around.
I’d never shown that much interest in a guy before, not even Colton Todd. Ever since I’d been a teenager, I’d had to deal with excessive attention from men, and my parents, then my handlers, and now Anya had all coached me in how to appear perfectly disinterested in whoever was trying to court me.
“The thing is,” I said slowly. “It’s not exactly Dante who’s the problem right now.” I crossed my legs at the ankle and shifted in my seat. “It’s me,” I added after the longest pause of my life. “It’s me, Anya.”
“What do you mean? Have you been leading him on?”
“No!” The word practically exploded from my mouth, so loud that the people at the next table looked over. I sighed and let my forehead rest against my hand. They were still staring when I looked back up, but a glare from Anya had them quickly blushing and turning back around.
“Well then, what have you been doing, exactly?”
“I think I’m in love with him.” Blood rushed to the surface of my cheeks, and I stared at the floor, waiting for Anya’s inevitable rebuke. “I mean, I really think I love him.”
“What?” I squinted, letting my sunglasses slide down the bridge of my nose until they were almost hanging off my face.
“I mean,” Anya said quickly, blushing as well. She flipped her brown hair over one shoulder and furiously knotted it up again in an elastic band. “You’ve never had a real relationship, Katia. And dating in L.A., well, it’s not exactly like dating anywhere else.”
“You think I don’t know how to love because I live in L.A.? Ouch.” Anya’s accusation stung almost as much as the thought that Dante would be glad to get rid of me after all this stalker business was resolved.
“It’s not that. It’s just… Well, Katia, men are different here. You might think you love Dante, sure, because you’ve spent so much time with him recently. He’s seen you without makeup,” she pointed out. “That’s not like you at all. I bet you’re just hung up on him because you feel so comfortable around him.”