“Mr Fielding!” said the fastest of the group, a middle-aged guy who was dressed for the sports desk. By his side was another man, a video camera mounted on his shoulder. “You’re accused of being a misogynist, would you care to tell us why you posted those comments about women?”
He’d only just opened his mouth to deny the accusation when a woman butted in front of the guy, shaking her perm from her eyes and thrusting her cell phone in his face.
“Corrupt, indecent, selfish, cruel, pathetic, asinine. Just some of the words you used to describe the women in your life. Just how did somebody end up with such a strong and hateful attitude towards the opposite sex. What happened to you, Blake?”
“Look,” Blake said, but the questions came too fast and too hard for him to answer. He tried to shout over them, waving them away with the little pink notebook. “I’m innocent. I categorically deny that it was me who posted those comments.”
“It was you?” asked another reporter, jamming a padded microphone at him. “Are you admitting it?”
“No, I said it wasn’t me!” he fired back, trying to control his temper. “I’ll make an official statement later today. Please, excuse me.”
He pushed past the woman with the perm, a little more forcefully than he’d intended. She dropped her phone, gasping, but he didn’t dare stop to help her. He put his head down, almost running to the gate that led to the parking lot. The reporters followed like hyenas, still yelling questions at him. Old Mike, the security guard who was supposed to be manning the gate, was puffing and panting down the path from the booth, his hat in his hands.
“I’m sorry, Mr Fielding,” he said, his red face drenched in sweat. “I asked them not to come in, they didn’t listen.”
“Just make sure they leave,” Blake said, using his keycard to open the gate and running into the safety and shade of the building. He heard Mike barking orders at the crowd, ushering them out of the campus with threats of police action. Blake waited until the world had fallen silent, massaging his head to try to ease the ache in his skull.
“That probably wasn’t as bad as it seemed,” he told himself, replaying the last five minutes. But something told him it was way worse.
He walked down the ramp to his Mercedes, opening the door and climbing inside. He stared at the notepad for a moment, then tossed it onto the passenger seat. There was no way he could return it now. The press would be everywhere, and they’d be watching his every move like a hawk. The mystery woman would have to wait.
Sighing, and doing his best to shake the image of her smile from his head, he started the engine, and set off for home.
5
Ellie pushed through the door into the cool, air-conditioned café, happy to leave the sweltering heat outside. She wasn’t due to start her shift for another two hours, but Lissa always needed the help and it wasn’t like there was anything waiting for her at home.
There was something waiting for her here, though, something distinctly unpleasant. Josh was sitting at his usual table, nursing a cold cup of coffee, his pale grey eyes darting around the room. She almost hotfooted it out of the café, but it was too late, his round face lighting up when he saw her. He stood up so quickly that his chair almost toppled over.
“Ellie!” he said, running a hand through his thinning blonde hair. “How did it go? I was waiting for you, I wanted to be the first to find out whether you swam or sank.” He smiled unsympathetically. “I’m guessing by the look on your face you didn’t sink so much as drown.”
Ellie puffed out a sigh, meeting Lissa’s eyes as her boss served another customer. Lissa shrugged helplessly, and Ellie walked to the counter. Josh ran between the tables to meet her there, opening his arms for a hug. He did this every time, even though she’d asked him not to. It had been nearly two months since they’d stopped dating, but they’d been together for over two years and he was finding it hard to get the message. She caved into him the way she always did and he wrapped her in a bear hug, smelling of the antiseptic deep heat he rubbed on his perpetually sore back. She patted him politely, counting the seconds until he let go and she could breathe again.
“So?” he said, his watery eyes blinking at her. “Did you get in?”
“No,” she said. She turned to Lissa, watching her boss work the coffee machine. Lissa was in her fifties and was as much a kindly aunt as a boss. Ellie felt like she could tell her anything, even with Josh simpering next to her. “Something happened.”
“The curse?” Lissa said. “I’m sorry, Ellie.”
“It wasn’t me,” she started. “There was something—”
“I always said you had to be more confident,” Josh interrupted, brushing something off her shoulder, his fingers lingering. Ellie took a step away from him but he closed in, oblivious to her efforts to escape. “You should have listened to me. When we’re back together I’ll show you the best way to succeed in a job interview. Consider it a perk.”
This was coming from the thirty-three-year-old man who still worked in his dad’s music store and hadn’t been to a single job interview in his life.
“Interviews are all about personality,” he went on. “You’ve got one, you just have to let it show instead of keeping it hidden all the time. They probably just thought you were shy or something.”
He was making her angry, and she pushed past him, heading for the stock room that doubled as a staff area. To her annoyance, he followed her, still going on about her faults. It had been one of his favourite things to do when they were together, and it seemed that being apart was no barrier to his arrogance. She held out a hand as he tried to follow her through the door.
“I need to get changed, Josh.”
His eyes ran over her, his wet lips peeling open into a smile.
“Nothing I haven’t seen before, babe.”
Gross! she thought as she slammed the door in his face. Looking back, she couldn’t understand why she’d been so into him. They’d met in his store one afternoon, a couple of years ago. She’d seen the piano in the window, and decided to go in and ask about lessons. It had been something she’d wanted to do since she was a kid, because they’d always had a tuneless old piano in the farmhouse, but her mom had never had the money to make it happen. Josh had been sitting at a grand piano in the corner of the large shop, lost inside Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. It was the music that had snagged her, the mesmerising tune pouring right into her soul. He’d played it beautifully, and she’d listened for a full five minutes before he was even aware she was there.
She’d asked him about lessons and he’d offered his services there and then. What had started off as a half hour class every week in the back room of the shop had fast grown into a full-blown relationship. He’d seemed so perfect for her, despite the fact that physically he wasn’t the kind of man she found attractive. But he’d been into the same things as her, the same music, the same movies, the same books, and he was so good on the piano. Anyone who could play as well as he did had to be a good person.
And then, after a year or so, it had all started to fall apart. It was her mom who’d started plucking at the strings, unravelling what turned out to be an elaborate sham. One evening, during dinner at her farmhouse in Oregon, mom had pulled the dust sheet from the old piano, opened up some yellowing music books, and asked Josh to give them a good, old-fashioned singsong. He’d gone bright red and made every excuse under the sun, eventually storming off in a huff claiming that they were putting him under too much pressure.
After that, it hadn’t taken Ellie long to work out that Josh couldn’t play the piano at all, other than a few pieces he’d learned off by heart. He certainly couldn’t read a single note of music. He’d been studying online piano courses every week then regurgitating the information to her during their classes, while posing as a master tutor. And all the things he’d claimed to be interested in he’d just lifted from her Heartbook account. He was a fraud, and a conman, and she’d fallen hook, line, and sinker for it.
The worst thing, though, was that it had taken her another year to work up the courage to end the relationship. Every time she’d tried he’d found an excuse to keep it going—it’s just your hormones, they’re working against you; you can’t leave me, we’re renting this place together and we’ll lose so much money; I read an article saying that keeping things from your significant other was a guaranteed way of adding spice; I won’t cope without you, I don’t think I could even go on living—and she’d been weak enough to believe every one of them.
It was only when she’d walked in on him one morning updating her Heartbook page and sending messages to her friends—messages pretending to be her—that she’d finally lost her temper. He’d been doing it for weeks, she found out, declining invitations to parties, deleting messages, even concealing emails from companies who she had contacted for job interviews.
“I’m doing it for your own good,” he’d told her, furious at her for being furious at him. “I know what’s best for you, I always have. If you don’t want my help then you don’t deserve me.”
Ellie slung her bag on the hook and closed her eyes for a moment. The worst thing, actually, was the fact that she still hadn’t managed to kick him out of her life. She just didn’t have the strength to do it. He was utterly convinced that they were destined to get back together, and with her luck—and thanks to the Ellie Mae curse—he was probably right.
“No,” she told herself, unbuttoning her dress and shrugging out of it. She hung it next to her bag, studying herself in the full-length mirror wedged between the shelves of coffee. She had always been too short for super-model status, but her legs were toned and her body curved in all the right places. All the long hours in a café had stood in for the gym. Her mom had always pointed out how beautiful she was, but she could never see it. Her eyes were too big, framed behind thick glasses since she was six, her lips too full, too many freckles bridging her nose, and her thick hair was pretty much untameable. If she squinted—or looked at herself without her glasses on—she could almost convince herself she was cute, but she was nothing special.
Certainly nobody that Blake Fielding would be interested in.
Now where had that come from? The thought had taken her by surprise, the same way that Blake himself had when she’d crashed into him. Even now she cringed at the memory, but the thought of him wasn’t unpleasant at all. In fact, she was struggling to get him out of her head. He’d been so… so perfect. Even in the middle of California, where you saw beautiful men every day, he stood out. It wasn’t the perfectly sculpted contours of his face, his sun-kissed skin, or even the sparking blue oceans of his eyes. It wasn’t his tousled hair, or even the impressive physique visible beneath the eight-thousand-dollar cut of his suit. No, it had been something else, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. There had been a kindness there, a goodness.
Thank you, he’d said. You don’t know what that means to me.
And his smile had been the most incredible thing she’d ever seen. Even in the cool stockroom, with nothing on but her underwear, she could feel her cheeks heating up at the thought of it. She’d been face to face with Blake Fielding, she’d touched Blake Fielding, she’d been close enough to reach out and kiss—
Behind her, the door opened. Ellie yelped, wrapping her hands around herself and preparing to scream at Josh. But it was just Lissa, grabbing a box of long-life milk from the floor and hefting it to her chest.
“Sorry,” she said. “You okay? You look flushed.”
“Uh, I’m fine,” she said, grabbing her uniform from her bag. “Just, you know, disappointed.”
“You deserve better,” Lissa said. “As much as I’d hate to lose you, that Heartbook job should be yours.”
“I never even got the chance to interview,” she said. “It was cancelled. The whole Blake Fielding hates women thing.”
“I know,” Lissa said. “It’s on the TV right now.”
Ellie scrabbled into her work pants and shoes, buttoning her shirt as she left the stock room. She cleaned her glasses on her shirt, squinting at the little TV. Sure enough it was tuned to the news, a picture of Blake splashed behind the anchorman. They’d obviously trawled the internet to find the least flattering photograph they could—a grainy corporate shot with a suited, miserable-looking Blake glaring at the camera, his arms folded arrogantly over his chest.
“Turn it up,” said Ellie, pulling an apron from the side of the counter and tying it behind her back. Lissa fiddled with the volume until it could be heard over the hiss of the coffee machine and the chatter of the customers.
“… continue to fall as Heartbook CEO Blake Fielding battles allegations of sexism. The company has yet to offer a formal statement, but earlier today Fielding addressed reporters at the Heartbook campus.”
“What a creep,” said Josh, who had snuck up behind Ellie, his breath hot on her neck. “That guy is gonna get canned.”
Lissa hushed him as Ellie squirmed away. On screen, Blake was standing in front of a camera doing his best to smile. Ellie’s heart did a somersault as she watched him. The screen had diminished his looks a little, but he was still devastatingly handsome, and when he looked at the camera Ellie shivered—feeling like once again he was staring directly at her.
It was then that she noticed what he was holding in his hand. She felt so dizzy she had to hold onto the counter for support, and it took all of her reserve not to shout out, “That’s my notebook!” She’d dropped it by the river, and he’d picked it up.
Oh no, she thought, slapping a hand to her mouth. That notebook hadn’t just been where she’d written the notes for her interview, it contained a million and one other things, ninety-five per cent of which were unbearably embarrassing. Please don’t read it, please don’t read it.
On screen, Blake was waving the notebook like it was a sword. The noise of the reporters all but drowned out his voice, but it almost sounded like he was saying, “It was me who posted those comments.”
“What?” said Lissa. “He’s admitting it?”
“No,” said Ellie, shaking her head a little too much. “I think he was denying that it was him who posted the comments. He didn’t do it.”
“You seem pretty sure about that,” said Lissa. “How can you be so certain?”
Ellie hesitated, the story on the tip of her tongue. But it felt wrong to share the experience. It had been a moment between the two of them, his words had been for her.
“You must fancy him,” said Josh, his face dark. “Silly girl.”
“I just have a hunch,” she said, ignoring her idiot ex-boyfriend. “He’s innocent.”
The shot ended with Blake pushing past a reporter and knocking the phone from her hands. He stormed off, and Ellie frowned. That wasn’t exactly a gentlemanly thing to do, he hadn’t even apologized. Maybe the stories were true.
No, she protested. She wouldn’t believe that.
“… time will tell whether the actions of the founder will have long-lasting implications for one of the world’s best known social media companies.”
The story flicked to something else and Lissa turned the volume down. Josh made his excuses, heading for the restroom. Lissa offered Ellie a sympathetic smile.
“Like I said, you deserve better,” she said. “Better job, better man, better life.”
Ellie nodded, thinking of Blake again, thinking of that smile.
Maybe a better man wasn’t as far away as she’d thought.
6
It seemed to take forever for Blake to drive back to his apartment, even though it was only three miles from the Heartbook campus. It seemed like every vehicle was deliberately trying to get in his way, every traffic light was attempting to slow him down, and every pair of eyes was judging him from the sidewalk. Even the doorman at the exclusive luxury apartment block he called home seemed annoyed, offering Blake the briefest of nods as he walked past the desk.
Only when he was alone in the elevator did he relax, closing his eyes as he rod
e up to the penthouse. Even then he wasn’t sure he wanted to open them. At least with his eyes shut he wouldn’t notice how empty it was here, how quiet. The apartment had been his mother’s, and Blake had moved here to help take care of her. After she’d passed, he didn’t quite have it in him to leave her, and here he still was.
It looked exactly the same as it had when she was alive. His mom hadn’t been a glamorous woman, money hadn’t mattered to her and her heart had never really left the little apartment they’d had above the restaurant even when Blake had made his first billion. She’d never really wanted the penthouse in the first place, but as she’d grown older, and sicker, she’d wanted to be close to him, and he’d wanted her to be in a place where he could look after her.
You didn’t look after her though, did you?
Blake closed his eyes for a moment, the rush of guilt he always felt entering the apartment plunging him into darkness. He’d been there for his mom every single day of her life, except the last. And he would never forgive himself for it.
He composed himself, taking a breath and opening his eyes. The only decorations mom had added were the photos of him and his dad, framed on practically every wall. And the furniture consisted of the same moth-eaten sofas and armchairs they’d rescued from their old place. They looked ridiculous in the huge, open space, but he would never get rid of them.
He headed straight for the walk-in wardrobe inside his master bedroom suite, almost ripping the tie from his neck. He shrugged off the jacket and slid off the pants, tossing them onto the bed. The shirt was next, and he balled it up and lobbed it into the laundry basket on the other side of the room.
My Antisocial Billionaire: A Clean Billionaire Romance (My Billionaire A-Z Book 1) Page 3