by Holly Hart
I ignored his irritation. As far as I was concerned, the past was in the past. "Great job, buddy."
Alicia stepped back into the recording booth, mouth open like she was about to say something to me, and immediately flushed, her dark, chocolate skin glowing red with embarrassment.
"Oh, I'm sorry – I didn't mean to interrupt," she said, stuttering over her words.
For a second, I thought Mike was going to twist the knife, but luckily he was too gentlemanly for that.
"Miss Hudson," he smiled through gritted teeth, "I thought you might like to know I've managed to get those contracts all typed up and okayed with the label."
Forgetting her embarrassment, Alicia flushed again, but this time with excitement. I wanted to hug her, to hold her, and to celebrate with her – but even I knew that this wasn't my moment.
"Can we, uh, sign them?" she asked haltingly, almost like a child asking for permission.
"As long as you're not too tired," Mike said, unable to resist taking a little jab at my expense. "You must have had a long day."
"Mike…" I warned.
Luckily, Alicia seemed to miss his sarcasm. "If you don't mind?" she asked.
"Of course not."
Mike laid out the contracts, and Alicia had a pen in her hand and the contract signed within what seemed like seconds.
"Clay?" Mike asked inquiringly, proffering me a pen.
I looked at Alicia up and down, drinking in her curves, her beautiful glowing skin, and it made my mind up for me. I was happy to give her the thirty percent – hell, if she asked, I'd give her all of it just to spend time with her. I wanted this girl like I'd never wanted anything before in my life.
And I wouldn't do anything to hurt her.
"Clay? You there?" Mike asked, startling me out of my daydream.
Alicia was looking anxious, like she was worried I was having second thoughts, and I gave her a warm smile to allay those fears. "Oh, sorry – I must have drifted off. Here, toss me the pen."
Mike threw, I caught, and the contract got signed.
"Champagne?" I asked, smiling, and even Mike cracked a little grin. Alicia was giggling, like she'd just won the lottery, and in a way, I guess she had.
"Champagne?" she repeated. "I've never had it. Is it good?"
"It's expensive," I grinned, "and that's all that really matters. Mike," I said, turning to my manager, "how the hell do we get some champagne in here?"
"On it," he said, walking into the office next door to find a phone. I knew he would. The man like to drink as much as I did – he just dressed smarter and spoke fancier.
Then it was just Alicia and me standing there, alone, in the room where we'd just fucked. I could still smell it on the air, a musky scent. It smelled of her, and it made me want to bend her over again. I could tell she knew what I was thinking and I could tell she wanted me, too.
"So," she smiled, "about what just happened. It didn't mean anything, okay? We can still, you know, work together."
If any other girl had said that to me after any other fuck, I'd have been jumping for joy. One fewer woman I needed to let down lightly. From Alicia, it was like a gut punch. For some reason, with her, I wanted to hear that it meant something. What was happening to me?
In the background, I heard the raging screech of an incoming telephone call, and the unpleasant sound mirrored my mood. I put a brave face on things and smiled back.
"Don't worry about it." I couldn't have her knowing that she meant more to me than the others. After all, I still had a reputation to uphold. But I couldn't look at her, couldn't see that face, because all I wanted to do was press her against the wall and have her once again. I looked away, through the recording booth window, and saw Mike furiously gesticulating at me to join him.
"What the hell?" I asked the air, and jogged over, Alicia following close behind.
"Okay, Fred, I'm going to put your speakerphone – okay?" Mike said, pointing at the comfortable leather chairs set around the small boardroom table and indicating that we should sit.
Alicia looked nervous, and she didn't even know who Fred was. But it didn't take a genius to read Mike's facial expressions right now. He was worried, and so he should be. Fred Peters was the new CEO of Atlantic Records, and he was a hardass. Worst of all, judging by the miserable look on Mike's face, he wasn't calling to congratulate us on the new contract.
"Is he listening?" The speakerphone crackled.
"Mr. Peters," I said, injecting as much false friendliness into my voice as I could without throwing up, "how you doing?"
Alicia shot me a look – clearly surprised at my tone of voice. She was right to be. Dealing with record labels didn't suit me at all. I hated it.
"How am I doing? How am I doing? How do you have the nerve to ask me that?" the incensed music executive screamed down the phone. I met Mike's eyes and we shared an oh shit moment. This wasn't good. Hell, that was the understatement of the year.
Still, I couldn't help but feel pissed off that this good-for-nothing desk jockey was about to chew me out. Hell, I'd made hundreds of millions of dollars for Atlantic Records – and he'd only just joined. Who the hell was he to talk to me like that?
"You're a mess, Hunt – you know that? It was bad enough when you plastered your dick all over the gossip pages…"
How the hell was I supposed to know someone had snuck onto the island to snap a photo of my cock? It was a fucking private island!
"…that was a mess that took us a while to clean up, but it pales in comparison to this, Clay. Mike, when we spoke a couple of hours ago you told me you had a handle on your boy!"
Boy?
"I don't suppose," Mike ventured, "you could tell us what the problem is, Fred?"
Fred started spitting feathers. "Oh, that's right, your boy's such a mess that you don't even have any idea, do you? You had your chance to get a grip on him, Mike. You've forced my hand. This video's the final straw – we're pulling the plug on this little experiment."
Little experiment? I was Atlantic Record's highest grossing artist two years ago. I made that company!
"Fred," Mike began with a note of panic in his voice as he watched his meteoric rise as a top music manager coming to an end, "tell us what happened. Maybe we can fix this…"
"The fucking video, Mike. It was bad enough that your boy was getting in fights, but at least he had the good sense to do it behind closed doors, at white collar fight clubs or in dark alleys, but now he's gone and got himself caught on camera. We can't have this, we just can't have Atlantic Records’ name dragged through the mud like this."
Mike punched the mute button on the speakerphone. "Fucking hell, Clay – I thought you said no one filmed it!"
I cast a quick glance over at Alicia, who was looking shocked, as though she could see the impending danger of a car about to crash into her, but her muscles had given up the fight and instead of forcing her out of the way, had instead locked her to the ground. I couldn't blame her. After all, until just a moment ago, she must've believed that she'd finally achieved her dreams of being a star.
My blood was boiling, and I was in no mood for Mike to shout at me as well. What part did these people not understand that we were the goddamn moneymakers here – we were the talent, not them. Everyone else in this room, barring Alicia, was expendable – they were just office monkeys at the end of the day.
We had the voices that people wanted to listen to, not them. After all, you could hardly stick Fred fucking Peters up on stage and expect to sell any records.
"I didn't think they'd post it," I said, pissed off that yet again someone had taken advantage of my sense of honor. For exactly the same reasons that I was an unreformed, old school bad boy who liked to fuck, smoke, drink and fight, I had sometimes unrealistic expectations that people would live their lives with the same basic level of honor as me.
Very few lived up to it.
And then, suddenly, I had an idea. I knew how to fix this – I knew exactly how to appeal to a man with as lit
tle moral fiber as the music executive on the other end of the phone line. But Alicia wouldn't like it. Then again, I imagined she'd like the alternative – losing her only shot at a music career – even less.
"Fred," I began, dispensing with the formalities, "have you seen the video?" I needed to know whether what I suspected was in fact the case before I could attempt my plan.
"Do you think I'd be calling if I hadn't?" he replied acerbically, with a tone of voice that could freeze a lake in summer.
"Then you see how it starts?" I asked – hoping to all hell that I was right and that he hadn't. I was pretty sure that no one had picked up the start of the fight, only me knocking that punk out, and that was what I was relying on for my plan to work.
"No, I just saw you flooring some thug. Thank God it was some lowlife, because otherwise, Clay, we'd be suing you – you can be sure of that. Frankly, the only reason we aren’t doing that already is because we don't need the bad publicity. Atlantic has enough of that as it is right now…" He sighed, as though the stresses of his new job were beginning to mount up already.
That was what I was hoping for. I looked at Alicia and hoped that she would forgive me for what I was about to do. Hell, I hoped she'd go along with it at all, because if not, then the three of us were about to witness the end of my career.
"But you saw the first video, didn't you, Fred?" I didn't give him the chance to finish, just wanted his mind thinking about the number of views our duet had clocked up already – over a hundred million, and speeding up – and the money he was throwing away by putting a bullet in my career. "What you don't know is," I paused for a second and looked at Alicia, crossing my fingers behind my back, "that beautiful girl in the video – we're engaged."
I let my pronouncement fall like a hammer blow and watched as both Mike and Alicia's jaws dropped open in disbelief. Even Fred was stunned into silence for a second.
"You're what?" he sputtered down the phone.
I knew that I couldn't give him too long to think about it, because there were too many holes in my story – not least the fact that Alicia had only just found out that I'd apparently proposed to her – to give him a chance to poke his finger through one of them. Hell, he could poke his entire head through one if he tried…
"We were keeping things off the radar because Alicia wanted to make her own way in the business," I said, training my gaze directly on Alicia's stunned eyes and begging her to understand, and to play along, "but I guess the cat's out of the bag now…"
Fred paused for breath, then launched back into his tirade. "Be that as it may, Clay, I frankly don't understand what this has to do with anything. Perhaps you could enlighten me?" he asked sarcastically.
"My pleasure," I said. "That punk on the video tried to ruin Alicia's big night, and – I'm going to level with you, Fred – I saw red. I'm not proud of it, because I know it's the last thing Alicia would've wanted me to do, but I laid him out for it. She's barely spoken to me since," I said, injecting a pained tone into my voice.
"I still don't see what this has to do with anything," Fred blustered. "I don't care what the reason was, I still can't have my stars fighting like rats in the gutter."
That was promising, he called me one of his stars…
"You're a smart man, Mr. Peters," I said, reverting to formality. "I'm sure you see how this could be played in the media. My fans would love nothing more than to see me portrayed as a strong protector. They'd go mad for it. And you've seen the amount of views our duet's already got. Imagine what would happen if we not only announced that Alicia and I are engaged to be married," I said, still holding Alicia's stunned gaze, "but that we're releasing a debut album together."
"The Internet would go mad," Fred murmured thoughtfully. I'm not even sure he knew he'd said it out loud.
I could picture him sitting there, stroking his chin behind a power desk with sycophantic executives sitting around him nodding. I just hoped he'd reach the correct decision – the one I wanted.
What gave me hope was that I could hear the greed in his voice. I knew that for a man like Fred, cash was king, and right now, he saw me as one big dollar sign. If anything was going to save my career, that was it.
But Fred was a smart cookie, and part of him must've been paranoid that I was trying to pull the wool over his eyes.
"Is Alicia there with you?" he asked.
"She is," I confirmed nervously, redoubling my efforts to beg Alicia to cooperate – a difficult task when I had to remain completely silent.
"Alicia – is it true?" he asked, sounding as though he could barely believe it. "Are you seriously engaged to Clay Hunt?"
11
Alicia
I was caught like a rabbit in the headlights, facing the choice either to kill off my incredibly short-lived career on the one hand, or of lying to the man I guessed must be my new boss. Not a great start in the music industry.
I looked over at Clay, who somehow, incredibly, looked pleased with himself, as though he believed that he'd neatly solved this crisis with his plan. I wanted to scream at him, but my jaw seemed wired shut. Couldn't he understand that this was crazy?
"Alicia?" the powerful executive prompted. "You still there?"
That was when I made a decision that would change my life forever.
"I'm here," I said, my voice sounding weak and quavering even to my own ears. "Sorry…" I trailed off, unable to bring myself to commit to Clay’s plan. Listening to the lack of conviction in my voice, I couldn't believe that Fred Peters wouldn't see through me in a second.
"Are you seriously engaged to Clay?" Fred asked in utter disbelief. "Are you telling me that you've managed to tie down the only man in this city who'd rather blow up his career by fucking anything with tits and fighting anything without than be a global goddamn music star? I don't believe it. The Clay I know, and believe me – I follow my assets pretty carefully – wouldn't settle down for anyone. Certainly not you." He spat the last bit, his voice dripping with condescension as though I were barely worth his time.
It was the way he said you that got me. Before that, I'd been wavering – not sure whether I could commit to Clay's crazy plan. But maybe some of Clay's easy confidence, quick temper and lack of regard for consequences – any consequences – had already rubbed off on me. I never knew that I could be so rash. I'd always worked so hard to get where I wanted to go, and never taken a shortcut like this, but by the time he'd finished his angry tirade, I was ready to pitch myself to Clay's plan – whatever the repercussions.
"I'll have you know, Mr. Peters," I said, allowing the righteous anger building up in my voice to dispense with my previous anxieties that he'd figure out I was lying, "we've been together for almost a year. I've never met a man like him – even," I looked directly at Clay and shot him a hard glare, "if he is a little rough around the edges sometimes."
I decided to direct the rest of the conversation not at the Atlantic Records executive, but at Clay. If I was going to go along with his crazy, madcap plan, I was going to do it my way. After all, the worst that could happen was that I'd need to stage a "breakup" at some point.
"Clay knows that after the other night, the only way I’ll stay with him is if he's on his best behavior. It's not losing his career that worries him," I said. "After all, we both know that he's got enough money to live out the rest of his life in unbelievable luxury. It's losing me."
"Then how can you explain," Fred batted back with the air of a man who believed he'd found a way of toppling the entire house of cards our lie was built upon, "those pictures of him with that Victoria's Secret model draped around him last week? Are you happy to stay with a man who's cheating on you?"
He thought he had me there, and for a few seconds, I was worried he did as well. Suddenly, my mind grasped upon a solution. "Fred," I said. "I can call you Fred – can't I?" I blustered.
"Sure," he replied, sounding irritated. I grinned, enjoying myself.
Clay, how have you rubbed off on me this qu
ickly?
"Not that it's any of your business, Fred," I said – now injecting my own condescension into my voice, "but Clay and I have maintained an open relationship," I continued, grasping around for something to say next.
"An open relationship?" he spluttered. "You mean, you're okay with him sleeping around?"
"I'm not really sure I'm comfortable having this discussion with you," I replied, "but as it so happens – yes. You're right, Clay's a man who likes a woman, likes a lot of them. That's one of the things I've found so attractive about him – he takes what he wants. But," I said, staring back at Clay, ready to make my point, "when we got engaged, we decided to close the relationship. Clay and I are exclusive now, and if he sleeps around – not that I think he would," I quickly added, "I'll end it, immediately."
I saw Clay's face fall as he listened to me and the reality of what his rash decision to claim we were engaged really meant hit home. I was making it clear that if he wanted me to go along with this crazy plan, then I was going to call the shots. He wasn't going to be sleeping around, and he wasn't going to be fighting – because if he did either, I'd be straight out the door, and his career would go right down the drain. He looked crestfallen.
Fred was silent. Mike took the opportunity to make his point. "Fred, you and I both know that Alicia and Clay are PR gold right now, and we both know that Atlantic needs every bit of good PR it can use right now. How exactly were last quarter's results?" he said, somewhat snidely.
I couldn't really believe where this was all going – was I seriously about to commit myself to a philanderer like Clay Hunt? Did this mean that I actually had to marry him? And if I didn't, what did that mean for my career in this business – would it just disappear?
"We both know that last quarter had us in the red," Fred said after a long silence, "but don't think that your boy's completely blameless in that. His sales were down more than ten percent, after all."
"And they'll be up fifty this quarter, just from all the extra press he'll get," Mike said. "That alone will buy you a bit of breathing space on Wall Street. Don't tell me you don't need it…"