Even though I was pretty sure that I was alone, I broke into a sprint just to be on the safe side. I felt like shit. My heart was racing, my mouth was dry, and anxiety was racing right through me. I hadn’t felt like this since…fuck, don’t think about that now, I told myself.
I tugged my phone out of my pocket, dialing quickly and pushing it to my ear as I reached the safety of my car. I was calling the number out of shock, and I wouldn’t have even considered it if I’d been in a normal state of mind. But to be honest, if I really thought about it, there was no one else in the world that I’d rather speak to.
A feminine voice answered the phone on the fourth ring.
“Hello?” Riley said. She sounded a little choked up, and this didn’t escape my attention, but there were more pressing thoughts on my mind.
“Riley?” My tone was stressed and panicky, and I couldn’t disguise any of my emotions. I was a fucking mess and she must have known it. “Riley, I’ve done something bad. I need your help…need you to wave your magic PR wand.”
“What happened?” The glumness was still in her tone, but concern had crept in too.
“It’s about Serra. I did something fucking stupid. I’m sorry, that’s why I called you. I know you’re mad about earlier, but this can’t wait.”
It suddenly hit me how selfish I was being. What if something bad happened to her? After all, she wouldn’t have sounded upset for nothing.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Where are you?” she replied, completely avoiding my question. “I’ll come and meet you.”
“No, Riley, what’s wrong?”
My problems suddenly paled in significance as I worried about hers. Had I really upset her that badly over dinner, or was it something worse?
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine. Tell me what happened, and tell me where you are,” she said. She sounded a little puffed, like she was already racing out the door.
“I’m about to head home. I live up in Bel Air, 2212 Porter Drive…you know where that is? Maybe you could meet me there.”
I was only partially thinking about my crappy situation when I said this. I was mostly hoping that face-to-face, I’d be able to coax Riley into telling me what was up with her.
“I’m on my way,” she said. With that, she hung up.
I started the engine and tore out of the parking lot, wanting to get home as quickly as possible, and a sense of shame burned deeply within me as I drove, even more so than before. Despite the shitty way I’d acted towards Riley earlier tonight, and even though something was clearly upsetting her, she was still prepared to meet me and help me out. She was a much bigger person than I was. I was sure this went way beyond the normal call of duty for her.
I decided to reel it in and get my shit together from now on. If I didn’t, I’d likely find myself losing Riley’s expertise—which I so clearly needed—and I didn’t want to push her out of my life. I’d already lost her once.
I wasn’t going to let that happen again.
Chapter 6
Riley
God, what the hell had Kaiden done now?
I rushed up the long driveway of the address he’d given me with my head hanging low. His panicked tone had given me something else to focus on other than my health situation, so that was something to be grateful for. Right now, there wasn’t anything I could do about my own problems, but I might be able to help support Kaiden and offer him solutions to get out of whatever PR nightmare he’d walked into this time. After all, it was my job to do so.
His words swam round and round in my mind. ‘Riley, I’ve done something bad. I need your help.’
I’d only left him outside the restaurant a short time ago…how could he have gotten into any trouble in that time? What could Serra have possibly done? It must have been something that seriously affected Kaiden’s reputation, because there was no way he would have called me after his earlier performance if it wasn’t serious.
Click, click, click. My heels sounded along the paved outdoor tiles as I stepped determinedly towards the front door, and my heart beat in sync with the clicks. Luckily, I hadn’t gotten into my pajamas as soon as I’d arrived home earlier, so I was still wearing the same clothes as before, and that had allowed me to leave quickly. I wasn’t sure if Kaiden was even home yet.
It didn’t escape my notice that his house was enormous, and it was situated in a wealthy area to boot. My apartment was okay, but it was undeniably small and basic. I loved it because of its homely feel, but as I found myself standing at the front door of a three-storied mansion with a wow factor like this, I suddenly felt like I lived in a cardboard box.
I wished I didn’t feel so intimidated by Kaiden’s wealth. I was fairly successful too, given that I was already the assistant director of social media PR at my firm, all at the age of twenty-four. Sure, the PR thing wasn’t my overall dream job, but I was damn good at it—a skill I was probably going to need right about now.
I pressed my finger against the buzzer, listening as it rang out. My heart was pounding, and my mouth was dry with nerves. I was already feeling emotionally exhausted, and now I was putting myself through more.
Would I be doing this for anyone else? Would I go the extra mile for all my clients?
Of course I would, I told myself. Kaiden is just the same as any other client. Nothing special; just someone you represent.
Kaiden’s voice sounded on the intercom next to the buzzer a moment later. “Yeah?”
“It…it’s me,” I said. I cringed, wishing I could sound a little cooler.
“Riley,” he said. He sounded relieved. “Thanks for coming. Hold on a sec, I’ll buzz you in.”
I listened for the buzzing sound before swinging the door wide open, and I was instantly greeted with a luxurious foyer. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before; black and white diagonal chess-patterned tiles on the floor, beautiful artwork adorning the walls, and a double staircase leading to the next floor, which Kaiden ushered me towards as he greeted me. I wanted to gasp in awe, but I couldn’t show him how impressed I was. That would set us on the wrong footing, and I didn’t want him to feel guilty about his success, no matter how he’d reached it.
I stepped up the beautiful staircase, running my fingers along the banister as I followed Kaiden, and I absentmindedly wondered if he’d created such a lovely home as a welcome contrast to the ugliness of the fighting he engaged in for a living. Or maybe he’d done it to escape the ugliness of his childhood home.
A moment later, I found myself in the largest kitchen that I’d ever seen. Every appliance one could possibly need was on display, and I couldn’t stop myself from having a little look around, just trying to put the jigsaw pieces of this new Kaiden together. It just wouldn’t quite work in my mind. I was still finding it extremely difficult to fit the gorgeous, rich hunk of a man walking in front of me into the mold of the young, dorky guy I’d once been friends with.
He turned back to me as we passed through the kitchen and wound up in a dining room. “Thanks again for coming so late,” he said.
As I looked up at him, I was instantly stunned by how different he appeared. It had only been an hour or so since I’d last seen him, but this was like looking at a completely different person. He’d looked smooth and slick before, but now he was disheveled and stress was written in the lines on his forehead.
“Are you all right?” I asked, rushing forward to him and forgetting myself for a moment. The vulnerability that he was displaying was breaking my heart. If I’d been even closer to him, I might have been tempted to wrap my arms around him right then and there to try and take away his pain.
“Um…yeah, kinda.” He was all on edge, wearing his emotions on his sleeve. “Come sit down. I’ll tell you everything.”
I nodded, needing to know exactly what was wrong. All I could work out was that it had to be bad.
Really, really bad.
“So, what’s going on?” I said, breaking the tension in the room. It was so
thick I felt like it could have been cut with a knife, and despite the fact that Kaiden was right across the other side of the room from me now, I could feel it rolling off him in waves.
“Let’s sit down,” he repeated, indicating to the large dining table sitting in the middle of the room. I perched on the edge of one of the chairs, waiting for him to speak again, but instead of saying anything, he handed me his phone.
I stared at the screen, a perplexed expression crossing my face until I processed the image of Serra sobbing uncontrollably in the street outside Siderno. Kaiden was next to her, and he looked furious.
“This was tonight?” I asked, a little shocked. Had he really gone straight from being with me—and from doing all of that in the alleyway—right into her arms? The idea of that made me feel like absolute garbage.
He sighed, defeated. “Yeah. She called me as soon as you…”
He trailed off, seemingly too embarrassed to finish that particular sentence. “I couldn’t avoid her because she was already there. She set up this whole scene, causing an argument when the press were all there to capture the moment.” He tugged on a strand of hair, clearly distressed.
“How did she make you this angry?” I asked, staring at the picture again.
He put his head in his hands, holding it there for a few moments as if he was trying to block the rest of the world out. “She told me that she lied to me about being on the pill, and said the condom we also used could’ve broken, which I suppose is possible. But then I asked for proof that she was really pregnant, and she blew up,” he said. “Should’ve seen it coming. I’m a fucking idiot.”
He was muttering, as if he was embarrassed to speak those last few words.
I felt daggers pierce through my heart. Wow. Serra had lied about being on the pill, and the baby could really be his…
I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why this hurt me so much, but it did. Maybe it was because of my potential health problems. After all, if my BRCA results were positive and I had to have an oophorectomy—a procedure where the ovaries were removed—I’d never be able to naturally conceive kids, and meanwhile, people like Serra were getting pregnant at the drop of a hat.
“So,” I said. My voice was thick now, and it was almost hard to breathe properly. “The baby…it could actually be…?”
“Yes. I might be a father soon.”
I nodded, which I quickly realized was pointless because he wasn’t even looking at me. “I guess that must be hard. It’ll be difficult with your career.”
“No,” he said, looking up at me. “It’s not that. It’s not that at all. It’s not like I don’t want the baby or anything. I mean, sure, it’s gonna be hard with Serra being the mother, but I’d do anything to support a child that’s mine. I just feel like shit about how I acted when she first tried to tell me she was pregnant. I was only so cold towards her and the situation because I thought it was all bullshit. To find out that it’s real, and in that media circus…fuck, it’s just a lot to take in.”
I stood up and moved over to his side before rubbing his back gently, trying to calm him down a little, and he slumped his head down again, reverting back to his despair.
I had to say, I’d been surprised by what he’d said. I’d assumed he was being cagey about the baby because he didn’t want his reputation and his bachelorhood to be tainted by his impending fatherhood, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. The way he’d spoken with such passion made it obvious that he was telling the absolute truth.
He really would do everything in his power to give his child a good life.
I was seeing him in a different light now. He may have been a douche and a man-whore with a career that semi-depended on him having a rough reputation, but anyone who was willing to put all of that aside to look after a child had to have a lot of good inside them.
“Okay,” I said, sitting down beside him. “We need to be proactive here. We can’t be defeated by this or let it pass us by. If you do nothing, then the ‘asshole’ reputation will stick.”
I could feel Kaiden looking up at me, but he didn’t speak. I knew he was waiting for me to come up with some sort of magic solution that would fix everything, and that was exactly what I was going to have to do. This online article would go viral, and there was no doubt about that—simply because of who was in it—but if Kaiden could get his word in quickly, he might be able to avoid some of the negative press that was about to fly his way.
“Well, the first thing I’ll suggest is to stay away from social media for tonight. It’ll probably be a playground for trolls, and I don’t think reading stuff like that does the ego any good. Especially with an ego like yours,” I said with a wink, trying to cheer him up with a little joke at the end.
I expected Kaiden to laugh at how simple and obvious my statement about staying away from social media had been, but he just continued to stare at me as if every word I spoke was golden. Jeez, who the hell was his old PR firm? Did they not coach him about all of this stuff? This was just the basics!
I continued on. “Then first thing tomorrow morning, I’ll book you a press conference. If we get all the media together in one place, you can give your statement about how tonight’s situation was wildly misinterpreted, and we can leave it at that. We need to be consistent with this. If you speak to each outlet individually—which reminds me, you might want to disconnect all your phones for a while—the messages can come out mixed and misinterpreted. So just remember...consistency is the keyword, and try not to talk to anyone that we haven’t arranged for you to speak to.”
“Okay,” he replied. He pulled his cell phone out and switched it off. “So what will I say?”
“I’ll write down an official statement for you to read, but it’ll say something along the lines of ‘I am deeply upset about how the situation last night is being represented, and I would like to take this opportunity to clarify things. I fully intend to support Serra throughout the pregnancy, and I apologize if my words and actions were taken out of context. I’m looking forward to being a good father…’ that sort of thing. You’ll also need to say sorry for being rude to Serra—no matter what she did—and you’ll need to seem genuinely excited about the baby, which I can tell you are already, underneath it all.”
I tried to smile at him reassuringly, but it came out as more of a grimace. He sighed.
“I just can’t help but have some doubts about…” he began before trailing off for a second.
I nodded for him to go on.
“Look, I know this sounds awful, but I want to be sure that she’s really pregnant. If she is, then I can accept the fact that it’s probably my baby, but I just want some sort of proof that she’s actually pregnant. That’s all I was asking for tonight,” he said.
I nodded again. “Yeah. I was thinking of suggesting that we should insist on an ultrasound early in the morning, before the press conference, just to be one-hundred percent sure.”
That could only be a smart move, personally and professionally. It wouldn’t be good for him to look forward to a baby that didn’t exist, and it’d hurt his macho fighting image if he was duped by some bimbo soap actress. I’d also want to request a DNA test after the birth to make sure the baby was definitely his, too.
“That won’t make me seem like a total dick?” he asked. “She didn’t react well to me asking for evidence. Like I said, that’s what started this whole fight tonight.”
“That’s what makes it more suspicious; the fact that she didn’t want to give you any proof. Don’t worry, I’m on your side in regards to that, and I think any other rational-minded person would be as well. I’ll speak to her PR people about it. If I state that you’re going to go public with your support but want an ultrasound first, I’m certain they’ll go for it. After all, you’ll both be in every magazine and gossip blog for a while, given your combined fame. They’ll be lapping up the attention, I’m sure.”
“Will you be able to do that?” he asked, uncertainty tainting his tone.
&n
bsp; “Oh, please. What do you take me for? I’m not a complete amateur,” I said in a teasing tone.
“I guess it’s just hard for me to get used to you being ‘Riley Solis: PR Extraordinaire’. I mean, you’re the same girl I once dared to eat a dead bug. And you did it, too.”
He chuckled, and I giggled at the memory too. God, we’d been gross when we were eight.
“How do you think I feel? You’re ‘Kaiden Cross: Champion Fighter’ now. I didn’t see that coming in a million years,” I said.
“Yeah, but remember, I always used to joke around and tell you that one day I was going to learn every martial art available, so I could be like that guy from our favorite movie back then,” he said with a grin.
I nodded and smiled back at him. “Oh, I remember that movie now! The one where that karate champion stops those bank robbers, right? We must’ve watched it ten times.”
“Yep, that’s the one. And I always used to joke that I’d be like that one day,” he said. “Hey, that actually reminds me…you always used to say you’d be an author one day. When did you lose interest in writing and get into PR instead?”
I bristled at his words, and the smile faded from my face. Kaiden was the only one I’d ever expressed my true dream to, and back then he’d been endlessly supportive of that, always telling me that I would do it one day. The fact that I hadn’t, and that I’d allowed that dream to die simply because it had seemed too improbable, made me feel like a total failure.
“I…um…I guess I never got around to it,” I said, averting my eyes from his.
Bad Boy Brit (A British Bad Boy Romance) Page 28