by Amy Brent
Didn’t people sleep with escorts?
“Aren’t escorts just high-class hook—”
“Escorts will do as you ask.” Damon had guessed what I was about to say and put me straight on the matter. “If it’s just to attend a gala or charity dinner, that’s all they do. Not all of them give extras, and I never asked for any.”
I was puzzled as to why Damon went to so much trouble. His wife had died, but he tried hard to keep his private life under wraps.
“Why be so cautious?” I asked curiously.
Damon screwed up his mouth again and sighed. “Alexis. She’s the reason for everything. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to protect her from anything—nothing more so than the crappy paparazzi.”
“Ohhh! Now I get you. I must’ve had one of those dumb moments. I never put her into the equation,” I replied, feeling a little stupid that I hadn’t done so before. I had focused on why he didn’t rather than why he wouldn’t.
“Come on,” I said in a jovial voice. I kicked off the sheet and couldn’t resist a glance at Damon’s hot body in the process. Yummy!
He swung his legs off the bed and slipped into a baggy T-shirt and a pair of sexy shorts. “Where are we going?” he asked.
“My treat. It can be my turn to make the coffee,” I replied, slipping into one of his old T-shirts and a pair of panties.
I decided to make breakfast as well as coffee. Nothing heavy, just a couple sunny-side ups and a few slices of plain toast. I flicked the switch on the coffee machine as the eggs sizzled away in the skillet. Damon readied the table. It felt like we were a real couple. We sat and began eating.
When Damon’s phone vibrated on the counter, he stood and reached for it. He stared at the screen and then raised his eyes to look at me. Something was wrong.
“Check if the paper’s been delivered,” he said.
I trotted to the front door and saw the rolled-up newspaper sitting in full view at my feet. I unrolled it as I heard Damon’s voice from the table, and my eyes fell to the headline.
TECH RICH KID BEDS HIS NANNY!
“What the hell’s all this?” I snapped in amazement as I reached the table.
Damon explained without looking at the front page that it was a full spread on him. Or more plainly, it was a full spread on us.
“I can see that. What does it mean?”
“It means a few things,” he replied as he started to scour the front-page article. “It doesn’t bode well for the company.”
Oh, dear god!
“I’m sure you can talk your way out of it,” I said. “The question is how the hell’s the media latched onto it? I haven’t been explicit about us with anyone.”
Damon raised his head from the newspaper. He looked at me sheepishly and explained that he’d accidentally let something slip to Eric, his best friend. He dialed a number on his cell.
“Eric, I’ve seen the paper.” Damon stood and walked across the living room in a huff. “What the fuck have you gone and done?”
Damon paced back and forth and raised a hand every now and again as he listened to Eric. He turned to me on occasion, his eyes unfocused as Eric fill him in on what had happened.
After a few minutes, Damon pulled his phone from his ear and ended the call. Shaking his head, he threw his cell on the couch and ambled back to to the table with his shoulders slumped. He sipped from his cup and started to explain.
“Apparently, Eric got drunk and was approached by a fabulous redhead. Eric thought he was on a winner, so he further wined and dined the girl to the point where she asked him about me.” He looked at me with a serious face. “Eric, being none the wiser and who was more interested in her cleavage than what his mouth was saying, mentioned that I was getting close to my nanny—you. So basically, Eric spilled his guts about our coming together to keep the redhead interested until he could tempt her into sharing a cab back to his place.”
It was clear the redhead had manipulated the entire conversation to glean every bit of information she could get her hands on.
“Who was she?” I asked.
“She’s a journalist for one of the major tabloids. Eric only found out this morning when she left his apartment and said she had a deadline to meet.”
“She’s what?” Shocked and understandably angry, I searched for words. What the heck could I say? The story was already plastered everywhere. Damon had apologized. It wasn’t his fault to a certain extent. However, he didn’t have to tell Eric everything. “What’re we going to do?” I asked him.
Damon closed the newspaper and pushed it across the table. “We’d better lay low for a while. Hopefully we can shrug it off and show the press it’s not true.”
My head spun. It was only a matter of time before they posted a picture of us together. I tried to remember if I’d ever been close to Damon in public, like leaving the building, taking Alexis to kindergarten, or anywhere else.
My concern swelled even higher. “You know what the press is like. They’ll be all over us like a rash.”
“I am worried,” he replied. “They’ll twist this around and make you seem like another notch on my bedpost, and you know I don’t have any.”
“That doesn’t help us at all now,” I replied.
“Tell me about it. Our reputations and the company’s could be tarnished—tarnished a fuckload.”
Damon’s phone rang from on the couch. He tutted and muttered “what now?” as he walked to the couch. “It’s my mom.”
I swallowed. Shit.
Damon answered the call and put his mom on speakerphone so I could hear her too. “Good morning,” she said in a chirpy tone. Damon looked at me and rolled his eyes. It hadn’t been a good morning at all.
“Hi, Mom.”
We guessed she’d seen the article from the way she talked. She was upbeat while we were both in downbeat moods.
“I’m so happy for you. Actually, I’m so happy for the both of you,” his mom said. “Karly’s a great girl. I didn’t show it when I met her, but you know what moms are like.”
“I know what you’re like, Mom,” he replied in a half-joking manner. “Why did you call anyway? Just for that?”
“No. I’m getting Alexis ready, and we’ll be there in a short while,” his mom said. “I wanted to make sure you were awake first. That’s all.”
Damon ended the call, and we began getting dressed. Making it plainly obvious was too much even for his mom, who seemed to be over the moon. Damon and I were far from being over the moon.
The doorbell rang within the hour. Damon opened the door without showing his face. His mom held Alexis in her arms, who jumped into Damon’s arms and kissed him on the cheek with a “hi, Dada!”
They walked into the kitchen. His mom saw I was there. “Oh, Karly. You’re here so early,” she said. “Or did you stay the night?”
“She’s living here,” Damon replied, giving her a look.
His mom did a double take. She spoke her truth, though lightly so as not to be rude. “Do you think that’s wise? It’s ammunition for the press.”
Damon answered for me. He gave a different answer than what mine would’ve been. I would’ve belted out that Keith, my unbeloved ex, had trashed my apartment. He told her something else to satisfy her.
“Karly lives too far away. It makes sense for her to stay here. It saves two to three hours per day of traveling.”
“Well, it all makes a lot of sense, and I’m so happy for the both of you,” she said. “I sensed a good feeling about your situation.”
I smiled gratefully, although I still twiddled my thumbs nervously about the predicament I now found myself in. It was a big thing to be a part of the news headlines and not something I could ever learn to enjoy.
Chapter 19
Damon
It was only yesterday that the news had broken, and already Karly was distant. We weren’t avoiding each other, but we kept missing each other or Alexis was always around, so the chance to talk over the leak in the paper
s hadn’t materialized. I had said we should cool it a little, but I could only guess what Karly must have been going through. She hadn’t been exposed to this sort of thing, and I had the overwhelming urge to wrap my arms around her and tell her it would all be okay.
Initially, my concern had been how the company would be impacted. That was natural, but business was business, and a vast number of people might see my being in a relationship as a good thing. There wouldn’t be any more pictures of escorts on my arm. That was for sure.
Karly was different altogether. I wanted to hold her close, although I wasn’t sure how to approach her to make it feel natural, and most important of all, I didn’t want to push her further away from me.
I walked down the stairs, expecting to see Karly in the kitchen preparing breakfast. But it was empty, silent, not a hint of any cooking being done. Where the hell had she gone? Some of her things were on the bench, so I guessed she hadn’t left and gone back to her apartment. There was no way she’d do that without saying something first.
The front door banged, and I poked my head around the kitchen doorway. Karly stood with her back against the broad white expanse of the door. Her head was raised, and she rubbed at her eyes.
Had she been crying? I walked into the hallway and made my way toward her. She sniffled and wiped her face on the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
“Where’ve you been?” I asked curiously.
“I was going to get an icebreaker,” she replied. She smiled and stepped away from the door. She kicked off her running shoes and dropped the front door key into the colorful glass fruit bowl.
“Icebreaker?”
“Yeah.” Karly twirled her hand in front of her head. “It’s been a bit of a whirlwind since yesterday,” she said. “Rather than cooking breakfast, I thought I’d go to the coffee shop and get doughnuts and coffee for a change.”
She wasn’t holding doughnuts or coffee. I guessed she never made it that far. “Is the media outside? Is that it?” I asked, wishing she’d tell me what was going on.
Karly pulled her lips back as she grimaced. She shook her head as she explained. For her, it was worse than the media, much worse.
“Keith’s on the street. As I went out, he caught up with me and followed me back here,” she said. “I came back so as not to make a scene, but he ranted and raved about how he told me so and all the pretentious crap he normally spouts from his mouth.”
I held her hand as I spoke. “He’ll make more trouble for us. Wait here. I’ll go and sort him out.”
Karly tried to say be careful. I sensed she was past caring what happened. Keith was the last of her worries. “A few people are hanging around out there. They aren’t the press, but you never know if they’ll arrive at the wrong moment,” she muttered, wiping her tears.
Karly’s sanity was more important than a few media personnel watching me argue with Keith. He’d appear as the jilted ex who now stalked Karly. He’d already done a number on her apartment, so a quick call to the cops and he’d have a restraining order well and truly pinned to his stupid ass.
“Wait here and don’t come outside. It’ll aggravate the hell out of Keith if he sees you.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”
I pulled on my shoes and headed outside. I took the elevator and then strode down the steps. I looked up and down the street. There was no sign of dickhead Keith. I noticed the chill in the air as plumes of breath formed in front of me. I glanced over toward the park. Clouds of smoke blew from behind a large tree. I walked across the road as a cigarette butt landed on the edge of the sidewalk. Keith exhaled his last lungful of smoke as his eyes fell on me.
“Karly’s sent you out, has she?” Keith asked.
“Not a chance. This was my choice,” I replied. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage?”
“It seems you don’t know the meaning of the word,” Keith replied, standing straight and lifting his khaki jacket from the bark of the tree.
He stepped onto the sidewalk, pulling his free hand out of his pocket, and stood with clenched fists. Half squinting, he looked me up and down. I was maybe a few years his senior, but I’d bet I was way faster, way fitter, and way smarter than good old Keith, the pissed-off, jilted ex-boyfriend.
God only knew what Karly saw in him.
Keith took the offensive and stepped forward. The tone of his voice attracted the attention of passers-by. They stopped, and I already saw cell phones held up and recording everything.
I’d let Keith do all the work. He obligingly did, drawing his fist back.
Rather loudly, to make sure it was picked up on the videos, I said, “Keith, there’s no need to get violent.” I held my hands up in a nonaggressive manner. I wanted all the videos to show I had attempted to calm the situation.
I just hoped his first punch didn’t knock me out.
The first punch he threw hit me square in the jaw. It didn’t knock me out, and it didn’t hurt that much. Keith sensed he was on the winning side and went to throw another. His miscalculation resulted in my swift uppercut counterpunch—I’d learned a lot from watching boxing and MMA on TV—which landed firmly under his jaw. His head flew back, and he took wobbly baby steps back toward the tree. He shook his head and ran through a full sentence of profanities that would have made Alexis’s bad-word box burst at the seams after he’d finished. He swung again. He was still dazed, and another punch to the side of the head felt satisfying and sent him in the other direction.
Keith let out primal grunts as he charged me. He flung his arms around my waist and attempted to wrestle me to the ground. The crowd grew, and it’d be a matter of minutes before the cops or the media arrived.
I needed to end the scuffle, and I needed to make sure I was the victor. The maiden’s hand wasn’t at stake, although reputation and making sure this didn’t happen again was as well. I raised my knee in a swift jerk. Keith’s breath rushed from his lungs as his balls made a speedy exit and vanished inside his body—metaphorically speaking.
His arms dropped from my sides. I looked down at Keith as he slinked toward the pavement and curled into a fetus-like ball. His knees were pulled tightly toward his chest as his body rocked.
“Let that be a lesson to you,” I yelled over his sore body. I doubted he listened or could even hear. “Stay away from my place and stay away from Karly.” Keith gurgled as if he were about to puke. It was kind of sad, but it had to happen.
I walked across the street and headed to the penthouse. I resisted the urge to turn back and look at Keith or the crowd that had formed. I stepped inside and rested my back against the door. Karly poked her head out from the kitchen doorway. She walked toward me and spotted the bruises appearing on my jaw.
“He hit you?” she asked, shocked.
“Just once. It’ll be all over social media in a little while.”
“Where is he now?”
I chuckled as I kicked off my shoes. “I left him on the ground clutching his scrotum.”
“You mean his balls?”
I started laughing. “No. I mean his scrotum. His balls vanished when they felt my knee against his groin.”
Karly walked to the table. “You know I don’t condone violence, but he’s pushed me too far. I hope he knows to leave me alone now,” she said. “Thank you.”
I walked into the kitchen and said he shouldn’t be any trouble now. Once the video was posted, Keith would appear as the real jerk in the whole situation.
“The only thing is”—I heard Alexis at the top of the stairs—“it’s going to add fuel to the fire for the press.” I headed to the stairs and kissed Alexis. She ran to Karly, and I showered and dressed, getting ready for work.
Karly was talking to Alexis when I walked down the stairs. I gave her a peck on her forehead, and Alexis looked at me. “Don’t forget to kiss Karly as well,” she said with a giggle.
“I don’t know what you mean, young lady.”
I stood and headed for the front door.
Karly walked with me. I kissed her, and she embraced the softness of my tender kiss without Alexis noticing.
“I think that’s the ice broken,” I said. Karly giggled. We both turned toward the kitchen archway, where Alexis stood with her hands covering her eyes. Her fingers were parted so she could peek. She’d seen us.
“I’ll see you both later,” I said with a smile.
“Bye, Dada.”
I arrived at the office, and a few of the staff lifted their gazes from their screens.
Yup, now I was famous.
Eric passed by my receptionist’s desk. “Go champ!” he said with a raised fist.
“It’s your damn fault.”
He bowed his head and scuttled off down the hallway. We’d talk later when I’d had the chance to cool down. For now, he could keep feeling guilty.
Carol the new receptionist, gave me the morning updates and then returned to her desk. I rested my head back and spun in my sizeable black leather chair. Raising my hand, I rubbed my jaw right as my cell rang.
It was Karly. “Hey. What’s up?” I asked. The noise of an outdoor area bled over the line. “Where are you?”
“I’m in the park,” Karly replied. “The house is like a scene from Notting Hill. There are about five TV vehicles, and God only knows how many photographers there are.”
“Ignore them.”
“I’ll go to my apartment with Alexis until it blows over.”
“Good idea,” I replied. It made sense, and the press might get fed up waiting for someone to appear.
“I’ll take her out for the afternoon. We can reach home the same time as you,” she said.
“I’ll be home at six. Get there around that time, and I’ll see if I can do anything to get rid of the TV crews.”
Karly cut the call, and I made a few calls myself. One or two reporters—due to favors needing to be repaid—said they’d pull out their vans. I wasn’t sure who the others were, so I kept my fingers crossed.
Time sped by, and it was almost time to head home. I asked Carol to get me a cab. I didn’t want cameras thrust against the windshield of my car. The cab was waiting when I exited the office. I was surprised no media team was waiting outside.