by Hannah Ford
His face went pale. “Raven, are you serious?”
“It’s true. That’s what happened to me.”
“Raven, I’m not sure what you’re getting at, but if you’re saying I should use what happened to you in order to someway benefit—I can’t do that.”
“You’re not using me. I’m the one offering to help you. If we act like we’re together, it will be almost impossible for this scandal to ruin you. I’m someone who’s been through all of it. I’m the exact person you need on your side to show that you’ve changed since that video they’re showing of you.”
He shook his head. “I can’t be your boyfriend, Raven. I can’t do it.”
“I know. I’m not saying it will be completely real. But it will be real enough for everyone else.”
“Why?” he asked. “Why would you do this for me after everything I’ve done to you?”
And then Raven didn’t know what to say. The elevator doors opened and he was still standing there, waiting for her response.
She didn’t know what to say because she wasn’t sure why she was doing any of it.
All she knew was that maybe sometimes you had to take a risk in life and bet everything on a long shot.
“Trust me,” she said, finally.
Jake’s eyes widened, and Raven realized she’d just asked Jake Novak to do the one thing in life that scared him more than anything.
TRUST.
End Of Book Two
THE DEBT 3
Raven had just asked celebrity superstar Jake Novak to trust her, and judging from the look on his face, Jake wasn’t going for it.
Not one bit.
She couldn’t really blame him for being skeptical of the idea that they could repair his image problem by pretending to be in a relationship together. It was a long shot at best.
“Trust you?” he said, as if she’d just asked him to jump on a live grenade.
For some reason, she kept persisting. “Yes, trust me. Give me a chance, Jake, and if you don’t like the way it’s going you can always end things.”
He shook his head, but she could tell he was giving it serious thought. “The story won’t hold up,” he said, after a long pause. “It’ll look like a PR stunt—which is exactly what it would be.”
Raven smiled at him. “How can you be so sure it won’t work?”
“We’ve only known each other a few days,” he said. “If this crazy idea was going to have any chance, we’d need to have been dating a lot longer than that.”
“How would anyone know how long you and I’ve known each other?” she said.
The elevator doors had closed and now the two of them were simply facing each other in the hotel hallway, Jake still looking skeptically at her. “You don’t get it, Raven. This isn’t like going into school and telling your teacher that the dog ate your homework.”
“I know that.”
His brown eyes grew darker as he continued. “These reporters are going to look under every rock—they’re going to dig into every corner of your life.” He stepped closer to her. “Are you really ready to have your world turned upside?”
She was taken aback by his scrutiny. “I—I don’t know,” she said.
“Exactly,” he said, his expression triumphant. “You just broke down when I applied the tiniest bit of pressure. All your confidence went away and you were left wondering if you could do it. Well that’s not going to fly when Barbara fucking Walters starts interrogating you on national television.”
“Isn’t Barbara Walters retired?”
Jake sighed impatiently. “I don’t know. Maybe. And that’s not the point.”
“What is the point?”
“You can’t hack it,” Jake told her. “And even if you could, the media will pour through every story we tell, examine every tiny detail, and they’ll figure out we’re lying. Once they do that, I’ll be worse off then where I am now. And so will you.”
Raven shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. I think we can pull it off.”
“That’s because you’re naïve,” he said.
“No, I’m really not. How dare you tell me who and what I am? You don’t know anything about what I’ve been through in my life.” She had half a mind to slap him for how dismissive he was being. “You know, this is exactly why you have an image problem,” she said, pointing directly at him, finally poking him hard in his chest. It actually hurt her finger because his muscles were like iron.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that you’re being a jerk right now, just like you were in that stupid video. Maybe the reason this is happening to you, is because you haven’t changed since then. Maybe I’m not the one who can’t hack it, Jake. Did you ever consider that?” She turned on her heel and started walking back to her room.
Jake was impossible, she decided. He was so full of himself, so caught up in his own media hype that he’d actually started to believe all of the bullshit.
Good riddance, she thought, fury boiling in her stomach once again. The look of arrogance on his face! Calling her naïve, telling her she couldn’t hack it.
“Raven,” he called from behind her. “Hold on a second,” he said.
“Screw this,” she yelled, not looking back at him.
She started to actually run, got to her hotel room and quickly opened the door. She wanted to slam it in his face, hard.
But then he was at the door before she could close it. He braced his arm against the door and kept her from shutting it on him. “I’m an asshole,” he said. “I know that.”
“Yeah, so does the entire world, Jake. Now get away from me.” She tried to shut the door but he held it open as easily as if she’d been a two year old trying to close it on him.
“I’m trying to talk to you,” he said calmly. He was almost—almost smiling.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said, breathing heavily.
“Like what?” And now he was starting to actually grin.
“This isn’t funny,” she said. “What is wrong with you? How can you smile and laugh at a time like this? Your whole life is falling apart, Jake.”
“I know,” he said, still smiling crookedly at her. “But you’re just…”
“What?”
“You’re so damn cute when you’re mad, Raven.”
She turned and walked away from the door, having given up on shutting Jake out. “You’re exhausting,” Raven said, wiping the strands of stray hair from her face. She stared out the window. “You’re so hot and cold.”
She heard his footsteps closing in behind her. “That’s why I told you I’m not boyfriend material.”
Raven saw his reflection in the glass—saw he was right behind her now. It made her flash back to the previous night when he’d come behind her, stripped off her robe and touched her so perfectly.
She tried to wipe that memory away because it only confused her. “I know that you’re not boyfriend material,” she said, still pretending to look out the window when in reality she was watching Jake’s reflection in the glass. “It’s not about us being together,” she said, knowing that was partly a lie.
Maybe it was even mostly a lie.
“If we were to do this,” Jake said softly, “it would have to be perfect. There’s no room for mistakes, no room for doubts. Everything we do will be examined under a microscope, combed over—people take pictures and video of every move I make.”
Raven’s breath caught in her chest. He was actually talking as if they were going to go through with her suggestion, as if he might actually come out and tell the entire world he was her boyfriend.
“I know they’d be watching us,” she said, shivering a little at the thought of it.
Or maybe she was shivering because his breath was hitting the skin on the back of her neck. “You think you know,” he said, “but you have no idea what bastards they can be.”
“I have an idea,” she replied, remembering her own brush with the lies and rumors that had spread about her when she
was seventeen. “Maybe I’ve never lived it the way you have, but I can imagine.”
“No, you really can’t,” he said. “Look at me, Raven.”
She turned and faced him, and his liquid brown eyes were staring into hers.
“If you don’t want to do it, just say no,” she told him. “I’m not going to beg you.”
“Are you sure?” he smiled, his lips twisting into a slight grin.
“Jake, this is serious. Stop confusing things.”
“I do want to do it,” Jake told her, “and that’s what bothers me.”
“Why does that bother you?”
“Because it doesn’t make sense. It’s too risky. I don’t know you well enough to trust you with my life, my career. You could ruin me.” His eyes searched hers, as if looking for the truth there.
She met his gaze and tried not to be afraid. “You could ruin me, too. And my life is just as important to me as yours is to you.”
That seemed to surprise him. He raised his eyebrows in response and gave a low whistle. “That was a damn genius comment, Raven,” he said, scratching his chin. He walked away from her and sat on the edge of a couch, watching her from further away.
“So what now?” she asked him.
“I’m seriously thinking about putting you to the test,” he said, laughing a little. “It might be crazy, but then again, it might just work. I’ve been travelling to Boston a lot, spending time at the veteran’s center. I could say I met you on one of my trips six or seven months ago.”
She swallowed. “I keep to myself. Nobody would know if I had a secret boyfriend. I mean, people wouldn’t expect it, but I don’t think they could disprove it either. How would anybody know?” She thought about it some more. “Of course, Max Mendez knows.”
“Don’t worry about him. Max is discreet.” Jake ran his thumb across his bottom lip. “And then there’s Skylar,” Jake said. “She knows we haven’t been an item, she was with you the night of the party, right?”
“Yeah,” Raven said, suddenly feeling guilty. She hadn’t been thinking about Skylar at all, only about Jake and the notion of being his fake girlfriend. “Sky’s fine, she won’t say anything if I ask her not to.”
That hadn’t always been true, Raven thought, but now Skylar had more important things on her mind than spreading gossip. She wasn’t going to be running around at the restaurant blabbering about Jake Novak. She was probably going to be in the hospital and dealing with her health for the foreseeable future.
Jake took a deep breath and let it out. “We’re going to have to act like we’re in a serious relationship,” he said, finally. He looked over at her. “Are you ready for that?”
She laughed. “I think you need to ask yourself that question, Jake.”
“Listen,” he said, getting up and coming towards her again. “I know what this means. I get it. That’s why I’m telling you. I need to know that you understand, Raven.”
“I understand,” she said, her stomach on fire from his challenge. “I’m not stupid.”
“I didn’t say you were stupid.” He was close to her again, and she felt the pull of him, the physical pull, and the wanting to be even closer.
Would he hold her at night when they were pretending to be girlfriend and boyfriend? Would they sometimes lay naked together, his arms encircling her, keeping her safe and warm?
“You didn’t say it but you keep hammering me over the head about how serious it’s all going to be,” she said, forcing herself to stay present and not fall into fantasizing about him. This whole thing couldn’t be based on her trying to start a relationship with Jake. If she tried to do that, he would break her heart and she knew it.
“I just need to make sure that I can trust you—“
“You’re never going to know that until we do it,” she interrupted.
He stepped closer to her still, his jaw working, hands clenching and unclenching. “I want to do it,” he said, and the way he said it gave the statement a hundred possible meanings.
All of the meanings she could think of turned her on. “If you want to do it, then stop making excuses and just do it already.”
He smiled slowly. “And you think you can handle all of me? All of Jake Novak?”
“Don’t talk about yourself in the third person, it makes you sound arrogant. That’s lesson number one for your personality makeover,” she said, smiling a little despite herself.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Yes,” she said, “I know I can handle all of you.”
His hand reached out and cupped her butt and pulled her into him, as his face turned towards hers. She was pressed against his rock hard body now, and he was warming her, heating her up like fire.
“It’s going to be fun,” Jake whispered, “watching you try.”
“But this can’t happen,” she said, prying herself away from his grip. She wanted him too much and he knew it. He was toying with her in his own way, and she felt the need to turn the tables once more.
Jake’s eyes narrowed. “What can’t happen?”
“This,” she said, trying to control her breath. “You and me in private being…being like this.”
He folded his arms. “Like what?”
“Intimate.”
A grin spread across his face. “That wasn’t intimate. That was nothing.”
“Whatever it was is too much,” she replied, pushing the hair out of her face, trying to cool her hot skin and cheeks. She felt flushed. “No more messing around. No more spanking, no more touching each other, nothing.”
Jake’s smiled dwindled. “We have an agreement. Two nights a week—“
“That was before.”
Now his eyes were cool and his expression was increasingly serious. “You can’t just back out of our contract.”
“You said you were letting me out of it five minutes ago.”
“That was before,” he replied, throwing her own words back in her face.
“I’m not going to do any of that anymore,” she told him, backing away from him. “I’m no longer your escort in any way shape or form. That’s finished.”
“You’re acting like you didn’t enjoy what happened between us last night,” he said. “And we both damn well know that you loved it. I can still remember the sounds you made.”
Raven’s heartbeat started to increase. The way he was staring at her, the look in his eyes—he was starting to take away her will, her defenses were already crumbling. “Last night happened, I know that,” she said calmly. “But it won’t continue to happen. It won’t be like that between us ever again.”
Part of her was screaming to stop pushing Jake away like this. Part of her wanted him so badly, wanted to be close again, to be spanked again, to be touched and held again by him.
But another part of her said that this was the way to put things right.
Stand up for yourself, become Jake’s equal and stop bowing down before him. That means no more groveling, no more submitting to his every demand, no more messing around with a guy who won’t even kiss you while he’s touching you everywhere else.
Jake stared at her a long time, and Raven didn’t know what he would do next. If he came towards her and took hold of her right then and there, she was too weak to fight. She wouldn’t be able to overcome the intense desire she was feeling, the craving to return to what had transpired last night.
But Jake didn’t force the issue. After a long time of just looking at her with those dark brown eyes, he finally looked away. “I need to go make a few calls,” he said softly, and then started for the door.
“What does that mean?” she said, as walked away from her.
“It means just what I said,” he replied, and then he was opening the door and it was shutting behind him as he left the room.
* * *
Raven didn’t know what was going on.
Jake had left her room and now she was confused, left wondering whether he had decided that she wasn’t worth it now that
she’d told him her “services” would no longer be on offer.
It was even stranger when she thought about how Jake had offered to let her out of the contract first, and then seemed enraged when she accepted that offer. Yes, she was willing to help him get out of this situation with the media, but that didn’t mean they could keep playing games on the side.
The games had to end, it just made sense.
But nothing with Jake Novak really made any sense. And now she was stuck waiting around in her hotel room, wondering if or when she’d ever hear from Jake again.
She was sitting on the couch, trying to find news stories about Jake on TV, when her phone rang. Instantly, she sat bolt upright, excited at the thought that perhaps it was Jake calling her.
The only thing better than that would have been a knock on the door and hearing his voice when she asked who was there.
But when she picked up her cell and glanced at the caller I.D., it was a foreign number she’d never seen before. And that made her nervous.
Still, she answered on the off chance that it was someone important trying to contact her. When she said hello, the man’s voice on the other end was vaguely familiar.
“Hi, Raven,” he said. “Jake gave me your number, I hope you don’t mind.”
“Who is this?”
“This is Kurt, Jake’s manager.” Once he said his name, it all made sense. His voice sounded somehow deeper on the phone than it did in person.
“Oh,” Raven said, a little shocked. “I didn’t expect your call.”
“I told Jake that I wanted to call you and touch base. Jake just told me that you’re going to play a big role in helping us deal with this media shit storm.” Kurt laughed at this, seeming not to be at all concerned.
“What exactly did Jake tell you?” Raven asked him.
“Just that he was cancelling the remaining Boston shows, refunding everyone’s tickets and paying all the crew and performers, essentially losing us millions of dollars.” Kurt said it like it was no big deal, like he was only talking about the small details of a weekend fishing trip.