Billionaire Beast (Billionaires - Book #12)

by Claire Adams

  “I’m not entirely sure that I do know,” he says.

  “I’m just saying that we should wait and give it some more time to grow, give the relationship more time to grow. Then, if that’s how we’re both feeling, we can go from there,” I tell him.

  “You’re such a commitment-phobe,” he says.

  “First off, you can’t just add the word ‘phobe’ to the end of another word and expect that to create a psychological term,” I tell him. “Second off, you’re the one that said he couldn’t handle being in a relationship at all. Are you really going to push this?” I ask. “After everything that’s happened today, everything that’s been happening, is now really the time to have this particular conversation?”

  He shakes his head, saying, “No. I don’t think this is the best time to do this.”

  “Good,” I answer. “That’s settled, then.”

  “Still horny?” he asks.

  The question serves its purpose, as it gets me to smile.

  “No,” I tell him. “I think I’m good.”

  “All right,” he says. “Just one quick thing…”

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “You never said how you would answer,” he says.

  “What?” I ask.

  “You never said, gun to your head, if you absolutely had to, whether or not you’d say you love me or not,” he says.

  “I thought we were dropping this,” I groan.

  “We are,” he says. “I’ve just got that one question: do you love me?”

  I scoff and turn away, but as I bring my gaze back to settle on him, I notice something that I haven’t before. It’s subtle, very subtle, but as I look at Damian’s expectant face, I see softness about him, and I feel a tender warmth and security with him.

  “I don’t know,” I tell him. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

  “You’ve had a few minutes,” he says. “What’s your knee-jerk reaction?”

  I narrow my eyes at him, looking for any sign of jest or insincerity, but if there’s any there, I don’t spot it.

  “I’d say I’m closer to a yes than I am a no,” I tell him.

  “What does that mean?” he asks.

  “Yes is love, no is not love,” I answer brusquely. “I’m closer to a yes than a no, but that opinion is certainly changeable.”

  “Okay, okay,” he says. “I got it. Just wanted to be sure we were on the same page and all that,” he says.

  “Okay, so are we done?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “Good,” I answer.

  “Unless you’re still horny,” he says. “I kind of liked you up there on the countertop.”

  He’s pretty, but not too bright.

  Damian lingers in the kitchen, I’m assuming, in case I change my mind and decide to wipe the floors with him. He’s going to be waiting in there for a while.

  I get out to the front room and see the glare of headlights and camera lights, and I wish these people would just go home. Why are they so goddamned fascinated that they’ve got to camp out on my front…

  “Damian?!” I shout.

  “What?” he calls, and rushes into the living room.

  What I caught out of the corner of my eye through the window wasn’t a mass of cameras and reporters; there’s a small fire burning on my front lawn.

  “What the hell is that?” I ask.

  “It’s her,” he says. “Call the cops. I don’t know if she’s still on your property or not.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” I shout at him.

  “I’ve never seen her,” he says, fumbling for his phone. “I don’t know if she runs off after she does what she does or if she waits somewhere nearby where she can see my reaction or what. Just call the cops.”

  He hands his phone to me.

  I take the phone and he runs around locking doors.

  This can’t be happening.

  I dial 911, although I’m really not sure whether this constitutes an emergency. Well, I guess the fire, however small, might be reason enough to send someone pretty quick.

  “What is the location of your emergency?” the operator answers.

  I go through and give the woman all of the information. She asks if I’ve been outside about the time Damian’s heading back to the front door, this time to unlock it.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, covering the phone.

  “I’m going to see if she’s still out there,” he says. “If not, I want to see what she did to your lawn.”

  “Stay inside,” I tell him.

  “Ma’am?” the operator asks through the phone.

  “Wait for the cops. You don’t know if she’s dangerous. You don’t know what she’s capable of,” I tell him.

  “Ma’am?” the operator asks again.

  “Yes,” I answer, putting the phone back to my ear. “I’m sorry about that. I was just telling my boyfriend not to go out there until someone in a uniform checked it out first.”

  “So the two of you are in a relationship,” the operator says.

  You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

  “Ma’am,” I start, “I’m not calling to gossip, I’m calling because some psycho lady just set my lawn on fire and I need you to send someone!”

  “Help is on the way,” she says. “So, what’s he like? Is he nice in person—he really seems like the kind of guy who’d just be really nice to you if you met him on the street or in a coffee shop or something, is that true?”

  “‘Is he nice in person?’” I ask. “This is a practical joke, right?”

  “I don’t know, he just seems like he’s got that humility to temper the confidence, you know?” she asks. “Is he doing a nude scene?”

  “Is there anything I should be doing?” I ask. “Should we be staying away from windows or something?”

  “Probably,” she says. “Did you ever see that movie he did, Eastland, the one where you get a 10 second look at that cute behind of his?”

  Help’s on the way and I’m really just so tired of fighting things that I just give up.

  “Yeah, that was quite something, wasn’t it?” I ask.

  Damian’s moved away from the door now and he’s pacing in my front room, occasionally stopping to look out the window at the burning patch of lawn. Whatever she did, the fire seems very well controlled.

  “I wore out that DVD,” the operator laughs. “Between you, me, and the lemon tree, I must’ve watched that part of the movie about a couple hundred times, and you know what?” she asks.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I’ve still never seen the ending,” she says, and erupts in laughter.

  I’m starting to hear sirens in the distance, and, thanks to what I’m assuming is my utter exhaustion, I just start laughing with her.

  “Do me a favor?” I ask her while I sit down.

  “What’s that, hon?” the dispatcher asks.

  “Is there any way we could just keep this conversation between you and me?” I ask her. “To tell you the truth, I think I’m about done with all the attention for the more screwed up things in my life.”

  “That isn’t really my call,” the woman says. “I think if we’re contacted, we have to release the tape. I really don’t deal with that, though.”

  “Huh,” I say. “Well, maybe with all of this I can be the first person to actually break the internet.”

  “Things happen,” the woman says. “Things get better.”

  “I hope so,” I tell her. “Things are pretty crappy right now.”

  A fire truck and an ambulance—for some reason—pull up to the front.

  “They’re here,” I tell her. “I should probably let you go.”

  “All right,” the woman says. “Keep that chin up.”

  “I’ll try,” I tell her. “What’s your name?”

  “Doreen,” she says.

  “It’s been nice to talk with you, Doreen. I’m Emma,” I say.

  “Well, you go on and h
ave a better evening now, all right?” she says.

  “All right,” I tell her. “Thanks, bye.”

  I hang up and release Damian, who’s been eyeing that front door for the last five minutes.

  He’s outside before I am, and by the time I’m walking out the door, he’s already standing near the fire, looking down at it.

  “Are you Emma Roxy?” one of the firemen asks. The patch on his jacket says Jackson.

  “Yeah,” I answer. “I called. This just happened—what—like 10 minutes ago?”

  “Did you see anyone around here?” he asks.

  “No,” I tell him. “I just came into the living room, saw the fire, and I called you.”

  “Okay,” Jackson says. “The fire is obviously very well-controlled. We’re going to wait for the police to get here before we put it out. I hope that’s all right with you.”

  “What is it, anyway?” I ask. “Is it just a bunch of sticks or what?”

  “They’re pieces of wood arranged to form a sentence,” he says. “I really wouldn’t worry about it. Between us and the cops, we’ll get this taken care of for you.”

  “Thanks,” I answer, looking past him. “What does it say?”

  “I don’t think you need to see it,” he says.

  “I’m not as delicate as all that,” I tell him, and walk past.

  As I get close, Damian looks up and says, “We’re going to find her. She can’t keep doing stuff like this and not get caught.”

  I look down.

  The fire, while an aesthetic touch, makes the message rather difficult to read, but after about a minute, I see it pretty clearly.

  “Hands off, bitch,” I read. “He loves me.”

  It was the fact that she used punctuation which made the message so difficult to read through the fire.

  Damian pops his lips.

  “The way Jackson back there was acting,” I tell Damian, “I thought it was going to say, ‘I’m going to shoot you in the face around noon on Thursday’ or something.”

  “Nobody has any common decency anymore,” he says. “The least a person can do when they’re threatening you is have the courtesy to be specific.”

  I smile.

  “You all right?” he asks. “I know this is kind of freaky shit.”

  “Yeah, it’s kind of freaky shit,” I tell him. “But I don’t think it’s going to bring my life to a screeching halt, either, so I guess we just do what we have to do and hope she ends up caught sooner than later.”

  “You’re taking a very enlightened approach to this whole thing,” Damian says, and in the background, a couple of police cruisers pull up.

  “I’m past the point where I can even process any of this,” I tell him. “It’s a nice place.”

  “I hope it sticks around,” he says, and that enlightened perspective must be starting to crack, because I’m already thinking of popping him in his stupid throat.

  But I take a breath, and everything’s just the slightest bit better.

  The police come over and we talk. I learn a lot more about the stalker hearing Damian talking to the policeman than he ever said to me.

  Why didn’t I say I loved him earlier? We’re still not to the point where we can trust each other with the things in our lives that make us uncomfortable.

  I know he was trying to protect me, that he didn’t want me to worry, but I’d take the communication over the illusion of security any day.

  After the officer’s done with his questions, we all just kind of look at each other because we all know the same stupid truth: nobody knows who this woman is, and she’s probably going to keep this up until something big happens.

  I can’t imagine it would be something good.

  The police leave after taking some pictures and the firemen leave after putting out the fire. The paramedics stick around for a couple of minutes to chat with Damian about an action movie of his that came out a few months ago called The Force of Law.

  One might say that it wasn’t his best movie and certainly not his best performance. One might also say that the movie probably would have threatened to destroy his entire acting career if people had bothered to go see it.

  One might say those things.

  Still, the few who saw it and liked it formed a loosely organized cabal of people who, whenever any topic that may be construed to have a remote relation to the film comes up, they talk about the movie.

  I almost lost my lady boner for him after seeing that steaming pile of…

  “Emma!” Damian calls over. “Check this out; you’re not going to believe this.”

  I never bothered leaving the side of the fire. The fire was small enough that I didn’t even have to move when the firemen put it out. Now, though, Damian’s over on the driveway with those paramedics and they’re all looking down at a cell phone.

  One more look down at the now illegible threat somehow arranged entirely without anyone noticing, and then I walk over to see what they all find so interesting at a time like this.

  “Check this out,” Damian says. “That guy who was blackmailing you—Ben Whatever,” he says. “He got into a fight in the slammer and got the shit kicked out of him.”

  “Don’t toy with me, Jones,” I tell him. “Don’t tease me with good news that isn’t true.”

  “Check it out,” he says.

  I was hoping for pictures, but it’s just an article. Apparently, Ben was standing in line, waiting for his food tray, and some man just came up to him and socked him right in the fucking mouth.

  “Did you see the best part?” Damian asks.

  “I’m still reading,” I tell him.

  When questioned about what possible motive he could have had for the assault, the attacker, LeRoy Tsvetkov, is quoted in the article as saying, “I know what that punk did to Emma Roxy. I love that bitch. I seen all her movies.”

  I think it’s somewhere around here that I realize any significant understanding I may have thought I had regarding the ways of the world is completely wrong.

  “Being famous isn’t all bad,” Damian says with a laugh.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Art of Conversation

  Damian

  “And, cut!” Dutch yells, and I know I’m in for some shit. “What the hell was that?” Dutch yells. “I told you to take the suitcase, put it on the bed, and then grab the big stack of towels. It’s really not that hard, Jones. Jesus! What’s the matter with you?!”

  Dutch is angry.

  I know I probably didn’t need to tell you that, but he’s been angry with me a lot lately, and it’s no secret why. I’ve been choking like a motherfucker for over a week now.

  “Let’s try it again!” Dutch shouts.

  I take my place at the foot of the bed. In this scene, my character finds out that Emma’s character has left the hotel and is planning to leave the city, so he’s chasing after her and Dutch insists that we do the old stealing-hotel-towels gag like it hasn’t been done to absolute death.

  Still, I took the job, so the least I could do would be to do a decent take, or at least one would think.

  Dutch yells action, I take a step toward the bathroom, and Dutch yells cut.

  “I want you to repeat this in your head,” he says. “Take the suitcase, put it on the bed, and then grab the towels. Repeat that for me.”

  “Dutch, I know,” I tell him. “I don’t know what my problem—”

  “Take the suitcase,” he says, “put it on the bed, and then grab the towels.”

  “I’m on it,” I tell him. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve got this—”

  “Take the suitcase,” he says a little less patiently, “put it on the bed, and then grab the towels.”

  “Fine,” I tell him. “Take the suitcase, put it on the bed, and then grab the towels.”

  “Good,” he says. “I want you to take about half a minute and just play that like a broken record in your head, all right? Then, we’re going to try this again and we’re going to
get it right.”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry, Dutch, I—” I start.

  “What’s the only thing I want going through your mind right now?” he asks.

  This is humiliating. They haven’t spent this much time on any single group of extras.

  “Take the suitcase,” I tell him, “put it on the bed, and then grab the towels.”

  “That’s right,” he says, and the whole set is silent for 30 seconds.

  The whole set. Quiet. For 30 seconds.

  If this is doing anything to my confidence, it’s not doing anything good.

  “All right,” Dutch says. “Now you know what you’re doing?”

  “Take the suitcase,” I tell him, “put it on the bed, and then grab the towels.”

  “That’s right,” he says. “And, action!”

  I just stand here for a second, trying to remember what the fuck it is I’m supposed to be doing. The fact that it’s so simple is making it harder for me to get it.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Dutch says.

  I take a step.

  “Cut!”

  I want to kill myself.

  “What happened that time?” Dutch asks. He patronizingly adds, “You were saying the right words, it looked like you knew what you had to do, and then poof! You fuck it up again.”

  “Does it really matter if I put the towels on the bed before the suitcase?” I ask.

  “Of course it matters,” he says. “It’s all about the punchline. If you get the towels on the bed from the beginning of the shot, you’re going to know what’s going to happen. If you’re under the impression that he’s going to quickly throw some clothes into his suitcase, but he just comes back with a big stack of towels, that’s comedy. You know the fucking drill,” he says. “Now get it right.”

  “I got it,” I tell him. “I’m on it.”

  “And, action!” he calls.

  I walk toward the suitcase.

  “And, cut!” Dutch yells. “Okay Jones, what the fuck? Are you trying to bury me? Are you trying to send my stress levels so far through the roof that I start bleeding from my eyeballs and strangling my assistant? I haven’t strangled an assistant in a very long time, Jones, and there’s a reason for that. It’s not a pleasant thing to do to another person. Forget about how unpleasant it is for the person being choked, I have to look into those eyes, screaming for life, and find an answer to the question, ‘Oh great, dear God, Why?’ and I have to let go because I’m starting to feel like an asshole. Is that what you want?” he shouts.