by Mira Gibson
But just as he was about to tell her all that, the warm wings of sleep carried him away and soon he was snoring softly, Abby having drifted off against his chest, her long leg draped over his as well.
When morning came, the warm autumn sun cutting across the bedroom, Zach made love to her again.
And again.
When they showered, he made love to her yet again.
He even endeavored to fuck her. Hard. Sweaty bodies slapping. Against the kitchen counter.
As far as Zach was concerned, the world beyond the four walls of his penthouse suite didn’t exist and he had every intention of keeping it that way.
But when he saw his publicist, Darlene Pinkerton’s name and number flashing across his vibrating cell phone while Abby was tinkling in the bathroom, he sighed, plopped his nude ass on the living room couch, and loathed the fact that he was enough of a slave to the Christian Network that he had no choice but to take her call.
“Please don’t kill my vibe,” he begged.
“Good afternoon to you, too, my favorite client.”
Shit, he thought. Whenever she buttered him up like that it meant she was about to throw him a curveball.
“Look,” he cut in before she could surprise him with any bullshit. “We’ll be at the airport at six like we’re supposed to. We’ll milk the whole clandestine fake-out for the paparazzi like we’re trying to leave the country without the press finding out. You have nothing to worry about.”
Silence on the other end.
He didn’t like it one bit.
Then she told him, “Why don’t you swing by the network in an hour?”
It didn’t sound like a breezy suggestion. Cautiously, he asked, “Why?”
“A little meeting with the team,” she said before attempting to assure him, “It’s good news, Zach. Just get your ass here in an hour.”
“With Abby?”
“With an open mind and that’s all.”
His mind was far from open when he sat across from the head of the Christian Network, Walter Mason, and his wall of suits—Andrew Cranston the attorney, Marla Dickerson the agent, his mostly useless manager, Howard Chatfield, and of course the powerhouse puppeteer who had been controlling his life for as long as he’d been on #Blessed, Darlene Pinkerton.
The conference room felt airless and he was eager to get back to Abby who had taken the limo to her Brooklyn apartment to pack. He was already looking forward to joining the mile-high club with her. She was bendy like that, he’d discovered. Exploring her flexibility and watching her come had become something of a paradise for him…
“Good news,” Walter announced, kicking off the impromptu meeting that had Zach’s heart in his throat. He knew the press junket to kick off the upcoming season of #Blessed, which would occur immediately after Zach returned from his elopement in Belize, would either propel his career forward with a renewed contract to stay on the show, or kill it. If Walter had summoned this meeting, then any news—good or bad—would directly effect that renewal. “The American public no longer thinks you’re a flaming, limp-wrist homosexual.”
Jesus.
Zach mustered a smile and muttered, “That’s good.”
“It’s great!” Darlene enthused. She looked way too excited for his taste. “The Christian girl—”
“Catholic,” he corrected.
Not that she cared for the distinction. She barreled right ahead. “Has totally redeemed your image! You’re more Brian than Brian!”
It was hard to imagine he’d convinced the major entertainment news outlets that he was anything like his squeaky-clean character, but he had been snorting zero cocaine and boozing it up not at all since getting into a domestic rhythm with Abby, so anything was possible…
Walter cut in, advising, “We do not need another Jamison Holt slump.”
Wait, what?
Zach’s suddenly concerned and definitely pissed flare of anger hardened his expression. The Jamison Holt ‘slump’ occurred as a result of him getting married.
Beaming as if she was about to announce the greatest news since Bradley Cooper came back on the dating market, Darlene said, “You don’t have to go through with eloping!”
“What?”
“We love the old Zach Canning,” Walter explained. “Teens and ‘tweens loved him, your bad boy shenanigans and all. Ratings were through the roof! But if you’re married, if you’re not ‘available’ in the minds of your adoring fans, then we’re going to have another Jamison Holt situation on our hands.”
As an aside and worse, as if it was promising news, Darlene mentioned to Walter, “Don’t get your hopes up, but I’m fairly certain they’re going to get a divorce.”
“That would be fantastic!”
“Excuse me!” Zach yelled. “What the fuck are you telling me, I don’t have to elope with Abby? We have a legally binding contract. We both signed. I’m getting on a plane in five hours. End of story.”
“Not quite,” said Andrew, his attorney, daring to pipe up and straighten his spine from where he sat on the far side of Marla who had enough skin in this game to be grinning like a hyena. Agents were predatory like that. “When I drafted the contract,” he explained, “I wrote ‘an out’.”
“An out?” Zach questioned as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “I read the whole thing. There was no ‘out’.”
“I tucked it in the Indemnification Clause,” he said with a proud little snicker that turned Zach’s stomach.
“It doesn’t matter where he hid it,” Darlene cut in, taking the floor. “The point is that, legally speaking, you don’t have to go through with marrying that girl.”
That girl? he thought, incredulous. Abby had been reduced to a nameless noun?
“This is great news, Zach!” she insisted. “You’re getting your life back!”
But he didn’t want his life back. He wanted his life with Abby, the one he had built up in his head, the one he had all but promised her.
“I can still marry her,” he said. “Just because I don’t have to doesn’t mean I’m forbidden from it.”
He was met with a wall of silence that told him otherwise.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“We’re all on the same team here, Zach,” Walter reminded him. “Team Hashtag Blessed.”
“But—”
“You want to be presented with a renewed contract at the press junket, don’t you?” he challenged.
Zach bit his tongue and stared dead at him. He didn’t want to admit that he wanted that. But of course, he wanted that. Obviously, he didn’t want it at the expense of his love for Abby.
“I’m still going to date her,” he declared, though it gravely disappointed him. Dating was way too small, it didn’t capture what he felt for her. He already felt like she was his wife. He wanted that title. He wanted to be her husband. He wanted to know that legally and spiritually she would be his, ‘til death do them part.
“No, you aren’t,” Walter informed him. “You are going to be single like you were.”
“I’ll date her in secret,” he shot back hotly, but knew he was already defeated.
“Stop being defiant,” Darlene ordered. “You’ll blow some coke, fuck some girls, and get over it.”
“Wow, screw you,” he seethed, rising from his chair. This situation made him so sick, he couldn’t stand the sight of any of them, not for one more second.
When he reached the door, Darlene stopped him, more than pleased to inform him, “The head of the Christian Network’s legal department is at Abby’s apartment right now. As we speak, she’s learning that now that your reputation is intact, she’s not to go near you or contact you for any reason. We have a restraining order in place.”
“What?!”
Darlene sprang to her feet and raised her voice ferociously, “I cleaned up your mess, Zach! For the millionth time, I restored your image like a god damned genius! Your renewed contract is there for the taking! All you have to do is act grateful and
not fuck it up! Two days, that’s as much time as you have to wait until all of your dreams go back to being true again! Not just for you, Zach, for all of us! We all have a lot riding on this! And if you go back to that little Christian girl, you’ll be kissing this—” she gestured to the spacious room, to New York City at large, to the implied world of celebrity royalty he’d grown accustomed to, “all of it goodbye!” She calmed for a beat then warned, “You’re not going to kiss off of this goodbye.” When he didn’t answer, she concluded, “I know you. You’re not going to do that.”
The absolute worst fucking feeling in the world overcame him as he glared at her across the conference room, because—God fucking damn it!—he knew that she was right.
It was a very long walk to the elevator.
Chapter Fourteen
“Abby? Earth to Abby…”
“Hmm?”
She snapped out of the deep, spacey funk that had clouded over her for the millionth time that morning to find one noticeably concerned Head of the Social Media Department staring at her from across the white-clothed café table they’d sat down at an hour ago in The White Rabbit. To his left and right were his department associates and Abby was sandwiched in-between two more, all young, hip, and welcoming professionals whose ranks she’d been vying to join.
All eyes were on her as Lance repeated the question that Abby, bogged in heartache, hadn’t caught, “I asked, how does it feel to officially be one of Tate & Cane’s latest social media marketing geniuses?”
Abby mustered an appreciative smile, made a point to look each of them in the eye, and tried to sound enthusiastic as she replied, “I couldn’t be happier! Thank you all so much!”
She lifted the cooling latte she’d been working on up to her mouth and took a sip to hide what she feared was a plastered-looking, disingenuous smile.
It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate being hired in their department. She was ecstatic in fact, and her transition would be seamless since both Olivia and Lance had agreed to pass Abby over from one department to the other in a few days when Olivia’s regular assistant returned. But Abby could barely feel the elation. She was mentally happy, but not emotionally.
Nothing could compensate for her broken heart.
The rug had totally been ripped out from underneath her.
She’d had no clue the contract she’d signed had a built-in ‘out’ for Zach and only Zach. Admittedly, she hadn’t read it whatsoever. She’d thrown caution to the wind and signed on the spot, and maybe that was naïve of her, but still…
Had he known?
She snapped out of it once again before any of her soon-to-be co-workers could notice she’d slumped into dark ruminations. Everyone was getting up from the small table tucked against the café’s large, picture windows so Abby followed suit, thankful that the crisp, autumn air to come as they walked back to the Tate & Cane building might be enough to help clear her head.
It wasn’t.
Though she managed to politely interject interested-sounding comments into the associates’ casual conversation about marketing trends and how social media campaigns didn’t have to be a poor man’s AdWords as they made their way up the busy, Manhattan avenue, Abby felt lost and hollow.
The attorney that had showed up at her door when she’d expected to see Zach had been soulless and brash. He’d informed her the entire contract was null and void, except of course for the dozens of non-disclosure agreements she’d signed swearing her to secrecy about the entire arrangement. He’d warned her that a restraining order was in place and if she tried to see or even contact Zach, she’d be prosecuted by the fullest extent of the law.
It had been enough to make her head spin and the fact that it was happening at all, that some strange man in an Armani suit was essentially breaking up with her on Zach’s behalf while she clutched the doorway, blindsided, and tried not to hyperventilate, had been, in a word, surreal.
It hadn’t been until he’d left and she’d closed her apartment door that slowly, gradually, the horrifying magnitude of what had just happened began to hit her.
She thought Zach was the love of her life.
She thought he felt the same way!
She winced as she lowered into her desk chair, having parted ways with the social media associates on the elevator and returned to her floor where Olivia was in the throes of a heated telephone argument deep inside her sleek office.
She should’ve never slept with him.
What had she been thinking?
Abby angrily shoved her purse into the bottom drawer of her desk and woke her computer from its slumber.
She was mad at herself.
She was furious at Zach.
She felt helpless and out of control.
She had given him something she had been saving her entire life, something she had been saving for her future husband, something she could never get back!
Did he even care?
Had he even loved her?
It made her want to take something from him…
Old Testament style…
But Abby wasn’t a vengeful person.
She realized she was fiddling with the cross pendent hanging from her necklace.
No, she didn’t want to hurt Zach in the same way he’d hurt her. She didn’t want anyone to be hurting, least of all herself.
She just wanted to talk to him, to try and make sense of what in the hell had happened, why all of a sudden and seemingly out of the blue when everything between them was great and his publicist, Darlene had only praised her for how well she’d been doing… Why end the relationship?
Nothing made sense.
She wanted to be with him. She wanted nothing to have changed and yet in the blink of an eye absolutely everything had.
Her life had gone from heaven to hell. That’s what this feeling in her chest was, the heavy heart, the fact that she’d cried her eyes out all night, wallowing in the closest thing to misery she’d ever felt. It was a hell she didn’t deserve, and nothing could distract her from it, uplift her out of it, or otherwise soften the excruciating sting.
She tried to read a new email that had popped in, but it was a useless struggle. Her eyes didn’t seem to work, or maybe it was her brain. She kept reading the same sentence over and over again but retained none of it.
“Abby?” Olivia called from behind her stately office desk.
“Coming!” she replied, trying to sound as perky as possible.
Olivia looked like a polished goddess in such a flawless way that called to Abby’s attention that her own eyes probably still looked puffy despite the hoards of eyeshadow she’d caked on to hide that glaring reality. The executive lifted her blonde head, diverting her eyes from something concerning on her computer screen up to Abby, who was standing, notepad in hand, in front of her desk.
“Congratulations,” she smiled and as Abby let out a breathy ‘thanks’, she added, “please, have a seat.” As soon as Abby settled into one of the plush, white chairs across from her, she went on. “I heard the good news of course and I’m so glad you’ll be with us for the long haul.”
It was getting harder and harder to muster a smile and by the time she said, “I’m really happy,” she wasn’t even sure that she had.
Olivia’s perfect eyebrows knit together and she cocked her head. “You don’t sound happy.”
“I am,” she tried to assure her, but again her voice sounded flat.
A knowing, empathetic and pained look came over Olivia’s face and after holding Abby’s gaze for a beat, she pulled what Abby quickly realized was a trashy tabloid magazine out of her lap-drawer and set it on her desk facing the young, sad-looking woman across from her.
“Is this why getting hired at Tate & Cane isn’t making your day?”
Abby grimaced at the shiny cover. It featured a huge, happy-looking photo of Zach under the headline ‘Back on the Market, Ladies!’ At the bottom-right corner was a little bubble image of Abby looking forlorn and, quite frankly,
terribly disheveled in saggy sweatpants and an unflattering autumn coat that she’d incorrectly buttoned, evidently. Must have been taken yesterday.
“Yup,” she said in delayed reaction to Olivia’s accurate guess.
“What happened?”
“You said it yourself. A contract is no guarantee.” After a moment, she realized Olivia was looking for an actual answer so she supplied, “Apparently there was some loophole clause or, I don’t know, sentence that gave Zach an out.”
“And he took it?”
“Don’t remind me,” she said heavily. “I’m not allowed to talk to him. I’ve been completely discarded. Used up and thrown away.” She lifted her gaze from her clasped hands and looked Olivia directly in the eye. “I thought he loved me.”
“I can’t stand seeing you like this,” said Olivia, clearly pained.
“I can’t stand feeling like this,” she agreed then dared to lie, “but I’ll get over it… eventually.”
A determined look came over Olivia and she suggested, “You could hit him where it hurts.”
Abby didn’t know where that would be. He seemed completely invulnerable. And even if he had an Achilles heel, would she want to take her shot? Would that make her feel better? She doubted it.
“You could break the contract.”
“The contract is null and void,” she told her halfheartedly. “There’s nothing to break.”
“I’m not talking about the marriage contract.”
Abby’s eyes snapped up to Olivia.
“I’m talking about all those non-disclosure agreements you surely signed,” she explained.
What kind of voodoo was she practicing that she seemed to know the secretive ins and outs of how these types of arranged marriages go down?
Impressed, curious, and a little scared, Abby asked, “Tell people that the entire relationship was all for show?”