Brian kicked himself, hoping he hadn’t put Gabriel in the doghouse with his sister.
‘Don’t be cross with him. He thought he was doing the right thing. He knew the effort you’d put into the auction and how desperate you were to contribute to restart the research.’
‘I’m not angry with him. I can’t believe he did that and never said a word. I always thought he indulged me and my emphatic drive and dedication to the hospital. I never stopped to think it was as important to him and he managed it in a different way.’
Relieved he hadn’t inadvertently stirred an argument between the two, he was faced with the unenviable reality of what Faith had done to betray him.
‘Faith, if it wasn’t that, how did you betray me?’ he asked, shutting his eyes wondering what the answer would be.
‘I called them. It was me, not Susie, not by chance. I called the paparazzi that Tuesday night you took me out in the Hummer to the club. All these women were throwing themselves at you. I saw you making a text when we were on the balcony and with your reputation assumed it was to another girl. It was Tuesday and I only had you till Friday. I was convinced I had the briefest window of opportunity to use your profile in conjunction with the hospital fund raiser.
‘I called some newspapers telling them you were there with the a nobody secretary, charity worker as your latest date. I was shocked at the number or photographers. I thought it’d be one or two. Like what Susie organized at the auction, but the crowd and the way they charged. I was determined to get the research funds. I didn’t take into account I was dealing with a real person, not a media creation.
‘Everything I read and assumed without question supported me using you. The whole incident freaked me out, with cameras in our faces and people calling your name. It was frightening and when you held me I’d never felt safer, but I didn’t think I could ever confess. Over the week the guilt gnawed away at me. The more you opened up, the loveliness I saw in you the worse it got. I was falling in love with you.
‘When you told me about your parents, your job for your family, I knew if I told you I set the paparazzi up it would ruin everything. I thought I could block it out, pretend it never happened and carry on because the hospital took a back seat. The only part of my life I wanted to see satisfied and operating smoothly was you and I. I figured if I could remove any involvement you had with the Muscular Dystrophy ward and charity it would be easier for me to forget.
‘I wanted to cancel the hospital, pull out, pretend I was ill, stop your efforts because what I’d done to attract your interest had been sneaky and sly. The auction check I could deal with, but I disgusted myself using you like those other women did. You were ready to learn with an open heart, when I’d closed mine off to get my own way—which was wrong; good cause or not.’
‘How did I betray you?’ he asked detached.
‘Susie told me how she leaked those photos of Paris to gossip bloggers. I saw the snaps of you leaving the club with two girls last night. I have no right to be jealous, because it’s not like we left as a couple, but I believed your words over the week. No matter what went down between us, however bad things were, I didn’t think you’d get over me in a few hours. I didn’t think you’d do it publicly.
‘Looking at you now, all I can think of is you in bed with those girls. It’s what I’ll forever think. Not only have I lost my boyfriend, but I lost my friend as well. It’s killed any chance we had of rescuing what could have been.’
‘What could have been is better than what could never be at all,’ said Brian huskily.
‘I read the article and even though I was acting like a crazy person, somehow I came across as this angelic, down-to-earth girl, with a heart of gold who you were using and abusing to gain public favor, when it was me wanting your reputation to help the hospital. I rang your Dad, I’m awfully sorry, but I’ll do an interview and set the record straight.’
‘Dad won’t send an interviewer, let alone run a story. He’s already told me that.’
‘I’ll try something else, I promise I’ll make it right.’
Brian held up a hand.
‘Yes, I got drunk. It’s what I do to dull the pain. Yes I surround myself with girls to make me feel better about myself. That I did, too. I didn’t sleep with or have sex with anyone. When your heart is bleeding as profusely as mine is, sex and revenge is the last thing on your mind. It’s about pushing through the pain to get to the other side. The thought of another woman in bed makes me sick. Maybe if it were someone else I would’ve but when love breaks your heart it changes your reactions.’
‘You didn’t deserve this, Brian.’ said Faith, swallowing her tears realizing tending to his heartache was more important than her own.
‘As for you calling the paparazzi? Welcome to my world. It gave you a window of the whirlwind my life is. How it’s all in the public eye. Susie downloaded pictures from my personal phone and leaked them without my permission. Did I sack her? No, I’m putting her in the freezer for a few hours and then we’ll make up. Faith, when I found out what my duties were after winning the auction, I made a pass at you.
‘Threw money at the problem, hoping I could sneak in a one night stand with you. When I took you out on Tuesday, I did it to dazzle you, seduce you. My intentions had nothing to do with getting to know you, giving you a taste of my life or showing you what a decent guy I was. I just wanted to have sex with you. Trouble was I got to know you as we talked that night. After the paparazzi the desire to sleep with you was replaced by something else completely foreign to me.
‘It was more than sex that night. That’s when I started to fall. I thought you were beautiful and sex on legs when I laid eyes on you, then fell head over heels as I got to know you, but I didn’t stress out about what I’d done prior to you stealing my heart. I’m a red-blooded man who first and foremost wanted to have sex with you. That’s the truth. You are a determined, smart business woman.
‘You used the resources you had to as a means of supporting you believed in. Our first impressions of each other were awful. I fancied you but disliked you immensely and don’t even try telling me you felt different.’
‘I didn’t know then what I know now.’
‘That’s the point, Faith. Neither did I. If you did you wouldn’t have called the paparazzi. If I did I wouldn’t have splashed my cash showing you the heady heights of big city life. What we did before falling in love is irrelevant and means nothing to our relationship. It’s what we do after that counts. Anyway you lost a shoe that night so karma got you in the end.’
Faith’s eyes sparkled at the remark. The hint of merriment in the normally bubbly girl assured Brian this was the start, not the end.
‘Is that really what you think,’ asked Faith tentatively.
‘Yes. It’s not even been a week. We’re getting to know each other and find out how we both tick. It’ll take more than a few days, but I want to carry on with you. It’ll be easier if you can forgive yourself or realize you were using your head not your heart. I was hurt by the article and angry, but that was ego. Here and now you make my heart happy; it’s safer to follow.’
She kissed him long and hard. The flames of fire in his heart ignited his love and passion for the unique woman.
‘Can you explain one thing to me?’ he asked holding her back to not get lost in their physical and sexual whims.
‘Anything.’
‘Why did the wheelchair soccer cause you to flip out?’
‘Since the auction, since the funds were cut I’ve become a tiresome bore. Gabriel’s my age, he has a fiancé, a baby on the way, and a social life. I expend all my energies trying to raise funds for a cure. I want Gabe cured. I don’t want to worry about a gene I may or may not have and a condition my children may or may not inherit. When Gabe talks soccer his eyes come alive. Even when he was the supportive brother, I knew what you were focusing on was relevant because of the immediacy of its effects.
‘How did I miss all that? How did
the idea of love and children and being an aunt register so low on my list of priorities. Saying it aloud, I know it’s not me. With my Dad and Gabe, I guess I’ve spent too much time around people with the disorder, all I saw was the suffering and a cure as the only possible solution. I refused to consider any other option.
‘You spent a week there and saw how you could distract the suffering to bring genuine regular happiness to their lives. I’ve wasted my time. I was angry at me, not you. Wasted efforts because I wouldn’t listen to those that had the syndrome, I assumed I knew best as a carer.’
‘You haven’t wasted your time, Faith. I meant every word in that interview in respect to the value of research, but yeah I like to see people smiling and sometimes you can do that with minor things. I mean Paris was great, but I’d love to go to Paulo’s tonight for a pizza. I have an immense amount of money, but it tore me away from my family.
‘You and Gabe may not be millionaires but the way you support and look out for each other, you can’t put a price on. It’s crazy how you’re the person who told me to look for the little things in life bring joy but are blinkered when it comes to your brother’s condition.’
‘I’ve acted like a mad woman this week. I was completely out of my depth in your world. Then to fall in love with the knowledge that being together would necessitate my fitting into your way of living. It was overwhelming, frightening, amazing and exciting all at once.’
‘I didn’t have to come here. Looking at the jigsaw pieces of our relationship. This week you’ve put me down publicly in an interview, blown hot and cold with me, berating me for my wealth one minute, then using it for your own means the next, gone crazy any time the l.o.v.e word was mentioned. Looking at the big picture, with the all the fragments combined. I see is a twenty-three year old girl, juggling the worries and responsibilities of someone way beyond her years.
‘I see someone who is making changes in the world and it inspires me. I had to raise the soccer team in the interview. It wasn’t to steal the limelight, it was to demonstrate that I had been affected by what you offered at the auction. I wanted to show it was important enough for a cad like me to invest his own money in.’
‘Does your Dad know?’
‘Having read the interview, yes.’
‘I wanted to give much more than just that, Faith. I wanted Porterhouse Media to look at corporate responsibility and become fully involved with the hospital and all its wards and research. I’d love my family name to represent something other than money and power. I want the company to be a contributing part of society. I love you, Gabe’s condition will always be a priority, but my family have the means of branching out to contribute and cultivate all kinds of worthy endeavors to benefit a range of charities and causes.’
‘Why didn’t you say all that in the interview?’
‘Because my Dad laughed me out of the office when I put the proposal to him. However he has agreed to meet me in six weeks on the proviso that I haven’t lost interest in it. Strangely after your call to him he was more open-minded to the idea. He’s going to be in for a shock when I do turn up, but in the long run, it’ll benefit the family, the business, the hospital and us.’
‘How will it be benefit us?’
‘I sort of like the idea of working normal hours then, coming home to you, cooking dinner, snuggling up in front of the TV and then having rampant sex with you.’
‘Your place or mine?’ asked Faith.
Chapter Eighteen
‘You nervous?’ asked Faith in the elevator has they headed to the top floor of Porterhouse Media office building.
‘A tiny bit,’ said Brian frankly.
‘What are you most nervous about telling him?’
‘Not sure, but I figure after I tell him we married last week at a cheap tacky Elvis chapel in Vegas, then land the bombshell that he’s going to become a grandfather, agreeing to the ‘Corporate Responsibility’ policy and its implementation will be a cinch.’
‘Let’s go deliver the good news,’ said Faith, taking Brian’s hand as they stepped out of the elevator.
I Kissed A Playboy Page 13