Temptations - The Complete Series

by Annie Jocoby

  I couldn’t live like that. I couldn’t make Serena live like that. So, for now, I had to stay there in that driveway. Staring at that bitch’s face. There was nothing else to do, and it made me sick.

  Finally, I got out of the car. “Okay, let’s go in the house. Let’s get our terms straight.” I had no leverage at that moment. I knew that. She knew it, too. She held all the cards, because she was the dangerous one of the two of us. She was the one who had the mob ties. She was the one who was desperate and was willing to do anything, absolutely anything, to ensure she got what she wanted.

  Still, I was going to negotiate with her as if I held all the cards and she had nothing. That was the only way to go into this. If I went into it as if I knew the weak position I had, then she would roll over me. That was the last thing that I wanted, because, well, I wanted to at least ensure that Serena was away from that Derek asshole.

  “Come on in,” she said, walking into the house. “And let’s sit down and try to get this thing done.”

  I followed her to her terrace, which was set up with a table and chairs and candles as the centerpiece. It looked as if she were anticipating a romantic dinner for two, which is probably what was on her mind. But I was careful to show her, with my body language, that I wasn’t having it. None of it. This was a business transaction, nothing more.

  I was also going to have to try to negotiate one more term. One major term – that this marriage was going to be a sham in every sense of the word. I would appear on her arm in public. I would do the dance like a marionette. But I wasn’t going to touch her in private. There would be no kissing, no dancing, no sex. We would have separate bedrooms.

  That was important. Anything else would be truly betraying my love for Serena, and I wasn’t willing to do that. Besides, I doubted that I could get it up for her. I hated her that much.

  She was certainly trying, though. I glanced at her as she sat across from me, and I noticed that she was wearing something that was plunging. It was a filmy black number that showed her ample cleavage, and she leaned down so that I could see all of her breasts if I was so inclined. I wasn’t, of course, so I immediately averted my eyes.

  She continued to lean over the table, though. She was attempting to make it impossible to look down her dress. I was just as determined that I wasn’t going to.

  “Okay,” I said, as she poured both of a glass of wine and snapped her fingers. A waiter came around and laid dinner in front of us. We each appeared to have some kind of a stuffed bird, with some asparagus tips with hollandaise sauce and a side of potato. I shook my head. Charlotte obviously had something in mind, and she was going to try her mightiest to get it. “We need to go over terms.”

  “Go over terms?” she said, apparently incredulous. “You make this all sound like some sort of business transaction.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I think that it is. I need to get this straight with you. This is not about love. It’s not even about like. It’s about Serena’s preservation. And mine, to a lesser extent, but mainly Serena’s. Don’t ever think differently. The second you start to think that what you and I have is real is the second that I get the hell out of here.”

  She finally stopped leaning over the table, and leaned back in her chair instead. She was sizing me up, trying to find my weak spot, trying to see if I was bluffing her. “What did you have in mind?” she asked me coolly.

  “I would like to dictate the terms of this arrangement. First, there will be no physical contact between us. I will have my bedroom and you will have yours, hopefully in two different wings of the house. Second, you will allow me to fire Derek. After all, I am the managing partner of that firm, so I do have the power to fire him. And, considering what he has done to Serena, I do have cause.”

  She shook her head. “This isn’t what I signed up for. Perhaps I should just put that hit back on Serena and be done. Because you aren’t giving me a damned thing here.”

  “I’m giving you the attention that you crave. Being with me will give you just the right air of danger and intrigue to put you in the spotlight. After all, I’m this notorious billionaire who was accused of murder, and most of the people in this country still think that I might have done it. Once we go public, you’ll have the cache that you want. Since I know that you want to become this starlet that is in the public eye at all times, then you’ll have that with me.” I raised an eyebrow. “Take it or leave it.”

  “I’m leaving it,” she said, perhaps too quickly. “I get what you’re saying, and you’re absolutely right about that – since you were, by far, the biggest story of this past year, and you continue to draw your share of attention, you definitely will be an asset. But I want more than that. I want you and I to be a real couple. That means a shared bed, and that means sex. You can go ahead and fire Derek. I’m through with him, anyhow. But the other stuff is non-negotiable.”

  I gave her a high opening offer, and I knew that. I also knew that I had to tread carefully with her. “Okay. Thank you for allowing me to fire Derek. We can sleep in the same bedroom, but not the same bed, and there will be no sex between us. Nothing physical between us.”

  “Why? You’re going to be married to me, so you can just forget about that other woman. You might think that you’re betraying her by being with me, but you need to stop thinking that. I’m your future. You and I are the ones who will be together. The sooner you understand that, the better off you’ll be.”

  I narrowed my eyes, trying to figure out how far I could push this. If I threatened to walk away, would she acquiesce, or would she get it in her crazy head that she was going to go nuclear? I realized that I wasn’t playing with a woman that had a full deck, and that made her inherently dangerous. Yet I couldn’t possibly give her what she wanted on this. There was no way in hell that I was going to have sex with her. No way in hell that I was going to touch her in any kind of a romantic way. That was simply non-negotiable.

  “Those are my terms. You can take them or leave them.” That was the same thing that I said before, and I meant it. Of course, inside, I was a mound of jelly. All she had to do was tell me that she wasn’t going to play my game, and that she would just go ahead and put a hit on Serena, and I would have done anything that she wanted me to do.

  She sighed. “We’ll sleep in the same bed. We don’t have to have sex, though. That’s my final offer.”

  I could live with that. As much as I didn’t want to, I could. The bed was quite large, as it was twice the size of a king. She usually had her animals sleeping with her, which was why she needed a bed that big. I could certainly have my side of the bed, and she would have hers. I didn’t want to think about the possibility that she was going to try to crawl on top of me during the night, though I knew that could happen.

  “Okay,” I said. Then I dug into the food.

  She smiled. “Oh, I love having you dancing on a string like this. Kind of like how you had me doing the same all those years ago. All that time, I was pining away for you. Just pining away. You couldn’t give shit less about me, of course, which depressed the hell out of me. Now, here you are, dancing. I love it. I have always thought that turnabout is fair play, but I never thought that it would be quite this delicious.”

  “It’s not going to be as delicious as you have in your mind.”

  “Oh, but it is. We’re finally going to be sharing a roof. I’ll finally be sharing your name. I’m going to have you on my arm wherever I go. The paparazzi will never leave us alone.” She rubbed her hands together and raised her arms above her head. “It’ll be glorious. There’s no way the media is going to forget about me. I can just see my Oscar right now.” She pointed to a shelf that was just inside the door. “That’s where it will be. My agent has already told me that this part I have in this Van Sant film is the part that all the actresses have wanted. It’s the part that will make me a star. The only thing that I needed was the right guy to put me into the stratosphere, and now I
have him.”

  It was then that I realized that I might have actually underplayed my hand. I didn’t know how desperately she wanted me to give her the kind of exposure that she needed to get her onto the A+ list. She was already on the A list, but, as she had explained to me, there was a tier that was at the very top. It was occupied by the stars who were truly “It” at the moment. The stars whose every move was followed by a stream of paparazzi. She wasn’t quite at that, but she would be when she was with me.

  I mentally kicked myself. I should have dictated my terms more sharply. I now knew that she would have gone along with anything at that point, as long as she could show up at places around town and have people take her picture. I discounted that too much. I assumed that she was just desperate to be with me, but perhaps she was more desperate for her image to be enhanced.

  I had to smile inwardly as I thought about how being with me would increase her cache. I was under investigation for disposing of a body and covering up a murder. I was just out of an investigation for actual murder. I knew that there were many in this country who still believed that I killed poor Jordan Harris. All of this, and she somehow believed that I would be good for her image?

  I wondered if there was something in that. Now that I knew that she was more concerned about her image than being with me, I could possibly use that. How I would use that, I didn’t really know. But there might be something to that.

  The name “Sarah Fuller” popped into my head. The blonde publicist who was slight and tended to drink too much, and spilled the beans when she drank, was the person who might be the one that I needed to talk to. I wondered if she was really going back to Atlanta and become a personal trainer. She might be the person whose brain I could really pick to find out the best way to exploit Charlotte’s many weaknesses.

  Then again, Charlotte was willing to let her craziness get out in the press, as well as the murder she committed. That made me despair just a little. If it wasn’t for the fact that I strongly suspected that Charlotte was behind my mother’s death, I might have been willing to call her bluff a little longer. But, with my mother’s death, and the evidence of poison in her system when she died, I knew that Charlotte was a loose cannon. I wasn’t quite sure what Sarah Fuller could do to help me if Charlotte was willing to let her cray go public.

  As I sat across from her, my mind was whirling a hundred miles a minute. It seemed that my thoughts were careening from one extreme to the next. At one extreme, I was tempted to bolt. I would test her, see if she was willing to make a move, knowing that I was capable of bringing her down in the press. Yes, she claimed that she had all those records erased, but I knew better. Those records were on my system, still, and, while I knew that authenticating them might be a problem, considering that Doctor met his unfortunate end at Charlotte’s hands, there was still a chance that the press would be willing to put this stuff out.

  But, on the other extreme, I knew that, if there was even a 1% chance of Charlotte making a move against Serena, I had to stay put. I had to be 150% sure that Serena was completely safe before I extricated myself out of this Charlotte mess.

  “Okay,” I finally said. Charlotte and I had been sitting there, with the food in front of us, untouched, for what seemed like hours. In reality, it had only been a few minutes, but every moment with this woman seemed like hours to me anymore. “So, then, we have an agreement. I appear with you in public, and I guess we share a bed. But no physical touching, let alone sex. I hope that I make this perfectly clear.”

  She shrugged. I could tell that she was really thinking that she could bide her time with me. She thought wrong, of course. I was going to be firm, absolutely firm, that there would be nothing physical with this woman.

  “What’s up with that shrug?”

  “I think that you’re going to change your mind. I can be very persuasive, after all.”

  “Think what you want.”

  She sighed. “Well, okay. Listen, tomorrow is going to our first outing together. I’ve already called the paparazzi to come and follow me.” She put her hand to her hair and pursed her lips. She leaned down again, and I steadfastly refused to take her bait. “I’m going to deny, of course, that you and I are together. That just makes the paparazzi more intrigued. That’s how the game is played you know. Whip them up into a frenzy before I confirm for them that you and I are getting married. By the time I make this announcement, through my publicist, the media will be going crazy.”

  “Sounds like you have this all planned out.”

  “I do. Listen, I’ve been playing this game for years now. Do you really think that all those actresses or actors who are in the tabloids are in the tabloids because the paparazzi happens upon them or that they had actually called the pap themselves? Nine times out of ten, the pap are contacted and told where to go to get a picture.”

  I rolled my eyes. I did know that the game is played that way, to be honest. I didn’t necessarily think that Charlotte was going to lay it out in such stark of terms, though. “So, what is our first outing?”

  “We’re just going to go to the beach. I’m going to be wearing a tiny bikini, and, well, we’re going to be holding hands and kissing in the ocean.”

  “I told you, nothing physical.” She was already going back on our agreement. That irritated me, and I felt emboldened by my earlier realization about the fact that she wanted me to be her lap dog more than anything.

  “Nothing physical behind closed doors. That was my understanding. I told you, though, that I need the pap to think that we’re a real couple. That would mean PDA. It’s required.”

  At that, I got up from the table. She wasn’t going to push me around like that. While there was a part of me that was apprehensive about calling her bluff, I knew that I had to. There was no way that I was going to act as if I had a weak hand.

  “Okay, okay,” she said, batting her eyelashes. “We’ll hold hands and that will be it. There doesn’t have to be kissing and all of that.” Then she raised an eyebrow. “You better take this offer, Slade. I’m warning you. I’m at the end of my rope with you, and I know that you don’t want your precious whore Serena to have an unfortunate accident.” At that, she looked at her nails and then looked back at me.

  I sat back down. Holding hands with her wouldn’t be all that bad. I sighed, though. Serena was going to be so depressed when she saw me and this spider in the papers. I was going to have to get ahold of her to tell her not to worry. I was only giving Charlotte a little something to keep her in line. I needed Serena to know that.

  I crossed my arms in front of me. Charlotte daintily started to eat her food, but I wasn’t hungry anymore. “I’ll hold your fucking hand.” I got up from the table. “I’m going to go and get something eat someplace else. The very sight of your face is making me nauseated.”

  She smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “I’ll see you later.”

  I knew that she felt that she was winning, and that thought made me not just sick, but it made me want to kill her with my bare hands.

  And, if I thought that I could get away with it, I probably would.

  Chapter 3

  Serena

  The day after Slade left, I got back to work. I had to. I had no excuse not to. I mean, I could call into work with the excuse that I didn’t feel up to working, but that would be just silly. I had been through heartbreak before, and I always showed up to work anyhow. Today would be no different.

  Or would it? Yes, I had been through heartbreak before – when my mom died, when I was raped. But nothing quite tore out my soul like what had happened with Slade. I didn’t even know why I was so profoundly affected. I only knew that I was.

  I got to the elevator, and my heart started to pound. Would Derek be there waiting for me? What about the people in the office – would they know what had happened in my own office? I had intended never to come back, yet, here I was, coming back. I was never one to run away from a problem, even an enormous problem like Derek, and I wasn’t a
bout to start now.

  Still…I felt my heart pounding so hard, with every floor, that I felt that I was going to pass out. If Derek were there, I didn’t quite know how I was going to react. I could tell Harry what was happening. After all, Charlotte was apparently neutralized for the time being. There shouldn’t be any danger in telling Harry what was going on.

  I finally got to the suite and went in. Peggy, the receptionist, gave me a huge smile. “Serena, it’s so good to see you. I have to admit, I was pretty worried about you before. You left this office and you had such a look on your face. You looked like you had seen a ghost.”

  I didn’t see a ghost, just a total douche-bag. “I’m fine. Listen, hold my calls. I’m really behind the eight ball with my cases.”

  She smiled again. “I think that maybe you picked up another one. Santino Bianchi has been waiting to talk to you. He’s in the conference room right now.”

  I groaned. What did he do now?

  “Do you have time to see him?”

  “I guess. I mean, I have a hearing at 1:30, and I have about a million appellate briefs to write and an expert witness coming in, but why not throw something else into the mix?” I felt annoyed, not only because I suspected that good ol’ Santino caught yet another case, but also because he just popped in and waited for me. As if I had nothing else to do but help him out again.

  I went into the conference room, and Santino was sitting there, his hands clasped in front of him. He saw me come in and stood up and smiled. He went to hug me, and I hugged him back, even though I didn’t necessarily want to.

  “Miss Serena,” he said to me, “you look beautiful as usual. Thanks for seeing me.”

  I nodded my head but didn’t greet him back. “What’s going on?” I narrowed my eyes. “You didn’t catch another case did you?”

  He shook his head. “No. I’m keeping my nose clean.” He touched his nose. “You won’t see me in here for another case, I promise.” Then he lowered his voice. “I mean, I’m still working for Joey, don’t get me wrong. But we’re working on making sure that I catch no more cases.” He nodded his head and caught his drift – he was still doing shit, but he and Joey were getting better at greasing palms to make sure that nobody ever caught him doing it. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that Santino was actually clean.