Chapter 19
Gossip
Victoria woke up to a blistering headache and the sound of Stevie Nicks blaring from outside her bedroom door. She crawled under her blanket, trying to hide from the morning sunshine streaming through her window that seemed to burn through her eyeballs.
I’m never drinking again.
The headache wasn’t going away, so after a minute she grudgingly got up to get coffee.
She found Nicolette in the kitchen frying bacon. “‘Morning, Vic,” she said, and looked at her slyly. “Ardan’s still asleep?”
“No idea,” Victoria mumbled, pouring coffee into a mug. “He brought me home last night and left.”
“Oh.” Nicolette plopped a plate of bacon and scrambled eggs in front of her.
“Thanks. Why are you making breakfast?” Victoria asked, eyeing her friend suspiciously. Most mornings, they usually just ate whatever leftovers they had in the fridge.
“We’re celebrating,” Nicolette said. “Well, we were supposed to be celebrating you taking a guy home for the first time in God knows how long.” She sighed. “Pancakes?”
Victoria saw the stack of pancakes beside the stove. Instant pancakes, fried bacon and scrambled eggs made up the entirety of her roommate’s kitchen repertoire, and she had made all three. “Oh, Nic. Sorry, I don’t think I have much of an appetite today.”
“It’s fine. I thought you guys really hit it off, though.”
“We did. I think we did.” Victoria picked on her bacon. “He said he’d call.”
“He will.” Nicolette settled down with her own plate on the other side of the table. She picked up her iPad from the table and pulled up a website. “By the way, did you run into your boss last night?”
“What?”
Nicolette handed the tablet to her roommate. “Looks like he got caught cozying up with that country singer at the after party. Erika, I think her name was. You didn’t see him there?”
Victoria looked at the website, a lump in her throat. There was a photo of Sebastian and the woman he was with. They were sitting quite close together on a couch, and Sebastian was touching her face. She swallowed. “I did,” she said, her eyes fixed on the photo. “We didn’t really talk.”
The article said a close friend of Erika Daniels told the media that she and billionaire CEO Sebastian Chase had met at the Fire after party, and that he was “quite crazy about her.” Erika’s PR reps would only say that they were “just good friends,” but the singer’s close friend disclosed that Sebastian had bought her the jeweled bra she wore at the show as a gift.
“That bra with the emerald is worth a cool two million dollars,” Nicolette said. “And I thought that designer underwear he got you was already a bit much.”
“Two million,” Victoria echoed numbly. She put down the tablet. “That’s ... Good for them, I guess.”
Quite crazy about her.
From what she had seen of them at the party, it looked like the feeling was mutual. It was almost like something out of a movie: two perfect people finding each other one night, and falling in love almost immediately.
They did look good together, she had to admit. And Erika was probably a lot more suited to Sebastian than she could ever be. Not that Victoria had been holding on to the hope of him actually being interested in her that way.
Hadn’t she?
Sebastian was handsome, intelligent, and insanely rich. And he paid her more attention than a man ought to give someone who tutored his child twice a week. He made her feel special. Victoria thought it was a crush, nothing more. A simple attraction no one could blame her for.
Until last night when the sight of him with another woman in his arms nearly knocked the wind out of her.
Nicolette took a bite of bacon and chewed thoughtfully. “Hey, maybe you’ll run into her at his house. Too bad neither of us listens to country.”
“If he starts dating Rihanna, I’ll let you know,” Victoria mumbled under her breath.
***
“You and your girlfriend are in the news.”
Sebastian pinched the bridge of his nose in an attempt to quell the headache that had been plaguing him since he woke up that morning. Or rather, since he got out of bed. He’d barely slept all night.
“Callie, Page Six is hardly news,” he said, signaling the flight attendant. “An aspirin, please,” he said to the tall young man.
“It’s on TMZ, actually,” said Callie Holmes. “But I’m guessing you already know about it.” She was sitting across him, reading the last two week’s Asian stock reports on her Macbook.
They were on one of Sebastian’s Bombardier Global private jets, heading to Beijing. Elton Lowry, Mattheson’s World Services EVP, was behind Callie, chowing down a late lunch of lobster and quiche. Three accountants and four lawyers were on that same flight, currently busy going over the contracts and numbers. Callie’s, Sebastian’s and Elton’s personal assistants were in another cabin, fielding their bosses’ emails.
Sebastian took the aspirin and washed it down with a glass of sparkling water. It was his third aspirin that day, and he only felt slightly better than he did at breakfast.
Callie bringing up the issue with Erika wasn’t helping either. The PR department had informed him of the “news” report on a couple of gossip websites, and they had all decided to not give any official comments on it.
It was not the first time Sebastian had been involved with a celebrity, but his past lovers have all been discrete, respectful of his desire to retain his privacy. There was no doubt Erika was behind this media mess. Her PR company would officially deny a relationship between her and Sebastian, and then feed misinformation to whatever gossip rag was willing to print it.
He got a text message from her that morning.
Thank you for the lovely evening. Enjoy China. Dinner when you get back? P.S. I won’t be wearing anything under my dress next time.
How Erika knew about his trip, Sebastian had no idea. He’d already had one of his assistants look into it. However, he did allow himself a begrudging admiration for the girl. While he abhorred her dishonesty, he couldn’t help acknowledge her tenacity to get what she wanted.
He wasn’t quite sure why he was resisting the woman’s charms. She was beautiful, sexy, and accomplished. And from what she’d told him last night, she was willing to do anything for him — sexually, at least.
It was sheer stubbornness on his part, holding out for Victoria. He was torturing himself trying to find a way to have what he couldn’t. She was an employee, a woman he shouldn’t even be thinking about outside of work. Especially since she was apparently also seeing somebody else.
Sebastian’s jaw clenched. The image of Victoria surrendered and pliant in her boyfriend’s arms was burned into his memory. He had spent the entire night before sleepless, bothered by alternate thoughts of what she and her boyfriend might be doing at that very moment, and what Sebastian longed to do to her.
In Sebastian’s waking dreams, it was Victoria telling him she would let him do anything he wanted to her. It was Victoria who was desperately trying to undress him and begging him to fuck her.
He never replied to the other woman’s message. If Erika Daniels wanted him, she would have to try a lot harder.
***
Victoria had that Saturday off, so she had set herself a goal that day to finish writing at least one chapter of her novel, after she was done with laundry and housecleaning. So when 7 p.m. rolled around, she was justifiably horrified to realize all she’d done since five o’clock was Google Erika Daniels on her iPad, and read everything she could about the singer.
Cursing, she immediately deleted her search history and closed her browser.
“Where’ve you been?” Nicolette said. She’d just come back from yoga to find her roommate on the couch, furiously typing on her laptop. “I’ve been texting you since six. “
“I didn’t hear my phone,” Victoria said. She got up to look for her cellphone, and found it lying on top of the fridge, where she put it before doing the dishes. “Oh crap, the battery’s dead. I forgot to plug it in, sorry. Was it urgent?”
“Damn right it was.” Nicolette put down the paper bags she was carrying on the table behind Victoria’s laptop. “I was getting Mexican, and I didn’t know if you wanted a burrito or a taco.”
“Please tell me you got both.” Victoria plugged in her phone, and went over to open the paper bag. She was starving. She hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, having forgotten lunch altogether.
“Of course I did. What are you doing tonight?” Nicolette disappeared into her room.
“Nothing,” Victoria replied, her mouth full of beans and rice. “What about you?”
“I have work,” her roommate said, speaking loudly so Victoria could hear her from outside the bedroom. “That was in one of the text messages I sent you.”
Still eating, Victoria turned on her phone. It was still plugged in its charger but there would be enough juice in it that she could turn it on.
There were a few text messages from Nicolette. And one from a number not in her phonebook, timestamped at two p.m.
Busy? — Ardan
Victoria checked her missed calls, panicking slightly. She had two from the same number, one at three p.m., and another at six. From Ardan.
She was trying to decide whether she should call back right away or wait till he called again, when she got another message.
Look, I have this work thing in Santa Monica, and I have to drive over there tonight. But if I could see you for a few minutes, I’m parked on the street outside your apartment right now. If you can’t or don’t want to come down, just ignore this message and I’ll be gone in five minutes. — Ardan
Victoria hit the call button.
Ardan answered on the first ring. “Victoria—”
“I’m coming down.”
Victoria was breathless as she stepped out of the building a minute later. He was waiting for her below the front steps, his hands in his jeans pockets, a hopeful smile on his face.
They both started speaking at the same time.
“I’m sorry I didn’t answer—”
“Did you get my messages—”
After a moment’s silence, they burst out laughing.
“I’m sorry, you go first,” he said.
“My battery died,” she said. “My phone battery, I mean. I wasn’t ignoring your calls.”
He looked relieved. “I was afraid you’d think I was stalking you.”
“Come to think of it,” Victoria said, frowning, “calling me up while standing outside my building is kind of creepy.”
“I was hoping I was cute enough that you’d overlook that.”
She pretended to look him over. “Hmmmm... It’s possible. So I think I’ll let that slide for now.”
“Thank you.” He grinned.
God, his smile could bring any woman to her knees, Victoria thought. She looked down nervously, and blushed as she realized she was wearing her housecleaning clothes — an old shirt with a tear in one of the sleeves, and tiny denim shorts with frayed edges.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “If I’d known you were coming, I would’ve gotten dressed.”
The way Ardan’s eyes raked over her legs and her torso before they settled back on her face made her whole body warm. “So that outfit wasn’t for my benefit then?”
“No!” she said. “I mean ... I was cleaning.” Way to go, Slade. Because bringing up the topic of chores with a guy is really sexy.
“Would you like to come up for a bite?” she said, trying to change the topic. “We have Mexican.”
“I don’t have a lot of time right now, I’m sorry.”
“Oh.” She tried not to sound too disappointed.
“But I’ll be back on Wednesday,” he said softly, taking a step closer. “May I take you out to dinner on Wednesday, Victoria?”
A smile slowly spread across her face. “I would love that.”