Chapter Six
Jacob
“Look at this shit!” Angelo cast down his tablet on the table in front of me, throwing his hands in the air and pacing the room quickly. “You want to explain it?”
I squinted down at the photograph; it could only have been taken a few minutes ago at most. It showed Natalie and I emerging from the elevator, both of us looking like we’d spent the night rolling around in bed together. I mean, we had, but that wasn’t necessarily the image I wanted to project.
“What’s wrong with it?” I shrugged, playing dumb. For a second, I thought steam was about to come pouring out of Angelo’s ears, but he took a deep breath and steadied himself before he lay into me again.
“A bunch of people have seen you out with her,” he waved his hand at the picture, which was being hosted on some low-level gossip site. “They’re starting to think that she’s your girlfriend.”
“So?” I averted my eyes from his. “What if she is?”
“This doesn’t fit with your brand, Jacob, you must be able to see that,” he shook his head.
“You’re not the kind of guy who dates, remember?”
“So just tell people that she’s a reporter and that’s why we’ve been spending so much time together,” I waved my hand. “What’s the big deal?”
“And how are we going to explain why a receptionist tipped off the photogs that you were heading to her room in the middle of the night? And that the two of you didn’t come out till morning and when you did it was looking like…this?” The words tumbled out of his mouth as though he was having a hard time keeping them in, and a patronizing part of me wanted to tell him to just calm down, to take a few deep breaths. But I knew that he needed me to offer up a decent solution. I just couldn’t think of one.
“I’ll be more discreet next time, sorry,” I shrugged again. I was starving, and could seriously have done with a good cup of coffee to set me up for all the travelling we were going to do that day. Maybe I could sneak her on to the private jet? That would make the trip a whole lot more palatable.
“You’re not listening to me,” Angelo spoke again, this time through gritted teeth. I snapped out of my musings about Natalie and finally focused my attention on him.
“What are you saying here?” I flattened my hands on the table and raised my eyebrows at him. “Just tell me straight.”
“You need to dump her,” he replied, drawing his finger over his throat as though he was ordering a hit. “This kind of stuff doesn’t fit with your image. At least until the tour’s done, you need to keep her at arm’s length.”
“Fuck off,” I screwed up my face at the ridiculousness of what he was suggesting. “Are you telling me that you can’t find any way to spin this?”
“Not when I’m managing press for the rest of this tour,” he pointed out. “It’s a few weeks, Jacob. She’ll understand. And if she doesn’t…”
And if she doesn’t, I’ll have lost a chance with one of the only women who’s ever made me feel anything outside of my own selfishness. I stared at him for a moment, trying to figure out what the best course of action was here. And I knew, at once, what I had to do.
“Fuck that,” I shook my head. “I want to be with her.”Angelo rolled his eyes. We had been working together long enough that he didn’t feel the need to hold back anymore. Which was good most of the time, but right now I needed him to be on my side about this.
“Seriously?” he snapped. Maybe the jet-lag was getting to him, but he seemed tired, and it felt like that was affecting his judgement.
“Yeah, seriously.” I clenched my fists. “I’m not listening to this. We can talk about this later.”
“We better,” Angelo replied, and there was a warning tone to his voice that made me want to turn around and give him a serious piece of my mind. But instead, I took a deep breath, turned, and made my way out the door to find Natalie.
When I came across her, she was sitting back from a table in the dining room, plate empty and eyes closed, as though she was recovering from the food-orgy that she had just engaged in. She looked up when I approached and smiled, but that was wiped from her face when she saw the expression on mine.
“What’s wrong?” she demanded, cocking her head at me. I sat down opposite her and looked around, making sure that no one else was snapping pictures of the two of us while we spoke. I leaned in towards her, and she widened her eyes as I got up close.
“Jacob, come on, just tell me what’s going on,” she demanded, sounding nervous.
“I just spoke to my agent,” I explained, already feeling exhausted by the turns the day had taken. “He says that I can’t see you anymore.”
I scanned her face for a reaction but she kept it studiously free of any of expression, as though she was too busy processing the news inside her own head.
“And?” she prompted.
“And what?” I shot back.
“Do you think he’s right?”
“He said that it’s going to get in the way of my…reputation, or some shit.”
“Yeah, they sell the playboy angle pretty hard when it comes to you,” she grinned playfully.
“He seems pretty intent on preserving that,” I shook my head. “I can’t figure it out, you know?”
“I can,” she waved a hand, reaching for the orange juice that was sitting next to her, “They want you under control, right? They want to be able to sell a certain thing about you, and they can’t do that if you pick up a…”
She trailed off, not sure how to fill out the last part of that sentence. I knew how she felt. I had no idea what Natalie was to me, or even what I wanted her to be.
“A whatever,” she continued after a long pause.
“So, you think they’re right?” My stomach dropped. “We shouldn’t see each other?”
“I didn’t say that, now, did I?” she pointed out. “Maybe we could just keep it on the down-low. That’s all.”
“You’d be okay with that?” I frowned. She nodded.
“I mean, I don’t want my editor finding out that I’ve been hooking up with the man that I’m meant to be writing a profile on,” she pointed out.
So…where do we go from here?” I asked, looking down at the table and forcing myself not to reach out and take her hand. Jesus, what was it about this girl? Every time I was in her presence, I found myself having to argue with myself so as not to blow this whole thing wide open.
“Professional in front of everyone else,” she suggested. “Just interviews, nothing more. But when no-one’s looking…”
A smile played on the corner of her lips, and my eyes flicked down to her mouth; I remembered how it had looked when it was wrapped around my cock the night before, and felt some twinge with excitement deep inside of me.
“Does that sound good?” she asked, her voice low and seductive despite the setting we found ourselves in. I nodded slowly.
“Starting now?”
“Starting now,” she confirmed. She leaned back in her seat, satisfied, as if she had just successfully brokered a deal.
“That’s a shame,” I replied with a shrug.
“Why?” she asked, brow furrowing.
“Because I really want to take you back up to my hotel room and fuck you senseless before we get on that plane,” I murmured, before getting to my feet and leaving her sitting there by herself once more. I got to enjoy the look of complete and utter surprise on her face when I glanced over my shoulder, and I had to fight a grin. She had no idea how hard I was going to rock her world in the next few weeks.