Confrontation
Lucy
Charlotte Rampling lived in a fifth floor walk up apartment on the edge of the Gold Coast of Chicago.
No wonder the bitch had such great legs!
I pounded on her door for over five minutes before I heard the scrape of a chain being slid back.
She opened the door in just a short t-shirt and pink panties, her hair the proverbial rat’s nest, eyeliner smudged.
But that only made the woman look like a supermodel doing a Calvin Klein shoot.
I hated her even more.
“You really are something, pipsqueak.” She stretched and then yawned. “I was having the best dream before you started that annoying woodpecker shit.”
There were so many things I wanted to shout at her, but what came out was, “You big, stupid… liar-face!”
I pulled out my copy of Commons Magazine and almost hit her in the nose with it, like she was a bad dog.
Thankfully I didn’t do that—I would never live that down. Instead I held it up to her and said. “This piece of crap is all lies. You need to print a retraction right now!”
She looked at me nonplussed. “It doesn’t work that way, sweet cheeks.”
I had the urge again to roll up the magazine and bop her in the nose with it. “Why the hell not?”
She sighed, leaning sleepily against the door. “I write for a print magazine, a monthly, not some web-rag. So there are no immediate retractions.”
Oh…
“And I wouldn’t do it even if I could.” She pointed lazily at the magazine in my hand. “Every word in there is the truth.”
I held it up at her again. “No, it’s not!”
She raised a sculpted eyebrow at me. “Okay, what did I write that wasn’t the truth?”
I felt my face start to burn. I swallowed hard and tried to speak in a measured, confident tone.
“I am not in love with Dante… with Mr. Saint James. And he is not in love with me.”
She let out a derisive little snort. “Really?”
I stood up straighter. “Yes. Our relationship is purely professional.”
Charlotte pursed her lips and pulled them to the side as if she was pondering something.
There was a little beep from somewhere back in her apartment.
“Oh, finally…” She turned around and padded barefoot back into her apartment.
“We’re not done here!” I yelled at her.
“Then come in, cupcake, and shut the door.”
Grudgingly, I followed her into her apartment, obediently shutting the door behind me.
Her apartment was a big loft, everything on the same floor, no walls cordoning off the space.
Charlotte Rampling was standing in a dinky little kitchenette, pouring herself some coffee into an Eeyore mug. I cringed as she drank it piping hot and black.
Her eyes brightened and she looked at me with a mixture of annoyance and surprise.
“I’m useless without my coffee.”
I could relate. I’d tried to cut caffeine out of my life a few times, but… well, I lived off the stuff.
“Where were we?” she asked, and then nodded to herself. “Oh, yes… you’re in denial.”
Denial? “What?”
“You heard me, sweet cheeks.”
“I am not in denial, and quit giving me nicknames! You used my name in your poisoned pen article, so use it!”
She did that little scoffing snort thing again.
“And quit being a full of herself…” Say it! “Bitch!”
She moved over to a cluttered glass topped kitchen table and sat down. “You are adorable when you’re riled up.”
She opened the laptop that sat on the table, and after it whirred to life she clicked on the mouse as she said, “I knew the instant I met you that you were hopelessly in love with Dante… Mr. Saint James.” She pointedly gave me a look, and then went on. “But then I started getting the feeling, from the things he was doing to me, that he was imagining someone else in my place.”
“That’s ridiculous…” My heart was beating so darn fast.
“I thought that too. He’s with me, up in that swank penthouse, wining and dining me, bending me over his desk, tying me to his bed with silk ropes—”
“I read the goddamn article!” Boy, that was louder than I was going for.
Her little grin when she looked up at me was infuriating. “And then this happened.”
She hit a button on her computer and I heard a woman and man moaning and groaning in the obvious throes of sex.
I dropped the magazine and covered my mouth with my hands. My god, she’d taped Dante and her having sex!
I was about to scream at her to turn it off—and then I was going to wring her neck—when their voices came to a crescendo, dropping off as they obviously had climaxed.
And then I heard Dante say, “Lucy…”
My hands dropped to my sides and my mouth fell open.
Charlotte Rampling slid her finger gingerly over the laptop mouse and Dante’s voice repeated, “Lucy…”
She hadn’t lied.
I was hopelessly in love with Dante Saint James. I had been since the moment I’d interviewed for the job as his personal assistant. And I’d been falling slowly but surely deeper in love with him every day since.
And he had called out my name when he was…
Oh god…
I started breathing hard, like I’d been running for my life in a slasher movie.
Oh god, oh god, ohgodohgodohgod!
“Are you alright?” Charlotte asked.
I nodded, but in truth I was starting to hyperventilate.
“Do you have asthma or something?”
I shook my head, but I was getting dizzy.
Charlotte got up and pulled me over to a second chair at her cluttered kitchen table, then she went over to a cabinet and rifled around until she found a plastic grocery bag. She handed it to me and said, “Breathe into this. You’re hyperventilating.”
I took the bag and brought it to my lips, trying to slow my breathing, but only making myself breathe even harder.
I hadn’t done this since high school… okay, two or three times in college—but not since then.
And here I was, at it again.
Charlotte leaned down and looked up into my eyes, her hand on my shoulder. “Go slow… it’s okay.”
I shrugged off her hand and closed my eyes.
This wasn’t happening. This was all a bad dream and I would wake up any second now.
Just like I did every time I dreamed I showed up to work completely naked.
I always woke up at the most embarrassing moment.
I opened my eyes.
I was still in Charlotte’s shitty apartment, breathing into a blue plastic shopping bag that smelled of bananas.
Oh hell!
I pulled the bag from my lips and glared at Charlotte. “You taped having sex with Dante?”
Her full lips curved into a wicked, shameless smile. “I have video too.”
“You bitch!”
She started laughing as she stood back up and snagged her coffee mug. “I’m kidding. I’m a reporter, not a porn auteur…” She tapped her chipped polished fingernail against her mug—something we had in common. “Though, I really should. You should see the guys that pass through my door.”
The woman was unbelievable. “So why were you taping it?”
“I’m a reporter. That’s what we do.”
She sat down again and clicked another button. Suddenly a familiar voice started reading aloud some very familiar words. “Daniel plucked the memo pad from my hands and then grabbed my shoulders with his big, strong hands.”
Oh no… that was from my book Daniel’s Desire, the audio version read by an actress named Christie Lando, who I kept busy with my books on a full time basis.
“His cold blue eyes had warmed to the blue of a summer sky,” Christie went on before Charlotte stopped the recording.
“This is what they call circumstantial evidence,” she said, leaning in as she said, “But I think we both know it’s just the tip of the iceberg. You’ve got a pretty lucrative career built on the Billionaire Romance genre. I bet every Billionaire hottie in your books is based on Dante in one way or another.”
I stared at her, but it had no heat. I was exposed.
“Wonder who all those perky, polite little heroines are?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t wrap my mind around this.
“My only question is,” she said, walking slowly toward me, “when were you going to tell him?”
Never…