Chapter Six
Chase
Hunger kept me from dozing like Abigail and Luca. I left them cuddling, sheets tangled all around and ordered room service. I got enough for all three of us in case they woke up, grabbed a robe and stepped out onto the balcony to try and puzzle out the solution to our situation.
Abigail wanted her life choice accepted by her peers and not used against her or her father. I understood it. But I wasn’t sure it was realistic. I didn’t think anyone would be accepting of three people as a committed serious relationship. Still, even if I couldn’t get people to accept us, I’d make damn sure no one would ever use it against her again.
The fallout from last year’s scandal was minimal for us— further proof of a double standard between the sexes. No one called our families demanding money so our faces and “virtue”, whatever that was, wasn’t tainted. No one even cared about the two bachelors in question. They only ever cared who the “dirty, dirty, debutante at the center of the menage” was. And that was a direct quote from the article.
It still made me so angry that in this day in age consenting adults couldn’t do what the hell they wanted without being ridiculed. Before Luca and I discovered we enjoyed sharing, it was impossible for us to date. We’d be at each other’s throats over it which eventually turned off the girl we were fighting over. Not right away. No. For a little while she’d like all the attention. She enjoyed the fact that two men were fighting over her. At first. But once Luca and I actually came to blows over her, she always split. It was hard for a long time. Until we realized that sharing was the ultimate compromise.
We thought it was just a phase. That eventually our tastes would change and we’d stop being attracted to the same women. But it never happened. Luca and I kept falling for the same girl but it always turned out the same way. It was fun but not much else. We’d never found a girl that could hold our interest or even a conversation really until we met Abigail.
I knew the moment I saw her that she was going to change our lives. Luca and I nudged each other at the same time and asked each other the same thing when she walked in the ballroom last year. “Do you see her?” We were as good as done that very moment. We spent the rest of the evening transfixed by her, wanting to know everything about her and relishing the attention she gave us.
It was our fault our photo was taken that night. If we hadn’t been so anxious to have her, if we’d been thinking with the head on our shoulders we wouldn’t have whisked her to the closed-off ballroom. We would have taken her home and had our way with her there. But we just couldn’t resist her charm and composure and her intellect. She could hold her own on any topic we threw at her. Plus it didn’t hurt that she was drop-dead gorgeous. No, that was definitely a plus. This whole mess, the disgusting tabloid photo, the fortune her father spent keeping her name and face out of it, and the subsequent separation was actually all our fault. If we’d only taken her home...
A knock on the door kept me from continuing to blame myself. I stepped back in the room and saw Abigail and Luca getting up as well. “It’s just room service,” I said and opened the door wide to let attendant wheel in the cart. Before I could get out the words “come in” the door slammed all the way open, cracking against the wall. I jumped out of the way and looked at the room service guy.
Except it wasn’t a room service guy. It was just a guy. A guy who happened to have an iPhone held sideways like he was filming us.
“Nope. Not on my watch,” I said and grabbed the guy by the throat, pulling him the rest of the way into the room. Luca was at my side in moments wrestling the phone out of his hand and body slamming him into a chair.
“What’s the deal, man?” Luca asked. “Who’s paying you for this footage, huh?”
The guy shook his head. Luca and I both stepped closer, hovering over him. “See, the way I figure is you’ve got two choices. You can tell us who sent you, or we can rough you up a little bit and then you can tell us who sent you.”
I snickered at Luca’s tough guy impersonation. He was pretty good at it.
“Actually,” Abigail said as she slipped back into her dress and handed Luca his pants. “There’s a third option. You two aren’t going to lay a finger on him. We’re the victims here and you’re not going to muddy the water by beating up this scrawny little shit. Everyone get dressed. I have a plan.”
The guy looked at each of us. “Well, I’m just gonna be on my way then.” He slowly rose from the seat Luca had slammed him in.
“Sit down,” Abigail ordered. “You’re not going anywhere, you little fuck. Just sit there and be quiet.” Luca and I just stared at her. If I hadn’t already been in love that would have been the straw that pushed me over. “What time is it?” she asked me.
“Um, a little after two in the morning.”
“Good, that should work. Luca, I want you to call the front desk. Tell them we need the hotel manager in the main ballroom immediately.” As he followed Abigail’s instruction I got dressed and waited, one eye on the guy. “Okay, let’s head down.”
I grabbed him by the shirt collar and followed Abigail out to the elevator. “Forgive me, my love but what are we doing exactly.”
She smirked at me. “More than one way to subvert a scandal, isn’t there?”