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‘Where did you say she works?’ he asked, doing a search for the location of the offices as Sam told him again. ‘I’ll go and see her, get her to delete the tweet.’ And while he was at it, he could give Tally Gladstone a lesson on the evils of social media—and screwing with people’s privacy.
‘Buddy, getting the tweet deleted isn’t gonna do you much good now.’
‘Why not?’ Brent asked, the tsunami of bad karma washing up his neck to incinerate his scalp.
‘Because you can’t delete the ret
weets.’
‘I can’t?’ He groaned.
‘Nuh-uh,’ Sam said, sounding as if he was still enjoying himself. ‘But don’t feel too bad—one of the hashtags is kinda cool.’
‘Hashtags? Plural?’ He was only vaguely aware what a hashtag was, but the creeping sense of dread had him opening his mouth to ask the obvious next question. ‘What hashtags?’
‘I think the one that’s driving all the retweets is #EpicHotLover. No wonder all the ladies want to find you. You’re a legend in your own laptime, bud.’
‘Shut the fuck up,’ he snarled at Sam, but his friend didn’t seem to be able to stop himself from coughing up a lung with laughter. ‘I’m gonna kill her,’ he added.
‘Good luck with that.’ Sam sounded doubtful. ‘I think you messed with the wrong woman this time.’
Brent shoved the phone in his back pocket and marched out of his office, ready to commit murder now as the vein in his temple throbbed. Tally had set him up. Had taken what he had to offer and then used it against him. It wasn’t that she’d made him look like a jerk to all her followers—he didn’t know any of them, so why should he give a crap what they thought—it was that she’d taken what they’d had, what they’d done together in private, and then made it public. Maybe he’d cheapened it too by flipping out and mistaking her for a hooker. But hell, that had been an honest mistake. The fact that it hurt to know that Tally had screwed him almost as royally as his ex-wife—and after only knowing him for one night—only humiliated him more.
‘I’m taking lunch, Jenna,’ he shouted to his PA, who had her phone at her ear, as he strode past her desk. ‘I’ve got some important business to attend to. Cancel any meetings for the rest of the afternoon.’
He didn’t know how long it was going to take to find Tally’s offices in Shoreditch, but once he did, the Blind Date Bitch was gonna find out she’d messed with the wrong man.
Chapter Eight
#NewRule: Be warned: hot tempers and confined spaces don’t mix... Unless you’re in the mood for superhot make-up sex. #Justsaying
Tally frowned at her computer screen as yet another speculative tweet appeared in the #EpicHotLoverHunt stream and her original tweet continued to clock up retweets at a rate that hadn’t slowed for over three hours. Her stomach contracted. She’d deleted the stupid post half an hour after sending it, once she’d arrived at the office and realised the furore it had caused. How was she supposed to know that approximately 80 per cent of her followers were so desperate to find a decent Hot Lover they didn’t care if he was an alpha hole?
But as the retweets mounted and the search for Brent’s true identity escalated, her anxiety increased. Maybe the guy had proved himself to be a class-A bastard. But publishing his picture online might not have been her smoothest move. Not only could she be open to a liable suit if he was identified, she wasn’t entirely sure even he deserved to be the object of an oestrogen explosion of these proportions.
She tried to override the memory of his hand skimming over her stomach as he pressed inside her that last time.
‘Hey, Tal, snap out of it.’ MyPad’s features editor, Jill Clinton, clicked her fingers in front of Tally’s face. ‘What’s so interesting, anyway?’
Tally slapped the lid down on her laptop. ‘Nothing.’
‘Spoil-sport.’ Jill grinned. She was a good boss. Smart, hip, not too much of a slave-driver and usually game for a laugh. But Tally wasn’t sure she’d be grinning if she found out Tally’s hidden identity. Especially now @BlindDateBitch seemed to have morphed, in the space of a single knee-jerk tweet, from being the single woman’s smart-mouth friend into the prime hot lover’s pimp.
‘Marketing rang to say we’ve lost the half-page ad on fifteen.’ Jill got down to business. ‘Kel’s rejigging the page, but could you write up a sidebar to fill the gap on...’ Jill rotated her hand as if trying to conjure up an idea from thin air. ‘Design dos and don’ts for kitchen makeovers, or something like that...basically anything amazing that you can illustrate from our stock photos.’
‘Sure.’ Tally’s brain knotted. Terrific. Just what she needed when the shit was hitting Twitter, her emotions were in turmoil and she’d got about an hour’s sleep last night...real work.
‘Have it on my desk by six. Eight hundred words should do it.’
‘Excuse me, sir, you can’t come in here without an appointment.’ The pained cry from the magazine’s receptionist, Gloria, had them both turning towards the front of the warehouse space that housed MyPad’s offices.
‘Tally Gladstone’s expecting me,’ came the gruff response from the man bearing down on poor Gloria.
‘Who’s he? Please tell me he’s here for a photo shoot? He’s gorgeous.’ Jill’s teasing voice seeped into Tally’s consciousness past the blast of shock as Brent O’Neill headed across the industrial linoleum.
He’s the Epic Hot Lover. And he’s here to bite me.
Tally’s heart smacked into her ribs. Bright blue eyes locked on her burning face and her mind scrambled to come up with a way to avert the disaster.
