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I check the satchel that I just pulled off the blackmailing journalist. An uncomfortable flashback of how black his blood appeared as it pooled beside him appears in my mind, unbidden. It’s rather distasteful.
Then again, I’m still a bit shaken after watching him die.
I sift through his bag carefully, seeing that he left behind two spiral-bound notebooks, a thin silver laptop, his camcorder, and a small mini-cassette tape recorder. Interesting that he would have all of these devices even though one would think a cell phone would suffice in this day and age.
Closing the satchel, I sigh silently and turn my eyes toward the window.
When Ella begins to drum her fingers on the leather seat between us, I snake out a hand and catch hers. She jumps and yanks her hand back as if I had burned her, blinking at me as if I had somehow just appeared beside her.
“Stop fidgeting,” I intone.
She looks at me, her dark eyes rimmed with long lashes looking impossibly wide. “What?”
Her accent is so very American, with elongated vowels and short, rounded consonants. My lips flatten as I take in her simple white sundress, her ample amount of luscious skin at her collarbones and her miles of perfectly toned legs.
God, she looks so young. So very young, so tempting, so very off-limits. Her face is so open and earnest, things about her that I desired mere hours ago.
Now, I feel that it’s only right that I warn her. Leaning toward her, I snare her hand again and make heavy eye contact with her.
“I don’t think you understand just who I am. I own a company that employs almost three quarters of the world’s journalists and news anchors. That includes newspapers and news channels all over the globe. If any reporter gets so much as a hint that there is a story between us, they will rip us apart in search of it. The press are vicious and cruel but ultimately, they are smarter than I give them credit for. It’s important to be on your guard every fucking minute of every day.”
“Is this all because of you? Because you are a married man who has a lot of money?”
Flicking my hand in a dismissive gesture, I narrow my gaze at her. “It’s not the money that’s at issue here. It’s the power that I wield. I’m a wealthy CEO of a media empire with close family connections to the future prime minister of England.”
She frowns. “And if you were single, there would be no story for anyone to report. But you are a married man.”
I can feel a shiver of heat on the back of my neck. It’s been a long time since anyone has made me feel this way, as if I were a naughty little boy.
“That’s not the whole picture. And for your information, I’m separated from my wife.”
Ella studies me for a moment. “Maybe we should tell a reporter that. Get out in front of it so that we can’t be blackmailed.”
My eyebrows rise. Frankly, I’m surprised that she would already have a strategy in mind for spinning the truth.
“That’s not an option here.”
She gives me a quizzical look then shakes her head. “I don’t understand why you would say that.”
I give her a thin, humorless smile. “You’ll see why in just a minute.”
Ella opens her mouth to reply but the driver rolls down the partition at that moment.
“Sir? We are about to arrive at Teterboro and it looks like there are a lot of press waiting outside the gates of the airplane’s hangar.”
Ella clamps her jaw shut and places her hand against the window, looking out. I keep my eyes trained on her as the limo begins to slow. Ahead of us, I can make out a howling, seething pack of reporters, each one a neat set with a microphone and cameraman at the ready. Press vans litter both sides of the road, antennae all waiting, hungry and ready to transmit the tiniest scrap of information to the waiting world.
Ella tenses up and presses her face to the window as the hangar’s gate slowly begins to open. The reporters begin closing in on our vehicle, pounding on the windows, shouting into their microphones.
“Oh my god,” she mouths, gaping as the limo starts plowing its way slowly through the crowd. She looks at me, clutching her necklace. “They are putting a lot of trust in your driver by assuming that he’s not just going to floor the engine and drive into them.”
Shrugging a shoulder, I sit back with a heavy sigh. “This is the least amount of press we are going to get from here on out. When we go across the pond, the rules about how the press operates will change. Not to mention the public audience’s interest will immediately quadruple. It’s best to be prepared.”
Ella shoots me a helpless look. “Why would you willingly subject yourself to this? It’s like torture.”
I just give her another shrug.
“Welcome to fame, sweetheart.”
