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“Do you remember how I told you about the guy I met when I was in Laguna Beach on assignment? I didn’t say anything when I got home, because it turned out he didn’t tell me who he really was. I found out after I had slept with him that he was Bryce Royal, one of the owners of the resort.”
Graces eyes grew wide. “You mean the Royal family as in Royal Resorts. As in the House of Royal. As in…you slept with a billionaire?”
Vivian nodded. “That wasn’t on my bingo card, but yes. The second I found out, I bailed and got the first flight home.”
“But you had already told him about the dating app. Ouch, Vivian.”
Hindsight was a bitch. “I told him about Pete. And then, yada yada.” Vivian waved her hand about. “I gave the resort a less than stellar review. Bryce must have read it, seen my name, then signed up for the dating site. He thought to put little old me firmly in my place.”
Which he had most certainly done. Her chances of getting any sort of date from the millionaire dating site now lay in ashes. She might as well have flushed a thousand dollars down the drain.
Grace climbed off the sofa and got to her feet. She looked ready to punch something or someone. “Sheesh, Viv he puts the bilious in billionaire.”
Vivian snorted at the wry joke. It was either that or crying. And she was well past the point of sobbing her heart out over men.
“So what are we going to do about it?” asked Grace. Her friend was not the kind of girl who took this sort of thing lying down. Grace’s father had broken through many glass ceilings on his way to becoming one of the East Coast’s richest African Americans, and he had instilled in his daughter a strong fighting spirit.
If this had happened to Grace, she would’ve been on the phone to her lawyer and Bryce Royal would have had a stack of legal papers in his hands well before the next morning. But Vivian didn’t have access to those sorts of resources, and truth be told she didn’t want to fight Bryce. She simply wanted to go on with her quiet life and continue to travel the country writing balanced stories about the hotel industry, penning reviews which people could trust. She didn’t want to get tangled up in a fight with a billionaire.
I gave his resort a fair review.
Bryce clearly hadn’t seen it that way.
She rose from the sofa. “I’m going to bed, that’s what I am going to do. I have an early flight to Galveston in the morning. Lionel wants my next review by mid-week.”
“So you are just going to let this millionaire douchebag treat you like that?”
Vivian nodded. “Actually, I’m pretty sure he is a billionaire.” She had checked Bryce out online while sitting at LAX waiting for her flight home. “Then again, it’s all just numbers.”
Grace slowly shook her head. Her housemate wasn’t foolish enough to try and convince Vivian to do anything further about Bryce. “Behind those numbers lies power.”
“And private jets.”
Her secret dream, one she had never shared with anyone was to ride in a private jet. Just once in her life, she wanted to see how the super-rich lived.
“My dad says they are overrated,” offered Grace.
Vivian headed for the door of her bedroom. She was tired. Now was not the time to mention to her best friend that at least her father could draw on real life experience for his opinion.
“Night, Grace. I’ll shoot you a text once I land in Texas.”
“Night, sweetie.”
She would stand by her review of the Laguna Beach resort, and Bryce Royal could go to the devil.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-TWO
There were few spare seats around the boardroom table at the Royal Resorts office. Bryce took a copy of the agenda from Janice with a wry smile. Farther down from him sat Jordan. His brother’s eyes were cast down, studying his pile of papers with far too much interest. And while sympathy stabbed at Bryce’s heart, in the current situation he was powerless to do or say anything to help.
The other night in his brother’s apartment Jordan’s odd behavior had hinted at something being wrong in his life. And while they had reaffirmed their brotherly pact to support one another, Bryce was finding it difficult. He was torn between duty and loyalty.
Edward swept into the room and headed straight to the top of the table. He was followed by several other people, a couple whom Bryce didn’t recognize. He wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t been back in the New York office long enough to learn the names of all the new hires.
I should introduce myself to those people. They are obviously keeping their distance since they don’t know me.
Bryce’s thoughts of hosting a small in-house meet and greet disappeared the second he spotted what was tucked under his father’s arm. It seemed that wherever Edward went so did the now crumpled travel magazine. The agenda had many other items on it, but he had a horrid suspicion that Janice’s carefully crafted agenda was about to become meaningless.
All heads turned as the magazine landed on the table with a loud slap. “Laguna Beach is an unmitigated disaster,” announced Edward.
