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My dad flashes in my mind, and immediately, I gain enough clarity to remember that Alex has still not said what it is he wants from me.
“What do you need?” I rasp, my voice in shreds. Every cell of my body wants him to answer my question with one singular word:you.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to hold on to an image of my dad walking in on us. It doesn’t work. Not when I’m also wondering what it would feel like if Alex’s fingers slipped lower.
“I need you,” he grinds, and I open my eyes to look at his perfect, angular face, “to pretend to be my fake girlfriend. At least, until all of this blows over.”
Oof. That works.
His words pulverize my frenzied desire into a heap of ash.
“What?” I’m too surprised to remember to never scream, to speak in the subdued tone I’ve imposed on myself.
Alex is staring at me with remorseless eyes that still burn for me. “Blake’s idea,” he says, as though that explains everything. “The press keeps picking on me, and Janice seems tobe nowhere near done. If I get someone with your kind of image to date me, then—”
“My image?” I cut in.
“You know,” he says, with a shrug of his broad shoulders. “Good girl, conservative. Blake thinks it would be nice if someone like you went out with me for the cameras. To forget the stench of the last few weeks.”
I’m barely listening. It hits me that Alex was trying to seduce me earlier. Moving closer to me, rubbing up against me . . . He’d thought that getting me to want him would make it more likely I’d say yes. He would not have tried that tactic in front of my brother, which is why he wanted Blake to leave us. After that dastardly massage session, Alex had recognized my fleeting attraction to him.
He’d figured he could get me to say yes the same way he got dozens, probably hundreds of women to do anything for him: by getting them on the hook for sex.
He played me. And almost won.
He’d also had the audacity to think I’d do him a favor by loaning him myself—or rather, the version of myself that I’d tirelessly built over two decades—and that I would be ready to keep up that image for him in front of the cameras, for nothing in return.
Impulsively, I’m about to tell him to go fuck himself. But then, I restrain myself. I don’t curse, at least, as far as anyone knows. I hold back the storm of rage and channel it into the most professional, innocent smile I can muster.
“You don’t need my image.”
He raises a brow. “What do you mean?”
I try not to dwell too much on how I’d rather be clawing his face up than having a pleasant conversation with him. “You don’t need anyone’s help,” I say, remembering to mutter my words now. “All you need to do is what you’ve always done.” This is probably the longeststretch of words I’ve ever said to him, but I do want to drag this out.
A look of anger and impatience flashes in his eyes, making me feel mollified. “Again, what do you mean?”
“All you need to do is go to Janice and fuck her into keeping her mouth shut. If that doesn’t work, go to every presswoman’s apartment you can find and fucktheminto not saying anything mean about you. Seducing women into doing your bidding has always worked, hasn’t it?”
With a tepid smile in place, I walk away.
CHAPTER 5
BRITNEY
“Sweetheart, I need you to accompany me to the Furmans tonight.”
My entire body buzzes with dread. This is it. Tonight’s the night.
I’d been waiting a while for this invitation. From the moment I heard through the Philly Flyers grapevine that Andy Furman was throwing a huge celebration for his sixty-fifth birthday party, I knew my dad would ask me to accompany him. Even though it’s impossible to prove it, I know he’s been working hard at trying to convince Andy that I’m the woman for his son.
There is no concrete plan yet. My father is going to broach the topic with me tonight. He’s not going to demand outright I marry Theodore . . . not yet, anyway. But he’ll lay the foundation in some way. Maybe introduce the idea that becoming the wife of a billionaire is safe.
I’m grateful I uncovered his scheme. Otherwise, I would have been surprised and overwhelmed by his manipulations. Even though I would have stopped short once he brought up Theodore as a suitable candidate for marriage.
This way, I’ll nip this whole thing in the bud.
I nod in agreement, resigned he’ll soon mention another gown of my mother’s. She certainly had a lot of dresses. That, or my dad discreetly shops on Etsy.
