“I wasn’t followed,” he assures me. “And I valet parked almost a mile away at a twenty-four-hour strip club. If there’s a tracker on my car, that’s where they’ll think I’ve gone.”
Then he gestures to the drinks and a brown paper bag sitting on the coffee table. “I picked up some coffees and breakfast tacos down the street, in case you’d been too distracted for your regular brunch order.”
“From Chico’s?” Shiloh dives into the brown bag. “Oh yeah. Forget what I said about him before, B. This guy is…” With both hands clutching aluminum wr*pped tacos, she manages to give two thumbs-up.
“…what you said about me before?” Hadrian shakes his head. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. Get some food, Brystin.”
I’m too hyper focused to eat and hyped up with nervous energy that has me pacing the room. “What do we do, Hadrian? How do people know? Is this going to f**k up the show? Is my contract going to be canceled? Will you get kicked off the board? I thought you said you controlled the news. Isn’t the City Post an SNC paper? They had Hunter’s quote front and center.”
“Whoa, there. That’s a lot at once.” He seems relatively unconcerned with getting to my questions though as he opens a coffee lid. “Two hazelnut creams, no sugar, right?”
I pause my pacing to exchange a glance with Shiloh. “Um…yes.” I can’t ever remember having coffee with him. “Do I just read like the two cream no sugar type?”
“It was your breakfast order every day at Adeline.” He must notice my gaping mouth when he puts the doctored coffee in my hand. “I was curious, okay? I asked the staff.”
I’ve been with Elvis for how long, and he still sometimes forgets I prefer hazelnut.
It means nothing, it means nothing.
And this isn’t the time to get all puppy dog on him anyway.
I take a sip of the coffee, and proceed with my badgering. “Do we need to release a statement? Should I be getting in touch with the PR team? Or is that something Elvis should do?”
Since I haven’t made a move to grab a taco, Hadrian unwr*ps one for me and puts it in my hand while I throw questions at him. Despite being too cool for school at the moment, I don’t miss his flinch at Elvis’s name.
“Brystin, sit down. Eat your taco. While you eat, I’ll tell you why everything is going to be fine.”
I don’t think I should trust him.
I don’t know him well enough, and he has less at risk in this whole thing than I do. Logic says I should watch my own back. I should look out for my own interests. He’s likely doing that for himself.
But I’m a problem because I do trust him. For no reason other than that he makes me feel taken care of. He makes me feel safe.
I sit down next to Shiloh and start eating the taco. I take a delicious bite. “Barbacoa. Nice choice.”
“I got picadillo.” Shiloh hands it out for me to take a bite. “Good, right?”
“Oh, it is. I’ve never been brave enough to order that one.”
“I got a variety.” Hadrian sits across from me, watching me carefully. “You’ll keep eating if I start talking?”
I nod, my mouth full of egg and meat and cheese.
“All right then. Let me go back.” He puts a fi**ger up in the air. “We don’t really do anything.” Another fi**ger pops up, and so on as he counts. “They don’t know anything—they’re sensationalizing because Hunter made a stupid comment that he knew would be taken as fact instead of opinion. This doesn’t f**k up your contract. The show is definitely not canceled. I doubt I’ll get kicked off the board over this. If I interfered with every news report about me in the City Post, I would get kicked off the board. If we released a statement it would mean we consider this an issue, which we don’t. I’ve already spoken to my cousin Scott who is in charge of the PR team, which Elvis should have done, but maybe he’s been too busy to see the news yet.”
Without thinking, I wince at the last comment, realizing what he’s implying.
Hadrian clears his throat. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”
“Eh,” Shiloh says, her mouth full. She takes a sip of coffee to swallow it down. “I think it was called for. By the way, if you’re curious, I take mine black.”
I almost spit with laughter.
But I quickly sober up again. “What do you mean we don’t do anything? This undermines the entire brand that I’ve worked so hard to build. No one will tune in.”
“Everyone will tune in,” he insists.
“Not for the right reasons.”
“Maybe not at first. But I wouldn’t have hired you if I didn’t think you would prove yourself as soon as you opened that beautiful mouth.”
I try very hard to ignore the palpitations happening in my heart.
“Look, Brystin. You’re going to get criticized no matter what. The more successful you are, the more criticism. A lot of it, unfounded. A good deal of it legit too, but if you react to it all the same, no one knows the difference. What matters is that you continue to stay focused on your goals. The rest is noise.”
“‘The rest is noise,’” I repeat.
“Loud noise, sometimes, but noise all the same.” He smiles, and I swear it’s like he still has that toy p**ssed against my c**t, the way my female parts light up. “Have you ever tried Googling my name?”
I have, of course. There were a lot of scandals, but nothing I can remember off the top of my head. Which is maybe his point.
Next to me, Shiloh types something into her phone. “‘SNC Continues History of Nepotism by Giving Primetime Show to CEO’s Latest Girlfriend.’ That’s what comes up when I Google.”
He laughs. “Well, today, yes. Next week, it will be something else. The world doesn’t burn down. I’ve still got my job. You’re still going to be America’s next top journalist.”
I stopped crying a while ago now, but tears of a different kind prick at my eyes.
Shiloh turns to me, pointing a fi**ger in Hadrian’s direction. “You should consider losing that other guy and hooking up with this one.”
I cover my face with my hand. “Shiloh!”
“Just sayin’.”
The worst part is that when I dare look at Hadrian to see his reaction, he doesn’t seem at all appalled. Maybe he’s ignoring her comment completely.
But then he says, “You’re moving up, Brystin.”
And he could very well be continuing his pep talk from before, but I’m fairly sure he intends the double meaning, and now I’m starting to wonder…if I fall for this guy—is there actually a chance he might fall for me too?
“I have one,” Shiloh pipes up. “Hunter Seymour made some frank comments regarding the reason you were hired for this show. Do you have a response?”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.
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