4. Laura
laura
. . .
I gripped the unfinished report on Harley Hart in my hands, rage taking over me. It was eating at my insides. Like a virus multiplying over and over again until there was not an ounce of calmness left in my body.
How dare she? How dare anyone?
“I swear I tried to stop them, but there were just so many?—”
I burst through my office, already fuming, but even Ana’s panicked call wasn’t enough to prepare me for the sight.
Every surface was covered.
From the floor to my desk to even the free spaces in my bookshelf, all of it was covered with the same blue roses Harley’s assistant had brought earlier. The normal mahogany and white of the room were splashed in blue.
I couldn’t help but groan when I noticed they even put tiny vases on my windowsill.
This is too much.
I couldn’t even walk to my desk. They just placed them on the floor and created a sea of petals. No reprieve in sight.
They are everywhere .
That was the point.
What had been disguised as gifts was actually a way to annoy me until I finally gave in to her.
She would try to wear me down with the calls. With the gifts. Until I couldn’t get her out of my mind.
Do people really think this type of courting would work? On me?
I scoffed at my own thoughts. A better word for this would be stalking. Harassment . But that was fine. I could do something against that. In my world, I could make them pay for it.
She embodied the kind of person I hated. People who thought they were entitled to a person’s time. Like just because they asked, the entire fucking world would stop turning for them. Like just because they existed, every single thing they ever wanted would be at their fingertips.
Even people.
My chest felt tight. My skin burned. Even just the slight brush of my cashmere sweater against my back and stomach was starting to annoy me. It was out of my hands. She had somehow pushed my once perfectly curated space—my safe space—out of my control.
And the fucking smell.
I had once loved the smell of roses, but this was overpowering, so much so that Ana let out a sneeze at my side. She ruined that for me too.
I held my hand out to Ana, and she placed the small, white envelope on it. Guilt was evident on her face, but at the end of the day, it was Harley’s fault. Ana was just an assistant and no match for the guerrilla tactics she was employing.
“I don’t blame you,” I murmured and looked at her. “People like this… I don’t expect you to go up against them.”
“I know, but I run the front desk. I’m supposed to?—”
“Call me and let me know when things get out of hand,” I said, forcing myself to give her a smile. “And that’s what you did. You did good, okay? No one is mad.”
I held her gaze until she nodded, then turned my attention to the envelope. Another burst of anger washed through me, and I all but ripped it open to look at the small, typed note. She hadn’t even bothered writing it herself. She had it fucking typed.
Lazy and entitled.
I heard you liked the flowers.
That’s all it said. I would respect her more if she’d just written a very straightforward fuck you instead. At least that had some creative flair—and some honesty.
I heard you liked the flowers.
I was tempted to set them all on fire and have it broadcast all the way across the fucking continent so she knew what I really thought about her gifts.
I crumpled the piece of paper in my hand and threw it to the floor.
“Call in that favor to Artem,” I said, turning to look at Ana. “I need a flight to wherever the fuck Harley is now.”
“Last I heard, she’s filming in Los Angeles, but I could check with her manager to make sure she’s still there?—”
“I’ll take care of it,” I said as I pushed past her. “This ends now.”
Why is my heart pounding?
The loud hum of the private plane was drowning out the sound of it racing through my ears, but I could still feel the erratic beating in my chest.
It started as soon as I cracked open the file on Harley.
Her picture was right in front. Not just any headshot, though—her newest Vogue cover.
She wore an open blazer, the sides covering her nipples but leaving the crease of her breasts visible.
Her black, curly hair looked wet, and her makeup was a bit smudged.
The kind of smudged that takes work, not the one that happens after one night tangled in the sheets .
I let myself wonder how much smudgier it would look like then, and then I shut it down.
Her loose pants hung low on her hips and gave me a perfect view of her flat stomach. If I squinted, I might even see the remnants of a happy trail.
I had seen what she looked like before, so there was no reason for my eyes to be glued to that fucking cover for the first fifteen minutes of the flight.
Even her expression was downright sinful.
Hooded eyes, her hands near her mouth, and a slight smirk playing at her lips.
Fuck.
And those dimples? How could someone so fucking annoying look so good?
Maybe that’s where the confidence comes from.
Maybe she had gotten used to getting her way her entire life based on looks, and when she finally met someone she couldn’t get, she freaked out.
And I was freaked out too. Because even I wasn’t immune to her.
Those brown eyes held so many… secrets. Even through the photo, I could feel there was so much more to this woman than met the eye.
It drew me in. It caused an electric feeling to go through me, and all I wanted was to?—
Snap out of it.
When I finally shook myself from her trance, I moved right to the juicy parts. The reports. Ana wasn’t only good at managing my schedule and greeting clients. Just like everyone else in my life, I had a very specific reason why I hired her.
Her research. When anyone else would have seen a mindless young person stalking their favorite celebrity crush, I saw her potential. I saw the dirt she could dig up and gave her the resources to do it .
That did come with having to put some boundaries in place, but it was worth it in the end.
Or at least it had been worth it… until now. There wasn’t enough on Harley, especially not for someone who was in the public eye a lot. The file itself was small, with only a few pages of research. I hadn’t given her much time, maybe only a few hours, but that had never mattered before.
Not to Ana.
Harley’s background was… boring. She claimed she wanted to act from a very young age, but there were no high school records or anything to support that. If anything, it was like she’d just popped up out of nowhere in her first—albeit small—commercial role.
But it wasn’t long until she was put in TV shows.
Nothing flashy, and she’d gone mostly unnoticed until three years before, when the world seemingly fell in love with her.
Then all of a sudden she had movie deals.
Modeling contracts. She was splashed on cover after cover and offered co-star roles alongside the most famous actors.
Just another addition to her already inflated ego.
She didn’t have to struggle for years upon years. The starving artist cliché didn’t fit her at all. She’d just shown up one day, and her career had taken off.
Suspicious .
Even more so when Ana failed to pull up anything remotely interesting about her parents.
Joseph and Mary Hart. No job information. No extended family. No other marriages or kids. No address or place of birth.
It almost sounded… made up.
I made a mental note to have Ana do a bit more research after I had delivered my message in person. It might not matter at that point, but my curiosity was piqued.
The rage had subsided only slightly when I saw her picture, but as I got closer and closer to Los Angeles and the day wore on, it sparked again .
The audacity of this woman!
Flying across the country to tell her where she could shove her flowers might be satisfying, but it was a waste of my precious time. And, for the first time, it dawned on me that maybe she wanted exactly this. That I was playing right into her hand.
I shook that off. More important people had tried to rattle me and failed.
Three hundred and sixty more minutes added to her bill.