19. Renée
19
RENéE
T hings blew up in the blink of an eye.
Why I didn’t see this coming, I have no idea. My PR team worked overtime to try and figure out what to do with the situation and who had leaked my private weekend.
I sat in the middle of the conference room at my world HQ and let the words spill in the air around me like so much background noise. My heart raced and breath came short. None of the pics someone had put up on social media had been nudes. All were fully clothed and showed us walking around the market, kissing, holding hands. Wholesome shots of two people on vacation.
When tempers flared and voices rose, I stood, letting my inner bitch take control. I wasn’t about to let the most beautiful weekend of my life become the fodder for gossip or speculation. Nor was I going to allow the unease in my own chest to grow.
Yes, there was a good chance that C.T. had set it up to leak pics of me to social media, for a big payday, but if he did that, wouldn’t he have paid to have someone take them while we were having sex?
I needed to think. To plan. Hell, I needed to talk to him.
“Enough!” I shouted.
The room instantly stilled, and all eyes were on me.
“I don’t want to hear another word about it. If we don’t release a statement, people will soon tire of it. I don’t even understand why they think it’s any of their business.”
Natalia cocked her head. “Because you’re the Renée Palmer. You are one of the richest people on the planet. Everything you do and say is put under a microscope.”
“I’m allowed to have a life.” I left off the part where I wished other people would get one. I didn’t need to make any enemies at the moment.
Zayre sat at the other end of the table, his mouth pursed and eyes unreadable. Oh, yeah, he was thinking it all out down there. I wondered how long it would be before he figured it out. The truth. What I’d been hiding since I returned.
I gathered up my things and started out of the office. I had one banger of a headache and just wanted to go home and sit, staring at the lake and make a cup of tea.
I was halfway down the hallway to the elevator when Natalia caught me. “Have you spoken to him since Bali?”
Well, take a knife out and stab me in the heart.
“No.”
She frowned at me. I hadn’t told her anything about the app or the NDA around the entire situation.
“Do you want to?”
Wait, did she know more than she let on? What made her think I didn’t have a way to contact him? I’d often wondered if she had some kind of psychic ability that allowed her to know my business better than I did. Or at least run it.
Not once in all the years I’d employed her, did she let on how she knew things. The woman should have worked for government intelligence.
That didn’t solve my immediate worries.
The fact C.T. knew my name the entire time, burned me, but I didn’t have a reason to believe without evidence that he’d done anything wrong. How could I retaliate on an innocent man? What if he didn’t want to know me now?
So many unanswered questions.
What if the disparity on our economic levels was too much for him? He was a man, after all. Unless he wanted a sugar mama, I couldn’t see him being okay with that vast economic gap.
What man would?
Which had been my problem for the last few years. I didn’t like the ones I knew who were on the same level. The ones who weren’t, were for all they could get.
It put me in a very delicate and precarious place.
I chose to address the unanswered question with a bit of truth. “I don’t know how to find him.”
She momentarily narrowed her eyes, then as if making a quick decision, brushed her hand aside and made a face that said it was not a big deal. “No problem. Let the internet sleuths do their magic. They’ll have his identity within a couple hours and his entire life story by dinner.”
Fear that I might be close to finding out more about him edged through me like a razor. What if I discovered he had a girlfriend or that he wasn’t who he appeared to be, did I really want that knowledge?
No, he’d been vetted by the app company, right?
The other mercenary part of my brain kept telling me that knowing his identity evened the score and to let the internet do its job.
I gave a decisive nod.
If the amateur sleuths of the world uncovered my weekend lover, so be it. I wouldn’t comment on it. My people wouldn’t comment on it. We’d have nothing to say about the situation other than, Bali is a lovely place for a vacation. Highly recommend. Five out of five stars.
I left the office and drove home.
Home is in Westchester County, New York. I live in a beautiful older home that overlooks a lake. It’s a modest, humble place with history and tranquility. With the way the topography of the land is rich with hills and valleys, I can’t even see the city, though it’s not that far away.
The community is gated, but I’m on the very end of the private lane, and my closest neighbors are still a football field length away from me on either side. I bought the home before I made it into the stratosphere with my company. I could afford bigger, but I didn’t want it or need it.
I have one person on my household staff who doesn’t even live in the residence. She leaves at the end of the day, and I love the solitude. Really, I only need someone to do the things I don’t have time for: laundry, ironing, cleaning, cooking, grocery shopping. That might require a forty-hour week, but I am capable of doing for myself.
I walked through the house and went straight to the deck that overlooked the lake. My favorite places on earth are within easy distance of watching water. I don’t know what it is—I must have been born under a water sign, but it helps to center me and allows me to focus.
Moira, my housekeeper, came out onto the deck with a tray of tea and some cakes. I smiled up at the way she read my mind.
“Thank you.”
“Thought you could use these. You don’t often come home so early if you’re in the city.”
“I felt the need to be home today. Maybe I’ll start outlining another book.”
“That’s a good way to work through whatever is bothering you.” She gave me a motherly smile and asked if there was anything else she could do.
“No. This is lovely, thank you again.”
Moira was the mother I should have had. She’d been with me since I moved to the area. Since I’d started making enough to hire someone in. I’d even put her on a payroll and benefits that allowed her a retirement account. Not to mention, I’d set up another private account for her that I planned to gift to her when and if she ever decided to retire.
I sat sipping tea and took stock of my life.
I wouldn’t regret the weekend. I wouldn’t apologize for it either.
My phone rang and I looked down at the number. Natalia. I didn’t want to speak to her. I didn’t want to solve any crisis that might have cropped up because I wanted to have sex with a handsome man on an island half a world away.
Reluctantly, I picked up.
“The internet found him. His name is Cooper Thorne, and he lives in the town of Suwannee Grove, Florida.” She laughed. “Oh, he’s kind of a bad boy. I mean…a baaaad boy.”
Cooper Thorne. C.T. He’d stayed close to his name. At least used his initials.
The name Cooper fit him.
“In what way was he bad?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“He face-punched an umpire and got banned from minor league baseball.”
I had a hard time reconciling such violence with the man I’d slept with repeatedly. He’d been sweet, tender, a little wild, but careful.
I shook my head. “There’s always two sides to every story,” I replied.
And now, I really wanted to know his.