Chapter 7
Seven
It’s very early the next morning when I finally roll onto my back, satisfied. Ella lies on her side, her eyelids drooping. I start to wonder if I’m supposed to just let her sleep here.
A big part of me says no. I run NewsCorp, which owns tv stations and newspapers, all on the lookout for the slightest hint of impropriety from someone famous. I know as well as anyone that being caught having Ella in my hotel room is dicey at best.
I don’t think I’ve technically done anything wrong, but it’s better not to chance it.
Glancing at Ella, I clear my throat. She opens her eyes and yawns.
“It’s getting late.”
“It is.” I’m quiet for a beat. “I will have my driver take you anywhere you’d like to go.”
She gives me a suspicious look. “Are you telling me to get out?”
My neck heats. “Not in so many words.”
She sits up, her lips thinning. “I see.”
I arch a brow, indicating that I’m not sure she does. But Ella whips around, pulling the sheet off the bed to cover herself.
As if I hadn’t just explored her every nook and cranny. With my mouth, no less. I can still taste her and I’m damned sure my breath smells like I’ve been eating her pussy.
She gropes for her bra and underwear. Her demeanor is silent and angry, making me feel as though I’ve done something wrong. I haven’t. Not to her, anyway.
I stand up, finding my boxer briefs, my white shirt, and my fancy dress pants. After another half minute of her silently getting dressed, I put on my shoes.
“I’ll walk you down to the car.”
Ella shoots me a glare. “Don’t bother.”
That’s it. I fold my arms across my chest, glaring right back at her. “What’s the problem here?”
She pulls on her dress, miffed. “You are the one with the problem. Not me. I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine.”
She slips into her high heeled shoes and then regards me. “You are a disappointment. That’s all.”
My eyes widen and my nostrils flare.
“Really? What gives you the right to say that?”
“Your behavior gives me the right. If you had just asked me what my plans were, I’d have told you that I didn’t plan on staying the night. But no. You made an assumption and then started bossing me around. You’re every bit as entitled as I feared.”
“And you’re a conceited, whiny little girl.”
She gives an astonished laugh. “You know what? Maybe it’s better that it only took you this long to show me your true colors. If I had decided to be your au pair, it could’ve taken me weeks to figure it out.”
I wave her toward the door, my anger rising. “Likewise. I don’t want my daughter around such a negative influence.”
Ella’s mouth twists. “I feel sorry for your daughter. It must be hard for her to have a judgmental, narcissistic prick as a dad.”
Grabbing her by the arm, I tug her toward the door. “This is why I don’t hook up with girls in their twenties. You’re all so damned dramatic.”
She yanks her arm from my grasp and gives me an accusatory glare. “Just so you know, I just turned twenty last week. It’s amazing that you just hopped into bed with me without even worrying about my age.”
“…what?” I cry.
She heads through the doorway, storming out. I’m right on her tail. When I try to grab her hand, she rounds on me.
“Keir, I know you’re not trying to control me by stopping me with your much bigger body. Right?”
I freeze. I feel out of my element, suddenly. And my go-to reaction of anger does not seem to be helping me out much.
“Ella…” I say, not sure where I’m going with it.
She whirls and heads through the living room, leaving me to trail helplessly behind her. When she hits the hallway, she skips over the elevator and exits down the stairs.
It’s a long, silent descent. Clearly after four floors it becomes a bit harder for her to manage in her high heels.
She slows way down and seems conscious of my eyes on her back.
But she sticks it out through another twenty floors anyway, even though by the time we hit the ground floor she has a noticeable limp.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Ella lifts her chin and walks to the door, limping through into the all-white granite lobby.
I keep trying to help her, because I feel some sense of duty I guess. “Why don’t you let me—”
A man dressed head to toe in black with a bald head and heavy black eyeglasses steps out from behind a plant. He wears a press badge around his neck and holds a phone upright, clearly filming.
“Hello, Lord Grayrose.”
I immediately put myself between the stranger and Ella, who seems most interested in getting out of the lobby.
“Ken Jeong, New York Daily News Star. How are you two tonight?”
Ella frowns and moves around him.
“Fuck off,” I tell the reporter. “This is private property. One more word and I’ll call the police.”
“Really? Even though I’m the only person that can stop the release of a sex tape featuring you two?”
Acid starts to burn a hole through my stomach. “What did you just say to me?”
Ella freezes and her head whips around. Her lips compress into a thin line but to her credit, she doesn’t say a damn thing.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I continue. “She is my child’s nanny. Right, Ella?”
Ella looks at me for a heart pounding second and then she nods. “That’s right.”
The reporter crosses his arms and grins. “My tape is brand spanking new, made tonight. And it will blow the lid off of your little fling. That’ll be hard to explain to the Mrs., won’t it, Keiran?”
Ella’s eyes widen. She looks at me like she just found out that I’m a serial killer.
“Fuck off,” I tell the reporter. “You haven’t got anything because there is no sex tape. There was never any inappropriate contact between the young lady and myself.”
He grins. “Did she tell you who she is, Lord Grayrose? She’s Ella Washington, the former ballerina.”
“We’re done here.” I stand herding Ella toward the door.
“Her father is Malcolm Washington. He’s a former news anchor with your NewsCorp network. You fired him four years ago for embezzlement.”
I look at Ella, trying to see if that part is true. Ella is red in the face and looking determinedly toward the door.
Not that it really matters. The guy is trying to trap us. No way was there a recording device upstairs.
Except in the next second, the journalist starts playing a recording from his phone. He swivels it toward us and I can see two people who look very much like Ella and I on the screen. The journalist unmutes the sound and Ella groans loudly.
As one, we stop moving and look at the screen.
“Turn it off!” Ella snaps. Her expression is humiliated and angry.
Whereas mine is just full of rage. I snap, moving fast to grab the journalist by the shirt collar and slam him up against the hard granite wall.
“Why the fuck are you bothering us?” I demand to know.
“Easy, easy!” he insists. “If you think that I don’t have a copy of the video stored in the cloud, you’re smoking something.
And I’ll tell you right now… I have it on a dead man’s trigger.
If I don’t check in and deactivate the device once a day, it will automatically release your video to every single news outlet in the world. ”
I grit my teeth, slamming him against the wall again. “You’re a dead man.”
“Ehh… I think I’m going to be okay for as long as I have this little video. I may not have obtained it through honest means. But that won’t mean a thing to the journalists who receive it. You’re a big, bad guy. There are plenty of people out there that would love to take you down.”
I slam him against the wall again, thinking about whether or not it would be better just to beat the living daylights out of this guy, right here and now.
But Ella’s hand on my arm and plaintive whisper convince me otherwise.
“Keir. Please don’t.”
I slide her a look. Her brown eyes are full of unshed tears. Letting the journalist go, I put my hands up and back away. I look squarely at the man, wishing that looks really could kill.
“Is this blackmail, then?” I grit out.
He smiles. “Meet me here tomorrow at one p.m. Bring ten million dollars. Then we can talk about disarming the dead man’s trigger.”
I tense, bucking at the back. He pales but smiles at both Ella and I, doffing an imaginary cap. Then he takes off and heads out of the building.
“Fuck!” I mutter a curse.
“Yeah, no shit,” Ella says. She crosses her arms, looking at me like I’m a rabid dog. “You’re married?”
I squint, not really wanting to explain myself to a girl I just met.
“It’s complicated,” I answer, at last.
Her reply is instant. “Fuck off.”
“Yeah, you weren’t exactly forthcoming about who you were either.”
She screws up her face. “The two situations do not even vaguely compare with each other. You can fuck your former employee’s daughter.
I can’t fuck a married man. And we both know who is going to get all the blame if this comes out.
I’m a young Black woman and you’re a married Scottish tycoon.
The battle lines have been drawn between us since the dawn of time. ”
She’s right, of course. It’s a race and gender thing, and she’s on the losing end of the equation for both. But I don’t have to tell her that.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll pay the blackmail. This will never come out.”
Ella sizes me up for a moment. Then she evidently finds me lacking, because she shakes her head.
“Pray to god you’re right. Now I’m leaving. And I think it would be best if you didn’t follow me.”
Then Ella stalks out the glass doors and into the early morning, disappearing as though she was never here.
But in my heart of hearts, I know that she was. Hell, I can still taste her, still smell her on my clothes. And given the chance? If we lived in the same city… if I didn’t have Isla to care for…
If I wasn’t technically married…
If Ella wasn’t too young for me, too immature, too likely to care more about partying than people…
If it were just a physical thing, I would absolutely be drawn to Ella over and over again. But of course there are tons of reasons why I can’t just do what my body wants. There are other people in the world, people that depend on me.
Besides, if I hadn’t already ruined things between us, the journalist just put the nail in the coffin of our brief affair.
Spinning on one heel, I march back toward the elevators, ready to tear someone a new orifice.