Chapter 12
Twelve
Pursing my lips, I look out the plane’s tiny window and lay my head on the leather seat.
When I first arrived at the New York Ballet, I stepped into a lush new world.
Kaia was my roommate and she showed my middle class Southerner self a glimpse of luxury.
Our first few months were filled with expensive steak dinners, thousands of dollars of clothes put on her dad’s credit card, and a seemingly unlimited supply of new leotards and ballet slippers. To me, it just seemed so fancy.
Bougie, even.
But that experience was nothing compared to today. There is a kind of luxury to being in Keir’s private plane that makes every single other experience in my life seem… I don’t want to say impoverished, but it definitely takes some of the shine off of what I previously thought was so very fancy.
Everything has been provided to me. Expensive water in glass bottles, cashmere blankets, full feather pillows, a pair of pricey earbuds together with an iPad. Slippers, an eye mask, a fancy little tote full of European snacks.
Closing my eyes, I sigh. This is the life. And it’s probably the only time I will fly in a private plane. So I have to enjoy myself. Slippers on, cashmere blankets wrapped around my shoulders, full glass of expensive Norwegian still water.
I’m doing the whole the damn thing.
“Miss?”
I blink as I turn my head. Riccardo is standing there with a wheeled cart, gesturing to several silver-covered dishes.
“Would you like something to eat? I have chicken Milanese, garlic soy salmon, and a summer salad with king prawns. There are also cheese board and crudité options, depending on your hunger level.”
I bite my lip, sliding my gaze toward the back of the plane. Keir and his brother James are sitting across from one another on the leather benches, each picking absentmindedly at a tray of food beside them.
“What did everyone else choose?” I ask.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. What’s the matter with you now?” Natasha appears from the front of the plane, her Irish accent making her words halfway indecipherable.
My cheeks heat. “I didn’t realize it was a crime to ask what the most popular dish is.”
Natasha snorts and gives me a hard look before zooming over to pick up the lid of a plate. She pulls a face and levels a look at Riccardo.
“I want a salad, no cheese, no croutons, dressing on the side. And… a whole sliced lemon.” She stops, then looks at me. “Bring her one, too.”
“Yes, miss.” Riccardo bows and pushes the cart back toward the galley.
I wish I could go with him, because from the very limited interaction I’ve had with Natasha so far, I would vastly prefer the steward’s company. I have the distinct impression that she doesn’t like me.
Natasha flings herself into the seat across from mine, sizing me up. My stomach flip flops and I lift my chin.
“So?” she asks, narrowing her eyes at me.
After a moment, I’m prompted to ask. “So… what?”
She pops her gum and piles her wild mane of blonde hair to one side.
“What’s your situation? I asked James and got something about the ballet. So what are you, a dancer or something?”
Feeling heat rising to my cheeks, I suck in a breath. I draw my feet up under my body and resettle the cashmere blanket to cover them.
“I used to be a ballet dancer,” I say at last. “Now I’m…” I trail off, uncertain of what to fill in. “…not.”
Natasha tilts her head to the side.
“You’re good with children then, I presume?”
It takes me a second to sort out what she asked me. Her lilting accent is just so damned thick.
“With children?” I ask. “Uh… I guess.”
“That’s a funny thing for a nanny to say.”
Shit. I shift in my seat, uncomfortable. The back of my neck grows hot.
“Oh. CHILD-ren,” I say. I’m lying my ass off, but I don’t know what else to do. “I am having trouble understanding anything you’re saying.”
She scowls at me. Riccardo interrupts just then, saving me from whatever she has to say.
He brings two salads and two accompanying plates, carrying them stacked on his arms like a waiter would.
He unpacks them onto two folding trays with a flourish.
When he bows and retreats, I stab a huge forkful of salad and shovel it into my mouth, desperate for the conversation to die off.
I’m not so lucky, though.
Natasha pushes her salad away and eyes me.
“You know that you can’t just waltz in here like you own the damn place and take over.
Isla won’t like you. And Lord Grayrose will no doubt start treating you the way he treats any other member of his staff.
” She picks up a mushroom from her salad, popping it in her mouth.
“He has quite a terrible temper and he drives away almost every single member of his staff at one time or another. Everybody but me, of course.”
She tosses her head and gives me a little self-satisfied smirk. It’s mildly infuriating, but I’m more interested in hearing more about Keir’s life than anything else. I school my expression and try to think up the most pertinent question.
“You said Isla won’t like me. Who is Isla?”
Her eyes bulge out for a moment. “Lord Grayrose’s daughter. What on earth did you two talk about in this interview?” She narrows her eyes. “God, he really did just hire you because he thinks you’re pretty.”
She laughs, a braying sound that grates on my nerves. I clench my teeth, trying to come up with a snappy retort.
But I’m tripped up by the fact that I don’t know what I’m supposed to share and what Keir has decided to keep secret. Finally, I just shrug, feeling heat bloom in my cheeks.
She grins. “I bet you don’t last a fortnight.”
James sticks his head in the cabin where we’re sitting, a smirk on his lips. He’s taken off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves, looking eminently relaxed and alert. For some reason, looking at James smirking in his shirt cuffs and slacks reminds me of a prep school boy, looking for trouble.
“And what’s going on up here?”
Natasha automatically sits upright and smiles, but she doesn’t seem pleased at James’ presence. As a former ballerina, I’m used to reading body language. And the tightening of her shoulders and the strain in her fake smile scream that she’s tense.
“We’re just having a little girl talk,” Natasha says. “Nothing more than that. Right, Ella?”
I nod, although I can’t for the life of me say why.
“Yep,” I agree.
James looks between us, seeming to make some kind of choice. After a second he moves toward me, sitting on the thick white padded armrest of my seat. I have to flatten myself against the hard plastic of the wall to give him room so that I’m not practically in his lap.
“So, Ella. My brother hasn’t told me anything about you. How old are you?”
His posh British accent is much easier to understand than Natasha’s. It makes me wonder how he and Keir can be Scottish and yet still sound so English.
I clear my throat. “Um, twenty.”
“Tell me, are you hoping to catch a sugar daddy while you’re over here?” His eyes twinkle. “My brother has a lot of well-connected friends. Princes, billionaires… and then there’s me, of course.”
He winks at me, leaning in close. I am already as far away as I can get from him, so I just turn my face away when he looms close.
Thankfully, Keir interrupts.
“James!” he thunders, his voice just behind my seat.
I jump, my heart in my throat, my pulse doing a can-can dance in triple time.
James pulls back, looking at his brother with an innocent expression. “What? I’m just asking Ella about herself.”
“Get up,” Keir barks. I turn my head and see him, looking dark and brooding, his hair ruffled just so. “I don’t actually want to know how much trouble you get in when I’m not around.”
“Very funny,” James gripes. He hoists himself up, scowling at his brother. “You really know how to suck all the fun out of a room.”
Keir grabs James by the back of his shirt, dragging him into the cabin behind him. “I can see it now. Would Be P.M. In Court For Sexually Harassing Nanny. More at 11.”
James moves his head around Keir’s body, making eye contact with me. “I’ll talk to you later then, darling. That’s a promise.”
Gooseflesh breaks out across the back of my neck and my upper arms. I clamp my mouth shut and look forward, pretending I didn’t hear his words.
“Natasha, out,” Keir orders, jerking his thumb toward the back of the plane. “I want to show Ella something that Violet has been doing.”
He holds up a thin laptop, lifting his eyebrows. Natasha instantly gets up, bowing as she passes Keir. She makes a showing of closing the thin curtain that acts as a partition between the two cabins.
I give Keir a questioning look but he puts a finger to his lips. He walks past me to the front of the plane, checking that there isn’t anyone in the darkened plane hallway. Then he takes the first seat, beckoning me toward him.
Making my way over to him, I stand awkwardly as Keir opens the laptop.
“I don’t know what you could possibly show me—”
He stops me with a hand on my forearm. “Shut up.”
At his touch, I feel my blood begin to heat. And Keir gives commands like he was born to do it; I guess he really is part of the aristocracy.
Keir opens the laptop. The words Hello, Max appear on the screen.
“Who is Max?” I ask. I put my hand on the armrest and lean closer to the screen, squinting.
“This is the journalist’s computer. I had someone I trust do some digging and break the passcode. It wasn’t hard because it was the fifth one my IT guy suggested it might be.”
He bumps my arm with his own. I automatically pull away slightly, trying to focus on the dead man’s laptop before me. It’s not the easiest thing in the world, though.
Keir pulls up a video, putting it on mute and playing it for a few seconds. My heart contracts in my chest when I see myself, fully naked, astride a flushed-looking Keir. He is treating sex like it’s a competition that he aims to win, thrusting upward to meet my body, a wicked look in his eyes.
The way he’s looking at me in the video gives me chills, because I don’t think anyone has ever looked at me that way before. Mean, hard, admiring… all three, at once somehow.
I reach out and snap the laptop closed, my cheeks burning. “Keir!”
“Relax, sweetheart,” he growls. “I’m not about to announce to everyone that I have a sex tape floating around in the ether. I was just showing you that I have this copy.”
My hand flutters up to clutch at my necklace. “So… that’s it? I can just… go home?”
I won’t lie, a teeny little itty bit of me really hates that idea. My heart twists in my chest.
Keir studies me cool. “Not so fast, sweetheart.” He drums his fingertips on the top of the computer. “The video is stored in the cloud. And apparently it has already been accessed by three IP addresses. One is registered to the reporter. But the other two are using end to end encryption.”
Raising my brows, I shrug. “What does that bunch of jargon mean?”
“That two other people in the world may have seen the video. And those people may have copies.” He makes a frustrated sound, running his hands through his hair.
“So… there may be another blackmailer?”
He nods slowly. “I know for a fact there is someone out there who is knee-deep in this. Because when I tried to have my IT guy turn off the dead man’s switch, he said that the switch was already reset remotely.
There is someone watching me, waiting for me to…
” Keir’s mouth balls up. “Fuck. I don’t even know. Make a mistake, maybe.”
“What if you already made the mistake?” I ask softly. He looks up at me, arching a brow. I push on. “What if I’m your mistake?”
Of all the reactions I’m expecting, a bleat of laughter is not among them. He laughs and runs his hand through his thick, dark hair again.
“That much I already know, Ella. Fucking you was certainly a mistake. And one I will pay for dearly, it seems.”
At that moment, the plane hits some turbulence, enough to send me skittering across Keir’s lap. His strong hands catch me, holding me firmly. Electricity sizzles up my arms and straight to my core. His face is only inches from mine, reminding me all too much of our first kiss.
Just like that, I am primed and ready. I lick my lips, darting a glance at his mouth.
I look up in his eyes, wondering if he feels the same way. I swear, I can see a hint of that same fiery look, just the same way he looked at me when we were fucking.
Then Keir shatters my moment by pushing me off his lap. I’m not ready for it, so I tumble onto the seat across from his.
“Ella,” he grits out. A warning. A prayer. “Don’t go misconstruing what happened. It was just a one night fling.”
I swallow against the sudden lump in my throat. “I know that.”
He stands up, folding his arms across his chest. “We’re employer and employee now. Until we get this whole blackmail thing sorted, that’s all that I’m interested in. Then you go back to your life, and I keep on living mine.”
“Great.” It comes out sounding harder than I meant it, but I can’t stand the way he’s looking at me right now, disgust in his expression. “That’s what I want, Keir. I wasn’t the one who wanted to get on this plane in the first place.”
A muscle flexes in Keir’s jaw.
“I think you’d better call me Lord Grayrose, Ella.”
The gall of the man. I glare daggers at him.
“Fuck you, Keir.”
His hands bunch into fists. He stands there for several seconds, looking absolutely livid. And then he turns, heading back through the thin curtain, swatting it away and storming off.
And me? I feel like if we are playing a game, I earned a point. But maybe I don’t even understand the rules yet…