Chapter 5
Damien.
She calls me while I’m in a meeting. I ignore her and send the call to voicemail. She calls again and again. I do the same. That stops her. For about twenty minutes. She calls again and this time I am leaving the meeting and answer as I make my way to my office.
“Do you know how to take no for an answer?”
“Our wedding. It’s out. It’s all over.” She sounds breathless and hurried as if she’s about to have a panic attack. “Calm down and wait for a few seconds.” I hasten my stroll to a march, to the surprise of my employees as my shoes clatter against the marble. I tell my assistant to hold my calls as I enter the office and close the glass door behind me. “What do you mean, it’s over?”
“All over. Well, technically speaking, not all over, but a few New York-centric gossip blogs are talking about it.”
“Oh.” I don’t know why, but I feel relieved that we’re not breaking up. As for the news, it was bound to come out, eventually.
“Is this your work? Did you leak this?”
I guffaw. “Why would I do that?”
“To mess with me. Revenge. All the above.”
“Marrying you gives me my revenge and trust me I would rather this news came out later rather than sooner. My ducks aren’t in a row yet.” As I’m speaking to her, I open my laptop and google my name. She’s right. Three blogs have written about the news. There’s a video of us attached to all the articles. Ivy and I kissing against the door of the suite before we enter the suite. The camera then zooms in and stops at the front door, which reads, “Monroe suite.” Below is an added cation that says, “The Grand Palazzo’s honeymoon suite.”
Ivy and I are kissing passionately in wedding clothes and from the vantage point of the camera, we can’t get enough of each other. Like a married couple.
“It’s not that bad,” I say.
“You’ve seen it? How can you say it’s not bad? What If Nolan finds out?”
“Nolan doesn’t read gossip blogs.” It’s been a while since Nolan and I have been friends, but he didn’t spend his time reading about celebrities and socialites, and I doubt he has changed.
“He doesn’t have to. All it takes is for his assistant to congratulate him. Fuck. My mother is calling.”
“Does she know?” While Nolan isn’t one for gossip, Ivy Jacqueline Hawthorne is.
“When I spoke to her, she didn’t.”
I recall the name that flashed on the screen when she received a call while we were having dinner during the reception. She had cut the call and sent a text, but I had seen enough. “And Lake? What does your totally not boyfriend think about this?”
She goes silent. After a beat, she says, “What about Lake?”
“Does he know?”
“I’m going to call you back. I need to take this call.” She ends it there and I feel a stab at my chest. I wonder what her not-at-all boyfriend thinks about her being married to another man. I know I wouldn’t be cool with it even if the relationship is purely platonic. Not when my girlfriend is a woman like Ivy. Not with a body that sinful. Her Barbie-like proportions are enough to drive a sane man wild. And as for that kiss, that’s now all over the Internet, I still wish even now we had done something with it. Several days later, I still can’t get the sensation of her lips against mine. I’ve dreamed about taking it further, laying her on the rose petal bed and sinking into her. Sometimes I fantasize about her taking her against the wall. We don’t leave the foyer. I just fuck her there like a madman. Her dress bunched up around the waist and her boobs bouncing as I thrust relentlessly into her.
She wanted me. If I hadn’t lied to her and told her it was a test, we could have fucked. Her boyfriend be damned. I was too proud and hated how much I still wanted her. Still do.
Reluctantly, I wash away the daydream and call Nicole in. My second assistant peers behind Nicole, who bobs her head in. “You need both of us or just me,” Nicole asks. I wave both of them in and she enters, Meg tracing her steps.
Nicole has been pensive ever since Vegas. She has been giving me looks that say, “Are you sure about what you’re doing?” as though she’s a judgmental convent school marm. Which is ironically the last description I would give of her. Nicole is the smartest and most professional assistant I’ve ever had. Some might describe her as sexy, even though I’ve never been attracted to her. And besides, I don’t shit where I eat. I learned that the hard way eight years ago.
“Please take a seat,” I say to Meg and Nicole. Nicole gracefully perches herself on the corner of her chair, tablet in hand, while Meg plops into hers and, while doing so, her phone clutters to the floor.
“Sorry,” she says, picking it up. If Meg wasn’t so good at her job, her clumsiness would have had her fired ages ago. She’s the opposite of Nicole in every way. Short. A little plump and is always looking harried, but she has a sweetness to her that is charming.
I turn to her. “I don’t know if you know this, Meg, but I got married.”
She jerks and says “Oh.” Her gaze darts between me and Nicole, who is sitting stone still. She frowns, saying, “Um, congratulations. Uh, when did it happen?”
“Last weekend.”
“Oh.”
“In Vegas.”
She sputters and quickly collects herself. “I didn’t know you were dating anyone. Not that it’s any of my business, of course. Who’s the uh, the lucky lady?”
“Ivy Hawthorne.”
Her eyes bulge and her phone slips from her lap to the floor again. I know how it looks. The cool, suave CEO of one of the biggest hedge funds in the world gets married in Vegas to a woman who’s been pestering him for weeks.
When Nicole told me Ivy wanted to set an appointment with me, I had been initially taken aback. It surprised me to discover that the wound she left was still raw. I wanted nothing to do with her. I told them to tell her I was busy. But the more she persisted, the more curious I got. I wanted to see where she would take things. And I did, didn’t I?
“I know. It’s a long story, one you don’t need to know right now, but our marriage is now out in the press. Well, not the press. A few gossip blogs are talking about it and they have irrefutable proof, so it will soon proliferate. I expect you’ll be getting calls soon.”
“You want us to deny it.” Nicole’s question comes out more like a statement.
“No. It will only make things worse.” I send them both a link to the article. They look down on their respective devices as I say, “Tell them Ivy and I have been in love for quite some time. We knew each other from my Hawthorne Inc. days. That part is true at least.” Nicole jerks her head up. She frowns as she stares at me. “And we rekindled that relationship during the past six months.”
Nicole raises her stylus pen. “You were with Zsa Zsa six months ago.”
“Right.” My brief fling with the supermodel I met on Hunter’s yacht was so short, I had forgotten it happened. But by virtue of her being a celebrity, the press had breathlessly reported it. “Four? Let’s say four months. Once we rekindled, we couldn’t get enough of each other. You know, something like that.”
I give them time to scribble and type the notes and, when they’re done, I say, “Do you think it will be convincing?”
Nicole looks up. She’s the one I’m addressing after all and the one whose opinion I value more. She’s been with me longer than most of my employees. Hell, when I left Hawthorne Inc. to start Tartarus Capital, she followed me. Nicole believed in my vision before anyone else did and has stayed as my executive assistant for all these years, even when I’ve offered her other opportunities to rise the corporate ladder. And even when many second assistants have come in and gone, she’s never left. She’s almost like a right-hand man. Many in the company see her as such.
“You’ve never been one to rush into the things.”
“In business.”
“And in your love life. People are going to wonder why you married Ivy Hawthorne so quickly, especially since she’s related to your nemesis.”
“Yeah. The Hawthorne heiress thing does throw a wrench into the whirlwind romance idea.”
“We could add that she’s estranged from the family.”
“Yeah. On background. I don’t want you quoted as saying so. Smart.” I scoff, salivating at the idea of Nolan reading the news of his precious little sister taken away by the man he thought to be beneath him. But that wouldn’t be the only thing to love about this relationship. There’s the huge stake in Hawthorne Ivy gave to me with this fucked up marriage. That part at least should not be in the press. “Make the estrangement as obvious as possible. Stress that. I don’t want the press thinking Nolan and I have buried the hatchet.”
The news of my marriage to Ivy spreads faster than I expected. By noon, The Wall Street Gazette has picked it up. Dante called to apologize for the leak and that’s how I learned about it. I’m not mad at him for that. I should have been more careful. Next is Hunter, my best friend who calls laughing, thinking the story is a lie, and sounds stupefied by the time he hangs up. Followed by my brother Theo, who calls from London with the same disbelief as Hunter. Unlike Hunter, I tell Theo the truth, including my plan for Hawthorne Inc. By one o’clock, I get another call from her. Ivy. I hate how my heart flutters when I hear her voice as I answer her call. She sounds a little less frazzled than before, but she’s still on edge.
“The fucking New York Tribune is reporting about it,” she says as soon as I answer.
“It’s a slow news day. I get why the paper of record would deem our little scandal necessary.”
“Whirlwind romance? Really?”
“Why not? People fall in love and get married all the time.”
“I don’t know about this. It makes us sound like, like, teenagers. My phone has been ringing non-stop. My family wants an explanation, and my mom suspects the truth of our relationship.”
“You can’t pull out now, if that’s what you’re saying.”
“Don’t you think I know that? I’ve already spent four million dollars.”
“Excuse me?” How the hell has she spent all that money in a few days? To purchase an apartment maybe? I would want to leave that tiny place if I once had control of half a billion dollars overnight.
“Nothing.” She exhales. “I called to ask you something.”
Anything, I almost blurt out. I clamp down the irrational desire to give her what she wants whenever she takes that tone. “I have things I need to do, Ivy. Some of us are busy people who run Fortune five hundred companies.”
I can feel her rolling her eyes. “You’re not the only one with a business.” She exhales again. “Fuck it. My family has been pestering me all day and remember when we said we would never get involved in each other’s lives?”
“One of the most important clauses of the deal we signed. I remember.”
“Yes. My family is doing a thing this weekend and they want to meet you.”
“Are you serious?” The thought of being back in that vicious circle is vomit-inducing.
“You’re my newly wedded husband,” she says in a sing-song voice. “It’s natural that you meet the family.