Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
LEXI
After the incident on the desk, Oliver snuck down to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of wine like a teenager stealing from his parents’ liquor cabinet.
It took only one glass and a lot of laughing and talking about everything—from how many miles it is to the moon that we can see outside the window to him trying to make me pick a soccer team to support—before we couldn’t keep our hands off each other any longer.
That time, we ended up in bed for a protracted session of exploring and discovering and figuring out each other’s bodies before he brought me to yet another brain-splitting climax on his dick.
Even with the bugged vase now farther away and behind the closed bathroom door, I’m sure whoever’s listening got a great show.
After we’d finished the wine in bed, we fell into each other’s arms, and I was asleep within seconds.
And now I’ve woken from the happiest, most satisfying, solid rest of my life. Before I’ve even opened my eyes, my senses fill with the fresh aroma of Oliver’s skin mixed with mine to form a heady cocktail and the comforting warmth emanating from his naked body under the covers.
I snuggle closer to his side. But my cheek has been settled on his firm pec for barely ten seconds when my phone vibrates on the nightstand.
Whatever that is can wait till later, when it won’t disrupt my delicious contentment.
But after only two breaths I can’t stand not knowing what it is and slowly ease myself off Oliver.
He shifts a little and emits a soft, sultry groan, his face the picture of serenity.
I can’t help but smile. It might not be the wisest idea to agree to a temporary relationship with the person whose memoir I’m writing, but he’s right.
Life’s too short. We’re adults. We know what we’re doing.
We’ll enjoy the time we have. Be grateful for it.
And then move on to our detached, polar opposite, and completely incompatible lives.
I’m sure walking away from this won’t be easy. But my life will be so overwhelmingly new and busy and stressful that I’ll have plenty to occupy me and take my mind off the upset while I power through it.
I blink the phone screen into focus. Shit. I must have slept through a whole bunch of other buzzes. There are a ton of texts all stacked on one another.
The top one is from Becca.
Her message makes my blood run cold and my heart race. But maybe I’ve misunderstood. I try to go back and read it again, but my eyes can’t stay still. They jump to each word randomly, forcing my brain to reorganize them into an actual sentence.
When I figure it out, my hands shake around the phone.
BECCA
Whoever the asshole is who sold you out, tell me, and I will fucking destroy him.
Sold me out? Does she mean someone knows I’m not Oliver’s real girlfriend? Or knows I’m writing his book? Who the hell has found out what? And who have they sold it to?
I sit up and pull my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them as I flick through the stack of messages.
The next one down makes my stomach churn so much I’m genuinely afraid I might puke.
JULIAN
Can you really continue with this assignment now?
“What the fuck is going on?”
“What’s that?” Oliver rolls onto his side to face me, wraps his arm around my back, and kisses my naked hip.
I ignore him and click on the link that Julian included.
Oh, no. No. My whole future career flashes before my eyes like this is its dying moment.
“Hey.” Oliver’s voice sounds like a sexy morning. But I doubt very much I’ll be having another one of those with him.
He sits up beside me, kissing my shoulder. “What's wrong? You’re all tense and muttering ‘fuck.’”
I rest the screen against my leg to prevent him from seeing it and, my pulse racing, cheeks burning, heart full of dread and remorse, cup his gorgeous half-awake face in my hand. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m glad you woke me.” He manages a sleepy eyebrow wiggle.
He leans in to kiss me, but I hold him back.
“That’s not what I meant. You’re going to hate me.
” And that’s the first thing it occurs to me to tell him.
Not that what’s on my phone might get me taken off the book.
Not that I might have lost my new job before I even start it.
But that it might change the way he feels about me.
And that it will reflect badly on him. “This will probably undo all your efforts to try to shake off your old image, and oh my God, I’m so fucking sor—”
“Sir!” Giles’s voice is accompanied by sharp, impatient thumps on the door. “Sir. We need to talk.” More thumps. “Urgently.” His snarl is audible even through the panel of thick, centuries-old wood.
Panic floods my body like fire chasing ice that’s chasing fire.
“What the fuck is going on?” Oliver rubs his eyes, bewildered by all the fuss.
He pulls back the covers to get out of bed.
“No.” I wrap an arm around his back to stop him.
“Well, hello.” He gives me a sexy smirk and reaches for my breasts. “Let me get rid of Giles, then we can—”
“No, Oliver. I need you to see this from me first, before you open that door and Giles gets the fucked-up pleasure of shaming me in front of you.”
His brow furrows. “Shaming you? What are you talking about?”
“Look.” I turn my phone to face him.
His eyes flit across the screen for a moment before he scrolls through the rest of the article and the pictures.
Pictures of me on spring break in Florida my junior year of college.
Photos of me in a barely there bikini drinking from a beer bong surrounded by my drunk, cheering friends.
Me in only bikini bottoms laughing with my guy friends on a “clothing optional” beach.
And a series of images of me doing very suggestive things involving my mouth and a hot dog.
The headline is absolutely fucking awful: Prince Harming—Oliver Brings More Shame on the Royal Family with His Choice of Party Princess.
I don’t even want to know what the article says.
Oliver’s expression awakens as he takes it all in.
He’s going to have to fire me from the book. And if he doesn’t, the publishers will.
My career dreams are circling the drain.
Giles bangs on the door again. “Sir. I need to come in.”
“Hold your fucking horses.” Oliver’s sharp yell makes me jump.
When his eyes finally leave the article and meet mine, he takes my face in both hands and, in only the second most-shocking thing that’s happened since I woke up two minutes ago, plants a full, gentle, lingering kiss on my lips.
“You,” he says, “are amazing. And they”—he tips his head toward the phone still in my hand—“are a bunch of cocksucking cockroaches.”
Then he slides away, pulls on his jeans, which still have his boxers inside them from last night, and, without bothering to zip them up, strides toward the door, shoulders back, purpose on his face.
I grab my sweater from the floor and fling it on in the race to get dressed before Giles inevitably storms in to throw me out. My jeans are halfway up my thighs when Oliver puts his hand on the doorknob and turns back to look at me.
“Don’t worry.” His smile is reassuring.
But that’s easy for him to say—the press has trashed him so many times he’s used to it.
And he hasn’t spent the last eleven years working his ass off to climb the ladder to the job he’s always dreamed of and might now have to start all over again.
Under a new name. In a new country. Possibly on a new planet.
Plus, I’ve already learned he’s not the decision-maker around here.
He waits for a moment while I stand to button my jeans, then give him the nod to open the door.
Predictably, Giles doesn’t wait to be invited in and strides right past him.
“Have you seen this?” He’s flapping printouts of my breasts and me sucking a sausage.
Printouts. He literally took the time to create full-page images of these pictures and print them out. What kind of top-level turd does that?
“Yes, Giles. We’ve seen it,” Oliver snaps.
“What do you have to say about it?” He flaps the photos at me, his voice burning with outrage.
“I was twenty. It was spring break. And my best guess would be that it’s the asshole who was my boyfriend at the time who’s sold them.”
“What are you going to do about this, sir?” He spins to face Oliver, who walks past him in silence and stands next to me.
“Absolutely nothing.” He puts his arm around me and draws me to his side. “Is there something you are planning to do about it?”
Oh my God, I could absolutely kiss him. The tightness in my chest loosens enough for me to take a full breath.
I loop both arms around his bare waist and look up at him. “Thank you.”
He winks at me, then kisses my forehead in an I’ve-got-your-back kind of way. And, holy shit, it floods me with a sense of warmth and protection that’s entirely new to me.
But I don’t recall ever wanting anyone to protect me before. If anyone had even tried, I certainly wouldn’t have allowed them.
Giles opens his mouth to speak, but before he can, Oliver’s mother appears in the open doorway.
“What we’re going to do about it,” she snaps, “is that she has to leave.”
“Lexi’s going nowhere,” Oliver says and holds me tighter.
“Honest to God, Oliver.” She bustles into the room like she has to clean up a mess everyone else is ignoring.
“We can’t have this sort of thing going on.” She points at the papers Giles is, for some reason, still holding in the air. “It’s bad enough when it’s you. But we can’t do anything about that. At least when it’s someone you’re associated with, we can get rid of them.”
There’s an inexplicable sting behind my eyes.
Inexplicable because there is no reason on earth why anything this woman does or says should hurt me.
Even when she hasn’t looked at me once, is acting like I’m not even here, and is talking about me as if I’m a piece of toilet paper that got stuck to her shoe, caused her extreme embarrassment, and needs to be yanked off and flushed away.