CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER FIVE
A UGGIE DIDN ’ T THINK she breathed properly until they landed in London, and she separated from Matias. She went as quickly as she could to the Your Girl Friday headquarters, in a lovely little office space in London. As soon as she arrived upstairs to their suite, she spread her hands wide and threw her arms up over her head. “I came up with a solution.”
“Good,” Irinka said. “Because I’m hearing rumblings through my contacts that the brewing storm is going to be a big one.”
“I’m going to pretend to be engaged to him.”
Everyone stared at her. Mouths open, eyes wide. Irinka did not look overly proud of her like she had predicted.
“You what?” Lynna asked.
“I decided that I would get a bigger boat. A bigger headline. And that headline is that notorious playboy Matias Javier Hernandez Balcazar has traded in a life of debauchery for one of commitment.”
“This is...not a good idea,” Lynna said.
Auggie was instantly annoyed.
“Oh, are we going to talk about bad ideas now, Lynna? And what we all think they might be? Because we all agree that it is a bad idea you continue to go and stay at Athan Akakios’ house once a year and make him meals when his father is responsible for the ruination of your entire family.”
Lynna waved a hand like she was brushing Auggie’s words out of the air. “You don’t know what my eventual plans are. Perhaps I’m playing a long game. Death by Chocolate doesn’t always have to be a metaphor, Auggie.”
“If you’re plotting murder on company time we do need to know about it, though,” Maude said.
Maude could never stand for a creature to be in distress. But apparently beautiful Greek billionaires with dark souls were an exception.
Auggie couldn’t argue.
But then, Maude turned her wide, compassionate eyes to Auggie.
“Let’s not get derailed with Lynna. Why you ?” Maude asked.
“Because, actually trying to find somebody who would do this, who could be trusted, fast enough... It is not even reasonable. I was there. I have to do it.”
“In exchange for what?”
“Contacts. He is going to help grow our client base beyond our wildest dreams. I really do believe that.”
“Do you?” Irinka said. “You really can’t see what might go wrong with you pretending to get engaged to a client? It could open you up to all kinds of harassment. I am extra concerned with keeping boundaries in place.”
She did know. Because Irinka’s job was tricky, and it required total discretion. No one could know, broadly, that she did it, and yet the right people had to know when they needed her. But there could be no confusion among clients that she was an escort, either. Her lines had to be neatly and clearly drawn, while she stayed in the shadows and that was a difficult task.
Auggie never envied it.
“I know. I know ,” she said a second time just to make sure that she emphasized it appropriately. “I know exactly how loaded it is, and how big of a risk it is. Trust me. But either way, it’s a sticky situation.”
“We could just walk away,” Lynna pointed out. “We don’t have to be the cleanup crew.”
“But if we are,” Auggie said, “then imagine what that will do to our reputations. Imagine.”
Everyone looked up, and it was clear that nobody wanted to endorse her acting as a sacrificial lamb in this way, but they could all absolutely see the benefit.
“I promise that I’ll be safe. I’m drawing up an agreement.” She went to the computer and sat down at her white desk. They had chosen to make their office bright, filled with light colors, golds and pastels. Because they were as tough as any man, but they didn’t have to demonstrate that by sacrificing femininity. Far from it. Maybe that was her problem now. She was trying to right too many wrongs every time she did a single thing. They all were, honestly. The combination of the four of them, and all of their issues meant that they were a company comprised almost entirely of a desire to prove something. There were worse things. She really believed that. Far worse things.
But it made everything feel weighty. And just a little bit more intense at times.
She opened up a document, their boilerplate for a nondisclosure agreement, and then for terms and conditions of their association.
“You aren’t going to sleep with him,” Irinka said.
“No,” Auggie responded, fighting the urge to laugh out of discomfort and a feeling of being caught. “Of course I’m not.”
“Well, I just want to make sure you get that in the agreement.”
She felt warm, and very uncomfortable. Like Irinka could see inside her head, inside to where all her secret fantasies were.
“Believe me, I’ve covered that. I know that you deal with a lot of men who try to push the boundaries of your agreement.”
“Not anymore. My reputation precedes me. They know better.”
“Good. I hope your reputation insulates me.” The first thing she did was add in a clause that said no more physical contact than absolutely necessary, and only in public.
“You should put no contact below the waist. Or... In the front, above your waist.”
“Are you telling me to put Don’t grope me in the Ts and Cs ?”
In spite of herself, her breasts felt heavy. He was not going to grope her. She didn’t want him to anyway. It was actually laughable to think about Matias doing anything quite so prurient as that. Everything he did was sexual, yes, but there was nothing grasping or adolescent about it. She knew that all too well. She had watched the way his hand skimmed the curves of the women that he was with on the plane. Even while she had done her best to redirect her focus elsewhere. She had been aware.
It was impossible not to be.
She had done her best to try and block out the raw sexual nature that radiated from him, but of course that was extremely difficult.
She didn’t like admitting that she was vulnerable to that part of him. Because it was pointless. She didn’t want to be vulnerable to anything or anyone, frankly.
“You’re snarling,” Maude said.
“I am not ,” Auggie responded. She finished with the papers and sent them directly to his email. Then she slammed the laptop shut and stood up from the desk. “And do not tell me I look like a hedgehog, Maude. I’m good. Honestly, I just came to tell you all because it’s going to break and it’s going to break big. Tonight.”
“That sounds so ominous. Like a prophecy from a fantasy novel,” Maude said.
“It’s not,” she said. “Not even close. Thank you, though.”
Their intercom buzzed. “Ms. Fremont, a car has arrived for you.”
She frowned. Then she looked at her phone, and saw that she had a text from Matias. I need you to prepare yourself for tonight. Get in the car.
She scowled.
“Why are you scowling?” Maude asked.
“I’m scowling because he’s already being annoying. But that’s... That is the agreement I’ve made. To continue to deal with the Pitbull.”
“Guard your chastity,” Lynna said.
“Thanks, Lynna,” said Auggie. “Do you happen to have a belt on hand?”
“No,” she said, grinning benignly. “I’ve never needed one.”
“I’ll be safe,” she said, scurrying back out of the office, and into the elevator.
She looked down at her phone. And then she sent back a text.
I hope this isn’t going to be degrading.
When have I ever degraded anyone?
It was a good point.
I don’t know. I’m not in your bedroom the entire time we are going on long-haul flights.
Very funny.
I am very funny, Matias.
I didn’t know that about you.
You never really bothered to talk to me.
She had watched him be amusing, and witty. She had seen him be filled with a dark rage that made a sense of disquiet expand inside of her. But she had mostly been nothing to him. Nothing at all.
It was on purpose. How could it not be? But still, she realized that actually put her at a slight advantage. He didn’t know her.
She pondered that all the way to the ground floor, and then when she exited the building she saw a stark black car parked against the curb.
She opened up the door and slipped inside, and shrieked when she slid down the seat, and against his hard body.
“I didn’t know you would be in the car,” she said, jumping back like an angry cat.
“Well, that’s not going to be very convincing,” he said.
“You startled me. There was a whole human in the car I wasn’t expecting to see.”
“I gather that.”
She practically hissed and gathered herself into the corner of the car as it drove away from the curb.
“I have arranged for several stylists to come to my penthouse.”
“Oh. Do you need a makeover?”
He treated her to a grin that was a bit more to see than the one he generally showed the public. “I’m fine the way that I am.”
“Oh. So only the woman needs to be changed irrevocably to be acceptable. I thought you were supposed to be a progressive playboy.”
“If by ‘progressive’ you mean that I love and respect women, then I suppose I am.”
“Many people would argue that a man who is as promiscuous as you are doesn’t respect women.”
“That would only be true if you find sex inherently disrespectful. I believe that using another person for sex can be disrespectful. I believe that a man who acts as a selfish lover, who sees the woman that he’s in bed with as less than him, or as someone worthy of contempt because she has chosen to sleep with him, is a man who ought to be hanged.”
“Strong words,” she said.
“It contributes to that great, unsolvable problem created in the world by men, does it not?”
“Explain,” she said.
“Men want women to be sexually available. Yet judge them when they are. I have always found the standards of men to be unfair in that regard. And I have certainly never sought to perpetuate that sort of behavior.”
“An activist.”
“You said it, not me.”
“Your father was that sort of man,” she said, understanding then.
“Yes, he was. An exacting set of standards for others that he did not hold himself to. A hypocrite. I have no patience for hypocrites, Augusta. My sister was cruelly treated by a society that hates a rebellious woman. Who sees a spark of defiance in them is something to be crushed, not cultivated. What was a strength in me that could be reframed, was seen as a portent in her. I am a great many things, I have committed a number of sins in the pursuit of revenge against my father, and I have no doubt that I will commit innumerable sins more. But I don’t hurt women. I do not hold myself to different standards than I would anyone else.”
“And yet I’m the one getting the makeover,” she said, though not quite so sharply as she might have, because the mention of his sister gouged her a bit.
“I already had mine. I think perhaps you don’t understand exactly what I was back then. I might well have worn my suit as a military uniform. I was barely able to smile, let alone tell a joke. I could no more have amused a companion with a witty story than I could have pulled a rabbit out of the hat. I can do both, now, incidentally.”
“Cheap magic tricks?”
“Sleight-of-hand can be useful for many things.”
For some reason that made her face get hot. It should conjure up ridiculous images. Of Las Vegas and cheesy shows. But there was something about how he said it, how he looked at her when he did, that made it very clear he was talking about something else entirely.
Her body couldn’t help but respond. She hated herself then a little bit. For being so... Susceptible to him. Even while he was saying exactly what he was. Maybe that was the secret. There was no shame in him, and he was exactly what he appeared to be. Every woman who got involved with him knew exactly what she was getting. It was well-publicized.
“Is that your secret?”
“What exactly?”
“You don’t promise women anything. You are actually quite honest in some ways.”
“In a sense,” he said.
Of course, she also knew that he hid his intensity from everyone. She had seen it. It was a force. The kind that... That was the thing that could trap a woman. That intensity. When he played easy and affable, it was easy to believe that nothing else was there. That there was nothing deeper to him. That he was only the very shallow puddle he pretended to be, and that made it easy to think of him as a jungle gym that a woman could climb on and leave behind.
Not her, necessarily, but a woman. One who had experience of that kind of thing.
She had seen the intensity.
Just then, the car pulled up to his penthouse, delivering her from her thoughts. The building was beautiful, well appointed. She had been here before, but had never gone inside his residence. Just to the lobby. Which was all gold and marble elegance, ostentatious and fitting a jackdaw. A man who put brightly colored feathers over his plumage to disguise what he really was.
“You’re the Scarlet Pimpernel,” she said.
“Excuse me what?” he asked as he opened up the elevator that led to his floor.
“I was just thinking. You disguise your true nature behind a facade that allows people to underestimate you. It’s a book. About a nobleman during the French Revolution who pretended to be an empty-headed fop in order to escape detection as a man who was helping people escape the gallows. It is also a movie, one that my mother liked quite a bit. So, I can pretend that I read the book, but I didn’t.”
“And you think that’s me?”
“Yes. Essentially. It suits you to have people underestimate you, but only on your terms.”
“Yes,” he said, smiling wryly, “only on my terms.”
They arrived at the top floor, and the elevator doors opened, revealing the grand scope of his penthouse. It was filled with people. She was trying to take in the opulent details of the room, but was distracted by the crowd that immediately rushed around her. “Jewel tones, I think,” said one of the men. “Matching manicure,” said a woman.
“I think perhaps a champagne-colored diamond.”
She was being made over.
And she had no choice but to surrender.