Chapter 16
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Social media is the worst. And so are PR managers. And promises…
Mirabelle
Sick, I stare at a photo from a night that I can barely pick out of the haze. I was inebriated. I was fuzzy-warm. I left from Jeffry’s with Mr. Anders early, because the air in the apartment felt wrong, and I needed to leave. Outside, Mr. Anders told me half my friends like liked me.
And then?
Then he cornered me against my car, touched me, kissed my cheek, and tried to get me to agree to a bet.
I can’t think. I hate this. It’s my face, online, very clearly.
And I look drunk. So drunk.
But since there’s no alcohol in the picture, I look drunk on Mr. Anders.
Ahead of me at that great big black corner desk in his office, Mr. Anders focuses on his computer screen and swears.
When I look up at him, he’s swallowing hard and reaching to pour himself a glass of water from the Brita pitcher I keep filled for him.
“We’re not together,” I say, feebly. “We’re not dating.”
His stormy gray eyes slash to me. Pupils dilated, he stares.
“We’re not,” I whisper.
His head begins to shake. “I don’t think you should read any of the articles associated with this picture, Mirabelle.”
I slump and look down at my phone. “It’s that bad?”
“This time, the picture was sold to a tabloid, not a main news channel. The language is more…objectifying.”
My phone slips from my fingers into my lap, where the screen goes dark against my pretty pink apron.
I was optimistic this morning. After two days of quietly doing my job without any incidents or unwelcome interactions between Mr. Anders and me, I decided to wear something pink and happy.
I thought maybe the photo wound up scrapped, useless, blurry.
I thought maybe, despite the altercation with Jeffry, Mr. Anders had actually managed to make a friend and that’s why he was leaving me alone.
I thought many, many things.
Many good, hopeful things.
Sinking against my hands now as hope abandons me, I whimper.
“I’m sorry,” Mr Anders says.
I peek up at him, ready to say it’s not your fault. Except, of course, I am pressed to my car with his thumb against my lip. So.
My fingers close into fists, and I find myself glaring at him. Because it is his fault.
“What were you even doing?” I snap. “Why was I in that position?”
“I…” He reaches for the collar of his shirt, tugs. “We were talking.”
“I know we were talking, Mr. Anders. I even remember what we were talking about. You tried to get me to agree to a stupid bet. Fake dating. Bets. Why are you so dead set on bringing to life my least favorite tropes?” I recall that I am talking to my boss and bite my tongue.
Turning my face away from him, I temper myself, take cooling breaths, then mutter, “Ugh.” I squeeze my eyes shut.
“Why was I in that position? If you’re capable of such a feat, tell me the truth. ”
His office chair creaks, and heavy steps approach. By the time I’ve opened my eyes and turned, he’s got his hand braced against the backrest of my chair. Caged in, I sit beneath him. “You want me to be honest?” he asks, voice tantalizingly low.
I shiver. “Yes. Of course.” Honesty is all we have. It’s all anyone has.
“It’s really not obvious?” he presses.
I stare up at him, and blink. “What’s supposed to be obvious?”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, he steps back and falls into the chair across from me, sighing.
I…am deeply confused.
Is he allergic to honesty or something? That much seems almost obvious.
“Mr. Anders, why can’t you just tell me?”
His eyes snap open, brows heavy above them. “Because. I don’t want to lose you.”
“I’m under contract through February, and I’d rather not have to move again so soon even if this matter of unwelcome public displaying is deeply distressing. I think we should just make an effort to not be seen together. At all. Ever again.”
He winces. “I still think it’d be safer for you if we fabricate a dull relationship for a little while.”
I cross my arms. “We are not fake dating!”
“Then it doesn’t need to be fake!” he booms.
“Ew, no.”
He winces, again, more violently. Then he clutches his fist, swings his head to the side, heaves a breath, and presses his clutched hand to his mouth. Heavily breathing, he sits like that for a little while.
I replay what I just said.
Okay.
Maybe it was a little harsh to say ew. But. Come on. He’s my boss. And he’s nearly a decade older than me. We are not fake dating and we are absolutely not going to real date, either.
Unwinding my arms, I thread my fingers together in my lap. “I apologize. That was crass of me. I likely should have said, no, thank you, sir.”
“You don’t need to censor yourself with me,” he mutters against his fingers. “You said what you meant, exactly how you meant it.”
Yes. Well. I cross my ankles, innocently.
I understand where he thinks he wants me uncensored, because maybe he’s a little too pro be yourself and grew up with too much Disney Channel or something, but also he’s clearly having a moment because of what I said.
I fear he doesn’t understand what it means to be in a position that controls my job security and living quarters.
I need to watch myself. Be respectful. And absolutely, one hundred percent completely, get back to heavy censorship…
Tapping the pads of my thumbs together, I watch him, respectfully waiting as long as I can before saying, “So we’ll just not be seen together ever again? Perpetually?”
He drops his face into his full palm.
“If you want someone to go out and do things with, I have all the guys’ numbers.”
His eye twitches before his gaze slices toward me.
“Samuel’s a disaster, but he’s sweet. And Micheal’s pretty funny.”
Mr. Anders’s gaze blackens.
I get the feeling he’s not interested…
I don’t know why.
It’s not like they’d side with Jeffry’s alpha dog, territorial-over-me nonsense. They’re the ones who, apparently, aren’t harboring a weird crush that they never told me about.
“Mirabelle Peters,” Mr. Anders mumbles, “are you trying to organize a play date for me?”
My gaze skids off him. “What? Who? Me?”
“I understand being with me is a fate worse than death and you find me revolting in every sense of the word, but I’m not interested in being around you because I’m lonely. I have friends.”
I am a million and one percent positive that the pure unadulterated shock that appears on my face in response to what he’s just said is, um, not the kindest response. Neither, to be certain, is the fact I blurt, “You do?”
If I didn’t know better, I’d assume I was watching the slow collapse of a man’s mental health.
Thankfully, Mr. Anders is a billionaire, and he’s certainly had worse accusations laid upon him.
For example: dating his housekeeper.
Now that I think about it, this situation is probably pretty insulting to him, too. I shouldn’t assume that I’m the only one being affected here. He’s a billionaire. And the media is shoving him together with someone far younger who clearly cleans for a living based on the way she dresses.
That has to be problematic somehow.
I say, “What does your PR team say about this?”
Lifting himself from the trenches of mental collapse, he mutters, “My PR team?”
“Yes. What are they suggesting we do to remedy the situation?”
His eyes narrow. “You don’t want to know.”
“I do, actually. I think, probably, we should rely on the professionals to deal with this, don’t you?”
His brow arches, and he straightens in his seat, lifting his hips to retrieve his phone from his back pocket.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Calling my PR manager.” He taps something in, then he tosses the phone on the table between us.
I blink at the device.
“Yellow, boss,” a surprisingly chipper greeting buzzes up from the phone, “I’ve seen the news. This is great.”
I stiffen. Great? What does he mean great?
“Is it now?” Mr. Anders grumbles.
“People are invested. We’re getting brand awareness out of this. Everyone is obsessed with that girl. She’s just so stinkin’ cute.”
I flush.
Eyes fixed on me, Mr. Anders says, “Yeah, well. Any advice on what I should do now?”
“Halloween,” the man states. “Keep it fresh. Get party plans, make them obvious enough that whoever’s doing this gets a front-row seat, see if we can’t get enough buzz from it that I get you on a talk show by Thanksgiving.
This chick’s so different from what people expect a billionaire’s woman to be like.
It’s practically fiction. Housewives and tired moms are living vicariously through the scandal.
Keep the fantasy alive, and we’ll keep utilizing the gossip to your benefit. ”
Mr. Anders grunts. “’Kay. I’ll see what I can do. Thanks for your input.”
Once the call clicks off, I find myself in a staring contest with my boss.
He breaks the silence with, “That was actually more tame than last time.”
I fix a smile on my face. “What?”
“Last time, he suggested a whirlwind romance, culminating in a June wedding. I guess he’s assuming I already know that part of the plan, though, so now he’s just focusing on giving me the steps to get there.”
I swallow.
Rising, Mr. Anders looks down at me, deathly serious. “If we’re following the professional’s advice, I think we need to go costume shopping before wedding dress shopping. Halloween is next week, after all. Then June is in only a matter of months.”
My head shakes, violently.
His head tilts. “But you said…”
“I thought PR would be up in arms trying to defuse the situation!”
He sighs, steps forward, and crouches in front of me. “I know. Which proves that you don’t understand how these things work. Trust me. It’s safest to make them think they’re getting what they want, but then be boring about it.”
Trust him? Trust him? He’s already lied to me once, and he just lied on the phone to his PR manager when he said he’d see what he could do. I can’t trust him. “How exactly was having me pinned to my car boring, sir?”
“It wasn’t. I wasn’t being intentionally boring then. Because you told me you didn’t want to ‘fake date’.”
My breath shakes. “So this is my fault?”
“No, it’s my fault. Completely. All of it is.”
My shoulders bunch, and I whisper, “I wish you’d just be honest with me.”
“I don’t think you’d like that.”
“In the same way I don’t think you’d like me completely uncensored?” I ask. “What if we’re both wrong?”
He sits there on his haunches, arms settled against his knees. Moments slip by. Calculations run through his eyes. Finally, he says, “Are you willing to find out?”
Something prickles my skin, but I say, “Yes.”
“Okay. In that case. From now until your contract ends in February, you’re stuck with me.
No matter what happens, you stay. And I will be honest. Painfully so.
And you will be you. No more muting. No more stopping, rethinking, and trying to backtrack.
No more biting your tongue. If you promise that, I’ll promise, too. ”
This feels completely dangerous.
And, worse, it feels like he’s been trying to get this out of me ever since I started working here. With prodding. Then bets. And now this.
I say, “Is your promise worth as much as mine?”
“If you catch me in a lie, I will give you anything you want, anything at all. I will write that in ink and have it notarized. If I lie, you will be at liberty to destroy me, to enact whatever justice you deem appropriate.”
“I’d have to prove you lied, though.”
“I can have it outlined that you don’t.”
“That seems really risky on your part.”
“Probably because it is.”
“You’d have to trust me. Completely. To do something stupid like that.”
“So it’s probably a good thing that I do.”
Simply knowing that I passed a background check with Mr. Lundberg should not elicit this kind of trust.
Nevertheless, my flesh is tingling.
Honesty.
Complete and total honesty.
From someone. Anyone. Under penalty of justice according to my own moral code.
It’s beautiful. Alluring. Addicting.
“Do you promise?” he asks.
If I promise, he’ll be honest with me until February.
Maybe by that point, he’ll have formed a habit.
Then, after, assuming he doesn’t hate me being me so much that he throws me out the second our work agreement ends, my work environment will improve.
I won’t have to feel like I’m constantly playing a game trying to decode what he’s thinking.
It places an awful lot of hope in him not hating me by that point, but I’m in pink today.
I’m in pink today because I was happy and hopeful.
It’s a bit terrifying to be hopeful that someone might like me in the way Fawn likes me when it took me eighteen years to find her. And to hope that someone I don’t even really care for might like me seems silly. Really silly.
I don’t, for the life of me, know why I want the chance.
My lungs shake when I inhale, and I whisper, “I promise. If you do.”
“I promise,” he says, and something unwinds in my body, like a twisted elastic finally being set free. “I’ll have the paperwork handled by tomorrow night, but I trust you, so we can start now.”
I nod. “Okay. So…tell me the truth. Why did you have me pressed to my car like that the other night?”
“Because,” he begins, rough, as he tips forward onto his knees and cups my cheek in his hand, “I wanted very badly to kiss you.”
My heart stops.