Chapter 23
Reed
The incident at the party sticks in my mind for the next several days. No matter how hard I try to focus on work, I can’t erase the lingering frustration, nor the tension that hangs in the air between me and Olivia—tension that wasn’t there before, and is an unwelcome guest now.
I keep replaying the entire evening in my head, over and over, as I go through paperwork at my desk.
I didn’t even really register that the woman I’d talked to was flirting with me. We were talking business; she was in real estate, and wanted to ask about a recent Eastwood acquisition. The subject matter of our conversation was strictly professional, and I was focused on that.
But I hate that Olivia took it the wrong way. It’s just another instance of proof that she only sees me as some messy, immature playboy. She must think I’ve slept with half of the women in this city.
And really, who can blame her? After all, that’s the whole reason our arrangement exists in the first place. I was making a mess of the Eastwood image.
My reputation never used to bother me. If a magazine wanted to plaster my exploits across a two-page spread, it didn’t affect my life beyond the talking-to I’d get from my father.
But it bothers me now. I don’t like the idea that Olivia feels like she can’t trust me.
Even though our relationship is all for show, I’d never cheat on her.
I promised her I’d protect her from that.
Plus, I’m still getting over the jealousy of watching someone else dance with her.
I don’t know who that guy was—I’d never seen him before at any of the functions my family attended. The second I laid eyes on him, though, I wanted nothing more than to break his jaw for putting his hands on her.
I don’t think I hid it well, either.
The whole night turned into a mess, just like everything else I touch, and now the whole situation feels fucked up. Olivia and I haven’t had sex since that night. We’re like strangers living together, with none of the fun or easy companionship from before.
More than anything, I want things to go back to normal between us. For the first time since we signed this contract, we’re out of sync. I hate it. I feel like we’re barreling toward disaster. But I have no idea how to fix it.
It’s got me agitated. Unsettled.
Unable to focus.
I sit back in my chair, frowning at the document open on my computer screen. For some reason, all of the legalese is suddenly as dense as molasses. I’ve been plugging away at the same task for the past half hour—wasting time. Getting nowhere.
Figures.
With a groan, I lean heavily on my desk. I need to find a way to soothe my frustration, or this day is going to last years.
I pull out my phone and dial my assistant’s number. She picks up immediately, as always. “Mr. Eastwood. What can I do for you?”
“Hi, Marjorie. Can you have something delivered to my office for me?”
“Of course. What do you need?”
“Some knitting needles,” I tell her. “And a roll of yarn.”
She’s silent for several seconds.
“Marjorie?” I prompt, wondering if the line has gone dead.
“Um—sorry, sir,” she says. “I’m not sure I heard you correctly. Did you say knitting needles?”
“Yes. And yarn. Please and thank you.”
There’s another long pause before Marjorie says, sounding suspicious, “Alright. If you say so, Mr. Eastwood.”
After hanging up, I turn to my desktop to wait for my supplies to arrive. I minimize the window with the documents I was going through—that’ll have to wait until I get my mind right—and instead bring up YouTube.
I type how to knit into the search bar, then peruse my options. Without sound, I watch a few of the videos. How hard can this really be?
It always seems to calm Olivia down; in fact, she’s told me before that she knits whenever she’s stressed. She finds it soothing, apparently. I figure that if it works for her, maybe it’ll work for me.
Twenty minutes later, I’m regretting that decision.
The yarn tangles hopelessly easily, and I can’t figure out how to make the starting knots that the woman in the video did. I keep fumbling with the needles; I have no idea how to make them move easily in my hands the way they do for Olivia.
This is hard as fuck. It’s way more frustrating than it is stress-relieving.
While I’m grappling with the needles, the door to my office flies open without warning. I jump, nearly dropping my knit creation, which seems to just be a big knot of yellow yarn.
My father bursts into my office. His face is severe, rage etched across his features. Without saying a word, he marches up to my desk and tosses a newspaper down in front of me.
I let the yarn and needles fall into my lap, reaching for the paper. It’s flipped to an article that features a photo of me and Olivia outside of the hotel at the party a few days ago. The headline reads, REED EASTWOOD’S NEW LOVER CAUGHT IN SEXUAL HARASSMENT SCANDAL.
I have to read the words five times before they start to make sense—before I realize what they’re trying to say.
“Looks like the media’s been more interested in the girl since the engagement was announced,” my father says, his tone clipped.
As he stands there, his arms folded, I begin to read the article.
In a shocking move after months of radio silence, Reed Eastwood did the unthinkable—got down on one knee and proposed to a woman reporters have identified as Olivia Quinn.
At first, it looked as though, after years of playing the field, New York City’s most notorious pleasure seeker was seeking only to settle down with his true love.
But of course, no associate of Eastwood’s would come with a clean history. The New York Gazette has secured an exclusive, tell-all interview with Olivia Quinn’s former boss, Martin Keller, who has a less-than-positive story to tell about the hotel heir’s new paramour.
“I told her over and over again that I was happily married,” Keller told us. “But she wouldn’t listen. She was constantly making comments to me, coming on to me… suggesting things that are, quite frankly, inappropriate for the workplace.”
It’s at this point that I begin to see red. Unable to finish the article, I throw the paper down on my desk and look up at my father, fury making my hands tremble.
“I thought you vetted this girl,” he snaps before I can say anything. “I thought you’d made sure she was clean as a whistle.”
“I did, “ I protest. “She is. This is—”
“Did you see how many times your last name was dragged into the picture? Do you have any idea what that will do to the company’s image?”
“This is all lies,” I insist. Even as I say it, though, my anger only grows. No one can fact check it, can they? It’s all conjecture—he said, she said. Everything Martin Keller said, he said to inflict harm on Olivia’s reputation. But that won’t matter to the press, nor to the public.
“Are you sure?” my father asks, raising an eyebrow. “Maybe that girl isn’t as goody-goody as you thought she—”
“Of course I’m sure!” I’m even more pissed at the insinuation that this could be true.
The hardest part, though, is knowing that there’s not much I can do. I can stick by Olivia, of course, and I can stand up for her, but I can’t force the Gazette to retract this article.
I pull out my phone, my mind racing, and open Twitter. When I type my name into the search bar—yeah. The article’s already hit the internet, and people are discussing it online. There’s no going back now. There’s no erasing this.
“This is bullshit,” I growl.
“Whether or not you think—” Lionel pauses mid-sentence, noticing the mess of yarn on my lap. “What the hell is that? What are you doing?”
Impatiently, I stash the yarn and needles in the top drawer of my desk, closing it before my father can get a closer look at my ill-fated knitting project. “Nothing.”
He shakes himself a little, his eyes narrowed, and says, “Listen to me. I don’t care if this is true or not. I don’t care what it takes to deal with it—you deal with it. Do you understand me?”
Before I can answer—and I’m not even sure what my answer would be, anyway—Lionel has turned on his heel and stormed out of my office. He slams my door with unnecessary force on his way out.
For a few moments, I sit at my desk, staring at the Gazette article. I can hardly believe it exists—that Martin Keller was enough of a scumbag to pull something like this.
And I can’t reverse it. I can’t get rid of it, no matter how much I desperately want to.
That clause from my contract with Olivia flashes through my mind again, as it does every so often. Protect her reputation.
I couldn’t even do that. One of the most important things I promised her… I couldn’t make sure it happened.
My fingers shake as I lift my cell phone again, dialing my assistant’s number.
“Marjorie,” I say when she answers. “I need you to cancel my day.”
“Your… day?”
“Yes. The whole day.”
“Are you sure? You’ve got a meeting at four with some—”
“Cancel it,” I say, getting to my feet. “I need to deal with something that’s come up.”
As I head out of the office, I notice more than a few stares directed my way. I do my best not to meet anyone’s gaze as I head to the front entrance, where there’s a car waiting for me.
By now, I’m sure everyone has heard. But there’s only one person I want to discuss this with. There’s only one person who needs to hear about this.
During the drive through the city back toward The Luxe, there’s only one thing on my mind. In a weird, twisted way, my father was right. I need to deal with this as soon as possible. For Olivia’s sake.
When I arrive at the penthouse, Olivia is in the living room, sitting with Riley. As the elevator door rolls open, I hear snatches of their conversation drifting through the front hallway.
“—and I just don’t know what to do about it,” Olivia is saying. “I don’t want to be bothered by it, but…”
“I hear you,” Riley says. “You know, to be honest…”
She trails off at the soft chime of the elevator, both of them going quiet. I head down the hallway and round the corner, immediately locking eyes with Olivia.
The air is tense. I have a hunch that I know what they were talking about. Riley seems nervous, her gaze darting between me and Olivia.
I want to fix things between us. I want things to go back to the way they were, when I’d come home and we would enjoy each other’s company. The feeling of coming home and finding Olivia here with Riley, clearly venting her frustration with me, isn’t ideal.
And bringing this article into the mix… well. It might just make things even worse. It’s my fault that Olivia was dragged into this spotlight.
Right now, though, I know I have to tell her. I want her to hear it from me, rather than finding out from someone else—or worse, from a stranger online. We need to deal with this. It’s the priority.
Eventually, I clear my throat and break the silence. “Olivia, we need to talk.”
She frowns, clearly picking up the seriousness in my voice. “Did something happen?”
“In a manner of speaking,” I say, reaching into my inside pocket to produce the article. “Though I’m pretty sure this is more about something that didn’t happen.”
I reach over the coffee table to hand the article to Olivia. She eyes me warily, then unfolds the page and begins to read. She holds the paper out so that Riley can see it, too, and as the two of them scan the page, I see horror and fury dawn on both of their faces.
Olivia is silent for several minutes as she reads. When she looks up, her face is grim, her mouth a thin line. Only her eyes betray her anger.
“I can’t believe him,” she says, flinging the paper onto the coffee table. “This is just…” She shakes her head, at a loss for words.
“Disgusting,” Riley finishes for her, and she nods. Olivia seems more weary and upset than angry, which only makes me angrier on her behalf.
“It’s more than disgusting,” I say furiously. “It’s slander. We ought to go after his ass for defamation. He’s a complete piece of—”
“I don’t know how we could possibly go after him,” Olivia interrupts, her head dropping into her hands. “It’s his word against mine, right? And if I accuse him back, it’ll only make me look even more guilty.”
“That’s not true,” I argue. “You’re not guilty. He is. That has to count for something.”
“But I don’t know if it does. He’s well-connected—”
“So am I.”
Olivia looks up at me, and I can see the beginnings of tears in the corners of her eyes. “Reed—”
“We can fix this,” I insist. “We’re going to fix this. Okay?”
I’m not sure whether I’m talking about the situation, or about the tension in this apartment, or both. Everything. I’m going to fix everything.
“What am I supposed to even do about this?” Olivia’s expression is one of total despair. “The public barely knows who I am. We’ve only just gone public with this, and I’m already dealing with a scandal?”
“We’ll get PR to help you craft a statement,” I suggest, sinking down onto the couch opposite her and Riley. “Something that can contextualize things a little. Obviously, you’ll have to deny the allegations.”
“How am I supposed to deny it without looking like I’m a liar?”
“We’ll word it perfectly.”
“That might not help,” she says.
“It won’t have to,” Riley breaks in, grabbing her by the arm. “You’ve got the receipts.”
Olivia turns to her, confusion and stress creasing her forehead. “What are you talking about?”
“You worked for Martin Keller for years,” Riley says. “You’ve got texts. Emails. Dozens of messages from him full of inappropriate comments—stuff you can screenshot. That’s proof that he’s a liar and a pig.”
Olivia lets out a breath, her hands folded. “That’s true.”
“You’ve showed me a few of your text conversations with him. He was definitely the one harassing you. It’s obvious, and if you leak a few of those to the public, everyone else will see it too.”
Olivia glances at me, and I give her an encouraging nod.
“I don’t know,” she says uncertainly. “I don’t want to get down in the mud with him, you know? I’m worried I’m just going to make it worse.”
“It seems like it could only get better,” Riley says, giving her an encouraging pat on the shoulder. “Come on. This feels like the right thing to do. You’ve gotta stand up for yourself.”
Olivia stares at the floor, wringing her hands together and biting her lip. I know that look. She’s still unsure.
“This asshole shouldn’t get to just walk all over you,” I add. “Riley’s right. And I’ll help you. I’ll have your back. I promise.”
Finally, Olivia looks up. As she locks eyes with me, I realize it’s the first time she’s met my gaze since our argument at the party. There’s a little bit of fear there, but determination, too.
“Okay,” she says. “What do we need to do?”