Dr. Stud

“I — I suppose you do,” she says finally. It's almost like a little white flag poking over the edge of the bunker. A tiny, adorable surrender.

“How about The Copper?” I ask her, waiting to see how she reacts. There's nothing there, even though she should probably know already that reservations are impossible to get. It's ridiculously exclusive, and she should absolutely be impressed.

“All right,” is all she says.

“Wear something sexy,” I advise her.

She thrusts her chin defiantly a little higher in the air. “Certainly. I can hardly wait."

Just before I back away, I stop and look her over once more. She's quite the contradiction: willingness battling against some kind of natural hostility. I don't understand it, but I find myself eager to explore it more thoroughly.

I am intrigued, I suppose. Well, that's something, at least. Most people do not arouse my interest.

“Til then,” I smile, meaning goodbye.

“Yes,” is her simple answer.

I walk away thinking how nice it is when women answer yes before I've even asked the question.

Chapter 26

Emmet

Hannah's office door is closed, I notice as I get off the elevator. Still, her receptionist twitches when she sees me, her eyes automatically rising to meet mine and then slicing diagonally away. She doesn't want to look at me. She's probably been privy to enough email threads that she's worried any interaction with me will damage her career. Like I'm pollution. Or some kind of strange virus.

Which, at this point, I'm too exhausted to care about anymore. The last few months have been harrowing, with paparazzi and reporters dogging my every step. After the first few pictures showed up on TMZ, the story caught fire. Everybody wanted a piece of it. We couldn't even get away.

But still, it's my goddamned company. I think I deserve a little respect. I set my jaw and stride past her, never letting my eyes waver. I can see her breath rate accelerating, and watch her cleavage heave in that designer blouse she can afford because of me.

They all seem to forget that. Everybody on their high horse forgets just who bought the fleet of horses.

But whatever. She keeps her eyes down and types frantically as I pass by her, strolling into my office and closing the door behind me. Some part of me wants to go back out there and ask her to do some stupid task just to antagonize her little bit more, but that would be petty. What am I going to win by antagonizing a receptionist, for chrissakes?

I’m going to need a better sparring partner.

Frankly, I'm not sure why I'm in the building anyway. I squint around my spacious office, trying to remember the last time I was here. A month? No, it has to be longer than that. It was only three weeks ago when Hannah suggested I take an extended vacation, at least from being physically present in the office. Too much press roaming the halls was making people jumpy.

In all likelihood, she was trying to protect Dillon and me from some eager reporter running into an intern or business development executive whose feelings we might have hurt along the way. Probably trying to save us from whatever stories they might be tempted to tell.

That's Hannah for you, always a team player. Always looking out for me. Even when she aggravates the ever-living piss right out of me.

So it's definitely more than a month, maybe two? I head for the Barcelona chairs by the wide, bright windows and sink into one. My Italian loafer heels naturally drop onto the coffee table in front of me, a huge slab of granite with a polished top. Chopped right out of the mountain, just for us. Swirling patterns of beige and pink and burgundy that somehow look like a quilt made out of vaginas.

Probably my favorite possession.

This is all mine, at least for now. I try to remind myself that everything I can see out this window is because we built this company. Well, maybe we didn’t build it. But we kept it running after our father died, and we changed from something stuffy and old-fashioned into one of the top media outlets in North America. All of North America, from the top of Manitoba down to the ass crack of Peru.

I mean, can't a guy get a little credit?

But in a few weeks, this is all going to be over. All I have to do is keep treading water until the merger, and then strap on my golden parachute and get the fuck out of here. If the press wants to follow me, they can hang glide with their zoom lenses over our yacht outside Ibiza, the way God intended. No more showing up at our condo at three in the morning, asking for the names of everybody in the place. No more dangling over the edge of the roof, trying to get a picture of us…

I make a fist, driving my knuckle between my eyebrows. I don't want to think about that. Why am I thinking about it? None of it even really matters to me. So a bunch of gossip rags need salacious crap to keep their readers happy. So what? That's basically what our company does too, isn't it? It’s all the same game, just on a different level. I mean, it's only fair that Dillon and I should be on the receiving end of it every once in a while, right? Turnabout being fair play and all that?

Right.

I take a few deep breaths, waiting for that ocher-colored fog in my belly to settle. I just want everything to go back to being calm. Back to normal. I just want some privacy and the luxury of feeling that all of this hubbub is behind me.

Hubbub. It's kind of a silly word.