Living alone was a choice I made rather happily.
The alternative was living a lie, and I didn’t do lies, nor theft—not since both things had exploded in my face in spectacular fashion. Even though I had a car, I took the subway to work every morning. And since everyone in my family for the last three generations had personal drivers, I was seen as the black sheep of the tribe. Luckily, the tribe had dwindled and was nearly nonexistent, so it’s not like I had anyone to impress.
Besides, I liked the smell of piss and the general misery of harsh city life. It reminded me that I was a lucky motherfucker, even on the days I felt like God—if he existed—had made a point of pissing all over my plans.
On my way to work, I thought about what had driven me to pull Judith into the power room on Friday and fuck her mouth into what could have been a mass power outage in one of the largest skyscrapers in New York. My jizz definitely shouldn’t have been anywhere near all those electrical switches.
I was definitely trying to piss all over my territory, but in the process, I’d also pissed over my no-repeats rule, as well as my professional relationship with her. Currently, I was trying to decide if I should go back to normal and act like she didn’t exist until she quit and the problem took care of itself, or figure the damage had already been done and make her a booty call for when I was too tired to go on the prowl.
Pros: the Manhattan singles scene was beginning to grate on my nerves. I was starting to see the same faces in the same clubs. Every hookup and Tinder profile blended together in my head. At least with Judith, I had sexual chemistry.
Cons: her pussy aside, she had an annoying, holier-than-thou attitude, not to mention, she was mouthy, and I really couldn’t fucking stand her.
When I got to the office building, I had to take a phone call. Lily. I normally sent her straight to voicemail, but this was the third time she’d called since I’d gotten off the subway, so I wanted to make sure Madelyn, her grandmother, was okay.
“Anyone dead?” These were my exact words when I took the call.
I didn’t go into the building, knowing things could get pretty crappy and fast when it came to Lily and me. I rarely raised my voice, but for her, I was always happy to make an exception.
“What?” Her default voice was whining. The kind that sounds like a fork scraping against a plate. “No. Grams is doing great. I was just wondering if—”
“No need to wonder. The answer is no.”
“Célian, wait! I—”
But I’d already hung up. I turned around to walk through the double glass doors and spotted Judith sitting on the top stair reading, soaking in the first rays of sun like a thirsty flower. She wore one of her crumpled, wannabe-grownup black suits and hugged her backpack.
Her Chucks were red today. Oh, boy.
She wiped her eyes quickly, but I wasn’t sure whether she was crying or about to. She was talking on the phone, and any other bastard would’ve turned around, walked away, and vowed to stop making her life more difficult.
But I was programmed differently, carved from stone like the very people who’d created me.
I rounded her tiny, blond figure, half-listening to her conversation.
“Okay, Milton. Just…please don’t tell him.”
Milton sounded very much male and very much like a douchebag. The latter wasn’t based solely on his affiliation with Judith, but also his name. Now I was fully invested in the conversation.
“I’m really not interested in hearing what you have to say.”
Pause.
“Please don’t make it any more difficult than it already is. Promise me you won’t tell him. That’s all I ask.”
Pause.
“Yeah, well, I have a job to go to. Bye.”
She stood up. I pretended I didn’t see her, pushing the door open and waltzing to the open elevator. She was a few feet behind me, so when I turned around, our eyes met. She hurried to catch my elevator—of course I didn’t push the hold button—and sneaked in at the last second. There were two more people inside. Two assholes who went to the second floor. HR.
“Hi,” she breathed, turning around to give me her back and ass. Not a bad deal.
I nodded solemnly.
Silence. Silence. Silence. She didn’t act shy or awkward. Something about this morning told me she had more pressing issues to deal with than sucking her boss’s dick, and I decided on a whim that I needed to know what was on her mind.
Naturally, talking to her was out of the question. She sassed way too much and always nagged me about my behavior. No. I fired a quick text message to one of my reporters, Dan, with her name and address while the elevator made its way to the sixth floor in record negative time.
Célian: Judith Humphry. Her file is with HR. I want to know everything there is to know about her, from her education to her favorite color. Who she fucks, who she lives with, who she talks to.
I fingered my chin, watching my message and firing off another one immediately.
Célian: And how many pairs of Chucks she has.
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t any of my business. But Judith was shaping up to be such a trainwreck—stealing from her boss, then fucking him, then avoiding him, then sucking him off, then having public fights with people on the phone outside her work building—I wanted to make sure she was on the sanity spectrum.
When we got to our floor, we walked straight into the newsroom. The first rundown meeting was in ten minutes. She walked over to her desk with that damn notebook clutched to her chest.
“Humphry, join us in the conference room,” I heard myself say.
She perked, bit down a smile, then opened the notebook and scribbled something into it. Fast. Lord. She was so fucking thirsty for the job. I let Brianna dispose of the iPad in my palm and shooed her away.
“You’ll be taking notes, Judith, not making suggestions,” I said.
I was careful to treat her exactly as I would any other reporter in her position. I was already an insufferable prick, so I wasn’t particularly awful to her. But I was also fair, and after a week, she’d earned the right to sit, listen, and absorb.
She kept her eyes on her notebook. “A girl can dream.”
“Happy to fulfill your other fantasies.” Good thing Brianna had started working on her cardio and was already on the other side of the floor. We were almost alone, early, eager fuckers that we were.
“I actually have one you could help me with.”
“Unless it involves me tying you to a bed, I’m not really interested in hearing about it,” I said, setting fire to the entire conversation we’d had last week about my dancing on a red line. I sprinted through that fucker all the way to the finish line of sexual harassment. Not that I was harassing Jude, as evidenced by the enthusiasm with which she sucked my dick, but if she wanted ammo on me, I’d stupidly given her that.
“It actually involved me tying you to a bed.” She batted her lashes, and for an unknown reason, didn’t look annoying doing so.
Normally, I liked being the one doing the tying, but for Humphry, I could make an exception. She stepped toward me, her tongue sweeping over her lower lip.
“Then I’ll strap a ball gag to your mouth…”
I curved a brow, raking my eyes slowly over her body and undressing her item by item. She was high if she thought I’d put anything in my mouth that wasn’t a part of her body. By the time she was in front of me, she was stark naked in my head, her voice dripping honey and sex all over my fucking loafers.
“Then,” she whispered, her pillowy lips moving against my ear. “I’ll set the whole damn thing on fire, with you in it.”
I smiled. Judith Humphry was a massive pain in the ass. Not only was she a natural blond, shit-hot, and the owner of the best pair of lips in the tristate area (both pairs, if we’re perfectly honest), but she was also sharp as a razor—the opposite of my usual pushover flavor of the night.
“If you ever had the pleasure of getting in bed with me again…” I narrowed my cold eyes on hers. “You would be the one to catch fire, and we both know it.”
With that, I curled my finger, motioning her into the conference room. People had begun to trickle straight into it with their coffee cups and sleepy eyes. Judith obeyed, her catlike, limber walk telling me she knew I was looking.
James Townley opened the door for us before he walked in.
“Son.” He clapped my back.
“Call me that again if you want a one-way ticket to early retirement,” I muttered.
“Junior.” He winked at Judith.
“Mr. Numbers.” She saluted.
They shared a knowing smile. I punched him in the face. Internally, of course. My limits were few and far between, but they were there. Besides, James had just married the morning show’s latest weather girl—who was thirty, both in age and IQ points—in a Hamptons ceremony that made Harry and Meghan’s royal wedding look like a karaoke evening for a low-budget Jersey Shore bachelorette party. That thing got more news coverage than the North Korea threat. I shot James a don’t-fuck-with-me frown—just to make sure he knew that I knew he’d checked out Judith’s ass when she walked in—and he pretended not to notice me.
From that point forward, it was same old, same old. My staff presented me with their ideas for tonight’s show starting with Kate beside me—my right hand—then moving to the person next to her and so forth.
Kate (forty-something, happily married, and openly gay) suggested we start with the volcanic disaster in Maui. Jessica (twenty-something, single, and clingy as saggy balls) came up with new details about the EU crisis, and Steve, the newbie who was shaping up to be a little less useful than a bag of unwashed anuses, suggested we talk about the cheese crisis in Belgium. I braced my hands on the back of the chair I stood behind so I didn’t accidentally punch him from across the table.
“Junior?” Frankly, I did it because I didn’t want James and her to have something uniquely theirs—a pet name, a connection.
“Me?” She pointed at herself, looking up from her abused notebook.
I shot her a condescending glare and punctuated it with a raised eyebrow.
She tucked her hair behind her ears and cleared her throat. “Yes. Okay. Good thing I have Kipling.”
Kipling? Who the fuck is Kipling?
“So, there’s a YouTube blogger…”
“Next,” I barked.
This wasn’t Couture. I doubted our viewers wanted to hear about some chick showing people how to apply eyeliner for twenty minutes, unless she was dead and chopped into tiny pieces, spread across the five oceans.
“Wait,” she bit out, her teeth grinding together. “There’s a YouTube blogger with over two million viewers. He just posted a video telling people he hid a body part of someone close to him who passed away in the woods near his house. Whoever finds it will get ten grand in cash.”
“What?” Kate nearly spat her coffee all over the desk. “How did we not hear about this until now?”
“First of all, we are the news.” Judith smiled apologetically, and my jaw ticked, fighting a smirk. “And it happened literally ten minutes ago.” She swiveled to Kate, her chest rising and falling. “Honestly, I doubt it will warrant much reaction at first. Most of his viewers are minors following his journey as a pro skateboarder. But this is definitely something we should be alarmed about. Can I?”
She pointed at Steve’s iPad. Steve dragged his eyes to me, a question mark and boredom shining through them.
“Give her the iPad, doofus.” I shook my head.
Five seconds later we were looking at Cody McHotson—not his real name was my wild guess—wearing a Viking helmet, sleeveless Billabong tank top, and a smug smile that flashed bleached teeth. He looked like the reason they invented guns, but he was actually doing this—sending minors out to look for a body part.
“It’s not gross or anything.” He tucked a lock of his blond side-bang back into his hat. “Like, don’t expect to find something super weird. But it’s there, and hey, if you feel like making a buck, you should go for it.” The stoner laughed into the camera, sending a plume of smoke toward the lens.
“Is he a minor?” I turned to Judith.
She shook her head. “Twenty-one.”
It was official. This generation was too dumb to repopulate. Hard to believe I would be dependent on his likes fifty years from now.
“Good lead, Humphry. Jessica, follow it.”
“I’m on it.” Jessica saluted, typing away on her phone.
“Hey, what about me?” Steve flung his arms in the air.
“You gave me a lead about Belgian cheese. Be happy my shoe is not in your ass.”
“Ugh,” he wailed, picking a pastry from the basket and stuffing it into his mouth.
He was of the Phoenix Townley brand—a rich boy who’d wormed his way into my newsroom through connections. My father had paved the way for people who were incapable of consuming a latte without burning themselves in the process, let alone making one, yet simply had the right last name. Of course, same could be said about me. With two differences: I hadn’t asked for this job, and I’d goddamn well earned it.
People were leaving the conference room when I jerked my chin toward Judith. “A word in private.”
“Here?”
“Yes, Einstein.”
The room had floor-to-ceiling glass walls, exactly what I needed to keep my hands off her. Once we were alone, I shut the door and sat down in my seat, linking my fingers together. She straightened, her chin high, watching me closely.
“This can’t happen anymore.” I motioned between us.
I wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to blow our dirty fucks out of proportion. The last thing I needed was for her to think we were in a relationship of sorts. I needed to keep my work area efficient and professional.
She clicked her pen, nodding. “Agreed.”
“Anything you need help with?” I gestured downstairs with my finger, but I could see by her flaring hazels that this was not the way she interpreted it. “I saw you crying outside this morning.” My lips flattened. “This was not an invitation for a cock-ride.”
Her cheeks pinked. “I fail to see how that is any of your business.”
“My employees are my business,” I shot back drily.
“Their performance is, yes. You don’t have to worry about that. I assure you.”
Judith didn’t have the tools and means to fight me. But other than that, she did a damn good job of standing up to me.
I was getting tired of beating around the bush, so I just gave it to her straight.
“Was the phone call about us?”
She tilted her head back, laughing. “No. There is no us.”
“Quite right. Good job on the YouTuber.” I stood up, ironing my shirt with my palm. This was good. I could go back to ignoring her from now on. I was about to do just that, marching over to the door, when I saw the face behind it and froze.
Lily Davis stood on the other side, her glossed lips grinning at me.
Lily Davis, as in the woman I should’ve been fucking.
Lily Davis, as in the woman Humphry knew nothing about.
Lily Davis, as in my fiancée.
Some girls looked like they had the world at their Louboutin-clad feet, and the leggy brunette who burst through the glass door with a megawatt smile was one of them. Her flowery perfume made my eyes water, but maybe I was just on the verge of crying because of my exchange with my boss. She gripped Célian’s collar—flashing an engagement rock the size of an entire Tiffany’s store—and planted a wet kiss over his scowling lips. He held her shoulders and took a step back, giving her a frosty onceover, as if assessing the damage on a recently purchased wrecked car.
“Lily.”
“Fiancé.”
What?
It shouldn’t have surprised me. Célian was gorgeous, successful, and a billionaire in his early thirties. Why wouldn’t he have a fiancée who looked like sex on heels? But the irony wasn’t lost on me. He had managed to put me firmly in Elise-the-editor’s shoes. The other woman. The homewrecker. The moral-less girl. Only difference was, Elise had known for a fact that Milton had a girlfriend. I, on the other hand, had had no clue.
I stood on shaky legs, waiting for Célian to introduce us. He did no such thing.
Throwing Lily a cold glare, he ground out, “This is a surprise.”
And not a good one, his eyes said.
“I had a fitting just around the block, and Mom wanted to buy macarons for Grams, so I thought I’d drop in and say hi. You know how I get stabby when there are carbs around since I started keto.” Her thick eyelashes fanned against her cheeks as she clung to him, as if worried he could slip out of her hands like butter. On top of being a brunette version of Blake Lively, with a summer dress and bright yellow sandals, she looked wildly in love. Undeniably so.
But I wasn’t going to do that to myself—be jealous of her. The poor thing had a cheating scumbag for a fiancé, and even now, he looked about as remorseful as a used tissue.
“And you are…?” She circled her manicured finger around my face.
The idiot your partner cheated on you with.
I wanted to fall down on my knees and come clean. Tell her I’d had no clue he was taken, that he was lying, that he was a jerk. Of course, I didn’t have a death wish.
So I settled for a faint smile. “Jude Humphry.”
“Jude. Oh my God. Love your name. So chic. I’m Lily Davis. But, you know, not for long.” She ran a possessive hand over Célian’s muscular arm.
A needle of guilt pierced my heart, my agony pouring out.
“Wow. Congratulations.”
Célian stared at her like she was an alien, a perfect stranger who’d walked into his life unannounced. Sweat coated my upper lip.
“Oh, this little thing?” She wiggled her fingers, flashing a rock that made Dwayne Johnson look miniature. “We’ve been engaged for as long as I can remember. I finally got around to planning the wedding.” She rolled her eyes, laughing. “It is so exhausting.”
Coincidently, so was holding my smile intact while she told me about her relationship with my boss. I decided to excuse myself before I did something that would secure me a night in jail—like slap Célian across the face several times.
“I’m sure you’ll rise to the seemingly impossible challenge.” I reddened, watching the cheater smirk in my periphery. “Well, I have a lot of work to get to. So…” I tilted my head to the door and found my way out. Célian stood next to Lily—they were a united front, after all—staring at me with quiet interest.
Engaged. He is engaged. I was so flustered, so blind with fury, I didn’t even know how I would proceed with my day without doing something stupid and irrational, like trash his entire office.
I stumbled toward my station, keeping my eyes on my Chucks. A hand snaked behind me, clasping my elbow and spinning me in place. I slapped it away instinctively, thinking it was Célian.
It was Steve, sitting at his desk, his dull eyes zeroing in on mine.
“Happy with yourself, Junior?”
What in the fresh hell did he want from me, and did he realize how extremely poorly timed his question was? I couldn’t be less happy with myself right now.
“Define happy, and please don’t touch me again.” I jerked my arm back.
He stood up. Steve was a little pudgy, and not very tall, but he was handsome in the way men who had all the money and time in the world could be. Groomed to a T.
“You made me look like an idiot back there, and we both know it,” he pointed at the conference room, whisper-shouting.
Puzzled, I cocked my head, thinking he must be giving me some kind of backhanded compliment. When his face remained thunderous, mine followed suit.
“I’m not following.”
“You came with that stupid YouTube idea no one knew about. Why did you even talk at all? You’re the lowest goddamn person on the totem pole. Guess that’s all it takes these days. Know how to give a good BJ, get your foot in the door.”
My eyes flared. Not that the accusation was far off the mark. But while Célian Laurent could be blamed for a lot of things—all of them scoring him brownie points in the Asshole of the Year contest—giving me perks for whatever we did or didn’t do wasn’t one of them. When it came to integrity, we both had it.
Besides, there was no way Steve knew about the power room incident. He wanted to rile me up.
Mission accomplished.
“Steve, you’re making a pretty serious accusation here, so unless you’re going to back it up with facts, I would kindly ask you to never speak to me again in a non-professional capacity.” I crossed my arms across my chest.
I didn’t know why the universe had decided to rain calamities on me today. I just knew the day needed to end before I stabbed someone with my mechanical pen.
“I’ve got my eye on you.” Steve pointed at his eyes with two fingers and poked my arm. Again. I did the only thing I could without actually putting that mechanical pen to use. I bumped my fists against each other twice, giving him the finger Friends-style.
“Did you just…?” Kate pushed off her desk, her chair wheeling backward. She held her Sharpie like a cigarette in her mouth.
“I did.” I cleared my throat. “Please don’t judge me. Living with the fact I did it in public is punishment enough.”
She shook her head, her chest vibrating with laughter. “That was totally epic, in a weird, nerdy way. Good work on the YouTube piece, by the way. I’m Kate.” She offered me her hand.
“Jude.” My tight expression finally melted into a smile.
“Steve, let’s go into Célian’s office.” Kate jerked her head toward the hallway, and the bastard actually had the audacity to stomp under his desk. How old was this guy?
I got back to my desk and stared at the Reuters reports, chewing on my lower lip and trying not to think about Célian’s fiancée. I knew I was being irrational, but I still logged into the LBC software’s messenger app and group-messaged Grayson and Ava. For the past week, I’d been spending my lunch breaks exclusively with them. Not surprisingly, they had their noses in everyone’s business.
Judith: Did you know Célian Laurent is engaged?
Grayson: What’s it to you, Miss I-don’t-know-him-hey-look-a-squirrel?
Judith: It was a surprise, is all.
Ava: They’re childhood sweethearts.
Grayson: Sans the sweet part. I’ve seen them together enough to know the man loves her as much as I love getting my crotch waxed. (The results are far more aesthetically pleasing than shaving, if you’re wondering.)
Ava: We weren’t, but thanks for the mental image.
Judith: Célian doesn’t look like the kind of guy to do something he doesn’t want to do.
Grayson: Let’s just say it’s an arranged marriage of sorts. Célian is doing it for the same reason he does everything—to get ahead in the game.
Ava: Her father owns Newsflash Corp. They distribute eighty percent of the magazines in the US market, plus her family has ten-percent equity in LBC. Don’t worry about Célian. No chance of him ever lifting a finger without calculating the consequences and risks.
“She’s right,” a husky voice boomed above my head, and I snapped my gaze up, my blood freezing in my veins.
My knee-jerk reaction was to apologize profoundly, but then I remembered what had brought this conversation on. My browns met his blues. I tilted my chin up.
“I do whatever—and whoever—I want, and my favorite finger is the middle one. Makes for very unhappy critics. And one-night stands.”
How had this guy not been assassinated yet? He was a walking, talking personal offense.
I kept my mouth shut. We were in a room full of colleagues. No way I could tell him what I thought of him and end the day still gainfully employed.
“Let’s take this conversation somewhere soundproof,” he ordered.
“Pass.” I gathered some reports I’d printed out earlier and began to highlight the headlines I thought would be of interest to Jessica. Hadn’t we agreed our fling was over? It was none of my business that he was a cheater. Even if it made me want to staple my fist to his face for falling under his charm. Twice.
“The sooner you realize I don’t use question marks, the easier you’ll adapt here. Up.” He turned around, storming toward his office. I followed him because I had to. We went in just as Kate and Steve were coming out. He closed the door behind them and leaned against it, hands in his pockets.
“You’re engaged.” I narrowed my eyes into slits, giving his hard pecs a shove. He didn’t move from his position against the door. Just stared at me with his bone-chilling indifference. “Freaking engaged, Célian!”
“I’m sorry, were you expecting a ring after our one night together?”
I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.
“No, but I was not expecting you to be engaged to another woman. Had I known, I never would have touched you. Just because you don’t have any morals doesn’t mean I don’t, either.”
“Please tell me more about your morals, Miss Still-Owes-Me-A-Grand,” his eyes traveled along my body with boredom.
Fifteen hundred, actually, but that wasn’t something I was eager to correct him on.
I waved a hand at him. “Just say what you want to say and let me get on with my day.”
I turned around, staring at the wall and refused to show him my pain, which he seemed to thrive on.
His posture unstiffened, and he stuck a hand into his unruly, tousled curls. “That being said, it is not what it looks like.”
“Hmm… My favorite cheater line—right after, ‘I can explain’.” I clucked my tongue, still staring at the wall behind him.
“Are you going to listen?” His lips thinned in annoyance.
“Not if I can help it.” I shrugged.
“Then I guess you can’t. Lily is well aware of the fact that I’m seeing other women. We do not share a bed, a house, or even a joint gym membership. As your friends pointed out rather bluntly, my engagement is one of convenience.” He dragged his long fingers over his jaw.
I chose my next words carefully.
“You said your life is none of my business. I tend to agree with that sentiment, especially now that we’re officially done with each other. So while I appreciate you explaining yourself,” I spat sarcastically, “I really think this conversation is over.”
I made a move toward the door he was blocking. He stopped me, resting a hand on my wrist. Our eyes met, and I found his bleeding with pain. But his set jaw, high cheekbones, and smooth, regal forehead all told a story of a formidable man. My lonely heart believed his eyes. The rest of my body knew it made no difference.
“Chucks.”
Stop calling me that. Stop giving me nicknames and orgasms and hope, I internally screamed.
“You said you were legal-savvy. Now’s a good time to withdraw that hand of yours,” I whispered.
He did. I thought he was going to send me on my way angrily, but he didn’t.
“Was Steve giving you trouble?” His voice didn’t sound like steel anymore, though it was nowhere near soft.
“Don’t.” I shook my head. “Don’t pretend you care. Don’t even try to be the good guy. You’re as bad as they come, and now that you came…”
His mouth twitched with a smile.
“…it is time to move on. Congratulations on your engagement. She’ll make a beautiful bride.”
Grayson: Jude? Are you still there?
Ava: Maybe he fired her :/
Grayson: Maybe he kidnapped her :O
Ava: Stockholm fantasies much?
Grayson: The guy does look like Theo James’s beefed/baller/macho brother. Him not knowing my name aside, I would let him show me a good time even if I ended up in his trunk at the end of the night.
Ava: You need professional help, Gray. I’m not equipped to deal with your type of crazy.
Grayson: It would be a spacious trunk, too, I bet.
Célian: If you two were to read anything more substantial than the National Enquirer, such as our company’s newsletter from three months ago, you would know that messenger chats on our web software are now publicly available to view by any user in the company.
<Grayson left the chatroom>
<Ava left the chatroom>
<Judith sent a gif of Ross from Friends bumping his fists together>
