For a tiny sliver of time, I feel nothing but sweet, undisturbed relief.
And then the camera flashes start.
***
“How bad is it?”
“It’s—”
“Wait!” I interject, hands pressed firmly over my eyes so I can’t see Shelby’s face. Or her computer screen. “Lie to me.”
“It’s not that bad, Gem.”
“Really?” I ask, hope lacing my voice.
“No, not really. You asked me to lie to you, remember? It’sbad. Like,reallybad.”
I fall back against Shelby’s couch — a musty, springless, uncomfortable piece she swears is an antique — and groan, loudly. Thank god she was home, when I got here. As a freelance graphic designer, she makes her own hours and, more often than not, she spends her days out of the midsize, recently-renovated house Paul purchased for her in the suburbs four years ago, doing Pilates or Cross Fit or hot yoga or god only knows what other kind of torture.
The one time she’d dragged me to the gym with her, I spent forty minutes flirting with a personal trainer named Drake and bouncing on the exercise balls like a five-year-old while she did a zillion crunches with such determination, you’d think a drill sergeant was standing over her. She never even got winded. As for me, I didn’t get Drake’s number — despite some of my best moves, including (but not limited to) hair-flips and flirty smiles — and I didn’t get another shot, since Shelby never invited me to the gym with her again.
Shocking, I know.
“This is a disaster,” I mutter.
“Yep.” She sounds practically giddy. “There are lots of pictures of you — thank god you were having a good hair day — and they’ve all got delicious headlines likeAFTERNOON DELIGHT — GEMMA SUMMERS SPOTTED LEAVING CROFT INDUSTRIES. It’s awesome.”
“Shelby!”
“What?”
“Nothing about this isawesome. I almost went blind from the camera flashes outside Croft Tower, I stubbed my toe on a fire hydrant while I was running away from the swarm of reporters, and the taxi driver I finally managed to hail charged me double because I made him take the long way here, so I wouldn’t be followed.” I sigh. “The story had finally died down, the paparazzi werejuststarting to leave me alone. And now…”
“Now, they totally know about your tawdry affair with the billionaire!”
My eyes crack open to glare at her. “It’snotan affair. We barely know one another.”
“You’ve kissed,” Shelby points out. “Twice.”
I blush. “Actually…”
“Ohmigod!Nottwice?” she squeaks. “As in,more than twice?”
I groan again and throw my arm back over my eyes.
“You’ve been holding out on me, bitch!” Shelby latches onto my arm and pulls it away from my face. “Spill it like a glass of milk.”
I glance at her. “That’s not a thing people say.”
“Isay it.”
“Well, it’s not an expression.”
“Ask me how much I care,” she demands. “No? Thenspill!”
With a sigh, I tell her about the trip to Brett’s office, Chase dragging me out, and the elevator ride, without going into any details about the fact that, apparently, Brett is a certifiable lunatic. When I describe the elevator kiss, she sighs dreamily and starts to melt. By the time I get to the part about the gentle lip brush in Chase’s apartment, she’s practically dissolved into a puddle of estrogen on the couch beside me.
“Ohmigod,” she breathes, her eyes locked on mine. “YOU ARE TOTALLY HAVING A TAWDRY AFFAIR WITH A BILLIONAIRE!”