“You’ll be happy to note that Lennox Rose Group is thrilled with our new business relationship,” Sterling says to Asher. “The transition has started smoothly. We have a ways to go of course, but so far, so good. And they’re reporting record profits for many of their companies due to the influx of sales from Ella’s London tour.”
“Excellent,” Harrington says.
“Let’s not talk business here,” Catherine says, rolling her eyes. “You’ll all be doing enough of that this weekend.”
The rest of the meal is spent in polite, pleasant chitchat, and I can’t help but wonder as I carefully watch Asher’s family if that wasn’t a little show. At the mention of Lennox Rose Group, a gentleman to Sterling’s left perked up; he tried to cover it, but I still caught it. Then, he listened intently to Sterling’s short declaration, and now he looks to be mulling oversomething while tuning out now that the Langfords are discussing boring, banal topics.
Did Sterling and Catherine do it on purpose or was it a coincidence?
I lean in close to Asher and whisper in his ear. “Am I crazy, or did your mother and Sterling try to bait the man sitting next to Sterling?”
He turns and gives me an approving smile. “Perceptive. And yes. Well done, baby.”
I’ll ask him more about it later; now is obviously not the time, but it’s got me curious. And it reminds me that this world really is like a jungle, and to stay at the top of the food chain, the Langfords play to win. But what I’ve come to respect about them is the fact that they play as a family. At least their immediate family does. One thing I learned from the binder Heather put together on the families attending this weekend is that for most of them, money is everything and family is often a distant second or third priority. Which isn’t exactly a surprise, but I find it sad that many of the people here married for alliances and power and had children primarily to create heirs to their legacy. Genuine love is not their concern.
Yet with the Langfords, it is, and I can’t help but admire them more for it.
I stay quiet throughout the meal, observing how the Langfords interact, and I’m grateful that no one outside of the Langfords makes any attempt to speak to me. After all the craziness of the last few weeks, and the other engagements we have planned for this weekend, it’s nice to sit with my thoughts and not have to engage much.
Although Asher whispers sweet dirty nothings into my ear at regular intervals, so that keeps me on my toes.
Toward the end of the meal, I get several texts, one after another. I try to ignore them, but after a while, curiosity gets the better of me, and I pull my phone out of my clutch.Matthew and Emily have both sent me a string of articles with my name on them. I click on a link and my stomach drops as I read the first headline.
“Ella Hale’s Sordid Past as a Stripper”
What?
Below the headline is a picture of me in a cropped black dance top, short dance shorts, and knee-high black boots. My hair is down, but the picture is an action shot, so my hair is frozen in a flipping motion. I skim the article, growing red and frustrated as it describes me as a poor woman struggling in the jungles of New York who turned to stripping to make ends meet. Then it goes on to describe how I’ve given up my stripping days now that I’ve landed myself the Lion of New York and will never want for anything—but only if I can keep the shame of my past a secret from Asher.
What a load of shit.
I click on the link in the middle of the article, and it takes me to a video. Ten seconds in, I groan.
Fuck.
The video is indeed of me, and it has an easy explanation that is anything but easy to explain to the public. In the video, I’m attending what’s called a “heels” class. It’s a style of dance that is primarily focused on a sensual type of movement, much like what is performed in music videos. It’s a legitimate style of dance that is taught all over the place since dancers must be trained in all styles so that they can land jobs. One job might ask for Broadway style jazz, and the next could be a music video, so if you’ve never tried that style, you wouldn’t make the cut and/or be hired for that job. In the dance world, there isnothing risqué or questionable about this routine—but that’s the dance world—not the rest of the world. In the video, I’m wearing that tiny dance outfit and dancing in knee-high boots, and I’m performing choreography that is very sexy. But it’s not a fucking strip routine, and there isn’t a pole anywhere in that room. I’m in a dance studio, and there are a dozen dancers around and behind me, all doing the same routine. This was recorded probably five years ago at a dance class.
So how do we explain that to the public?
And who the hell recorded this video and sold it? I grit my teeth and shove my phone back into my purse, then lean into Asher.
“We’re headed back to your parents’ house after this?”
He nods.
“Good. I have a situation I’m going to need to deal with.”
He raises his brows.
“Not now,” I shake my head.
“There are three more articles,”I seethe, pacing and reading the articles on my phone. Asher and I are in our bedroom in his parents’ house between events. I’ve been texting Emily and my team nonstop since we left the Vanderholts’ garden party. We’re trying to put together a plan, but we don’t know what direction to take yet because the universe is a bitch, and it’s like once one article broke, the dam burst, and now there’s a flood of negative articles in various tabloids, all aimed at me.
One article has comments and sound bites from all sorts of random people from my past, from college classmates to friends from high school, and anyone else they could find who wanted a minute of fame and a few bucks to talk about me to the sleazy tabloid. I swear a vein bursts in my head when I reada paragraph quoting my old high school boyfriend telling the world I dumped him because he wasn’t rich.You’ve got to be kidding me.Yeah, the reason I dumped that asshole couldn’t possibly have been the fact that he kept pressuring me to have sex with him when I wasn’t ready to and he wouldn’t take no for a fucking answer. It was definitely his lack of money. Because that was my concern at seventeen.
But worse than that is an interview with my aunt, my father’s estranged sister. I haven’t seen her since I was probably twelve years old. She struggled with drug and alcohol addiction for most of her life and stole money from my father and grandparents on several occasions. They tried for years to get her help, which failed over and over again. Finally, they had to keep her away from the family because she was such a mess.
She apparently got sober a few years ago, and I’m glad for that, but it looks like she either reached out to or was contacted by a tabloid for an interview. In her article, she goes on and on about how I was a spoiled brat who constantly tried to manipulate my family and friends, and how I’ve always said I would be rich and famous one day, no matter what. It’s all complete nonsense and lies. I’ve probably talked to my aunt Cassie five times in my whole life, and that stopped fifteen years ago.
