No one really needs to know about the slow-burning torch I carried for him for years, or about the fact that the whole time,he barely seemed to see me. I’ve never talked about it fully, not even with Riley. No, I’ll be taking that to my grave.
“Anyway,” I say, trying to change the subject, “c’mon. Party planning. All we’ve talked about is balloons, and that’s nothing. How about hors d’oeuvres? Is this a hors d’oeuvres kind of event?”
As Riley ponders the question, I breathe a small sigh of relief that she let the Reed issue drop. Right now, all I need is a solid distraction, not a new thing to worry about.
I throw myself into the party planning, doing my best to put Reed and my money troubles out of my head.
Chapter 3
Reed
Celibacy,as it turns out, is hard work—but contrary to the tabloids’ image of me, I’m a hard worker. I put my mind to the task.
For three long months, I do exactly what my father asked of me: I don’t date. I don’t hook up. I don’t even go to the kinds of parties or clubs where someone might expect me to hook up. I wear exclusively long sleeves, lest the sight of my bare arms get any stalker paparazzi too excited. Wouldn’t want the starving Examiner to publish an exposé about me in a T-shirt.
I’m the model of restraint, really.
And itsucks.
I haven’t had a dry spell this long since… well, ever. The fact that it’s a PR-enforced dry spell does nothing to improve my mood about it. I expected the guys to give me shit for it, but both Cole and Declan seem to approve of my idea, which just makes it suck more. How am I supposed to complain about it, if everyone thinks it’s so important for my image?
Three months, almost to the day, after I made my pledge to my father, he appears in the doorway to my office at Eastwood. There are storm clouds gathering on his face, but that’s not an indicator of anything in particular. That’s just Dad.
“What’s up?” I swivel my rolling chair toward him, steepling my hands on top of my desk. “What can I do you for, Dad? I’m crazy busy right now, so if it’s?—”
He clears his throat to cut me off. “The Eastwood Hotel Corporation has done another publicity poll on your image.”
“Oh,” I say, the automatic smile frozen on my face. Irritation flickers in my chest, but I don’t let it show; I don’t want to give him a reason to tell me off. If all goes well, I could be in the clubtonight,and in the king-sized hotel bed of an A-lister tomorrow morning. “Well, let’s hear the verdict.”
“It’s tainted,” Lionel says, arching a brow.
“What’s tainted?”
“Your image,” he says impatiently. “Public opinion is the same as it always has been. Your little experiment has been a failure.”
I sit up straight, dismayed. “But that’s impossible. I was basically a goddamn nun for the past three months. I haven’t so much as looked at a woman the entire time, I swear.”
“It doesn’t seem to matter.” My father’s voice is clipped, and I suspect that he might not believe me. “Even if you’re not giving the tabloids material, they’re publishing new stories anyway.”
Only then do I notice the roll of magazines tucked under his arm. He unrolls them and passes a sheaf of them over to me. I flip through the covers, taking in the titles.
More than a few of them are old news. They’ve dredged up some of the more sensational stories from the past, dragging my fling with that heiress back into the limelight, or sinking their teeth back into my sordid affair with a famous singer and her twin sister.
I turn that cover around. It features a red carpet photo of the singer and a paparazzo’s shot of me getting out of a black car. Unrelated pictures. “This is old news,” I tell my father. “That Sofia Bellafonte shit, that was almost a year ago.”
“I’m aware,” he says drily. “Some of it’s old, certainly. Some of it, less so.”
I frown, flipping through the magazines until I get to the bottom.TheExaminer,again, my fucking nemesis. There’s a picture of me being kicked out of a club, my hands raised to shield my face from the camera flashes. I recognize the scene; it’s at least two years old. But the date is from last Tuesday, and the headline is unfamiliar.
EASTWOOD HEIR BEHIND CLOSED DOORS WITH ROYAL COUSIN?
“What?” I look up at my father, aghast. “Dad, I—this isn’t real. I haven’t slept with anyone since I promised you I wouldn’t. And I don’t think I’veeverslept with a Royal… that I know of.” I hesitate, then add, “They’re making this shit up.”
He purses his lips, nodding thoughtfully. “That may be the case,” he says. “But there’s only one takeaway here, and it’s that this isn’t working.”
“What do you mean?”
“You may not be giving them any new material,” he says, “but that doesn’t matter. They’ve got a deep well of old stories to turn to, and they seem perfectly eager to speculate on who you’re fucking in private, don’t they?”
