Page 10 of Dirty Nasty Billionaire: Part 3

Chapter 5

Elise wakes me up by barreling through my bedroom door, still in her pajamas, her iPad in hand.

“Delaney, you need to wake up right now,” she says. Her voice is full of urgency and worry, and all I can think is oh my god, someone died. I sit bolt upright in bed with a gasp of fresh morning air.

“What?” I cry, scrambling for my phone to check the time. It’s five forty-five in the morning. But before I can register that it’s way too early and that I’m way too tired, I see the notification on the screen in a little white box. And my stomach turns a complete somersault.

Scour CEO Embroiled in Office Sex Scandal - Dalliance with intern causes discord

“Oh shit.”

“Yeah, ya think?” Elisa snaps. “I knew you were getting laid, but how could you not tell me you were fucking the boss of all bosses?”

“Wait, my name is in there?” I drop my phone and snatch her iPad out of her hand. I’m going to need a bigger screen to watch my entire life fall apart in real time.

Elise already has the CNN story pulled up. CNN. My sex life is on CNN. I let my eyes skim over the words, too frantic to slow down and read every one. Nixon Blake … billionaire playboy … caught having a sexual relationship with an intern … Delaney Masterson … recent graduate … New England College … high honors … sex in the office … against company code of conduct.

Oh my god, there’s even a quote from a Human Resources rep from Scour. And further down, several prominent employment lawyers weigh in. And noted feminists, some condemning Nixon Blake for harassment, some condemning me for trying to sleep my way to the top. And at the very bottom, over ten thousand comments from internet strangers all over the world, most of whom are very excited to call me a slut and a climber and a gold digger and a whore.

But that’s not even the worst part. The very worst part? That’s the red button at the top of the screen that reads “Start Slideshow.”

I know I shouldn’t. I know there’s nothing in there I haven’t already seen in Amber’s file folder or, you know, lived. But somehow seeing it pixelated beneath CNN’s Breaking News scroll feels important, and all the more humiliating.

There they are, the photos of me leaving Nixon’s building with bee stung lips and sex hair. There’s me coming out of the supply closet, Nixon’s hand planted firmly on my ass while we smile conspiratorially. They even have a photo of Nixon at the State of Scour Gala where you can see me, slightly blurry, in the background. Of course, because I’m surrounded by a crowd of white-haired men in tuxedos and the errand older woman in a modest black dress, I look like a fucking sex-starved harlot in my slinky blue silk. These pictures tell quite the story — without quite telling any of it fully, of course, not that it matters to any of the hundreds of thousands of people probably clicking through over their morning coffee.

Which of course leads me to fall down a shame spiral imagining all the people I know who are seeing this. My high school chemistry teacher, Mr. Duncan. My parish priest, Father McCutcheon.

My parents.

“Oh god,” I croak out, before dropping Elise’s iPad and sprinting to the bathroom. I don’t vomit, but I come damn close. I fall to my knees on the cool tile, resting my head on the toilet seat. Maybe if I did throw up, I’d feel better. Maybe it would be like an exorcism.

But no, those photos, that story, would still be on CNN. And who knows where else. Seen by everyone with an internet connection.

My life is over.

Behind me, I hear a sigh. I look up and see Elise standing in the bathroom door, leaning against the door frame.

“I’ll say it again — you should have told me.”

“Why, so instead you could say ‘I told you so’?”

“Maybe? I don’t know. Or maybe I could have saved you from this to begin with. Dating an internationally-known and recognized billionaire bachelor is enough to land you in some media somewhere, of course. But when he’s the head of the company you work for? Come on, Delaney. You had to have known that was a disaster waiting to happen.”

Did I? I try to think back. Was there I time when I thought I shouldn’t be with Nixon Blake? Because if there was, that thought got swallowed by the incredible connection we shared. Yeah, ok, there were a lot of orgasms, but it was more than that. I got the sense that I knew Nixon better than anyone, even if that meant I didn’t know him very well at all. I felt like he let me inside his world a little bit, even if it was just a toe in the door. I fell in love with him, for god sakes. This wasn’t just a fling. How can you ignore that kind of connection, those kinds of feelings?

“Oh shit, you fell in love with him, didn’t you?”

“What?” I say in a desperate attempt to protect some of my privacy, to protect even the tiniest sliver of my relationship with Nixon.

“Don’t even try to hide it. It’s written all over you face,” she says, the truth of the words washing over me. Because I’ve never been in love before, never even thought I was in love before. Not until I met Nixon. He’s my first in so many ways.

I look up at Elise, who seems to have, at least for the moment, gotten over the fact that I lied to her for so long (though knowing Elise, I’m definitely going to hear about it later … and for years to come). She’s looking down at me, her face a mix of pity and sadness.

“Look, it’s not that bad,” she says, though even I can tell it’s half-hearted.

“Seriously? Not that bad? My parents are probably sitting at the breakfast table eating shredded wheat and reading about me fucking my boss in the copy room!”

“First of all, no one actually eats shredded wheat.”

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