Page 18 of Stuck with the Grump

Iwokeupnakedin bed with Leigh passed out beside me. Her hair was wild from a night of the best sex I’d ever had. She was something else in bed; untamed and free in a way no woman I had ever known had been. Leigh wasn’t the kind of woman who was afraid of touching herself or teasing me, both of which only turned me on more.

When my phone started ringing, I grabbed it quickly and hurried into the hall before it could wake her. Looking at the screen, I saw the one name I didn’t want to see.

“Camille, what’s happening?” I said, getting straight to the point. When your public relations liaison called, you didn’t waste time finding out what she wanted.

“Clarke, where are you right now?” she asked, her tone clipped.

“At my family’s lake house away from the city. Why?”

“Well, it would seem like someone in that tiny ass town you’re around decided to take a picture of you mauling a much younger girl in the grocery store right before a massive storm. You want to tell me what the hell is going on, Clarke?”

I sighed and walked away from the bedroom, heading outside to pace across the back porch as I spoke. “How the fuck did that make the news?”

“Well, when an eligible billionaire such as yourself is seen two seconds away from nailing somebody in the bread aisle, it tends to make the news.”

“That’s ridiculous. How do we make this go away? The last thing I need is for this to be splashed all over the media.”

“Well, too fucking late for that.”

“You know, other people would fire you for speaking to them that way,” I said, leaning against the railing and looking out over the yard.

“Other people would keep their dick in their damn pants while they’re supposedly in hiding.” Camille sighed and I could imagine her pacing back and forth across her office. “How do you want me to clean up this mess?”

“Couldn’t this work to our favor?” I asked, trying to imagine how the headlines would play out. “This would make sure that news of the embezzlement isn’t released in the next week or two.”

“You want to use this poor girl to keep a bunch of old men in suits from finding out that their money is on the line?” Camille said, her tone disbelieving. “Clarke, that is wrong on so many levels. Why would you do that to her?”

“She wouldn’t care, anyway. What we have is just something that works while we are together. She’s nobody serious in my life.”

Even as I said the words, I could feel the guilt gnawing at my stomach. Though Leigh and I didn’t know each other well, I knew I should be telling Camille to bury the story. I should be telling her to plaster whatever she needed to on all the sites she could find. I should be saving Leigh from the internet, not using her to escape.

And yet, I couldn’t get the words out.

“Camille,” I said with a sigh. “I don’t know what else to do here. I need something to keep the spotlight off of the company and this is the story that will do exactly that.”

“Why don’t you take a second to talk to her and find out if she is even okay with being used like this?”

“She’ll be fine. It’s her brother’s company.”

“Your funeral,” Camille said before the line went dead.

I ran a hand through my hair as I stared at the dark clouds rolling in across the horizon. Another storm would be over us in a matter of hours and I could only hope that the power went out before Leigh saw the pictures of us.

However, when I walked back into the bedroom and saw her sitting with her phone in hand, her full lips set into a hard line, I knew that she had already seen the first of the stories. Leigh didn’t look at me, her large brown eyes still staring at the screen.

There were two ways that I could deal with this. I could admit to knowing nothing and hope that she believed me, or I could come clean about what I said to Camille.

“What are you looking at?” I asked as I sat on the bed, leaning against the headboard. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”

“Did you know about this?” she asked, her tone cold and detached. Her eyes flickered up at me, a distant look in them. “Tell me that you didn’t know about this.”

“Not until they were posted.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Camille handles our PR. She gave me a call a few minutes ago and told me that pictures of us in the grocery store were circulating online. I haven’t seen any of them yet.”

“Have you seen what they’re saying about me?”

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