Boxed Set: Dominated by a Billionaire - Part 10-12: Irresistible Billionaire (2 page)

"You’re beautiful," I say, being totally honest, looking at her pretty mask of pregnancy. "It looks like you’ve got a tan!"

"I wish! I can’t even leave the house with this wiggly worm pushing on my bladder. Hey you, in there," she screams at her stomach, both hands like a megaphone around her mouth. "Enough is enough! Let’s stop playing games with mommy’s insides!"

I burst out laughing and sit down next to her on the couch. Even at the end of her rope, my best friend knows how to lift my spirits.

"You know what I think?" I say, pointing my finger at the baby-to-be. "Given what a pain in the ass that baby’s being, it's got to be a boy!"

"Don’t forget that I’ve already given birth to two little gremlins. The D’Aragon girls can be bigger pains in the butt than all the men on earth!"

"Right, but it’s also Clarence Miller’s child," I say, with a knowing look. "I bet it’s a guy!"

"Woe is me!" she jokes, rolling her eyes. "Now, what has your man done to you?"

"Oh, next to nothing. I just found his little personal collection…"

"What? Of porn mags?" Clémentine interrupts me with a sparkle in her eye.

"Worse! Dozens of pictures of me taken years ago…"

"Oh, right, he’s crazy about you; nothing new there. Hold on," she freezes,. "Did you say porn photos?"

"No! Are your hormones turning you into a sex maniac or what? Stolen shots! He had me watched after we'd broken up."

"Oh… And he forgot to tell you about that, is that it?"

"If he spends his life lying to me, maybe I should just give up the idea of spending my life with him, I say, sighing at this thought.

"Not so fast, sweetheart! Maybe he’s suffering from amnesia? I read in
Health Mag
that–"

"Nice of you to try and defend him," I interrupt mid-sentence. "Maybe you should try reading something else, though. And maybe I should stop believing that I’ve met Prince Charming."

"He loves you, Alma. I’ve never seen a man love like he does. Your King couldn’t stand losing you. He tried to track you down for years after you broke up, that’s pretty flattering, isn’t it?"

"To tell the truth, I don’t really care if he was spying on me! But I can’t stand his lies anymore, his secrets, the way he keeps everything to himself and has to control everything, even me!"

"Look me in the eye: if he had told you, would you have taken it well?" Clem traps me, holding my chin between her fingers.

"Maybe not," I admit quietly.

"So there! You’ve already gotten away from him once – I think he’s just doing everything in his power to prevent that happening again!"

"Well, it’s off to a bad start…"

"Cut this bullshit and help me up! Pee emergency!"

That night and the following three nights, Vadim tried several approaches in view of making up in bed. All he got was me turning my back on him, grumbling “good night” reluctantly. I’m starting to miss his body, his warmth and his kisses. But I haven’t given in. I can really hold a grudge when I feel betrayed.

And he’ll soon realize that I can be even more hardheaded than him!

My CEO – who always knows what he wants – also tried to make me waver while on King Prod premises. Over the past three days, his attempts at being forgiven included: calling me into his office for no reason whatsoever, trapping me in the hallway and brushing his lips against mine, making pleading eyes at me in meetings and slipping into the elevator just before the doors shut. Every time, I held firm!

But his scent, my God, his scent…

Fortunately, the workload from
Twirling
has both of us running on overload, and usually autonomously. Since the final script has been OK’d, the pre-production phase is now underway. I love my job, but I especially cherish this key phase of making a movie: there’s still everything left to do and anything seems possible. Everyone is working themselves to death, trying to get the project off to the best start possible and all the decisions that are made now will have huge repercussions on how successful it is.

This morning, we're meeting up with Susan Bridges at King France headquarters. The American casting director is coming straight from L.A. to help us make that rare find: the French actress who’ll play the trilogy’s leading heroine, alongside two male characters who will be chosen in the States. The Franco-American cast is an extra challenge. But Sophie and Clarence seem to be totally up for it – rearing to go. Alistair can’t wipe his half-angel half-demon grin off his face – most likely at the idea of running into all these young actresses, each one more beautiful than the next. And hyper Susan is all over the place, cup of coffee in one hand, cellphone in the other, with a pen stuck in her mouth.

I wonder when she’s going to swallow the pen and call with her cup!

Luckily for me, Mr. King decreed that he would only meet the two semi-finalists after seeing their screen test. For everything else, he places his “complete trust” in us. I couldn’t keep from letting out a little snide laugh when he said that.

Start by being an example, Mr. CEO of a thousand secrets!

The young actresses parade by one after the other. Some of them speak practically no English. Others haven’t learned their lines or have partied a little too hard the night before, and most of them blame their incompetent agents. Among them, three or four girls stand out: perfectly bilingual, wacky enough for the role, innocent enough to please the audience, but still grounded enough to withstand a shoot that goes on for several months, followed by two sequels. We have them do the designated scene. Clarence is happy to give them their cues and Sophie is so absorbed that she sometimes even forgets to switch on the camera. At the end of the day, we're all exhausted, but we still have three names on our shortlist. We might be able to agree on two if Susan Bridges would stop noisily apologizing as she goes out to answer “urgent” calls.

It is 9 p.m. when I finally leave King Prod. In front of the Champs-Elysée building, I stop a minute to let the month of May blow its warm little breeze on me, and decide to take off one of my pumps to relieve my sore toes. I hadn’t noticed the car parked in front of me, along the sidewalk.

"Do your feet hurt? May I drive you home, Miss Lancaster?"

Vadim has rolled down the back window and the surprise, combined with his formal manner of speech, his grin and his sexy voice have an insane effect on me.

It’s the fatigue, Alma! Don’t give in.

"No, thanks, I have my own car. And you should try a new pick-up technique."

"OK, you asked for it… Get in this car unless you want me to come and get you!" he says, scrunching up his forehead, still seated in the backseat, his arms leaning on the door window.

He takes off his jacket and rolls his shirtsleeves up to his elbows. His golden skin, the prominent muscles in his forearms, the veins rising on his wrist all give me some kind of electric shock. If he weren’t so sassy and sure of himself, I would throw myself into the car through the window!

"The thing is, you don’t know how to do anything except lie and give orders, do you? I thought you were more resourceful than that," I tease, trying to annoy him. I still haven't not budged an inch.

"I know you want to, Alma. At least as much as I do," he goes on, as I remain at a standstill. "I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth and I promise I haven’t hidden anything else from you. I love you and… Go back into the building!"

My CEO’s scream reaches me before I notice the three paparazzi rushing towards me. It isn't long before others join them and flashbulbs pop all over the place. I cover my eyes with the back of my hand. Vadim jumps out of the car and joins me outside the building, as the photographers start shouting strange questions that I don’t understand at all.

"What do you have to say to Keith Johnson?"

"Do you confirm his disclosures?"

"Why did you hide your past?"

"Mr. King, have you served time in prison?"

Vadim wraps his arms around me, makes himself into a shield and heads straight into the little pack gathered on the sidewalk, forming a barrier between us and the car. I limp on a single heel, still holding my pump, but my King manages to make the paparazzi back up and finally step aside. We both rush into the car through the still-open door. The driver takes off immediately, leaving those gaping hounds empty-handed.

On the way to our penthouse, my gloomy lover surfs the web on his touchscreen tablet. I lean in close to him and read over his shoulder, forgetting all my resentment for a while. His search comes up with several pages of results; all the celebrity websites vying for catchy headlines that make me nauseous. “Scoop: Vadim King ex-delinquent!”, “Revelations by King’s Former Social Worker!”, “Bad Boy turned Playboy,” “Drugs & Prison: King’s Troubling Past Resurfaces,” “Scandal: Vadim King Changed Lives, says close relation.”

Keith Johnson: a ghost… from hell!

Vadim only unclenched his jaw to call Adrian, asking him in his deep, furious voice to come right away. It's after 10 p.m. when the ex-FBI agent joins us at the penthouse. The well-built man, clad in black, shows up, head lowered, face uptight, expecting Vadim to hit him with a lightning bolt. He has already printed all the articles from the celebrity websites and highlighted the parts where Keith tells everything he knows. Along with everything he has managed to make up.

"What am I paying you for, Forester? How could you let something like this happen?" Vadim says, visibly angry, ripping the papers out of his hands.

"We didn’t see it coming," Adrian apologizes, with his hands on his hips. "Johnson wasn’t supposed to be out of prison for another eight or nine years. I have no idea how he got out so early."

"He’s out and you don’t even know about it! He talks to the press and you don’t know about it! What’s going to be next? Is he going to come and ring our doorbell?"

"I've put my guys on it. He won’t get close to you. Anyway, he isn’t allowed to leave American soil as long as he’s on probation."

"Being over there doesn’t stop him from doing damage," Vadim grumbles, throwing the papers in the middle of the living room.

"He hasn’t wasted any time, anyway," I say. "What does he want from you after all these years?" I ask, laying my hand gently on his arm.

"We thought he’d ask for money to keep quiet," Adrian suggests. "But since he’s already talked, it’s must be out of vengeance. It looks like he's been getting ready to strike for quite some time. I’m sorry, King, we should have been more on our guard."

"What do we do now?" my lover sighs, as he walks away towards the plate-glass window, his hands in his pockets, looking off into the distance.

I walk softly over to him and press up against his back, slipping my hands onto his firm pecs. I hate it when his heart aches. And the memory of that trial twelve years ago causes me as much pain as it does him, when Keith Johnson tried to frame him for the drug dealing that he was doing himself. That shady social worker tried everything to get Vadim sent to jail, taking advantage of the influence he had had over him since his teenage years. But Keith ended up getting sentenced, thanks to the brilliant lawyer by my father found. I thought we would never have anything to do with him again.

Vadim takes my hands in his, kisses my palms and puts them back on his chest, as if that physical contact had done him some good. Despite everything that separates us today – the secret surveillance, the argument that we still haven’t discussed again – I only want one thing: to relieve him of his pain a little.

No, I’m don't forgive him. But yes, I love him. Go figure…

Snuggled up against him, we become one. And I know that our two minds are struggling at the same time to keep from thinking back on those terrible days of our break-up. Those days that tore us apart. That trauma we never really recovered from. That wound we’ve been trying to heal ever since we got back together again.

"We can file a complaint against Johnson for libel. Attack the websites that publish false information. Request a right of reply or write a press release and deny it all," Adrian suggests halfheartedly, numbering the proposals off on his fingers.

"But the damage has been done, hasn't it?" Vadim hisses, his eyes squinting out at the Eiffel Tower shimmering in the night.

"You know how the people that read those rags are. They remember the scandals better than they remember the truths. It’s always the paparazzi that creates the buzz, never the lawyers," the ex-FBI agent says spitefully, trying to cover his ass, which only serves to irritate me.

"You’re no better than they are, Adrian!" I bark, turning around to look him in the face. "I know you had me followed for years, took pictures of me, took notes on every move I made to write your little pathetic reports. So you can go shove your ethics you know where!"

Both men turn their surprised eyes towards me. I don’t get mad often, but when I do, it’s never halfway. Vadim has trouble hiding the little smile emerging on his lips. I know that he loves seeing me rebel, but now is not the time for admiration.

"What about you? You can’t stand it when people dig up your past and intrude in your private life, but it didn’t bother you to have me watched!" I add to Vadim.

"Those documents shouldn’t have been there, Adrian. They should have been destroyed long ago. Or hidden better. A little professionalism wouldn’t hurt, if you want to keep your job!"

"Read you loud and clear," the big guy mumbles, nodding his head.

"And that’s it? He gets all the blame?" I fume, raising my voice. "First of all, you should never have asked him to do that, and second of all, you should never have hidden it from me."

In three opposite corners of the living room, we fire back and forth at each other in a totally useless triangular game of ping-pong. Fed up with the little game, I leave them to go upstairs – praying I don’t fall flat on my face in the imposing spiral staircase.

After a screaming fit, always exit gracefully!

A few minutes later, I hear Vadim’s footsteps in the hallway near our bedroom. Sitting in bed, propped up by three fluffy pillows, I force myself to focus on my book and don't even look up when he taps three short knocks on the door that I've left ajar.