DAMAGED - A Bad Boy Romance (82 page)

Looking back, I’m pretty sure my body knew what was up long before I did. Had I been paying attention, I would have noticed that I took just a little longer getting dressed the next morning, and picked an outfit that admittedly, I wouldn’t have worn otherwise.

I pretended this was all necessary, all part of this game I was playing wherein I was a professional, and people took me seriously. I would have to meet him at an expensive, up-market hipster hole where I would be forced to put fussy drinks and snacks on Penelope’s credit card and act like I did this all the time.

And he was late.

It was 11:00 am on the nose that I began to sweat in my low cut silk blouse and skirt that was just a few threads long enough for plausible deniability. My feet were killing me in my heels. Ten minutes disappeared and then another ten. I began to get annoyed. Possibly by the realization that even I, professional cynic and hard ass, was a little buzzed to be meeting
the
Tom Hood.

What an asshole.

Just as I had mentally condemned him forever, and resigned myself to trying to look busy and
not
stood up, a hidden number flashed across my phone screen with a buzz.

I froze and then snatched at it, nearly knocking over a glass of water on the table.

“Hello?”

“Is this Katie Mack?”

For a while, I actually didn’t know the answer. It was a deep, familiar accent, but instantly new somehow
. It was him
.

He repeated the question, this time with an extra lilt; it was a strange voice, rough and silky at the same time, like old velvet.

“Yes, this is she,” I said and instantly felt like a dumbass. “This is she”? Nobody but my grandmother spoke like that, what on earth was I thinking.

“Oh, hi. It’s Tom. We were supposed to have a meeting today, right?”

Without thinking, the full-blown image of his thick, unapologetic cock sprung into my head. I violently shook it out of my head.

“Oh, yeah, no. Um – of course, yes! You were supposed to meet me at 11, I think.”

I think? Why the fuck was
I
apologizing?

“I am
so
sorry,” cooed the velvet voice from inside the phone. “I’m just, uh, I’m tied up with something right now, you know?” This last part came out strange somehow, and the voice warped a little at the end and trailed off.

“Oh? Umm… no problem, do you want to reschedule then?”

The line was silent while I waited for an answer, and all of a sudden, a nervous burst of laughter. Then, a woman’s voice, a panicked giggling followed by a loud “shhhhh!”

My face dropped.

“Is this a bad time? I’ll get the secretary to reschedule with you if -”

“No, don’t!” he said, a little too loudly.

I could still faintly hear the giggling in the background. Was this guy for real? Did he just have a bevy of sluts following him around 24/7?

“I mean, I’m sorry, yes, let’s reschedule. My apologies.”

What happened next was, in hindsight, probably the turning point, the big crazy hinge around which everything turned. It was almost imperceptible. I almost didn’t notice it. But I
heard
it – a quiet, quick growl under the breath, followed by a single, desperate gasp as a counterweight. It was the softest, tiniest sound imaginable …but there was no mistaking it. I knew that sound anywhere. It was the sound of a man coming.

I dropped the phone on the table like it had suddenly sprouted spikes. I ended the call, dazed.

I had seemingly forgotten to breathe during the entire exchange and did it all at once the second the screen went dark. I was sitting there like a complete idiot, done up with three different kinds of foundation on my face and shoes that should have been banned for human’s rights violations… and I had been stood up by a jerk, an asshole who had the cheek to haul me all this way to give
him
an apology and then …and then …was he playing a game with me? I sat stewing for a few moments more.

The other, weirder thought came bubbling up in my mind. He was definitely having sex. Right now. I was busy being mad as hell for being messed around and he was…

I looked down at my phone again, ears burning. It was too outrageous to be true and yet it was: I had just had my first celebrity interview, and it was with Tom Hood,
the
Tom Hood, and he was on the phone, breathing heavy, dick in some giggling girl most likely.

‘Tied up’ indeed.

“Ew,” I said under my breath and immediately wondered whom I thought I was trying to convince. I got up to leave.

It wasn’t ew. In fact, it was all I thought about for the rest of the day.

“Oh my God, Katie, there you are! Get in here and open this stupid letter, I’m dying to see what it says and they won’t let me open it!”

Clara, the new intern, was hovering excitedly over my desk, eyeballing a giant basket of blood red flowers with a small white card skewered on a plastic fork in the center.

When did my life become a sappy rom com?

“Didn’t you break up with what’s-his-name? Is it from him? What a douche,” she said, bouncing from foot to foot like a kid at Christmas.

The arrangement was overwhelming the entire surface of my small desk; the whole thing was unreal, the giant roses and lilies completely out of place in our minimalist chrome office. I felt worryingly conspicuous. I opened the card, gingerly; not quite believing this was really for me.

Miss Mack,

Please forgive my disgusting phone manners

67 Baltic Terrace, 9:00pm

You’ll have my full attention, promise

T

My eyes whipped over the lines again and again, trying to make sense of the letters.

It was an actual house address. An invitation.
At night
.

Clara looked at me with big eyes. “Oh God, it IS from what’s-his-name, isn’t it?”

I stuffed the card back in the envelope and buried it into the mound of stems.

“Uh, yeah, it’s from my ex. What a douche.”

I looked at my watch – it had just gone 3pm. Thinking twice, I grabbed the card again and slid it into my pocket.

“Hey, Clara, could you just let Penelope know I went out for a sec?”

“Sure. But she’s at the other office for a few days anyway. She’s been asking about your interview with what’s-his-name though – how’d that go?”

“Uh, yeah, the interview …if you see her just let her know I’ll have it ready for Friday, OK?”

I dashed out, not giving Clara the chance to pry any further. I only had a few hours. I would need time to think.

And I would definitely need a sexier dress. And shoes. Maybe.

If you had asked 5-year-old me to imagine what the home of one of the country’s wealthiest personalities looked like – she would have accurately described 67 Baltic Terrace.

It looked like it was the scene of a movie. Flush with vaulted marble ceilings, dense green lawns folding into infinity pools, and a swooping grand staircase at the main entrance.

Tom Hood had made his fortune speculating on hot tech start ups, “angel” funding those two bit operations that turned into outrageous money-machines in a span of just a few years. He had a knack for spotting business diamonds so rough that it was almost as if his investment in them alone was the very thing to transform them, to make emperors out of the long sighted nerds in garages, and empires out of their impossible dreams. Tom Hood had made many people’s dreams come true, and he was living his own, clearly.

Coming down the staircase was a lithe, black haired girl in some kind of luxurious-looking kimono. A week ago, I would have laughed if someone had told me that
this
is what my dream magazine job would be paying me to do on a Wednesday evening, but by this point, I was getting used to the feeling that everything associated with Tom Hood had a sheen of unreality to it, a strange glint of power that he seemed to wear so well.

He was still a dick, though, obviously.

The black haired girl smiled broadly at me, slinking down the last few of the steps and gliding over to me as though she had been expecting me all her life. This, I thought, was some weird Stepford Wife nonsense right here. I made a mental note to take in every detail about her, knowing I’d find a place for her in my article, whatever it turned out to be.

“Are you Miss Katie Mack? Oh, welcome! It’s very nice to meet you,” she said with just a distant waft of an exotic accent, and then extended her slender hand.

I followed her all the way back up the staircase, eerie music seeming to come and go in pockets of air as we passed by rooms and corridors, finally reaching a wide conservatory style room at the end, and the source of the music.

The jaded part of me saw only the ill-gotten gains in the glittery tiles and disgusting privilege dripping in every giant mirror and painting we passed …but another, smaller part of me was quietly amazed.

Tom Hood was barely 30 years old. This was success, and there was no denying it. I was so used to seeing him surrounded by shocking red and yellow tabloid headlines that this neutral, expensive taste unfolding all around me was quite striking. He really
was
very wealthy.

By the time my black haired escort flung open the conservatory doors, I hadn’t yet decided if I was brimming with judgment or with secret admiration for all this opulence.

The black haired girl kept her kimono-ed arms spread open and floated over on her tiptoes to join Tom, who was seated on a cushion like a Buddha, bent over a carved chess board.

It occurred to me all at once that I should have prepared far more thoroughly for this interview than I had. I had spent too much time on my outfit, too little time on …well, I wasn’t sure yet. But I felt unprepared, already off-kilter.

A pair of small muscles was working in his bare, upper arms as he moved the pieces round before looking up and smiling cordially at me.

Great. He had decided not to wear a shirt.

The black haired girl had turned the music down and was flitting about with something in the periphery of my vision.

“Miss Mack! Welcome to my humble abode,” he said, and the girl giggled in appreciation.

She was busy fixing me a drink. Not Kool-Aid
, I thought, although I wouldn’t be surprised if the story took that turn.

Again, there was something startling in how different he seemed in real life. How
three-dimensional.
He had that kind of vestigial dusty blonde-brown hair that some men seem to carry over from childhood, even though every other part of them had grown and matured. I guess I had always just written off male bodies of this exact kind: the predictable Calvin Klein physique in expensive lounge wear, the kind of deliberate all-American healthy tan, the boringly tight abs.

I had always shirked away from this kind of thing the same way I did from infomercials and ads – and for the same reason, too. I had had my beginnings in the advertising industry, and in my current job, I stared all day at men just like this. I was numb to this kind of beauty. I was just being pandered to, right? Just being sold something. Nothing sexy about it. Rampant objectification may work on men, sure, but I liked to think I personally was made of stronger stuff.

And yet… here was this body, this real-life flesh, and there was something immediately and obviously different in it. This body wasn’t an image, it wasn’t fake and forced and cheesy. The ease with which he held himself, his upright posture, the bridled strength that seemed to pulse in even his smallest movements …here was a man who was utterly and completely in control of his physical form.

And what a physical form it was.

He was more Robinson Crusoe than hedge fund kid. Not a Calvin Klein model but the
inspiration
for one.

This was very unexpected. I all at once felt small and became aware of myself slouching, of how cheap my haircut must have looked to him.

“Drink?” said the girl, and snapped me out of my daydreaming.

I thanked her, took the glass she was offering me and had a sip, noting how beautifully comfortable she looked, and feeling the lack of my own comfort even more strongly.

“It’s a pity we missed each other yesterday, I do apologize,” he continued, crinkling the corners of his eyes into a warm smile.

I cleared my throat.

“Well, it’s me that should apologize – I was made aware that you weren’t happy with my piece. I do apologize.
Cache
magazine is primarily committed to content that is
fair
, so we’re absolutely more than happy to issue another article with a more balancing perspective, and you’ll have the chance to weigh in throughout, and we’ll run each quote by you befo--“

“Woah woah woah,” he said, raising two broad hands and shaking his head.

I stopped.

The black haired girl looked adoringly at him, as though everything that fell from his lips was gospel from God himself.

Was she his girlfriend? Some random groupie? I would have to explore that angle for sure.

“I don’t care about any of that,” he said. “
Cache
magazine is, if you’ll excuse me, a piece of shit. They’ve written about me before, and they’ve been wrong before. But you …you were right.”

“What?” I stammered.

He had shifted his weight in the heavily upholstered chair and the black haired girl now perched herself prettily on one of his thighs, snaking a bare brown arm over his shoulders.

I was right? Then why had he called me all the out here to apologize? Why had I bought this ridiculous faux-reporter-please-take-me-seriously color-blocked monstrosity of a dress?

“I was told you were unhappy with my reference to you and your recent …data security issues, and so I…”

He interrupted me immediately.

“Oh my God, you are
way
too highly strung,” he said.

I tried to respond but he cut me short again, pinning me with his gaze.

“I just
said
that to get you here, obviously. But you’re actually onto something. I absolutely did leak those pictures on purpose.”

I felt like I was rapidly drifting out of my depth. I hadn’t prepared for any of this. And I was developing a complete and decided hate for my new dress.

I felt stupid.

I realized with fresh petulance that what I really wanted was exotic, flowing robes like this dark haired girl draped over him, and golden dangly bracelets, and I wanted to be loose and easy, and have long Pantene hair and easy confidence.

“Ok, well, sure, there’s not a journalist in this country that believes you were
actually
hacked, right?” I said, in a tone that instantly seemed too hard and snarky, even to me.

He looked hurt.

“Man, that was mean,” he said and turned to the girl. “Kai, I think it’s your fault for not making that drink strong enough, honestly. Miss Mack seems pretty stressed out.”

He turned back to me.

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go.
He
was the rich, asshole one-percenter, and
I
was the honest, truth-loving journalist who was going to expose him to the world. It was like he didn’t even know how this story was supposed to go.

He was looking down at the chessboard.

You wouldn’t think someone with such triumphantly toned pec muscles could look disappointed, but he did. And I felt bad. 

“You misunderstand me,” he said. “I
know
what the press makes me out to be, obviously. But the way you wrote about me was …different. You get it. What did she say…?” he looked over to Kai, who immediately parroted off a line from my article.

“She said, ‘Hood is not the first to troll the media with fake ‘leaks’, but why should he stop there? When you’re as wealthy as he is, you can afford an extra identity or two.’”

He chuckled.

“Man, I
love
that line,” he said, clapping his hands together. He stared meditatively at the chessboard again, Kai looking pleased at having performed well.

Was it some weird sort of S&M thing? Was there a dungeon somewhere in this stupidly huge house?
That
would make for a good story.

“I love it because it’s so true. I want you to write more like that. You’re good at creating characters, so make another one for me. I don’t like the image they have of me right now”

“The image?” I asked, thinking that he must be deluded if he thought the media had got him all wrong and that the model sipping champagne in his lap right now was somehow not what it looked like.

“Yeah. The image. Go on – what do think of me? Tell me. Three words.”

“Three words? What do you--”

“Yeah, quickly. Tom Hood. First three words that pop into your head. Go.”

“Ok bu--”

“No, just do it.”

I squirmed in my chair. I was mesmerized by how tight and vibrant his skin seemed. Warrior-like, I thought, making a note to say so in my revised piece. But I was also aware of another image trying to push into my mind. My gaze fell on the toned V shape disappearing into his pants, and I thought with horror about how well I knew how that shape continued down over the rest of him.

“Ok. Stupid,” I said. This seemed to upset Kai more than it did him.

“And …privileged,” I said after a pause. “Or maybe, entitled.” This elicited a tiny twitch around his mouth but he only sat silently, waiting for the third word.

My eyes flicked over his bare stomach again.

“And. Well.
Sexy
.” I said this like it had been tortured out of me.

When I looked up I fell immediately into the beam of his gaze again.

“But I don’t see what that has to do with anything. Can we just start with the interview?” I said, a little embarrassed.

What had made him make that sound on the phone yesterday? What made this man happy? What did he do, secretly, for pleasure? What did he do with this beautiful woman in all these rooms? What special words and gestures and actions would get him to make that sound again?

“Start? We started ten minutes ago. This
is
the interview. You’re going to write a story, a different story, and you’re going to make sure I
don’t
seem stupid or entitled or privileged. You’re going to--”

“Mr. Hood,” I snapped, “I’m not your hired PR person. You don’t get to
tell
me what to write,” I said, lashing out at even the slightest suggestion that I would slot into his vast harem somehow.

A slow, strange smile spread over his lips.

Reading some invisible change in the tides, Kai jumped up, stood behind him and began to gracefully massage his shoulders with long, womanly fingers. He spoke again, this time the velvety quality giving way to something rougher and more abrasive.

“Penelope Welsh has a net worth of around $1.2 million. I could
buy
your magazine before breakfast tomorrow and
easily
tell you what to do.”

He was stroking the curved neck of the wooden Queen piece, turning her over again and again in his fingers.

“But I won’t, because I have better things to do with my time, and besides, you
want
to write what I tell you. That’s why you’re here.”

I nearly laughed out loud. I didn’t know what surprised me more, his audacity, or the fact that I had trouble summoning up a rebuttal to it.

“Go on, leave if you’re not interested,” he said, gesturing to the door, while I fumbled for a response.