The Gideon Affair (7 page)

Dave, for his part, caved in immediately, after which he put off a classic conquered vibe.

This guy was a lowercase s.

More regret that Paige wasn’t around followed the caustic observation. She would have gotten the reference and laughed like hell. It was something that had become a regular joke because she insisted they had a twisted D/s relationship where each of them played both parts. Only in a business sense.

He believed the point she was trying to make involved the term switches, but it wasn’t like he knew what the fuck any of that was about. If he hadn’t previously portrayed a character dabbling in the kink lifestyle, chances were he wouldn’t have much of a working knowledge of that whole scene.

Eventually, the camera guy coughed and the moment passed as Dave realized Edward, or rather Gideon, was deliberately giving him nothing. That didn’t mean, however, that this guy was finished. No way.

Picking up as if none of that had just happened, Dave gathered his wagons in a circle and went in for the money shot.

“Earlier, Ms. Jones let, uh … slip …”

Okay. Mentioning Joann’s name almost got a reaction. If she was stirring the pot, he was going to make her very, very sorry for messing with him.

“… that she knows a bit more about your video romp than anyone suspected.”

Ice water fed into his veins. He hated gossip. All the flame throwing, insult hurling, body shaming, and holier-than-thou judgment that the Internet fueled was anathema to a guy like him. He pretty much figured that if ya had time for shit like that, it spoke of an empty life. A life driven more by what others might or might not do as opposed to one’s own behavior.

In a voice meant to sound menacing, he bit out, “Is there a question in that Dave or are you just spitballing for a reaction shot?”

The interviewer smirked.

Here it comes
, he thought and waited for whatever grenade this asshole thought he had.

Quickly holding up a picture taken a couple of nights earlier of he and his co-star out on a very public dinner, Dave started laying down what the guy apparently imagined was a kill shot.

“You’ve been seen around town with your leading lady.”

No use in denying it. They were actors, for Christ’s sake, and the occasional paparazzi dash into a see-and-be-seen restaurant was part of the job.

Yeah, he’d taken Joann out. Assuming that she learned her lesson and wouldn’t try to be a bitch around him or Paige again, he’d made nice and given her a media circus worthy of the woman’s legendary status. The press had gone wild when they showed up at The Ivy—something she’d endlessly milked.

So, what the fuck was she up to now?

He could have shrugged as if it was no big deal, but he knew when he was being set up and simply waited him out.

“According to my sources, one of the TV outlets will be running a story that quotes your co-star.”

A stone wall couldn’t have been more immoveable—only instead of guarding against an awkward interview moment caught on film, Edward steeled himself from leaping up and rushing the little prick. He wouldn’t even have to get close enough to smack him before the dude shit himself.

“She inferred to a colleague of mine …”

He snorted derisively at the word. A colleague, my ass. The gotcha-paps would gleefully sell each other out for a buck.

“… that she was crossing
do it with a tattooed guy
off her bucket list.”

Edward began counting back from a hundred. Anything to control the surge of rage sparked by the mention of the damnable sex video.

It wasn’t him, goddammit, and he could fucking prove it.

Only, to do that, he’d have to reveal his birthday suit with the distinctive ink to the entire world. And that would never happen.

Fuck.

In the video that he’d studied along with his lawyer, it did appear the guy had a tattoo similar to Gideon’s. That alone was the extent of the evidence everyone was basing his participation in the tawdry tape on.

But the wartime tattoo covered his hip and part of a thigh with ink extending to his groin that for lack of a better way of putting it framed one side of his junk. He’d been drunk as shit and on leave with a couple of buddies when they’d stumbled into a tattoo parlor and tried to outdo each other on who could be the most daring.

Shit. He’d gotten damn close with that tribal bullshit, some of it now obscured by the hair surrounding his cock. In the end, he’d gone as far as some ink near his balls and then tapped out.

And that, my friends, was why he knew it wasn’t him in the damn video. That guy’s privates were pornstar shaved, and though some ink was visible, probably Photoshopped in, there certainly wasn’t any ball action going on.

He had no idea who the fuck was out there impersonating him, only sure that it wasn’t Marsh. And it wasn’t Tony Murtaugh because that crazy as fuck dude had inked his entire shaft while Edward and the rest of the guys on hand cracked jokes and covered their junk in horror. Sadly, the memory was burned in his mind along with the knowledge that he could pick out Tony’s dick ink in a faceless lineup. So of all the males on the planet around his age, those were the only two he was sure it wasn’t.

Gideon Shaw…meet a brick wall
. Defending, denying, or threatening a lawsuit was only going to extend the life of the salacious gossip and put untold millions in the coffers of Fierce.

He needed Paige. Why did today have to be her day off?

Ah, fuck it. He was done with this shit.

Tearing off the microphone threaded through his shirt, he stood and glared down at the worthless excuse for a celebrity journalist.

“Interview over,” he growled with his back to the camera.

And it was.

Her fingers tapping absently on the steering wheel, Paige gritted her teeth with mounting frustration as the clusterfuck people called driving in L.A. made her slowly mental. In fifteen minutes, she’d managed to go three miles. At this rate, she’d get onto PCH sometime next week.

Living in Los Angeles and going to the beach shouldn’t require an itinerary. It was quite literally ridiculous. That it took ninety minutes on a good day to travel the twenty miles between WeHo and Malibu was insane.

Hoping a drive along the Pacific Coast Highway would be just what she needed, it had been an easy decision to head out to the beach house and check up on Edward. He’d been on his own all day, which was sometimes a recipe for damage control on her end. The truth was, she played the Hollywood game much better than he did. By regarding it as the business it was, she knew how to get it done. But him? He was clueless, probably because Gideon Shaw was a creation. And the man pulling the strings, Edward? He wasn’t the sort to give half a shit about ego and protocol and schmoozing and a dozen other little things in which she excelled.

Bottom line … sometimes the decent man inside didn’t play well with his swaggering and very public studly exterior. Checking up to see whether he’d wandered off the reservation seemed like an entirely reasonable thing to do. Even on her day off.

Liar, liar … was that your panties on fire?

Stupid librarian. Shut up!

Stabbing at the radio controls, she looked for Ozzy’s station because nothing drowned out the noise of one’s conscience going up in flames like some thundering rock. First tune? “Gypsy Road.” She laughed. Cinderella. Why the hell not?

Singing along with a vengeance, Paige rocked out as she crawled along aware with every passing second that she was getting closer to Edward.

Beyond glad that his latest project was completed, she was looking forward to some downtime before they had to be on location again. And because downtime was code for spending all her time with Edward, well … what wasn’t there to look forward to?

She glanced around at the other cars as if the drivers could hear her private thoughts. Not even the booming music could drown out the truth—that she was utterly and completely in love with Edward Banning.

Slogging through the hellish traffic just so she could hang out with him might seem awfully forward, but Paige knew he’d be thrilled. When she was around, he could leave Gideon Shaw at the door and just be Edward.

He needed that.

So did she.

A
tremendous wave thundered ashore spreading along the stretch of beach where Edward had planted. The sucktacular day had destroyed his mood to the point that after pulling the plug on the interview from hell, he’d headed home. Once there, the displeasure over the day’s events had driven him down to the water’s edge. There was practically a chemical reaction inside him when he was near the ocean. Or a lake. Or a stream … or fuck, anything that contained water. But today—today he needed the expanse of an endless ocean to blunt the angry firestorm raging inside.

It was times like these that made him rethink his career plan. Maybe six years was enough.
Well, actually seven
, he admitted wryly. Seven—because he already had work obligations next year, and he wasn’t the type to walk away from his commitments.

Digging into the sand, he gathered big handfuls that sifted through his fingers. Watching the stream of loose grains cascade into a pile reminded him of other times when his hands had been covered in sand. Maybe the thought wouldn’t have been such a burn if those other times had involved a beach instead of an unforgiving landscape.

At least here, the air had a soft, ocean-misty quality while that other? Even after all this time, he remembered the smell of fear, rage, and danger that marked those violent days—something he had tried hard to forget. Dragging that shit into his life after the Army was a big, fat NO. Not if he wanted to keep his sanity.

He’d been a sophomore at the university when, in a moment of extreme patriotism, he’d quite boldly put his comfortable life on hold and had enlisted. At the time, plenty of people had thought he was out of his mind, but his motivations had been rock solid. It might seem like an overused expression these days, but for him it really had been … For God and Country.

Something about putting yourself in harm’s way that forces some clarity on life, which never leaves you
. Not even years afterward. There was the stuff that mattered and then … everything else.

Did being a big-time movie star matter? No.

But using this extraordinary and fortuitous situation to secure the future? Well, yeah … that mattered. The amount of fucking crap that came with this whole celebrity deal just pissed him off. Shaking his head in disgust, Edward leaned back on his hands and studied the churning ocean. A gull dive-bombed its dinner in the surf then flew off, disappearing into the summer sky.

What the hell was he going to do about this mess? A fucking sex tape. And an off-the-rails co-star. Goddammit.

Gideon Shaw might be one of the sexiest men alive, but Edward Banning wasn’t. Sex tapes and public displays of fuckery weren’t his style.

The embarrassment this had already caused his parents almost gutted him. Explaining to his mom that there was no way he was in the video had been the single most uncomfortable conversation of his life. Made worse once he’d understood that she’d actually seen it.

Edward groaned aloud at the memory. What could he possibly say?

Mom … seriously. I swear it wasn’t your son’s dick destroying the completely bare pussy playing second fiddle on screen to what even he had to admit was some serious grandstanding cock.

Now, his dad on the other hand … oh, god.
That
had been a dreadful conversation. Before he’d gotten to say a word, his father had launched into a thirty-minute lecture about respecting women that ended with the man questioning if Edward’s conscience would survive Hollywood.

Until that moment, he’d never thought of it like that … but he sure did now.