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There’s a wide, winding staircase leading up to the next level, but he ignores that and gestures to a mid-Century sofa in red.
“I didn’t do anything, okay?”
“Photographic evidence seems to prove otherwise.” I hold up my phone. “As I said, the photos are everywhere. And Red Light? Really? It’s a high-end meat market in the aptly named district.”
“It’s also a bar where people go for drinks.”
“Celebrities, the rich.” I glare and he glares back. “The kind of rich you’re trying to pretend not to be.”
“I went out for a fucking drink with a friend.”
“Who’s married.”
“I’m not sure that’s the real situation with Lacey and whatever his name is, but that’s not my problem.” He stops, marches over to a wet bar, pours a drink, looks at it, and then at me. “Okay, it’s my problem, but I didn’t do anything.”
“And yet you chose there for a meet up.”
“Not,” he says, stalking back to the middle of the room, leaving the drink behind, “with her. A friend. Male. College friend who wanted to meet up, talk about a deal I’m not interested in. Not after I heard it.”
“Offices. Daylight. Lunch. You know, the things I set out for you.”
“I’m not your performing monkey.”
“You hired me so I could make you into what you’re not.” I look at the photo on my phone of the passionate make out. His hands are on her face and it says they’re about to get down and dirty right there. “I ask again, what’s this?”
He jabs a finger at my phone. “That is me trying to get her off me. She stuck her tongue in my mouth, not the other way around.”
“You—”
“And if you look, I’m stopping it. I’m pushing her away, not pulling her into me. I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t ask for it. I stopped it. Immediately. Jesus.” He gives me a disgusted look. “I don’t like being mauled against my will.”
“No one does.”
Ryder nods. “That was her, not me. and she bought the fucking cameras. I’m innocent here.”
And weirdly, I believe him. He looks so pissed off and out of sorts that I believe him. I’m most definitely a fool. Because only a fool would do that. By his own admission, he’s a fuck up in this department. He hired me, not the other way around and here I am, trying not to ogle all that glorious man flesh that’s suddenly very personal and keep an even and objective head about me.
Just because he’s charming and has a smile that does things to a female, or eyes that can make a polar ice cap melt, doesn’t mean he’s innocent. At all.
And it makes everything way more difficult.
I breathe out, trying to find room to think.
“You just made my job harder,” I say.
“How?”
“By being…you. This is totally you, not caring about anyone else, by just wanting to have a good time. For enjoying it.”
“So I make your job harder for liking to have a good time—which I wasn’t by the way—and enjoying women, which is something I’ll always enjoy, Elliot.”
“No,” I answer, clear and concise, “because you flagrantly went and flouted my rules and guidelines. You deliberately went to a place where the paps love to go. Where celebs love to go. You went there because you knew it would cause a stir.”
“Bullshit.” He shoves his too-long, softly curling, sleep tousled hair back. “Why would I go and sabotage something I actively want?”
“You just told me how much you enjoy women.”
“I do. But I didn’t plan that.”
