All That He Loves (Volume 2 The Billionaires Seduction) (9 page)

The stewardess – or whatever her title was – came back with the bottle of water and an empty glass. She looked uncertainly from Connor to me. “Um… I have your water…?”

“I… think I’ll have that drink you mentioned,” I said weakly.

“Bring her some brandy,” Connor ordered. “And bring me a bottle of Dalmore. The 1974.”

The stewardess nodded. As she was about to walk away, Sebastian’s voice stopped her: “No.”

Everyone looked over at where he stood by the door to the plane, arms crossed, face glowering. “I need you in top form in exactly seven hours, Connor.”

“And I will be,” he snapped.

Sebastian shook his head. “Not with a bellyful of scotch, you won’t.”

Connor stared down his assistant, but spoke to the stewardess. “Bring Lily a glass of brandy… and bring me the Dalmore.”

The stewardess’s eyes flitted back and forth between Connor and Sebastian… and then she quietly went to the back of the plane, walking as quickly as she could without obviously running away.

The brandy helped steady my nerves for the phone call. I went in the back of the plane and sank down in one of the plush leather seats, the farthest away from all the hustle and bustle.

It was almost midnight in North Carolina; I didn’t want to wake up my parents.

Hey Mom, hey Dad, did I wake you? Oh, I did? Just wanted to tell you not to watch the news tomorrow or look online at anything, EVER. Okay, goodnight!

No, I needed a comforting voice.

She answered on the second ring.

“Lily?”

“Hey Anh,” I said softly.

There was a long silence.

I realized what it meant.

“You already know,” I whispered, and closed my eyes in pain. “God, that was fast…”

“Sarah texted me and asked if it was really you… is it?”

I laughed once, bitterly. “Haven’t you seen the pictures?”

Her reply was so quiet I almost couldn’t hear it:
“…yeah…”

“So then you know it’s me.”

“…it could’ve been Photoshop… right?”

I sighed, still not opening my eyes. “It wasn’t Photoshop.”

“…how did it happen…?”

I thought about a smartass reply –
well, when a man and a woman love each other very much and want to make a baby outdoors…

But I figured that wasn’t the best play, when what I really wanted was a shoulder to lean on. “It’s… it’s really fucked up. Yes, we did it, but Connor has this rich, evil ex-girlfriend who’s trying to ruin him…”

“Is she trying to ruin him because she’s jealous of you?!”

“No, it’s… it’s a big business deal thing… she was trying to blackmail him…”

“Holy shit – did you guys call the police?!”

“It doesn’t matter, she already dropped the bomb.” I looked around the seat and down the aisle. Twenty feet away, Connor was pouring himself a drink as Sebastian looked on in severe disapproval. I carried on in a whisper. “Anh, I’m so scared… and I can’t admit it, not in front of him…”

“Why not?”

“Because he gave me the choice of whether the photos got leaked or not.”

“What happened?! Did that evil ex lady double-cross you?”

I frowned, then realized Anh didn’t realize what I had done. “No… I chose to let them get out.”

“WHAT?!”

“She was going to destroy all his plans if I didn’t.”

“So you destroyed your own life instead?! AND HE LET YOU?!”

“Anh, this isn’t helping.”

A pause.

“Sorry. What… what do you want me to do? Is there anything I CAN do?”

I drew my body into a little ball on the seat, the smallest that I could get it. “Tell me it’s going to be okay.”

A longer pause.

“It’s going to be okay,”
Anh said.

She didn’t sound convincing.

She sounded like somebody in a movie holding the hand of somebody else who was going to die… and both characters knew it, but were going through the motions because nobody wanted to confront the truth.

“My parents… I can’t tell them, I can’t…”

That was the
real
reason I hadn’t called them: because I couldn’t bear to hear the disappointment and shame in their voices.

“It’ll be okay,”
Anh repeated in her robotic voice.

“I didn’t do it for the money,” I whispered.

“Pff, I know THAT.”

That was the real Anh – and she was telling me the truth.

I smiled. “As long as you don’t think too many horrible things about me, I’ll be okay.”

“Too late!”

I grinned wider.

“But now I can TOTALLY see why he paid you 50K… damn, girl, you FREAKY.”

“Anh!” I whispered hoarsely, verging on laughter.

“Just kidding. But still – DAAAAMN.”

Once I got off the phone with her a few seconds later, I was in a much better mood.

Connor was finishing off his second glass when he called me over to the loveseat. “Come here, we’re getting ready to take off.”

I slipped in beside him, and he wrapped one arm protectively around me and pulled me closer to him. Though he still seemed fine, I could smell the scotch on his breath.

Sebastian and Johnny sat across the table from us in a double seat of their own. Sebastian looked mightily pissed off; Johnny looked like he was trying to stay out of the line of fire.

“Buckle up,” Connor ordered as he drained the rest of his scotch.

I picked up the ends of the belt from the seat and locked them together around my waist.

“Want another drink?” Connor offered.

Across the table, Sebastian glared at me like,
Don’t encourage him.

“No, thanks.” As Connor reached for the bottle, I put my hand on his arm. “Maybe you should take it easy… it’s going to be a really bad day tomorrow.”

“God, not you, too,” he said darkly, and went ahead and poured himself a couple of fingers of amber liquid. “It’s been a really bad day today, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

The plane began to accelerate rapidly. Connor grabbed the bottle with one hand and held onto the glass with the other.

“You get your wish,” he said sarcastically to Sebastian. “No more drinking… for a couple of minutes.”

“Extend that to the next 24 hours and
then
I’ll get my wish,” Sebastian shot back.

“Not gonna happen.”

As the engines roared, I felt everything grow light beneath us, and then we were lifting. The liquid in the glass tilted back at an angle in Connor’s glass as the plane nosed into the air.

After a few minutes we leveled off, and the liquid in the glass went back to level. Connor downed it almost immediately.

“Can you stop drinking for a few fucking minutes and let’s talk about tomorrow?” Sebastian snapped.

Connor put the bottle next to him in the seat, wrapped his left arm around me, and gestured with his right hand. “Alright,
consigliere,
let’s hear what you have to say.”

I frowned. “Is that from
The Godfather?
”

“Very good,” Connor laughed, and tweaked my nose with his finger.

He was certainly in a better mood from the scotch, that was for sure.

“The
consigliere
was the advisor to the Don. Al Pacino had to boot Robert Duvall because he wasn’t a wartime
consigliere.
But luckily for us, Sebastian’s the best wartime
consigliere
there is. So…” Connor said, and waved his right arm expansively, like
Go right ahead.

Sebastian kept glaring, and looked between Connor and the bottle, but then grudgingly began to speak. “Alright, when you go on the news tomorrow, I figure you should play it this way…”

They talked for awhile, and I kept up for a little bit, but honestly, I was so emotionally drained from the day that I started to fade. The brandy did the rest.

When I woke up, we were in Los Angeles.

Connor nudged me awake. “We’re here, Lily.”

I lifted my head groggily from Connor’s shoulder. We were still in the airplane, but Johnny and Sebastian were on their feet and milling around.

The hum of the engines was gone, as was the vibration of the airplane in flight.

We must have landed.

Connor helped me to my feet and down the stairs to the tarmac where a stretch limo was waiting. He held the rear car door open for me and then followed me inside. The smell of scotch on his breath was pretty powerful.

“How long was I out for?” I asked, rubbing my cheek and hoping I didn’t have any drool on me.
Nope. Thank God.

“Thirty minutes.”

“Wow, that was fast…” I mumbled.

Sebastian piled into the limo with Johnny, who shut the door behind them. Since it was a stretch, the limo had two sets of seats facing each other, and Sebastian and Johnny sat directly opposite us.

I felt like we were in a gangster movie.

Or going to prom.

Sebastian looked like a very unhappy gangster/prom date.

Then a voice I didn’t recognize spoke over a speaker.
“Is everyone ready?”

“We’re good,” Connor spoke aloud, and the limo began to move.

“What time is it?” I asked blearily.

“9:45. We should be back at the Dubai within 30 minutes, at which point we
all need to go to sleep,
” Sebastian said, staring at Connor meaningfully. “We have a big day tomorrow.”

“Did you get the penthouse?” Connor asked.

“Yes, I got the penthouse,” Sebastian snapped. “And, by the way, I’ll be staying
in
the penthouse to make sure you’re up in the morning.”

“No. You can bunk with Johnny across the hall.”

Johnny looked at Connor. “Say what?”

Sebastian scowled. “Absolutely
not.”

“It’s not a suggestion, it’s an order,” Connor said, his voice cold as death.

Sebastian looked furious, but he clamped down on his emotions. “I’ll be bunking with Johnny,
apparently.
But I want a keycard so I can come rouse your drunk ass out of bed at 3:30 to make sure you get to the Good Morning America appearance. Which I sold my soul for, by the way, so show a little gratitude.”

“Is that what a soul’s going for these days?” Connor asked with a barely suppressed smile. “I didn’t know the Devil was in broadcasting.”

“She’s not. She’s blackmailing you,” Sebastian snapped.

Connor looked grim. “Touché.”

I watched the streetlights flash by outside the limo. “Hey – we’re not at LAX!”

“No, we landed in Burbank,” Sebastian confirmed.

I frowned. “But… we were going back to LA, and so was Javier… so why didn’t he just come with us?”

“It was either say goodbye to him there, or bore him to death for an hour while I worked on the plane and then say goodbye to him here,” Sebastian shrugged.

“You worked on the plane?”

Sebastian narrowed his eyes. “While some people were sleeping.”

“We spent most of the time strategizing,” Connor explained.

“
Some
people did,” Sebastian sniped. “Others spent it drinking.”

Connor fixed Sebastian with a steely look. “Sebastian, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me the last couple of hours – I do – but I’ve handled intensely high-pressure situations before without you holding my hand. I’m a big boy, you’re not my wet nurse, so back… the fuck…
off.
”

Sebastian closed his mouth and looked out the window. He was obviously hurt and angry.

“He’s just trying to help,” I reprimanded Connor. “He’s worried you’re going to – ”

Connor looked over at me, and the anger in his voice chilled me to the bone. “Do
not
take his side over mine, Lily. Ever.”

Then he looked out the window.

My cheeks flushed – from anger, from fear, from shame. The first two I understood; the last, I didn’t. All I know is I felt like a four-year-old getting a talking-to from Daddy.

And then the moment passed, and I was even angrier that he had made me feel like that.

I opened my mouth –

Sebastian caught my eye and shook his head ‘no,’ an almost imperceptible movement.

I closed my mouth and stared out the opposite window.

No one spoke for the rest of the car ride.

Well, that’s not
entirely
true. There was a brief burst of conversation when we saw the paparazzi.

They were outside the front of the Dubai’s covered valet circle, twenty or thirty men with cameras and flashes. I didn’t see anybody with a microphone standing in front of a video camera, so I was guessing the legitimate news reporters hadn’t shown up yet.

“Are they here for us?” I whispered, my stomach full of dread.

“Ohhhhhhh yes,” Sebastian nodded.

Johnny clicked a button on the console between him and Sebastian. “Gerard, keep going down a few blocks and then take us around back to the private entrance.”

“Will do,”
the driver acknowledged.

We passed by the group, not fifty feet away. They all turned and looked out at the street, but the windows of the limo were black, so they had no idea who was inside. The car didn’t pause in the slightest, which I guess convinced them that these weren’t the droids they were looking for. And, to be entirely fair to the slimebuckets, a limo on Sunset is a fairly regular sight, even on a Tuesday evening.

Still, all their heads swiveled and followed us, like zombies tracking the living… and then we were past. They all turned around and started waiting for their prey again… who, unbeknownst to them, had just escaped.

Connor watched the small crowd of photographers as we passed by them, then went back to staring into the darkness.

As soon as we stepped inside the penthouse at the Dubai, Connor fixed himself another drink from the bar. More scotch. Then he went over to the floor-to-ceiling window and stared out at the lights of the city.

I wanted to kill him, I was so angry. First talking to me and Sebastian like that in the car, now acting like an aloof asshole.