Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (126 page)

A moment later she was back at her desk,
on the computer, staring at The Rag’s front-page headline.

RED AND NICOLE TOGETHER AGAIN!

Beneath the headline was a picture of the
two of them coming out of the rental car place the day before.
 
Nicole was shading her eyes from the
sunlight, and Red’s arm was on the small of her back as they walked toward his
car in the parking lot.

Nicole couldn’t believe it.
 
The Rag was back to reporting on
them—in fact, it was probably written by that same creep, Anderson, who’d
hounded them until Red had gone and bought the paper.
 

But Red no longer owned Jameson
International and so he no longer owned The Rag.
 
In point of fact, Kane Wright would be
the new man in charge over there.
 
Nicole could imagine plenty of scenarios where Kane might like to
encourage The Rag to go even further in its stalking and harassing
tactics.
 
Kane Wright and The
Rag—the two entities seemed tailor made for one another.

“This isn’t good,” Nicole said
aloud.
 
“This really isn’t good at
all.”

***

Red came into the city to meet her for
lunch.
 
They went to Five Napkin
Burger, a great little restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen.

“I need a milkshake,” Nicole said, wiping
the hair out of her eyes.
 
She’d
been paranoid the whole way over to the restaurant that someone was taking
pictures, and she’d had to explain to Red all that had gone on that morning;
the call from her mother, the realization that The Rag was once again
publishing stories about them online, her concerns about Danielle and Kane
Wright being married.

The waiter took their orders; Nicole
wanted the original five-napkin burger and a black and white milkshake, Red got
the burger salad and a beer.

“This will all sort itself out,” Red told
her, taking her hand across the table.
 

Nicole glanced around the place.
 
It was fairly crowded with typical New
Yorkers and no one seemed to be paying them the slightest bit of attention.
 
“I just feel like we’re going to be
under the microscope again.
 
The
last thing I want is for my mom to be finding stuff out about us through the
tabloids.”

“I can handle The Rag and that clown
Anderson,” Red told her, thanking the waiter as he brought over his beer.
 
He picked it up and took a long sip.

“What if Kane Wright uses them to harass
us and release those things about you—the things he’s been threatening us
with?”

Red shrugged.
 
“I told you already, I’ve got nothing to
hide.
 
I’m not ashamed of anything
I’ve done and I’ll defend it publicly if necessary.”

Nicole wasn’t so confident.
 
The media could easily twist and distort
Red’s reasons for helping those illegal workers come to the United States.
 
For many Americans, anybody with dark
skin and a Middle Eastern sounding name was practically Osama Bin Laden
reincarnated.
 
It wouldn’t be easy
to make a public case that Red was doing the courageous thing in trying to help
political dissidents.

“I think maybe we should try and bury the
hatchet with him,” Nicole said, eventually.

“With who?”

“Kane Wright.”

Red just laughed.
 
“I think you and your friend Danielle
have both been drinking the same Kool-Aid.”

“I’m serious.”

The waiter came with Nicole’s black and
white milkshake, which tasted amazing.
 

Red looked her in the eye.
 
“Nicole, there’s no way in hell I’m
going to be BFF with Kane Wright just because he put the moves on your
roommate.”

“You’re the one who said my friends are
your friends now.”

“Is Kane Wright your friend now?”

“Maybe he will be,” she replied, drinking
her shake.
 

Red’s expression darkened.
 
“I don’t think so.”

She leaned forward, lowering her
voice.
 
“We have a chance to smooth
things over for a while.
 
Let’s do
the right thing and have a double date.
 
Let’s be the bigger people.”

Red just shook his head.
 
“He’s going to burn us if we let our
guard down.”

“I didn’t say that we should make him the
godfather of our child.
 
I said we
should maybe have a drink with him and try and play nice for awhile.”

 
“Our new company is going to do anything
and everything but play nice with Kane Wright and his organization.
 
We’re going to be battling it out day
and night to take back what he stole from us.”

“Fine.
 
I understand that we’re starting a
company and I want to be a part of it.
 
But can’t we at least call a truce between you and Kane Wright until
after the wedding?”

The waiter brought their food and both of
them were quiet for a time.
 
Red was
picking at his salad, clearly preoccupied.
 
Finally he put his fork down and looked at her.
 
“You’re right.
 
I’m letting my emotions get the best of
me.”

“Thank you for seeing that,” Nicole said,
relief flooding her.
 
“It will make
things so much easier if the four of us can at least be civil with one
another.”

Red smiled darkly.
 
“And as Sun Tzu says in The Art of War,
we must keep our friends close and our enemies closer.”
 

***

 
Nicole’s mother called her at almost seven o’clock that Friday and told
her they were stuck in horrible traffic just outside the city.

“How long before you get here?” Nicole
asked, rolling her eyes, as Red came over and massaged her neck.

“Honey, I have no idea how long.
 
I don’t know if there’s been an accident
or if this is just normal Friday evening traffic.”

“Well how far away are you?”

“The GPS said we were less than an hour
away until we hit this gridlock.
 
Nothing’s moving as far as the eye can see.”

“Well, there’s nothing you can do about
it.
 
I’ll just keep the food warm
and hope it lets up soon.”

“We’ll call back to give an update in the
next half hour or so.”

“Thanks, mom.
 
Bye.”
 
Nicole got off the phone and looked at
Red.

“That bad?”

“They’re running way late.
 
They would have been late even without
traffic, that’s what annoys me most,” Nicole said, opening the oven and
checking on the chicken.
 
She took
her baster and squirted more broth over it to keep it moist.
 
“It’s ready now.
 
In an hour it’s going to be completely
dried out.”

“Relax. What’s the worst that
happens—we have chicken jerky for dinner.
 
I like chicken jerky.”

“That’s not funny,” she said, but she was
laughing just the same.

 
He put his fingers under her chin and
tilted her face up towards his, and then he leaned in and kissed her deeply.

As usual, the anxious thoughts and fears
seemed to slowly ebb, like the tide going out.
 
“If you could just kiss me all the time,
I’d really be happy the whole day,” she told him.

“Why didn’t you say so?
 
We can arrange that, no problem.”
 
He leaned in and kissed her again, then
on her neck, then moving toward the swell of her cleavage.

“Red!
 
Stop it!”
 
She pushed him away, giggling.

He grabbed her ass with both hands and
pulled her against him.
 
“Come
on.
 
Now we have time for sure.”

“I need to make sure I keep an eye on the
food,” she said.
 
“Please don’t get
me crazier than I already am.”

“You’ll be totally relaxed
afterwards.
 
Think about it,” he
said.
 
“Danielle’s gone out with
Kane, your parents are stuck in Friday rush hour traffic.
 
We can get completely naked right in
this kitchen.”

She felt her nipples stiffening and her
body responding, especially her lower half.
 
Nicole was still surprised at how wet he
could get her just with his talk.
 
But she shook her head no.
 
“Time for that later,” she said.
 
“I need to be on my game right now.”

Red sighed.
 
“Fine.
 
Have it your way.”

“Do you think it was a mistake having
them over to my apartment?”

“Nicole, we went over this and over
this,” Red told her, walking to the fridge and grabbing a beer.
 
“You said you didn’t want to freak them
out by having them come to our house.”

“Our mansion,” she corrected him.

 
“I believe your exact words were that you didn’t want them to get
smacked in the face by my opulent lifestyle.”

Nicole went to her mashed potatoes and
glanced at them.
 
“These are
hardening.
 
They’re going to be
gross.”

“You’re getting caught up in your head,”
he said, having a long drink from his beer.

She glanced up from her soon-to-be
fossilized potatoes.
 
“Must be nice
to just hang out and drink a beer while your fiancé does all the work.”

“It’s not as easy as it looks to be this
laid back,” he said with a smirk.

“At least at the house Chef Roland could
have helped me deal with this disaster.”

“That would be great, having your folks
eat food made by a personal chef in a multi-million dollar mansion.”
 
Red laughed.
 
“Afterwards we could have gotten a
helicopter to fly us around the Statue of Liberty.”

“It probably would have been better than
this,” Nicole said.
 
She opened the
oven again, shook her head.
 
“I need
to put some tinfoil on this to keep it warm and keep the moisture in.”

“Where’s the tinfoil again?” Red asked,
starting to open cabinets.

“Thanks for at least trying to help,” she
replied, opening the third drawer of the cabinet beside the sink.
  
She took out the aluminum foil and
pulled out a long strip to overlay the chicken.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” he said,
for the millionth time.
 
“Nothing
ever goes as badly as you think it’s going to.”

Nicole thought to herself that those
sounded like famous last words.

About an hour later, her mother and
father finally arrived at the apartment, and they were in absolutely terrible
moods.
 
It was obvious they’d been
at each other’s throats, even though they tried to hide it initially.

“We’re so, so sorry,” her mother said as
she entered the apartment.
 
“That
was the worst traffic I’ve been stuck in since I don’t know when.”

“If we’d taken the Brooklyn Bridge
instead, like I said,” her father began and her mother snapped at him.

“The Brooklyn Bridge would have made us
even later.
 
Would you like to have
gotten here at ten o’clock at night instead?”

“That bridge would have been clear all
the way.”
 

“No it would not.
 
Don’t be foolish.”

Her father shook his head and mumbled
something.

Nicole’s mother made a face.
 
“This is what I’ve been dealing with all
night.”

Red was right there to greet them,
shaking her father’s hand and hugging her mother.
 
Her mother embraced him with about as
much enthusiasm as if she’d been told to hug a deranged serial killer.
 

“Let me take your coat,” Red said, and he
took her mom and dad’s coats and hung them on the coatrack beside the door.

“I’m going to put dinner on the table
right away,” Nicole said.
 
“I can’t
let it sit any longer.”

“Let me help you, honey,” her mother
replied, and the two of them went into the kitchen together.

“Can I get you a beer, Mr. Masters?” Red
asked.

“Call me Bud, and heck yes,” he laughed.