Courting Trouble (Reality Romance Book 5) (19 page)

“I saw you checked her into rehab. Did she…?”

“Fall off the wagon? No. Though I’m not sure running to the tabloids with lies about you is much of an improvement. She’s in therapy now. We both are. And I backed out of a project that would have taken me away next month. I’m trying to be around more.”

Adam nodded, not sure what she wanted him to say.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “You probably didn’t want to hear any of this, but I felt you deserved to know why this happened. And that I take responsibility for what Cassie did.”

“I appreciate you retracting the story so quickly. Before it had time to feed on itself.”

“It was the least we could do. I wanted to make some public gesture, show the press I still think of you as a hero, but my people think anything like that right now would only bring attention back to the scandal.”

“Probably.”

“They didn’t even want me coming here today. They thought it would be better if I apologized by phone, but this is the kind of thing that needs to be done face to face.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“Yes, I did. But I’m sorry if I’ve inconvenienced you. I understand if you want to distance yourself from us.”

“It isn’t that.”

She didn’t seem to hear him. “Is that why you’re selling the house?”

Adam cursed internally. He should have known she would hear about that. “I’m not. I never actually put the house on the market. I was just talking to some real estate agents because I needed the money for a friend who was in trouble.”

“The woman? The one from the reality show?”

He nodded. “She wouldn’t have accepted the money from me anyway, but I wanted to feel like there was something I could do to help.”

“If you need money—”

“Sandy.” His voice stopped her. “You can’t keep giving me extravagant presents.”
Because you feel guilty about your parenting skills.
“The truth is the main reason I was thinking about selling the house is because I really can’t afford to live here. The property taxes, the maintenance, the utilities—it’s outside my means. I was paying off student loans on a government salary before you gave me a beachfront villa in Malibu.”

Her eyes widened, the blithe celebrity naiveté when it came to real life falling away like scales from her eyes. “Oh.”

“I’m not going to sell it now—that’s the kind of gesture we don’t need the press getting a hold of right now—but if I could give it back to you, I would. Maybe we can work out some sort of agreement where you will reclaim ownership after things have died down.”

“I want you to have it.”

“It isn’t mine. It’s a wonderful thought and I appreciate it. I do. I don’t want you to think I’m not grateful. But it’s still your house. And if I hadn’t been living here, do you think Cassie would have felt quite so comfortable letting herself in?”

Sandy’s eyes widened even farther. “She’s been just letting herself in whenever she pleases?”

“I changed the door code after the other night, but that isn’t the point. It never felt right for me to have it.”

“I just wanted to thank you.”

“I know. And it was the most insanely generous gesture I’ve ever seen, but it was too much.”

“You lost your job because you saved my daughter’s life. I just wanted to help. I never meant to tie you up so you could never get away from us.”

“I didn’t want to get away.”

Her smile said she heard the lie in the words. “I want to argue with you. To tell you that you need to stay in the house, but that isn’t my call. Whatever you want—keep it, sell it, give it back—I’ll figure out a way to make it happen without a fuss. But I like thinking of you here. I hope you’ll stay.”

She’d left soon after that, and Adam had found himself looking around the house with new eyes. It was his choice now, not his obligation, and he still wasn’t sure what choice he would make, but he liked being here, now, with Elena making the walls feel alive with her presence. Making it home.

Chapter Thirty-One

The weeks after the Hoax were a blur of words and empowerment for Elena.

Everything that had happened to her in the last year poured onto the page. All her frustrations, all her hopes, every insult and indignity. She released it all into the book with one rule. Honesty. It might not be art, but every word she wrote would be true.

She wouldn’t lie or hide her emotions. She wouldn’t sugarcoat the facts to try to make herself look innocent. When she’d been a bitch, she would own it. Her book would be biased—everything was—but she would be honest about her bias. About her perspective. For whatever it was worth, the book would be true.

Of course, whenever she thought about letting someone else read it, she felt sick to her stomach. Exposing herself to the degree required to actually publish it was a horror she didn’t want to contemplate. So she didn’t. What she did with it when she finished was a problem for another day. Today her only job was to write fearlessly. To put the words onto the page without pulling any punches.

Adam was a prince.

He seemed to be capable of handling whatever she threw at him and he proved that again as she fell into the ideas of her book and got lost. He fielded every emotion without flinching—from her despondency when she wrote about her family cutting her off, to her righteous rage when she wrote of Daniel leading her on. He was there through it all. Better than she deserved.

Miranda had called back the day after the Hoax with a short list of agents and instructions to drop her name. Two days later Elena had met with the second woman on the list for coffee, a silver-haired woman with the sculpted arms of a triathlete and a style that ran toward Bettie Page. Elena liked her instantly. And even more so when she dissolved into a rant about agents who typecast their own clients.

Her name was Claudia Frost and when Elena wasn’t writing they would discuss possible roles and PR strategies. Ways to transition her from Topless Co-Ed #2 to Sidney Bristow.

She met Adam at the door one night, after a long conversation with her agent and a particularly vehement chapter about roles for women in Hollywood. “Do you think you can make me into an action star?”

He dropped his keys on the side table—she hadn’t even given him a chance to take off his coat. “Right now?”

“No time like the present. Knowing all the self-defense stuff is good, but I want to be a ninja. And a marksman. I want to be Michelle Rodriguez meets Gabrielle Anwar. I want people to look at me for the same roles they would give Scarlett Johansen—crazy hot, but capable of choking a guy out with her thighs. Can you make me that badass?”

“Absolutely.” Adam grinned. “Can I take my coat off first?”

And so her training had begun.

Most of her days were spent in Adam’s living room or on his bed with her laptop in her lap and the Pacific sprawled in front of her. And most of her nights were spent with him—sex, sparring, sparring that led into sex, dinners where they moved around one another in the kitchen, so easy and comfortable it was like they’d been doing this all their lives.

It was going to be hard to let him go, when the time came. Somehow, without even looking for it, she’d fallen into a life with him that made her happy in ways she’d never been before. And that sort of thing didn’t last. But she would enjoy it while she had it. Enjoy every second.

It was coming into the hot part of the summer and a new spate of wildfires near the city would turn the sky grey when the wind shifted the right way, but Elena rolled through the days, measuring them by words as her book grew.

It might be a disjointed mess, but there was something there. Something worthwhile. And it felt amazing to be
doing
something. To finally be saying everything she’d bit her tongue on in the last few months.

The legal wrangling on the sex tape was progressing well, her lawyers assured her, though a date for the custody hearing had not yet been set. She’d copyrighted her naked body—which had been creepily invasive in its own special way. And now she was doing her best to ignore the entire mess and get on with her life… by venting it onto the page.

She was doing a pretty good job of it, too. Until one Tuesday afternoon when Slick the Wonderlawyer, as she’d started thinking of the smarmy elder member of her legal team, called.

“They want to settle.”

Elena’s heart jumped up into her throat. It could be over soon. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

She’d heard too many conversations about the media zoo any kind of hearing or trial would stir up—and how her reputation could negatively sway the result—to think settling out of court would be anything but good.

“It’s good and bad,” Slick—whose real name was Kevin—cautioned. “The deal is worth considering. Keep in mind it’s a sure thing. We can’t be sure how a judge will rule.”

Her heart dropped from her throat, bypassing her chest and landing with a thud in her stomach. “I’m going to hate the terms, aren’t I?”

“Just keep an open mind and really think it through before you react.”

“Fine. Just tell me.”

“We drop our suit, he drops his countersuit, we lift the injunction, and you agree to allow Kellerman to sell the tape, provided you are consulted regarding the terms of the sale and you split all profits evenly. Essentially he’s accepting our claim of joint custody.”

He sounded so reasonable. As if her only objection to having the sex tape released was the fact that Dermott hadn’t
paid
her for it.

“No.”

“Really think about this, Elena. You could fight it all the way and end up with it released to the public and nothing to show for it. At least this way you can have some control. You can make sure it’s released in a way that makes you comfortable.”

“There is no possible way I’m going to be comfortable having strangers watch me have sex. And for him to profit from tricking me into making a sex tape with him—you have to be crazy if you think that’s going to be okay with me.”

“I’ll give you some time to think about it—”

“No. I’m going to fight him all the way to the end. What he did was wrong.”

“But it wasn’t illegal. At least not in a way that’s clear cut. You could lose.”

“If I lose and wind up with nothing, at least I’m not going along with it. That’s as bad as saying it’s okay. It isn’t okay. Don’t come to me with any more settlements like this. We’re not just doing damage control now. We’re going for justice.”

She got off the phone and returned to the open file on her computer, but she couldn’t seem to focus, words blurring on the page. She’d been in the middle of a rant about the entire Madonna/whore complex, but now she couldn’t make her anger coalesce into words. She was so pissed about all the things women dealt with—revenge porn and Monica Lewinsky and all of it. It was
wrong
. She wanted to scream against the injustice of it all and this book was her scream, but suddenly it felt inadequate.

It wasn’t
enough
.

She heard the front door close downstairs and shoved her laptop aside. She hadn’t made it downstairs today, too wrapped up in the words to bother. She leapt off the bed and ran down the stairs. She found Adam in the kitchen, putting away groceries.

“It isn’t enough.”

Adam pulled his torso out of the refrigerator and frowned at her. “You wanted more yogurt?”

“The book.” She paced in the kitchen, the room tiny and restrictive where she’d always thought it was spacious before. “I’m being pro-active. I’m taking arms against a sea of troubles, but the book isn’t enough.”

“Was that Hamlet?”

She spoke over him. “I need to help others. A warrior for the slut-shamed! Something good has to come out of this, Adam.”

“Okay.”

She loved the way he said okay—not like she was a crazy person who needed to be talked down, but like he was recalibrating his life to fit her new plan into his every day. Simple as that. God, she loved him.

Her heart stuttered hard at the thought and she felt her face flushing even as she tried to drown the dangerous emotion in words. “We need a foundation or something,” she said in a rush. “A place that will help with legal fees and PR and giving advice on what your legal options are when men are exploiting you because they have tiny little dicks. Not you, of course. Your dick is lovely.”

“Thank you.”

He stood there, in the opening of the refrigerator, and she didn’t think a man had ever been more handsome. Yes, he was a good looking guy, but this was something else. Brad Pitt and Chris Hemsworth could suck it. Adam Dylan was the sexiest man alive.

“Do you think I can do it?”

“I think you can do anything.” He closed the fridge. “Just let me know if you ever decide you want to conquer the world so I can get out of the way.”

Shit.

Men had been trying to woo her since puberty, but no one had ever made her knees go weak like Adam did when he said things like that. Roses were for suckers.

She reached him in two steps. She jumped and he caught her against his chest. Their faces almost level, she kissed him until they were both breathless. When they finally came up for air, he didn’t put her down, so Elena wrapped her legs around his waist, grinning into his eyes from a distance of inches. “Hi.”

He grinned back. “Hi.”

“It occurred to me that I forgot to welcome you home.”

“That is an egregious sin.”

“Oh,
egregious
,” she agreed, her smile turning wicked against his lips. God bless a man who never treated her like her head was stuffed with fluff just because she was hot. “I love it when you talk dirty to me.”

He chuckled and she felt the vibration everywhere they touched. “Bed or couch?”

“Both.”

#

So.

Love.

Elena lay in bed, studying the man dozing beside her. She should have known she’d fall in love with him. She didn’t deserve him, but why should that stop her?

He stirred, draping an arm over her to fit her against him. “Making plans to conquer the world?” he asked, his breath stirring the fine hairs at the nape of her neck.

“Always.”

She felt him smile against her skin.

She’d never thought of herself as a feminist. Never intended to become a feminist icon. Even in the middle of the Slut Storm, she hadn’t thought of it that way. She’d just wanted to act. Wanted to
do
something.

“I’m not the ideal poster girl for women’s issues,” she said into the twilit room, looking out over the darkening water. “They may not want me on their side.”

“Then they’re idiots,” he said without hesitation and she turned in his arms. His sincerity shone in his eyes.

She didn’t deserve him. And karma was a bitch. It was coming for her. Guys like Adam didn’t end up with girls like her. It was only a matter of time. But for now she closed her eyes, snuggled in close, and tried to pretend it wasn’t going to break her heart when he walked away.

#

She called Miranda as early as was civilized the next morning.

“I’m going to First-Wives-Club this thing. You in?”

Miranda didn’t miss a beat. “Hell, yes. Let me make some calls.”