Glitter on the Web (40 page)

Or all of the above.

Instead I cleared my throat. “Hello.”

They turned around to see me. Only Julie had the good sense to look embarrassed. “You’re back!” she said as she hopped up and came around to hug me.

“Right on schedule,” I commented as I slid a cool glance to Eli.

“Right,” she said before glancing at her watch. “I guess we got carried away.” I had nothing to say to that. I simply glared at Eli, who glared right back.

“I… should go,” Julie decided as she watched the air crackle between us.

I barely let the door slam behind her before I tore into him. “Back in the saddle again, I see.”

He shrugged. “You know me. I was born to ride.”

“Were you hoping I’d walk in and catch you?”

“Would it matter if you did?”

“Fuck you,” I spat.

“You did that,” he replied as he straddled the bench to face me. “Which reminds me. You lost our bet. You said you would never fuck me for a million dollars. You fucked me lots of times for a whole lot less. And you fucked me over for free.”

“I didn’t fuck you over, Eli.”

“That’s not how Miles O’Rourke tells it.”

“That was all part of the plan,” I gritted between clenched teeth.

He stood from his piano. “Indeed it was. It all was,” he informed me as he approached. “Fucking you to show you I could, ensuring that I’d get at least half of my money back when I did. Getting all your services 50% off. It was too good a deal to pass up.”

He stopped in front of me. “You are such an asshole.”

“You knew that going in,” he reminded. “But I’ve got good news for you, Miss Reynolds. Your services are no longer required.”

My eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”

“It means you’re off the hook. You broke the contract. You’re free to go. I had Clem and the gang move out all your stuff yesterday. There’s no reason at all for you to stay.” Those crystal clear blue eyes challenged me to give him a reason.

“I didn’t fuck Caz,” I told him.

He smiled. “I didn’t fuck Julie. Does that make liars out of both of us?”

I gasped as I backed up a step. “So that’s it? You just ended it?”

“It was ending anyway. What’s the difference if it’s now or in January? This was always how it was supposed to end up, right?”

Once again he baited me. “Those were your rules, Eli.”

“Right,” he nodded. “My web.” He touched my hair. “You were the glitter.”

“Eli,” I started again, but he moved away.

“Now if you’ll excuse me. I need to head to the studio. I’ve just had my heart trampled by the woman I love. I need to lose myself in my work. Lock up when you leave. And leave your key with Julie,” he added. “Along with your check.” He stalked out of the room and slammed out the front door.

Though I thought I had been prepared for it, my heart exploded into a million little pieces with the sound.

CHAPTER
TWENTY
-
SIX

I ended up at Clem’s that night. Non-disclosure or no, I poured out the whole torrid tale as I literally cried on her shoulder. She patted me and wiped my tears until the last one was spent. “I’m sorry, Carly,” she finally said as I collapsed, exhausted, onto her bed. “I had hoped…,” she started but then shook her head. “I guess it doesn’t matter what I had hoped.”

“Welcome to my world,” I mumbled.

“What are you going to do now?” she asked.

I took a deep breath. “I guess the same thing I was always going to do, just a few months sooner than I planned. Get an apartment. Work at the club. Maybe pick up some modeling gigs here and there. Live.”

She nodded. She crawled next to me on the bed, holding me in her arms. “You can stay here as long as you need to.”

“Thanks,” I said as I squeezed her tight. “But I think I’m done depending on other people for a while.”

She nodded again. She understood.

That week we went house-hunting each morning before the club opened. I finally found an apartment in West Hollywood near the club. It was a cool, old art deco building with funky blue walls and dramatic crown molding in stark white, and black and white checkered tiling on the floor. My apartment was a few floors up in a building with no elevator, which had made it a bit tougher to rent given its price tag, but I kind of liked the built-in exercise. There was no pool, just a fountain in the tiny garden out back.

By the weekend we had moved my stuff from storage into the apartment. I hadn’t bothered with my old second-hand furniture, though it probably would have fit the retro décor. I decided to do my place right, the way I always wanted to do, especially now that I had the money to do it.

I still sat on a pretty decent nest egg, even after I sent a check for $500,000 to Eli. It wasn’t as painful as I thought it would be. In fact, I was glad to be rid of it. It had always been blood money.

Many of the people who had jumped at the chance to follow me after I hooked up with Eli dropped me like a stone after our “breakup.” Miles didn’t know which team to choose between us, though he leaned a little more towards me. Even with the rumors of my “cheating,” he seemed to think that Eli deserved it, especially given he had always been the philander before, and there was already proof of his cheating in this relationship. On Valentine’s Day no less.

No one forgot.

It was like getting a divorce. Suddenly everyone had to pick sides. I couldn’t go to the grocery store without headlines and covers crowing how Eli Blake was managing his broken heart, or how Carly Reynolds was getting her life back as a new single woman. Everyone hinted there was more to the story, enough to entice people to pick up a magazine and sniff out the article.

I might have done this a time or two. But I don’t think anyone saw me, so it doesn’t count.

Of course, much of what I did do made social media and gossip columns. Once our breakup was “official” we trended for two whole days. It made me a celebrity in my own right, so I had to dodge the PING paparazzi as I tried to live my new life as club entrepreneur and model.

The ad for Tempestuous dropped in early November, and as promised, the photo of me at the bar made billboards and buses all over Los Angeles. It was so successful that Tempestuous signed me on for another year. They wanted exclusivity, which Frank advised against. He was fielding offers left and right. I could practically see the dollar signs in his eyes. Instead, I stayed true to Tempestuous.

I figured I might as well stay faithful to something.

They invited me to Atlanta over the Thanksgiving weekend, for a host of holiday events that would start our Christmas season. I decided to take them up on it. I needed a break from Los Angeles. Since I had never really had a home to go to, I opted to run away. Again.

Since Caz wanted to make inroads with Tempestuous to finalize his shoot for his special client, he decided to go with me. Since I didn’t want to be alone, on Thanksgiving of all days, I let him.

PING was there to greet us as we got off the plane, as usual. Tempestuous sent a car around, which we shared, which whisked us to our five star hotel, a contemporary place that mixed Southern hospitality with Oriental opulence. We got separate rooms, but they were across the hall from each other. Each had a private terrace, which was fortuitous. We could vape in comfort as we looked over the city.

Thanks to a shattered heart, I had become a shameless pothead. And the weight of the memories of this particular holiday only made it that much harder to bear.

As always, Caz knew and understood. When he produced the pen, which counted as contraband in Georgia, I knew he wasn’t above breaking some rules to get me what I needed.

I wasn’t against breaking some rules to comply.

He ordered room service so we could wind down from our flight. We braved the crisp air to eat it on the terrace, where we talked about our game plan. After a lull in the conversation, he glanced at me.

“You okay?”

I shrugged. “Trying to be.”

“Let’s get out of here,” he suggested. Up for any distraction, I nodded.

We spent our one free afternoon at Piedmont Park in Midtown. There was a lot to explore there, including a 30-acre botanical garden.

“It’s so beautiful,” I murmured as I soaked it all in.

“It is,” he agreed softly, without taking his eyes from my face.

I dismissed it with a shrug. “You don’t have to say those things, Caz. You’re not on the clock.”

“You’re right,” he agreed. “That should tell you everything.” He reached over to brush the hair from my face, then bent to kiss my cheek, lingering there for a brief moment.

It was a romantic scene. It just starred the wrong man.

“Caz,” I started but he simply took me by the hand and pulled me towards our next exhibit.

The natural beauty was so breathtaking it was hard to stay depressed. I drank it in like the balm for the soul it was. I smiled at Caz, who reached for my hand. I squeezed it. He squeezed back.

“You really do know what a woman needs, don’t you?”

He grinned. “Occupational hazard.”

I laughed. And I followed obediently wherever he led next. We biked along the beltway before we stopped for dinner, where we talked for hours about anything and everything. Caz Bixby was good company. I was grateful to have him along, so much so I gave him a long hug in the hallway before we parted for the night. He held on even after I let go. Our eyes met.

“Caz,” I started, but he shushed me. His head tilted for a soft, exploratory kiss that I allowed, mostly to see if I could kiss another man.

But the minute his lips parted mine, Eli’s face flashed in my mind. How angry he’d been, mostly that I could have slept with this man. How it had ended everything way before I was ready for it to be over, which was a joke because I knew I would have never been ready for it to be over.

Eli was it. He was the one. Though I could never have him, settling for anything else was no longer an option. I pulled back.

“I’m sorry,” I found myself saying.

Caz gently grasped my chin and tilted my head up so I could look him in the eye. “Never apologize, Carly. Not for that.”

I nodded. He hugged me. I hugged back harder. I knew I had a friend if nothing else.

That was worth everything.

We ate Chinese food for Thanksgiving, which reminded me of Ling. I was so emotional I nearly cried in the restaurant, so Caz took me dancing at a rooftop party. He never let me stay downtrodden for long.

I was sad to part with him by the time we returned home. Of course, by then the rumors abounded that I had spent a holiday with another man, and Caz Bixby at that. But it had been worth it. Not only had he gotten me through one of my least favorite parts of the year, after meeting with him and getting to know him beyond his persona, Tempestuous had agreed to dress Caz’s client for the episode. With all the rumors swirling about Caz and me, who was at the club a lot in recent weeks to make this very special episode happen, maybe Tempestuous thought that I could domesticate him, like I had obviously done for the reformed ladies’ man, Eli Blake.

My domesticating days, however, were over. I knew Eli’s lovelorn persona was just another line of bullshit. Every single time I went to Frank’s office, Julie was M.I.A. Frank had said she was helping Eli with his album, but I knew that album was practically done.

She was helping with a lot more than that. Apparently
he
didn’t have any trouble rebounding, casting someone else in my role as effortlessly as he had cast me.

Still, the release date for his newest CD, aptly named “
Glitter on the Web
,” was pushed back to January 12
^th
. I knew that was a not-so-subtle jab. This was the Eli I knew best, and liked least. I had been used and discarded, like an old condom, and he made sure the world thought it was my fault that he could never want someone like me.

Because of this, I was not prepared to find Eli in my office that first Monday in December. I shut the door and approached cautiously, like one who might not to rouse a hibernating bear. “Eli,” I greeted before I disappeared behind my desk.

I was glad to be sitting when I finally looked into those icy blue eyes of his. They still cut me right to my core. The smirk slowly emerged. “You’re not going to ask me what I’m doing here?”

“I figure you’ll tell me.”

His voice was soft. “You always did know me best.”

I looked away. It wasn’t fair. Even after all these weeks apart, the effect he had on me hadn’t diminished. “Can we get to it, though? I’m really busy.”

“Yes, I heard,” he murmured. “You’re working really closely with Caz Bixby. Scuttlebutt around FFF is that you’re going to let him film a segment for his show here.”

Those eyes dared me to confirm it. Instead, “I’m not really sure that’s any of your business, Eli. It’s not your club.”

“Isn’t it?” he mused. “The way I see it, you would have never had the money to invest in this club if it weren’t for me.”

My eyes narrowed as I glared at him. “What?”

“Where’s the confusion? You invested a portion of my million dollars into the club.”

“I invested a portion of
my
million dollars in this club.”

“
Au contraire, mon amour
. You broke the NDA before you even cashed the check. That money was never yours. Now, you returned some of it, which,” he said as he held his hand to his chest in mock sincerity, “I appreciate. But that still leaves $500,000 left unaccounted for. I realize, of course, that you probably don’t have that kind of money to pay me at the moment, thanks to your new WeHo apartment and all the traveling you’ve been doing.” My eyes narrowed as I watched him. He knew entirely too much, and clearly wanted to punish me for it. I really didn’t know what he could do to me that would be any worse that what he’d already done.

He was about to tell me.

“I want you to split your interest in this club with me, bringing me on as a fourth partner.”

My heart stopped. “You bastard,” I breathed.

“OGWO is surprised?”