Unbidden Love (Book Five of the Bidden Series) (5 page)

“I brought you some coffee.”

James woke to the sound of an unfamiliar voice - a woman’s voice. He opened his eyes against the morning light and pulled himself into an upright position in the plush bed. He had nearly forgotten where he was. And with whom he had spent the night.

“Morning. Thanks,” he said as he accepted the steaming hot cup from a gym clothes-clad Harper Avery - Celine used to babysit her long before she was an A-list actress and bonafide Hollywood starlet - who was looking decidedly more awake than he felt at that moment. He sipped from his gifted coffee and stole a glance around their surroundings, noticing a stack of manuscripts threatening to spill over the bed. “What is all this?”

She cast her eyes down nonchalantly from her phone and gave an effortless shrug. “Scripts my manager wants me to consider. My assistant must have brought them over while I was with my trainer.”

That Avery seemed nonplused about someone who was a stranger to James entering the room while he was asleep irritated him immediately. His eyebrows furrowed as he waited for Avery to come to a similar conclusion, but she kept her attention solely on her phone. “You mean while I was here in bed, sleeping?”

“Ye-es?” she said, drawing out the word. Finally her face seemed to register his annoyance. “She signed a non-disclosure years ago,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I wouldn't worry about it anyway. My manager texted me the link to Page Six early this morning. Honestly I do not know why she thinks I care.”

Not even coffee could help clear the dark cloud that was his confusion in that moment; strangers in the room and Page Six? “What are you talking about?”

"What are you guys looking at?" Natalie asked as she stalked through the kitchen towards the coffee maker. Judging by the speed with which Joe turned to face her and Quinn closed the lid of her computer, Natalie guessed they were hiding something. "Seriously?" she asked incredulously.

"I love your boots! Chanel?" Quinn tried.

Now she knew for sure they were hiding something. “Stuart Weitzman," she said before making a
tut
noise with her tongue. "But you knew that. What is going on?" Her eyes moved to Joe, who was pretending to be engrossed in something on his phone.

Shane burst through into the kitchen holding an iPad and looking as though he had just been privy to the biggest secret on the playground. "Did you guys see James Fitzgerald on Page Six?" He caught sight of their looks too late, and when his eyes met Natalie his mouth clamped into an unattractive purse. "
Oh
." Recovering, he swished a stray lock of hair from his forehead to his head and tried for a smile. "Morning, Nat. Cute boots!"

Natalie rolled her eyes as she sipped her coffee, buying herself a moment so her friends and co-workers could stew in their own embarrassment for as long as possible. When the silence was becoming too much even for her, she held up her phone so they could look at the screen.

"You mean this?" Their eyes went to the screen where an image of James - his arm tucked behind the svelte waist of Hollywood's latest
It Girl -
was front and center. She turned her hand and read the accompanying text. “'
Harper Avery
shows off the smile that launched a thousand
Vogue
covers while out to dinner with recently eligible bachelor and billionaire business tycoon James Fitzgerald. Harper and James dined at the ultra exclusive Masa, she in Zac Posen and he in Tom Ford, before quietly slipping into the Four Seasons for the evening’.
Blah blah blah." She held the phone at her side and gave her friends an expectant look. "Half a dozen people sent me the link before I even woke up. You could try to take away my phone or my laptop or, God forbid, shut off the Wifi, but it is not going to stop the world from spinning. I am fine.
Besides
,” she added pointedly, “Harper Avery is friends with Audra and Celine. It’s likely all very friendly and innocent.”

Natalie was not about to mention that James and Celine were quite possibly together again. She had yet to wrap her mind around that one - not that she wanted to. And whatever feelings she was having about that particular coupling were just as muddled. Rather than try to suss out what it all meant to her she chose sweet, blissful ignorance.

There was a long stretch of silence as Quinn, Joe, and Shane looked everywhere but her or each other. Finally Shane was the first to again break the silence.

"She is a terrible actress, and even in Zac Posen she dresses like shit." With a flamboyant flip of his hair he stalked back to the dining table and resumed work, followed by Quinn. Natalie couldn't help but laugh.

James folded the newspaper and cast it aside. What did he expect when going out with a paparazzi magnet? He saw the photographers snapping away. Avery had paid them no mind, smiling politely as she kept on walking, James at her side. Then again she was used to the attention.

“It doesn’t bother you, does it?” Avery asked as she rifled through a rack of hanging garments situated beside her many suitcases.

“I wouldn’t be any good at my job if I was bothered by press, would I?” Throwing off the covers, James got up from the bed and made his way to the bathroom, casting a side glance at her from behind. Just as he finished relieving himself, Avery sauntered into the bathroom and turned on the tap in the shower.

“I am going to head out,” he announced as he finished washing up at the sink.

“Are you now?” she asked, catching his attention just as he was one foot out the bathroom door. James turned and watched as Avery slipped off her tee shirt and tossed it to the ground. She reached behind her back and a moment later the straps of her bra fell loose around her shoulders. “Maybe I can change your mind.”

"Have you talked to James lately?" Joe asked from beside Natalie as she tucked herself onto a barstool at the kitchen island.

"No. Not since-" Not since the last time they saw each other. Her mind flashed back to the memory before she could finish the sentence.

'Let's make a deal.'

'A deal?'

'If when the time comes it turns out that you're right - that I'll somehow love you less or not at all once I've found out what awful thing or things you've done - I'll buy you a Bugatti.'

'James-'

'And if
I'm right
,' he interrupted her, 'and I still love you at your absolute worst, then you have to give me an answer to my proposal.'

She wanted to be annoyed that he so obviously wasn't taking her seriously, but his self-assuredness was admirable, even if it was misplaced.

'You're that confident in your love for me?'

'
Abso
fuckin
lutely,' he said without so much as an instant of hesitation. 'What do you say, Harlow, do we have a deal?'

So far she had yet to receive any Bugatti deliveries.

"-not since before he found out about us," she continued. "And Audra and me."

"Does he know about you and Audra
now
?"

She shrugged. "I have no idea."

Joe leaned his elbows on the granite countertop, let out a deep breath and stared at her for half a minute. Finally, he asked, ”How is that going, by the way?"

Natalie smiled conspiratorially from behind her coffee cup. She was grateful that there was no lingering awkwardness between them, and that he was just as relieved as she was about it. Were they really so lucky to come out of what could have been a horribly awkward and potentially life-ruining situation even better friends than they were before?

"It's good. I never realized how insane her schedule is though. She has been stressed with renewing contracts, management reviews, and something to do with shares. That company is so huge I don’t know how she manages everything she does. I know it has only been a couple weeks but I feel like our phones are getting more action together than we are."

Joe stood from his seat and playfully brushed against her shoulder as he headed to the coffee machine. "So go work from the Fitson office today. Take your Mini-Me with you."

Natalie guffawed and rolled her eyes. "You have to stop calling Amelia my Mini-Me!" she hissed. “She is going to report you to Human Resources!" With a wink she stalked away, coffee cup in hand, and sat down at her computer. She glanced at her phone where the picture of James and his date was still in full display.

Avery Harper. Natalie had seen one or two of her movies in the past, and wasn't more than mildly impressed when it was mentioned in passing that none other than Celine Robertson (pre-Fitzgerald) had been her babysitter once upon a time. It made sense that they were friends now that Avery was grown up and had more fame and money than any 21-year old deserved or needed. There could not possibly be any more to it than that. James would never…

James leaned a hand against the slick shower tile to steady himself. He closed his eyes and let himself feel awash with sensation, from the torrent of warm water cascading down his body, to Avery’s eager mouth between his legs. She made a series of soft suckling noises as she worked him, alternating between lapping up and down his hard shaft with her tongue, and creating suction around him with her lips. His hips swayed, thrusting in and out of her mouth before climaxing.

He looked down just as she discreetly spit his bodily fluids in the direction of the shower drain, and offered her a hand as she came to stand on her feet. With her soaked hair slicked back and dewy water droplets on her eyelashes, Avery was the epitome of the all-American, pretty girl-next-door. James brushed his thumb against her temple just as she leaned up on her toes to kiss him, her lips flushed pink with use.

“We should do this again some time,” she said flirtatiously.

“Isn't there some insipid boy your own age you would rather be spending your evenings with?”

“Probably,” she shrugged. “But I don’t like insipid. I like men with substance.”

James feigned a smile before leaning in to kiss her again, fusing her soft, plush lips against his own. He almost felt sorry for Avery. She had youth and society’s standard of beauty on her side, and no matter what she claimed to be looking for in a man, James wasn’t it. She was manufactured and packaged to make almost anyone believe she was spectacular behind the demure eyes and flirtatious smile, but stripped of the Hollywood bullshit, Avery Harper was just another pretty girl with a lot of hype, and while he enjoyed her both in and out of bed, she was not much more than a passing moment. A fling.

“I am going to go,” he said before stepping out of the shower and wrapping a towel around his waist.

“Say hi to Celine for me.”

Natalie stared at the screen of her laptop and skimmed her fingers absentmindedly across the letters of the keyboard. Glancing up she noticed her assistant Amelia, her “Mini Me”, looking incredibly focused at her own laptop, tapping away at Natalie’s email. Stationed around them were interns working on their variously-assigned tasks. Everyone was hard at work but Natalie, whose thoughts were singularly on the office and its occupant two doors down the hallway from where she sat. She had managed a rather inconspicuous glance in the direction of Audra's office upon entering the executive floor of the Fitson Entertainment Groupe offices, but had seen nothing more than a brief flash of blonde hair and heard the faint clicking of Audra's shoes along the ground.

Focus, Natalie!
she chided herself as she looked to the keyboard for inspiration to get back to work. She noticed then, rather surprisingly, that her two index fingers were each resting on specific keys on the left and right side of the keyboard; her left finger on the A, her right on the J.

That’s odd.

"Natalie?"

Natalie glanced up at the familiar voice, her keyboard forgotten, and found James' long-time secretary staring at her from the hallway behind the partially-open door.

"Yes?" she asked, a little too bright to go unnoticed.

"Audra Robertson would like to see you in her office if you have a moment?"

Excitement rippled through her insides like a flash. "Absolutely! I will be right there." Natalie tried not to make a spectacle as she closed the lid to her laptop and stacked paperwork on top of it before grabbing her phone. "Amelia?" she called out to her studiously-engrossed assistant. "Would you mind taking a lunch order for everyone? I will be back shortly." She could hardly wait for the assistant's answer before making her way out of the office. She walked briskly down the hallway, every step like an arc of anticipatory electricity.

The moment her hand touched the handle on the door to Audra's office, Natalie hesitated. She hovered just above the metal knob and took a moment to wet her lips with her tongue and shake off the nervous energy from her shoulders. The vibration of her cell phone going off in her other hand nearly made her jump.

‘Audra: Are you going to come in or should I have maintenance move my desk into the hallway?’

The nervous energy that had plagued her only a moment prior now rippled down her arms as she laughed at the text display. She swept in through the door and met Audra’s blue eyes almost immediately.

“Am I totally lame for being nervous?” Natalie laughed as she closed the door shut behind her.

“Would you be offended if I told you I find it adorable?” Audra stood from her desk and crossed the distance of the lavish office. Natalie could feel her cheeks flush as Audra swept her eyes unabashedly up and down the length of her.

“No,” Natalie breathed a moment before Audra’s lips were pressed against her own. She relished in the momentary sensation of butterflies in her stomach, the kind that she was inflicted with as a teenager whenever her crush entered the room. She tampered down the nervous energy that seemed to take root in her insides once more. “Though there are a whole list of superlatives I would rather be than ‘adorable’.”