HDU #2: Dirt (28 page)

“Getting
dressed.”

She shook her
head and frowned.
 
“Wait.
 
No.”
 
She removed his hands from his shirt.
 
“Why?”

“So I can go
downstairs with clothes on.”

Amanda rolled
her eyes.
 
“Why are you going
downstairs I mean.”

“Terrence’s
drone is probably still here trying to locate me.
 
I’ll find him and let him know I’m done with the goddamned
contract.”

“Liam! No, you
won’t,” Amanda protested, grabbing the end of his tie and whipping it off.
 
She balled it up and tossed it across
the room, relieved to hear his laugh.
 
“And take your clothes back off too, Liam.
 
I’m serious.”

“You first.”

Arching her
back, Amanda reached behind it, unzipping her dress in a single pull.
 
She’d gotten good at that lately.
 
Liam cocked an eyebrow, watching her
slightly wriggle to push the stiff leather dress off of her form until it was
in a ring around her ankles.
 
Stepping one bare foot out, Amanda gave the other a light kick, sending
the dress flying up in the air for her to catch.
 
“Happy?” She handed it over to Liam, whose fingers wrapped
around it for about a second before he tossed it behind his back.

“That… would be
an understatement.”

Amanda grinned
at the way Liam’s eyes locked on what she wore underneath.
 
Looking down herself, she almost
laughed.
 
Jesus Christ, no wonder
.
 
Having been completely dull and blank while getting ready, Amanda had
simply put on whatever Wendy handed over.
 
She required no mirrors to zip or fasten or herself anymore, which was
probably why she hadn’t registered the fact that Wendy had chosen the lingerie
set she’d gifted Amanda for her birthday to wear beneath the Thierry Marc dress
she’d chosen — the three-strip lace bra that opted for total seduction
over any ounce of cover or support.

Hair tumbling
down from her up-do as she looked down, Amanda continued staring at herself, at
her barely covered breasts and the flashes of her skin between each horizontal
strip of lace.
 
She giggled.
 
“This is the most ridiculous bra ever,”
she breathed, hearing Liam’s low laugh follow.

“You should just
take it off then.”

Looking up,
Amanda lifted an eyebrow up at Liam, realizing that the focus of the night had
miraculously shifted from the prospect of tearing apart Terrence’s contract to…
sex.
 
Thank God
.
 
She could
live with that.
 
She was more than
happy to work with that.

“You
first.”
 
Amanda nodded at Liam’s
half unbuttoned shirt, at the collar he had flipped up in preparation for his
tie.
 
“Off.
 
Those too,” she said, pointing to his
pants.
 
She could see Liam watching
the grin spread on her lips as she collected each article of his clothing in
her arms, heaving them across the suite once he was done.

“Back to you,”
Liam said the moment he stood a few feet before her in just boxer briefs, the
dim lights of the room highlighting all the best parts of his shoulder and chest
muscles.
 
Her head tilted and her
eyes glued to the sections of his abs, Amanda pulled both thin, satin bra
straps down at the same time, taking her arms out and reaching behind herself
again to unfasten the back.

Her bra had
hardly come all the way off before Liam had her bent over the back of a chaise
and her breath already ragged as it escaped her fully parted mouth.

Her hands tried
to grab handfuls of satin cushion as Liam’s lips and tongue warmed the tingling
skin on the back of her neck, his hands cupping her breasts from behind and
kneading firmly as he pushed his body against hers.

Parting her legs
for him, Amanda closed her eyes, feeling his hands in her hair and obliterating
its structured up-do as he positioned himself outside of her.
 
She had barely finished groaning his
name before he’d sunk himself into her, his thrusts immediate and strong, each
one bringing down a new lock of waves from her messy topknot.
 
Grinding her hips back against him,
Amanda peered over her shoulder, her lips instantly curving at the sight of
Liam’s dropped jaw and sloping, knitted brows as he held her sides, watching in
awe but mostly ecstasy as her bent body swiveled against his.

If all the
problems in their relationship could be ignored this way, she’d be such a happy
girl.

Chapter 18

“So… you always
keep extra clothes in the car for easy getaways?” Amanda asked breathlessly as
she wiggled out of her leather dress in the backseat of the Audi.
 

Upon sneaking
out of Liam’s room at the top of Metropolis, Amanda had noticed the barrage of
missed calls and text messages from both Ian and Harper in her phone.
 
Apparently, Ian had been calling for
them to meet him for hours.
 
Assuming the worst, Harper had spent twenty minutes calling Amanda,
reaching her only after Amanda had decided to sneak out of the room while Liam
slept.

Harper nodded in
response to Amanda’s question, already fully changed from her asymmetrical
saffron gown into a loose T-shirt, boyfriend jeans and ankle boots.
 
She fished through the giant nylon tote
that they had taken from the trunk, digging through the various tops and
bottoms before pulling out a quilted Chanel sunglasses case.

“Mm-hm.
 
Picked it up from my friends,” Harper
replied as she decided against the shades, probably because of how dark it
already was out.
 
“They also taught
me the whole leaving-without-telling-anyone trick so you get a head start on
being out without the paps tailing you.
 
And they like, attract nine thousand times as many cameras as you or I
do so this should definitely work.”

Amanda nodded as
she pulled on oversized heather grey raglan to go with a pair of black leggings
and linen sneakers.
 
Once fully
changed, Harper knocked on the window, signaling for her driver to come back in
and drive them to the Chinatown cafe that Ian had asked them to meet him at.

“I hope nothing
happened,” Harper mumbled absently as she gathered her hair into a
ponytail.
 
“He sounded all urgent
on the phone but he wouldn’t tell me what it was about.”

Amanda shrugged,
unsure of how to tell Harper that Ian had more than likely found something on
Casey with which to develop some sort of revenge plan.
 
So she remained silent, pretending to
text throughout the short ride across The Bowery to Chatham Square, where Ian
was waiting.

They spotted him
the minute they arrived at the small cafe, which was empty aside from an
elderly couple at the counter.
 
Sitting in a back corner, Ian’s leg bounced as he swiped about on his
iPad, the hood of his maroon sweatshirt pulled almost over his eyes.
 
Despite her tension, Amanda couldn’t
help laughing with Harper the second Ian spotted them and burst off his seat
with such excitement that his hood flew off of his head.

“Thank God
— I can’t be alone with this information anymore.”

“What’s going
on?” Harper asked curiously, running her hand through Ian’s messy hair.
 
Her eyes followed his iPad as he handed
it over to Amanda.
 
She cocked her
head when no one answered her.
 
Amanda’s lips had made a brief attempt but stopped when her eyes went to
deciphering the image on Ian’s screen.
 
It looked to be a page from a blog but the writing wasn’t in English and
the only words that Amanda could read were names — “Casey Mulreed” and
“Quinn Colwell.”

“What is this page?
And this language? And who’s Quinn Colwell?” Amanda asked, looking up
quizzically at Ian, who bit back a grin.

“It’s a page
from some I think Russian gossip site that doesn’t exist anymore.
 
The website shut down years ago.
 
But their content is still floating on
the Internet — you just have to brave through a lot of weird pop ups and
broken links to get to it.”

“Nothing ever
dies on the Internet,” Amanda mumbled wryly.

“Which is good,”
Ian said.
 
“At least in this case
‘cause this website has, or had, a very useful obsession with Casey.”

Harper’s hands
dropped from her hips.
 
“Oh
God.
 
Are you two trying to go
after Casey?”

Ian shrugged at
her, surprisingly unapologetic.
 
There was that excited spark in his eyes that Amanda recognized.
 
Hardly anything could get in his way
when that look took over.
 
“I need
closure,” he said simply.

Harper blinked
at him and then Amanda.
 
“You two
are some masochists.”
 
She shook
her head, her peach-tinted lips puckered in disbelief.
 
“This isn’t just bad karma, this is
like, a death wish.
 
You can’t mess
with Casey Mulreed, she’s untouchable.”

Ian made a face
at Harper.
 
“You never struck me as
someone who was scared of other people.”

“Good, because
I’m not,” she replied, her tone acidic.
 
“But I know what things are good for me and challenging something who
doesn’t lose doesn’t fall under that category.”

“Everyone loses
at some point,” Ian retorted.
 
“Amanda and Liam have this bullshit going on.
 
You and I went to rehab.
 
Now it’s Casey’s turn.”

Harper shot an
icy glare at Ian.
 
Amanda hadn’t
seen it since her days as a Hollywood mean girl.
 
“She’s an
addict
,
Ian, who isn’t seeking help.
 
And
she comes from a family of people who died or almost died because of the same
problem.
 
She’s going to have her
loss eventually.”
 
Disappointment
knitted her normally wrinkle-conscious forehead.
 
Her voice softened.
 
“You and I went through exactly what she’s going through right now
— with the addiction, the completely screwed up families.
 
You shouldn’t put a target on her back,
you should sympathize with her.”

Ian’s green eyes
widened at Harper’s plea.
 
Suddenly, he burst into a bitter laugh that made even Amanda
cringe.
 
“Holy shit, are you
kidding, Harper? Sorry, but I’m not one of those people who gives an instant
pass to other addicts or former addicts.
 
I wouldn’t expect anyone to excuse the shit I did earlier this year
because I was drunk or high.
 
I got
what was coming to me — and none of that shit was even half as bad as
what Casey’s done in her life.
 
To
me, to Amanda, to Liam and all the other people you grew up watching her screw
over.”

Sitting
helplessly on a chair between them now, Amanda peered up at Harper, who wore a
wounded expression she’d never seen once from her before.
 
“Whatever,” she murmured, hoisting her
bag up onto her shoulder.
 
“I just
want you to be okay.
 
But if you insist
on messing with Casey, go ahead and do it.
 
Just don’t expect me to be a part of it,” she said before
turning on her heel and walking out the door, the door chime ringing loudly to
punctuate her exit.
 
Amanda studied
Ian’s flexing jaw as he watched her go.
 
She stared down at the iPad and the jumble of words and letters she
didn’t understand.

“God, I hope
this ends up worth it.”

The words were
Ian’s but she had been thinking the same exact thing.
 
“Yeah.
 
So.”
 
Amanda heaved a breath
before holding up the iPad.
 
“How’d
you find this article? Or blog or whatever it is?”

Ian plopped down
on the seat next to her, bringing his knees up on the chipped wooden
chair.
 
“Was Googling ‘Casey
Mulreed Jake Tatum.’
 
The only
website that gave me a result was this one but the link was broken so I Googled
the name of the site and found out it was an old Russian gossip blog.
 
Googled the blog and ended up finding a
lot of the posts archived on some webpage.
 
There was no search feature though, so I basically went through
a hundred stories before finding this one.
 
There were other Casey pieces but this was the only one that
I probably hadn’t heard about yet considering the names involved.
 
Like, Quinn Colwell.
 
No idea who he is.”

“Me neither,”
Amanda murmured.
 
“Did you
translate the page?”

“‘Course I
did.”
 
Ian nodded, taking the iPad
back and swiping around until he reached his desired page.
 
“Saved it here.
 
You ready?”

“Yes.
 
Read it to me.”

“Okay, here
goes.”
 
Ian cleared his
throat.
 
Amanda gave him a strange
look as he struggled to contain his broad smile.
 
“‘A boy with name Quinn Colwell to court the American film
actress O’Casey, infringement Mulreed original work.
 
However, there was no evidence was not to find these
allegations, and loss.’”

“Oh my
God.”
 
Eyes wide, Amanda sucked her
lower lip between her teeth before she burst out laughing with Ian.
 
“
What?
Holy shit, that’s amazing.
 
What
the hell do you think it originally said?”

“Something about
infringement of an original work.
 
And ‘to court the American film actress’ was maybe ‘to sue’ or ‘to bring
to court.’
 
Not sure though.
 
That shitty translation actually shows
up in a few other Google search results so I guess other non-American websites
tried to pick up the story at some point.
 
But it made no sense, obviously.”

“Hm.”
 
Amanda wiggled her pursed lips.
 
“But why would a random Russian gossip blog
have this story when the U.S blogs didn’t? I sure as hell don’t remember
approving any story like this on HDU — not that Casey got much tabloid
attention until this year.”
 
She
rolled her eyes, reminded of the fact that she and Ian had been the ones to
finally deliver Casey from the pages of Elle and Vogue to the more sleazy gossip
blog headlines, which of course, had been exactly what she wanted.
 
“When did this news come out, anyway?”
Amanda asked with a frown.

“Two years
ago.
 
We were both working for HDU
at that point.
 
I know I never saw
this story submitted,” Ian said.
 
“I’m assume it spent a day on American blogs and wasn’t even juicy
enough to get picked up before the Mulreed’s lawyers wiped it off the face of
the Internet like they did with the, uh… the video I made for Casey.”

Amanda’s peered
up at Ian with a bit of a grimace.

“Don’t make that
face,” he laughed.
 
“It’s
fine.
 
I’m fine.”

“Totally fine?”

“Yeah.
 
Because I think we might have the
makings of a hammer to drop on Casey here.”

Amanda made a
face and gave a weak smile.
 
“I…
don’t know.
 
It doesn’t make sense
that we wouldn’t have known this story or been able to search it.
 
Kind of seems like it can’t possibly be
legit if it’s not anywhere but this random blog.”

“You’re actually
totally wrong,” Ian insisted with a big grin.
 
“We can’t search it because it was a legit enough story for
Casey’s lawyers to take down from every corner of the Internet.
 
They just forgot one random Russian
corner, I guess.”
 
Ian nodded
excitedly as Amanda’s eyebrows lifted to consider the point.
 
“I don’t know if you remember this
because we were kids but when Casey’s parents were going through a divorce, it
was all over the news that her dad cheated on her mom with some other
actress.
 
But then another story
came out that he also cheated on her with the nanny, who was like, possibly not
eighteen yet when it started.”

“Holy gross.”

“Yeah.
 
But try Googling that shit today.
 
Everyone remembers the news coming out
for a hot second but now you can’t find one story on it unless it’s some random
person’s comment on a blog, but even that’ll get zapped eventually.
 
‘Cause the Mulreed lawyers will erase
anything the family doesn’t want out there.
 
And the only reason they wouldn’t want it out there is
because it’s either insanely humiliating — like boning an underage nanny
— or totally mundane but completely true — like the possibility of
stolen work.”

Amanda felt her
eyes slowly widen at Ian’s explanation, once again struck by one of his
eloquent and well-researched arguments.
 
It was like the good ol’ days.
 
“That sounds actually… quite possible.”

“Right?”

All it took was
another twenty minutes of speculation over a round of blueberry rooibos tea for
Amanda to be almost fully convinced — if anything, that the name Quinn
Colwell
did
somehow mean something to
Casey.
 
“We just need to figure out
what,” she murmured as they pushed through the front door of the tea house,
onto the quiet street.

“Amanda!”

What the hell now?
The second she
stepped onto the sidewalk, Amanda froze, staring at the hooded figure who had
just called her name before jogging from across the streets in his ridiculously
large sweatpants.