Power (The Keatyn Chronicles Book 9) (5 page)

Vanessa gives him a radiant smile. “That’s what the kiss was for.”

 
He grins at her like a lovesick puppy, making me both want to puke at the sweetness of it and feel jealous at the same time.

“Speaking of kisses,” she says, coming to stand directly in front of me. “For the record, Ariela’s husband showed up unexpected, begged her to come home, and then kissed her. And in case you happened to see it when you came to pick it up and your stupid male brain thought otherwise, the kiss was unwanted.”

I look at the floor, realizing that this whole mess was because I jumped to a conclusion.

“Are you serious?” Jennifer groans. “She didn’t kiss him? Riley, you’re such an idiot.”

“I’m not an idiot. What the fuck was I supposed to think? His car was in the driveway. She’s at the door, holding her heels in her hand, giving him a kiss goodbye. I didn’t just think she kissed him. It looked to me like they just had sex and she was shooing him out the door before I got there. What do we even know about them anyway? Maybe this is all just a ploy to weasel me out of my money.”

“Right now, Ariela is the absolute least of your worries, Riley. We have a shit storm of bad publicity we have to deal with it. And blame Ariela all you want, but this is about you. Your life. Your career.” She stops chewing me out and appraises us. “Jeez, you all look like hell.” She points toward the conference table. “And somehow, I doubt what you’re going to see here will make you feel any better. Take a look at all the photos we’ve found on the web so far. Jennifer, you may be especially interested in looking at the laptop. You are currently trending on Twitter with a meme made from video footage taken of you at a strip club.”

Jennifer looks sick as she sits down at the table and clicks.
 

“Oh my god! What an epic fail!” She screams, then laughs, but then breaks down into tears. “My parents are going to kill me.”

Keatyn and Tyler come into the room, laden with bags. When they spread the food out, I see that it’s my favorite breakfast. The combination I taught Keatyn to love when she first tried it on my seventeenth birthday. Chicken and waffles.
 

“I figured you could use some hangover food,” Keatyn declares. “Why don’t you eat while Vanessa and I fill you in on what’s going to happen next. As you can see, your fun night in Vegas is all over the press. What you don’t know about are all the calls I’ve been receiving from our Board of Directors. They’re calling for your heads. They want me to cancel Knox and Jennifer’s contracts and fire both Riley and Dawson. Immediately.”

I choke down my food when I hear that the board wants me fired.
 

I know now why she ordered chicken and waffles. Because this is my last meal at Captive.

It’s even worse than I imagined.
 

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8TH

Captive Films - Santa Monica

RILEY

Jennifer is shoveling food in her mouth while looking through the photos. She holds up one where she has wrapped a scarf around her head, tied her shirt up in the middle, and has a fake parrot on her shoulder. “When was this? I don’t remember this.”

Dawson answers. “After the first club, we toured the Strip in a party bus. You were convinced if you looked like a pirate you could get on the ship at Treasure Island.”

“And this?” she asks, holding up a photo of her on a thrill ride.

“That’s the X-Scream at the Stratosphere,” Dawson says.

“Did we all ride it?”

“Yeah, we went before the second club. Thank god, you were impatient and volunteered to go single. You came back covered in puke. I think I bought the picture. It’s classic, we can download it if you want,” Dawson says, eating and laughing.

Vanessa shoots him an evil eye.
 

“I mean, at the time it was funny.”

“I thought it was funny,” Knox says. “I remember doing all that. The second strip club is when things start to get blurry.”

“I’d like to try to piece together a schedule of your night,” Keatyn interjects. “Tyler, will you start writing this all down.”

“How will that help?” Dawson asks.
 

“We need to know everything that happened if we’re going to have any chance of dealing with this appropriately,” Vanessa states. She may be an ice queen, but she knows her stuff. “Dawson, you seem to remember the most. Let’s start with you.”

“On the plane, we pre-partied. Drank a lot of champagne. We got to Vegas. Checked into our suite. It was the coolest place I’ve ever seen. I didn’t know they even had suites like it. There was a round bed that rotated. A fireman’s pole. Remember sliding down it?” he says excitedly.

Everyone nods as I remember what Jennifer told me on the bed. That I should care that she was fucking Knox.
 

When did I stop caring?
 

After Ariela.
 

“Oh, gosh,” Jennifer says, holding up a photo. “Knox, why were we humping Roman statues?”

“You said you wanted to have a threesome,” Knox says, laughing.
 

I’d be laughing too if I wasn’t waiting for this to be over so Keatyn could fire me.
 

“Do you remember stripping off your skirt to skinny dip in the fountain?” Knox asks her. “You said if throwing a penny in and making a wish for love was supposed to work, that immersing your whole body would ensure happiness.”

“There’s a photo of that too,” Tyler says, rummaging through photos to find the correct one and then handing it to Jennifer.
 

“Okay, so we have fire pole sliding, a strip club, a roller coaster ride, statue humping, and attempted skinny dipping,” Vanessa says. “What else?”

“Then we got politely asked to leave the Forum shops and to never return,” Dawson says. “After that, we took the party bus to strip club number two. We did shots on the way there.”

“This must be at strip club number two,” Knox says, holding up a photo of a topless Jennifer giving him a lap dance. And another one of them making out.
 

Jennifer holds up another photo, comparing them. “This one looks like it was taken at the same place, but because we’re both shirtless, it gives the impression that we’re naked and having sex. My parents are going to fucking kill me. Not to mention my agent. And I don’t even want to talk to my publicist. Remind me to never go to Vegas with you all again.”

“That goes for me too,” Dawson says. “Although, I do remember having fun.”

“I remember having fun too,” Jennifer says, holding up a photo of her surrounded by barely dressed waitresses. “But I just don’t understand. Where did the press get all these photos?”

“You took a lot of photos,” Knox says. “I do remember that. You were obsessed with it. You said an epic night needs a record. So you could remember everything you'd probably forget.”

“And you gave me your phone and made me video you on the stripper pole,” Dawson admits.
 

“Well, here’s a fun photo,” Tyler interrupts with a smirk on his face, holding a stack of photos out for all of us to see. “Jennifer, you were a lovely drunken bride. Which one of you was the lucky groom?”

Jennifer’s face goes white.
 

“What?!” Jennifer screeches as she grabs the photos out of Tyler's hand. Looking at the first one, she says, “Oh! Look at me with Elvis! Ohmigawd that photo is priceless! But I was probably just dressing up like the pirate thing. No way we got married.”

Knox holds out a manila envelope. As he dumps the contents of it, I notice little beads of sweat have formed on his forehead. Knox rarely sweats.
 

Two shiny silver wedding bands clang onto the table.
 

“Oh fuck!” Jennifer groans. “Knox? What the fuck? Did we get married? I was joking when I said let’s get married in Vegas. Oh my god.” She flips to the next photo. “Look at me in this one. I’m in a veil. I have that silver ring on my finger and the other in my hand! I’m giving Elvis a thumbs-up! And, ohmigawd, look at this one. Knox, we’re at the altar, kissing!”

“I remember going to a wedding,” Dawson admits. “And, Jennifer, I remember you throwing a bouquet.”

“Did you sign anything?” Knox asks Dawson, clearly shaken by this. “If you were our witness, you would have signed something. Now that I think about it, I do remember being at a chapel. I was on the steps and worried I was going to puke and ruin the wedding. But I think it was someone else’s wedding.”

“I remember crashing a wedding,” I interject. I haven’t said a word this whole time. I’m afraid to open my mouth, but Knox’s face is getting so red, I’m worried he might have a stroke.

“Oh, me too, now that you say that,” Dawson confirms. “I think you and Jennifer stood up for someone. They said it would be an honor. Then, I think later, Jennifer took her veil.”

Knox lets out a big breath of air. “Dodged that bullet,” he says, obviously relieved.
 

“Wasn’t there a wedding party on our party bus?” Dawson asks. “Didn’t we invite them back to the suite?”

“Yes! I remember that!” Jennifer says. “I puked in the party bus, and the bride told me that was the best way to cure a hangover. That I should just stay drunk. So I started drinking again.”

Tyler hands her another photo.
 

She studies it and then turns it toward us. “Okay, so I know I was drunk, but how in the fuck could the press have gotten this? It’s a selfie. See my arm?”

“You probably used the bride’s phone and she sent it in,” Keatyn states. “I mean if Knox Daniels and Jennifer Edwards were at my wedding, I’d post about it.”

“Where is your phone?” Vanessa asks Jennifer.

“I think I lost it,” she says.

“Or maybe that’s our answer. Maybe someone found it,” Vanessa suggests.

“I did take the passcode off last night because I kept screwing it up. Shit. I’m an idiot.”

“Did you get an envelope at the police station like Knox did?” Keatyn asks her.
 

“Oh, yeah! I did. Let me see what’s in there. Everyone should look. Maybe there are more clues.”

“I think the internet has more than enough clues,” Vanessa deadpans.

Jennifer dumps the contents then screeches, “My phone!” She looks at it and goes, “Ohmygawd, I’m down to one percent. I need a charger, stat!”

Tyler runs out of the office and rushes back in with one, plugging it into the wall behind her.

“You’re a life saver—oh shit, it just died.”

“Plug it in, anyway,” Tyler says.

She leans back in the chair, staring at her phone, willing it to life.
 

I take another helping of chicken and pick at it. The silence in the room is freaking me out. I already looked at my phone, saw it was dead, and decided to leave it that way. Anyone who needs to reach me can call the office. I’m sure Ariela found the flowers and left me a message. I don’t want to know what she said.

I just don’t want to know.
 

“It’s awake and loading now,” Jennifer says.
 

We watch her hit buttons on her phone, her eyes getting bigger by the second.
 

“Um, shit . . .” she mutters.

“What?” Vanessa prods.

“Besides the seventeen missed calls from my parents, it appears that I sent my ex-boyfriend exactly sixty one texts last night.”

She bangs her head on the desk and leaves it there.
 

“Your ex, huh?” Knox says, “You were texting him while you were with me?”

“I’m sorry I just—”

“You just what?”

“I wanted to make the jerk jealous. I wanted him to see that I could party too.”

“Which means you still care about him,” Knox states.

“No, I just . . .” Jennifer stutters. Then she lays her head on the desk dramatically and whispers, “I sent him all the photos.”

“Well, that solves the mystery of how the press got them,” Knox says, fuming. “Why in the hell would you send photos like that to Parker Hudson after the way he treated you in the press?”