RICHARD (A BAD BOY ROMANCE) (63 page)

Chapter 17

“Leave,” I said, fighting back the
torrent of tears threatening to soak my face. “Just get out, Tristan.”

“But this is for the best!” he said,
trying to make me see some brighter side of my life being ruined. How could my
reputation being dragged through the mud possibly be a good thing?

“You really have no idea what you’ve
done, have you?” I asked, laughing incredulously. “How could you not understand
that you’ve ruined everything that I’ve made for myself?”

“It’s just words!” he cried, as
though that would make it all better. “It doesn’t mean anything!”

“It means something to me!” I
shouted, my face burning red with anger. “My reputation is
everything
in my business! And now I have a scandal over my head!
How are my clients going to trust my discretion when I sleep with my own
client! Let alone the fact that you’re my stepbrother!”

Tristan frowned, though the
confusion on his face somehow told me that he still didn’t completely
understand.
How dense could one person be
?
I wondered.

“I want you to leave, now,” I said,
my voice trembling with and effort not to start sobbing right in front of him.
I wouldn’t give him the privilege of seeing me weak. “You’ve caused more than
enough damage already.”

“But Gwen, I—”

“Get
out
!” I screamed, picking up the nearest thing I had and throwing
it at him—which happened to be my phone. He was more than lucky that I wasn’t
trying
to hit him. “You’re just like
they always said that you were. Your father way right, all you ever do is ruin
everything you put your hands on! I never should have agreed to help
you,
I should have known better than to think you wouldn’t
find some way to make this into another one of your media circuses.”

He staggered back out of my bed,
once again hurrying to pick up his clothes and put them on before I lobbed
another projectile at him, one that wouldn’t miss.

“Go!” I shouted at him again, my
voice breaking.

Tristan didn’t say a word as he
picked up the rest of his things and left. It wasn’t until I heard the front
door close that I allowed myself to cry.

How
could he be so stupid
? I
asked myself.
How could
I?

How would they trust a woman who
can’t keep her hands off of her own stepbrother?

I want to slap him as hard as I
could, make him pay for the way he could just drag someone down into the mud
and not once bat an eye. He had the privilege of being born into a life of
money and power—a life of wealth that he never had to lift a finger for. I was
never so lucky as that. I had to put my blood, sweat, and tears into building
my business from the meager little thing that it was from my days at the
university. My entire life was in that business, and he had taken a flame to it
all.

I needed to do damage control.

I dug around in the bed where I’d
thrown my phone, surprised not to have even one call from Tina to warn me.
Either she was swamped with handling the fallout or something was terribly
wrong. I dialed her up and waited for the phone to ring.

She answered after the first one,
and I could already tell she was fighting not to panic.

“
Marm
,”
she said, “you’ve seen the news?”

“Tell me how bad it is,” I said,
bracing myself for what I knew would be bad news.

“I’ve had clients calling me all
morning to cancel their services with you,
marm
,” she
said, and I could feel the worry in her voice, not just for her job, but for
the company she’d help me run for the past few years. Both our hearts were in
this business and I knew Tina hated to see this just as much as I did. “I’m
sorry, but I’m not sure how well we’re going to weather this.”

I sighed, trying not to cry over the
phone as I did my best to come up with some sort of plan.

“I’ll need to make a statement—a
message to our clients apologizing for bringing them into the spotlight. At
this rate they’ll all be investigated to find out whether they were slept with
as well. By the time the day is over they’ll be trying to make it sound like
I’ve been running some sort of escort service.”

“I’ll prepare something within the
hour,
marm
,” Tina said dutifully.

“Thank you, Tina,” I said. “I’m not
sure what I’d do without you.”

“You’ll not see me abandon you,
marm
, that I can promise.”

After I hung up the phone I
descended into a mess of tears.

Chapter 18

The music pulsed through me, the
bass thrumming in my ears as I watched the countless men and women on the dance
floor grinding and pressing into one another to the rhythm. I hated clubs

I need somewhere that I could drown
myself in enough alcohol to kill an elephant all while having the excuse to
ignore anyone who decided that they knew who I was. I wanted to be surrounded
by people, while at the same time be alone with my thoughts.

I sat there as the world moved
around me in a constant motion, while I felt like I alone stood still, watching
everything pass me by, changing and evolving while I stay the only constant. I
laughed at myself, and at how every single word that Gwen had said about me was
true—I would never change, and that I had done everything within my power to
make her life a living Hell all for my own selfish needs and desires.

She had every right to hate me for
what I’d done, for who I was and would always be. I was a burden, an
embarrassment, and if that was who I was meant to be, then why hide from it? If
life wanted me to play the
Fool
then who was I to deny
it? The best thing that I could do for Gwen was to stay out of her way—to
disappear and never show my face anywhere near her again. I’d hurt her enough,
and I was more than willing to put an end to all of it right then and there if
it meant sparing her another minute of the pain I had caused.

I looked up from my drink to find my
eyes draw toward a woman only a few seats over from me at the club’s bar, her eyes
half-opened in a sultry stare that I couldn’t deny was utterly enchanting. She
smiled at me, her full lips turning up at the corners like a cat that was about
to eat the pet canary.

“All alone tonight?” she asked,
sliding over into the seat next to me and shouting about the noise. “Sort of
shocking for a guy as gorgeous as you are.”

“I had something of a breakup,” I
said, my gaze drawn to the plunging neckline of her dress. “I thought I could
come here to get over what happened.”

She laughed in a way that made my
spine tingle.

“The only way to get over a lover is
to take another, darling,” she cooed in my ear. “And I’m more than available
for a gorgeous thing like you tonight.”

Why
not
? I thought, wondering whether it
even mattered at this point if I could ever win Gwendolyn back. What was the
point of staying true to her if no matter what I did I’d always be a plague on
her life?
Maybe it’s better if I try my
best to forget these last few days ever happened
.

“You think you’ve got what it takes
to make me forget?” I asked, trying my best to sound coy, though no matter how
much I wanted to I couldn’t stop thinking about Gwen. I’d never fallen so hard
for any woman in my life, and now that I lost her it was hard to let her go.
“She was the best I’d ever had.”

“I’m better,” the mysterious vixen
purred in my ear. I felt the soft touch of her hand sliding over the leg of my
slacks and up my thigh until she caressed the bulge of my cock. “Trust me, I’m
all you’ll be thinking about tonight.”

I should have wanted her. I should
have done what I would have normally done and used that woman to make me
forget, to devour her in bed to feed my own need for something to fill the
holes in my life. But the more she came onto me the more I kept thinking about
how disappointed Gwendolyn would be. She would hate me for betraying her, for
being the man I told her that I would never be again. Despite what she said I
knew that I couldn’t be that person again. I had to prove them all wrong.

“I’m sorry,” I said, gently pushing
the woman’s hand away from me. “But I just can’t do that.”

“Suit yourself,” she said, shrugging
her graceful shoulders as she slid off the bar stool and strutted out onto the
dancefloor
. I watched her go, feeling that she took
something of my old self with her. The old me would have taken her into some
VIP room and bent her over for my own pleasure. But that wasn’t me, not
anymore.

I
have to make this right
,
I thought, setting my drink down on the bar as I stood up.
I can’t let her think that I ruined everything
.

I slipped a fifty-pound note under
my glass and headed out the door, pulling my cellphone out of my pocket as I
searched for the number of the news station that had covered the scandal when
it first made the air. I was going to make things right, even if it ruined my
own life in the process. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t be the man that my
father and stepmother thought that I was, and I wasn’t about to stand by and
let Gwen think that I was that kind of man either.

“Hello,” I said as the phone stopped
ringing. “My name is Tristan Wolfe—yes, the very same. I’d like to offer you an
exclusive interview about the story you released concerning my stepsister and
I. Yes, I can be available as early as tomorrow morning.”

Chapter 19

I couldn’t bring myself to go into
the office, not with the threat of a crowd of jeering men snapping pictures
with their phones crowding around the doors to the building. There had already
been vandalism on the front door, a spray painted sign declaring me a slut and
a harlot. It was too much for me to handle, too much for
anyone
to handle. I just wanted to hide somewhere and not come out
until the world completely forgot my name or that I’d been stupid enough to
fuck my own stepbrother.

Clients had left in droves after the
news story broke, even some former clients coming out of the woodwork to claim
that I’d slept with
them
as well! I
couldn’t believe the nerve of some people, or the desperate need some have to
be in the spotlight. If it were up to me I’d never grace the newscasts ever
again. I just wanted to disappear.

Tina had honestly stepped up more
than I had ever imagined possible, even giving a statement on my behalf in
regard to the scandal, brief as it was and denying any and all claims that I had
slept with any of my other clients. I could have kissed that woman if it
wouldn’t have turned into another scandal all on its own. With the evidence of
my affair with Tristan, it was best to not deny what was already proven, but
that hardly meant I had to give them all the details. Thankfully I made sure
that I had minimal contact with the press—or my mother for that matter.

For the last few days my mother had
tried to call me, trying my number again and again to mock me or try to tell me
just how disappointed she was to have a slut for a daughter. Her last message
had been particularly venomous, especially the parts where she declared that
she wouldn’t even bother to disown me, since my own inheritance was already set
to be given to my soon-to-be baby brother. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about
any of it. All I wanted was to be left alone by the rest of the world to try
and salvage what was left of the life I had built.

All that I had left was my business,
and I was determined to take whatever was left after this disaster and build it
back, better than ever. I could only hope that I at least had
some
of my clients left.

“With us this morning we have
Tristan Wolfe, son of Lord Wolfe who recently made headlines after it was
discovered that he had been having a rather sordid affair with his own
sister
,” came a voice from my TV. I’d
almost forgotten that I’d had the damned thing on, and it was only Tristan’s
name that had brought my attention back to it.

For a moment I froze, time seeming
to slow around me as I turned my head to gaze in shock at the television
screen.

What
is hell
is
he
doing?
I thought, turning my attention back toward the screen.

“Good morning,” Tristan said,
dressed in a sharp looking blazer, with a conflicted look on his gorgeous face.

He
ruined everything for you
,
I reminded myself, but the fluttering in my heart was a hard feeling to ignore.
I wanted so badly to simply hate him with every fiber of my being.

“Mr. Wolfe,” the interviewer began,
“tell us how all of this began.”

“Well,” he said, “it started when we
were in our teens actually, though as it was this time, the flirtation was
mostly one-sided.”

“Your stepsister did not return your
advances?” the woman asked.

“Not at all,” he said. “She refused
me several times up until the point when I left to begin my first tour of
duty.”

“You might consider this unrequited
love then?”

“Perhaps on my end,” Tristan said.
“I am sad to say that I employed a great deal of manipulation on my part in
order to get my stepsister into the position we were caught in. A lot of
promises I had little intention of keeping”

“Is there something that you’d like
to say to your sister if she’s watching this?” the woman asked.

“I’d like to tell her that I’m sorry
for dragging her into this, and that I take responsibility for putting her in
such a terrible situation. I took advantage of her drunkenness and did things
that I should not take any pride in.”

“Is it true that you’ve formally
renounced your claim to your family title?” the interviewer inquired.

“I have. I hope that my
half-brother—when he’s born—is a better fit for it than I ever would have been.
I can’t say that I’d have made a wonderful brother to him, but perhaps this is
something that I could do for my family that wouldn’t be such a black mark.”

“Heavy words of repentance from the
debonair Mr. Wolfe,” the newscaster said, looking into the camera, “next up—”

I turned the TV off mid-sentence,
utterly dumbfounded by what I’d just heard coming from my stepbrother’s mouth.
Why on earth would he lie like that? How could he sit there on national
television and say that he was responsible for everything that had happened?

He
was protecting me
, I
realized, tears welling up in my eyes as the truth of it all hit me like a
ten-pound hammer.
He still loves me
.