139

139
DREW
Going back to work felt like shoving bamboo splinters under my nails.
If I could have stayed in that villa with Camille for another few weeks, I would have. I wanted to spend as much time getting to know her as possible.
Even if our relationship was complicated.
There was a part of me that hated having to keep it a secret. Now that I had her, I wanted to tell everybody. I wanted to take her out to nice dinners and go on adventures together.
I wanted to wake up next to her every morning and go to bed with her each night. I was tired of filling my life with meaningless relationships.
As I glanced down at the picture of her on my phone, my heart skipped a beat. It was the first time that I had felt this much for someone. She was the one person in my life who was starting to make me believe that love—true love that could last forever—was real.
It was equal parts terrifying and exciting.
There was a knock at my office door that pulled me from my thoughts. I flipped my phone over, hiding the screen as the door opened. Tyson walked
in and shut the door behind him.
He smirked as he walked into the office and sat down in the chair across from me. I raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to say something.
Tyson wasn’t the kind of man who would come to my office and sit in my chair for no reason. On the days that he was in the city, he spent most of his time locked away in his office. He worked hard to make sure that he didn’t have to do as much when he was home with Haley.
I wondered how he managed to balance his life, but there was no way that I was going to ask him.
“So,” Tyson said, drawing out the vowel as he leaned back in his seat and crossed one leg over the other. “How was your week off?”
“It was good. Gave me a lot of time to sort through some shit that’s been going on in my life.”
Tyson hummed and nodded, a look of amusement still in his eyes. “Odd that you and Camille both chose to take a week off at the same time.”
“Didn’t even know she was gone,” I said, lying through my teeth. My stomach clenched as I wondered what he knew.
“Never said you did,” Tyson said, his grin growing wider. “I just thought that it was interesting. You know, Camille is like a younger sister to me. I worry about her a lot. She works too hard, and she lets her job rule her life.”
“Okay,” I said, feigning indifference.
I doubted that there was much he could tell me about Camille and her work ethic that I didn’t already know. It had been nice to see her relax over the last week. She’d finally been able to unwind and let her hair down.
“Point is,” Tyson said, uncrossing his legs to lean forward on the edge of my desk. “I don’t want you to be stressing her out or making her job any harder. She was asked to help improve your image. We don’t want to see this
company take a hit because you keep producing scandal after scandal. Please let her help.”
“I will,” I said, clasping my hands together. “I have a meeting with her later this afternoon to talk with her about our next steps moving forward.”
Tyson nodded, his smile dropping. “Is there anything else going on between the two of you that I need to know about?”
“No,” I said, swallowing hard. “I don’t make a habit of doing anything with employees beyond our jobs.”
“You know, there are forms to fill out in HR if there is something happening.”
“Well,” I said, crossing my arms and dropping my shoulder in a casual shrug. “There’s no need to fill out those forms since there is nothing going on.”
“Good.”
I nodded, expecting him to get up and leave my office. He continued to sit in the chair, looking around my office.
“Is there anything else?” I asked.
“Well, there is a dinner tonight to celebrate a successful quarter. It ended up being nearly four hundred thousand over the expected profit. You should come tonight. Bring a date if you want.”
“When and where?” “Bordeaux Steakhouse. Eight.” “I’ll be there.”
Tyson nodded and got up. “We’ll see you there. I’m having my assistant bring you a file soon about a movie production company that’s about to file for bankruptcy. The production company hasn’t produced the best movies in the past, but I think you should take a look at flipping the business.”
“Alright,” I said as he headed for the door. “Send it my way and I’ll take a look.”
“Good. See you tonight.”
He closed the door behind him after he left. I sighed and slumped back in my chair, running a hand over my face. Trying to keep my relationship with Camille a secret was going to be harder than I thought if Tyson was already suspicious.
I closed my eyes and leaned back in my chair, trying to push the last few minutes from my mind. There was another knock at my door.
“Come in,” I said, opening my eyes and sitting up.
“This is for you,” Tyson’s assistant said, dropping a file on my desk before scurrying out of my office.
At least the file will be a good distraction until my meeting with Camille.
“You know, I don’t know if there is a scandal that you haven’t been in,” Camille said as she walked into my office and set her laptop on my desk.
I grinned as she pulled one of the chairs around the desk and took a seat beside me. Her hand drifted down to her stomach as she leaned forward and brought up a presentation on the laptop. Briefly, I wondered if she knew that she touched her stomach as often as she did.
“I haven’t murdered anybody,” I said, leaning closer to her and staring at the collage of pictures on her screen. Most of them were of me and various
women doing inappropriate things in inappropriate places. “None of that is even that bad.”
“It’s not that good either,” she said, flipping to another slide. “These are the general polls taken from the investors about how they perceive your image.”
“Okay,” I said, staring at the overwhelmingly bad perception. “So, what are we supposed to do about this?”
“You’re going to start dressing the part of a man who makes a lot of money and knows that he should be presentable in public. You aren’t going to be seen leaving clubs with women draped all over you. Most importantly, you aren’t going to get arrested again.”
My cheeks warmed at the mention of the arrest. Yes, she had bailed me out, but every time I looked back on that night, I was embarrassed. Street racing was one of the dumbest things that I had ever done.
If Camille hadn’t come to bail me out that night, I don’t know who would have.
“I’m still sorry about that. I never should have done it.”
She smiled and shrugged a shoulder slightly. “It’s in the past but that’s where it needs to stay. We need to keep moving forward with your image.”
“It won’t happen again.”
“Good.” She hit the arrow key and another slide came up. “Now, you are going to start attending more charity events. You’re going to appear at them and stay at them. Hell, it would look better if you were there to help set them up and take them down too.”
I nodded. “I can do that.”
“Your first event is at the children’s hospital. You’re going to be taking a few actors over there. Some of the bigger names from one of the production
companies you currently own.”
Camille launched into a list of everything that I was expected to do for the event. I listened to her, watching as she added notes to her slides. I knew that maybe a few minutes after our meeting ended, I would have an email waiting in my inbox with all these details.
I admired the way she handled her job. Everything that she did was detailed and organized. She strived for perfection in her work, and it was easy to see how her career had taken off even though she was only twenty-two when she had started with Tyson and Clarke.
Her drive and ambition inspired my own.
I wanted to be better for her and our child. I wanted to do better.
The man I had been was disappearing by the day and if I was being honest, I was glad to see him go.
My life was changing for the better. While I could acknowledge the past, I wasn’t going to live in it anymore.
“Alright,” Camille said when she finally got to her last slide, “do you have any questions about the plan?”
“No. If I do, I’ll call you.”
“Good.” She closed her laptop and stood up with a smile.
“Do you want to be my date to the dinner tonight?” I asked as she walked toward the door.
“I’m already going,” she said with a small smile. “They invite me to their quarterly dinners all the time. Besides, we’re being discreet, remember?”
“I remember.” I hated it, but I remembered. “I’ll see you tonight then?” “See you at Bordeaux.”
I watched her as she left, closing the door behind her. Not even five minutes after she was gone, an email came through from her with the
presentation attached. I smiled and opened the presentation, needing more time to study her plan.
There were hours to kill before the dinner tonight. This would be the first real outing since agreeing to work harder on cleaning up my image. I needed to be prepared.
I needed to show Camille that I was willing to do whatever it took to make us work.
When Camille walked into Bordeaux Steakhouse that night, my heart stopped. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her as the waiter escorted her to our table. Leigh and Haley both bounced out of their seats to greet her.
I pretended to be uninterested in her. Nobody would suspect anything. Camille and I usually avoided each other or argued when we were out together. At least, we used to.
Avoiding her was the much better option. The others wouldn’t suspect anything.
“You look nice,” Clarke said as Camille took the empty seat beside me.
His arm draped over the back of Leigh’s chair as she took her seat.
Camille smoothed down the dark green silk and shrugged. “Well, we are celebrating, aren’t we?”
“Absolutely,” Tyson said as a waiter came back with a bottle of champagne.
The waiter popped the bottle and filled our glasses. Camille glanced at her glass before grabbing her water. We all raised our glasses in a toast before taking a sip.
“So,” Haley said, leaning on the table and looking at Camille, “not drinking tonight?”
Camille shot Haley a glare. Before she had to come up with an excuse, I grabbed her champagne flute and downed it in one go.
“Thanks for that,” I said, grinning as I put her empty glass back down.
Leigh looked at me, her eyes burning holes through me. It felt like she was looking inside my soul and digging around to reveal my darkest secrets.
“You’re such an asshole,” Camille said as she crossed her arms and glared at me. “What if I wanted that?”
“Too bad, Cami,” I said, using the nickname I knew she hated.
Camille flipped me off and I was grateful for the private room. None of the other people in the restaurant could see us bickering. If they did, I knew I would have been splashed all over the news for arguing with an employee in public.
To our friends, nothing looked out of the ordinary.
“One of these days you two are going to have to figure out how to get along,” Clarke said, grinning as he glanced down at the menu.
“When hell freezes over,” I said, playing the part I knew I was expected to play.
A hand reached for mine under the table and gave it a squeeze. Camille retracted her hand quickly and grabbed her own menu, looking through it. When I glanced over at her, she gave me a soft smile.
When she smiled at me like that, it was hard to believe that there was ever a time when I wasn’t falling for her.
Keeping our relationship from our friends was going to be hard, but for her, I would do just about anything.
Even though I got a sinking feeling in my stomach every time I thought about keeping her a secret.