The Price of Scandal Read online

  “How well it works,” Emily insisted, standing her ground. “Now, you might as well finish chastising me so I can get back to running my company.”

  “This might be your company, but don’t forget you have a board of directors and a few hundred employees to answer to. If you’ve fucked us all over, Flawless will be the one wearing the scars. So you’d better get out there and raise money for orphans or give away free lipsticks to the homeless. Whatever it takes to save face. Make it go away.” He pointed a burly finger at his daughter.

  “I’d suggest that you have some faith in me rather than running behind my back and hiring me a babysitter,” Emily snapped.

  For the first time, Byron registered my presence. I had a feeling he didn’t notice most of the people who crossed his path. Quiet servants, invisible employees. The people who made his world go ’round.

  “So you’re the famous Derek Price,” he said.

  “I am,” I said, setting Emily’s bag on her desk. Neither of us offered a hand to the other.

  “I certainly hope the exorbitant fee you charge covers more than carrying purses.”

  “Derek, meet my father, a rude child when he’s grumpy and hungry. Dad, meet Derek, a trespassing criminal hell-bent on annoying me. Now, if you both will get the hell out of my hair, I can get back to running this company.”

  Byron grunted.

  His daughter’s high-handedness obviously pleased him, and I wondered if his bluster was just for show.

  “Better call your mother today,” he said, buttoning his jacket. “She’s yammering on and on about being too embarrassed to show her face at the club. And I need her to go to the club, Emily. If she spends much more time at home, one of us will murder the other.”

  Emily’s frostiness warmed by a few degrees. “My money is on Mom.”

  “And mine’s on you. Make me proud, slugger.” He landed a light punch on her arm.

  “I will,” she said, sitting behind her desk and effectively dismissing him.

  For the first time, Byron smiled in approval. “Jane, you’re looking trigger-happy as always,” he said.

  “Always ready and willing to stun gun anyone who requires an attitude adjustment,” Jane shot back with a baleful look.

  “Mr. Price, I expect you’ll keep my daughter on the straight and narrow for the next seven weeks.”

  “I’ll see that Emily has all that she needs,” I said.

  “I should hope so. I admire the way you wormed your way into a position we didn’t know we needed filled.” It was both sarcastic and a compliment.

  He offered his hand, and I shook it. We were two brawlers sizing each other up, wondering what the other was up to. I saw my opening when he glanced away.

  “You’ve got a few donut crumbs there,” I said, brushing at his jacket.

  “What?”

  “If you two are done crushing bones, I’ve got a very busy day today,” Emily said, sounding annoyed from behind her monitor.

  11

  Emily

  “Disgraced CEO hires publicity shark Derek Price to repair image”

  “Derek Price has hands full with disaster Emily Stanton”

  “Alpha Group founder hints at relationship with beleaguered billionaire”

  My father stormed out of the office looking for someone else to terrify, and I relaxed into my chair.

  “On that note, I’m going to head back to Bluewater and meet with security to find out just how our well-hung Mr. Price got in last night,” Jane announced.

  Derek chuckled.

  “You could just ask him,” I suggested, scanning the fifty new emails that had rolled in on the drive here.

  “It’s much more entertaining this way,” he said, sitting down on my couch and opening his laptop.

  “Jane, I’ll call a car for you. You can pick me up tonight—”

  “No need, Jane. I’ll see the boss home,” Derek said, without looking up from his screen.

  With an elegant flick of my wrist, I flipped him off.

  She snorted. “Play nice, you two.”

  “Alone at last,” he said when Jane left.

  “Don’t you have an unsuspecting woman to show your penis to?” I asked primly.

  “Ms. Stanton, what would your HR department say?” he asked, feigning horror.

  I didn’t feel like joking with him. His presence was a reminder that my own board didn’t trust me to run my own damn company.

  I tapped the end of my pen on the notebook I always kept handy for notes and formulas. “What did my father mean by you wormed your way in?”

  “Oh, that. I happened to personally witness those handcuffs snapping around your beautiful wrists. I also happen to be acquaintances with Imani on your board of directors.”

  I closed my eyes. “So you called her.”

  “So I called her.”

  I was suddenly very, very tired. “Derek, why are you in my office? Surely this ‘fixing’ doesn’t require you to shadow me 24/7?”

  “My darling Emily, how else can I help you?”

  “Are you in my calendar right now?” I barked. Appointments were moving, times changing right before my eyes.

  “Why, yes, I am.”

  “How did you even get access?”

  “Do you really want me to bore you with the details of how I do things?” he asked.

  My printer whirred to life and spat out several pages. “Stop using my equipment!”

  “You’re welcome to use my equipment at any time, Emily.”

  I was going to find a way to destroy this man. Somehow. Someway. I would make him rue the day he agreed to be my babysitter.

  I snatched the papers out of the tray and marched them over to him. “Derek, I mean this in the nicest possible way. If you don’t get out of my office and let me get to work, I am going to lose my shit in a scene so un-Stanton-like that the entire building will be talking about it for years.”

  “I’d better get you two donuts tomorrow,” he mused.

  I threw the papers in his face and had to restrain myself from wrapping my hands around his neck and choking the life out of him.

  “Take it easy, love,” he said, relenting. “I’ve got a few things to go over with you first. I’ll be quick. I promise.”

  “I give you five and you leave me alone?” I pressed.

  “Is everything a negotiation with you?” he asked, amused.

  “Yes. Now get out.”

  “You give me five and I’ll stop distracting you.”

  That was definitely not a promise to leave my office, I noted.

  He patted the cushion next to him.

  I took a deep breath and counted backward from ten. Luna swore by counting away the mad. But it never worked for me. It just made me angrier that I’d wasted ten seconds in which I could have done something more productive.

  “Five minutes,” I repeated and sat, making sure to leave several inches of couch cushion between us.

  “First up, a non-disclosure agreement,” he said, spreading the paperwork out.

  “You want me to sign an NDA?”

  “No. I’m going to sign one for you, which is something your team should have done the second they hired me.” He pulled a fountain pen from his pocket and scrawled his name across the contract.

  His signature was bold, confident. Just like the man it belonged to. It irked me. Just like the man it belonged to.

  Derek looked up, our eyes met and held.

  “There. Now I’m all yours. You can tell me your deepest, darkest secrets, and I’ll never tell a soul.”

  He was using his physical appeal against me, and I was not exactly falling for it, but my foundation felt a little shaky.

  “I don’t have any secrets,” I lied.

  He tapped me on the nose with his pen. I imagined myself catching him off guard with a palm strike to his achingly perfect nose.

  “You most certainly do,” he said. “But I’ll let you keep them a little longer. For now, let me give you a vi
sual demonstration of the services I intend to provide you.”

  For a fraction of a second, I was convinced he was cueing up a sex tape. It was a millisecond of envisioning his perfect ass as he thrust into a very lucky woman that had my face turning six shades of tomato.

  It felt warm in my office. Close.

  He pressed a button with a flourish and a video played on screen. It was me, arriving at work yesterday.

  “While I admire your impeccable taste in vehicles—I hope you let me drive her—watch yesterday compared to today.”

  With the sound off, I watched as I pulled up in front of the building and got out of the Porsche. I strutted like an angry supermodel toward the front door without acknowledging the presence of the photographers. I looked… fierce. Powerful. Angry.

  “And today,” Derek said, cueing up a second video.

  There I was again, casual in my jeans and messy hair. Smiling, laughing. I turned and beamed—when had I ever beamed in public? Stantons didn’t beam—at something Derek had said, laughed at Jane. I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t with an entourage. I looked like a woman having a good time with friends.

  “Now, I won’t insult your intelligence by pointing out the marked difference between yesterday and today,” he said. “But I will further prove my point with a few stills.”

  He clicked through a few pictures. Back and forth from my grim arrival yesterday to my donut-toting one today.

  “We literally walked in the door ten minutes ago. How did you put this together so quickly?”

  “Minions,” he said with an eyebrow wiggle.

  He was stupidly handsome.

  “This is my goal,” he continued. “To take you from unapproachable and frosty to down-to-earth and likable.”

  “I don’t need to be liked, Derek. I need to have the space to do my job. Not take the time to present Lynetta Dirk with the Women in Business Award at a luncheon today,” I said, glaring at an event he’d hacked into my calendar in mere hours.

  If my time was spent on a public apology tour, I’d fall behind on what really mattered. My work. Flawless wasn’t some hobby. A lark. It wasn’t even just about smoothing wrinkles. Or a billion-dollar IPO. It was science and growth. And it was mine.

  “The presenter canceled last minute, and you were kind enough to swoop in on a moment’s notice.”

  “Did you have the original presenter killed?”

  He scoffed. “She is alive and well.”

  My smart watch buzzed, and I spotted a text.

  Luna: Super cute and approachable! Love the outfit!

  “Damn it,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Emily,” Derek said, looking deeply into my eyes. I looked away, pretending to study my calendar. “You’re not some drug-addled socialite on the verge of destruction, and you’re also not a ‘ladies who lunch’ mannequin.”

  “I realize that,” I sniped.

  “Good,” he said amicably.

  “I have shit to do, Derek. Never-ending shit to keep this company running smoothly. I don’t need to suddenly become friendly and approachable. I need to prove that I am more than capable of running this company.”

  “I’m not here to hold your hand through day-to-day operations. I’m here to make the public realize what an intelligent, savvy, interesting woman you are. You don’t invest in businesses, love. You invest in people. And right this second, you just skated on a drug arrest.”

  “The publicists want to push attention on to Lita. Let her do the award giving. Let me work,” I said. “Why can’t we do that?”

  “Marching out a substandard Emily Stanton is not going to build confidence,” Derek said, sinking back on the couch. His arm rested on the cushion behind me. “Lita does not own this company. Lita is not the face of the company.”

  “Lita is not a substandard me,” I argued.

  He waved it away. “Do you want to sit here and argue the unfairness of it all, or do you want to do something about it?”

  I couldn’t believe I felt like pouting. I blamed Derek… and the emotional effects of a long overdue sugar rush.

  “Do something.” I sighed.

  “Good. Now let’s get down to business.” He took my hands in his. “Your board of directors hired me. But as far as I’m concerned, you are my client. My job is to get you what you want. So what do you want, Emily?”

  He enunciated each word as if he were asking me the most important question of my life.

  “I want this to go away. I want everything to go back to the way it was before I got in that stupid car.”

  He studied me with an intensity that made me want to squirm. I held eye contact on principle. No one made me squirm.

  “Then I’ll get that for you. But you have to trust me to do my job.”

  “I don’t even know you,” I argued.

  “I’m Derek Price. Age forty-three. Charming bachelor by choice. I dropped out of college to run a firm that specializes in fixing the damaged images of public figures. I charge exorbitant fees without the smallest measure of guilt because I’m confident that the service I provide is invaluable. I abhor anyone who can’t be bothered to be real. If you’re an asshole, be brave enough to be an asshole.”

  I pulled my hands out of his grip and crossed my arms. Some people didn’t have a choice in how they were perceived.

  “And in high school,” he continued, “I very nearly destroyed my life with a series of terrible decisions culminating in me stealing a cop’s personal car out of his driveway.”

  “You didn’t.” If he’d meant it to shock me, it had worked.

  “I did. I had an excellent run of petty thievery until I set my greedy sights on that SUV,” Derek said almost fondly.

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, I was arrested and hauled downtown to face my worst nightmare.”

  “Jail?” I asked. I didn’t want to be interested, but I couldn’t help myself.

  “My very angry single mother. My father left all of us when I was twelve. My mother worked seven days a week at a hair salon to make ends meet. My siblings and I took it upon ourselves to help out. My older brother got a job waiting tables. My middle sister started a tutoring business. My youngest sister clipped coupons. And I—”

  “Stole cars?” I was horrified. And oddly intrigued.

  He spread his palms, a magician distracting his audience. “I’m a thief at heart. Fortunately, winning at business is almost as much fun. Besides, it worked itself out.”

  “How?”

  “Detective Michael Perez ended up being the best thing that happened to my family.” Derek sighed. “We all call him Dad now. And his kids are my siblings regardless of blood. Turns out that I’m not the only thief in the family. One look at my beautiful, angry mother who was still wielding scissors as she threatened my life and she stole his heart.”

  I’ll admit it. A very teeny, female part of me swooned in the recesses of my very busy heart.

  “So he just erased the charges?”

  Derek laughed. “Of course not. Neither of my parents let a good deed go unpunished. I had two hundred hours of community service to keep me occupied.”

  “Don’t your clients care about your… colorful past?” I pressed. It seemed so unlikely that the elegantly wealthy would willingly part with fistfuls of cash and hand them over to a man with a criminal past.

  “It makes me real, darling Emily. I’m openly flawed, vulnerable even. There’s a security there that no polite, socially acceptable mask can deliver. You know that you can trust me.”

  I trusted very few people in my life, and one romantic sob story about a teenage felony wasn’t going to have me welcoming the man into my circle of trust.

  “Do you still steal?”

  A smile flickered across his face.

  “Only when absolutely necessary,” he said, slipping a hand into his suit jacket.

  Oh, God. “Is that my father’s…”

  “Wallet. Yes. It seems he left it behind. Pity.”


  12

  Derek

  I gave Emily an hour to play catch up and used the time to deliver her father’s wallet to Valerie, the attentive, ambitious assistant.

  I perched on her desk, turning on my charm, and quizzed her on Ms. Stanton’s daily habits. I got very little out of the woman and nothing but smug looks from Easton, the other assistant.

  I approved. These were the kinds of people someone like Emily needed to surround herself with. Loyal, sharp, immune to a handsome stranger’s sly charms.

  Jane returned after terrifying the Bluewater security team, and together we commandeered a small conference room to debate—argue loudly—Emily’s new schedule since I’d taken the liberty of adding a few of the necessary appearances and activities into The Boss’s calendar.

  “I’m telling you, Tea and Crumpets,” Jane said, kicking back in her chair at the head of the table. “She’s not going to go for this. You want her making an appearance Wednesday night at some concert. It’s not happening. And what billionaire CEO has time to sit through a fundraiser luncheon for—” She paged through her phone. “Oh, hang on, STEM Girls? She might actually do this. The boss loves this shit.”

  “Have a little faith in me, Jane,” I insisted, drumming my fingers on the glossy wood tabletop. “And who wouldn’t want to see Beyoncé live?”

  She snorted. “It’s not the Beyoncé part. It’s the Wednesday. No plans on Wednesday nights.”

  “Why?”

  Jane shrugged. “Ask her yourself.”

  Jane was cagey, rude, and unapologetic. I liked her immensely. Plus, her not telling me things told me just as many other things. She was another loyal follower of Emily’s, which meant there was an interesting woman who earned loyalty from her team under that very shiny layer of polish.

  The door opened, and the room filled with the lovely cool breeze that was Ms. Emily Stanton. “Derek,” she said, shooting Jane a look that said you better not be telling secrets. “Lita has time to meet with us if we head over now.”

  “Head over?” I asked, catching the flash of annoyance in Jane’s eyes.