The Arrangement - A Reverse Harem Romance, page 20
“So where the fuck did you disappear to?” asked Nathan. “We were about to go out looking for you, and… whoa. Is that—”
“Yeah.”
A fan of dark red droplets spattered Chase’s right forearm, all the way up his sleeve. There was some on his hand, too. There was no mistaking what it was.
“A—Are you okay?” I asked.
“Better than okay.”
We shrank back from him a bit. Gave him some room.
“What the hell happened?”
“I went out and solved a problem,” Chase said evenly. “That’s what happened.”
There was a look in his eye that was almost frightening, but not in a dangerous way. Not to us, anyway.
“Wanna tell us about that?” asked Burke. He tilted his head toward the foreign laptop.
“That… is an insurance policy.”
“Against?”
“It belongs to Jay Summers,” I guessed, stepping forward.
“Belonged,” he corrected me quickly. “But yes.”
Nathan was incredulous. Burke let out a little grunt of approval.
“That his blood?”
“Sure is.”
“Feels good, doesn’t it?”
Chase chuckled for the first time all night. “After what he pulled? Fuck yeah it does.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a strange phone, too. He tossed it on the table next to the laptop. Nathan looked nervous.
“Uhhh, he’s not in your trunk or anything, is he?” When Chase didn’t answer right away, Nathan put his hands up. “Wait, don’t answer that. Nod once if he’s in there. Nod twice if he’s—”
“The little shitbag is fine,” Chase explained. “Except for his nose. I think I broke it again.” He let out a long, hot breath. “It bled like I broke it, at least. But yeah, he’s at home.”
“Sans laptop. Sans phone?”
Chase nodded. “Sans whatever pride he had left, too. What little there was.”
He went on to explain the remainder of his evening, which was long and strange. It included a trip out to Jay Summer’s house, a quick thrashing, followed by a late-night drive to the publishing office with Jay strapped in the passenger seat, a T-shirt pressed over his nose.
“My car’s going to need to be detailed,” Chase lamented. “He bled a lot.”
“And he just… went with you?” I asked. “Gave up his phone and laptop?”
“He gave me everything I wanted,” said Chase. “I didn’t give him much of a choice.”
Hope filled my heart, as I realized where this was going.
“So… you got everything?”
“All of the photos, yes. Everything he took that night under the pier. Some of us in the restaurant, too.”
Relief flooded through me. It felt astoundingly good.
“He kept the files on his phone, and on a thumb-drive in his desk. I deleted everything.”
“What about the laptop?”
Chase shrugged. “I took that for good measure. And it was a good thing I did.”
All of a sudden I could breathe again. Like the crushing weight of the past several hours had been lifted from my chest.
“Okayyy…” Nathan offered hesitantly. “Sorry, but I have to ask. What’s to keep him from pressing charges?”
“A few things,” said Chase. He held up a bloody fist. “This for one.”
“Besides that.”
“Well I’m betting there’s something on that laptop he doesn’t want seen,” Chase went on. “He begged me not to take it. In fact, he told me he’d do anything if I just left it. Rather than do that, I told him how he could get it back.”
“How’s that?”
Chase turned to face Nathan. “He’ll be calling your father tomorrow. And apologizing for everything.”
“What?”
“He’s also going to explain how he lied about the meeting with Kayleen. Especially since I pointed out several cameras in the office, including one that looks like it could provide easy footage straight through his office window.”
The kitchen went silent with even more incredulity. Someone whistled.
“Damn,” said Burke. “I didn’t even think of that.”
“Neither did he,” said Chase. “And believe me, he wasn’t happy.”
Nathan was looking down at the floor. He seemed to be in deep thought.
“Look, none of this takes back the photo in the tabloid,” Chase said. “But at least now we don’t have to worry about any other photos.”
Thank God.
He nudged Nathan. “And hey, I’m hoping maybe you can get back on the same page as your dad. Once he realizes the bullshit Jay pulled.”
Nathan nodded. “Thanks, bro. I’m still gonna have to explain Kayleen, though.”
“We all are,” Chase shrugged. “Every one of us, to friends, to family, to everyone.” He paused, and for a moment I saw a familiar defiance in his expression. “And you know what? I’m cool with that. More than cool, actually.”
He looked at me and smiled warmly. I could feel my heart swell.
“The world knows now,” Chase went on. “Not just from the tabloids — it’s in our book. It’s in our hearts.”
“It’s all over the internet too,” Burke pointed out, motioning to the computer’s screen. “Or at least it will be.”
“Yup,” Chase agreed. “And so what? I say we own it.”
I threw my arms around him and hugged him hard. Everything he’d done… everything he’d said… it all made sense. It was all for us. We were the only thing that really mattered.
“Goddammit, I’m tired,” Chase breathed, sinking heavily into the nearest chair. He pulled his blood-splattered shirt off, perking me up immediately. “But this…” he pointed at the sales page. “This is fucking amazing.”
“Light years past amazing,” Nathan agreed.
One of them tapped the button again. Burke coughed.
“Jesus, we’re already beating yesterday.”
I scanned past each of them in turn. Chase, looking as sexy as he was exhausted. Nathan, his blue eyes all big and bright. Burke, staring back at the screen almost unbelievingly. Scratching at his perfect goatee.
There was a long moment of total silence.
“You know what this means, right?” said Chase.
“That we don’t have to move out of this place?” Burke offered.
“Shit, in a week or two we could buy this place,” said Nathan.
I laughed nervously. Looking down at the screen, I did some quick math… and realized they weren’t kidding.
“All this,” Nathan swore incredulously. “From a single photo...”
He turned back from the screen and winked.
“Just imagine if we made a movie.”
Fifty-Four
KAYLEEN
What followed next was total insanity. Well beyond the scope of our wildest expectations, and our expectations had been fairly wild.
In retrospect we could never have possibly prepared for it, or guided it, or channeled it in any one direction. It ran fast and hard like a roller-coaster, twisting and turning, moving in whatever direction it wanted to at the time. All we could do was sit tight, hang on, and enjoy the ride.
And oh, what a ride it was.
A full month after our exposure in the tabloids, we were still reaping the benefits of the instant publicity. We’d been called out by name, first and last. Almost every aspect of our lives exposed; laid totally bare, for anyone and everyone to see.
Not that our lives were particularly interesting to begin with, because they weren’t. Individually we were rather plain. But together, as a quad-ruple (that’s what they were calling us), everything we did was interesting as hell.
We became minor celebrities, virtually overnight. No, scratch that. Definitely overnight. We were followed and photographed in all kinds of places, doing all sorts of things. None of it as racy or sexy as our time under the pier, but that was okay. There was still plenty of PDA for the photographers to click their shutters on. Lots of three and four-way sightings of us doing everything from walking on boardwalks to eating in restaurants to seeing a few shows.
Every woman in the country wanted to know what it was like to be me, and some from other parts of the world, too. My email inbox was utterly destroyed, our physical mailbox stuffed full each day. I received everything from fan mail to hate mail, from gifts and letters of advice to pamphlets decrying me as a sinner and telling me I’d be judged harshly in the afterlife.
And as bad as I got it? The guys got it even worse.
Theirs, for the most part, was a rabid fan base of hungry, horny women. Photos of each of them had emerged, shirts off, looking as strong and beautiful and muscular as they actually were. Entire crews followed Nathan and I surfing, and it wasn’t until we’d changed beaches three times that we could finally be left alone.
We’d done interviews. A few, anyway. Nothing tremendous, but big enough to keep the momentum going while pushing the second and third book launches. Those went off without a hitch, reaching best-selling status even during the pre-sales. It was unbelievable, really. As thrilling and lucrative as it sounds.
It got to the point where we didn’t even need to do any marketing, but we hired a team anyway. For a short while, we had a publicist. We retained a lawyer. We even trademarked a few things, tucking them away for a future in which we might need to put out a line of T-shirts or something equally ridiculous.
But the truth of the matter was simple: we didn’t have to do anything anymore. Not after this. Not after the checks were cashed and the smoke cleared and all the dust stirred up by our ‘coming out’ photo finally, at long last, settled.
In the end, the books were considered a critical success. Triple Team kicked off compelling story, even beyond Juliana’s similarities to our real-life situation. By design, the guys brushed away offers for agents and publishers until after the third book had been finally released. It took them two months of sifting through competing offers to find the perfect fit, and to sign on for another three books to be written along the same vein.
As for me, I went straight back to doing what I’d wanted all along: attending culinary school. The residuals we received as a ‘quad-ruple’ didn’t come close to the book sales, but it was a significant enough chunk that I could put my business on hold. I spent even more time away from the villa than before, but that was okay. I was doing exactly what I loved, and the guys traveled a lot on their book tours anyway. Three different ones, to be precise.
Like I said, it was pretty crazy. A perfect storm of attention, money, and instafame. We took full advantage immediately, even though it meant being apart for a while. The guys were constantly out of state, but always in touch.
And in truth, it made us even stronger. Forced us to appreciate our time all the more when we were together, just the four of us.
And those times were the best of all.
As for my parents, that part was a lot harder to reconcile. It was my mother who came on board first, although very hesitantly. After a few lunches and a thousand stories about how great the guys were and how happy I was, she began to see things a little more my way. Everything she went home with she conveyed to my father, who at some point a few weeks later, finally started calling to talk to me again.
He never asked about the guys directly, and I never really offered. But he could tell I was happy. And I could tell he wanted me to be happy, which was the first big step for the both of us.
It wasn’t full-blown acceptance of course, but it was definitely a start. Slow going but solid. And it made us all feel good just to be talking again. To see something of a light at the end of a very long, very strange tunnel.
Nathan’s father came on board a lot quicker, especially after having to eat crow regarding the whole incident with Jay. We learned pretty fast that Jay Summers no longer worked at his office, or as a publisher anywhere, as far as we knew. He never did get his laptop back, and we never opened it. As long as we never heard from him again, Chase intended for it to stay that way.
Chase and Burke made their own adjustments, although their ties weren’t as tight. Their families were more surprised than upset. Too shocked at the whole idea of what was happening — the success of the books included — to get all righteous about the way we lived our lives.
And then, just like that, things died down. It turns out fame is fleeing, especially in today’s internet age of short attention spans and 6-second vines. We were still a thing, still very popular, just not the shiny new toy we once were. By then though, the trilogy was already a smash best-seller. The guys had built a huge following, gained a healthy fan base. They’d hired an agent. Signed with a publisher.
And we were all very, very well off.
Fifty-Five
KAYLEEN
It was another late night. Really late. I was exhausted as always, but this time I was more excited than usual.
And that’s because Chase was cooking dinner for us.
It was almost ironic, how starving I was. Surrounded by food all day — food that I was cooking, even — and not stopping to eat anything at all. Still, I didn’t want to spoil my appetite. Chase had gotten pretty good at the basics, and I was looking forward to whatever he’d whipped up.
I pulled into the driveway with no less than three bandages wrapped around me. Two were from knife cuts, one from a burn I took on a risotto pan. All three injuries were the result of doing too many things at once. But the intensity was good for me. I needed the experience.
You certainly didn’t open your own restaurant without knowing how to multitask.
“Mmmm…” I called from the foyer. “Smells good!”
I was still a little far off from that dream, but closer than ever before. I needed a location, a theme, a menu. Suppliers… staff… a whole overall business plan. Burke had been helping me put one together, but he and Nathan were wrapping up their latest publicity tour. I did have Chase though. He’d hung back on this one, to begin writing their next series of books.
And I was definitely looking forward to our time together.
I entered the kitchen and found nobody there. There was something resting in the oven though. I could smell it.
I opened it slowly, and saw a delicious chicken pot-pie. It was tremendous! Much bigger than the two of us could ever finish.
“What did I say about wasting food?” I chided loudly into the empty air. “It looks fantastic though!”
It did, actually. Thick and rich-smelling, with a perfectly-golden, flaky crust.
Beast strutted in and immediately began wagging his tail. Three seconds later I was practically tripping over him, while he hopped excitedly around my calves.
“Where’s Chase?”
The little corgi’s ears perked up at my lover’s name.
“He’s in the can, isn’t he?”
Beast’s tail swung even faster. I laughed.
“Let’s go surprise him.”
My body was physically exhausted, my feet practically dragging across the tiles. The rest of me was alive and well, though. Happy to be home. Eager to fill my belly with—
I stopped halfway down the hallway. Off to the side, I could hear music floating in from the living room.
And laughter too.
“Hey,” Chase said, as I shuffled in. He slid a glass of red wine right into my hand. “Welcome to the party.”
My breath caught in my throat. Nathan and Burke were standing behind him, grinning warmly. They rushed in, two pairs of arms going around me in a big group hug.
“You’re back early!”
The wine sloshed dangerously around in my glass, nearly cresting the rim. It could’ve dropped for all I cared, all I wanted was to kiss them both.
“We cut the tour a few dates short,” Burke explained. “Time to stop running around, jerking ourselves off. Get back to some actual writing.”
I smiled at him teasingly. “Jerking yourselves off…” I said, tasting the words slowly. “Now there’s something I—”
“Oh stop talking and get in here,” said Nathan, guiding me toward the couch. “We’ve been waiting long enough for you.”
The room was warm and cozy, the music soft. Burke sat down, taking me practically into his lap. His hands went to my shoulders… and he began rubbing them.
Oh my God…
I melted as his hands began working their familiar magic, his fingers rolling their way along my tired muscles. My lips parted in a sigh.
“I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you,” I purred, meaning the statement in every way.
“My fingers?” he kneaded gently. “Or me?”
“Both, of course.” I sighed. “But if you’re forcing me to be honest, right now your fingers are winning.”
Nathan took the other side of the couch, pulling my legs into his lap. One by one he pried my shoes from my swollen feet. I’d been on them all day.
Then he started giving me a foot massage… and I went straight to cloud nine.
“Are you trying to get me to marry you?” I sighed, lolling my head back. “Because this is how you get a girl to marry you.”
Someone chuckled. I couldn’t tell who because my eyes were closed.
“Eventually, yeah.”
With my head lolled back against Burke’s chest, I felt like absolute jelly. A soft piece of clay, ready to be manipulated and molded by them.
I could feel all the tension leaving my body at once.
This is just what I needed… I thought to myself. So good. So fucking gooooood…
They rubbed me like that for a little while, and it was like floating on a cloud in heaven. I was being spoiled. So spoiled. So fucking—
So fucking what?
A mouth closed over mine, kissing me hotly. It could’ve been Chase, it could’ve been Burke. With my eyes closed I made a little game out of it, seeing how long it would take to guess who it was. Then I felt a hand slide down my belly…
… and my stomach rumbled.
God I was hungry.
