Page 83 of Handsome Devil
“The dress is beautiful,” I tried again.
“Thank you. You bought it for me with my last bonus.”
“How generous of me.”
She gave me a brief once-over. “You look ridiculous,” she informed me.
I smoothed my jacket. The other hand smoothed my hair. “What?” I looked down. “Is my fly open?”
She gave a brief eye-roll. “You’re male perfection in a tuxedo, Dane. Even my husband finds it uncomfortable to look directly at you. Try to smile at the ladies, for once, okay? You scare too many of them away.”
I considered that. Was I really that scary? Just mingling at a party?
“Right,” I said. “I’ll try that.”
“So, what’s the issue?” she asked me. “I assume you wouldn’t fly me to Vancouver for this event for nothing.”
“No. I need to look good at this gala. You’re my emergency backup plan. If everything goes to shit, I need you to do that thing you do with my mother.”
“You mean, convince her that you turned out okay?”
“Yes. That.”
“What is she upset about now?”
“The sex tape scandal. My fiancée dumping me. Firing one of her ‘women in media’ just days before this event. Take your pick.”
“The modeling agency? I really don’t understand how that whole mess is your problem,” she said, not for the first time.
“Because it’s personal, Velma. Everything I touch is personal right now. My mother’s not just upset. She’s pissed. I’ve never seen her this pissed at me.”
“Hmm. Have you ever seen her truly pissed at you?”
“Not often.” And definitely not this pissed. Other than when I was fifteen, acting like a fucking brat, and she got so pissed she threatened to send me to the west coast to live with my father. I called her bluff—and actually did it. But she’d seen me off with enthusiasm.
Actually, this felt strangely similar.
“Look, ifanythinggoes wrong in my general vicinity, she’s going to look to me,” I said. “No one needs a reason to point a finger at me right now. I need to be beyond reproach, so they can’t. If you didn’t notice, my family’s faith in me went right out the fucking window about a week ago, along with my general reputation.”
“Your reputation is still intact,” Velma informed me. “Bad news about that is it wasn’t so pristine to begin with.”
I gave her a look.
She shrugged. “Your reputation as Hades-as-a-hottie is well-established at corporate HQ, and it isn’t going anywhere. If anything, this whole sex tape scandal increased your renown as both diabolical and… you know… active.”
“Active?”
“It’s not a secret that you’re sexually active, Dane.”
I rubbed my temple. “Can we move on?”
“No. Actually, I think we need to discuss this. Without your mother, your grandmother, HR, PR and a team of lawyers present.”
She was right, and she’d just described the last several times I’d seen her, the both of us stuffed into a boardroom with far too many people weighing in on my personal level of “active.”
“So, is this thing really quashed?” she asked me.
“As quashed as quashed gets on the internet,” I said.
