Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 96802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
My own anger was ignited by his. “I’m not doing anything of the sort. I’m here to whip your ass into shape. I’m not here to coddle you like everyone else in your life. If you don’t like it, take it up with your mother. She’s the one who hired me to fix your bullshit before you lose her the election.”
“I’m not an idiot,” Court snarled. “You can put me down and treat me like an ass if you want. But I see what the fuck you’re doing, English.”
“Good. Then you’ll stop acting like someone who needs his hand held every time he walks out into public?”
“Berate me all you want. This is about you and Josh. Not me.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
His eyes widened a fraction at the words that left my mouth. The fury that had nothing to do with him. But that I was using against him.
I’d thought that I had it all under control. I’d had such a picture-perfect life. I was married to the Josh Hutch. He was the biggest up-and-coming movie star on the scene. He’d been handpicked to remake the Bourne trilogy. I was the top celebrity publicist at my agency in LA. Everyone wanted to work with me. We went to premieres and sipped champagne and lived the life.
Except that hadn’t been right, had it?
I’d wanted more. That was why I was here. To use this as my next step to achieve my dreams: to open my own agency, a place to work with fewer clients, ones who actually cared and didn’t just need someone to secure cocaine and make sure their sex tapes didn’t end up on the internet. Or did, depending on the person. So, when I’d gotten offered to work for the Kensingtons, step into New York high society, work for a political candidate, I’d thought it was my chance.
And now, all of those pieces were crumbling into ash.
I was left staring into Court Kensington’s impossible baby blues. Wondering where it had all gone wrong. And how I could fucking fix my life like I fixed everyone else’s.
“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?” Court asked after a tense, silent minute.
He’d moved a step closer. Our breaths mingled. I could feel the heat rising from his skin. The fury that pulled us together like magnets. A sense that we were both so beyond fucked up that, impossibly, we were attracted to each other. We hated each other so supremely that, somehow, at any second, it could tip the other direction.
His eyes darted to my lips. I drew a line across the bottom one with my tongue. A reflex. Or was it?
My breaths came out irrationally loud. I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. Time slowed until seconds felt like hours. And we just stared, edged, hedged, waited, wondered, wanted.
And then the moment the scales tipped and he moved forward—as if he was actually going to do it, actually going to cross that divide—I jolted out of that awareness. I shoved him back away from me.
“Fuck, Court,” I cried.
His eyes rounded as if he couldn’t believe for a second that the playboy prince had misread the signs. Then he returned to careful neutrality. Born out of boredom and masks and societal pressure.
“Are you done?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m fucking done. I’m going back to LA.”
“What?” His eyebrows rose.
“Don’t get too excited. Just for a few days to handle some business. I don’t want you to fucking leave this apartment until I get back. Are we clear?”
“I am not on lockdown again.”
“Yes, you are. Because I can’t trust you not to do something that will land you in the papers.”
He glared at me. Any warmth we’d been mustering evaporated. “Whatever.”
“Be a good boy,” I said, patting his cheek twice.
He looked like he might bite me for the insult, but I was already storming toward the elevator to leave this hellhole. He muttered something under his breath, but I didn’t catch it. I assumed he’d called me a bitch.
But as soon as the elevator doors closed, I leaned back heavily. God, maybe I should get some sleep. What the fuck had I been thinking?
I had only one rule: don’t get involved with clients.
I’d never broken it.
And I had just almost kissed Court Kensington.
2
English
I couldn’t get what had almost happened out of my mind.
Court Kensington was objectively the worst client I’d ever had. Not because he was particularly difficult to work with or because he was a drug addict or a sex fiend or any number of other impossible things I’d dealt with. It was because he didn’t want me. He didn’t feel like he needed a publicist. That I just got in his way.
And even though, over the last couple weeks, he had started to listen to my advice, he still didn’t want my help. Everyone else came to me. They needed someone to cover up a sex scandal. They needed me to hide an affair from their wife. They wanted someone who could get their career back on track after the stint in rehab. On and on and on.