Dirty Headlines by L.J. Shen

“Good morning, Mr. Laurent! Here is your grande Americano, daily schedule, and the news bulletins for today. You have a ten o’clock meeting with your father in his office, and a noon lunch with James Townley and his agent regarding renewing his contract. Your dry cleaner left a message that your navy blue Gucci pea coat is missing. They sent their apologies and offered a twenty-percent discount off your next visit. What would you like me to do with this information, sir?”

Bunch a lawsuit into a ball and shove it down their throats.

Overall my PA, Brianna Shaw, was an okay kid.

A law school grad who I was pretty sure still thought pro bono referred to being a U2 fan, she did make an effort—something that couldn’t be said about the pile of self-entitled, snotty millennials who’d come in and out of this place trying (and failing) to assist me. Brianna wheezed like she was in the middle of an orgy when she talked to me, which made understanding her a struggle. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she had to chase me up and down the hall. She was short and stocky, and I was tall and ran seven miles a day.

I bookmarked the idea of hiring a tall, athletic, married assistant the minute Brianna threw in the towel. Which, judging by my track record, should be any week now. My assistants usually quit at the two- to three-month mark. Right around the time either of these grave realizations hit them:

1. I was an insufferable asshole.
2. I was not going to fuck them.

Brianna now hovered near the four-month threshold—a trooper if I ever saw one, or one masochistic lunatic.

“Fire them,” I snapped. “I don’t work with thieves.”

Unless they have an ass worthy of every rap song I’ve ever heard. Judith Humphry assaulted my mind. Then I let them keep their job.

Though that was bullshit, and I knew it. Miss Humphry didn’t work for me. Chances were, I wouldn’t see her for months on end. She worked on a different floor, in a different department. At any rate, I never screwed the same woman twice, and I would never touch an employee. She was officially as toxic as poison ivy, and after stealing from me, just about as tempting.

Brianna licked her lips, pushing her dull, brown curls behind her ears as she huddled beside me. I was dashing from the newsroom into my office. “Sir, that would be a challenge, seeing as, according to this spreadsheet—” She swiped the iPad screen in her hand. “You have officially blacklisted every single dry cleaner in Manhattan.”

I pried the device from her fingers, my eyes skimming the lines of red-stricken shops. Un-fucking-believable. Human nature was designed to take what it wanted, consequences be damned.

Again, I thought of little Miss Humphry. She had no business barging into my thoughts. I usually forgot my one-night stands before the cum on my cock dried up. Then again, she had stolen from me.

And I took something of hers.

The Smiths? Bloc Party? The Kinks? Babyshambles? Dirty Pretty Things? The girl knew her way around a record shop.

“Fire them,” I repeated.

“But, sir…” Brianna gasped, a rather dramatic response for the occasion.

I stopped in front of my office door. She did the same. Her face was so red I thought she was going to spontaneously combust. I hoped she wasn’t. I had a new Brioni dress shirt and apparently no honest dry cleaners within the city limits.

“You have no other option, unless you want to go back to one of the dry cleaners you’ve previously blacklisted,” she explained.

“False. There’s a third option.”

“There is?” She batted her eyelashes.

Not many of my female employees had the balls to do that. First, because I was the president’s son. Second, because I was just a tad more intimidating than Lucifer himself. And third, because I was, as my associate producer Kate labeled me once, “Devastatingly unavailable.” Which essentially meant I wasn’t distracted by a perky set of tits.

“You can be there to monitor them while they work on my items.”

“But…”

“You’re right. Can is a casual word. It is what’s going to happen.”

“Sir…”

“Clock starts now. Better run—they get busy around noon.” I tapped my Rolex, storming into my office and shutting the door with a thud.

An hour later, my lousy excuse for a father wandered into my office like a tourist in a gift store wondering what the fuck he’d like to break. Technically, I was supposed to meet him in his office. But if we were talking technicalities, he was supposed to act like a dad and not a skirt-chasing, social-climbing douchebag, so I called us even. He leaned his shoulder against the doorframe, his hands tucked inside his pockets.

“Je n’aime pas que l’on me fasse attendre.”

I don’t like to be kept waiting. Hard to believe this asshole was the president of an American broadcasting news channel. He still insisted on speaking French to anyone who would listen. My mother had stopped being one of those people a year ago, when my sister died. She’d promptly divorced him, moved to Florida, and found a new boy toy to play with. I visited her every few weekends to get away from the bullshit and nagging loneliness. Bonus points: Floridian pussy was tanner and not half as uptight as the New York variety. And it was so much easier to pull the tourist thing without people realizing I was a Laurent. The Laurents, Maman’s family—Mathias took her last name as a part of a draconian pre-nup—were royals in the upper-class crust of Manhattan. We kept our shit secretive and tight-lipped, and we were almost as scrutinized as the people we reported on.

“Chances are you’ll live,” I said in English, still typing on my laptop. Unfortunately.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you,” he barked.

I did.

I could tell my compliance startled him, because the great Mathias Laurent cleared his throat, walked over to the seat in front of mine, and collapsed into it like he’d been holding his breath for the past year. Which was pretty much what we’d all done since Camille died.

“We’re having an identity problem that causes ad space to tank.” He slapped the chrome desk between us.

“Let’s agree to disagree. I know exactly who I am: a newsman who’s grossed the highest network ratings every night for the past two years and the son of a philandering idiot. If you suffer from memory loss, I’d suggest ginkgo biloba, B-12 vitamins, and fatty acids.” I kept my eyes on the screen.

“Listen, son…”

He crossed his legs, and I did my best not to laugh. Really? Son? That was rich.

“Your work here is appreciated, but it’s time to play nice with new advertisers and harvest fresh revenues.”

“You mean now it’s time to let parties’ propaganda and every dick with an alcohol bottle or cigarette brand sell have air time?” I sat back and laced my fingers together. “Because we already have commercials coming out of our asses. We just don’t run the spots that bring in the big bucks, because people tend to lose their trust in a news channel who tells them they should buy a pack of condoms and lubricants to go with their booze.”

He rolled his eyes like a teenager. “Il n’est pire sourd que celui qui ne veut pas entendre!” No one is as deaf as the one who refuses to listen. “Perhaps a few simple endorsements on air will do. I’m meeting you halfway here, Célian.”

“I’d rather meet you in court when I sue your ass for shitting over my soon-to-be network.” I stopped him mid-speech. “This news channel will report the news. Nothing more. Nothing less. It is the sales department’s job to find lucrative deals.”

“Précisément. They simply can’t. You’ve made this network the goodie two-shoes of TV. We’re never biased, never wrong, and never profitable. And that’s an issue.”

“Don’t give me the profitable bullshit. I watch the numbers closely. I’m about to inherit this place.” We were making clean profits, just not major revenues like we could if we sold our soul to the devil. I preferred my soul intact. It was bad enough I didn’t have a heart.

“Continue this line of behavior, and you will inherit nothing.” My father reddened, his face swollen with blood and anger.

I smiled impatiently. “It’s not up to you, and you know it. My mother gave you the keys to this ride, and you shall return them when you’re no longer fit for the job. The difference between us is that I am a newsman, and you are a lucky bastard.”

“Watch your tone with me.” He punched his thigh, his face so red it was starting to look purple.

I knew I should back down before he suffered another heart attack. I hated my father with a fiery passion, but I didn’t want his death on my conscience. I knotted my fingers together, leaning forward and meeting his gaze. Nature must’ve known what I’d found out when I wasn’t even ten—we weren’t going to be close. I’m certain that’s why I looked so much like my mother. Light eyes, dark hair. Only things I’d inherited from Mathias were his height and ability to make people want to commit murder.

“I pride myself in bringing to the table impartial, factual, bulletproof information. In having a proven track record of clean kills every night. What our viewers do with this information is up to them. You will not inject any pro-Republican, pro-Democrat, or pro-bullshit propaganda into my news show. You will not air ads for casinos, alcohol, or condoms. You will not ruin this business for me.”

“We need to stay profitable, Célian.” My father adjusted his silky red tie. “And when it comes to thinking for yourself, at least have the decency to sound a little less adamant. Your track record hasn’t exactly proven that you do as you preach.”

I knew exactly what he was referring to, and I wanted to staple his face to my goddamn door for the hypocrisy. He’d dug the hole I was sitting in with his own dick, and now he was shoveling mud to bury me inside of it.

“If you don’t want me to touch your show, I will have to cut back on your staff. I will make the necessary arrangements to let go of the interns and stand-by reporters.”

Fucker.But it beat drowning in ads for casinos and experimental drugs.

“You do what you have to do,” I hissed. “Any more words of wisdom from a man who doesn’t know where our studio actually is?”

“We should rid ourselves of James Townley if he makes any further salary demands.” My father flattened his hand over my desk.

For a reason beyond my grasp, my father fucking hated our anchor of the last thirty-five years. James Townley had come to this station when he was twenty-four years old, and over the years, he’d miraculously received everything he’d ever asked for—including, but not limited to, setting up his son, Phoenix, with a job here. Said son stirred up so much trouble on this floor, my father’d had to strategically remove him to the other side of the world. He was now on the Syrian-Israeli border, reporting on all things Middle East. It was my educated assumption that ISIS would sponsor the next pride parade in Damascus before trying to kidnap Phoenix Townley. Yet James was still pissy about Mathias putting his son’s life in danger.

Townley was a lovable prick, and he was well-spoken, well-respected, and well-received. He also looked like Harrison Ford’s fake-tanned, bleach-haired twin brother, which didn’t exactly hurt our ratings. If he and my father could’ve killed each other without legal consequences, I’d have two less headaches to worry about.

“Are you done?” I sat back and rolled a pen between my fingers. I was going to have a double-serving of this nonsense in about two hours when I met James and his agent for lunch.

“Almost. I added a little something special to your team I believe you’re going to appreciate.” My father raised his hand to the glass wall, and my eyes followed the direction to the fishbowl newsroom.

Judith Humphry.

She stood there, statuesque and holding a cardboard box to her chest, refusing to look petrified. With her sun-kissed hair and a dusting of freckles covering her button-like nose, she was the type of beautiful that suddenly sneaks up on you. The more you looked at her, the more you realized how striking she was. She looked like she belonged on a beach, running barefoot. Even in her size-too-big potato sack dress, she looked like freedom and tasted like a piece of the sky. I wanted to grab her and slam her over the desk, fucking her three ways to Sunday in front of my entire news crew.

Problem was, Judith also had a mouth. And it talked back. Always. It annoyed and delighted me in equal measure. Part of me wanted to screw her, the other to spank her. Those two didn’t necessarily contradict one another. But I wasn’t the type of asshole to sleep with an employee.

My father, however, didn’t seem to share my moral standards—or any morals, for that matter.

“We’ll make do without her,” I snapped. “Even after the intern cut.”

“She’ll make for pretty decoration in the newsroom.” He ignored me, sitting back and eyeing her. My father had an office over fifty floors up, on the sixtieth floor. However, he was here a lot, and he couldn’t exactly fire his own secretary and replace her with Judith. Mainly because he already had a reputation.

“She’s not a vase.” I refused to spare her another look.

My dad shrugged. “Both have holes.”

My eyelid ticked. Your face can have one, too, if you don’t shut the hell up.

I gathered the paperwork for the morning’s rundown and stood up. “Out of curiosity, are you moving her here because you want to fuck her or because you think I will?”

He’d obviously filled in the gaps yesterday when we’d made the Couture announcement. Mathias threw his hands sideways with a smile. “Why not both? This could go in so many interesting directions.”

“No. It won’t. You won’t touch her, and neither will I.”

“Because…?”

My father still hadn’t received the memo that he was well into his sixties, and that the only reason young women weren’t slapping him into unconsciousness was because he had more money than he could spend in six lifetimes and a name that was synonymous with power.

“Because she’s an employee.”

He raised an eyebrow, silently reminding me that when he set his eyes on a woman, he liked her small, dependent, and very much unemployed. If it was up to him, he would saunter over to Judith right now and whisk her to the same suite we’d shared at the Laurent Towers Hotel next door. If she proved to be good in the sack—which she would, I knew that, because I’d been balls deep in her not even a month ago—he would lock her in a golden cage and provide her with a luxurious life of imprisonment: an apartment, a private driver, a credit card with an outrageous cap—all to keep her happy and available until he got bored with her.

I pointed the stack of documents in his face. “Move her ass back to the fifth floor before the end of the day.”

He smirked. “May I remind you who is the boss around here?”

I pushed my door open, throwing him a glare soaked with repulsion. “The boss is the asshole who makes your show worth something, Father. You’re just the fucking purse.”

I ended up ignoring Judith for the rest of the day.

It wasn’t intentional, but satisfactory all the same. I didn’t even bother to show her to her desk. I wasn’t entirely sure what my father wanted her to do here, but I knew after the faceoff this morning I’d better keep her, or he’d find another way to sabotage my show.

She was probably a wannabe fashionista who thought working at Couture was an honor akin to receiving the Nobel Prize. I needed to get creative with giving her a task she could perform well that would still put some distance between us.

After lunching with James and his agent, I had to do a final rundown before the show. James was having a meltdown two floors below because the makeup artist didn’t have his shade of foundation and he was afraid he’d look like an Oompa Loompa, and an interviewee had been involved in a car accident on his way to the show.

Since Judith didn’t have a desk, a computer, or anyone to talk to, she sat on a chair by the door and wrote furiously in a thick notebook. I imagined her diary to be filled with her latest thoughts about Shawn Mendes and anal bleaching.

By the time I had a minute to spare, it was seven-thirty. Everyone had already left for the day. I grabbed a chair and plopped down next to her, folding my arms over my chest. She looked up from her notebook, uncrossing her legs and tucking her Chucked feet under her chair. She looked like a newswoman like I looked like a fucking clown. The mere acknowledgement of her existence here was spit in my precious time’s face.

“This wasn’t my idea,” I clarified, rubbing my face tiredly.

She broke into a smile—not fake, not calculated, and also not constructive to my twitching dick. “Good show.”

“I know.”

“But I thought your interview with Faceworld’s CEO could have gone differently.”

“Next time I’ll make sure he wears Hermes when he talks about the Russian hacker threats.”

“Or maybe next time make sure he’s not blowing smoke up your anchor’s ass, excuse my French.” If nothing else, her dig was kind of funny. “Seeing as your main competition ran a story tonight about how said CEO is now accused of being an avid user of Cotton Way, a darknet website where you can buy heroin and guns for competitive prices.” She handed me her phone.

It was the main item on their website now. Fuck.

“This place look like TMZ to you?” I motioned around the room with my finger.

“There’s nothing sleazy about this item, and you know it. I came here to make the news. To keep the masses informed, and to serve my country.”

She surprised me, her eyes shooting daggers at mine. Why did her words surprise me? Because she was gorgeous, and young, and fuckable to a fault. But didn’t that make me the misogynistic, judgmental bastard my father was?

“Your station.” I stood up and cleared my throat, sauntering to the middle of the room. I’d deliberately put her somewhere I couldn’t see clearly from my office. I knew my dick better than to trust it around Miss Chucks. “See this?”

She slid into the chair in front of the monitor. “Reuters.”

We have a genius on our hands.

“Your job is to stare at this screen all day and sort through the relevant news items on this site. Yellow items go to Steve, our junior reporter—well, slightly less junior than you. Orange items go to Jessica, our in-house reporter, and red items go straight to Kate, my associate producer.”

I scribbled their emails on a Post-It note and slapped it on her monitor.

“And what happens when I see a yellow with the potential to become a red?”

Your yellow hair would look nice on my thighs as you suck me off and I make your ass red with the spanking you clearly deserve.

“Fat chance.” I straightened up so I wouldn’t have to smell her vanilla and warm ginger scent. My dick didn’t need this kind of negativity in his life.

“It could, though.”

I turned around, facing her again. “And what are your credentials to make such assumptions?”

She stared at me flippantly. “BA from Columbia Journalism School.”

Fuck-hot.

Smiths enthusiast.

Well-educated.

And a lying thief.

I needed to stay away from her, send her ass packing and relocate her to our Chicago branch. For now, though, I was mainly interested in why a Columbia graduate had stolen my goddamn change and condoms.

“Before you ask, full scholarship. I have no money.”

She was a mind reader, too.

I stroked my chin. “Didn’t ask; don’t care. You’ll also be my assistant’s assistant.”

“Your assistant has an assistant?” She swiveled in her chair, eyes widening.

“She does now.” I smirked.

“You disgust me,” she said.

“You have a weird way of showing it.”

“Weren’t you the one who gave me a twenty-minute lecture about never mentioning that night again?” She darted up and stomped her foot, her hands balled into fists.

I would pity her if I didn’t remember how I’d felt when I’d realized my wallet was missing. She actually thought we were playing by the same rules. We were toe-to-toe now, and even though the room was empty save for her and me, I could feel it burning up with our anger. I liked her hot and bothered, but that didn’t mean I was going to dip my dick into her again. I didn’t break my rules for anyone.

Let alone an employee.

That didn’t interfere with the fact that my balls tightened, though. My muscles tensed, too, with the frustration of not being able to remind her that she might hate me outside of bed, but inside it, she’d been purring like a kitten.

“Judith.” I clasped her chin between my fingers, angling her face to meet my gaze.

“Jude,” she corrected.

She wanted me to be like everyone else. That ship had fucking sailed the minute I’d spotted her in the bar, and all I could see were her pink-Chuck-clad feet wrapped around my shoulders as I drilled into her.

“Let me be clear about one thing: my title may be news director, but sometime in the next five years, I will be the president of this company. Better yet, I will be the owner of every single floor in this sixty-story building, top to bottom, staplers and coffee machines included. The rules do not apply to me. You have laws, but I operate in my own little dictatorship. As long as it’s legal and does not cross the employer-employee relationship, I can say whatever I fucking want to you. Since I have a rich legal background—Harvard Law, in case you were wondering—I know where the line is drawn, and I intend to walk it like a tightrope if you cross me.”

Her breath caught in her throat, a caged, helpless animal, and my eyes focused on her big, russet hazels, knowing that if they drifted downward, to her cleavage, I was liable to rip her clothes off and fuck her against the desk.

“Ambition,” she whispered, running her hand along my dress shirt.

What?

“I wore the black Chucks because black represents ambition. Motivation. I want to work here. I want to prove myself. I have a lot to offer, in and out of the newsroom.”

What the fuck was she doing? Touching me in the office? She wasn’t exactly trying to seduce me, but she wasn’t not-trying to, either. Turned out two could walk that tightrope.

“You’re playing with fire,” I warned.

Her hand crawled up, touching my mouth, her thumb hovering over my lower lip, tracing the seams, reminding me of three weeks ago. “Maybe I want to get burned.”

I grabbed her wrist and lowered her hand, as gently as I possibly could without pressing it against my raging hard-on. “I don’t shit where I eat.”

“Give yourself some credit.” She licked her rosebud lips. “You weren’t that bad.”

I chuckled, shaking my head. Say what you want about this girl, she had balls the size of watermelons.

“You can join my ship.” I grabbed my new wallet and phone, tucking them in my back pocket. “As long as you realize I’m your captain, and that there will be no more fucking around, literally or figuratively.”

Instead of giving her the pleasure of formulating a response, I turned around and walked away, muttering under my breath. “Just don’t expect me to help you when you drown.”