Manhattan's Most Scandalous Reunion by Dani Collins, Caitlin Crews

CHAPTER SEVEN

THEPLANEWASlong and narrow and pointed like a pencil. It had bladed wings attached to its sides and a booster rocket as an eraser.

Nina had spent January through March living Reve’s life. Staying in his secure building with its daily housekeeping and obscenely gorgeous views had already been a lifestyle far beyond her middle-class experience. He had often spoken very casually of other extravagant things, like his house in Hawaii or his yacht in Florida, so she ought to have been prepared for this.

There was a big jump between hearing him mention a supersonic jet, however, and walking into one where he was greeted with warm familiarity.

“Mr. Weston, it’s nice to have you aboard.” The uniformed staff placed their luggage in the stateroom located in the tail. Glancing in, Nina saw it held a king bed amid built-in furniture in glossy mahogany. The curtains were open, showing the private airfield, but the hostess touched a button that opened a skylight, allowing morning sun to pour onto the bed.

They moved into a sitting area that held a half-dozen recliners and a couple of sectionals. Everything swiveled into different configurations to allow for private conversations or conferring as a group. Tables emerged from various wall pockets for dining and holding a laptop.

Before she sat down, Nina unabashedly peeked into the galley. There was a wine fridge and something baking that smelled like fresh croissants.

She settled in a recliner that faced Reve’s, and glanced behind him at the screen showing the weather and their flight plan. She was completely intimidated.

After their kiss at the showroom last night, she’d cooked dinner, wondering if something more would happen between them. The way he’d reacted after viewing her collection had been so...

Well, she didn’t know what she’d seen or heard in him except that she felt as though he had finally seen her exactly as she was. There was little triumph or comfort in it, though. Especially when he skirted talking about any of it when they arrived back to the privacy of the penthouse. He knew how much he had meant to her and how deeply he’d hurt her, but he only brought up innocuous topics like how she planned to travel to Luxembourg.

Confused, she had wound up making calls to her family, bringing them up to speed on her plans. Reve had been talking to Australia when her long hours of work had caught up to her and she’d fallen into bed.

It was just a kiss, she kept telling herself. Same as she kept saying, It was just sex.

It was just Reve. He had this effect on her. He made her want and yearn and rationalize and wish and hope for impossible things to come true. He made her like him and laugh and want to spend every moment of her life in his presence.

But he had never wanted those sorts of roots and family ties, and she didn’t understand why.

They took off, leaving a small bang behind them.

“That was it?” she asked.

“The boom? Yes. This technology has come a long way. The original was banned for overland travel because the booms were damaging buildings. They were also fuel hogs. You’ll be happy to hear, we use biofuel and have a near-zero carbon emission.”

This was a funny old argument they loved to dig their heels into. He called her a tree hugger who starved so she could make clothes that only rich people could buy. She called him an elite industrialist who was out of touch with the way common people really lived, even as he made off-brand car parts so blue-collar workers could save a few bucks.

They were both right and wrong, but she still bit.

“I imagine you’re happy, too, since you live on the same planet as I do.” She played with the touch screen that came out of her armrest, glancing through the various entertainment options. “This spaceship is overkill, isn’t it? I mean, we’re not transporting a kidney, are we?” She pretended to look under her seat for one. “Why do you need to be able to get to Paris in three-and-a-half hours?”

“Time is the new luxury, haven’t you heard?” He nodded at the air hostess to serve them breakfast. “And I like to surround myself with the very best. That’s why you’re in my life.”

“Ha ha.” She looked away, a tiny bit hurt that he would mock her like that.

The hostess efficiently made a table appear from the wall and flicked a tablecloth across it. Moments later, she brought fresh pastries with coffee and took their orders.

Nina noticed Reve was watching her as his thumb and finger rubbed pensively against the handle of his coffee mug.

“I bought this jet because I can. There was a time when I couldn’t afford a baloney sandwich, even though my father somehow always had enough for a bottle. That sort of thing leaves you hungry for the rest of your life. It makes you reluctant to apologize for acquiring nice things when you can afford to buy them.”

While she had known he hadn’t had much growing up, she hadn’t realized it was that bad. She bit her lip with contrition. “Why did you never tell me that before?”

“So you could see me as noble because I was once poor?”

“So I could understand you better.”

“What’s to understand? I want to eat and be warm and dry, same as everyone. I want those needs to be met consistently.”

“But you don’t believe they will be. Is that what you’re saying?” A stark, tragic truth dawned on her. “Deep down, you’re always worried that this—” she waved at the extremely high standard of living on display “—is temporary.”

“Nothing in life is permanent,” he said with conviction. “But yes. That’s why I have a dozen fail-safes. Property here, extra cash there. I’m like a dog burying bones in the yard.” He was being very self-deprecating, and it made her ache to hear it.

For her whole life, she had always taken for granted that if her life fell apart, she could fall back on her family. In fact, she had. When she had walked out on Reve, she’d cried in her father’s hotel room. She’d been home a few days later, sleeping in her old bed, pouring her heart out to her sister, who had helped her get back on her feet.

The one time she had worried her family wouldn’t be there for her had been this recent crisis. Fearing she might lose them had been the darkest, most terrifying time of her life.

She tried to imagine a whole childhood of being that isolated and unsupported. Her throat closed on a lump.

“You don’t believe people are constant, either. Do you?” she realized.

“They’re not.” He used his lobster fork to draw meat from the bright orange tail that had been butterflied and broiled. It sat amid deviled eggs and blanched beans decorated with capers and olives and mushrooms. “Even when people don’t betray you on the way out the door, they still leave.”

“Like me?” she asked in a thin voice.

“You. My PA left a couple of months ago. She worked for me for four years and I never once made her cry. I asked. She made six figures and had two months of paid vacation every year. She said it was the best job she’d ever had, but she was getting married and wanted to start a family. Now I’m training Melvin.” He lifted a shoulder, conveying his lack of enthusiasm. “He’s fine, but I’ve learned my lesson and won’t get attached.”

Nina broke the yolk on her poached egg so it oozed across the lox stacked with asparagus and tomato on toasted crostini. “Will you tell me what happened with her?”

“Her? Oh. Her.” His mouth twisted. “It’s all online. I was involved with a sex advice blogger who filmed us during an intimate moment without my knowledge. She also posted it to her site without my permission.”

Nina had the feeling his lawyer had crafted that statement because it sounded word for word how he’d described it the first night they’d had dinner. I like to get this out of the way, he’d said. So you understand why I am so adamant about not allowing people to use me for their personal gain.

Since it had never been her intention to do so, and he had clearly not wanted to talk more about it, she’d pushed the whole thing to the back of her mind. He must have thought she hadn’t appreciated how truly devastating it must have been.

“Would you tell me how you got together?” She was treading very carefully. “What led her to think that would be okay?”

He kept his gaze on his plate as he chewed and swallowed, then chased it with a gulp of orange juice. Just when she thought he was going to ignore her question, he spoke.

“We got together because I was twenty-two and she was a very sexually experienced twenty-nine. I was getting press for closing in on my first million. She had her blog and was determined to make her first million by thirty. She said she wanted to achieve it in her own way, without a man helping her. How ironic is that?”

He spoke with droll amusement but glowered into the middle distance.

“Was she angry with you?”

“Not at all. She was on a kick of trying to normalize older women sleeping with younger men. She was already writing posts about our sex life, and I didn’t care because she was only using my first name. I didn’t know about the video until I got a call from a reporter. I told her to take it down. She said I should enjoy the publicity and left it up. To be fair, I did benefit from it. And the publicity around the court case.”

“Did she think that justified it? What happened when you went to the police?”

“They said it was her word against mine. By the time we went to court, she was claiming she’d done it to expose the lack of teeth in revenge porn laws. She came to court armed with a hundred instances where men had done something similar to women and had their cases dismissed. There was no way for her to lose at that point. Either she would become a martyr, suffering a heftier punishment than any man ever had, or our case would be dismissed like all the rest. Either way, her website was making hundreds of thousands in advertising. She made her million by thirty with months to spare,” he said with false admiration.

“What happened? Was she found guilty or...?”

“She paid a fine of five hundred dollars and did thirty days of community service.”

“Are you serious?”

“The laws are inadequate,” he said with a fatalistic shrug, though she could tell he was still simmering with rage beneath his laissez-faire attitude.

“What about civil damages?”

“We settled out of court.” He dipped another morsel of lobster into his melted butter. “There was no win for me in publicly flogging someone who was being lauded as a social activist for revealing a flaw in the system. I just wanted out of the spotlight. She had already received a pile of donations for her legal fund, so I had her roll it into a nonprofit that pays the fees for other victims pursuing justice for similar crimes. She is not allowed to speak my name, and whenever our tape is regurgitated into the blogosphere, I bill her for the takedown expenses.”

“You must hate her so much.” Nina did. She had never before wanted to cause another person harm, but she sure did now.

His expression darkened. “I’m angry with myself for allowing it to happen.”

“Reve. That’s called victim blaming. She did that to you. You didn’t provoke or invite it.”

“Nina.” He mocked her tone of intervention. “A person like you, who has every reason to believe in others, is not to blame when someone takes your sincerely offered trust and crushes it under their heel. I already knew people could be rotten to the core. I failed to protect myself because I thought we had something.”

“You loved her?” Oh, that was a dagger to the heart. Her fingers went numb. She set down her cutlery with a clatter so she wouldn’t drop it.

“I don’t know what I thought I felt.” His cheek ticked and he didn’t meet her gaze. “Whatever it was, she betrayed it in a very public and humiliating way.”

She nodded jerkily. No wonder he hated paparazzi so much. She contemplated why she was going to Europe and how much attention she might garner.

“There’s still time to distance yourself from me, you know. Before my identity comes out and things blow up.”

“I know,” he said gravely. “I will.”

His quiet assertion caused her throat to close up. As she coughed and tried to recover, she realized breakfast was over for her.

Reve had offered up his heart to another woman, and she had essentially sold it to the highest bidder. Nina had no idea how to help him get past that. Why would he want to? It would mean leaving himself open to another betrayal like the one he’d already suffered. His inner walls had been forged in fire and she understood why he fought so hard to keep them in place.

Reve’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out, glanced at it and said contemplatively, “Humph...” Then he set the phone facedown.

It buzzed again. Then again.

He picked it up to read the screen.

“Is something wrong?”

“Not at all.” His mouth pushed sideways in something that bordered on smugness.

He started to put it down, but it buzzed again.

“Something about your deal in Berlin?”

“No,” he said mildly, but when his gaze met hers, there was a light in his eyes that was pure, wicked enjoyment.

Her heart shrank, then exploded with alarm.

“You did not tell Andre to text you.” She had expressly told the man she would be in touch if and when she wanted to know how things were going. Otherwise, he should maintain radio silence.

“I plead the Fifth.” Reve set the phone facedown again and went back to eating, grinning around his fork.

She stared at his phone, not realizing she was holding her breath until it buzzed again. She gasped for air and looked at Reve.

He lifted his brows.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! Tell me. No, don’t. Wait. Do I want to know?”

“It’s not that big a deal,” he said with a hitch of his shoulder, but he was shaking with quiet laughter. “You’ve had a bid on the unfinished gown, as is, with the sewing machine and shoes. It’s from one of Andre’s colleagues who designs window displays for upscale boutiques in Asia.” He reached for his phone and read, “‘He set a reserve bid of twenty-five thousand dollars and has recommended a couple more buyers fly in to view the rest of your collection.’”

“No! That’s...” She started to pick up her glass of orange juice but didn’t trust herself. She pointed and asked the air hostess, “Can you put a little vodka in this for me, please?”

“He also has an order for the pantsuit.” Reve flicked at his screen. “Only two hundred, but he’s certain that will go up.”

“Make it a double.” She smiled heroically at the woman.

“There’s been a very friendly tweet from Vogue after their sneak peek. They’re teasing a full column to be posted later today. The photos are also gaining momentum on social media.”

“Please stop.” She set her elbows on either side of her plate, her head so dizzy she had to brace it in her hands.

“Wait.” He frowned as he read. “Nina.” His voice was somewhere between awe and affection. “I was already proud as hell of you, but this...?” He licked his lips, smiling with relish as he read aloud, “‘Kelly Bex has requested an appointment. Per Nina’s instructions, I explained that Ms. Bex has been critical of this designer’s work in the past and so the designer felt there was no value in Ms. Bex attending.’ Ruthless.”

“It’s true,” she said with a defensive shrug, then bit her lip. “But I also asked myself what you would do and decided she could kick rocks.”

He touched his chest. “I feel like my little girl is all grown-up.”

They both dissolved into laughter. The dampness in her eyes wasn’t humor, though. It was more poignant than that. This was the man she’d fallen for, the one she had imagined making a life with. The closer they grew, however, the clearer the gaps between them became.

There’s still time to distance yourself.

I will.

She didn’t blame him for that.

But it still broke her heart.

“I’ve always wanted to come to Paris, and I can’t explore it!” Nina lamented, her face pressed to the car window as the Eiffel Tower appeared on the far side of the Seine.

“I’ve booked us a private dinner cruise so you can see some of it.”

“You don’t have to do that.” She sat back.

“It’s done.” He brushed it aside. “We both have to eat. I never take time to enjoy the city when I’m here.” And he wanted to make the most of the little time they had.

There’s still time to distance yourself.

He became perversely annoyed every time she said something like that. He could take care of himself. She was the one he was worried about, thinking she could put on a pair of sunglasses and wander around like Sherlock Holmes looking for clues.

They left the river and headed into the Eighth Arrondissement.

“That’s Oriel’s building,” he said as they approached it. He recognized it from the street view online. “The yellow one.”

Nina sat up, alert. “She’s not there. She’s in Mumbai. They had dinner with her husband’s sister last night—which you would know if you went anywhere near a gossip site.” She swung her head around to flash him a teasing smile. “Their photos are everywhere.”

She leaned to look upward against the window as they passed the building.

“Oh, shoot.” She quickly slouched into her seat again. “I think there was a photographer waiting for her on the stoop. He jumped to his feet when he saw me.” She craned to look out the rear window. “He might be following us. I’m really sorry.”

He shrugged. “We’re catching the train in the morning.”

“To Luxembourg? You’re coming with me?”

“I am.” He might not read gossip sites, but he had devoted some time to reading up on Oriel. The model was being mobbed everywhere she went.

That sort of attention might be bearable if there was a visible endpoint, the way interest died down after a court case was settled. Oriel was expecting, though. Each detail of her pregnancy was being picked apart and, if history was anything to go by, the world had an endless appetite for celebrity babies. There was also speculation that Lakshmi’s manager had forced her to give up her baby, and the mystery of Oriel’s biological father had yet to be solved.

Given all of that, Lakshmi’s story was destined to make headlines forever. Once Nina came forward, the publicity would explode exponentially.

Reve had no desire to be in the middle of that, not only because he loathed the idea of his own scandal being dredged up. He was never happy when that happened, but he’d learned to live with it. No, he was dreading his history smearing Nina. She had enough to deal with.

He couldn’t bring himself to let her face all of this alone, though. Better to help her fly under the radar a little longer and enjoy her last few days of anonymity.

His driver turned onto Avenue Montaigne and stopped outside his building. They hurried inside before any scooters caught up and, moments later, entered a space that seamlessly mixed old-world authenticity with modern expectations. The attic space above his unit had been opened to the main floor, creating high ceilings and skylights that allowed light to pour down to the living space on the main floor.

A wine and a charcuterie board awaited them. Nina ignored the pinwheel of meats, cheeses, fruit, crackers, nuts and olives, instead swinging wide the doors to the narrow terrace that ran the length of the apartment. She plucked a sprig from an herb plant in the pot and rubbed it between her palms, inhaling the fragrance before sighing as she looked out at the cityscape.

“I’m starting to think it would be worth the notoriety if it meant I could walk into the boutiques I’ve dreamed of seeing my whole life,” she said with a wistful sigh.

“Come.” He took her hand and tugged her back into the apartment.

He felt the jolt go through her. It sent a spark of electricity straight into his groin.

He was leading her toward a bedroom for other reasons, but the way her lips parted and her expression grew soft and receptive nearly fried all of his best intentions.

“It might take you some time to dress for dinner.” His voice wasn’t quite even. “You should get started picking out your clothes.”

“Why? If it’s a private cruise, I can go like this, can’t—? Oh, Reve.”

She stepped into the spare bedroom where the bed had been removed and racks brought in from a dozen of the most exclusive haute couture designers. Not the dominant names exported worldwide, but the up-and-comers who had moved to Paris from Tokyo, Seoul, Saint Petersburg and São Paulo.

She sagged into him as though confronting something too monumental to face. Her fist closed on his shirtfront while she stared and stared.

“What have you done? That’s seven figures. Easily.”

“I don’t expect you to keep all of them.”

The look on her face was worth every penny if she did, though. Her mouth trembled and her eyes gleamed. There was awe and excitement, anticipation and reverence.

It disappeared as she turned her face into the crook of his neck, hugging him so hard she shook with it.

Reve had never had Christmas as a child. As an adult, he went through the motions of bonuses and corporate gifts because it was expected, not because he really understood the celebration. It sounded a lot like doing someone else’s shopping and then lying about it. Santa was, at best, a manipulation tactic. At worst, he was a cruelty against less fortunate children who were striving to be “good” for a promise that wouldn’t manifest.

This was it, though. This was Christmas—giving someone something they had always wanted. Taking Nina by surprise and witnessing pure joy on her face was filling his chest with a swell of pride and pleasure and a sense that they now shared something deeply personal and precious.

He could hardly breathe as he prompted her to go into the room. “Don’t you want to meet your new friends?”

She was still shaking. She was crying.

His heart lurched.

“Nina. I thought you would like this.”

“I do. I’m so excited I can’t bear it.” She drew back and pushed the heel of her shaking hand across her cheek. “But I don’t want to lose myself in that because...” She looked up at him and her chin trembled. She wiped another track of tears from her other cheek. “Because it takes away from my time with you. I want to be with you, Reve. Like, with you. I know it’s not forever, but for what little time we have.”

She played with the button on his shirt, and his libido resounded like a struck gong, singing yes!

Then a harder, crueler sensation pierced into his stomach.

“That’s not what this is, Nina.” He dropped his arms from around her and stepped back. “I’m not trying to bribe you into sleeping with me.”