The events in this 2-part short story happen after the chapter, DENIAL AIN'T JUST A RIVER IN EGYPT. So if you haven't read it yet, go and read it and come back.
I published this on Wattpad last year as a separate book and decided to include it here in the Loving Ashe book because people who hadn't read Loving Ashe would read it first and there went the spoiler. So if it sounds familiar, it probably is because you read Barbed Wire the first time I posted it.
Oh, and my total inspiration for Gareth is Devin Paisley :)
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I know he's not a popular guy, but sometimes even the unpopular guy wants to have his say, and here, he gets his time in the spotlight. This short story is a major spoiler and may also be triggering (cheating) and polarizing - so you've been warned.
This is written from Gareth Roman's point of view so the tone is so much different from Riley's point of view. Please remember that there are 2 parts.
He shouldn't be there. He knows it's the worst thing he could do, but he has to know.
He has to know that she had nothing to do with it. That it wasn't her idea of a cruel joke to move her baby sister out of the apartment that she had shared with him three years ago, leaving her with only a mattress and $20,000 in cash to help set her up elsewhere. He wants to know that if it was her idea, it had never been her intention to lead her baby sister to spend all that money on heroin that would almost kill her.
For his peace of mind - which he knows is quite a rare thing for him these past five years - he has to know.
And that's why he's standing in front of a $7 million three-story brownstone with an English basement and its separate entrance to the lower left of him as he's at the top of the steps, waiting for someone to open the door. He knows its worth. He's checked.
The door opens and she's standing there, her eyes widening as she registers who he is, before frowning as if wondering what he's doing there. She's wearing a sleeveless dress that hugs her at the waist. His eyes move down to follow the curve of her skirt as it flares along her hips, reaching just below her knees. He realizes how he misses the sight of a woman in a dress instead of the majority of the yoga pants-wearing lot of them. Maybe deep inside he's just old-fashioned, he muses then, a funny thing to call someone who's screwed half of the female population with a pulse. Or maybe he's just sick of the yoga pants craze that's been going for years.
She's as beautiful as her baby sister, except for a few lines along the corners of her eyes that she hasn't yet paralyzed with Botox - and this actually surprises him. It occurs to him then that it's been a while since he's been with a woman who hasn't had any of that type of work done, who can actually smile and really smile, or frown and really frown. Or the biggest turn-on of all, a woman who can laugh and really laugh.
Like Riley when he saw her last night.
He meant every word he had said to her - that she was real. And he knows she won't go for all that augmentation business. Maybe when she hits fifty, when everyone around her has been doing it for a long time and she figures she might as well start doing it, too. But for now, he knows Riley won't fall for that. She's too real.
And except for the woman's breasts in front of him, so is her sister.
"You have the nerve to come here," she says coldly. "What do you want?"
"I need to talk to you," he says.
"We have nothing to talk about."
"Oh, yes, we do," he says as her lips straighten into a thin line. "But this is just about Riley, so you can rest easy."
She pauses, eyes him suspiciously. "You promise?"
"You know how crappy I am with promises, Paige," he says. "Just let me in before someone takes a picture of me standing in front of your door, and splashes it in front of the Daily News."
That does it. She steps aside quickly to let him in and leads him into the living room. She doesn't offer him anything to drink and he doesn't expect her to. His visit is meant to be short. Just a few questions and then he'll be out the door.
"Why did you move her out of the apartment and make her believe it was me?" He asks through gritted teeth. He still does care for Riley, but that's only because he's betrayed her in the worst possible way. He can never make it up to her, not in a million years.
"And what was all that money for? Twenty thousand to get her started elsewhere? Queens maybe? New Jersey? Because 20K can last a while there," he says, hating that he can't keep the sarcasm from his voice. "Was that the only thing you could afford out of your petty cash fund? Because I heard it was all in cash."
Paige stares at him. Her mouth opens and closes. She's trying to find the words but he sees the anger flashing in her blue eyes.
"You think it was me?" she asks him incredulously. Then she scoffs, puts her hands on her hips and shakes her head "It's just like you to blame it on me. You, who had to send your own assistants over to your own apartment to do your dirty work for you and leave her with only a mattress on the floor. Was that all my little sister was good for? Just someone for you to fuck?"
He takes a step forward towards her but she stands her ground.
"No, Paige, that was all I was good for as far as you were concerned. Don't ever forget that fact," he says as her face pales. "But I'm not here for that. I'm here for Riley. I want to know why you did it. Why you gave her all that money when you could have just helped her yourself without paying her off?"
"Paying her off? You keep talking about this money. What money are you talking about?" She asks him, her balled fists shaking along her sides as she stands across from him.
"Twenty thousand in cash," he says. "Maybe you didn't expect it to be spent on drugs, but having her go back to Queens was the last thing she needed. If she hadn't thought of drugs then, living with your crazy-ass dad would have been the Fast Trak ticket to hell."
"Twenty thousand?" She stares at him, her brow furrowing. "Where the hell would I get all that cash? You really think I have all that money lying around? That Clint would allow me to just withdraw whatever I wanted without showing him proof? Why do you think I started my damn blogging business that has nothing to do with him and his fortune? If there's anyone who has a lot of cash, it's you."
"Not three years ago," Gareth says. "I didn't get paid my first real paycheck till three months after Riley left me."
"Left you?!" She exclaims. "You really have the nerve to even lie."
"Lie? Tell me this then, Paige. If I was the one who moved her and my stuff out of the apartment, wouldn't I have my stuff with me? Wouldn't I have my books? My classics? Dante, Shakespeare, Bukowski. Newsflash - I don't. All this time, I thought she had it. And all this time, she never did because someone kicked her out of there first," he says, running his fingers through his blonde hair. God, he needs a smoke so bad but he knows it's the worst time for that. He needs closure first.
"I can't believe you're here asking about her when you never gave a damn about her the whole time you were enjoying your time in L.A.," she says. "You were too busy screwing anyone in Hollywood with a hole for you to -"
"I still love her," he says and he wonders if he says that just to shut her up, because it does. He hates it when Paige gets this nasty - though what she's just said is not so far from the truth. "But it's a different kind of love now -"
"Oh, shut up, Gar. You don't even know the meaning of the word."
"And you do?"
She stops, catches the look he gives her, and swallows nervously. "That's not fair. I love her very much. More than you'll ever know. She's my only family."
"If you love her, then why did you do it?"
As he looks at her, the look she gives him back tells him she knows what he means, and it has nothing to do with the apartment or the money.
"I could ask you the same thing," she says, their gaze locked with each other. She turns away from him and walks towards the back of the living room, turning towards a stairwell leading to the English basement.
"Where do you think you're going?" He demands. "We're not done."
"If you're so sure that it's me, then let me show you my bank statements. You can still read numbers, right? Or do you need an assistant for that?"
He shakes his head, and sighs. Typical Paige, he thinks. It was alright when she was just his girlfriend's sister, the girl who made it big in modeling before snagging herself a rich old man for a husband. It stopped being okay when they both crossed that line. Still, he reminds himself that's not why he's here.
He follows her downstairs to her office. He knows this because he's been here before so many years ago, with Riley always with him. She loved coming down to Paige's garden office, as Paige called it, to browse the internet because they didn't have access in their old apartment.
Shame fills him then, for the things that he couldn't give the first woman he's ever loved. They were the same things and so much more that he could easily give her now, without even having to consult his bank account. Didn't the Hollywood Reporter say he commanded $10 million per movie these days, but earned more than $20 million in box office gross sales? They weren't too far off the mark. The actual figure would be $18 million gross.
It was one of the things he'd taught Hollywood newcomer Ashe Hunter. Ashe, who was as handsome and suave as hell but as old-fashioned as his great grandfather, was the type who would never make it in Hollywood - but thanks to Isobel Reign and her obsession on Englishmen, make it he did. But when he reportedly only made $5 million for his last movie, Gareth had to teach the guy a few things. Thank god he was a good listener - him and his two childhood friends, Ben and Lance. And his sister, bless her soul.
For Sentience, Ashe and his lawyers may have only been able to negotiate a paycheck of $5 mil but 10% of the gross wasn't anything to laugh at, especially since the movie had so far grossed $86 mil, and still grossing. That Ashe even managed to get that as part of his contract had been thanks to Gareth, for he told Alan Reign he wasn't doing the movie without Ashe getting that as part of the deal. Gareth has even done the numbers. The Englishman would make an easy $20 mil after his initial paycheck, easy.
And if it was true that he was seeing Riley, then hallelujah is all Gareth can say. He'll kiss the man's ass if he needs to. He's kissed enough of them for all the wrong reasons, but he knows that Riley deserves a good man after having to deal with the likes of Gareth Roman.
Paige pulls out a folder from a file cabinet behind her desk, which only has a laptop. Years ago, it had been one of those giant desktop computers. Since then, Paige has upgraded everything else, which means just about everything is mobile. Laptop, tablet, smartphone. Since coming to New York to do major publicity on Sentience, Gareth has checked her blog stats, and was surprised to see that behind the dumb blonde routine Paige played on her blog, she actually ran a pretty profitable business.
She'd parlayed her blog into a book deal, which in turn attracted a lot of advertisers. One thing that's surprised Gareth is that Paige hasn't written a word about her sister dating Ashe. Sure, there were blog posts about Riley's tentative forays into dating, most of them with hilarious results and none of them developing past the first date. But wouldn't posts of Riley dating a movie star generate a ton of traffic and revenue? Yet Paige hasn't taken advantage of the opportunity at all.
"Here, take a look at my bank activity from that time if you want," Paige tells him, thrusting a thick folder towards him. She's leaning against the front of her desk and folds her arms in front of her chest as she watches him open the folder.
"You don't have to show me these, Paige," he says though he still glances at the numbers. "These are your and Clint's financials -"
"So? Since you're so convinced that I kicked my own sister out of her apartment barely three days after you kicked her out of L.A., then prove it. You should know the month. Then check a month or two before the incident. Check the whole damn year, for all I care to see if I made withdrawals in cash -"
"Paige, I don't need to see this," Gareth says, handing her back the folder but her arms remain folded across her chest. She's refusing to face him, instead turning to the side so that he can see the pulse beating on the side of her neck.
Gareth reaches his arm across her side to place the folder on the table, the scent of her perfume hitting him like a blow to the head. It jars him and he stiffens, almost flinches so that she notices and looks at him, frowning.
The smell reaches his nostrils again, and this time he can pick out the notes, thanks to an older French lover who took the time to train his olfactory senses to pick up not just the top notes of a perfume, like the white flowers he smells now, followed by the heart of the fragrance, one that makes Gareth's blood pool where he least wants it to - at least not now. Musk.
He forces himself to think of other things. Like the framed picture of three boys on her desk. That cools him immediately and he picks it up, looks at it. His breath catches in his throat.
The three boys in the photograph, probably about 4 years old now, had probably been around two or three years old when the picture was taken. It's a professional photograph. Gareth can tell because of the light upon their faces were produced by a strategically placed reflector.
He traces his finger along their faces. "Has he ever wondered why they've got my eyes?"