What He Bargains (What He Wants, Book Nineteen) (26 page)

Raven was shivering from the jarring experience she’d just had. Jake turned to her, his eyes concerned. “Are you okay?” he said softly.

Kurt didn’t say anything, but Raven couldn’t help but look at him. Just hours prior, he’d threatened her very existence on the phone. She couldn’t talk in front of him, and yet she couldn’t allow Jake to see just how uncomfortable his manager (and closest friend) made her.

“I’m fine,” she lied.

“I know it’s a lot,” he said. “I mean, I’ve had years to get used to it and it still can get to be a bit much sometimes.”

“Just a bit?” she laughed.

Kurt shot her a glance that Jake couldn’t see.

“Yeah, just a bit,” Jake said, joining her in laughing at the craziness of it all.

Raven was so disturbed by Kurt’s presence that she wanted nothing more than to go back to her own room. The moment the doors opened again on their floor, she got off and abruptly made a beeline in that direction.

“Raven,” Jake called out, moving to follow her. In a few quick steps he’d caught up to her. “Hey,” he said, “where are you going?”

“To my room, Jake.” She kept walking, trying to put distance between herself and Kurt.

“I thought you and Kurt and I could hang out in my room for a bit, talk shop. Discuss strategy.”

“Yeah,” Raven said, “the thing is, I really feel kind of sick. I need to go back to my room and lay down for a little bit.” At her door, she pulled out he room key, fumbling it a little.

“Raven, is something wrong? Like, really wrong?” he asked, putting his warm hand on her wrist.

“I told you—“

“I just want to be sure everything’s okay.”

“I’m really frazzled.” She swept her bangs from her forehead and looked at him briefly, but she couldn’t meet his gaze. He looked too concerned, too worried—almost like he actually cared about her.

He doesn’t really care about anything but whether his big plan is going to be ruined. The big plan that I stupidly came up with in the first place.

Her door unlocked and she went inside, while Jake stood there in the hall. “I’ll come and check on you soon,” he told her.

“Okay,” she said, suddenly needing to be alone more than anything in the world. As she shut the door, everything crashed in on her at once. She ran to the bathroom, feeling like she might be sick.

She leaned over the toilet bowl and waited for everything she’d eaten earlier to come up, and for a brief moment, she was sure that it would. But then her jittery stomach seemed to calm, and she simply collapsed to a sitting position next to the toilet, head hanging limply.

All of those photographers and reporters out there—they’d known her name.

They’d known who she was already. How was that even possible?

It was shocking, really, to feel the ferocity of it all, like being slammed by a forty foot wave that you never saw coming. The scope of it was so much bigger than she could ever have prepared herself to cope with.

Soon millions of people might know who she was. They’d be dissecting her and talking about how she was too ugly, or short, or fat, or whatever people would say. She was sure none of it would be good.

Raven wondered why she’d put herself in this position. To help Jake Novak? He didn’t need her help, and besides, she wasn’t capable of giving him her help. She was turning to jelly and nothing had even happened yet, really.

Maybe it was time to have a chat with Jake, to pull out of the deal. Explain that she wasn’t cut out for the spotlight. He would be better off trying to make a go of it with Courtney Taylor or someone on his level.

Slowly, though, her breathing was getting a little less shallow, and she felt her light-headedness giving way to just sheer tiredness.

You’re okay, Raven. Nothing bad has happened.

Well, not yet anyway.

Raven got slowly to her feet and left the bathroom, went to the window of her hotel room and looked down, where she could see the crowd still gathering. It was so strange to know that they were there, at least in part, to see her as well as Jake.

She took out her phone and pulled up Google.

Before, she’d sometime googled herself to make sure that all of the old garbage from her past had been scrubbed from the internet and wasn’t still coming up. It had been gone for years by now, but she still occasionally checked just in case.

Just a few weeks ago she’d plugged her name into Google and gotten less than five direct hits. A race result, some article about her old restaurant that used a quote from her, and then some white pages results. That was it.

Hands shaking, she decided to search again.

When she typed her name in and hit search this time, she couldn’t believe her eyes.

24,897 results came back.

She started to scroll through what was coming up, and it was all basically social media stuff and bloggers talking about how she’d been seen with Jake Novak. How they’d gotten her name, Raven had no idea. It was frightening to think that it had all happened so fast.

In the blogs, they were saying she’d met Jake on tour. Raven got on Twitter and searched her name, finding a lot of tweets of the pictures that had been snapped of them leaving the hotel earlier in the day.

And most of the comments referred to her as a “groupie.”

People seemed genuinely stunned that Jake was hanging with a groupie when he could have had Courtney Taylor.

A lot of opinion seemed to think Jake was trying to be spotted with a “normal girl” to help his image, make him look less superior and arrogant.

That hurt a little, in part because it felt as though onlookers were already catching on to the plan. They couldn’t even believe that Jake would actually want to spend time with Raven—he had to have an ulterior motive.

It wasn’t particularly good for her self-esteem. There were comments like, “ugh, she’s not even one night stand worthy” and worse.

Raven closed out of all the internet windows on her phone and put the cell back in her purse. She kept wishing that she’d thought the whole thing through more, considered all of the ramifications.

But things had just happened so fast, and Jake had simply run with the idea, and now it was happening. She never should have suggested any of it.

This was madness and it was already backfiring.

Maybe Kurt had been right to try and scare her off. If only she’d listened to him.

At that moment, there was a knock on her hotel room door.

“Yes?” Raven called out.

“It’s me,” the voice replied.

“Who?” she said, not recognizing it.

“Kurt.”

Her insides froze and her hands tightened into fists. “Please go away.”

“Jake sent me,” he said. “Open up, I don’t have all day.”

“I don’t care who sent you,” she said.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ve got a suitcase full of clothes for you. I’ll leave them here and you can open the door when I’m gone, seeing as I scare you so badly.”

“Good. Please go,” she said loudly.

And then it went silent outside the door. She took a few deep breaths, hand on her stomach.

She hated that man, hated his voice. Why did he have to be there in New York? Why, with every other thing happening, did he have to come around to make it all that much worse?

But there was nothing to be done. She went and opened the door, expecting to see just a suitcase sitting in the hallway. But Kurt hadn’t moved. He was standing beside the suitcase, arms folded, smirking at her. “Hi, Raven.”

“You said you were going to leave.”

“I said that so that you’d open the door,” he said, his eyes sparkling with malice. “I knew you’d fall for it, too. You’re so darn predictable.”

She tried to slam the door, but he stepped forward and blocked it. “Don’t do that,” he said, his smile fading fast. “I want to explain something to you.”

“I don’t want to talk to you, and so help me—I’ll scream at the top of my lungs if you don’t leave me alone.”

“No you won’t,” he said, challenging her with his eyes.

“How do you know what I will or won’t do?”

“I know you were too chicken-shit to tell Jake what I said to you. You don’t want the gravy train to end so soon,” he said, his voice filled with contempt.

“Get away from me,” she said, trying to sound tough, but failing. Her voice shook from the strain. Finally, she let go of the door and backed away, giving up on stopping him.

He laughed as the door swung open once more, but he didn’t come further inside. “Listen,” he said, “you got what you wanted. Jake’s already allowed the two of you to be photographed together, so the damage is done and I’ve accepted that. I tried to talk sense to him, I tried to get you to go away, but it didn’t happen.”

Raven licked her lips. “I really don’t care about any of this.”

“Shut up and listen to me,” he replied, his voice as cold and condescending as a man talking to an idiot or a child he’s lecturing.

“Don’t talk to me like that.”

He chuckled. “Oh, so now we’re supposed to play nice, huh? Well, that’s fine by me,” Kurt told her. “I’m ready to play nice. I’m trying to explain to you that I’m not going to fight this preposterous scam anymore. If you and Jake want to play house like a couple of kids, go right ahead.”

“I don’t believe you mean that,” she replied.

“It’s true. My job now is to try my best to make this fly with the media.”

“It’s as simple as that?” she said.

“You and I can call a truce if you’re up to it,” he told her. He held out his hand. “Truce?”

“Leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone,” she told him. “But I’m not going to touch you.”

He turned and started walking away from her. “That’s the classy lady I’ve come to know and love, Raven. You just keep being you, honey.”

“Don’t call me honey, asshole,” she said and slammed the door shut. And then she remembered that suitcase was outside still, so she opened the door again and dragged it into her room.

She could have sworn she heard Kurt’s laughter still floating down the hallway.

Once the suitcase was in her hotel room and the door was shut, Raven unzipped it, revealing outfit after beautiful outfit folded neatly inside, and tucked away at the bottom were about six pairs of high heels. There weren’t just dresses, skirts and blouses, but also panties and bras.

Raven would have been grateful that Kurt had brought this suitcase to her, because she desperately needed the change of clothes. But the things Kurt had said and done made her disgusted, and part of her wondered if this was some sort of set-up. Would he later try and accuse her of stealing these things?

She had no reason to trust anything that came out of that man’s mouth, and she simply wished he would go away.

She picked out some clothes to change into and then got dressed, her mind whirling with thoughts about this new life that had been thrust upon her. Everything was moving so fast, and Raven didn’t know anymore if she could make the right choices.

Would it be better to just try and go home, run away from it all?

Could she even leave or would Jake find a way to bring her back?

As Raven checked herself out in the bathroom mirror, fixed her hair, she thought about Jake. What was even going on between them?

Sometimes she got the distinct feeling that there was more than just a business relationship. The way he looked at her, touched her, the softness and tenderness in his eyes when he was concerned about something—everything told her that Jake had feelings beyond a mere transactional arrangement.

But then he would act completely disinterested, cold, angry and dismissive of her the next moment. He wouldn’t so much as kiss her.

None of it made any sense. Why couldn’t he just be a normal guy? Did such a category of man even truly exist? Maybe a normal guy was like Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster—one of those things that people searched for but never quite found.

Raven had changed into a short black skirt, black heels, and a white blouse. She had to admit, it was a cute outfit, maybe even sexy. It scared her a little that reporters and photographers might take pictures of her in this outfit and then people would trash her all over the internet.

But she wasn’t going to let that possibility change what she chose to wear.

Will Jake like it? Will it make him want to do bad things to me?

Raven left the bathroom, shaking her head. She was frustrated at how much she continuously wondered about Jake, and how much the thoughts of him touching her seemed to dominate her thinking.

Every so often, no matter where she was or what she was doing, she’d remember him stripping off her robe, putting his hand down there, between her legs…

And then she’d be wet all over again, wishing that he’d do it the same way that night. Even as another part of her said that what Jake was doing to her was wrong, and she was wrong for letting him have his way.

No wonder he won’t kiss you. This is no way for a good woman to behave.

Raven ignored that critical voice. She was used to the self-judgment, and often chose not to listen to it.

There was a time when she’d listened, and it had nearly cost her everything.

The phone was ringing.

It was her hotel room phone. She hesitated, then finally crossed over and answered, expecting to hear someone from the front desk, or maybe Jake calling to check in with her.

But it wasn’t any of them.

“Hello, Miss Hartley,” the familiar voice said, and Raven suddenly realized that Max Mendez was calling her hotel room.

“How did you get my room number?” she said, her voice shaking a little.

“Never mind about that,” Max said, his tone light, friendly even. “Just you know that we’re always keeping tabs, Raven. Always.”

“What do you want?”

“That’s not very nice. I thought we were friends.”

“No you didn’t,” she said, and waited for the real reason he was calling.

“You need to come to our office immediately,” Max said.

“I can’t just go to your office, I don’t even know where it is. And I’m in New York with Jake.”