Page 61 of Built to Last

“I can handle my own business.” I did it for years. I don’t need to talk to Reid about things. I don’t need his opinion on how to handle my cousin. I don’t need him to simply sit and listen and hold my hand the way he has the last month. I’m not weak.

“Yes, you can,” Darnell agrees.

I don’t need Reid for anything. Anything at all. I can take care of myself. “And by business, I mean orgasms. Does he think I’m going to go back to him after he refused to talk to me?”

“You should not.” Darnell sounds firm in his agreement. Then he leans toward me. “Unless you want to. I can hail you a cab.”

Asshole. I ignore him. He’s my only sounding board right now, and I’m going to get all of this out of my system because I have to work tomorrow. “He made himself clear. He doesn’t want to talk to me. He never wants to talk about this woman he spent years with. I can’t tell whether they’re star-crossed lovers or if she’s stalking him.”

Darnell groans, and his head drops back against the couch. “Are we doing this? Fine. We’re doing it. What is the situation? All I know is you’re sad because the guy in the suit dumped you.”

He wasn’t told much. He was handed a beer and told to take care of me. Poor guy. “He didn’t dump me, exactly. He said he would handle something that I should really be a part of.”

Had he meant to dump me? It didn’t feel like he had but I was definitely dumping him because I won’t be treated that way. He can’t walk away.

We only agreed to sleep together while we were working. A short-term situationship with an end date. Except we kind of stopped talking about end dates. He even mentioned I should come to LA with him after the filming. I won’t, of course. Although I thought about how nice it would be to walk on a beach with him and sit in one of those Hollywood restaurants with Jeremiah and listen to all the gossip he knew about the stars.

Why would Reid talk to his soon-to-be ex?

Darnell seems to make a decision and sits forward. “What is he handling? I need to know since if we’re talking about, like, taking out the trash, you’re overreacting.”

Reid is very good about taking out the trash. I was a little surprised at how domestic he is. He even helps his housekeeper in the kitchen. “We made a sex tape, but it should have been lost in the hours of boring footage of me restoring cabinets, and according to Ivy the assistant editor went through it about a week ago trying to find some setup footage for one of the early episodes they’re working on. He finds the footage and decides to cash in because he knows Reid’s ex is always looking for a way to screw him over. Apparently this particular editor used to work on The Dorsey Brothers show.”

“I’m sorry, Harper.” Darnell gets extremely serious. “I thought we were talking about some run-of-the-mill breakup. I had no idea we were talking sex tape and potential international scandal. You’re right. This is some serious shit. I am here for you. I might take a couple of notes because this sounds like a great plotline. Please continue. So the Swedish twig gets the footage of you and Reid going at it hard and what is she doing with it?”

This is probably going to go into one of his novels, but I don’t care. He writes sci-fi so he’ll turn me into some alien princess fighting to save the galaxy. I’m kind of on a roll now, and it helps that Darnell isn’t looking at me with nauseating sympathy like Lydia or vowing bloody vengeance like Ivy. I did have to tell her she couldn’t go after Reid. “She took it to a French publication.”

“You mean a scandal rag.”

“I do mean a scandal rag,” I reply. “They were planning on running a story about how Reid found an American floozy, except in French it’s something that means chicken. I don’t know. Ivy ran it through a translator. Anyway, it was all about how he betrayed the beautiful model who loves him so much and I’m after his money.”

“That sounds awfully predictable. They could come up with something better,” Darnell says. “How did Reid handle it? Did Mr. Uptight lose his shit?”

“He’s not that uptight when you get to know him. I think it’s the suits that make him seem that way.” Although I’ve come to think those suits of his are sexy as hell. “So when it first came out, Reid was cool with it. I was surprisingly chill. Like I’m in good shape. I don’t know what the angles were or if the lighting was right, but I’m pretty comfortable with my body and I like Reid.”

Darnell shakes his head. “Get to the good stuff. Reid was truly cool with his sex tape getting out?”

I shrug. “I thought so. He said we should go to the press together and maybe we should even get married.”

A snort comes from Darnell. “You have not known each other long enough.”

“That’s what I said.” But now I wonder if I shouldn’t have taken him to the courthouse right then. Maybe he would have talked to me if we were married. That is such a ridiculous thought and exactly why I need to get all of this out of my system before I have to see him again. “Anyway, then Ivy announces it’s Britta who has the tape and he loses his shit. But in that very Reid controlled way. He announces he’ll take care of it.”

Darnell waves the idea away. “Ivy already took care of it. The girl is thorough. Britta will be lucky if she comes out of this with her dignity intact. She’s going to be put on a lot of mailing lists. Maybe a couple of watch lists, too.”

I can’t worry about Britta getting endless rounds of spam concerning male enhancement and tractors. Those are Ivy’s go to’s for some reason. “I know, but he didn’t stick around to hear that part. He walked out and refused to talk to me about it. When his brother tried to slow things down, Reid yelled at him.”

Darnell blinks as though he has to think the information through. “That does not sound like the Reid I’ve come to know. He practically treats Jerry like he’s a sick toddler.”

“No one calls him Jerry.”

“He looks like a Jerry to me,” Darnell continues. “So he blew up at the brother he adores and ices out the woman he tried to sneakily marry? All because of an ex.”

I nod. At least he gets it. “See. That’s it. He’s either still in love with her and I’m in the middle of this twisted game they’re playing, or he hates her and I’m in the middle of this twisted game they’re playing. But in the last scenario he doesn’t want to play.”

“I like this.” Darnell seems to think for a moment, and he’s probably already plotting the book in his head. “So you’re not upset that the sex tape has likely been viewed by both perverts and journalists who are probably perverts? You are upset that your boyfriend yelled at his brother and walked away. See. Another reason to like you. So I’m going to come down on the side of Reid doesn’t want to be playing whatever games she’s playing.”

Or maybe he doesn’t get it. “You can’t know that.”

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