Page 24 of Cakewalk
I needed a local advocate, a trusted go-between who could coax these people into giving me a damn chance. And I knew just the out-of-work, sweet little face that nobody could say no to.
Or at leastIcouldn’t say no to her.
Jade’s phone rang long enough that I thought she might be letting me go to voicemail. We hadn’t recommenced our… mutually beneficial agreement since that night. It had been all business for a week after, sorting out the rental and nothing more. Maybe she had gotten cold feet now that she had time to think about it, about who she was really getting into bed with.
All I knew was that I wanted more. All I knew was that those five years of isolation, those five years of abandonment by everybody I knew, didn’t seem so bad if it led me to cross her path.
Or rather, crash into it.
She answered. “Griffin.”
“Jade, hi. I was calling to see if you were still in the market for a job.”
“Yup, I’m still very unemployed. So is that really why you’re calling? To offer me a job? Is our previous… agreement finished?”
“Not if you don’t want it to be. I was just giving you space, and since you hadn’t asked again…”
“Well, a job would definitely put an end to it. We can’t be together like that if you’re my boss. That’d be an even bigger scandal than before.”
“I don’t know who else can pull off what I need done.”
“Pull off what?”
I sighed. “I need somebody to open up some doors that have apparently been nailed shut for me.”
“Aw, are the townsfolk giving you trouble, Griffin?”
I frowned at her playfully mocking tone. “They’re not making it easy.”
“Well, I can hide an illicit affair well enough, but it’s going to be nigh impossible to hide the fact that I’m working for you. I don’t think it’s doable. You really can’t just grease some palms the old-fashioned way?”
“How’s it going to change people's perception of me if I go straight to bribes? I want you to be my advocate, Jade. You mentioned something about experience with PR work.”
She let out a loud, exasperated sigh against the receiver. “Griffin, I don’t even know if I can advocate for you to myself right now. I read up on you, like I probably should have in the beginning, and let’s just say the headlines are pretty bad, and the articles are even worse.”
“Great,” I said, my tone pleasant. “Then you see the need I have for a good PR officer.”
She paused. “I have morals, you know. I don’t agree with what you did, and I couldn’t put a positive spin on it even if I wanted to.”
“Would you believe me if I said it wasn’t what it looked like?”
“Everybody’s a hero in their own mind, that’s what I would believe. I’m sure you thought there was some justification for it, but the fact is, normal people like me? Like the rest of this town? We don’t have the luxury of getting away with that sort of thing.”
“I wouldn’t call five years in prison ‘getting away with it.’”
“Yeah, but you’re still the CEO of some multi-million dollar company. I’d happily go to jail for five years too if I knew I had that kind of money to look forward to afterward.”
She was making good points—great points, really—ifI was the man she thought I was. But I wasn’t, and if I couldn’t convince her of that, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to convince anyone. “Why don’t we do a trial run?”
“What does that even entail?”
“I’ll give you full access to everything, to all the books, all the contracts—but in a sort of read-only sense. You can see for yourself that this oceanfront development is legitimate, and that I’m doing things in a way that will benefit the entire town, not just myself.”
There was a long pause. Another exhale. Then… “You gonna make me sign an NDA?”
“Of course not. Everything can be as informal as our other agreement.”
“Our other agreement,” Jade repeated, then laughed softly. “Even if I did work with you, I can’t walk all that way, you know. And you sure as heck aren’t picking me up on your motorcycle.”
