“Come again?”
I stare at the deep purple nail polish that’s chipping on my thumbnail. Why can’t my life be fixed as easily as my manicure? Oh, that’s right, because life isn’t for the faint of heart.
“Greer?”
I look up, mentally begging her to drop it. Do we really need to know the extent of my humiliation? I slap my hands down on the velvet sectional cushions on either side of me.
“This is pointless. Even if some whack jobs respond, I’m just going to ignore them and block their e-mails. There’s no point in checking.”
Banner glares at me. “Password.”
Given that I’ve known her since prep school, I know she won’t stop until I cave.
“Ionlysuckbigcocks69.” It comes out on a single breath in a new dialect of the language mumble.
When a crooked smile lit with pure amusement spreads across Banner’s face, I grab a toss pillow off the sectional and fling it at her head.
“Bitch. You already knew!”
“I had to hear you say it out loud. Because it’s fan-frigging-tastic. I might change all my passwords today. They’re clearly not creative enough. It’s like an anthem for women everywhere.”
I scan the area around me for additional projectiles, but come up empty. Why don’t I have more knickknacks?
“It’s not like I came up with it all by myself,” I remind her.
She was just as drunk last night while we laughed over the ad, the personal ad I placed in my real name in the crazy hopes that one particular guy would see it. A guy who clearly wasn’t interested in me before and isn’t now either.
He’s known where to find me for years. It wasn’t until a year ago that I finally figured out where he was.
How messed up is it to go to a movie with your friends and see the guy you had a mad crush on displayed center screen during the previews? The guy who broke your barely twenty-something-year-old heart before you could even get to the naked fun times?
Cavanaugh Westman, Hollywood’s newest bad boy. It didn’t matter that he’d changed, gotten bigger and more dangerous looking. I’d know him anywhere. Shaggy brown hair, curling just over his collar, hazel eyes that you could never predict the color of—anywhere from green to grayish-blue or tawny brown. It didn’t shock me that Hollywood agents had apparently fallen in love with him. His body was ridiculous. Thick, sculpted muscles covered with inked, bronzed skin—
“Holy. Shit. No. Way.”
Banner’s low words drag me from my little trip down memory lane, and I jerk my head in her direction.
“What?”
She holds up the iPad and I shove to my feet, leaving the safety of my cozy couch to join her.
“You’ve got over five thousand new e-mails. And somehow, almost a half million new followers on Twitter, thanks to last night. Color you popular, lady.”
My stomach bottoms out before twisting into a sickly, complicated knot as I take the tablet from her. “Oh. My. God.” My phone vibrates across the kitchen island before I can even begin to read.
My attention snaps to my phone as I dread who might be calling. There are two possibilities, both daunting but one more so: The chair of the professional staff committee from my firm calling to deliver my termination notice. Or worse, my brother.
I shove the iPad back into Banner’s hands and snatch up the phone to check the display. Crey.
“Shit.”
“Is it your brother?” she asks, knowing Creighton well enough from my birthdays and other events over the years.
“Yep.”
“Well, it’s not like he can say much. He practically invented the scandalous viral ad.”
That’s the truth, but it doesn’t mean my brother would want to exchange stories of how we found our respective ways into the gossip rags by posting moronic things online.
No, he won’t find the humor in how much his little sis follows in his footsteps. First, he’ll want to kill my ex-boyfriend, Tristan—who he never liked anyway, and then, he’s probably going to hire me a babysitter in addition to the bodyguard he forced on me last year. We toned down the security a few months back when I threatened to move out of the country to get away from him. Now I only have a driver who ferries me to and from work and anywhere else I need to go. I don’t traipse the streets of New York by myself anymore, especially not late at night.
Holding my phone as it continues to vibrate, I debate how big my lady balls are today. Not so very big.
I let it go to voice mail. Nothing good can come of answering it. I’m too old to be scolded like an errant child, but I have a feeling Creighton won’t agree with that assessment.
Instead, I round the couch to sink back into the safety of its plush cushions. Banner plops down beside me as I slide my phone next to hers on the table. She sets up my tablet facing us both, the list of e-mails mocking me with their subject lines like:
I’LL MAKE YOU MY BAD BITCH
MY COCK WILL ROCK YOUR WORLD
SEND ME A PICTURE OF YOUR FEET