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“Well,” he said, “I happened to have provided some of the software used for the highly sophisticated special effects, which landed me with the invite.”
She closed the door on her memories and focused on the presents. “Right, I was a little jealous about that.”
“But you don’t have the tech for this sort of thing.”
“No. I make technology for regular people,” she said, swiveling her chair in a circle. “Anyway, I really get to come?” She would go chained to Ferro’s leg if she had to. It was way too fun to pass up. She would go even if they weren’t partnering on the Barrows deal together.
“Yes. Formal dress. Though, it is a sci-fi film, if you wanted to do a gold bikini and a slave collar, I think that would be acceptable attire.”
“Har, har, Calvaresi. Anyway, that’s Star Wars. Cold Planet is an entirely different mythology. It’s based off of this first-person shooter game and…” She clamped her mouth shut. She was doing it again. “And I’m hardly going to a public event in a costume.”
“You’ll have to tell me more about mythologies at the premiere.”
She was sure he was making fun of her. She basically deserved it at this point. It was one thing to get in front of a room full of people and make a scripted speech, but still, even still, social interaction had the potential to be painfully awkward. She was out of practice. If she’d ever been in-practice.
“Sure,” she said. “What time?”
“I’ll pick you up at five. We have to walk the carpet, then we get to view the movie.”
“Wow.” So a lot more social interaction on the docket. Goody. “Neat.”
“You sound thrilled.”
“About the movie, yes.”
“Great, see you at five.” He hung up and she leaned back in her chair. Then she scrambled forward and hit the intercom on her phone. “Thad.”
“Yes?” Her assistant’s voice came through the speaker.
“I need a dress. A hot one. Get Ally on it, please. And I need to get my hair done.”
“Formal? And by when?”
“Yes, and I need to be waiting out front of the building at four-fifty.”
Thad sighed heavily. She knew she was asking the next-to impossible, but she also knew if anyone could get it arranged, it was him. “As you wish.”
“Great. Thank you. You rock. I have to go.” She pushed the off button and rested her chin on her desk, her hands on her lap. Then She took a breath and straightened. She was going to be fine. She wasn’t going to think about how ill-equipped she was to show up at a Hollywood premiere on the arm of a man like Ferro. She wasn’t going to think about how likely it was that she would drop a shrimp cocktail into her cleavage during the party.
No. She was going to sit back and let the professionals she hired to make her camera-ready do what they did best. If nothing else, she would look good. She would look strong.
Money might not buy happiness, but it bought an image that made it possible for her to go out in public.
And yes, she was Ferro’s date. But it wasn’t a date-date. Thank God. The last time she’d had a date it had been an unmitigated disaster. And that guy hadn’t been Ferro sex-on-a-cracker Calvaresi.
Not that she was all that familiar with sex. On a cracker or otherwise. But Ferro was. Her face got hot when she thought of some of the more revealing parts of Ferro’s unauthorized bio. Yes, she’d read it. And it made it hard to look the man in the eye.
He wasn’t just hot. He was the kind of man who made women lose their minds. Who inspired respectable members of society to throw off the bonds of convention and flaunt him at social gatherings. He’d been the much-younger stud of a few women back in his home country, setting off scandalous headlines and dissolving marriages.
Of course, that was assuming that version of his life was true. And that was assuming a lot. And as Ferro had said, he never confirmed or denied.
She took another fortifying breath. Great. Fine. She could do this. Tonight, she was going to be yet another rumor to add to Ferro’s list. And she wouldn’t confirm or deny.
When Ferro’s limo pulled up to the curb in front of Julia’s high-rise, he was genuinely stunned by her appearance. She was utterly captivating in a long black dress—the woman didn’t seem to own another color—that skimmed the gray sidewalk. The sleeves were long and full, like a kimono, and the neck high, revealing very little of her pale skin.
Her blond hair was pulled back in a low, messy bun, her makeup done all in shades of pale pink and gold. Her lips were painted the lightest rose, and it created the strangest curiosity in him. A fascination with what they might look like darker, flushed with arousal. Strange because he never felt curious about those things. He knew all about sex. There was no mystery left.
He’d opened the door and let her into the limo, and then both of them had spent the drive down the interstate on their mobile devices, finishing up the day’s interrupted work.
When they pulled up to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, the streets were already blocked off. Ferro’s limo was given immediate access, and they were let out near the end of the red carpet. This sort of thing had never been his favorite aspect of fame. The fortune was his biggest draw. These events did very little for him. Giving fake smiles to even faker people ranked low on his list of things he’d like to do with his Friday night.
Julia had the most purposeful look of boredom on her face he’d ever seen. Like she was forcing her lips to stay pulled together, forcing herself not to smile. She was stiff, walking with her head held high, her posture overly straight.
But beneath all of that, she was vibrating under the surface. Energy was pouring from her in waves, though he knew no one standing far away from her would ever be able to tell. But he could feel her shaking.
She seemed to like a spectacle, her presentations were so ostentatious it was unreal, but then, she was in control of them. The press played by her rules in those situations. Perhaps that was the cause of her unease now. It wasn’t her security keeping the fans at bay. The press weren’t being held to her guidelines.
He pulled her to him, lacing his fingers through hers. “We’re ready to walk the carpet.” He could feel her fingers trembling in his. “Relax,” he said. “We aren’t the A list. We won’t be mobbed.”
“I’ve seen pictures snapped of you while you were getting coffee at Roasted. You’re mobbed frequently.”
“Yes, but not when there are movie stars around. Come on. Anyway, if we are mobbed, our purposes will be served even better.” He tugged her along and when they stepped onto the carpet, he turned his smile on full.
Julia did the same, waving at the crowd lining the velvet rope that partitioned the masses from the golden few, hand-selected to enter into the realm of the elite. Very often Ferro felt like he still had more in common with those behind the rope.
She walked a bit ahead of him, her steps nervous and quick, and that was when he noticed the back of her dress, or rather, the lack of it, for the first time. It was cut low and wide, a swath of white skin on show from her shoulder blades down to the indent of her back, just above the curve of her butt.
It was the shock of it that made him want to touch. He was sure of that. He was a man far too jaded by his past to be aroused by a wedge of skin. Far too jaded to allow himself to be aroused at all, unless it was late at night and he needed a sleep aid. And yet, he found that he was. That fascinated him nearly as much as her exposed skin.
“Slow down,” he said, pulling her back to his side.
“Sorry,” she said, a smile still plastered on her face. “Nervous.”
“Don’t be. Just remember, they’re all here to see you. You’re the one in the enviable position. You’re beautiful. Successful. Everyone out there would love to be here. They would trade places with you in a heartbeat.” The words came, easy and without much thought or sincerity. He was good at giving compliments. At giving women exactly what they desired.
At keeping his mind somewhere else entirely, even while he gave all of his body. A perfect disconnect.
Her smile altered subtly, became more genuine. “That was a nice thing to say.”
“It’s true,” he said, without pausing to think if it really was.
“Ferro! Julia!”
Julia’s head whipped around in the direction of her name. She noticed that Ferro kept his movements much less spastic, kept his emotions better hidden. But she was having a much harder time with it. She’d trained herself to keep her reactions and emotions much more veiled than this, but she’d never been to a movie premiere before. And this movie premiere was a fangirl paradise, which, she admittedly was.
Back before she’d decided being herself wasn’t worth the pain, she would have been lining the streets with the crowd. Probably wearing some kind of Space Fleet Academy uniform.
The flashbulbs were directed at them now and she just smiled and hoped, feverishly, that she didn’t have leftovers from lunch in her teeth or a false eyelash stuck to her cheek or anything similarly horrifying.
Ferro, for his part, was immaculate in his dark suit and tie, short hair in perfect order. The man simply never looked anything less than composed and pressed. She’d bet he didn’t go home and put on a gigantic sweater and yoga pants after a long day of work. He probably wore a black silk robe and…nothing underneath.
She nearly choked.
“Are you on a date?” one of the reporters shouted over The din.
Ferro simply smiled and said, “If you have to ask, perhaps I’m doing it wrong.”
Jeez. The man oozed charm. She’d never seen him not at ease. Even when she’d pulled off her great OnePhone caper and messed with his product launch, his public face had remained completely smooth.
“Julia, any comments?”
“We better be. I don’t want to have to pay for my own dinner.” That earned her some laughter and she was gratified that she’d managed a witty response. Especially since half of her brainpower was being used up to focus on the heat that was coursing from her palm, where Ferro was holding her hand, up her arm, to her breasts, making her nipples, of all things, tingle a little bit.
Ferro waved and she did the same, and they walked on, into the ornate theater where they were ushered to their seats. Ferro released her as soon as they were in the dark.
And again, Julia felt like she was in danger of getting whiplash from the recognizable faces surrounding them. “I think that’s—”
“Don’t stare, Julia, it’s rude.”
She shot Ferro a deadly glare he probably couldn’t see in the darkness. “Sorry. I forgot we were being blasé.” And she shouldn’t have forgotten. Anything else was way too revealing and embarrassing.
“You’ll get to the point where you don’t have to remember. Trust me.”
“You think?” she asked, looking sideways at him in the dark.
“I know. You’re lucky life hasn’t knocked it out of you yet.”
She leaned back in her chair. “You have no idea what life has taken from me,” she said. For the second time in the same day, she thought back to that long-ago prom night. Why was she thinking about it so much? She never thought about it. She’d moved on from it. She was fine. Bruises healed. And the stuff that didn’t? It had helped her realize that you had to be strong. It had been when she’d stopped trying to fit in, when she’d stopped being so afraid to be unusual. She’d just started owning it then. And it had been the key to her success.
She wasn’t sending out any thank-you cards to the jackass who’d assaulted her, but she wasn’t wallowing, either.
“I’d venture to say you know less about mine than you think you do, Julia,” he said, his words darker than the theater.
“I read the bio,” she said.
He chuckled, a sound that lacked humor and warmth. “As I said, you know less about me than you think. Just because it’s in print, doesn’t mean it’s the whole truth.”
The End of the Tech World As We Know It?
The headline screamed up at Julia from the newspaper, just delivered to her tablet. Ferro was already in her office, sitting in the chair in front of her desk like he had every right to be there.
“Not exactly the headline we anticipated,” he said.
“Ya think?” She skimmed the article, her stomach sinking. “Either a sharp blow to progress or a cheap publicity stunt,” she read out loud.
“Because if we’re sleeping together we won’t be competing, and if we aren’t competing, will we be on our game?”
“I have a lot of words rolling around in my head right now and they’re all filthy,” she said, standing up and pacing up and down in front of her office window. “What are we going to do? It’s everywhere. It’s trending on Twitter. There’s a Facebook page, Calvaresi, a freaking Facebook page devoted to…what are they calling us?” She leaned in and skimmed the article again. “JulErro. For the love of Darth.”
“And for everyone rooting for this little enemies-to-lovers tale…”
“There are just as many rooting for us to go down in flames. This…this is a lot bigger than we anticipated, isn’t it?”
Ferro wished he could say he’d anticipated just this, but the simple fact was, social media was hard to anticipate. The press was one thing, the civilian-run news machine? Something else entirely. And the simple truth was, this had gone way outside the tech world, thanks to the internet, which was run by the masses. Who were entirely unpredictable.
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”
The feeling of claustrophobia he felt now, the feeling of being trapped, he didn’t like it. A trap of his own making. And it wasn’t the first one he’d ever been in. He knew all about this. About going so far down a road there was no way to turn back. That you just had to push through, keep going, because you’d gone too damn far.
“Fine,” she said, continuing to pace. “We continue on, and we make it the biggest spectacle ever. And when we blow it up, we make it huge. The biggest media explosion ever. And we’ll always be more interesting after this. Think about it, when you hijack another one of my presentations, just think how newsworthy it will be when we’re exes? Hypothetically. Don’t hijack one of my presentations again.”
Julia might be wearing armor, but she was a tough woman. Smart. Brilliant even. “Of course,” he said, “we’ll be expected to spend a lot of time together. A lot. The visibility is too high. We’re going to have to give them something to talk about, because if we don’t…if we get caught in this…”
“We’re in trouble.”
“Putting it mildly.”
“Okay…okay…what’s the plan then?”
“There’s a charity event tonight. I was planning on skipping it and writing a check, but I think we should make an appearance, don’t you? As a couple.”
Julia looked like she was going to say something, but she hesitated.
“Come on, Julia,” he said. “Don’t wimp out now.”
“I’m not wimping out!”
“Then why do you look like a deer caught in the headlights?”
“Because the other day we were sworn enemies and if I never had to see you in person it suited me just fine. Now…two outings with you in a row? I could live without that.”
“Maybe this is why tech, and business in general, is traditionally a man’s game,” he said, not meaning a word he was saying but knowing it would give Julia the kick she needed. “Maybe it’s because women are too ruled by emotion.”
He knew it wasn’t true. Because he’d been…he didn’t even know what to call it. Shaped, molded, by women who hadn’t cared what their actions meant to the emotions of a teenage boy. He’d spent years surrounded by women who saw people only as pawns. People of both genders were more than capable of acting based on selfish desire. Of using people to meet their ends.
But his words would push Julia. He knew it. Knew it was a hot button for her.
“Are you saying I can’t do this?” she asked.
“You’re the one who looks like she has a problem. I’m willing to make this work. Are you? Or are you just giving me lip service here?”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m going to ignore the potential double entendre there.”
“If it suits you.”
“Fine. You have yourself a date for tonight. Ferro?”
“Yes?”
“Uh…what’s the charity?” He had a feeling that wasn’t the question she’d intended to ask.
“For homeless youths.”
“Great. I’ll bring my checkbook.”
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