“Are you the Felicity Corning who was with Saint Montgomery last weekend?”
“People keep asking me for a statement. This is my statement,” Delia Chevron said on her social media reel.
Saint took the phone from Willow to watch the slender brunette with a wide mouth and eyelids that sat at a bored half-mast.
“I’ve never met Saint Montgomery or Felicity Corning. She was working for a housekeeping agency and took an invitation from my home that she used to get into the gala. The next day, Mr. Montgomery tried to send earrings to her, through me. This alerted me to the theft. My security team recommended I end my contract with the agency, so I have. That’s all I know. Don’t ask me for dirt on any of them. I don’t have any.”
“I do.” Julie had spliced Delia’s statement into the front of her own so the video cut to her in the back of a car. She wore a ponytail and yoga clothes to give the impression this was an impromptu reaction, but she wore full make-up and he would bet his encryption software that she was getting paid to wear that brand.
“This is how he operates,” Julie told the viewer. “He’ll sleep with anyone, even a light-fingered housekeeper. And the earrings? Judging from where they were purchased, they’re worth at least two hundred thousand pounds. In fact, they were probably purchased for me. I was meant to attend that gala with him. He told me he’d have something pretty for me to wear, then he dumped me. For her. Although I wouldn’t doubt he was trying to get Delia’s attention. Watch out, girlfriend. That man is a playa...”
Saint swore and clicked off the phone, handing it back to Willow.
“I’m going to have to take legal action against her, aren’t I?” he muttered.
“Who?”
“What do you mean ‘who’? The woman destroying my reputation,” Saint snapped.
Willow drew a breath and held it, as though still at a loss.
He swore again. “The woman who is intentionally destroying my reputation for the paycheck she’s earning off her viral clicks.” Although all of these women were contributing to this debacle in their own special way. He couldn’t blame Willow for not being sure which one was causing him the most irritation. “Did you send the apology to Delia?”
“With a gift basket and an offer to cover her PR costs.”
“Good. And Ms. Smythe?”
“Has the earrings. You’re not out of pocket. She has also received a gift basket and some tickets for an opening in the West End as compensation for her trouble. I had the sense that future calls from you might go to voicemail.”
No doubt. Saint scratched his eyebrow. How had one night turned into this?
“What about Fliss? Any word from her?” He braced himself as he picked up his phone to look for a text, not sure what kind of reaction he expected from her. Something that monetized her own notoriety? Blame for the attention that had fallen onto her? An apology for not being completely honest with him?
Nothing. Not even a redirection for delivery of the earrings.
“Her socials have been switched to private,” Willow said. “She hasn’t returned to the house in London. Her housemates are quoted as not knowing where she went.”
Fliss had been photographed leaving her home five days ago, when gossip from her coworkers had leaked to the press. She’d since found a good place to hide because she wasn’t turning up online. That was both a relief and a frustration for Saint.
He didn’t love that she’d hidden so much about who she really was, but she hadn’t been outright dishonest, either.
Are we prevaricating?
I’m out of my league.
He was dismayed to hear she’d stolen from a client’s home. It was too much like Julie’s laptop snooping for his comfort. It made him wonder if Fliss was hiding from paparazzi while she negotiated the best way to capitalize on her night with him—the way Julie had.
“I did find some background on her that was...concerning,” Willow continued.
“I’ve seen what the trolls are saying,” Saint grumbled.
“They claim to be childhood friends.”
“Friends don’t say things like that about friends.” And who cared if she’d had an active sex life? So had he.
No, those rumors bothered him for a different reason. They didn’t fit with the inexperience she’d expressed.
I’ve always wondered how these things were handled.
If she was as practiced as those rumors suggested, he would have expected less bashfulness, more assertiveness. She’d been enthusiastic as hell while they’d been making love, which was the part that really mattered, but maybe playing an ingenue was her kink?
Role-play was fine, too, but he hated feeling gullible. He didn’t want to believe he’d fallen for an act when he’d been fully involved and as real as he could be for those few hours.
He didn’t want to question his own acuity when his father and the board were already doing that for him.
Saint’s phone rang. He glanced to see that it was his father and muttered another curse under his breath.
“I’m talking to the lawyers right now,” he said in lieu of a greeting, then rolled his wrist at Willow to get on it. He wouldn’t out Julie for her gambling addiction, but... “I’ll have them threaten a defamation suit if she doesn’t cease and desist.”
Ted ignored that. “Your mother is asking why you have two hundred thousand pounds for a prostitute’s earrings—”
“She is not—”
“But I won’t bankroll another thoroughbred. Make that go away.” His father ended the call.
“Fuuuun...” Saint groaned at the ceiling, crushing his phone in his grip. He was tempted to throw it against the wall.
“Tell Legal to inform Julie that I will pursue industrial espionage charges if she doesn’t keep my name out of her mouth,” he told Willow. He reached for the extra-strength acetaminophen in his desk drawer and swallowed two before he tapped his mother’s number. “Interrupt me in ten minutes with a life-or-death emergency.”
