Table of Contents
Epilogue - As Told by Kylie
Also By Vivien Vale
Author’s Note
Xavier
Allie
Thank You For Reading
Hard Bargain
Wes
Kylie
Hard Luck
Sienna
Leo
Hard Pressed
Vivien Vale
Triumvirate Press
Hard Pressed
By Vivien Vale
Copyright 2017 by Triumvirate Press
All rights reserved
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons is entirely coincidental. This work is intended for adults only.
If you want to read more of my stories, be sure to sign up for my mailing list, Behind the Veil.
Contents
Also By Vivien Vale
Author’s Note
1. Xavier
2. Allie
3. Xavier
4. Allie
5. Xavier
6. Allie
7. Xavier
8. Xavier
9. Allie
10. Xavier
11. Allie
12. Xavier
13. Allie
14. Xavier
15. Allie
16. Xavier
17. Allie
18. Xavier
19. Allie
20. Allie
21. Xavier
22. Allie
23. Xavier
24. Allie
25. Xavier
26. Allie
27. Xavier
28. Xavier
29. Allie
30. Xavier
31. Allie
32. Xavier
34. Xavier
35. Allie
36. Xavier
37. Allie
38. Allie
Thank You For Reading
Hard Bargain
Wes
Kylie
Wes
Kylie
Wes
Kylie
Wes
Kylie
Wes
Kylie
Wes
Kylie
Wes
Kylie
Wes
Kylie
Wes
Kylie
Wes
Kylie
Wes
Kylie
Wes
Kylie
Wes
Kylie
Wes
Kylie
Wes
Epilogue - As Told by Kylie
Hard Luck
Sienna
Leo
Sienna
Leo
Sienna
Leo
Sienna
Leo
Sienna
Leo
Sienna
Leo
Sienna
Leo
Sienna
Leo
Sienna
Leo
Sienna
Leo
Sienna
Leo
Sienna
Leo
Sienna
Leo
Sienna
Sienna
Leo
Sienna
Sienna
Leo
Leo
Sienna
Sienna
Leo
Sienna
Leo
Sienna
Also By Vivien Vale
Hard Bargain
Hard Luck
Author’s Note
Hi Readers,
My writing dream is finally coming true!
I’ve always wanted to write stories and I was searching for the first characters that spoke the loudest.
As a writer, so many characters are speaking in my head. But I found these characters were the loudest (haha).
And the story? It is dark but not really demented. Something like life where we find ourselves dealing with drama, but a really good taste of what only romance can bring us.
Happily Ever After.
So this is one of many stories of mine…but I hope that our stories together are just beginning.
If you want to read more of my stories, be sure to sign up for my mailing list, Behind the Veil.
<3 Vivien
1
Xavier
I try not to do this too much. ‘This’ being whisking people up and away, taking them to far-off lands for multicourse dinners. It’s a little too Aladdin. It’s a little much and, honestly, not the glamorous fun it seems in the movies.
Here’s the basic truth: I drop more than a hundred grand to make people feel uncomfortable. They’re rarely enjoyably wowed. This might be my fault.
I don’t tell people to bring their passport, bustle people into my private (but shared) plane, and get a last-minute reservation to a Michelin-starred restaurant overseas all because I love them and want more of their company.
I do it only because I see doubt in their eyes. Or, no. It’s not doubt I see, but a look of discovery when they suddenly realize who I am is not what I seem.
Like this one sitting across from me. Her name is Jane, but she seems like an Amber or Topaz. Someone either born into luxury or someone so hungry they grab at opportunities, determined to make one stick.
We met at an event at a TriBecA gallery yesterday. She handed me a glass of sparkling wine and when I went to grab a cocktail napkin, she handed me her headshot folded into a sharp square, small enough to slide into my trouser pocket.
She winked at me. I laughed. Chutzpah can be sexy, but mostly it’s annoying.
Later, I followed her as she walked around the room with a tray full of canapés, each one capped with perfect mounds of shining caviar. When she stopped and turned to look at me, I took one and, before I popped it into my mouth, I asked if she’d get a drink with me when she got off work.
Jane-Amber-Topaz smiled and then she nodded. She turned on her heel and walked to the back of the gallery and through the doors hidden behind a towering sculpture of a faceless man carved in onyx.
A minute later she was next to me. She was wearing dark lipstick and her navy trench was belted tight.
“Let’s go,” she said. I arched a brow and smiled down at her; she was tall, maybe six feet, but I’m taller still and bent slightly toward her.
“Your boss is okay with that?” I asked, my voice low.
“I’m hoping to convince you to be my boss,” she said.
We left, slid into a cab. I let my hand brush her thigh.
“This is about work,” she said, so I removed my hand and nodded, looking out the window. I brushed my hair out of my eyes and tried not to be annoyed. “Ok, let’s start with work. Which one of my businesses are you trying to break into?”
“I’m an investigative reporter,” Jane said, “and Hard Pressed has one of the best teams working right now: the Russian dossier, the CH Jones scandal…well, I guess, I don’t have to tell you about the scoops your team has racked up over the past few years.
I nodded curtly.
“No,” I said, “You don’t.” Jane’s forefinger pulsed on her thigh. She was nervous, but her eyes gleamed with excitement. I asked her, “Are you good? Where have you published?”
“Mostly in mid-market newspapers, but yeah. I’m really good. I’ll send you my clips. But also consider the facts: We didn’t just run into each other, obviously. I sought you out. I hope it doesn’t
make you uncomfortable,” she said. She wet her lips with tip of her tongue and continued. “In order to find you, and get you to talk to me, I had to do a small investigation.”
“You could have just made an appointment with my assistant,” I said, feeling fascinated and wary. The air in the cab had gone still.
“We both know you wouldn’t have seen me,” Jane said.
The cabbie leaned on his horn. The moment broken.
The evening went on. We didn’t talk about her investigation. I planned to leave her at the bar and head back to my apartment alone. But she was beautiful and tenacious. I found myself fascinated and curious about what she wanted to happen next.
I listened to her talk and answered some of her questions. We both drank our bourbon neat. When the server brought the bill, I put down my black AmEx card over the bill for our drinks.
“I’m not going to hire you,” I said. “Not like this and not for that team. You want me to admire your gall and I do—to an extent. But finding out where the CEO of a major media group will be on a Wednesday night isn’t a deep dive investigation, a two-penny PI could have done just as well.
“On our investigative team, there are five Pulitzers between them. By asking questions and digging through thousands of files, they brought down one major bank and an online sex trafficking ring. What do you know about these kinds of investigations? You’re a cub reporter, tenacious but green.”
Even in the dark of the bar, I could see the blood rush to her face. At first, I thought she was embarrassed, and expressing it like a kid by blushing from her toes to the roots of her hair, but as the moment stretched I realized she was furious.
“I haven’t told you what I know about you, Stanley,” she said.
I was getting up from the table, but sat back down when I heard her.
“I changed my name,” I said, trying for nonchalance. “I’m not exactly the first person to do that.”
She nodded, smiling slowly.
“Sure, Xavier, that’s true. People change their names and you absolutely look the part of a debonair business god throwing around his black card in a dive bar in the East Village. Xavier is something else, but Stanley is…nothing much.”
I forced a laugh.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, taking care to keep my voice so low she had to lean slightly forward to hear me.
A slight look of surprise flashed across her face.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
I smiled coolly.
“To your house to grab your passport,” I said. “I assume you have one, Jane.”
She looked me dead in the eye, and belted the last of her bourbon. A sharp nod and then she took off for the door.
We didn’t talk much and then we both slept on the plane. I had the flight attendant bring out Dom Perignon and a bowl of caviar from the Caspian Sea. I told her to use the crystal champagne flutes.
When sudden turbulence caused the plane to jolt, I watched Jane’s full champagne glass fly and smash against the side of the plane. I smiled and asked the flight attendant to bring her another crystal glass filled close to the rim with champagne.
“Let’s try that again,” I said.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Rome,” I said.
I watched her swallow the wine, the caviar in front of her untouched. She looked out her window and I, finally feeling calm, looked out mine.
Once we landed, I deposited her in the penthouse of the Ritz. Then, later, I sent a chauffeured Rolls Royce to pick her up.
I didn’t prepare her for the luxurious glamor of the dinner. I didn’t offer to buy her a wardrobe full of designer dresses. I was dressed impeccably, tailored suit, cufflinks, a square of silk tucked into my pocket.
Now, she’s seated across from me in a dress that looks like it was bought in a Midwestern mall in 2003. She’s still beautiful, but she’s lost her cocksure attitude.
“You’re not eating, Jane,” I remark, taking a sip of the rare vintage I ordered for us. “Is it okay? Should we call the chef over?”
“It’s perfect,” she says, a note of bitterness obvious.
I incline my head.
She picks up her fork and puts it down again.
“You’ve made your point, Xavier,” she says.
I lift my eyes to hers.
“Let me be very clear, little girl,” I say. “You may think you know me and understand some part of who I am or where I’ve come from. You learned I came from a small town, was raised by a single-mother. You might know every fact of my life, but I am and will always be more than you are: smarter, richer, more powerful, more accomplished. If you cross me, threaten me, follow me, I will—” here I pause and lean back in my chair for effect, “crush you.”
I watch her wilt. I feel both shame and satisfaction.
“Now,” I say, dabbing my lips with the napkin. “We have a few minutes before the plane will be ready to take us back home, should we get dessert?”
I watch her as she lifts her head and squares her shoulders.
“Whatever you like, Xavier.”
Back on my plane, she’s staring out the window while I’m smiling to myself.
2
Allie
I’m not sure why I’m here again, sitting on the black leather chair in this stuffy, cramped waiting room. The guy sitting at the back of the room looks like the receptionist, but he isn’t.
His name is Brock, a douchey name for a douchey guy. He’s the youngest talent agent in this three-person outfit and the one who didn’t get a private office with a door. Everyone who walks in and treats him as if he might be helpful in connecting them with another agent in the office is rudely and pointedly ignored.
Or, if he’s in a playful mood, he looks you up and down and says something like: “My clients are all animals, but I might make an exception for you and your horse’s face” or “you and your bullfrog’s mouth” or “sloth’s hands” or “hippo’s grace” or “cow’s titties” or whatever animal part comes to his mind in the moment.
The poor person who makes the mistake of thinking he’s a decent human being, mostly innocent teenage girls, blink stupidly at him, and then sink into the other chair in the room to wait for their actual agent to stick their head from behind the door and call their names.
The smart ones, however, turn and take off, speeding out the door.
You better run, I always think, but Brock never acknowledge their reactions and goes back to barking into the mouth piece on his headset.
In all my years, sitting in this chair in front of his desk, I’ve never seen him meet with a client himself or close a deal. He must do something, though, because I’ve noticed his clothes have stopped hanging off his body. He looks like a man who eats good food regularly and he carries himself like a man who has a trainer, a masseuse, and a tailor.
I know all this about Brock because I sit here forgotten for hours by my agent, Cheri. I know all this because years ago I was the green and hopeful kid, still sporting my cheerleader-perfect ponytail.
The first morning I walked into this place, I was going to meet with my agent—my agent!—for the first time. I’d tied a red ribbon in my hair that morning, but before I opened the door of my car to walk into the building, I changed my mind. I pulled off the ribbon and slipped it into my black Longchamp bag, a present from my aunt on my nineteenth birthday.
That was years ago—how many? Seven? Ten? Who knows. That was the last promising day of my career. Since then I’ve wasted days of my life on this black plastic chair watching people walk past me with big confident smiles and leave with watery eyes.
Those of us who are veterans of this life will nod at each other. I’ve watched so many of them change from having that snappy walk of an eager dreamer to the more measured clipped movement of the determined, to the resigned forward motion of the person trapped in a tortured loop.
There’s nothing glamorous about this life.
Today, for
example, I’ve been waiting for an hour and forty minutes to see a woman who won’t look me in the eye for the whole of our 15-minute meeting. She won’t waste her words on me or help me when I tell her that I haven’t worked as an actor in months. I’ll tell her that I’m starting to lose my will to go on.
I’ll tell her in no uncertain terms, that I wish I was with an agent who took time to work with me or send me to auditions for interesting roles, and she’ll nod along, all the while shifting piles of papers from the left side of her desk to the right. A headset will hang around her neck and she’ll smell like Chanel and stale cigarettes, and I’ll leave without a job and get into my car and drive to Eastern High School where I’ll put in a few hours as the assistant cheer coach.