I had no desire to defend my brother, but I did feel the need to champion Lancaster International. “What if they don’t see a decrease in sales trends? It’s the twenty-first century, for God’s sake. Not everyone is a prude.”
Nicole turned toward me and lifted a knowing brow. “They haven’t seen the social media backlash yet. Maybe it will be brief and die out quickly, but there is going to be plenty of criticism. I’m sure you know that people have called to boycott companies on social media for less. The guy isn’t just a womanizer, or a serial dater of lots of women. Nobody really cares much about that. But showing up naked on the front page of a well-read newspaper with a bunch of nude women can smack of general disrespect and disdain for the female gender. People will assume he bought those women, and that he was able to use them because they needed to support themselves, and he has endless funds.”
I gritted my teeth, knowing there wasn’t a damn thing I could say in my brother’s defense. More than likely, he had rewarded those women handsomely, even though they’d been with him willingly.
She was right, of course. A lot could be made of a salacious picture and a sensational, lewd story. “Then tell me what you’d do to prevent all that from happening,” I requested grimly.
She snorted. “I’d kidnap the CEO and ship him to someplace in Siberia for a decade or two so nothing else happens.”
Agreed! I would have been happy to buy Dylan a one-way ticket, but knowing my brother, he’d find a way back to England.
She hesitated before she continued. “Honestly, I’d try to get in front of the whole thing. Find the man-whore a girlfriend who doesn’t have any skeletons in her closet, and book some positive publicity to let the public know that it was a one-time drunken incident. When I was researching, I did see something about Mr. Lancaster being single. I guess I just assumed that he was a widower. But if the old guy is healthy enough to get it up for an orgy, he can certainly get himself a nice girlfriend. He’d have to take responsibility for doing some skanky things, and then show the public that he’s changed.”
I raised my eyebrows. Was she under the impression that I was an…old man? “How old do you think he is?”
I couldn’t help myself. I had to ask. Obviously, she’d never managed to dig up a picture or she wouldn’t be talking to me right now.
It hadn’t been cheap to get experts to remove all that info from the net, but it had been worth it. Perhaps if she’d dug a little deeper into the family, she might have found a photo of me, but there wasn’t a whole lot there to find.
Nicole shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen pictures or articles about him. Initially, my presentation had nothing to do with the family. It was about improving Lancaster’s image overall as a company, and handling anything that came up in the future that might make them seem negligent to the general population. I didn’t know any of the family was even prone to bad publicity until I heard about this recent orgy thing. Doing damage control on a sleezy billionaire wasn’t even on my radar.”
“He’s actually not that old.” I hated the defensiveness I heard in my voice. “I’ve seen his pictures. Thirties, maybe.” I had to keep my comments vague. I was treading into dangerous territory. But I was British, so it had to make sense to her that I knew more about British billionaires than she did.
“That young?” She sounded completely caught off-guard. “Then they really need a fixer. They definitely can’t blow off the incident as some kind of dementia. Look, the guy is single, and I really don’t care what he does, but some people will care. Overall, Lancaster has always had a great reputation. I just wanted to be the PR company that was able to keep it that way. I wasn’t ready for the big sex scandal.”
“It was a stupid thing to do,” I grumbled, knowing I had to abandon the discussion about my family before I got myself in trouble.
She nodded her head slowly. “It was, but I’ve learned not to judge. I don’t know the circumstances. It could have been some kind of trap, and the guy does have a right to his kinks. But maybe he should have checked the lock on the door. When you’re at the helm of one of the most powerful companies in the world, private things need to stay private.”
Of course, what she just said made me wonder if the woman had her own kinks, and exactly what those might be.
I’m a red-blooded male who hasn’t gotten any for a while, so don’t judge me about my sexual curiosity.
I decided it was probably best not to ask her about her sexual fantasies at the moment. “There was no way you could have known what would happen while you were there. And I highly doubt that you really bombed that presentation. I’d say that you were presenting the wrong thing at the wrong time—through no real fault of your own.”
I knew that much was true. The entire corporate office had been bombarded by the media even before I’d left to get to Surrey.
My employees had been trying to put out fires, and Nicole had been unprepared to be a firefighter.
“That’s possible, I suppose.” Her tone didn’t sound like she was quite convinced.
“Feel better now?” I asked.
She put her feet up in the recliner and leaned her head back. “Not really. But thanks for trying.”
I ignored her denial. She sounded better, and that worked for me.
“Should we talk about your other little problem?”
She closed her eyes. “What problem?”
“Is it really true that you’ve never had an orgasm?”
Her eyes popped back open. “I think I need a drink.”
I grinned as I pushed the call button to get us some cocktails.
CHAPTER 4
Nicole
IT TOOK FOUR rounds of alcohol and a belly full of airplane food before I’d even entertained the idea of answering Damian’s questions about my sex life.
However, by the time I emptied cocktail glass number four, I had absolutely no inhibitions about telling him anything.
I handed my empty glass to the flight attendant and leaned back in my comfortable seat, thinking about everything Damian had shared with me over the last few hours.
Unlike most gorgeous men, Damian didn’t seem to want to talk about himself. At all.
I felt like he’d pried every detail of my life from me, but he never said a whole lot about himself. His answers to my questions about him were brief, and he hadn’t volunteered anything more than what I’d asked.
If he thought he could just give me a yes-or-no answer, that’s exactly what I’d gotten, but one-word answers hadn’t worked every single time.
I did find out that he’d grown up in Surrey, and had taken over an already successful family business after his dad’s death five years ago.
His mother was originally from Spain, but she’d been in England since she’d married Damian’s father decades ago, who’d been an Englishman. She still lived in their family home in Surrey.
He’d attended Cambridge for college.
He was well traveled, a fact I’d picked up myself after I’d asked him where he’d been in the world. His answer to that particular inquiry was probably the longest answer I’d gotten.