“Hey, come here.” Renni opens her arms for a hug.
I duck away. “You’re going to get wet.”
“Whatever. I need to shower anyway.” She hugs me tightly.
She doesn’t say anything. But I close my eyes and let myself enjoy the affection and love from my friend.
Chapter Two
Paige
It’s been seven days since the hotel. Seven glorious, incident-free days.
I even got the whole weekend off because Ryder was away at the wedding, and he insisted that he didn’t want me coming with him. He promised he would attend and do all the right things.
I’ve never seen him break a promise, so I stayed home. Read some books and relaxed. Pampered myself a little. I figured I deserved it after finding out that I’m pregnant, getting dumped by Shaun and being dunked in a hot tub full of skanks.
And the days following the weekend pass in relative peace. Now why can’t we do this all the time?
On Friday, I drive up the road that winds through what seems like miles of lush flower gardens. A giant pool appears to my left, the water sparkling like liquid jewels. I park my six year-old Altima and get out. Even after four years, I still can’t get over how grand Ryder’s Beverly Hills mansion is.
The main house is three stories tall, with thick columns between the doors. I go inside without ringing. I am one of a very very few people who can do that at Ryder’s place.
The interior matches the splendor outside. The floor is real marble; huge and glittering chandeliers hang from the vaulted ceiling. The walls have numerous paintings, but not a single photo of Ryder or poster from one of his movies.
For such a handsome man, he doesn’t like to look at himself much.
After grabbing a cup of ginger ale from the state of the art kitchen, I head toward my office on the second level, climbing the winding staircase. It’s exactly like the one from Tara in Gone with the Wind.
I stop at the sight of the seven special, climate-controlled cases mounted on the wall. The big one in the center is empty, but the other six contain charcoal sketches of Ryder…a Ryder, however, who I’ve never seen in real life. The drawings span the time from when he was a newborn to his mid-teen years. My gaze lingers on one. It is of Ryder when he was just a toddler. Despite the rough lines, joy beams from his wide eyes as he gazes back at me.
The housekeeper always dusts the cases daily—Ryder’s explicit instructions. I once asked him why the center case was empty. He said it was reserved for his grandfather’s painting. He was…reverent when he ran his hand over the glass, and there was a palpable longing in the way he gazed at the empty spot. Judging from the sketches, his grandfather’s painting must be something very special. I’ve never seen Ryder react like that to any other artwork—and he has a very large collection.
My office is nice, with plenty of shelf space, cabinets and a great view of a sparkling blue pool and flower garden that cost five figures a month to maintain. The place feels like a slice of southern California heaven…so long as I don’t look too far beyond the pool and see the concrete gray walls with barbed wire and security cameras along the top.
Ryder doesn’t have a mansion. He has a compound.
A big box covered with red heart stickers waits for me on my antique Louis XIV desk. It has YOUR GREATEST FAN in all caps…like that would make Ryder notice. Despite the lack of return address, I immediately know who sent it. This one comes from a particular loony-tunes I’ve dubbed Loopy because of her overly rounded handwriting.
I place my cup of ginger ale—it calms my nausea—on my desk and fish for the box cutter in the upper drawer. The furniture is ridiculously ostentatious for an assistant, but it’s part of Ryder’s home, so that’s that. Interior decoration isn’t my responsibility or prerogative, and if Ryder wants me to use a pricey antique desk, so be it. At least it comes paired with an incredibly comfortable ergonomic chair.
I run the box cutter along the clear packing tape. Inside is a white card.
“Loopy, Loopy, you really need to stop.”
I pull out a card with fat, childish handwriting. The overzealous woman never signs her name. And she always sends food at least once a week. The card reads, The expressway to a man’s heart is through his stomach.
Pure delusion.
There’s no expressway to Ryder’s heart. There are roadblocks all over. Countless women are currently stuck, mired in the traffic jam. They’ll all die before they get anywhere near his stomach, much less his heart.
On the other side of the card it says, Don’t forget I am your soul mate, the Cinderella you’ve been looking for all your life.
I shake my head. She never used to say that until Ryder starred in a blockbuster retelling of Cinderella. He played Prince Charming—naturally—and rumor has it that the ushers were scooping melted women off the floor after each viewing.
I look inside the package.
A red, heart-shaped tin of homemade chocolate truffles sits in the center, just waiting to be devoured by the object of Loopy’s loopy desire. What a waste. Nobody touches food items delivered to Ryder. Everything is restuffed into the boxes for storage. Ever since a psycho fan tried to run him over in her Jeep—screaming, “If I can’t have you, nobody can!”—Ryder has everything from his fans tagged and shelved in storage as evidence.
Just in case the police need them. It turned out that the psycho in the Jeep had sent him over two hundred letters in five months’ period.
I dump the box on the floor behind my chair, making a mental note to put it away later. Then I see another piece of mail—a big manila envelope. Thankfully this one doesn’t come with heart stickers. Just the logo and address of one of the most expensive and exclusive hotels in the state.
What is this about? It’s not the place I went to drag Ryder out of the hot tub, and hotels this exclusive do not send junk mail. No, they stick to the old way of doing things—like having humans hand-deliver messages that could’ve just been emailed instead.
I work a letter opener under the flap. A letter and a three-page-long invoice along with colored photos spill out.
I snatch the letter and start reading, toying with the apple-shaped silver pendant around my neck that I never take off. The general manager has addressed it to me directly. I would’ve been impressed if it were his first time. That one, he addressed to “To Whom It May Concern.”
Dear Ms. Paige Johnson, the letter begins. That is the only nice part. The rest is a litany of complaints about the woman Ryder screwed and left behind in the hotel’s presidential suite. I can’t decide if it’s good or bad that the general manager used such polite yet pointed language.
The H&D women can be forces of destruction, fueled by spite and a sense of betrayal. The former is completely understandable, but the latter? I don’t get it.
Ryder never promises anyone anything. When he takes you into his suite, it’s for a night of good fucking. You can’t even call it sex, if what the media reports is even ten percent accurate.
I toss the letter on the desk and pick up the invoice. Then wince. The bill lists over twenty thousand dollars’ worth of damage to the suite.
Twenty thousand dollars? Did Ryder pick up a feral cat?
I scan the enclosed photos.