The problem client is the guy from the beach. The problem client is … Gabe.
I don’t know how long I stand like that, but it’s long enough that Em says my name and nods at me to get moving.
“Sorry,” I say again, even softer this time, and start cleaning up my mess.
A chair rolls out from the table, and I feel a presence behind me. Gabe is holding out one of the cups that must have rolled away.
“Is this some sort of a joke?” he asks, looking from me to the table and back. His face is hard, the sardonic grin doing nothing for his good looks. “A setup?”
“What?” Confusion lines Em’s forehead. “This is our newest intern—”
“Madeline McPherson,” Gabe finishes for her, and gives a cold laugh. “We met on the beach this weekend. Wasn’t that … fortuitous?”
Fortuitous isn’t exactly the word I would have used. Catastrophic. Cataclysmic. Awful.
“Scott, do you have someone spying on me?” Gabe gestures to Emma with the cup. “I’ve been stalked by paparazzi. I’ve had women sneak into my hotel rooms. But this …” He finishes with a shake of his head.
I pick up the food boxes, trying to move as quickly and quietly as I can. I have to get out of this room. Like now.
“What are you talking about?” Scott says, sounding perplexed enough that I don’t need to look at him to imagine the expression on his face.
“The bike crash. The dog.” Gabe’s words are directed at my back. “Were you hoping that I’d rescue you and then … what exactly?”
“It was just an accident,” I say, staying focused on the boxes. “I had—have—no idea who you are.”
“I’m Gabriel Fortunato. Everyone knows who I am.”
Gabriel Fortunato. I’ve heard that name. Soccer. MLS. The pieces are starting to line up. I turn slowly to face my aunt, the agent, and Gabe. And then it all clicks. Gabriel Fortunato. The Italian soccer player who missed the goal in last year’s World Cup shoot-out and wrapped his Maserati around a telephone pole shortly after.
“The bike crash was a little over the top.” Gabe holds out the cup to me, lowering his voice to a stage whisper. “But the Wednesday panties certainly got my attention.”
“What in God’s holy name is going on here, Emma?” Scott thumps the table again.
Emma’s face is pale, her mango-colored lipstick a bright slash against her pallor. “I’d like an explanation myself.”
I can’t get enough air in my lungs. Black spots blot across my vision.
Gabe must see my panic because his face softens. He pushes back his hood. “Oddio. It was an accident?”
I take a deep breath in through my nose and blow it out through my mouth, trying to find some sort of center. “Em, remember how I rode your bike home on Friday? Well, I was a little out of practice, and I had Watford, and when he saw the sand soccer tournament and the ball bounced toward us—you know how he gets around soccer balls, so—”
Gabe flinches like he just took a hard kick to the shins.
“So Watford dove down the steps and pulled the bike with him and I crashed and …” I pause to pull up the hem of my skirt to show the bandage on my knee as if the evidence will save me. “And Gabe—or Gabriel, is it Gabriel?—stopped in the middle of his game—”
“Wait.” Scott’s voice stops the flow of my verbal diarrhea. He points at Gabriel. “You were playing in the sand soccer tournament?”
“I wasn’t alone. It was just for fun.” Suddenly, Gabe is defending himself in his native language, and shockingly, his agent is responding in Italian, although it’s slathered with a biscuits and gravy drawl. At least for the moment, I’m out of the hot seat.
Emma catches my eye across the room and mouths, “Run while you can.”
And I do.
CHAPTER
FIVE
ONE OF THE INTERNS THAT I MET BRIEFLY ON FRIDAY, MARA, IS sitting at the front desk. She looks up as I rush past her, but I pretend not to see her raised eyebrows and half-open mouth as I swing open the secret door.
I whip past William’s office and collapse into my cubicle chair. Elbows on desk. Head in hands. Questions ping around my brain like pinballs in the old arcade pizza place our family used to go to on Saturdays. What just happened? Ping. Gabriel Fortunato?!? Beep-boop. How could I possibly be so stupid? Pong. Also, what did he do to get into so much trouble since Friday? Brrrp. Game. Over.
Aunt Emma told me to run, but my gut—and the last growly words from his agent—says that Gabe has dug himself a ditch too deep to climb out without help.
My fingers fly over my keyboard as I log into Velocity’s creepy, stalkerish news-combing program and search his name. The nastiest gossip sites play a video of a glassy-eyed Gabe stumbling out of a club late Saturday night with his arm around the shoulders of a girl in a short, sparkly dress that shows off her killer legs.
The words drunken brawl and contract violation scroll across my screen. I plug my earbuds into the laptop to hear the voice-over.
“The Italian stallion’s management has been hush-hush about what actually happened in Mexico, but according to witnesses, MLS pretty boy Gabriel Fortunato escalated an argument to a shoving match, taking a punch to the chin. Ouch! Important side note for those not in the know: American laws prohibit nineteen-year-olds from hitting the clubs and boozing it up, so it looks like he spent some of his millions to charter a flight to a country where the laws are a little more lax. Not that silly things like laws have stopped this soccer hotshot in the past.”
The footage cuts to a still photo of a bright red sports car—or at least what’s left of it. A telephone pole rests against what would have been the passenger seat. The roof is partially caved in, and the windshield is opaque with fractures. I stifle a gasp. How in the world did he survive that? How could anyone survive that?
The gossip reporter continues:
“The boozy brawl comes on the heels of last summer’s—yikes—car wreck after Italy’s failed attempt at taking the World Cup title. While Fortunato wasn’t charged with driving under the influence, he was slapped on the wrist with a ticket for excessive speed and reckless driving.”
The next shot is of Gabe, shirt off, sunglasses on, smiling smugly at the camera while two women in bikinis drape themselves across him. Gag. What makes it worse is that it’s so posed and airbrushed and perfect that it looks like an advertisement. The voice-over fades to a buzz in the background as I lean a little closer to the screen, eyes squinted to see where Photoshop has done its magic.
“Trust me. The real thing is better,” a voice behind me says.
I bolt to my feet, forgetting the earbuds still attached to the laptop, which jerks off the edge of the desk. I manage to catch it before it plummets to a fiery death. My desk chair rolls backward into the open doorway. There Gabe stands in his hoodie-clad glory, gripping the chair’s high back and wearing an expression I can’t quite name. Confused amusement, maybe?
“Getting caught looking at naughty pictures is a little embarrassing,” he says, head canting to the side with all sorts of arrogant condemnation.
“It’s more embarrassing to pose for them,” I shoot back. Fold arms across chest, lean hip against desk, cross ankles. Assume self-congratulatory expression.