Roman-2(Lane Brothers, Book 5)(157)

Thomas pulled away. His eyes were bright. “Here’s my prediction,” he panted. “I’ll be waking up tomorrow morning in your arms.”

“Why?” Sasha said coquettishly. “Because when you want something, you don’t stop until you get it?”

Thomas shook his head. “No. Because when you want something, you don’t stop until you get it.”

A sudden flash of light made them both turn their heads. The paparazzi had found their way to the back of the building and were advancing en masse. At the same time, a black car rounded the corner. It had tinted windows.

“There’s our ride,” Thomas said. “Come on.”

He grabbed Sasha’s hand and led her to the awaiting car. With a tremble of anticipation, Sasha entered it willingly.





Chapter Four




It turned out that Thomas had an apartment in Gold Coast—a swanky part of Chicago—overlooking the lake.

“I have houses all over the place. I hate hotels,” he’d said in the car as an explanation. He went on to say that he hadn’t actually been to this specific house in over two years until his film promotional schedule had brought him here. “Two years?” Sasha had exclaimed. Turned out that was nothing compared to his Kolkata apartment. He hadn’t been there for a decade. He’d bought it when he was filming a movie on location in India but had never had a chance to return. It was the sort of flippant thing a man like Thomas Lloyd could do.

His Gold Coast house was everything Sasha would expect from a multi-millionaire—lavish decorations, sweeping staircases, and far too many bathrooms. Sasha briefly wondered how many women he’d showered with here, how many of the guest bedrooms he’d made love in, whether he’d ever done it on the sparkling-clean, granite-topped kitchen work surfaces.

“Drink?” Thomas said.

“Don’t you have a servant to do that for you?” she mocked.

Thomas smirked and set a couple of wine glasses onto the kitchen island. “I think you’ll find I’m actually very humble.”

Sasha laughed and picked up the freshly poured glass of wine. “Oh really? How many houses do you have precisely…?”

Thomas chinked his glass against hers. “How about I take you to them all and you can do the maths?”

“The math,” Sasha corrected, finding that humor was the only way to cope with a situation that was quickly making molten hot lava pump round her body.

Thomas took a sip of wine then set his glass down. He reached into his pocket. Sasha was half expecting him to pull out a pair of handcuffs or something else kinky. Instead, he produced his phone.

“Here,” he said, holding it out to her.

“What’s this for?”

“Google. You can see if you’ve had any impact on the internet.”

Sasha frowned, as she took the phone from him and went online. She tapped in Thomas Lloyd’s name and got a million hits. It took her less than a minute to find a photograph of them together in the restaurant from earlier. The image was grainy but clearly taken from inside by the waiter.

“He could’ve sold that for a couple of hundred dollars,” Thomas said.

Sasha raised an eyebrow. “That much for a photo? I’ll remember that....”

Her joke faded into the ether, as she scrolled through the pages. She saw there were already articles speculating about her identity. One said she was an extra on his last film. Another said she was a crew member. A third even claimed she was his long lost daughter suing him for lost child support payments and emotional damage.

“Wow. There’s so much garbage written about you.”

“This is my life,” Thomas said a little sadly. “Maybe you can understand now why meeting someone like you is such a big deal to someone like me?”

Sasha nodded, her gaze transfixed with the seemingly endless streams of speculation. She made the mistake of reading the first comment on one of the articles. ‘Whoever that bitch is, I’m going to cut her head off with a rusty chainsaw. Thomas is mine.’ The comment was signed off ‘Mrs. Lloyd’.

“Yikes,” Sasha said.

Then she spotted something else on the screen that caught her attention. An article by Alicia. She clicked on it and the words, ‘My Night of Passion with Hollywood’s Bad Boy’ flashed up on the screen.

She exited the page immediately, but the damage was done. Remembering Alicia made her stomach drop. They’d just been about to talk about Thomas’s fling with the rival Atomic journalist in the restaurant before the paparazzi interrupted them. Thomas had got as far as saying Alicia was nothing compared to Sasha, but there’d been no elaboration. Why should she believe him? How did she know he hadn’t said exactly the same thing to Alicia about some other journalist he’d bedded? Just because he didn’t sleep with prostitutes didn’t mean she could suddenly trust everything he said. His little-boy-lost routine could easily be another weapon to render her defenseless. He could still be driven to bed as many women as possible. She could still just be another notch on the bedpost.