My dad raises a sharp brow at my language from across the kitchen, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Ivy,” Lori sighs as she clasps her hands in front of her. “Ivy, this is damage control time.”
“I don’t care what it is, I’m not doing it.”
They can’t be serious.
“You and Blaine are a business, Ivy,” Lori says sharply. “To be perfectly blunt, you’re commodities.”
“Now you listen to me!” My dad suddenly growls, his face red and angry. I look at him and shake my head.
“Dad, I’ve got this.”
He’s mad. He’s mad like he rarely gets, but this time it’s actually making me smile.
Stella apparently impressed upon Blaine to leave after I did yesterday, before sitting my parents down and explaining the situation to them.
My dad was apparently ready to go after him with a golf club after that.
He looks at me here in the kitchen, his eyes darting menacingly to Lori and the two members of her PR team standing timidly in the doorway.
“Dad-” I smile wryly. “Let me handle this.”
I turn back to Lori, smiling plastically. “My fans will understand, Lori. I’m going to post about the breakup today with a little fun note about Blaine and his other girls, and we all know the fans are going to eat that up with a silver-”
“I’m just going to stop you right there, Ivy,” Lori says brusquely.
Lori is all business. All New York sharpness and polish in her steel-grey business suit and pumps, all of which seems unbelievably out of place here in my parents’ farmhouse-style kitchen.
“You’re both a business, Ivy. You understand that we manage Blaine as well, right?”
She raises a sharp brow, and my jaw drops.
“Wait-”
“I can’t let you tarnish his image, Ivy. That’d be bad for business.” She shrugs. “Not to mention a breach of your own contract.”
Across the kitchen, Sierra is glaring daggers at Lori, and my dad mutters something under his breath through his scowl before my mom puts a hand on his arm.
“You can’t actually expect me to do this.”
“This” is the industry gala event Lori and the rest of the team apparently want me to attend, with Blaine as my date. They want me to smile for the cameras, model some new products, and act like I don’t want to punch the obnoxious loser next to me in the mouth.
“The gala?” Lori smiles saccharinely. “I do, actually. We need you both there for exposure and branding power.”
“I won’t do it,” I snap, folding my arms over my chest.
“You’re contractually obligated, I’m afraid.”
“And what happens if she doesn’t,” Mom says icily.
Lori sighs like she’s an annoyance, which gets my blood boiling.
“Contractually obligated, Ivy,” she says again, slower. “I don’t think we need to go into what happens if you break that.”
“You actually want me to show up to some stupid event with Blaine and pretend we’re together.”
“I actually do,” she says sharply. She taps something on her phone before she stands, smoothing her business suit.
Efficient, cold.
“You’re very good at what you do, Ivy. You’re witty, pretty, choose products well, and people like you. But this is the other side of the business, unfortunately. And I’m sorry to say, it’s the side that doesn’t move or change.”
She nods at my family before turning to me.
“Tonight, Ivy. We’ll send a car.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Ivy
“Hey.”
He’s leaning against the main cabin looking out at the harbor, but he turns at the sound of my voice and grins.
“I’m starting to think you just have a thing for houseboats, the way you keep showing up like this.”
I smile as I stop over the side onto the boat. “Hey, you live here.”
I shriek as he suddenly scoops me up into his arms.
“And yet you keep coming around,” he murmurs. “You must kind of like me or something.”
He kisses me and I’m falling right back into last night. I’m right back in the moment with just him and I with nothing else in the world mattering, just like it used to be. And I want to shove him into that cabin and pull his clothes off and do everything I’ve been waiting so long to do with him all over again.
But that’s not why I’m here.
He stiffens at the frown on my face. “What is it?”
I sigh heavily, looking away. “I have to do something tonight.”
“Does it involve me and a nice long drive somewhere, and maybe you in one of those short little sundresses I keep seeing on your Instagram page?”