“Whatever.” Peyton dragged the iPad across the table and began pressing icons on the screen. “So where’s your friend the gold medalist?” That little edge to Peyton’s question hit every nerve.
“He had an early flight to catch.” Shut up and type, you nosy little bitch.
“Oh, I see. So he was privy to the early arrival. Nice.”
Victoria stood and glared down at Peyton. “I hope it was nice for our clients who prefer anonymity. One day, if you achieve the sort of celebrity status you’re aspiring to–which you might delude yourself you’ve already achieved–you’ll understand why somebody would want to sneak away someplace like a cruise with no reporters.”
“You’d like me to believe he’s just some friend of yours, who came here for privacy, and not a boytoy, for either you or your husband, although I’m not sure which.”
“I don’t give a Goddamn what you believe.” Victoria put her hands on the table and leaned toward Peyton. “All I care about is what you tell other people, and we both know what that will be, don’t we?”
Peyton’s lower lip trembled, then she looked down at her notes and went back to work.
Chapter 24
“Set me up with one of those frozen drinks you make so good.”
Griffin’s swimmer-surfer-swinger friend slumped from a bar stool to put his head in his hands.
“Uh, sure. David Roman, right?”
He jerked his head up. “Yeah. Whatever. Keep that on the downlow, huh?”
“Trouble in paradise?” He poured a glass from the blender–he’d started wondering whether the whole damn batch would go to waste, since nobody was stopping by for drinks.
“Guess I could ask the same. Cabana Girl was a traitor, huh?”
“Guess so, bro. What about you? No flying off into the sunset in a helicopter with the Grants?”
“Fuck, no.” David tipped his glass and gulped. “No. And I need a shot of something. This thing’s gonna freeze my fuckin’ brain.”
Griffin chose to assume David’s watery eyes were caused by brainfreeze, not whatever else had gone wrong for him. The guy had obviously gotten too much tangled up with the couple, and it hadn’t ended well, which was just sad.
“Looks like this definitely ain’t the Love Boat.” Although he’d noticed some of the crew members leaving with happy endings. “Not for us, anyway.”
* * * *
Gil set the empty chopper down and powered up his phone–again. He’d check the Gossip Girl blog–again. Something was wrong, very wrong. She always posted late at night, and now…nothing. What the fuck had happened? He’d tried calling her when he offloaded the last bunch of Beautiful People in LA, but her phone still went straight to voice mail. Which meant she was either still on the ship, or on a flight somewhere.
There. There! New text on her blog site. Fuck, yeah. Whew. He scanned the words…disgustingly unified jumped out at him, but otherwise, nothing derogatory about Grant at all. Goddammit. She must’ve had a reason for changing the tone in this post. Why? Fuck. If she got outed, that meant she’d probably out him too. Not only would he lose a peach of a job, but he’d lose access to Victoria. Couldn’t happen. He deserved Victoria.
If he could get hold of Peyton, maybe he could bribe her into keeping his name out of everything.
What if she’d been arrested?
He had hours before he’d know–still two more trips from here to LA, and then he had to leave this chopper here, catch a commercial flight back to Salt Lake and get the other chopper ready to fly Victoria and Brett back to the Mountain. Maybe somewhere along the way, he’d get hold of Peyton.
* * * *
“Hello?” Gil’s phone rang while he waited for the business class boarding call. He fucking hated flying on planes now, dealing with crowds and waiting while uptight uniforms ran the show.
“Hey. It’s me–Peyton.”
He knew–didn’t take a rocket scientist to read fucking Caller ID. “What the fuck happened today?”
The lady next to him glared, but he didn’t give a fuck whether she liked his language or not. She could suck it.
“I–this guy–he found the iPad in my room, and he told the Grants, and–”
A guy. And she didn’t have the sense to hide the fucking iPad? If brains were dynamite, the bitch couldn’t blow herself up. “So what’s the deal?”
“Look. I didn’t out you. They think I was working alone. I took all the blame.”
“And why would you do that?”
“Because, stupid. I still want my five thousand dollars.”