His Absolute Insistence: A Scandalous Billionaire Love Story (Jessika, #2) (3 page)

"I... what?" the nurse asked.  She stared blankly, clearly never having received a request like this before.

"Asher, don't," Jessika said.  "Stop it.  Don't be like that.  Please.  It's not her fault."

Asher muttered under his breath.  "Jessika, I understand, but she's not helping matters.  There should be stricter protocol.  I'm not threatening to sue the hospital, I'm just asking her to wait in the bathroom until after this is cleared up and we can leave.  Staying overnight was obviously a mistake."

His wife finally looked up, confronting the situation head on.  "It doesn't matter where we stayed.  The situation would be the same.  The papers still would have..."  She trailed off, and he thought she'd stop right there, but after a moment's pause she continued.  "The article still would have been printed and we'd be hounded at home instead of here, except it's not safe there, either.  The police might be able to keep people away, but if they're investigating our house, we wouldn't have any privacy.  At least here we have a little bit."

"Possibly," he admitted.  He didn't want to admit it, but she had a point.  One incompetent nurse was better than a house full of investigating officers and detectives, or a mass of media newspeople assaulting them with questions.

"We'll just wait," she said to the nurse.  "Thank you for coming and letting us know.  We're sorry for the inconvenience.  The hospital staff must be on edge, too."

"Oh, it's... it's nothing," the nurse said.  "It's a little disruptive, but I'm sure everything will be taken care of soon.  The police should be able to shoo everyone away when they get a chance to—"

The woman kept talking and Jessika listened intently at his side, despite her firm, nervous grip on his arm.  He appreciated and adored that about her.  No matter her situation, regardless of the worry and anxiety it caused her, she always tried to be understanding and accepting.  Too much sometimes, he thought, but he was that way, too.  He trusted people too easily and it had caused issues in the past, but he kept doing it.  He didn't want to
not
trust people if he could, because then what sort of person would he be?

Paranoid, hateful, unpleasant.  A lot more than that, too.

While the nurse and Jessika talked, Asher grabbed his phone.  He had a lot of missed calls, but he ignored every single one of them.  Instead, he went to dial Lucent's number.  If anyone could get this resolved sooner rather than later, it was him.

He dialed, hit send, and the phone rang once.  Then he hung up.

He couldn't call Lucent.  Lucent had issues of his own.  This was a multi-tiered issue in dire need of escalation to someone who could resolve it, but currently he had no one he could rely on.  The thought bothered him more than he wanted to let on.

He put the phone at his side and smiled at Jessika.  As soon as they could leave, he'd bring her away from here and to somewhere safer and more private.  He didn't know where that was yet, considering every place he would have thought was safe was currently being torn apart by someone or had been torn through in the recent past, but he'd figure it out on the way.

The phone rang, vibrating at his side.  Asher grabbed it to shut it up, with plans to ignore whoever wanted to talk to him, but he stopped just before he hit the button to quiet the buzzing.  It was Jeremy.

He accepted the call.  "Hey, Jeremy.  What's going on?"

"Hey, Asher," Jeremy said.  "Not much?  You?  I hear there's a horde of newspeople at the hospital.  Wow.  You guys are all over the news, did you know?"

"Yes, actually," Asher said.  "We saw."

"Jessika freaked out, huh?"

At his side, Jessika hissed into Asher's ear.  "Don't tell him I freaked out."

"She said not to tell you she freaked out," Asher said.

"Asher!"  Her palm slapped against his back.

"Yeah, I figured as much," Jeremy said.  "I can understand.  Anyways, I thought you guys might want some help?  I'm out back, by the dumpsters, if you want to sneak away."

"Nice," Asher said.  His idea of a good day wasn't typically one that started with taking a trip past dumpsters, but it would have to do.  "That'd be great, except we're stuck in the hospital room at the moment.  There are reporters everywhere.  They don't have many security measures in here for preventing situations like that, I'm told."

"Asher, be nice," Jessika said, hitting him on the shoulder.

"Yeah, I thought about that," Jeremy said.  "What you could do is..."

"A
sher," I said.  "I don't think this is going to work."

"It's going to work fine," he said to me.  To the nurse across from us, he added, "Can you do this one thing, please?  That's all I'm asking for."

He was being kind of testy with the nurse.  I understood some of the reason for it, but I thought he could at least treat her a little nicer.  It really wasn't her fault for what happened.  In all honesty, I doubted she ever thought she'd be put in a situation like this.  That's how I felt on an almost daily basis after marrying Asher, too. 
How did this happen to me?
  A simple question, but one that didn't have an easy answer.

I loved Asher so much.  I wanted to be with him.  We had passion and spark, but also intimacy and understanding.  He was so fun to spend time with and I could watch a movie while snuggled in his arms for hours.  We could talk about it after, still cuddling, too.  We both liked books and reading.  He preferred to read on one of his eReaders, but sometimes I liked the feel of a real book in my hands.  It was fun, I thought.  Just the idea of it, the presence and the memories when we sat in bed together, cuddled close, each of us reading something different, but doing it at the same time.

I smiled inwardly, thinking about it.  Asher and I liked to point out parts of books that we really liked.  Sometimes he teased me for what I showed him, but he read his fair share of all sorts of fiction and non-fiction, so he wasn't one to talk.  I definitely caught him reading a romance novel now and again, and after I secretly went through his Kindle and found a few sensual and emotional scenes he'd highlighted from one of the books I'd just read and suggested to him, I poked fun at him back.  He started sharing more of the passages he liked after that.

Sometimes we played at re-enacting them.  It was more than a little silly, but I liked it.  Asher, my hero, my prince, rescuing me from distress and then there I was in his bed, shy and nervous, but wanting to offer him his rightful reward.  My body, his hands, our lips.

Our souls, together, and sometimes no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't think of us separating.  It was like trying to imagine a world without a sun.  It was possible to think of, but impossible to truly believe.

Yes, Asher had issues of his own.  He didn't quite understand all forms of intimacy all the time.  He'd been denied it in his previous marriage, only offered occasional bouts of false love.  He thought it was his duty to marry the woman he did, and after that he should carry on with his life as if that was that.  They rarely saw each other.  They didn't enjoy spending time together.  She did everything within her power to stay away from him, claiming to visit friends or going on trips for this or that reason.

I didn't hate her, but I didn't understand her, either.  Asher was capable of so much love and intensity that sometimes it almost hurt to think of him being denied that.  I wanted to give him just as much passion and love as he was willing to give.  And he always offered all of himself to me.  It wasn't always good, but I knew that and I knew that maybe sometimes I wasn't always good, either.  We were good for each other, though.  Complements, creating one union, two parts of something bigger and greater.

Believing this, knowing it as an absolute fact, I gave in and agreed to what he and Jeremy had in mind.  It was a simple plan, but I didn't know if it would work.

Asher picked up the phone on the hospital bedside table and offered it to the nurse.  She took it, clearly nervous.  I didn't blame her; Asher made lots of people nervous.  He didn't mean to, and most of the time he was very friendly, but being in the presence of a billionaire put unreal expectations and thoughts in people's minds.

The nurse dialed a number and called someone from the front desk.  She told them what Asher had told her to say, and then she hung up.  Within a minute or so, it began.

The hospital speaker system crackled to life.  Generally reserved for medical announcements, today they'd decided to offer an alternative message.

"Attention, please.  Members of the media currently inside of the hospital.  Asher Landseer, the CEO of Landseer Enterprises, has informed us that he'll be arriving out front shortly.  He'll offer a brief interview and Q&A session with everyone who is willing to leave the hospital.  I've been asked to relay this message so that the hospital won't have to resort to police intervention.  Please, if you'll kindly go to the front entrance and wait patiently outside, Asher Landseer, the CEO of Landseer Enterprises, will be here to meet with you shortly and answer any questions you might have."

There was a commotion in the halls again and it sounded like a lot of people were hurrying to leave.  Thankfully, Jeremy ended up being right; no one actually knew Asher was here, they only expected to find me.  In reality, he shouldn't be here anyways.  He could have waited in one of the waiting areas overnight, I supposed.  He'd waited in bed with me instead, and I loved him more for it, but it wasn't exactly in accordance with the hospital's rules and regulations.

"I don't know how you're going to fool them into thinking you arrived by car when you're going to join them from inside the building," I said.

Asher shrugged.  "I don't care.  No one lied, did they?  I'll arrive out front shortly.  That's the truth.  I wouldn't be doing this if they stayed in the halls, so it's a better offer than they would have received."

"And what are you going to say?" I asked.

He shrugged again.  "I don't know.  Something vague."

"That's not reassuring, Asher.  They have pictures of me.  You're in the pictures, too.  They've got videos.  They..."

Asher glared at the nurse, ignoring my concerns.

"They," he said to her, his voice harsh and unforgiving, "have nothing.  You understand this, don't you?"

He directed his question to the nurse, not me.  The poor woman gulped hard and nodded.

"Nothing is confirmed yet," he said, more agreeably.  "While the likeness is there, we'll have to talk about this more later.  There are repercussions either way, and we need to figure out which ones we'd rather deal with."

"Um... I really have no idea what you mean," I said.  "Can you explain that in plain English?"

"This goes for everything, not just what's going on now," he said, specifying more for the nurse than for me.  "If we deny that the images and video clips are us, then it's likely someone will post them all over the internet and sell them as one of those fake celebrity sex tapes.  We can deny it, and with some legal proceedings technically no one could say it's us after that, but there will always be a little wink wink nudge nudge going on behind the scenes, as if to say that they can't say it's us, but it definitely looks like it, doesn't it?"

"Well we can stop them if we don't deny it, can't we?  It's private and personal.  They can't do that."

"Yes," he said.  "Theoretically we could do that."

Right then, after Asher kept glaring at her and practically sneering and baring his teeth, the nurse decided to take him up on his previous offer and went to wait in the room's bathroom.  Asher really wasn't that mean, I didn't think, but he did look more than a little off putting when it came to her.

"We can get them to remove everything and claim privacy, copyright infringement, or whatever else," he said.  "I took the pictures and I shot the video, plus neither of us signed model release forms, so everything they're doing is illegal, but that's the point of it.  If we deny it's us, then it suddenly becomes vaguely legal because no one's going to press charges against them.  If we press charges against them, suddenly the world knows there's a sex tape and pictures of us out there.  As hard as we try, they're going to get leaked to the public, too.  And almost without a doubt it'll be intentional, but it'll be extremely difficult to prove that and possibly impossible to prove who did it.  Then, not only will everyone know it's a real sex tape and naked pictures because we're filing suit against these places, but if people really want to they'll probably be able to find everything online."

"So we can't win?" I said.  I hurt and I wanted to punch something because of it.  I wanted to pick up one of the pillows next to me and squeeze it hard in my hands, then throw it at the wall, grab another one, and cry into it.  "We just can't?  Whatever happens we... I'll be there, always.  I... I don't know how to do this, Asher.  I don't think I can.  First it's one thing, and that was so hard for me.  I tried.  I did.  Asher, I know that this is easier for you, but it's not for me and I tried to..."

I tried to deal with the media calling me a whore and a homewrecker.  I wanted to get past it, and I thought it would all blow over.  It wasn't as prominent in the public eye now, but I didn't know if it'd ever go away.  Then, once it started to fade, this happened?  People knew me.  My parents would find out about this.  All of my friends, my relatives, everyone I ever knew or would know in the future.

I could deny I was a whore.  I could say I wasn't a homewrecker, that I loved Asher and that his previous marriage wasn't anything more than a piece of paper declaring it as such.  Even his ex-wife agreed with that.  She didn't try to hide it, and despite every issue Asher or I had with her, she at least admitted she'd never bothered trying to love him.  It was kind, in a cruel sort of way.

I couldn't deny I'd let Asher take sexy photos of me, though.  I couldn't deny us being intimate on camera.  It was just us, private and for no one else to see, not shared with anyone, except now everyone knew.

So... then what?  I didn't know.  I gave up trying to figure it out.