Second Chance Mess (Bad News Billionaires Book 1) Page 7

  The photographer was nice; she reminded me a bit of Brooke. They had a similar look and way about them. She also had a very creative eye and came up with some unique positioning to make the photos look unique and sharp. As the shoot started to drag on longer than expected, my mind started to wander to last night. I was still listening to the photographer’s directions, and I was still posing with Chelsea against the screen, but I was also letting it all kind of drone out in my head while I thought about Brooke and the night that we shared.

  It was a wonderful feeling knowing that we were back together in a much more unshakeable way than we ever were before. I wondered what she was doing upstairs now, and I couldn’t wait to be done with this shoot and get back up there to her. I also couldn’t wait for the workday to be over so that we could go back home and I could make love to her again. Even the mere thought of it sent a tingling and exciting sensation into my pants.

  What happened next was not only unexpected but completely unnecessary. I heard the photographer say something about the last pose being a more “intimate feel” to make the viewers feel like the build in the picture was more like home than just a house. I knew what she meant; she was talking about creating a feeling of being one with the surroundings in the landscape backdrop; she wasn’t talking about being intimate with the model. But of course, Chelsea jumped on the word intimate and used it as an excuse to touch me again. This time, since I had been daydreaming and not paying much attention to her, I wasn’t ready to react to her advance as quickly as I needed to be.

  She reached her hand straight down the front of my pants and wrapped her fingers around my cock, managing to move her hand in two strokes before I was able to grab her wrist and pull her hand out. The problem wasn’t as much that she had done it, but my physical reaction to it. I had just been thinking about making love to Brooke and was already feeling turned on, even before anyone touched me. When Chelsea managed to stroke me off, it literally caused a visceral reaction that immobilized me for a split second and made me instantly swell and harden at the touch before I could pull her hand out. Chelsea stood there, looking impressed with herself.

  “What the hell, Chelsea?” I shouted at her after telling the photographer to pack up the shoot and making sure that she knew not to use the erotic looking photos that were snapped.

  Now I couldn’t tell Brooke everything about the shoot. I couldn’t tell her that this had happened—not right now—after we had just finally gotten to such a good place. I told Chelsea that the next time she tried to touch me, I would file a harassment charge against her. She looked intimidated enough by that threat to hopefully stay away.

  I had the photographer show me the shots that she would submit to the client, none of which, of course, were the last one that was taken while the camera shutter was still clicking with Chelsea’s hand in my pants. The photographer said that after the select few were removed from the camera and sent off to the client, that the rest would be deleted. The few employees who were there were sworn to silence about it on the threat that I would end their career if word got out about this inappropriate shoot to anyone. I decided that since the issue had essentially been erased, the best thing for me to do was to act like nothing had happened and move on from it.

  I knew that I should have learned my lesson from the last time and probably just marched upstairs and told Brooke the truth right away, but it really didn’t seem like this would be a lingering issue. I didn’t want to go right back to the beginning of the problems again. I wanted to stay in the place that Brook and I were in now. Chelsea wasn’t going to be able to plaster the picture all over social media this time because she didn’t have it.

  My body calmed back down after a few minutes, and after I thanked the photographer and gave everyone else one last look of warning, I went back upstairs to my office.

  “Hey,” Brooke smiled as I walked in. She was sitting next to Max with a pile of papers spread out in front of them. It looked like they’d been hard at work. “How did the photo shoot go?”

  “It was fine,” I said without expression. “It lasted a bit longer than expected, so I’m definitely ready for another cup of coffee now.”

  Brooke laughed and offered to go grab some more caffeine for all of us. After she left, Max gave me a look. I recognized that look; it was the look he gave me when he knew there was more to say than what was actually coming out of my mouth.

  “You knew,” I said when I saw his face, “You knew that she would be there, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, I heard someone in the publicity department mention it.”

  “Why didn’t you warn me?” I asked, a bit pissed-off.

  Max shrugged. “I didn’t think it would do any good. It wasn’t like you had a choice in the matter. I heard the client requested Chelsea specifically.”

  “Yeah, they did. Figures.”

  “How did it go?”

  “Not well, if we’re honest now. Chelsea put her hand in my pants, and I reacted without meaning to.”

  “Oh shit,” Max said with wide eyes. “Did they get a picture of that?”

  “Yeah, I think so, unintentionally. But the photographer is going to delete them once she has the pics from the client downloaded.”

  “You have to tell Brooke, like right now.”

  “No, I already took care of the picture, threatened Chelsea with legal action if she didn’t knock this type of shit off, and swore any of my employees that were there to secrecy.”

  Max shook his head vigorously. “That’s a really bad idea, man. You shouldn’t keep anything from her again. You know what happened the last time.

  “Yeah, I know. And I know that you’re usually always right about these things, but I just can’t open this wound with Brooke again. I didn’t do anything wrong. Chelsea touched me faster than I could stop her, and I pulled her away and shut down the shoot as soon as it happened. Brooke and I are in such a good place right now, and this issue is over. I just don’t want to upset her over nothing. I feel like it will do more harm than good, even if I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I don’t know, man. I really feel like it’s the wrong move not to tell Brooke. If she finds out about it from somewhere else, it’ll make you look guilty, and it’ll make you look like you lied again and got turned on by the same woman that almost caused you to lose Brooke in the first place.

  “The only reason I even got turned on my that touch was that I had been thinking about having sex with Brooke. I can’t lose her again, Max, I think I’m in love with her.”

  Max smiled when he heard my admission of love for Brooke. He had known if even before I admitted it to myself. “You’d better not screw this up with her,” he said. “I like Brooke, and I really think you two need each other.”

  “Yeah, I think we do, too. Which is why I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that I don’t lose her.”

  “Okay, guys,” Brooke said as she came back around the corner with three steaming cups of hot coffee. “Who’s ready for some caffeine?”

  We took our cups from her and set them all down onto the table. Before we got back to work, I grabbed her by the waist and wrapped my arms around her and kissed her. After she got over the initial shock that I had kissed her in the office in front of Max and anyone else who might have walked by, she relaxed, and I felt her body melt in my arms as she kissed me back and put her hands against my chest. When we let go, we both saw Max with a wide smile as he looked at us.

  “I love you guys together,” he said.

  “So do I,” Brooke said as she smiled contently and came to sit back down next to him.

  This was how I wanted every day to be; with me and Brooke and Max, all sitting around the office, enjoying creating new projects together. This was why I couldn’t let some ridiculous photo shoot and some offensively obsessed woman ruin what I had going on here. I had way too much to lose. My company was going great with this new contract, my relationship was going great with Brooke, and Max had jus
t agreed this morning that he would stay on-board with the project to completion instead of just doing the one or two builds that he had first committed to.

  He was getting ready to take another wandering trip in his van off into the wilderness somewhere in the country for a few months, but I had convinced him to stay. Well, actually, I think it might have been Brooke who had convinced him to stay. I think seeing the two of us together made him happy, too. There was just a good feel in the company overall now, and I didn’t want it to end.

  “So when does the promotional material from the shoot come out?” Brooke asked.

  “The photographer is going to submit the few best shots to the client for approval, and then they’ll get to work on creating the final image products. Probably should only take a few days.”

  “Cool, I can’t wait to see it! How was the other model?”

  Max looked up at me, disapprovingly. I knew what he was thinking. He thought that now was my one and only chance to tell Brooke what had really happened at the photo shoot. He was right; I should have.

  “She was fine,” I said.

  “What did she look like?” Brooke asked.

  For a minute, I wondered if she had heard that it was Chelsea, too, and that maybe this was some sort of test that I was failing miserably. But then she went on to talk about how she thought a redhead would have made a nice contrast against the greenish mountain landscape on the backdrop.

  “She didn’t have red hair,” I said. “It was black.”

  “I suppose black hair would look nice too.”

  Then I realized like an idiot that she would see that it was Chelsea once the client’s material was published.

  “It was actually Chelsea,” I said. “The client requested her, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.”

  For a minute, Brooke paused, and I knew that I should have told her it was Chelsea right off the bat. “Thanks for telling me that and being honest,” Brooke smiled. “I know that probably wasn’t easy for you.”

  “Which thing?” I asked. “Doing the shoot with Chelsea or telling you that she was there?”

  “Both. But I’m glad that you told me. I’m glad that we have trust now.”

  Max rolled his eyes ever so slightly that I was the only one to have noticed.

  At least I told her that Chelsea was there. She didn’t need to know about the rest of it.

  14

  Chapter Ten (Brooke)

  I was a little taken aback when Tim told me yesterday that the model was Chelsea, but my unease about it only lasted a minute. After all, it wasn’t his fault that she was the model the client picked. I actually felt kind of bad for him for having to do the shoot with her after everything that had happened. I was sure it was a terribly awkward situation for him to be in. I was really happy that he told me about her being there. It must have been hard for him, not knowing how I would react and not wanting to upset me and cause another misunderstanding between us again. But everything had been going so great, and it meant a lot to me that he was honest and upfront with me about it.

  Today was going to be another productive day at the office. The builds were already starting to be built, and Tim had gone to one of the manufacturing sites in the city to check on the initial kick-off. I was going to go with him and see the production happening in person, but I had a few things on the marketing end that needed to be wrapped up first. Right after he had left, I realized that I had forgotten to bring my laptop with me to work, a critical error since I needed it to get anything done. We came together in one car this morning, and I knew that he wouldn’t have time to run back and grab it for me since he had to be at the manufacturing site by the time that they were ready to roll. So, I decided to just borrow Tim’s desktop in his office to do my work. It would be a bit more tedious since I had already started some of the work on my laptop, but I should still be able to get it done by the end of the day today.

  I sat down in Tim’s desk chair just as Max was walking by.

  “You playing boss today?” he teased.

  I laughed. “I left my laptop at home, so I need to use Tim’s computer.”

  “Sounds good. I’m going to go head out to pick up some supplies I need to get going on this. I’ll be back a little bit later on.”

  I nodded and then started my work.

  Tim’s computer station had three monitors so that he could lay out everything that he needed to see and multitask on at once. It was a bit overwhelming to me, though, and I tried to shut the two on either side of the main screen off, but they seemed to be all interconnected. When I shut one screen down, they all turned off. Eventually, I just left everything on and tried to ignore them. The thing that was the hardest to ignore, though, was the constant beeping of his incoming emails.

  How does anyone read and respond to these many emails in one day?

  The volume controls also seemed to be rigged into one of Tim’s unique configurations, so I couldn’t turn that off, either. I was getting a little frustrated because this would take me a lot longer than I had planned on it taking me. I wished that I just hadn’t forgotten my laptop. I pressed through all of the work until it was late afternoon. Tim should be back from the manufacturing plant soon, and I was excited to hear all about it and see any pictures that he might have taken on his phone. Tim was all about using the big tech and the large production plants for things, while Max was more about creating things individually by hand even if it took a hundred times longer. He said you could see the difference when you touched the things. I thought that both of the guys made a good balance for each other.

  I was trying to figure out how best to put the files together for Tim’s final presenting of the project to his client when everything was done. The presentation was a big part of how things were received. There needed to be some sort of unveiling video and some process pictures, maybe even some interviews with the potential future tiny home buyers who would live in the newly formed community.

  The ding on Tim’s email went off again, and I had been so deep in thought about the presentation I was working on, that it startled me and made me look over at one of the secondary screens.

  The newest, unopened email was titled “Behind the Scenes Photo Shoot,” and it looked like it was from the photographer who was here yesterday; I was so excited to see the pictures from the shoot, and now also admittedly a little curious since I knew that Chelsea was the model, that I really wanted to open the email and look at them. I tried not to, especially since Tim had been so honest with me about Chelsea having been there. It would have been a real crap move for me to open his email without his permission. But I was just so curious, and I was his assistant, and it was my job to field incoming emails related to the project. I went ahead and clicked on it without giving it any further thought.

  There was a short message in the email and then a bunch of photo downloads.

  “I know you didn’t want all of these, but since I am purging them all from my camera now, I just went ahead and sent them all to you so you can keep the ones you want and delete the rest. Don’t worry; I didn’t send them to her. You’re the boss.”

  I wondered what that meant.

  I clicked on all of the download links and waited for the pictures to show up. The good thing about the three screens is that when the pictures started to open, they were pasted across all three giant screens in a big montage of images that was really cool to see. Tim looked gorgeous in front of the camera, of course. He was wearing charcoal dress pants and a white button-down shirt that he had the cuffs turned up on and a couple of the buttons undone. He looked like a professional who was hard at work, building people’s dream homes.

  Chelsea looked beautiful, but a bit trashy in the super-tight dress that she was wearing. She had the kind of body that most women dreamed of—thick-thighed, tiny-waisted, and with breasts that looked way to big and perky to be real. But in this dress, she kind of looked like she’d been stuffed into a sausage casing. It was so tight that you c
ould see every line of her curvature beneath. The two of them looked good together on the surface of the pictures, though, I wasn’t going to lie. The client would be happy with them, for sure.

  I scrolled through the photos as they continued popping up on the screens and was almost to the end of them when a picture popped up that made me instantly feel sick. I looked at the photo on the screen in front of me, and then at the two pictures that followed on the monitors on either side of me. I couldn’t believe this was happening again. I felt my eyes start to fill with tears as I stared at the images through my blurry vision.

  The picture in front of me was of Chelsea with her hand inside of the front of Tim’s pants. It was very obvious by the outline beneath the fabric that her hand was wrapped fully around him, and you could even see the tip of his cock pressing against his dress pants. The look on her face was one of sultry seduction, and she looked as though she was enjoying teasing him in such a way. The look on Tim’s face was one of surprise. He didn’t look angry or upset, just shocked.

  The next two pictures appeared to be almost the same. Chelsea’s hand was no longer in his pants, but something else was. Tim was standing in the center of the screen with such a massively swollen and protruding bulge in his pants that it was impossible not to see how physically turned on he had been by Chelsea’s touch. His face looked the same as it had in the first picture.

  Maybe there was some sort of explanation for it again. Maybe Chelsea had just shoved her hand in his pants, thinking that it would be funny. But why wouldn’t he have told me about this? After all that we had already gone through, why wouldn’t Tim have explained what happened? Instead, he covered it up and hoped that I would never find out about it. I started to full-on cry. I just couldn’t believe that he would do this to me again, not now after things had become so wonderful between us.