Take Down, page 23
Leandro’s pocket buzzed, and he pulled his phone out, intending to dismiss the call, but when he saw “Vovô” pop up on the screen, he knew he had to answer it. He’d catch so much shit if he ignored a call from his grandfather.
Excusing himself from the group, he quickly wove his way through the club and out onto the smoking terrace, where it was much quieter. The last thing he needed was for his grandfather to know he was at a strip club. He was already on thin ice with his family after a string of recent . . . events. He swiped his finger across the screen and raised the phone to his ear.
“Alô?”
A world-weary sigh greeted him, and he braced himself against whatever might be coming. “What’s wrong with you?”
Now, there was a short question with a long answer. “Vovô?” He didn’t need to say anything more. João Oliveira wasn’t a man who pulled his punches.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”
Leandro bit his tongue, not entirely sure what his grandfather had found out about. That he’d accidentally lost the family yacht for three weeks last year? The illegal racing?
“I saw your little video, with the models.”
Ah. The sex tape. Fantastic.
“To be fair, I didn’t know anyone was recording us. That was supposed to be a private, uh, party.”
“It doesn’t matter, Leandro. The damage is done. When are you going to grow up and start behaving like an Oliveira? Like a man? You’re twenty-eight years old, for Christ’s sake.”
His grip tightened around his phone as something hot and prickly clawed at his chest. “Pretty sure I was behaving like a man in the video.” Fuck, if he ever got his hands on the cretin who’d taken it, he’d flay him alive. The poor women in the video had taken so much shit, and they’d all only been out for a little company—okay, fine, a lot of company—and a good time.
“I’m sick of this behavior. You need to grow up, Leo,” he said, softening his words with the use of Leandro’s family nickname. “I know you’re enjoying your life. I know you train hard for your fights. But there’s such a thing as too much of a good thing. You spend so much time chasing these fleeting things, these undignified things . . .” He sighed again, as though he were weighing his words. “Even though you’re wealthy, you’ll have nothing, not even your good name.” His tone turned sharp again. “Smarten the hell up. Enough of this shit. I don’t want to hear more stories about you, you understand me?”
“Yes, Vovô,” he said, scuffing his toe against the ground. A wave of irritation, shame, and frustration crashed into him. Without another word, his grandfather ended the call. Leandro suddenly understood the English expression chewed out, because after that short conversation, he felt ripped up and spit out.
As he made his way back to his table with his friends, he couldn’t help but feel that there was no such thing as too much of a good thing. The concept was completely foreign to him, and not just because it was another annoying English phrase he sometimes struggled to wrap his brain around. No, it was simply that the idea of having too much of something good didn’t make any sense. How could someone have too much of something that made them happy? That they enjoyed? It was like saying there was too much air, or too much sunshine.
A completely louco idea if he’d ever heard one.
He downed the rest of his tequila, trying to push away his grandfather’s words and the way they’d sliced him, leaving him raw. The alcohol warmed him, and as beautiful women danced around them, and Thiago told a favorite story from when he and Leandro were teenagers, Leandro felt the tension ebb from his shoulders, the corner of his mouth kick up.
Too much of a good thing? Impossible. This was life at its finest, right here, right now.
“Hey!” A female shout came suddenly from behind the curtained area. “I said no!”
Frowning, Leandro pushed to his feet and ate up the distance between his chair and the VIP area in several long strides. He could hear the sounds of a struggle before he saw it, and then heard a familiar voice.
“Get your fucking hands off me, creep!”
Red’s voice. Where the fuck were the bouncers? Anger tensed every muscle in his body, and he ripped the curtain back. A ruddy-faced man in his fifties was holding a struggling Red against him, her arms pinned behind her at an awkward angle. Several strands of her hair hung from the links of his watch, as though he’d grabbed her head and she’d jerked away from him. The straps of her leather halter hung limply at her sides, and Leandro could see fingertip bruises already emerging on the pale skin of her breast.
His anger turned to protective fury, white hot and barely controlled.
“Let her go,” he shouted, and when the ass took more than half a second to comply, Leandro pushed between them, moving Red behind him and shoving the other man hard in the chest.
“You stupid bitch,” the man hissed at Red, and the remaining shreds of Leandro’s control evaporated. He shot his fist out and connected with the man’s nose, hard. Several flashes went off, and Leandro realized they had an audience, but he was too angry to care.
“You don’t come to this club again,” he said, bunching his fists in the man’s shirt and shaking him. “I see you here, I do more than punch.” He had to concentrate on getting the words out, his accent thickening and his grasp of English evaporating with his self-control.
The man struggled free and took a sloppy swing at Leandro, who leaned back, then jabbed his fist into the man’s jaw. Finally, the bouncers came rushing over, parting the crowd that had gathered. They hauled the asshole up by his elbows and escorted him out.
Leandro turned to Red, who’d managed to pull her halter back into place. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
She nodded. “I’m fine. No thanks to the fucking invisible bouncers!” she shouted in their direction. “Thanks.”
He shook his head, smiling at her. “I like punching people. You don’t need to thank me.”
Something in her eyes shifted, and they softened and melted. “Maybe I want to.”
He grinned. He knew that look. He was definitely in for a night of too much of a good thing. Exactly what he needed right now to chase away what his grandfather had stirred up.
Besides, moderation was overrated.
2
“OLIVEIRA IS A fucking loose cannon, and I need you to get him under control.”
Ashlynn Fields sat across from Craig Darcy, president of the World Fighting Championship. She peered at him across the desk and opened her notebook. She had a feeling she was going to need to take notes. “That bad, huh?”
Craig laughed and began to tick off a list of the new light heavyweight champion’s indiscretions on his fingers. “For one, he has a fucking sex tape that won’t go away. Two, Mereo Athletics—our biggest sponsor—is threatening to pull their contract if he vandalizes the apparel they provide again. Three, he fucked the mayor’s daughter—the fucking mayor’s daughter—so I have that asshole on my back now. Four, he was cited for street racing. And the latest one: he got in a fight in a strip club, and it’s all over the goddamn Internet. I have sponsorship deals with Coke and Warner Brothers on the table. They’re threatening to walk if we can’t clean up our image.”
Ashlynn bit her lip as she scribbled down the areas they’d need to address. As an independent PR consultant, she’d worked off and on with the WFC and some of their sponsors for over a year, most notably when Craig’s daughter, Jules, the league’s director of marketing, had become involved with fighter Nick Giannakis—a huge breach of their employment contracts. Ashlynn had spun that situation, making it clear to everyone in the organization that the clause didn’t cover preexisting relationships. With another potential PR crisis on his hands, Craig had asked her to come in today to help with Oliveira.
It looked like she had her work cut out for her. From what she knew of him, Oliveira was an entitled trust-fund baby from a Brazilian banking family who thought the rules didn’t apply to him. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe in his world he moved from scandal to scandal and no one cared. Unfortunately, the WFC was already struggling to be accepted as a legitimate sports organization. They’d made great progress over the past year by securing big sponsorships, but they needed more to sustain that momentum. Athletes behaving badly weren’t helping their cause, especially ones as high profile as Oliveira. The champions were key figures who naturally attracted a larger share of media scrutiny. Ashlynn knew that having this sort of negative press while attempting to woo family-friendly advertising could be disastrous.
“I hadn’t heard about the strip club incident,” she said. She’d heard about the others, though. The sex tape had been leaked to TMZ about a month ago. It apparently featured Oliveira with a handful of models in a hotel room. He hadn’t even been ashamed of it. The video of a paparazzo asking him about it as he came out of a restaurant had appeared on all of the entertainment news shows. He’d grinned at the camera and said in his accented English, “It was a fun night.” She’d rolled her eyes at that part, as he’d confirmed her initial impression of him. Selfish and irresponsible.
Craig gave a world-weary sigh and raked a hand through his hair. “Just happened last night.”
That explained why Ashlynn had received a frantic call from Craig’s assistant two hours ago asking if she could come to the office as soon as possible. “Ah, okay, so this is a priority.”
“I’d hoped it’d fly under the radar, but the execs from Coke and Warner Brothers are pissed. I think I calmed them down for the time being.” He shook his head. “The sex tape was a private thing, plus he wasn’t champion then. I can’t have someone so high profile beating people up in a strip club, even if he says he was defending a stripper.”
She didn’t know Oliveira well enough to gauge if that was true or if he’d just been drunk and looking for a fight. She’d only seen him in person once, the night of his championship fight. He’d seemed arrogant and full of himself that night. It was the way he’d smirked at the reporters after he’d won, as though he were entitled to the belt. The way he’d basked in the spotlight. The way he’d flexed for the cameras, smiling playfully and winking. “Is this something we need to put together an official press release for?”
“No, I don’t want to weigh in just yet. It might still blow over.”
Ashlynn nodded, agreeing with that. Sometimes acknowledging things only made them bigger, added kindling to the fire. “Okay, I’ll get to work on a statement just in case we need it. In the meantime, how about we come up with something positive to put out there? Do you think we could get Oliveira to agree to do some charity work? He could work with Gabe Maddox at the WFC Foundation. I know it’s early yet, but I read that Gabe is setting up his first Saturday karate clinic for underprivileged kids.”
Craig shook his head again. “Nah, won’t work. Oliveira is still pissed at Maddox. Thinks Maddox didn’t put up enough of a fight for the belt. He’s not wrong, mind you, but getting those two together right now wouldn’t be a good idea. I like what you’re thinking, though. It’s a great plan.”
She hadn’t realized there was bad blood between Oliveira and Gabe. They’d been rivals and Gabe had retired after Oliveira had won the championship belt from him. End of story, or so she’d thought. “How about the children’s hospital? I think I could arrange for him to do a tour of a floor there.”
“Perfect! Who doesn’t like sick kids?”
Ashlynn frowned.
“You know what I mean,” Craig clarified, flashing her a contrite smile. “We have family-oriented sponsors now, so we need some family-oriented PR.”
“Do you think he’ll go for it?” she asked.
“Doesn’t fucking matter. He’ll go for it or I’ll cut his ass from the roster. We stand to make more from these sponsorships than from the fans he’ll bring in.” He sat back in his chair with a smile on his face, visibly more relaxed than when she’d arrived. “Arrange the hospital visit. He’s got some interviews scheduled over the next couple of weeks to talk about being the new champion. Jules has him booked on morning shows in Miami, New York, and Los Angeles. Go with him and keep his ass out of trouble.” He stilled and then leaned forward, as though an idea had just occurred to him. “I want you to coach him.”
“Coach him.” She’d meant to phrase it as a question, but her words had come out flat.
“Yeah. You know. On how to be a decent person. More champion, less . . . Oliveira.”
Normally she worked on defined projects, handled specific crises. Granted, Oliveira seemed like a walking crisis, so maybe Craig wasn’t off base asking her to work with him. Maybe she just wasn’t sure she wanted to babysit some rich, spoiled bad boy.
Craig continued before she could answer. “I’ll talk to Oliveira and let him know to expect you. Meet with him, tell him the plan, get him on board. Tomorrow good?”
She nodded slowly. “Uh, yeah. Tomorrow’s fine.”
As though he could sense her hesitation, Craig shot her a placating smile. “Look, I know this is asking a lot and it’s short notice. But you’d be saving my ass here if you could take this mess off my hands.”
She smiled. “It’s fine.” The WFC had grown so much in the past year, Ashlynn practically worked here part-time anyway. “Most of my clients are a little less hands-on, so I can work this into my schedule. Don’t worry.” It’d be a huge time commitment, but she was anxious to get started, and Craig had always compensated her generously.
“Great. Talk to Jules on your way out. She can get you the schedule and we’ll get your flights booked.”
Realizing she was being dismissed, Ashlynn closed her notebook and grabbed her purse. “Thanks for calling me, Craig. I really enjoy working with the organization.”
Craig smiled. “You’re helping me out here. You get us through this, and I think there could be a permanent position here for you.”
She tried to keep her expression bland, but her heart stopped for a second. A full-time position with a growing company like the WFC would be huge for her. It’d mean stability and a possible future as a PR executive. And there’d be plenty to keep her busy with the cast of characters around here. “I won’t let you down.”
His phone rang, so she said good-bye and went to find Jules. Oliveira would be challenging, but she’d yet to meet a challenge that she couldn’t overcome. She was confident she could handle him.
That night after dinner, Ashlynn took her glass of Chablis and headed into the tiny bedroom she’d converted into an office on the first floor of her townhome. Settling into her chair, she opened up her laptop and Googled Leandro Oliveira. Her meeting with him was confirmed for tomorrow morning at ten, and she wanted to make sure she knew the extent of the public image damage she was dealing with.
The search returned a lot of articles with the same handful of photos showing him punching some guy in the strip club. They’d clearly been taken by bystanders with cell phones. There were also articles and blogs that mentioned the other incidents Craig had talked about. She clicked a link that took her to a Brazilian fan website. It had photos of Leandro from his fights in a Brazilian MMA league. It also featured photos from various modeling jobs he’d apparently done. She hadn’t known that he’d modeled, but there he was on a beach in a Speedo looking like a Brazilian god, all hard muscle and sexy, masculine intensity.
She took a moment to appreciate the beauty that was Leandro. In person, his expression tended to show his arrogance, but in the photo he gazed at the camera thoughtfully. His blue-green eyes seemed to look right at her, sending a tug of longing straight to her core. She bit her lip and clicked on the next photo. In this one he was dressed like the son of a billionaire banker in a blue button-down shirt, white linen pants, and canvas shoes, lounging on the deck of a yacht. His olive skin and thick, dark brown hair glistened in the sun, emphasizing the masculine planes of his face. The logo of a men’s clothing company was stamped on the bottom of the photo.
She clicked through a few more, surprised to realize that when he wasn’t being a conceited jerk, she thought he was hot. Really hot. His chiseled features were sometimes harsh and intense, as if he could take control and make her like every minute of it. That appealed to her in a way she didn’t understand. She was not into that type of guy. Her last boyfriend had been a pharmacist. Someone stable and predictable.
The link at the bottom went to the next page on the website, but when she clicked it a pop-up window came up and a grainy video started playing. She squinted and leaned in, trying to figure out what she was looking at. She saw a wrought-iron railing, and when the video zoomed in, she could see several people inside a hotel room. Several naked people. It was night and the lighting wasn’t great, but Ashlynn’s mouth dropped open when she realized a couple of women were having sex on the king-size bed.
A movement caught her eye and she saw that a man had moved to take a seat in an oversize armchair facing the bed. His chest muscles were chiseled perfection, flexing and bunching as he moved. She knew immediately that it was Leandro. Her mouth dropped open again and she gasped at the size of his erection. “Oh. My. God,” she murmured. It stood up, curved slightly toward his belly, huge, thick, and long. She had no idea how big it was. Eight inches? Nine? A slow ache began deep between her legs. Shit. This was his sex tape. She should probably close the window, but she couldn’t look away.
He held the monster between his legs with one hand as a woman came over, dropped to her knees, and started trying to give him a blow job. It didn’t look easy considering his size—he didn’t even have to remove his hand for her to take him deep into her mouth. His other hand came up and tangled in her hair, guiding her down. A fourth woman walked up behind him, her hands sliding down his chest as she leaned in to kiss him.
Ashlynn stared, watching the scene unfold with a mixture of disbelief and disgust. But if she was honest with herself, there was a healthy dose of lust in the mix too. He was hot and she was a warm-blooded woman who hadn’t had a date in a while—there’d been that one guy from the gym after the pharmacist, but he was a mistake she didn’t like to think about.
Excusing himself from the group, he quickly wove his way through the club and out onto the smoking terrace, where it was much quieter. The last thing he needed was for his grandfather to know he was at a strip club. He was already on thin ice with his family after a string of recent . . . events. He swiped his finger across the screen and raised the phone to his ear.
“Alô?”
A world-weary sigh greeted him, and he braced himself against whatever might be coming. “What’s wrong with you?”
Now, there was a short question with a long answer. “Vovô?” He didn’t need to say anything more. João Oliveira wasn’t a man who pulled his punches.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”
Leandro bit his tongue, not entirely sure what his grandfather had found out about. That he’d accidentally lost the family yacht for three weeks last year? The illegal racing?
“I saw your little video, with the models.”
Ah. The sex tape. Fantastic.
“To be fair, I didn’t know anyone was recording us. That was supposed to be a private, uh, party.”
“It doesn’t matter, Leandro. The damage is done. When are you going to grow up and start behaving like an Oliveira? Like a man? You’re twenty-eight years old, for Christ’s sake.”
His grip tightened around his phone as something hot and prickly clawed at his chest. “Pretty sure I was behaving like a man in the video.” Fuck, if he ever got his hands on the cretin who’d taken it, he’d flay him alive. The poor women in the video had taken so much shit, and they’d all only been out for a little company—okay, fine, a lot of company—and a good time.
“I’m sick of this behavior. You need to grow up, Leo,” he said, softening his words with the use of Leandro’s family nickname. “I know you’re enjoying your life. I know you train hard for your fights. But there’s such a thing as too much of a good thing. You spend so much time chasing these fleeting things, these undignified things . . .” He sighed again, as though he were weighing his words. “Even though you’re wealthy, you’ll have nothing, not even your good name.” His tone turned sharp again. “Smarten the hell up. Enough of this shit. I don’t want to hear more stories about you, you understand me?”
“Yes, Vovô,” he said, scuffing his toe against the ground. A wave of irritation, shame, and frustration crashed into him. Without another word, his grandfather ended the call. Leandro suddenly understood the English expression chewed out, because after that short conversation, he felt ripped up and spit out.
As he made his way back to his table with his friends, he couldn’t help but feel that there was no such thing as too much of a good thing. The concept was completely foreign to him, and not just because it was another annoying English phrase he sometimes struggled to wrap his brain around. No, it was simply that the idea of having too much of something good didn’t make any sense. How could someone have too much of something that made them happy? That they enjoyed? It was like saying there was too much air, or too much sunshine.
A completely louco idea if he’d ever heard one.
He downed the rest of his tequila, trying to push away his grandfather’s words and the way they’d sliced him, leaving him raw. The alcohol warmed him, and as beautiful women danced around them, and Thiago told a favorite story from when he and Leandro were teenagers, Leandro felt the tension ebb from his shoulders, the corner of his mouth kick up.
Too much of a good thing? Impossible. This was life at its finest, right here, right now.
“Hey!” A female shout came suddenly from behind the curtained area. “I said no!”
Frowning, Leandro pushed to his feet and ate up the distance between his chair and the VIP area in several long strides. He could hear the sounds of a struggle before he saw it, and then heard a familiar voice.
“Get your fucking hands off me, creep!”
Red’s voice. Where the fuck were the bouncers? Anger tensed every muscle in his body, and he ripped the curtain back. A ruddy-faced man in his fifties was holding a struggling Red against him, her arms pinned behind her at an awkward angle. Several strands of her hair hung from the links of his watch, as though he’d grabbed her head and she’d jerked away from him. The straps of her leather halter hung limply at her sides, and Leandro could see fingertip bruises already emerging on the pale skin of her breast.
His anger turned to protective fury, white hot and barely controlled.
“Let her go,” he shouted, and when the ass took more than half a second to comply, Leandro pushed between them, moving Red behind him and shoving the other man hard in the chest.
“You stupid bitch,” the man hissed at Red, and the remaining shreds of Leandro’s control evaporated. He shot his fist out and connected with the man’s nose, hard. Several flashes went off, and Leandro realized they had an audience, but he was too angry to care.
“You don’t come to this club again,” he said, bunching his fists in the man’s shirt and shaking him. “I see you here, I do more than punch.” He had to concentrate on getting the words out, his accent thickening and his grasp of English evaporating with his self-control.
The man struggled free and took a sloppy swing at Leandro, who leaned back, then jabbed his fist into the man’s jaw. Finally, the bouncers came rushing over, parting the crowd that had gathered. They hauled the asshole up by his elbows and escorted him out.
Leandro turned to Red, who’d managed to pull her halter back into place. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
She nodded. “I’m fine. No thanks to the fucking invisible bouncers!” she shouted in their direction. “Thanks.”
He shook his head, smiling at her. “I like punching people. You don’t need to thank me.”
Something in her eyes shifted, and they softened and melted. “Maybe I want to.”
He grinned. He knew that look. He was definitely in for a night of too much of a good thing. Exactly what he needed right now to chase away what his grandfather had stirred up.
Besides, moderation was overrated.
2
“OLIVEIRA IS A fucking loose cannon, and I need you to get him under control.”
Ashlynn Fields sat across from Craig Darcy, president of the World Fighting Championship. She peered at him across the desk and opened her notebook. She had a feeling she was going to need to take notes. “That bad, huh?”
Craig laughed and began to tick off a list of the new light heavyweight champion’s indiscretions on his fingers. “For one, he has a fucking sex tape that won’t go away. Two, Mereo Athletics—our biggest sponsor—is threatening to pull their contract if he vandalizes the apparel they provide again. Three, he fucked the mayor’s daughter—the fucking mayor’s daughter—so I have that asshole on my back now. Four, he was cited for street racing. And the latest one: he got in a fight in a strip club, and it’s all over the goddamn Internet. I have sponsorship deals with Coke and Warner Brothers on the table. They’re threatening to walk if we can’t clean up our image.”
Ashlynn bit her lip as she scribbled down the areas they’d need to address. As an independent PR consultant, she’d worked off and on with the WFC and some of their sponsors for over a year, most notably when Craig’s daughter, Jules, the league’s director of marketing, had become involved with fighter Nick Giannakis—a huge breach of their employment contracts. Ashlynn had spun that situation, making it clear to everyone in the organization that the clause didn’t cover preexisting relationships. With another potential PR crisis on his hands, Craig had asked her to come in today to help with Oliveira.
It looked like she had her work cut out for her. From what she knew of him, Oliveira was an entitled trust-fund baby from a Brazilian banking family who thought the rules didn’t apply to him. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe in his world he moved from scandal to scandal and no one cared. Unfortunately, the WFC was already struggling to be accepted as a legitimate sports organization. They’d made great progress over the past year by securing big sponsorships, but they needed more to sustain that momentum. Athletes behaving badly weren’t helping their cause, especially ones as high profile as Oliveira. The champions were key figures who naturally attracted a larger share of media scrutiny. Ashlynn knew that having this sort of negative press while attempting to woo family-friendly advertising could be disastrous.
“I hadn’t heard about the strip club incident,” she said. She’d heard about the others, though. The sex tape had been leaked to TMZ about a month ago. It apparently featured Oliveira with a handful of models in a hotel room. He hadn’t even been ashamed of it. The video of a paparazzo asking him about it as he came out of a restaurant had appeared on all of the entertainment news shows. He’d grinned at the camera and said in his accented English, “It was a fun night.” She’d rolled her eyes at that part, as he’d confirmed her initial impression of him. Selfish and irresponsible.
Craig gave a world-weary sigh and raked a hand through his hair. “Just happened last night.”
That explained why Ashlynn had received a frantic call from Craig’s assistant two hours ago asking if she could come to the office as soon as possible. “Ah, okay, so this is a priority.”
“I’d hoped it’d fly under the radar, but the execs from Coke and Warner Brothers are pissed. I think I calmed them down for the time being.” He shook his head. “The sex tape was a private thing, plus he wasn’t champion then. I can’t have someone so high profile beating people up in a strip club, even if he says he was defending a stripper.”
She didn’t know Oliveira well enough to gauge if that was true or if he’d just been drunk and looking for a fight. She’d only seen him in person once, the night of his championship fight. He’d seemed arrogant and full of himself that night. It was the way he’d smirked at the reporters after he’d won, as though he were entitled to the belt. The way he’d basked in the spotlight. The way he’d flexed for the cameras, smiling playfully and winking. “Is this something we need to put together an official press release for?”
“No, I don’t want to weigh in just yet. It might still blow over.”
Ashlynn nodded, agreeing with that. Sometimes acknowledging things only made them bigger, added kindling to the fire. “Okay, I’ll get to work on a statement just in case we need it. In the meantime, how about we come up with something positive to put out there? Do you think we could get Oliveira to agree to do some charity work? He could work with Gabe Maddox at the WFC Foundation. I know it’s early yet, but I read that Gabe is setting up his first Saturday karate clinic for underprivileged kids.”
Craig shook his head again. “Nah, won’t work. Oliveira is still pissed at Maddox. Thinks Maddox didn’t put up enough of a fight for the belt. He’s not wrong, mind you, but getting those two together right now wouldn’t be a good idea. I like what you’re thinking, though. It’s a great plan.”
She hadn’t realized there was bad blood between Oliveira and Gabe. They’d been rivals and Gabe had retired after Oliveira had won the championship belt from him. End of story, or so she’d thought. “How about the children’s hospital? I think I could arrange for him to do a tour of a floor there.”
“Perfect! Who doesn’t like sick kids?”
Ashlynn frowned.
“You know what I mean,” Craig clarified, flashing her a contrite smile. “We have family-oriented sponsors now, so we need some family-oriented PR.”
“Do you think he’ll go for it?” she asked.
“Doesn’t fucking matter. He’ll go for it or I’ll cut his ass from the roster. We stand to make more from these sponsorships than from the fans he’ll bring in.” He sat back in his chair with a smile on his face, visibly more relaxed than when she’d arrived. “Arrange the hospital visit. He’s got some interviews scheduled over the next couple of weeks to talk about being the new champion. Jules has him booked on morning shows in Miami, New York, and Los Angeles. Go with him and keep his ass out of trouble.” He stilled and then leaned forward, as though an idea had just occurred to him. “I want you to coach him.”
“Coach him.” She’d meant to phrase it as a question, but her words had come out flat.
“Yeah. You know. On how to be a decent person. More champion, less . . . Oliveira.”
Normally she worked on defined projects, handled specific crises. Granted, Oliveira seemed like a walking crisis, so maybe Craig wasn’t off base asking her to work with him. Maybe she just wasn’t sure she wanted to babysit some rich, spoiled bad boy.
Craig continued before she could answer. “I’ll talk to Oliveira and let him know to expect you. Meet with him, tell him the plan, get him on board. Tomorrow good?”
She nodded slowly. “Uh, yeah. Tomorrow’s fine.”
As though he could sense her hesitation, Craig shot her a placating smile. “Look, I know this is asking a lot and it’s short notice. But you’d be saving my ass here if you could take this mess off my hands.”
She smiled. “It’s fine.” The WFC had grown so much in the past year, Ashlynn practically worked here part-time anyway. “Most of my clients are a little less hands-on, so I can work this into my schedule. Don’t worry.” It’d be a huge time commitment, but she was anxious to get started, and Craig had always compensated her generously.
“Great. Talk to Jules on your way out. She can get you the schedule and we’ll get your flights booked.”
Realizing she was being dismissed, Ashlynn closed her notebook and grabbed her purse. “Thanks for calling me, Craig. I really enjoy working with the organization.”
Craig smiled. “You’re helping me out here. You get us through this, and I think there could be a permanent position here for you.”
She tried to keep her expression bland, but her heart stopped for a second. A full-time position with a growing company like the WFC would be huge for her. It’d mean stability and a possible future as a PR executive. And there’d be plenty to keep her busy with the cast of characters around here. “I won’t let you down.”
His phone rang, so she said good-bye and went to find Jules. Oliveira would be challenging, but she’d yet to meet a challenge that she couldn’t overcome. She was confident she could handle him.
That night after dinner, Ashlynn took her glass of Chablis and headed into the tiny bedroom she’d converted into an office on the first floor of her townhome. Settling into her chair, she opened up her laptop and Googled Leandro Oliveira. Her meeting with him was confirmed for tomorrow morning at ten, and she wanted to make sure she knew the extent of the public image damage she was dealing with.
The search returned a lot of articles with the same handful of photos showing him punching some guy in the strip club. They’d clearly been taken by bystanders with cell phones. There were also articles and blogs that mentioned the other incidents Craig had talked about. She clicked a link that took her to a Brazilian fan website. It had photos of Leandro from his fights in a Brazilian MMA league. It also featured photos from various modeling jobs he’d apparently done. She hadn’t known that he’d modeled, but there he was on a beach in a Speedo looking like a Brazilian god, all hard muscle and sexy, masculine intensity.
She took a moment to appreciate the beauty that was Leandro. In person, his expression tended to show his arrogance, but in the photo he gazed at the camera thoughtfully. His blue-green eyes seemed to look right at her, sending a tug of longing straight to her core. She bit her lip and clicked on the next photo. In this one he was dressed like the son of a billionaire banker in a blue button-down shirt, white linen pants, and canvas shoes, lounging on the deck of a yacht. His olive skin and thick, dark brown hair glistened in the sun, emphasizing the masculine planes of his face. The logo of a men’s clothing company was stamped on the bottom of the photo.
She clicked through a few more, surprised to realize that when he wasn’t being a conceited jerk, she thought he was hot. Really hot. His chiseled features were sometimes harsh and intense, as if he could take control and make her like every minute of it. That appealed to her in a way she didn’t understand. She was not into that type of guy. Her last boyfriend had been a pharmacist. Someone stable and predictable.
The link at the bottom went to the next page on the website, but when she clicked it a pop-up window came up and a grainy video started playing. She squinted and leaned in, trying to figure out what she was looking at. She saw a wrought-iron railing, and when the video zoomed in, she could see several people inside a hotel room. Several naked people. It was night and the lighting wasn’t great, but Ashlynn’s mouth dropped open when she realized a couple of women were having sex on the king-size bed.
A movement caught her eye and she saw that a man had moved to take a seat in an oversize armchair facing the bed. His chest muscles were chiseled perfection, flexing and bunching as he moved. She knew immediately that it was Leandro. Her mouth dropped open again and she gasped at the size of his erection. “Oh. My. God,” she murmured. It stood up, curved slightly toward his belly, huge, thick, and long. She had no idea how big it was. Eight inches? Nine? A slow ache began deep between her legs. Shit. This was his sex tape. She should probably close the window, but she couldn’t look away.
He held the monster between his legs with one hand as a woman came over, dropped to her knees, and started trying to give him a blow job. It didn’t look easy considering his size—he didn’t even have to remove his hand for her to take him deep into her mouth. His other hand came up and tangled in her hair, guiding her down. A fourth woman walked up behind him, her hands sliding down his chest as she leaned in to kiss him.
Ashlynn stared, watching the scene unfold with a mixture of disbelief and disgust. But if she was honest with herself, there was a healthy dose of lust in the mix too. He was hot and she was a warm-blooded woman who hadn’t had a date in a while—there’d been that one guy from the gym after the pharmacist, but he was a mistake she didn’t like to think about.
