28. April

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

april

As soon as I hear the door shutting, I jump from the shower, wrap my hair in a towel and my body in another before I unfold that paper.

This contract is entered into willingly by Liam Gunn and April Hadden. Both parties agree to the terms and circumstances of the services that will be provided and received, as outlined below.

Oh, he's gotta be kidding me. I laugh out loud; the sound echoing back at me. I don't know if he meant for this to be funny, which just makes it funnier. I skim through the legal lingo, eager to get to the good stuff.

In the month(s) Dr. April Hadden is to stay in London, she's to:

Have the best sex of her life ( your words, not mine).

No strings attached, no expectations. We keep it simple. Uncomplicated.

Have her privacy respected. I'll protect your image as fiercely as I do mine.

Have sex only with Liam Gunn (I'll pay you the same courtesy, of course).

Keep the key to this room. It's ours until you go home.

Agree to keep a bodyguard/driver until I say so.

The parties consent to modifications and/or additions to be discussed and agreed. These amendments/additions shall be valid as if they were part of the original contract.

I'm smiling like a fool, racking my brain to think of a few rules of my own, but coming back empty. He covered it all.

No strings attached sex with Liam in total secrecy sounds perfect. Maybe even too good to be true.

I turn my phone on for the first time since yesterday and it pings with a message from the man himself.

L:

Do you need me to lay it out in layman's terms for you, Doc?

The condescending bastard. He had to run his mouth, didn't he?

L:

You're leaving in a matter of months. Let's put them to good fucking. Good use, put them to good use.

No, I really do mean fucking. Let's fuck each other out of our systems and have the time of our lives while doing that.

I'm not going to grace him with an answer. Let me deal with the two hundred plus messages from Callie instead. And none from Pres. That's weird. I'm about to message her when her call comes through. Knowing better than to go deaf by her screams, I answer it on speaker, lay it on the bed and wait.

"APRIL MOTHERFUCKING HADDEN! There. You've been re-baptized. That's how I'm addressing you from now on." Sounds catchy. I laugh, but the exhale she lets out makes me feel guilty as fuck, too. "Bitch, how dare you turn your phone off while the world is falling apart by the mere mention of your name?"

That's how it goes with Callie. No matter how serious the subject is, she finds a way to make me laugh about it. I've learned this the hard way, attending a funeral with her. Humor is how she deals with stress and I have mortifying memories to prove it.

"Callie, they told me to turn my phone off in case reporters got a hold of my number. I couldn't even go home, paparazzi were piling at my gate. So I came to a hotel and got hella drunk instead."

I lay down and draw an arm over my eyes. The walls of glass are nice, the views are to die for, but I'd love a pitch black room now. "I wanted to call you so bad, girl. You know, so you could make the worst, most inappropriate comments about this mess and make me crack a laugh."

"You know I would." Her smug voice comforts me.

"But I didn't have it in me to reach out yesterday. My first day at work, I find out my Tinder date thought I was a prostitute."

Callie interrupts me. "A story for the ages. I'll be telling it to my grandkids."

I try my best to disguise the smile in my voice as I carry on. "My second day at work, my face is splashed all over the news as my patient's lover."

Callie cuts in again. "Cannot wait to hear your plans for day three."

"Well…"

"Oh! My! God! You do have something planned! What? What is it?"

"Kind of. Day four, actually. When Liam left today…"

"TODAY? As in, he slept the night?"

Fucking hell, nothing goes past her. "Well, yeah, but that's not the point, Calista." I play it coy. "Before he left, he said I could give an interview before tomorrow's game. So that's happening." I ponder my next words, and Callie reads into my silence.

"But there's more. Spill it."

"He also left behind a contract with rules for us to keep sleeping together." God, it feels so embarrassing saying it out loud. "No strings attached, and no one ever finding out."

When he proposed it, it sounded practical, reasonable. But now I feel like I'm telling my middle school bestie a dirty secret.

"Way to go, girl." She chuckles, and it lifts the unwarranted shame from my body. "You're already breaking the rules telling me. We're up to a great start, A."

"You're basically my conscience, Callie. I'm the sensible angel on one shoulder. You're the devil, full of mischief, dangling their legs on the other."

"Ha!" Callie scoffs. "Babe, I'm fine being the devil, but you're no angel." She knows me too well for me to argue with her about that. "What else? I want to know the kinky stuff. Don't hold out on me now."

"That's pretty much it." I disappoint her and reach for the contract to flip it back open. "Agree to a bodyguard—you know, because of the paparazzi, keep the key to this room so we have a place to meet and only have sex with him while I—" The laugh that comes out of her is infectious. No matter how hard I press my lips together, I'm smiling at the sound.

"April Motherfucking Hadden!" See? Catchy. "Or should I change it to April ‘The Power of the Pussy' Hadden?" No, God, please no , I think to myself, but I'm laughing too hard to protest out loud.

When the both of us stop laughing enough to form words, I tell her not to read too much into it.

"Well, babe. Kinda hard, you see? I think Good Dick is under a pussy spell and is looking after you. The bodyguard, the interview, the call to the hospital board."

I bolt to a sitting position; the towel twisted around my head bobbing painfully to one side. "What call to the hospital board?" I yank the thing off with one tug.

"So, while you were having your fifteen minutes of fame and riding Good Dick, there was some commotion on this side of the Atlantic, too." Callie sounds too cool for my spiking pulse. "I was with Preston when he was pulled into an," she does a manly, dumb voice, "urgent meeting with the directors." Callie huffs to punctuate. "This nosey bitch followed him and stood by the closed door, eavesdropping. You're welcome."

"Callie, tell me what happened already. You're killing me."

" Killing you? Bitch, shut up. You're LIVING! You're in London, in a five-star hotel, getting dicked by a billionaire who put it on a contract that he wants to go exclusive. Oh-my-God, babe," she pauses, startled. "You have your first boyfriend," she exclaims in pure mockery, and I pull the phone away so she won't hear me laughing. "Took you a while, but wow, can't wait to see how you're going to top that."

"For the love of my blood pressure, Calista." I speak louder to bring her focus back to Earth and, if I'm lucky enough, this conversation. "Focus, or I'll hang up on you and call Preston."

"Yeah, right. Like he would tell you anything and have you worried," she huffs. "Okay. So yeah, the directors were being a bunch of prissy little bitches, saying you were supposed to bring good press to the hospital, but now the spotlights turned to their doctor having an affair with the footballer, blah blah, blah." Her tone goes from overly nasal to deadly stern. "They're pissed they can't control the narrative. Not your fault, obviously."

"Thank you," I murmur, needing to say it, but not wanting to interrupt her.

"Of course, babe." I can hear the smile in her voice, but it's gone the next second. "Then they said they're bringing you back here on paid leave and Preston needed to pick someone else from his team to go to London. I swear I was about to barge into that room when a loud thump stopped me. Sounded like something heavy falling to the floor."

She's making light of it, but I'm still stunned at the board wanting to bring me back home. As if I did anything to be ashamed of. To bring shame to them .

I try to focus on what else Callie has to share, scared of how much worse it can get.

"I'm wondering, ‘ Did Preston just kill a bitch? Was that a body dropping to the ground?' But then he shouts at the board." She pauses for effect and turns dead serious. "April. I've never seen the man raise his voice in his life. And now I'm partially deaf in the ear glued to the door because Preston screamed a ‘THE FUCK YOU WILL' that flailed my eardrums."

No, no, no, no, no. Is day three in London about to be the messiest one?

I'm having a hard time keeping the phone steady in my hand while Callie sounds so entertained telling this story she could use some popcorn.

"Callie, wrap this up. What did Pres do? What did he say?" My face must be so pale listening to all this that I got to be blending in with the white towels at this point.

"Bitch, Dr. Preston Jett said that if they brought you back, they could expect his resignation letter and that yours would follow." She sing-songs the next sentence. "That neither of you would stand for that shit."

I'm not one to get emotional, but my throat sure feels tight hearing that. I cough it out and blink London into focus again. I'm almost afraid to ask, but I just want to hear the end of it already. "And then what?"

"Then, my friend, it gets better. So much better now you've told me who you were with last night."

Huh? "What does Liam have to do with this?"

"I don't know, but I heard the secretary announcing on the speakerphone that Good Dick was on the line to speak with the board of directors. They might have said Liam Gunn. I'm not sure." She fakes confusion and I can't keep a straight face to save my life. Callie's a great doctor, but Hollywood is missing out on her.

"But anyway, that's when Jett exited the room looking murderous, found me snooping, and dragged me away by the arm. The man has been miserable lately, A. Insufferable. Something is off with him. I've asked him what, but he keeps dodging me."

I lie back in bed, sinking into the mattress, wishing it could swallow me whole. "Oh, this is doing my head in. Is it too early to get drunk again?"

"And fuck Good Dick again too?" The woman is a stand up comedian and is giggling at her own joke.

"Callie!" I laugh, not hating the idea, but still discarding it. I need a plan and I don't tend to do my best thinking with Liam around.

"Girl, listen. Your job is safe. Daddy Jett made sure of it. And my sixth sense tells me that call from Good Dick made it even safer."

"Stop calling him Good Dick. It's disturbing. His name is Liam."

"You're too visual, right? Do you picture his dick every time I say it? Good Dick. Good Dick." She moans it the third time. "Goooood Diiiiiick."

"Okay, I'm hanging up now." I pretend to be mad, but she's totally right and hilarious, too.

"Fine," she huffs. "I'll stop, I'll stop." It takes her a few tries to stop laughing, then out of nowhere, she punches me right in the heart.

"You know I'd quit too, right?" Oh, Callie . We share a moment of silence.

"Don't get sappy on me now. No one's quitting. Let me go and figure out what to do next, so I have a job to go back to. And babe?"

"What?"

"Same."