Page 82 of Wild King
As I text Ever back thanking her for giving me a head’s up about this new wrinkle, he says, “I’m not worried, Salem. I trust you.”
Standing from the table, I stuff my phone in my pocket. “I need to get to work. Stay and eat pancakes.”
Again, concern fills his eyes. “You can’t have any before you get going with your day?”
I shake my head and bend down to kiss him. “No. I need to make some big decisions in the next hour or so. Crises wait for no man. Or woman, no matter how powerful. No worries. I got this.”
He smiles, but I can tell it’s forced. He’s worried, and assuming he told me the truth about Charly Evans, I think his fear is that I won’t want anything to do with him now.
Nothing could be further from the truth. I know the kind of man Kellen King is. Now I plan to make sure the rest of the world sees that man in full color sitting with one of the world’s biggest media personalities.
Jessica Marchand chats upone of the cameramen on the other side of the hotel room where we’re about to do Kellen’s second interview while I fix his blue tie I picked out especially for this event. After explaining to Curtis that this interview had to be with a woman and fending off his claims of my being sexist by promising him the next interview, if there’s a need for one, I called Jessica and offered her the chance to have an exclusive sit-down with the man of the hour.
Of course, she immediately insisted on having free reign with the topics that would be covered, and I shot her down without missing a beat. After wrangling for nearly an hour and then conferring with Kellen’s lawyers, we reached an agreement that brought him to the Ritz room 412 today.
He fidgets, shifting back and forth from his left foot to his right and then back again, so I pat his chest just below the Windsor knot in his tie and whisper, “Stay calm. You’re going to be great. We practiced for the past week. If she dares to go into any area I deemed off limits, I’ll stop this interview?—”
With a smile, he interrupts me. “So fast her head will spin. I know. You wouldn’t just throw me to the wolves. I’m just worried I won’t come off well on camera.”
I look him up and down and can’t imagine how he could think that. The steel gray suit and pale blue dress shirt with the royal blue tie combination I chose for today is perfect and makes him look stunning. Women will like how he looks, and when they hear what he has to say, they’ll fall in love with him. I don’t care about how men feel, but I can’t imagine they’ll hate him after today either.
I’m just worried about one thing.
“Hey, I need you to listen to me, okay? Do not be defensive. I know this entire saga with first Gina and now Charly is terrible. I get it. And once we’re done here, if you want to complain about all of it for the rest of the day, I’ll block out all the hours you need, order food in, and I’ll be happy to listen to you bitch your heart out. I just need you to not show that side of you in this interview. People interpret defensiveness as guilt. It’s not right, but it’s just the way humans are. So none of that, okay? You’re calm. You’re a decent guy. Nobody needs you to be a saint. Just no defensiveness.”
He nods and takes a deep breath. “I know. I want to ace this. I do. I just need to remember I have someone great waiting for me on the other side. If I forget to tell you later because I plan to drink my weight in alcohol and eat more takeout Chinese than any man has ever consumed, thank you for believing in me.”
Behind us, Jessica says in a playful voice, “It’s showtime, ladies and gentlemen. Ready?”
A momentary flash of fear fills his eyes before he smiles at her and then looks at me. “Guess that’s my cue.”
I straighten his tie for the third time in five minutes and silently pray to God he’ll do as he promised. Standing on my tiptoes, I whisper in his ear, “I’m right here. No worries. You got this. And I love you.”
When I step back, he’s smiling from ear to ear. “You love me?” he whispers back to me.
“Yes, but try not to smile so big, okay? You look like you’re hiding something. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but I wanted you to know I’m by your side because I love you, Kellen.”
He takes another deep breath and lets it out in a rush. “You love me. Will you still love me if I screw this up?”
I roll my eyes and try to stop myself from laughing. “You won’t screw it up. Now remember, no defensiveness, you don’t have to be a saint so be yourself, and no huge smiling because it looks like guilt, or worse, like you don’t care about all the allegations. I’ll be right here the whole time.”
“Okay. I won’t let you down. Let’s do this!”
Kellen putshis feet up on the coffee table and loosens his tie. “So boss, tell me again how I killed that interview.”
I sit down next to him and fold my legs under me. “You just want to hear me compliment you again. Okay. You owned that entire interview. I knew it the moment she asked you about sexual harassment and you said it’s never okay to do that to co-workers. She thought she was going to trip you up with the next question, but you were so calm and answered that you never meant to harass anyone. I swear you actually came off as a romantic, believe it or not. Did you try to make it sound like you were hurt by Gina’s accusations, or was that real?”
He lifts the glass of scotch to his lips and takes a sip. “I was hurt. I tried to be honest with her, but either she wasn’t hearing it or I wasn’t saying it the right way. Whatever happened, it’s hurts like hell to be accused of something and then have the entire goddamned world jump on the burn Kellen King’s life to the ground bandwagon.”
I curl up next to him and rest my head on his shoulder. “Well, I knew you hit it out of the park, and when I read the reviews and the jillions of posts about it online saying maybe we need to question if we’ve all been too kneejerk when it comes to sexual harassment claims, that sealed it.”
Kellen turns his head and kisses the tip of my nose. “So now I’m the poster child for getting the facts before burning people at the stake? I guess I can handle that.”
We sit there reveling in the turnaround of the public’s opinion of him, and I hope soon I can call myself his ex-fixer. I close my eyes and listen to the sound of his breathing, happy he’s got his life back.
All of a sudden, he sets his feet on the floor, practically knocking me over onto the couch. Shifting his body to face me, he excitedly says, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Charly texted me to say she was sorry she said all those things. She said her car broke down and she needed some fast money, so when the rags came calling, she took their offer. I guess they called every one of my ex-girlfriends, but she was the only one willing to say she knew I did what Gina accused me of.”
“She’s a really moral person, isn’t she? Thank God her story was easily debunked. It serves those scammers right to have her take their money for a pack of lies. Maybe next time they can do a few minutes’ worth of fact checking before they barf up a story on the front page of their shitty magazines.”