Dane (A Foster Family Saga #1) Page 5

  “No problem, sir. I’ll get you a list.”

  “I need a team assembled by Monday evening at the latest. Things are about to change around the office. I’ll fill you in shortly. I need someone who specializes in, like, celebrity image rebuilding or something like that. Someone who can take this shit the tabloids are writing and turn it around for me.”

  “Will do, sir.”

  I hung up the phone and ambled back inside. I found Selene watching television in her room. I left her to her solitude and went to my own room to figure out what normal people did on a lonely Friday night.

  ***

  Morning found me in the kitchen, feeling far too sober for a Saturday. I was up earlier than usual for the weekend. According to my clock, it was just past eight. I was discovering the worst part about turning my life around was going to be filling the hours. I didn’t want breakfast, but I brewed a pot of coffee for the first time since moving back to New York. It tasted acrid as a mouthful of coffee grounds.

  I struggled to remember how to fix a Bloody Mary, but then I found I didn’t have the necessary ingredients. Instead I sipped a glass of juice, waiting for Selene to wake. We were slated to take a drive out to Rhinebeck to look at the estate Gervais thought I might like. From the brief description he’d given me when we talked about it the day before, it sounded okay. It would be a few hours’ drive away from New York City, down near Hudson Valley, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be that far out. However, I was willing to take a look.

  “Got GPS?” Selene asked when she found me puffing a cigar on the deck. I nodded. She was dressed and ready to go.

  “I’d cook breakfast, but it turns out I have no groceries,” I said.

  “We can grab something while we’re out.”

  We took the Aston Martin because I liked long drives when I wasn’t on a schedule or doing business. Out of the slow crawl of the New York City streets to the smooth-riding highway westward, we crossed New York State at a sedate pace. We took the scenic route, watching the landscape change from urban to suburban to rural across counties.

  Taking bridges over rivers and passing verdant summer-green forests, we rode companionably. Selene had chosen the radio station, and alternative music filled the car. I felt clearheaded like I hadn’t felt in months. There was no hangover, no wondering what had happened the night before. I wanted to make myself believe it was a rather boring way to start a morning, but it was actually nice. The woman at my side was family, and I didn’t have to plan a “don’t call me, I’ll call you” speech.

  We zipped along, guided by the GPS, until we finally reached our destination. Gervais had set up an appointment with a well-established real estate agent named Colton Preston. I knew a little about him by word of mouth. He was an effective agent who talked up the high points of the property, but the house basically sold itself. With acres of land as part of the estate, the mansion sat atop a hill that overlooked the Hudson River to the west.

  Part of the property was forested, making the estate seem an island cut off from the busier world around it. The exterior was a masterpiece of architecture in Italianate design with a mansard roof, three stories. The home had been recently renovated, surpassing its former glory, and shone a brilliant white against the bright blue sky. As soon as I saw it, I felt a connection. I could see myself escaping here.

  “See?” Selene said with excitement. She grabbed my hand and ran with me through the house, giddy with excitement. I was caught up in her youthful exuberance. There were nine massive bedrooms and four bathrooms, with a huge dining room and well-appointed kitchen. The bedroom on the top floor would be mine, I decided. Standing in the center of the room, I could see across the river in the far distance. On a clear day, the view would be a dramatic panorama. Nodding in satisfaction, I gave Selene a thumbs-up. Her idea to move out of the city was shaping up to be a good one.

  After we took a walk-through, Colton said, “It’s great for social functions or if you want to make this your vacation home. It’s a great place to get away. The isolation is worth every dime of the asking price. How valuable is your privacy, Mr. Foster?”

  “Very,” I said. As things stood, apparently my every move was public knowledge. I wanted to change that, and Selene had offered me an option that could help.

  “Do I take care of you, or what?” she asked when we were settled in the car for the drive back to the city.

  “You do,” I had to admit.

  “I have one last thing I want to talk about with you, and since we’re in a car and you’d never dream of putting me out on the side of the road, this is the perfect place to chat.” She was smiling, but I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. The warm leather steering wheel in my hands guided the sleek vehicle around curves and over dips in the road. We passed trees in a blur. I loved the hum of the tires on the pavement. There was no music to blot out the smooth purr of the engine, and I felt at one with my favorite car. For me, it wasn’t a good time for a serious conversation, but Selene wasn’t to be deterred.

  “This sounds serious,” I murmured. “Matter-of-life-and-death-type shit. I hope you’re not planning on telling me to get my soul straight with the divine or something.”

  “No, I’ll save you a seat on the glory train. I’m talking about the state of your mind.”

  “Oh, that.” I snorted.

  “You need a good shrink. One of those doctors who makes house calls. Someone private you can trust. Now, I know most girls will pay a share of their tits just to hear you talk, but you want someone whose job it is to really listen to you. “

  “Spoken like an idealistic college kid. Psychiatrists are for stressed-out people who can’t handle life. I’m fine.” I was fully in charge of my destiny, already en route to making my life more stable. I figured a change of pace and a new environment were all the help I needed to be back on my feet and keep me safely seated on the Excelsis throne. What Selene was suggesting was hiring someone to listen to me whine about shit I could take of by myself. That wasn’t about to happen.

  “Remember what I told you a few nights ago when I called? About you going through something internally? I was serious. You say Lynora has nothing to do with it, and I’m inclined to believe you. I might be mistaken about the source, but I don’t think I’m wrong about the issue. Dane…” She touched my arm. I kept my eyes on the road to avoid looking at her. “You were abandoned by too many of the people who should have been there for you, and I’m sorry for that. There’s no going back to change that, but you can make your peace with it.”

  “I have,” I said through gritted teeth, wishing she would leave it alone. Selene had no idea what she was talking about. Like everyone else, she knew just a fraction of my history. Regardless, she had no right to try to analyze me.

  “Think about it,” she said lightly. There was nothing to think about.

  “I’m fine.” I snapped on the stereo and turned up the volume. As far as I was concerned, there was nothing to think about.

  CHAPTER 5

  “Mr. Foster, what I’m offering you is the opportunity to forget about it,” continued the smooth-talking media relations guy Gervais had rustled up. He and his team sat around a conference table in my office suite at Excelsis. The blinds were drawn on the wall of windows, and the room was illuminated by the presentation. I had in front of me a printout of the material being presented, as well as a digital copy for my files. I had a portfolio detailing the company we had chosen to use as our media relations people.

  There were two other gentlemen with Rory Lamont, the laid-back presenter working the pointer as he went through the slide presentation. They were all well-dressed, smart-looking young folks with impressive résumés and referrals. It remained to be seen whether they could deliver what they promised, but judging by the high-profile clientele they represented, they had to be working with something. I reserved comment and followed what Lamont was saying.

  “Listen, as head of Excelsis, you have a million things you ha
ve to think about on a day-to-day basis, and the last thing on your mind is what story someone concocts about your personal life. What we do is eliminate their need to dig and your need to worry about it. You’re a person of interest. People want to know about you. We carefully supply the demand. That means if somebody wants to tell a story about you, we give them the story to tell. We tell them about your philanthropy, your favorite color, what designers you wear. We flood them with the mundane.”

  “And how is this helpful? Any reporter worth their weight can find out which charities I donate to.”

  “I understand that, Mr. Foster. What I’m talking about is giving them something versus making them look for something. Let me tell you a story. I’m married. I’ve been married eight years. One day my wife gets it in her head I’m having an affair. So, what do I do? I show her my emails, my text messages, my social pages. She gets full access to all that I want her to see, and do you know what she finds? Exactly what I want her to find. Nothing, zilch, nada. That’s what people like me do for people like you, Mr. Foster. We clean up the story, give them just enough juice to feel like there’s meat on the bones. In all actuality, we’re controlling what they have access to, but they walk away feeling like you have nothing to hide. You get your privacy back, they get a headline, everybody’s happy.”

  “What would be your approach?” I asked.

  “Do a few interviews, some late-night talk shows,” Lamont said. “Be yourself. Talk about the women. Talk about the drinking. Tell ’em you’ve been a bad boy. Americans like a good villain, but they love an apologetic hero. We put you out there as human and as flawed as you can possibly be. You say you’re sorry. Doesn’t matter what you’re apologizing for. You’re sorry to the girl, sorry to your father, sorry to the public. You want to be a role model. Blah, blah, blah, you want to redeem yourself. Then you sit back and wait. You lie low, while we feed the feel-good stories to the press about your good deeds and great works. You might even get a legitimate-looking girlfriend, show the masses you’re a real ladies’ man instead of just a lady killer.”

  “I’ve got a girlfriend,” I said.

  “I said a legitimate-looking girlfriend.”

  “What’s wrong with Annabeth? She’s an actress. The public loves her.”

  “Well, by my research, you’ve been dating her for, what, two years? Unfortunately, at this point in a celebrity courtship, the public either wants you to announce an engagement or announce an amicable split, Mr. Foster. They want a happy ending or a clean break, and with all the hoopla over you possibly seeing other women, I think it’s in your best interest to cut the cord—publicly, even if you choose to continue to see her privately. But I don’t want to get into all that right now. Right now, I just want to give you a layout of our plan of attack.”

  I liked the way this guy thought. Lamont continued with the presentation. Gervais whispered in my ear that he felt like we had the right team assembled, and I was inclined to agree. Lamont discussed how he planned to turn the tide of bad press. From handling social media to controlling what stories were delivered to which outlets, by the time the meeting was over, I felt like I was ready to take on the world.

  I had mixed feelings about the motivation, but the end goal was something I could live with: getting my life back and taking control of how others saw me. What stung was the knowledge Cornelius had his fucking foot to my neck. I knew he was somewhere in California monitoring my every move. The part of me that needed his approval wondered whether he thought I was making the right decisions. The majority of me didn’t give a shit.

  ***

  As summer came to a close, I moved forward with the renovation of Dane Foster. I had a decorator redoing the new house, paperwork being finalized on the sale. Gervais spent the next few weeks helping me transfer work from the office to home. The PR people were in place cleaning up the publicity damage. I spent nights at the penthouse until the estate was ready, forgoing my former partying for a more sedate lifestyle. I was shuttling from place to place doing television interviews and making appearances on talk shows when I wasn’t handling Excelsis business.

  I eventually made time to take care of the matter of finding a fake girlfriend, and that took me right to the doorstep of none other than Mrs. Etheridge Danos-Monroe. A handsomely dressed butler saw me inside. The estate was as I remembered it from the last time I was there, the infamous fundraiser. It seemed apropos that an element of my redemption be the very reason I was in deep shit in the first place.

  According to Lamont, the public wanted a reformed Dane Foster with a legitimate relationship. Gervais and I, along with the team, had pored over profiles for several different women, but none seemed a good fit. What I needed was eye candy, someone I could be photographed with on a red carpet or take out to dinner and be seen with in public. She had to appear playfully in love but be someone who didn’t require a full commitment. I needed a relative unknown, not some industry regular. It was Gervais’ suggestion I try persuading someone I already knew to act the part for a few months. Then I had an epiphany.

  The best person I could think of was Hanna Sorenson. She was beautiful, intelligent, appropriate, had the right background, and she wasn’t even from America. She was it! Lamont’s people gathered everything they could find on her, which turned out to be very little, as the sheltered heiress to a Norwegian tech company didn’t even have a social network page. However, everyone agreed she had the look. She was a knockout.

  The butler shepherded me to Mrs. Danos-Monroe’s receiving room. She was expecting me. I had called ahead to let her know I wanted to talk about something serious with her. I walked into the powder-blue room with butterflies in my stomach, like a kid arriving to pick up his date for the school dance.

  “Have a seat, Mr. Foster. I don’t bite,” she said. I had never met Mrs. Danos-Monroe in person and expected her to be a matronly elder. When I set eyes on her, I was in for a surprise. She couldn’t be older than her fifties, with her dark hair barely showing strands of grey. She had a smooth, unwrinkled face, except for smile lines, which I hoped indicated she had a great sense of humor—because, boy, was she gonna laugh at what I was about to propose. I settled my nerves and took a seat beside her. She politely offered me tea and a cookie, and I had a vague memory of my late grandmother. Once upon a time long ago, she would do the same on the rare occasion my mother actually let me see her. Pushing aside memories that should stay buried, I accepted the sugar cookie and took a bite. “What brings you here, young man? Come to apologize finally?”

  “No, I—I mean, yes. Certainly, I apologize for that awful situation with your niece. I want you to know it wasn’t at all what it looked like.”

  “She told me all about it.”

  “Really? Oh…um, great, great…” I cleared my throat, wondering what version of events Hanna had spilled. I knew she hadn’t told her aunt she had practically begged me to screw her. “Anyway, I actually came here today to talk to you about something else. I, uh, don’t know if you’ve heard or not, but I’ve kind of been on a mission to turn my life around.”

  “Wonderful to hear! You know, I knew your father growing up. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I was so pleased when he settled down and married, but he had his wild ways, just like you. You look a lot like him from when he was younger.”

  I gave some semblance of a smile. “Do I look like him?”

  “You do! You do. But I’m taking over the conversation. You’ll have to excuse me. It’s a bad habit of mine. What were you saying?”

  “Turning my life around. I hired a media relations team, and I have a savvy group of young people who are determined to assist me in shifting the negative public opinion of me. Now, I know my reputation up to this point is, I guess you’d say, tarnished.”

  “Not beyond repair.”

  “Exactly. My team and I believe one of the best ways to improve my image would be to get involved with the right sort of girl.” I faltered, wondering how to go about getting
her approval to faux-date her niece.

  Mrs. Danos-Monroe studied me, as if she knew what I was going to ask. She took a delicate sip of tea, eyes still boring into mine over the brim of the cup. “Mr. Foster, you want to date my Hanna. Is that it?”

  “Yes and no,” I answered, biting my fist. “Uh, I want to appear to date Hanna. I think it would be a mutually beneficial relationship—before you say no, Mrs. Danos-Monroe—and not at all unorthodox these days. What I offer Hanna is an opportunity to get out and enjoy herself. Of course, what I offer you is the assurance that I will not engage in any sex—er, inappropriate behavior with her. And what I get in return is the opportunity to cultivate a public perception of propriety and an end to the playboy reputation.” I smiled bigger.

  She set her teacup on the coffee table in front of us and placed her hands in her lap. “I guess you expect me to be a hard sell.”

  “I know you to be an astute woman.”

  She giggled softly. “You don’t know me at all.”

  “I realize that. You’re right. You know what, though? I started getting to know Hanna, how she’s always done the right thing. The right thing to her is what everybody else wants for her. She told me she wanted to major in art, but she’s taking a job at the Smithsonian. Did you know she doesn’t like history? Why not let her do something she wants for a change?”

  “No, you don’t know me, young man. If you did, you’d already know I agree with you. I invited Hanna to come stay with me because I could see what my sister and brother-in-law were doing to her. They raised her into the model child. She’s smart and ambitious. She’s a perfectionist and she’s agreeable. Too agreeable, if you ask me. She has always been the girl to play what everybody else wanted to play instead of her own game. I brought her here so she could learn how to make her own choices. So, what you’re asking me doesn’t bother me just because it’s you doing the asking, despite your checkered past. The part I have a problem with is: how do I tell the young girl who has talked nonstop about you since that damnable fundraiser that you want to date her, but not date her?”