Not just any stamp, either. It says, “Property of Tanner Sharpe.”
What the fuck?!?
I feel like everything slows down, accentuating the loud gasps and camera flashes coming from the stunned audience.
Bile begins creeping up my throat, and I become light-headed.
If the ground could open up and swallow me whole, I would gladly, gleefully even, go down the pits of hell to get away from this tent, this city, this moment.
I suddenly wish there weren't a million cameras and reporters all around me. It feels like every camera in the world is being shoved right in my face. Well, except for the ones pointed at my models' ass cheeks.
“What the fuck, Tanner?! What kind of immature ass pulls a prank like this?” I hate-whisper to Rebecca, as if I didn't already loathe him enough.
“I don't think the prank's over yet,” she says, pointing across the runway to Tanner's now-empty seat.
I follow her finger as it points to the stage where Tanner is jumping up in the middle of the models.
He's holding a microphone.
Who the fuck gave him a microphone?
“Good evening, ladies and gents. I’m afraid I need no introduction—but suffice to say, I have the highest sales and the hottest designs when it comes to women’s lingerie,” Tanner is announcing to the crowd.
The female reporters are practically cooing at his feet. Pathetic.
“The only thing missing was the sexiest models. And now, I have those as well. It’s my pleasure to announce the newest models for Pretty Little Vixen—straight from the Dirty Little Angel line.”
The audience is applauding his childish stunt, and he’s milking it for all it's worth.
Seriously?
He looks at me with his devastatingly gorgeous grey eyes and says, “No hard feelings, Elsa, Angel. It's nothing personal. Strictly business.”
“'Nothing personal,' you ass?!”
When did I get on stage beside him? I must have rage climbed up there in my Louboutins.
I see nothing but red—as red as the soles of my heels—and it’s only him that I’m focused on.
“You piece of shit,” I sneer. “You couldn't fight fairly in business, so you stooped to stealing my models?”
“Not at all,” he says, smugly. “I merely saw a business opportunity and took it. That's the kind of thing they teach you at Harvard. Not that you would know, cupcake.”
“Here we go,” I snort, “When in doubt, show off your Harvard pedigree. How pathetic.”
“Funny, I remember you calling me lots of things…but never pathetic, funnily enough. The best ever…Your stallion…the only one who could make you come…”
“The only one? More like ‘only once.’ You were as inept in bed as you are in the boardroom, Tanner! Don’t fucking flatter yourself.”
“Then that must mean I rocked your world, 'cause Pretty Little Vixen is killin' it, Elsa. The sales speak for themselves.”
“You are infuriating,” I yell. “That's not what I mean, and you know it.”
And that's when the flash from a camera goes off directly in my face.
Fucking reporter. I'm guessing my face won't look very alluring in that picture.
You know how someone explains deafening quiet as ‘it's so quiet that you can hear a pin drop’?