His Wild Blue Air

Day 1

Monday

Ethan Boyd, seducing even the gay?

Followed was a grainy picture of him whispering into a brunette woman's ear, his hand on her hip and hers on his shoulder.

Ethan tossed the tabloid on his desk and leaned back against his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers, simultaneously groaning and sighing. He wondered briefly if he would ever get a moment of peace without the paps constantly flooding the doorstep of his office building and stalking basically each and every one of his friends and family.

And then his office phone rang, quite loudly, stunning him to open his eyes and glare at the machine with wrath.

He picked it up regardless. "Ethan Boyd," he barked.

"Apparently, you're now a predator of the lesbians too. Aren't you a beast, Mr Boyd?"

He sighed and propped his elbows on his desk, atop a dozen of documents he had yet to review. "This is not the time, Emma," he said tiredly.

"Oh but this is interesting."

He stared down at the front page of the tabloid, his eyes hurting as he looked at it more. He resorted to picking it up and flinging it across the room. It hit the whiskey bottle on the bartop. He watched the bottle wobble, almost titillating over the edge and smashing to pieces. But even the bottle wouldn't want to test his wrath today, so it stayed put after a second more of wobbling.

"You just threw the magazine across the room, didn't you?" Emma guessed.

Ethan closed his eyes as he allowed himself to breathe very deeply for five seconds. "Stop being the worm in my stomach," he growled.

"Okay, first of all, ew. And second of all, I wish I could, Ethan, I wish I could." And then he heard some pages shuffling on the other end which he assumed was her flipping the pages. She chuckled. "You have got to read this."

"Emma-"

"A known rake and a very successful one at that, Ethan Boyd has apparently expanded his sexual ventures into the LGBT community and was seen trying his luck with Emma Lyons, who recently made the Forbes 500 with her technology company, LYONS," she read, ignoring his growl. "Sources claimed that they were particularly close last night at Lucas Jordan's annual Charity Ball. Lyons was seen-"

"Stop," he ordered.

"I have to admit, there is never a quiet moment with you, is there?"

"None of this is funny," he said.

"Your mother must be having a seizure back home."

"Don't bring Mom into this."

"What about your father?" she queried.

He clenched one of his hands into a fist and put it to the bridge of his nose. "I don't know, Emma. It's 8.30 in the goddamn morning and I just came into the office and this is the first thing my assistant put on my desk. This is starting off as a very good morning. Thank you for the concern by the way."

"Ethan."

"I mean, not only do I have to handle my parents and my sister surely hogging me later about this shit and then there's my rep probably on his way up right now, I also have to listen to you making jokes about this. Thank you!" he rambled on, volume increasing with each word.

"Are you done?" she asked calmly.

He gritted his teeth with his mouth closed, his muscles so tense that he was sure not even needle can poke through his skin. "Yeah."