That little sneak. She hadn’t texted him a thing all week. “And no one called you on your bluff?”
“Not a soul. Turns out that you have excellent taste, Asher.” Her voice dropped to a husky note that made his body react. Hell yes, he did have excellent taste. He was starting to think the smartest thing he’d ever done was get drunk and nail Greer, because it forced him to really pay attention to her, to really see her for the first time.
And damn, he liked what he saw.
“I’m glad I could be so helpful.” He hoped she didn’t notice the tension in his voice . . . or pick up on the fact that he was unbuttoning his slacks so he could free his cock. Jerking off while on the phone? He hadn’t done this since he was a teenager, but he craved Greer, and not having her in his arms? This would have to do.
Her small sigh made his senses go on alert. “I’m afraid that’s the only thing that’s gone my way this week.”
“What is it? What’s wrong?” The need to fix whatever was troubling her was overwhelming.
“Oh, it’s just the tabloids.” Greer made a small noise of disgust in her throat. “They follow us the moment we leave the Dutchman castle and trail me and the triplets everywhere we go. They spit questions at those poor girls and they have no idea how to answer, so they just make things worse. I swear there are new insulting things printed about them every day, and it breaks my heart. I know it’s upsetting to Kiki, even if Tiffi and Bunni are too . . . absentminded to notice things.”
Absentminded? He would have used the term thick as a brick but Greer was nicer than he was. “Is it just the online tabloids?” He could have Stijn’s lawyers send them a few cease and desists if he dropped a few words in the right ears.
“Have you seen the weekly magazines? They’re all speculating over which girl’s going to end up marrying him, and digging up every terrible thing they possibly can about each girl. Tiffi was an escort at one point, Bunni a stripper, and lord only knows what they’ve dug up on Kiki. They’re being referred to as the gold diggers of the century and made a laughingstock.” She paused. “It’s hard.”
Asher hesitated. He didn’t exactly feel sorry for the triplets. After all, they had started dating Stijn because of his money and his business, not because he was a stunning conversationalist. And the fact that they all three shared his bed? Of course people were going to talk. The wedding was a three-ring circus and he’d heard Dutchman magazine mentioned more times in the last week than he had in the last decade. Stock was through the roof and he was pretty sure Stijn was thrilled with the results—and the wedding hadn’t even happened yet. So no, he didn’t feel bad for the girls, or for Stijn, who was a ruthless, calculating bastard.
But this made Greer unhappy, and he didn’t like her unhappy. She was working too hard on this wedding for it to be laughed at, and he wanted to fix things for her. “Do you want me to step in?”
“Step in? What do you mean?”
“I mean if the tabloids are causing you problems, we grease the wheels in the other direction. We buy up some puff pieces and throw some money in their direction so they print positive-spin articles. I can get a publicist on this full time, if you want. A private publicist, not Stijn’s,” he corrected. Stijn’s publicist was probably one of the guilty parties feeding some of the more lascivious bits to the public.
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Would that work?”
“It would,” he assured her. “It’s all about perception. I’ll get the rumor mill grinding on the other end, and hopefully we can staunch some of the bleeding.”
“Thank you.” Greer sounded grateful. Grateful and tired.
“Anything for you.”
She was silent.
Okay, clearly she wasn’t ready to hear that sort of thing yet. He’d come back to that. Asher circled back around to a topic he knew she’d talk about: the wedding. “So you finalized the wedding parties?”
“I did.”
“Should I know who’s in them?”
“It probably wouldn’t hurt.” For the next few minutes, he half listened as she rattled off a list of names that meant nothing to him. Stijn’s groomsmen were all stockholders, and Asher wasn’t sure if that was the closest thing the Dutch millionaire had to friends or if it was a business ploy. The girls were each limited to three bridesmaids and one maid of honor, and had tried to get around the limitation with having endless amounts of flower girls and assigning friends to be ushers, provided they got to wear long, flowing dresses in the matching bridal colors. He would have been amused at the lengths that the triplets were going to in order to try and squeeze a few more people into the wedding, if it wasn’t for one glaring omission.
“I didn’t hear your name,” Asher commented when she was finished.
“What do you mean, my name?”
“I mean, what’s your part in the wedding?”
“My, you have been gone for a while, haven’t you?” She gave him another throaty chuckle that made his cock push against the front of his slacks. He tugged them lower, freeing himself as she spoke again. “I’m the wedding planner.”
“You’re also Stijn’s daughter. His only daughter, I might add. You should have some sort of place of honor in the wedding.” Now he was getting pissed on her behalf.
“I don’t.” She didn’t even sound upset. “Come, Asher. You know my father. You must be close if you’re his best man. You know he isn’t the sentimental type.”