The Publicist's Plight (Book I in The Harrison Inc. Series) | ✓

Chapter Nineteen: Right Wing

"Ommmm....ommmm...."

My hands at heart center, I take deep breaths and try to find my inner Yoga warrior. Emphasis on the word "try", since my stress level is so up the roof I can feel the gray hairs pushing out of my scalp.

The early morning summer breeze rushes through the front porch of the guest house as I channel all of my negative energy into the wood beneath me. But it isn't working. Because no matter how hard I try to get rid of the dark, clouded aurora that last night in North Carolina left behind, it still lingers in my mind about the chaos and disaster we left behind at Oliver Epps's birthday party.

"Sun salutation," I instruct to myself. I stretch my arms above my head and behind my shoulders into "waterfall" pose before bringing them in front of me, touching my toes, then at my sides while my legs stretch out into high plank, which is indubitably me just lying on the ground since I have no upper body strength whatsoever to hold myself up.

When I push my arms straight and curve my back into "cobra," I then push into "downward dog" and exhale slowly.

Along with someone else behind me.

My eyes open quicker than I blink when I hear the sound of someone behind me. When I'm welcomed to the upside down image of Sebastian sitting on the wooden bench, a smile on his face, I lose my balance at the sight and fall over on my side, landing with a loud thump.

I scramble up and hit the back of the railing, "Y-you...why...it's-but...y-you!"

"Good morning to you, too, Sunshine," he says, grabbing my fruit-drink mix from the small table and taking a sip. "Is this strawberry?"

The amount of normality in his voice is alarming.

"Raspberry," I grumble, my hands into fists at my side. "What are you doing here at," I check my watch, "7:03 in the morning? Most importantly, why are you here?"

"Hey, I used to live here at some point, so I think I have some right to wander. But enough about me. Why don't you go back to your...yoga routine thing?"

"What? N-no! No!" I refuse to feed into his perverted tendencies.

He laughs, "It's obvious you're still mad at me about something. So I figured, 'why not bother her to the point of her having to tell me what I did wrong?'"

I pull up the front of my workout shirt and avoid his eyes, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Okay. If you say so."

He doesn't move.

"I would like to finish my yoga workout in peace."

"I'm not disturbing it."

"Yes. You are."

"Just pretend I'm not here, then."

I scoff, "You're ridiculous. You know what you should be doing right now? You should be reflecting on the mess you caused yesterday in Charlotte with your junkie friend, Antonio."

"It's Anthony," he corrects, taking another sip of my drink. "And I thought we passed that, already? New dawn, new day, you know?"

I don't reply. All I do is grab my phone from by my feet and open the news column for him to see his name and the video of him dancing plastered on every gossip and entertainment page that loads.

He scrolls for a while and shrugs with disinterest when he returns my cell phone, "They just want something to talk about."

"They just want something to talk about!?" I repeat loudly and angrily, disrupting my chi. When I realize my anger is steaming up again, I take a deep breath, hold it for five seconds, then exhale my furiousness.