Jenny Lopez Saves Christmas

by Lindsey Kelk

  It wasn’t really our heads I was interested in putting together, but still, this could be a massive win for us and Erin would be super impressed if I could bring in business like this.

  ‘That sounds like all my dreams come true,’ I cooed down the line.

  Obviously mixing business with pleasure was a terrible idea. I already knew it was a bad idea to shit where you eat, but a little flirtation couldn’t hurt, right? And if we didn’t win the account, it would only be like shitting near where you eat, and most New York apartments were so small, that was pretty much unavoidable anyway.

  ‘Who’s the client?’ I asked, pressing my knees together and trying to concentrate.

  ‘New fashion line, very cool, very desirable, definitely going to be a big job,’ he said. ‘You know Bennett’s, the department store?’

  ‘Stephen,’ I said coolly. ‘Don’t be an asshole.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ he laughed. ‘Of course you know Bennett’s. Well, Bertie is launching his own fashion line and we’re working on the marketing for him.’

  My eyes widened. Maybe this was a situation where it was worth putting my job above my vagina. Only just, but maybe.

  ‘I’ve heard about it,’ I said, attempting to stay detached, but fuck me, if I could land Bertie Bennett’s debut line Erin would have to literally kiss my ass. Or make me a partner. Or kiss my ass and then make me a partner. ‘When’s the deadline?’

  ‘Now, that could be the only problem,’ Stephen clucked. ‘Someone who obviously wasn’t me already saw a couple of pitches, so there isn’t a huge amount of time. If I send all the info over to you today, I would need a pitch by five p.m. on Friday. If it looks good, we’ll get you in next week.’

  I closed my eyes and breathed out, trying to find my inner Oprah. Do not get mad, I told myself, this is an amazing opportunity. So yeah, you’re second string, but it’s still an amazing opportunity. Even if it’s three fucking days before Christmas and this asshole has clearly already seen pitches from every PR company in New York.

  ‘Stephen, you know I love a challenge,’ I said, forcing a smile into my voice even if my face was set in a grimace. ‘How about I get something over to you by end of play Wednesday, so you’ll be able to open it with all your presents on Christmas morning.’

  ‘I knew you’d come through,’ he said, his tone distinctly relieved. Someone was kicking his butt somewhere along the line on this. Even if we won the pitch, it wasn’t going to be easy business, I could tell. ‘I need it by five, though. I’m flying out home and I need to send it on to Bennett − he’s insisting on staying very involved. I’m sending all the info over to you now.’

  ‘Since I’m kinda pulling this out of my ass at the last minute, can you tell me who we’re pitching against?’ I asked. If you didn’t ask, you didn’t get. ‘Pretty please?’

  ‘Uh, okay, but you didn’t hear it from me,’ he replied, lowering his voice. ‘Ventura and CAR PR.’

  Motherfucking Carrie Anne. No wonder she’d had been so smug at her piece of shit purse party.

  ‘CAR PR?’ I did a spectacular job of keeping my tone light. ‘You’re looking at boutique agencies too?’

  ‘Miaow, Lopez.’ Stephen crackled with laughter. ‘They’re not doing bad work. And I heard they have some kind of hook-up with Sadie Nixon, the model? We’re looking at her to be the face of the brand. I heard she’s coming back up.’

  ‘She’s my fucking roommate,’ I shrieked, all sense of professionalism lost. Dammit. And that was why I would never be an Erin. ‘Sadie Nixon is my roommate.’

  ‘She is?’ His voice perked up way more than I would have liked. ‘Wouldn’t hurt for you to work her into your proposal, although we haven’t spoken to her agent yet so it’s kind of sensitive.’

  ‘No worries, I won’t say anything,’ I promised. ‘But she is looking at more selective jobs right now, so I’d get my ducks in a row before you speak to her if I were you.’

  ‘Understood,’ he replied. ‘And, uh, totally off topic, but I don’t suppose you know whether or not she’s dating someone right now?’

  There is almost never an upside to having a model for a roommate. The free clothes they get never fit you, they hardly ever buy pizza, and it’s hard to flirt a man into asking you on a date when he’s got visions of your roomie prancing down the runway at the last Victoria’s Secret show waltzing through his imagination.

  ‘I’ll talk to you later, Stephen,’ I said as sweetly as I could, checking my inbox for his email before I hung up. Before I could even open the attachment, my extension rang again. This time, I recognized the number.

  ‘Erin, dollface, are you gonna be happy with me,’ I said, clicking to answer.

  ‘What did you do?’ she asked. ‘Or who didn’t you?’

  ‘Ha-fucking-ha. Stephen Hall just called and asked us to pitch for Bertie Bennett’s new fashion line,’ I replied, unfolding my long legs and stretching them out on my desk. It wasn’t a look I liked to encourage, but hell, I’d earned my moment. ‘Erin, Stephen Hall just called us.’

  ‘Jenny, that’s amazing,’ she squealed. ‘I’ve been working them for years. You’re a goddess.’

  ‘I am, but I’m also going to have to be a miracle worker. They want the pitch by Wednesday night.’ I screwed up my face, scanning through the documents he’d sent me and forwarding them to Erin. ‘Any chance we can put our heads together on this?’

  ‘I’ll free up all of tomorrow,’ she confirmed. ‘We’re absolutely going to win this.’

  ‘CAR PR are pitching,’ I told her, that nasty vomity taste in my mouth again. ‘I want to kick their ass.’

  ‘Done and done,’ Erin said. ‘It will be my Christmas gift to you. But speaking of Christmas, did you and Angie make plans yet?’

  ‘No,’ I said, imagining the look on Carrie Anne Roitfeld’s face when she found out I’d won the Bennett business and she had won a kick in the vagina from me. ‘She’s being whiny and I’ve been really busy sulking about Jeff’s impending offspring.’

  ‘Which kind of makes me regret what I’m about to suggest,’ she said. ‘But I was talking to Thomas and we were thinking, why don’t the two of you head up to our house upstate and spend Christmas Day there? Then we’ll come up Friday and we’ll all be together for the weekend. Should be fun − skiing, snowshoeing, sitting on our asses eating food we wouldn’t touch the rest of the year.’

  ‘That does sound nice,’ I said slowly, not wanting to commit. ‘I guess. Isn’t it kind of far?’

  ‘We have cable and Wi-Fi and there’s a hot tub on the deck.’

  ‘So we could drive up Wednesday afternoon?’ I asked.

  Eggnog in the hot tub, A Charlie Brown Christmas on the TV, Jenny spending Christmas off her ass in a bathing suit. Yes please.

  ‘You sure could. I’ll bring the keys tomorrow and you guys can let yourselves in,’ she said, sounding so pleased with herself. ‘We have everything there − you only need to take food and whatever.’

  ‘You have a hairdryer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Straighteners?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Coffee machine?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you bringing your kids?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Jenny.’

  ‘No, I mean, yay, kids.’ I gave a weak whoop. ‘I love your kids.’

  ‘Yeah, well they love you too,’ Erin said. ‘But right now I have to go and collect the little demons from daycare. Let’s meet for breakfast and lock down this Bennett’s thing.’

  I made agreeable noises and then hung up to reread the brief properly. I did love kids, really I did, and I wanted my own little Lopezes so badly that the thought of spending another Christmas watching someone else’s toddlers running around made my heart sink a little. So many of my friends were anxious about becoming mothers, about what they might have to give up, but I couldn’t wait. Of course, I was the only girl in all of New York who couldn’t
give it away, which only made it even harder to know that Jeff, the love of my life, the fire of my loins, had gone and made a mini-me with a real-life Barbie doll called Shannon.

  Even though every bone in my body told me not to, I opened up a browser on my Mac and typed his name into Facebook. There he was. His profile photo still an offhand, unposed picture from their wedding. I felt so sick. And knowing that it couldn’t possibly be morning sickness only made it worse.

  Blinking back tears, I closed the window and forced myself to read the brief properly. Luxe couture, classic with a twist, accessible but high end, seasonal refresh, you are barren and no man will ever love you, yada yada yada. I was pretty sure I might have been making some of that up, but all of it felt accurate enough.

  *

  Fifteen minutes later when I was deep into competitor research, aka online shopping on Barneys.com with my company credit card, my phone rang again.

  ‘So popular today,’ I muttered, popping my earpiece back in and taking a sip of water. ‘Erin White PR, Jenny Lopez speaking.’

  ‘I’m so glad I caught you,’ a deep, sandpapery voice said. ‘I have some very important career questions to ask.’

  It was the guy from Barneys.

  ‘May I ask who’s speaking, please?’

  Obviously I couldn’t let him know I recognized his voice. That would be too easy.

  ‘Of course,’ he replied, laughing easily. If he was annoyed at my being an asshole, he wasn’t showing it. ‘It’s Joe Davies. We met yesterday. You helped me pick out a wallet for my assistant?’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Did you have another important gifting emergency?’

  ‘Actually, yes.’ His voice was low and yummy and made me feel like someone was running their hands through my hair while I ate chocolate truffles. ‘I wanted to get you something to show my appreciation, but I haven’t a clue where to start. I thought perhaps I could buy you dinner tonight and we could go from there?’

  First rule of dating. Never accept a date during the day for the same evening.

  I clicked thought to my completely empty calendar. ‘Tonight?’ I made a regretful mewing sound. ‘I don’t know … ’

  ‘I’m sure you’re incredibly busy,’ he said quickly. ‘Only I really would have liked to see you before I head out of town for the holidays, and tonight’s my last night in the city.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’ He sounded like he meant it, at least. ‘I’m headed down to Florida tomorrow to spend the holidays with my parents.’

  Oh, he was a hot guy and a good son. It would hardly be fair to punish him for that, would it?

  ‘And I made a reservation at Nobu downtown on the off chance that you might be able to figure something out? At eight?’

  I sucked. I sucked so hard.

  ‘I think I could make that work,’ I relented. The lure of a nice meal with a hot man in a cool restaurant was too much. It had been too damn long. ‘Nobu at eight, then?’

  ‘Nobu at eight,’ he confirmed. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’

  Hanging up, I pushed all thoughts of Jeff and Shannon and Stephen Hall and Bertie Bennett out of my mind and opened up a new browser window, tapping the words ‘Joseph Davies New York Lawyer’ into Google, just as ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ came on the office stereo.

  ‘Good timing,’ I said under my breath as a host of wildly attractive pictures appeared on my screen. I clicked, sighed and smiled. There he was. Joseph C. Davies, senior partner at Davies, Davies and Cooper, LLC, and my Christmas present to myself.

  Chapter Four

  Joseph C. Davies, senior partner, hot man and good son, was going to be my husband.

  Sure, I’d had a couple of cocktails – and that was before dinner – but I was almost certain that he was the one. Or the new one, anyway. He wasn’t quite as tall as I remembered, but his suit and his hair were both cut beautifully and the line of his shirt gave him a gorgeous silhouette when he took off his jacket, all broad shoulders and narrow waist. A lock of thick, wavy blond hair kept falling in front of his eyes and it was all I could do not to brush it back. Good hair equals good breeding, and good breeding equals money. I looked into his dark green eyes and his expensive orthodontic work and saw the word summer transformed into a verb. Only New York’s elite ‘summered’, and Joe had House in the Hamptons written all over him.

  It wasn’t like I was being entirely mercenary. So far, this was easily one of the best dates I’d been on, ever. Jenny Lopez was a smitten kitten. My heart did the ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ when I walked into the restaurant and he stood up to greet me, partly because he was such a gentleman and partly because he was just so damn hot. He had told me I looked beautiful, that he was so glad I could make it and that I smelled delicious. I had giggled like a schoolgirl and started dreaming of china patterns as soon as my ass was in my seat. Since then, we’d covered how we came to be in New York, our favourite coffee shops, where to get the most overrated pizza in the city, downtown versus uptown and everything else in between. After quizzing me on my preferences he ordered for the both of us, and instead of finding it chauvinistic and annoying, it seemed chivalrous and polite. I learned that he lived in Tribeca, that he was obsessed with CrossFit and loved Louis C.K., Larry Davis and the musical stylings of Jay-Z and Kanye if he was working out, Mumford & Sons if he was driving, and vintage Michael Jackson if he was forced onto the dance floor. So far, I couldn’t fault him.

  ‘You’re going home for the holidays?’ I asked, sipping my sake as slowly as possible. It wasn’t that slow. ‘You said something about Florida?’

  ‘I did,’ he nodded, pushing the last piece of miso black cod onto my plate. Swoon. ‘My grandparents live down there. They’re in their nineties so we all head down. The last thing they want to do is trek all the way up here − I think the weather would actually kill them.’

  Close to his family, great sign.

  ‘Hasn’t it been awful? At least it didn’t snow today.’ Snow was no friend to my choice of footwear, and tonight I was dressed for battle. Thank god I had half my wardrobe in my office. ‘Must be great to still have them around.’

  ‘Oh, sure it is.’ Joe rested his chopsticks for a moment, smiling to himself. ‘My brother will be there with his kids and my sister is bringing hers, so I get to play uncle Joe. It’s pretty great until my mom and my grandmother team up on me.’

  With every ounce of strength I could muster, I raised a numbed eyebrow.

  ‘They think uncle Joe ought to have kids of his own by now,’ he said with a half-smile. ‘I got away with a lot while I was working my way up, but they’re ready for more grandbabies.’

  It was pretty much all I could do not to grab his iPhone and conference call every member of his family and invite myself down to Florida, bringing with me the gift of a fertile womb and willing spirit.

  The restaurant was as dimly lit as ever. Usually I was annoyed they were determined to make it so tough for me to spot any celebrities, but tonight I was glad for the intimacy of the low lights. It also seemed that we had found New York’s only Christmas-free zone. There wasn’t a fir tree or a sprig of holly to be seen. I was fine with it; it made it feel more like a date to me.

  ‘Making partner was tough.’ Joe rested a hand on my forearm, absently stroking my wrist. My underwear melted onto the floor. ‘I haven’t had a lot of time for anything else.’

  ‘That explains why you haven’t had a lot of time to hone your present purchasing skills,’ I shrugged, utterly heartbroken when he took away his hand to pick up his chopsticks and dig into the seaweed salad.

  He laughed, that lock of blond hair making a break for it again. ‘Yeah, maybe I’m not as naturally stylish as some people. Your friend said you used to be a stylist?’

  ‘Used to be,’ I nodded, my freshly blown-out hair bouncing around my shoulders. Thank god for Manhattan’s plentiful blow-dry bars − I could never have pulled this look together by myself at such short notice. ‘But it’s kind
of a weird life. I like PR better.’

  I really didn’t feel like expanding on why it was weird. Men, especially men with corporate jobs, tended not to understand the function of a stylist. They just saw you as a professional shopper as opposed to someone who taped complete stranger’s private parts into dresses that cost more than the average American home at eleven p.m. so they could go to a party you would never be invited to, for very little money. Not that many understood PR either, but I stood a slightly better chance of not being written off as an asshole.

  ‘My sister used to work in PR,’ he said, signalling to the waiter for more sake. ‘It’s hard work. It almost felt like she was putting more hours in than I was. Working all weekend, totally at the whim of the client, no guarantees. You must be a tough cookie.’

  My eyes shone and I had no words. He really was the perfect man.

  ‘You have exciting plans over the holidays?’ he asked, allowing the waiter to pour our drinks while the waitress cleared away the empty plates.

  ‘Headed upstate to a friend’s house,’ I said, as though that was something I did all the time. ‘Should be fun.’

  My family wasn’t poor, but we didn’t have a summer house in the Hamptons either and I didn’t want to give him any reason not to fall hopelessly in love with me. I looked great. I’d pulled out my sexiest Louboutins and flirtiest Alice + Olivia LBD − all demure and lacy at the front but completely open at the back, it was the perfect first-date dress. Not too distracting and super demure as far as the girls were concerned, but when I got up to use the ladies’ room, it gave him something to think about.

  ‘I’m jealous,’ he said, leaning in just close enough for me to feel his breath on my neck. ‘I bet I’d have more fun with you and your friends than I will with my family.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, holding his gaze and taking a sip of my refreshed drink. ‘I can’t lie to you. I am a lot of fun.’

  He kept up the eye contact for a moment longer before breaking away and laughing, shifting his napkin in his lap.