“So you were just fucking your way to the top this whole time?” I asked her, my eye honing in on her bare ring finger. “Where’s your ring? Does your husband know what kind of woman you are?”
Sapphire looked torn. “When you and I started…hooking up…I was separated. We sort of got back together in the interim, I guess. I owe it to my daughter to try to make it work with her father.”
“And when were you going to tell me this?” I asked, fighting the strain in my voice. “Huh? When?!”
She held her eyes on the ground, unable to meet my angry glare.
“Did this mean anything to you? Us?” I asked, spitting mad. “Or was it all one, big lie?”
Her big, chocolate eyes slowly raised to meet mine and her lips curled into a half smile. “I don’t know what it was exactly. I just know it was fun, and I didn’t want it to end. I never meant for it to go this far…”
I placed my hands on my hips and hung my head. “I was going to propose to you tonight.”
I couldn’t look at her. I spun around and headed back towards my apartment uptown. A million thoughts rushed through my mind. All I knew was that I never wanted to see her again, and I never wanted to feel like that again.
SEVENTEEN
MIRABELLE
“Morning,” I said as I rapped on Preston’s door. “I brought you something.”
I handed him a steaming mug of black coffee and watched as he took it from my hands and sat it aside, almost out of arm’s reach.
“You okay today?” I asked, studying his face. His expression was nearly twisted into some sort of angry smirk.
“Do you need something right now?” he asked, turning to me and then looking towards the door behind me.
Speechless, I shook my head and walked out, shutting the door behind me. I headed towards my office, trying to rack my brain as to what could possibly be his problem. I’d always heard guys could run hot and cold, but this was ridiculous.
I sat my bag down on my desk, almost missing a tiny envelope with a jewelry store logo on it sitting right next to my keyboard. I gently pulled the seams apart on the envelope and poured the contents into my hand.
My grandmother’s pendant.
The chain was shiny and new, and it felt slightly thicker, sturdier. He must have found it that night after dinner and had the chain replaced. I unhooked the clasp and secured it back around my neck where it belonged, gripping the tiny stone between my fingers. That necklace meant the world to me, just like my late grandmother.
The sound of Preston’s door opening forced me to look up and out my doorway. His footsteps traveled the short distance between our offices only he didn’t stop. He kept walking.
“Preston!” I shouted out towards the hall.
Seconds later he appeared in my doorway, face expressionless. I motioned for him to come in and shut the door.
“Yes?” he said as he closed the door and stepped towards me, his hands clasped and eyebrows raised. This was not the same man who just last week couldn’t keep his hands off me.
“Oh,” I said, my cheeks reddening. “Is everything okay between us? Or are you having second…”
I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence. The fact that I’d had sex with my boss and former stepbrother went against every morale fiber of my being. Saying it out loud only made me feel worse about it, especially now that it appeared to have been a glaring mistake. He was such an asshole. He hadn’t changed at all.
He rolled his eyes. “What do you need, Mirabelle? I’ve got somewhere I need to be.”
My fingers twisted around the diamond pendant that hung from my neck. “I just wanted to say thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said as he turned to leave, his hand gripping the doorknob in haste.
“Wait,” I called after him. I walked around my desk and stepped closer to him. “What’s going on with you today?”
“Come clean, Miri,” he said through gritted teeth and with averted eyes.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Come clean,” he repeated.
“Yeah, I heard you the first time,” I snapped. “Now what are you talking about?”
“There’s something you haven’t told me,” he said. “Something very significant.”
I racked my brain. Nothing came to mind. I was a pretty simple girl; a straight A college student with a penchant for avoiding needless drama. I had no skeletons in my closet. Not a single one.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said with my head held high. “You’re being weird right now. I don’t like it.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t like being lied to,” he said, facing the other direction. His hand gripped the doorknob and began to turn it to the right.
I palmed the door and held it shut. “I don’t play games, Preston. You’ve been inside me, at least give me the privilege being able to have a decent conversation with you. I don’t have time to try to read between your blurred lines.”
He turned back to face me, obviously surprised at the heat and intensity of the words leaving my mouth.
“I’m a damn fine intern,” I said with my hands on my hips. “You’re paying me pennies compared to what I’m worth and you know that. And on top of that, I let you inside me. Not just in my body, but in my heart as well.”
He stared at my lips as I spewed my venom.
“Look me in the eyes, Preston,” I commanded. “You give me this job. You give me this office. You kiss me. You take me out to dinner. You make love to me. You fix my diamond pendant. And now that your ex-girlfriend is back in the picture, suddenly I’m chopped liver?”
“No,” he said, his eyes locked into mine and filled with angst and confusion. “It’s not about her. It’s not about her at all. It’s about the fact that you lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie to you!” I said, barely recognizing the angry shriek that escaped my mouth. I rarely raised my voice, but I wasn’t going to stand there and let him accuse me of lying.
“I know what I saw,” he said in a low hush. Before I had a chance to say anything else, he was gone.
EIGHTEEN
PRESTON
About one year ago…
“Preston,” Mr. Halston said as he entered my office door unannounced. Being equal business partners never stopped him from acting like my boss and barging into my space. Perhaps it was because I was hardly thirty and he was twice my age. “I have someone I’d like you to meet.”
As Mr. Halston moved from the doorway, behind him stood the most beautiful thing I’d ever laid eyes on. A tall, fair-skinned beauty with cropped blonde hair and the biggest eyes I’d ever seen stood with one hand resting on her perfectly proportioned hip. Her red lips, full and soft, parted into a sweet smile as she walked towards me and extended her right hand.
“Sapphire Hart,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”
“Sapphire’s our new associate VP of Client Relations,” Halston said. “The young lady I told you about. She’s the one I offered the job to last month while you were on that ski trip in the Swiss Alps, but she had to finish out her old contract at Reed, Ferryman, and Henderson.”
“RFH,” I said as I shook her hand. “Very impressive. What made you want to come here?”
“Mr. Halston convinced me,” she said as she gave him a friendly, knowing wink. “There are more opportunities for advancement here. And growth. RFH was a little stale for my style. I wanted something a little more exciting. A little more progressive.”
“I see,” I said, trying to hide the fact that I found her impossibly gorgeous. My eyes kept traveling the length of her body as if they had a mind all their own.
“I hear you have a vision for Halston and Woodfield,” she said. “I’m here to help you make that vision a reality.”
Sapphire oozed confidence like nobody’s business. With her head held high and her shoulders back, she was a woman who wasn’t afraid to try to take over the world. She was exactly what I needed. She was
exactly what I wanted…
“I look forward to working with you,” I said.
As Mr. Halston lead her out of my office, his hand on the middle of her lower back, she turned to look at me one last time, flashing a sexy smile in the process.
The second she left, I loosened my tie. My mouth was dry and suddenly the room was hot. The growing bulge in my pants told me what I already knew, and no woman had ever given me that powerful of a physical reaction before.
Sapphire was a real spitfire. An intelligent beauty that packed a 1-2 punch, she was the stuff that dream girls were made of. Group meetings turned into individual meetings, and eventually joint projects with the two of us at the helm took up most of our days. Working lunches turned into casual drinks which turned into date night dinners and the occasional hotel room.
We wanted the same things from life, and we were prepared to chase our dreams together. The attraction was evident the moment we first made eye contact, and the chemistry as undeniably intense. She was the only woman powerful enough to put me in my place, and God knows I needed that.
Month went by, and my feelings towards Sapphire only snowballed into something that was bigger than I knew what to do with, and one lazy Sunday afternoon I’d found myself wandering into a jewelry shop on 5th avenue. I walked out with a flawless, five-carat, cushion cut diamond solitaire, and I spent months trying to come up with the perfect proposal.
That night, at the restaurant, everything changed. Life as I knew it was over. I’d never given so much of myself to anyone before, and in a matter of seconds, I realized that those feelings weren’t reciprocal.
The way she’d wink at me from across the table in meetings. The way she’d bring me my coffee every morning, just the way I liked it with two sugars and the tiniest bit of vanilla cream. The way she’d stare into my eyes when we made love, and all those nights spent curled up in each other’s arms, daydreaming about our ambitions and life goals. It was all for nothing. It all went to shit the second she admitted she’d lied.
Not only was our relationship one, big, giant lie. So was she. Married mom from Jersey. Fucking lying bitch.
As I sat alone in my apartment Christmas day, in front of the tree Sapphire had insisted on decorating together in my place, I drowned my sorrows in a few too many glasses of warm brandy and passed out on the sofa in a puddle of my own vomit.
It wasn’t my finest moment, but by the time I’d come to, I made a vow to myself never to waste another second with a liar. No second chances. No exceptions. I would’ve sworn off women completely if I wasn’t such a hot-blooded, American man. As long as I always wore the pants and called the shots, I wouldn’t get hurt again.
NINETEEN
MIRABELLE
“Mirabelle,” Preston said as he called my desk phone. “Come in here.”
I’d emailed him my updated proposal for the Johnston account earlier that week. They’d come back and said they liked it, but they weren’t quite sold and wanted to mull it over some more. Preston then insisted that I make it better. I’d racked my brain all week, stayed up late, come in early, and poured all of my blood, sweat, and tears into that marketing plan.
“Hi,” I said as I walked in. My heart pounded in my chest as I waited for the moment of truth. I sat down in the chair across from Preston and studied his face, trying to gauge whether or not he liked it.
He sat back in his chair with a solemn look on his face.
“Well, what’d you think?” I asked. I couldn’t help but smile. I was damn proud of that work.
“Garbage,” he replied, his words cutting into my emotional flesh like a sharp knife. “Complete garbage. I’m actually really disappointed in you, Mirabelle.”
I struggled to catch my breath, as he had nearly knocked the wind out of me. “Can you elaborate, please?”
“What’s the point?” he sighed. “You obviously don’t understand what you’re doing. I really think I jumped the gun with you. I took one shining moment of yours and assumed that you were going to be my next star. I guess I thought-”
“Stop,” I cut him off. “Don’t say anymore. You don’t have to be mean about it.”
“I’m not being mean,” he said with an incredulous glare. “I’m being honest. You need to have thick skin if you want to work in advertising, Mirabelle. I thought you were a real shark. You’re not. And that’s okay. It’s just not what I’m looking for. I’m going to hand the Johnston account over to one of the senior execs.”
I pursed my lips together, trying to fight the word venom that was bubbling and aching to come out. “I feel sorry for you.”
He laughed. The asshole fucking laughed.
I flew out of his office like a mad woman and made a beeline for the fourth floor. I had to talk to Monica.
“Monica,” I said as I barged into her office, slightly out of breath and face red hot with adrenaline.
“One sec,” she held up one finger as she tied up her phone call. “What is it, sweetie?”
I damn near slammed her office door and plopped down in the seat across from her. It took all the strength I had not to break down, but I couldn’t fight the rogue tears that fell from my eyes and left tracks down my cheeks.
“You slept with him, didn’t you?” Monica said as sheer disappointment washed over her face.
“You can say ‘I told you so’ if you want,” I said between light sniffles. I grabbed a tissue from the box on the corner of her desk and dabbed my eyes.
Monica shook her head. “I won’t say that.”
“What should I do now?” I sobbed. “I feel like my career is over before it’s even started.”
“You have to rectify this,” she replied. “Resign. Get the hell out of here. Find a different place to intern and never look back. You’ve been here, what, two weeks now?”
“Yeah,” I replied, dabbing my hot tears once again. “There’s no way I can finish out the semester here.”
“Resign, sweetie,” she said. “Cut your losses. Start fresh somewhere else in the fall.”
I didn’t want to push my graduation date any farther, but it looked like it was going to be my only option.
“And promise me you won’t blur those lines ever again!” she said with a slightly joking tone to try to lighten the mood. “Your career is not over. Unless you really piss him off…”
She looked to the side, as if she was recalling an awful memory. I didn’t want to know, so I didn’t ask.
“I thought he liked me,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “I wouldn’t have done anything with him, but he told me he had to have me. He treated me like gold. He was starting to soften up with me a bit. And then Sapphire showed up. Ever since then it’s like he almost hates me.”
“Sapphire?” Monica asked.
“Yeah, she came into his office last week,” I said. “They had a heated argument. He kicked her out.”
“Interesting,” Monica said as she sucked in a slow breath.
“What, do you know something I don’t?” I asked, praying the answer was yes.
“I’ve heard some things,” she replied. “I don’t know if there’s any truth to them. You know how people like to talk.”
“Tell me what you know, because all I know at this point is he’s calling me a liar and acting like he wants nothing to do with me,” I said. “And I can’t, for the life of me, figure out what changed between us.”
“I didn’t tell you much before because I don’t know everything,” Monica said, taking her sweet time recalling the precious information. “I just know he was crazy about her. Crazy in love. Damn near obsessed. And she turned out to be married. Rumor has it she was using him to get to the top, but that’s about all I know.”
I shook my head. “I still don’t know what that has to do with me. None of it makes sense, Monica.”
“Cut your losses,” she said. “You’ll never be able to figure him out. Life’s a whole lot easier when the only committed relationship you have is to your job. Men suck.�
�
TWENTY
PRESTON
The faintest sound of paper sliding across carpet filled the echoes of my quiet office. I glanced around the room, only to see a white envelope resting in front of my door. Someone had just slid it under the crack in the bottom.
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