by Lee, Corri
“Oh really?”
“Of course,” I pulled back from his arms and nudged his shoulder, “I bet she won’t be able to write as well as I can though.”
Chapter Eight
Daylight snuck through the curtains and bathed my face. I promptly flipped over my pillow and buried myself under the covers. Now that I’d had a taste of sloth, I was greedy for it. I dozed for a while, feeling a little worse for wear after the ridiculous amount of alcohol I’d consumed the previous day, and mused over the alterations I could now make to my novel. My mind strayed to Mr Ale-… Nathaniel and how eagerly he’d swooped in to comfort me. Appearances could be so deceptive. Of course, I was still mortified that I’d sobbed in his company.
A relentless hammering on the door forced me from the warmth of the bed- I stumbled to the racket with a curse and a stubbed toe. I wrenched it open to find myself confronted with Bethany- standing with a proud swagger and a petite Vietnamese lady at each shoulder. Her eyes skimmed my frame and her mouth curled into an expression of approval. “Nice pants.” She pushed past me into the lounge area and threw herself down on the couch like she walked into expensive hotel suites every day. I wished I had that kind of confidence. “So, I found these guys down in the lobby.” She kicked off her shoes and grinned. “Manicure and pedicure. Come on.” She patted the cushion next to her and jerked her head towards a bouquet of large yellow roses.
“Again with the bloody flowers. The house must smell like a boudoir.” Bethany smirked at me and held her hands up.
“I’m not touching that one.” I groaned in mock disgust and darted back into the master bedroom to pull on a pair of tailored pinstripe trousers and a powder blue v neck sweatshirt. When I approached the lounge again, Bethany was shaking a small wrapped box with her tongue trapped between her teeth. She passed it to me with an impish grin, along with the card from the bouquet.
Envy:
Needs no work.
I have an open diary- stop by when you’re ready.
“No way, gifts for good work.” I settled down on the couch as the women set to work buffing our toes.
“He’s chock full of surprises. He hugs and everything.” Bethany raised an eyebrow and waved a hand for elaboration. Clearly I had no business hugging billionaires and she urgently needed to know why I’d bent the rules. “He turned up last night to make sure I hadn’t smuggled in my laptop.” She laughed incredulously and settled back with a cushion under each arm.
“Sure, that’s why he turned up.”
“Shut up, Bethy- I know what you’re thinking. He’s just turning out to be a really good friend.”
“Ok, ‘friend’.” I swatted her elbow and scowled at her.
“If he’s just trying to get in my pants, why would he be giving you time off work and booking you in for the same treatments as me?”
“Threesome?”
I blew a raspberry and shook my head, knowing that I could always count on her for a sexually orientated theory. “He told me to take a chance on Cole, remember?” She murmured in recognition and ceased her crude interpretation of mine and Mr Alexa-… Nathaniel’s working relationship. It wasn’t going to be easy getting my head around the lack of formality. I ripped the paper off the box and smiled down at a bottle of Gucci Envy. Not the most expensive of gifts, which I liked, but the sentiment was entirely apt. “So, how was last night?”
Bethany launched into a far too detailed blow by blow account of her date with Adam and the aftermath. I braced myself to walk into Hell when I got home- it sounded like she’d turned my house into a brothel. Though admittedly, she did promise that she’d put down towels and steered clear of my bedroom.
“You disinfected the kitchen sideboards though, right?” She wrinkled her nose and smiled apologetically. “Ugh, we’re ordering takeaway until you do it. So are you seeing him again?”
She sighed and nodded. “Friday.” This was unheard of. Bethany was seldom snapped up for second dates. Why didn’t she seem happier about it? “I think it’s a pity date.”
I scoffed at her in disbelief. “I’m supposed to be the unconfident one.”
“I cried,” she blurted, “he was just so nice to me. But they’re all nice to me until they get under me. I-…” she glanced at me and for the first time in years, she blushed. “I told him that I was sick of just being the busty blonde airhead good for an easy ride stood next to the demure leggy brunette who had men plaguing over her for commitment.” I paled slightly- I had never considered myself an object of desire and was fairly sure that nobody else had either. The thought of her being jealous of me made me feel slightly sick.
“He’d be a bit of a weirdo if watching you cry turned him on. But I don’t think Adam is like that.”
“You don’t?”
I threw an arm around her shoulders and pulled a face. “Definitely not. Doesn’t have the balls. Try calling him to ‘cancel’ and if he insists on rebooking, you know it’s not pity.”
“When did you get so wise, Cici?”
“When I cried at a billionaire last night.” She looked at me with a raised eyebrow and we both burst out laughing- two normal lovelorn women spending a billionaire’s money.
We strolled into the Alexander Publishing House arm in arm, laughing loudly with coffees in our free hands and handbags draped over the crooks of our elbows. In coordinating pencil skirts and white shirts with matching French manicured fingers and toes, we may have looked more suited to the buzzing streets of London, or even the upper east side of Manhattan.
Bethany tugged on the handle of the security door and swore- it didn’t budge. “Irina?”
The Russian receptionist looked up from her desk and blinked expressionlessly. “Sorry. I need a word with Miss Douglas.” I frowned and approached her desk cautiously. She didn’t blink as she stared at me and held up a key ring up to my face. “For Alexander’s office. You have lovely eyes.” I was taken aback by the unexpected compliment and struggled to articulate a response.
“Oh well, thank you very much. You have lovely…” I panicked, “you have a lovely accent.” Irina gave me a sly smile and buzzed open the security door. Bethany began to laugh at me the minute it closed behind us.
“ ‘You have a lovely accent’? Is that the best you could do?”
“Sod off, I could hardly say ‘you have great tits, mind if I motorboat them?’ ” That made her crack up and swat my backside with her handbag.
She swooped down gracefully to her desk and winked. “Don’t let Money-Bags wear you out- it’s the new Friday today.” I groaned inwardly and marvelled at the fact that at that precise time a week earlier, I had been finalising my novel to send to publishers. What a difference a week makes.
Riding the lift down to the office on my own felt illicit and forbidden- like I’d been given the keys to the Crown Jewels and was abusing the privilege to wield the sceptre like I owned it. I could see Nathaniel sitting at his desk through the glass wall- legs swung up leisurely and tapping foot rhythmically. I guiltily raised the key fob to the door and pushed it open a crack, expecting to be met by classical music. But instead-
“Are you listening to The Offspring?” He grinned at me and swung his legs down to the ground, rising from his seat to greet me.
“Want me to turn it off?”
“No,” I gaped, “I love that you’re so normal.” I held out the key and magnetic fob and found myself baffled by his frown.
“They’re yours, Cecelia. You can just let yourself in when you come here without waiting for me to come and get you.
“Oh.” I gaped. “Okay, I guess. Just remind me to give them back to you when we’re done with the novel.” I paused for a moment and shifted my weight onto one leg, hand on hip. “You have new furniture.” An impressive antique escritoire had been placed alongside the desk with a smaller more comfortable looking wooden chair padded in red velvet that matched the walls.
“We can move it wherever you want.”
“Pardon me?” Nathanie
l opened a door beneath the personal bar and pulled out a cheap plastic travel kettle.
“They’re for you. You said you don’t have a thinking space- it’s no wonder you find yourself mentally blocked sometimes. Coffee?” I blinked in surprise at his brisk subject change and ran my fingers across the hard varnished wood of the escritoire. It was unbelievable that he was volunteering uninhibited access to his personal space, and so casually too.
“Yes please. What do you mean ‘for me’?”
“You can use this as a workstation whenever you want. Separate work and leisure- write here and keep your home for fun and slumber.” My breath jarred at his suggestion, and I could only hope that it had gone unnoticed. His notion meant working closely with him and sharing his office, but at the rate we were progressing through the book, what was the point of buying me my own workstation?
“I like to write a lot.” I murmured under my breath.
He carried a tray laden with coffee, milk, sugar and two mugs over to his desk and sat in his throne. “So come here whenever you want in office hours. You have keys.” How could he be so liberal with his personal space?
“Don’t you have meetings and suchlike?”
“Not many at the moment. We can work around that.” His brow furrowed as he dumped an excessive amount of sugar into his mug. “To be completely honest, Cecelia, you’re the only author I’m working with at the moment. I’m bored of putting my name on three part novels about varying degrees of sexual degradation and child abuse.” Was that why he was trying so hard with me? Who cares? My mind screamed at me. Your novel stands out- he’s going to publish you! “So did you enjoy the hotel?”
I smiled warmly and took my usual place at his desk. “Bethany had to drag me out kicking and screaming. Thank you for the perfume, by the way.” I grabbed my laptop bag from the floor and tugged the laptop from its depths. “So, resuming ‘sloth’?” As I leaned towards the escritoire, I caught his eye and saw something sombre lingering there. “Are you alright?”
“Of course.” I could hear the lie in his voice but I was reluctant to probe too far into his feelings. He poured coffee into both mugs and sighed. “I was thinking, maybe we should start to relay your adjustments via email. Save on the paperwork.”
I wilted a little when I saw the young regular twenty-something Nathaniel Alexander regress back into the hard faced untouchable professional I’d met six days earlier. I slunk into the chair at the escritoire and silently forced myself into a literary frenzy. I battled to separate my own fury from the emotions I should have been filtering into the novel- my fingers thundered so heavily onto the keys that the laptop rattled against the wood. This was exactly the reason why I steered clear of self-righteous men- they were only too eager to withdraw at the first sign of weakness.
My phone buzzed in my laptop bag- I reached down to retrieve it with one had while my fingers still flew around like they had minds of their own. “Yes?”
“Cici, are you okay? You sound frantic.”
“Writing.”
“Oh. Well, I finish in ten minutes, are you coming home with me?” I bit my lip and flexed my fingers over the keys. I had no idea that I’d worked for so long, and I really did want to escape.
“I’ll be up in five minutes.” I tucked my phone back into my bag and sighed, closing my laptop and tucking it away. “I’ll email you the adjustments when I get home, Mr Alexander.” Before he could answer, I was out of the door, completely clueless as to why his apathy had rubbed me up the wrong way.
“Cici, your phone won’t stop ringing.”
“So turn it off.” The bar heaved with custom and I was in no hurry to start taking calls. My crazed thrash around the bar, serving patrons in double speed, was fuelled by anger and Red Bull. Every time Bethany approached a customer, I’d lunge and get there first. My aim was to completely exhaust myself, sleep until my lunch time shift the next day, then get horrendously drunk on unbranded tequila.
“Cici, flowers.” I growled and shook my head. I was not in the mood. “They’re from Cole.”
“Oh.” I felt slightly soothed for the reiterated presence of someone stable in my life- someone who didn’t blow hot and cold. Not that I really understood why the billionaire bitch fit bothered me anyway. He hadn’t really done anything- he’d just withdrawn.
Bethany put the bouquet down in front of me and snaked an arm around my waist. “What did Mr Alexander do to you today? You were best buds this morning but you’ve been in your self-destructive work-until-I-drop mode since you left his office.”
“Nothing.” I pushed her arm away and searched the bouquet for a card. “He looked completely depressed but he wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. I’m being irrational.” I spoke the words but I didn’t believe them for a moment- I didn’t believe that I was being irrational. I honestly thought I was completely justified in being annoyed when I’d opened up to him at The Langham and spent the evening sat in my underwear for him to just shut me out.
My mood didn’t improve when I read the card from Cole.
Can’t make the bar tonight- bistro emergency.
See you at The Duplicate tomorrow night with Bethany and Adam.
I wrinkled my nose and threw the card down on the bar next to the flowers. The Duplicate was an upmarket alternative nightclub hidden in a dark corner of Soho and an absolute nightmare to get home from in the wee hours of the morning. Not to mention that extortionately priced drinks in a club full of heavy set rockers wasn’t an evening I aspired to.
“It might be fun,” Bethany bumped hips with me, “I’ll bet Cole pays for everything.”
I raised an eyebrow at her and grunted. “Sold.” Everything looked brighter when it came at no cost.
My hand felt around aimlessly as my phone vibrated noisily on the nightstand next to my head. “You are in serious peril if this isn’t urgent,” I croaked, “text messages were invented for a reason.”
“Don’t be such a bum. You start work in an hour.” I lifted my head to look at the digital alarm clock- it would have helped if I’d actually set it to wake me up.
“Crap. Thanks, Bethy.” I dragged myself out of bed and caught sight of myself in the mirror attached to my armoire door. My eyes were red ringed and I looked utterly haggard. Nobody would ever guess that I’d been pampered within an inch of my life two days earlier.
“I did actually call for a purpose other than being your talking alarm clock. Check your emails- I’ve sent you something you’ll want to see.”
I groaned and rubbed my eyes, feeling like I’d hardy slept at all. “Alright. See you later.”
The smell of coffee kept me company as I filtered through the endless stream of spam in my inbox. There was no reply to my revised draft of ‘sloth’- I presumed that no news was good news. Bethany had marked her email as high priority and sent it with a receipt for a read request. As soon as I accepted, my phone rang again.
“So have you read it?” I tutted at her and clicked a link within the body of the email.
“Not in the five seconds between me opening the email and you calling- hang on.” My eyes scanned a puzzling article on a popular literature blog- well, it was popular if you were so inclined in that direction.
’I have the next bestseller’ says Nathaniel Alexander.
We were stunned when one of our sources came to us with a piece of scorching gossip yesterday afternoon- a new literary genius is in our midst. The story was leaked directly from Alexander Publishing House after speculation over his close involvement with an unnamed female over the past week.
“I have the next bestseller sitting in my office raring to go,” said Nathaniel Alexander, 23, “I make promises of core-shaking romance and heart-breaking betrayal. You will laugh, and you will cry- but more than anything, you will feel.” Alexander was determined to keep a lid on any further details of both the novel and it’s author except this- The Price Of Success will be reaching bookstores next month.
“Holy shit,” I whispered
, “next month.”
Chapter Nine
“So what does a guy have to do to score an autograph from the next big up-and-coming British author?”
“Queue up on Piccadilly with hundreds of my adoring fans when I do a book signing.” I laughed as Adam refilled my glass with wine. Our double date had turned into something of a premature celebration of my impending fame. As much as I insisted that it could all still go wrong, they were determined to drink to excess, and that was a concept to which I was not even slightly opposed. “So what do you actually do, Adam?” He raised an eyebrow at me and sat back coolly in his chair. It was a little shameful that I’d known him longer than I’d known Cole but had never taken the time to learn more about him. Bad Cecelia.
“I teach Psychology a few rooms away from this idiot.” He nodded his head towards Cole and winked.
I scooped my glass up from the table and matched his stance, preparing myself for a battle of wits. “Oh, so you know people?”
He swung an arm around the back of Bethany’s seat and ran his fingers tenderly up the length of her arm. “Oh yes. I’m all for abandon the generic schemata of negative gender stereotypes in favour of looking to the person beyond.” I knew that he’d muddled together the psychological jargon to exclude Bethany and Cole from the conversation- he knew that I’d understand.
And I understood his appeal to Bethany. He was the sandy haired, blue eyed ‘boy next door’ type to match her, but my reluctance to part with his phone number came from an inkling that he may have suited my ‘meeting of minds’ specification somewhat more than he fit her ‘hottest heartthrob of soap’ criteria.
“What the hell does that mean?” He smirked at me and shrugged, permitting me to provide a dumbed-down explanation. I rolled my eyes and sipped at my wine.