No One But Us
Elizabeth O’Roark
Copyright © 2018 by Elizabeth O’Roark
Editing by
Jessica Royer Ocken
Cover Design by
Kari March Designs
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN: 978-0-9898135-8-7
Contents
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Want More of Elle and James?
Also by Elizabeth O’Roark
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Foreword
In 2013 I published my second novel, Bloom. I loved the characters, James and Elle, and I loved their chemistry together. But it was my second book and it was flawed. I felt that, in some ways, I hadn’t given them the story they deserved. When I finally buckled down, I wound up basically crafting an entirely different book, with major changes to the plot.
All of this to say that whether you read Bloom at some point or not, I hope you’ll give this a shot, and that you love it as much as I do.
XO,
Elizabeth
Chapter 1
Elle
After nearly two weeks here, it still makes me giddy. Every. Single. Time.
That moment—the one where I emerge from the gloom of the subway into Manhattan’s sunlit streets—feels like the opening scene of a movie. And it’s all mine for the next three months. I wonder if it will ever not feel too good to be true.
The smell of coffee wafts on the early June breeze, calling to me, but I continue down the street, my desire to run hampered by a pencil skirt and three-inch heels. My father calls, and I ignore that too. It can wait. God knows he’d say the same about any call I placed to him.
In truth, there’s no rush. I could enjoy a venti mocha and leisurely chat with my father—not that my father and I actually have leisurely chats—and still make it on time. Instead I will get there early, as I do each day, even though my boss told me to sleep in. Yes, he actually ordered me to sleep in, because Edward’s the kind of boss who finds out I’ve got a late night planned and is more concerned with my well-being than my productivity. An internship at The Evening News with Edward Ferris may be the work equivalent of winning the lottery, but having a boss like Edward? It’s like winning it twice.
The building has just come into sight when my father calls again. I feel a stab of worry but ignore it. There’s no time for one of his lengthy diatribes right now, because while Edward may love me, my fellow interns do not. Despite my 3.8 at Cornell and the fact that I’ve spent the past few summers working 60 hours a week on a national talk show, everyone here assumes I got this job because of who my father is, and it’s possible they’re right.
Not helping matters is the fact that Edward has offered me perks he hasn’t offered anyone else. It’s only by working longer and harder than any of them that I’ve been able to hold my head high these past two weeks.
There are photographers outside the building—not an unusual occurrence since the morning show always has a few celebrities running in or out—but today, oddly enough, their cameras point at me. “You’re usually better at telling the difference between a somebody and a nobody,” I grumble as I push through the revolving doors. It’s only as I reach the security line that my steps falter a little. I’ve spent enough of my life with famous parents to know when I’m being gawked at, surreptitiously or not. And I’m definitely being gawked at.
I hustle through security, aware of a tension and excitement in the air I’ve never noticed before, and into an elevator that’s already too full—and people stare there too.
Maybe I should have answered my father’s call after all.
Heads turn as I step off the elevator, a chain reaction I begin to predict and dread. I haven’t even gotten to my cubicle before my path is blocked by Stacy—the producer who dislikes me most. I wish I could say her rudeness is a surprise, but I can’t. It’s not just interns who resent Edward’s partiality.
“What is going on?” I ask as she pushes me toward a conference room and shuts the door behind us.
“I guess you haven’t seen today’s paper?” she asks.
I begin to think of ways to defend myself, but the fact that I stayed out late to watch my ex-boyfriend’s band play doesn’t sound particularly admirable.
“No,” I reply. “Not yet.”
“Well, you’re in there,” she says, throwing it at me. “You and Edward, leaving a restaurant together.”
I shrug. Edward is one of the most famous news personalities in the country. He’s always in the paper. “I’m not seeing the problem.”
“The problem,” she says between her teeth, as her hand lands heavily on the table, “is that lead anchors don’t take interns to dinner for no reason. And the fact that you’re sleeping with him is hardly a well-kept secret.”
“Sleeping with him?” I stammer. “That’s ridiculous! I’m 19, and he’s my father’s age.”
She rolls her eyes. “As if that stops anyone. The two of you have been seen in public at least three times since you started. Doesn’t that strike you as excessive?”
It’s actually been more than that, if you include coffee, but that doesn’t seem like a helpful contribution to our discussion. “No,” I argue. “You know he worked with my dad. It just seemed unusually thoughtful.”
She rolls her eyes again, and I’m beginning to see why mothers loathe this habit in their teenage daughters. “I’ve worked with Edward Ferris for ten years. And he’s a lot of things, but ‘unusually thoughtful’ isn’t one of them.”
Her implication is ridiculous. I remember me as a little girl, spinning on his desk chair until I was dizzy. How he brought me all of the chocolates left on his pillow when we stayed in the same hotel and helped me construct castles with them. I
could tell her these things, but only guilty people offer elaborate defenses, and I am definitely not guilty.
“I’ve known him since I was an infant. Nothing happened.”
“Didn’t he invite you to the Hamptons?” she says. “Even people in the office heard that.”
I shrug. “I didn’t go. He said something about how I’d like his son—I think he wanted to set me up.”
“Eleanor, his son is five. And he’s with Edward’s wife in France all summer.”
Oh.
I stare at her blankly, trying to come up with an alternate explanation. He was telling me how fun the beach there was in the summer, especially for “kids” my age. And then he said, “I’d like you to meet my son. I think you’d really hit it off.”
Nope. Not seeing any indication there that his son was five.
Suddenly I see my two weeks here with him through a new lens. The hugs that went on slightly too long. The uncomfortable things he said that I ignored—telling me I wore “the hell out of” a skirt and had a mouth “that men dream about.” And last night at dinner, when he suggested that his apartment was right around the corner and I should just stay there. I thanked him and laughed, telling him my dad’s place was nearby and I was going out anyway.
I glance at the paper, which shows Edward and me leaving Per Se last night, with a headline that clearly makes us out to be a couple, and it finally hits me: everyone who has seen this photo and recognized me now thinks I’m sleeping with my very famous, very married boss.
I’ve heard enough of my father’s stories to know my internship is over, whether I’m innocent or not. The guy who pulls in viewers matters more to the network than some stupid teenage girl he wanted to screw.
“Can you help place me at another show?” I ask quietly. “Summer just began. There must be something else available.”
Stacy may hate me, but it seems they owe me at least this much. No matter what the country believes, this was definitely not my fault.
“I need to intern somewhere.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, her words undermined somewhat by the vicious glee in her tone. “We won’t be able to help you. We need you to stay out of the spotlight.”
“Fine,” I snap. “Good thing my dad has his own show.”
And that’s when she lowers the other boom. That’s when she tells me my father’s days are numbered too.
“Where are you?” my father barks in lieu of a greeting.
“I just got back to the apartment,” I reply. “They fired me.”
“Well, if you’d answered my calls, you’d have known not to go there in the first place,” he says. “Pack your stuff and get the first train to DC. If anyone asks you about me, say nothing. I need you out of the spotlight, ASAP.”
“What if they ask about me, Dad?” I reply with a sharp edge to my voice I know he’ll resent. “I’m in just as much trouble as you.”
“You’re 19. No one cares about you, and it’s not your contract in jeopardy, it’s mine.”
“So it’s true? About you and the production assistant?” The production assistant who was engaged to your next-in-command.
“It’ll blow over. These things always do. But not if you’re there handing them quotes. So not a word, Elle. I mean it.”
“But is it true, Dad? You got her pregnant?”
“Yes, but that’s not relevant right now.”
“Um, it’s kind of relevant to me. You’re married, in case you’d forgotten.”
“We filed for divorce last month,” he says, with a heavy exhale, as if I’m wearying him with my off-topic questions. “What matters now is that you don’t make things worse. Get to the townhouse and stay put until I’ve gotten my contract back.”
“I have to work,” I insist. “It doesn’t have to be on Edward’s show, but can’t you get me—”
“I don’t think you get it, Elle,” he snaps. “Your work this summer will be staying indoors and keeping your mouth shut. Your only work.”
“What if my name comes out? They’ve already printed my picture.”
“It’ll blow over. You know what won’t blow over? My unemployment, if we play our cards wrong.” He hangs up.
Had I been an employee, he at least would have said goodbye. But I, his only daughter, don’t even get that courtesy.
I’m still staring at the phone when Ginny calls. Ginny Campbell has been my best friend since our first day of preschool, when we were the only girls in the class who didn’t want to play this completely pointless game called “Unicorn Fairy” that involved a lot of running around and neighing. We spent that entire year taking over the small playhouse on the playground, where I’d interview her while she pretended she was a judge, yelling “You’re out of order!” at 20-second intervals. Her nanny let her watch a lot more Judge Judy than her parents realized.
And even though my parents moved from Connecticut when I was 14—and we’ve only seen each other for a rare week here and there since—our friendship has survived as if I never left.
“I saw the paper.”
Those are the first words out of her mouth. Before I’ve said anything at all.
I groan, burying my face in my hand. If Ginny, who’s spending the summer in a sleepy town on the Delaware coast, has seen it, everyone has seen it.
“They didn’t mention you by name,” she soothes. “I can’t believe you were sleeping with Edward Ferris and never even told me.”
“God, Ginny, of course I wasn’t sleeping with him! He’s my freaking dad’s age.”
“Well, he’s still mega hot,” she counters. “As is your dad.”
The fact that Ginny lusts after my father is, I think, significantly ickier than my crush on her brother.
I throw myself onto my bed and pull a pillow over my face as I tell her the rest of it—all the other things that would have been devastating on their own, but now almost seem mundane compared to my own spectacular implosion. “So now I’ve got no internship, and my father’s going to make me spend the summer locked away out of sight while he prepares for the birth of his new child.”
She’s silent. I can almost see her there, brow furrowed, eyes focused. Ginny is never without a plan for long.
“You need to come here,” she finally says with utter certainty. “Spend the summer with me at the beach. You’ll be away from the press that way, and honestly, you deserve this. You’ve never once had a normal teenage summer. You’ve spent every break since you were 14 wearing a suit and working your ass off. If it’s really all ruined anyway, then fuck it. Come out here and act like a normal teenager for once in your life.”
“What will I do for a job?”
“You can work with me,” she says. “Not at the senator’s office—my dad had to sell a kidney to get me that job. But they’re always hiring at the bar.”
“The bar you said made the Hooters uniform look ‘professorial’?” I ask with a tearful laugh.
“Come on. It’ll be fun. James and his best friend from undergrad are here too.”
It’s pathetic, but even in the midst of personal crisis, my heart starts fluttering at the mention of her brother. James is gorgeous, but he is so much more than that. He is brilliant and ambitious—currently in the process of completing a law degree and a master’s in international finance simultaneously—but most of all, he’s the one person other than Ginny who’s been consistently kind to me my entire life.
“Why is James even there?” I ask. “I thought he was interning at your dad’s law firm.”
“Long story,” she sighs. “Tell me you’ll come, and we’ll have all summer to bemoan my brother’s terrible judgment.”
I’m not sure when I first fell in love with James. All I know is it came long before I should have been thinking about boys. It came before my first sleepover (memorable solely because James was—OMG!—in the very next room). It came before my First Communion (memorable solely because I wanted James to see my new white dress). Almost every memory I hold is l
ike a pendulum with James as its axis. He came before everything else.
“I’m going to marry Bobby Sanchez,” Ginny would whisper to me during recess.
“I’m going to marry your brother,” I’d whisper back.
Her side of the conversation varied over the years. Bobby became Ryan Wesling, who turned into Adam Goldfarb, and then other boys, a new one each month. But my side of the conversation? It always stayed the same.
James Campbell. James Campbell. James Campbell.
That was a long time ago, of course. The last time I saw him I was 14, and he—six years older—barely noticed me. But even to this day, I still wait for Ginny’s small references to him like a dog panting for a treat. And sometimes at night, just as I’m dozing off, it’s his face I see, and my brain seems to chant his name, as if insisting that I not forget.
I should say no when Ginny suggests the beach. I should do as my father has asked, given that once this dies down, he’ll probably be able to find me another job. But the part of my brain that still dreams about James is the part that says go—ready to abandon every last whisper of ambition for a boy I haven’t laid eyes on in five years.
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