India’s eyes couldn’t have gotten any bigger and still fit on her head.
“It’s a long story,” I continued. “I didn’t get a chance to tell him about the subscribers leak before he found out about Gabriella offering me a job. No, I’m not the leak. No, I didn’t know about the Elwood and Stern takeover, and no, I’m not going to work for Gabriella.”
“So, you and Neil Elwood?” She made a little noise that sounded like she was grudgingly impressed. “I thought for sure that was just an unfounded rumor. And he’s not—”
“Dumping me over all of this?” I shook my head. “No, we’ve got other shit to worry about.”
India regarded me for a long moment with an uncertain smile. “Sophie Scaife. I would have never guessed it.”
My mind seized on something she’d said before. “Jessica was the one feeding the subscriber list to Gabriella, wasn’t she?”
“She was. She came to me from the mail room. And I believe she’s now creative director of Gabriella’s new magazine.”
That hit me like a punch in the gut, and I know it showed on my face.
India somehow managed to look sympathetic while smirking. “That was the job she offered you, wasn’t it?”
I nodded. “I had to pick between her and Neil. Neil won.”
“Isn’t he going back to England?” India frowned slightly.
“Yeah, I’m going with him. I don’t have a job here anymore. I’ll probably never work in New York again now that I’m blacklisted at Elwood and Stern as well as with Gabriella and her crew.” Somewhere along the line, I’d forgotten to think about my unemployment from that angle. I guess being caught up in the pregnancy and Neil’s cancer had kept me from looking at it from such a grim perspective.
“What will you do?” I appreciated that India had asked, instead of just assuming I’d be living off of Neil.
I mean, I would be living off Neil, but that wasn’t my life’s ambition.
Yeah, Scaife, what are you going to do? I heard Holli’s always surprisingly practical voice in my head. I raised my hands and let them fall together in my lap. “I have no idea. I’ll probably try to write freelance or start a blog. Right now, I’m just worried about the move.”
Oh, and the fact that Neil might die and also, we just went through an abortion. I knew I sounded lackadaisical about it, but there really wasn’t much more I could say or feel about either subject.
India looked concerned. “Well, you were good, in the short time you were here. And I’m sorry I accused you of spying. You did some unethical things, but who here hasn’t? If you ever need anything, a reference, somebody’s number, give me a call.”
Wow, I hadn’t been expecting that. “Sure. Um. Thank you, India.”
“Just—” She stopped herself, then, as if against her better judgement, she warned, “Be careful with Elwood. Men like that... a girl can get swept away very easily.”
Jesus, wasn’t that the truth?
* * * *
I spent the rest of the day at home, emailing back and forth with Neil’s lawyer about immigration statutes. It was basically a non-issue for me to come into the country for six months, but after that I had to really start getting things nailed down. I wasn’t sure how great I felt about the prospect of permanently immigrating anywhere. I’d never considered myself patriotic before, but the prospect of leaving New York and the US to live in a totally different country was shockingly lonely to me.
And the packing would be unbelievable.
As the day wore on to evening, I had an even worse task to face: my mother.
Neil was going to come by and pick me up at eight for a late dinner, and I’d wanted to do at least some packing before he arrived. But the longer I sat in my room, looking helplessly at all my stuff and not having any inclination to do anything with it, I had to admit defeat.
I had to call my mom.
Sometimes, there are just things you have to do to clear a path to the other stuff you need to do, my mom was fond of saying, usually when she’d been overseeing the cleaning of my room. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t see an abortion as something I’d done to “clear a path,” so I was going to make damn sure she never found out.
I also decided that if I did ever end up raising a daughter, I damn sure wasn’t going to screw with her thinking about her body and what she could do with it.
At the mercy of my out-of-whack hormones, I had to try twice before I called. For a while, I just laid in bed with the phone in my hand, crying.
Finally, when the threat of Neil possibly showing up and interrupting the call and everything getting super weird became more and more possible, I got myself together and dialed the number.
“Sophie!” My mom greeted me. “I was getting worried. I need your flight information so I can get your uncle down to Marquette to pick you up.”
“Yeah, about that...”
I heard something clatter and I could perfectly picture my mom, probably slaving away over banana nut bread batter. Her honey blonde hair, streaked with platinum, would be flat-ironed, the front pinned back from her huge, smoldering brown eyes and bombshell pouty lips that I did not win in the genetic lottery. At size twenty-eight, my mom looked like a Midwestern Donatella Versace, a comparison she’d embraced with glee once I’d pointed it out to her.
Right now, there was nothing gleeful about her. “Oh, honey, no. You can’t cancel on us now! Your cousin Ricky just got back from Afghanistan. We were going to take the first big family picture since grandpa died.”
Ouch. I was not only missing Christmas, I was ruining the family picture. I wiped a tear from my eye and made my voice stay level through sheer force of will. “I know, I know. But it’s for a good reason this time, I promise.”
“Well, let’s hear it,” mom said with an exasperated sigh. “Your bitch boss wants you to decorate her dog for Christmas?”
“No. Um, I don’t work for her anymore. I... kind of lost my job.” There was really no reason she had to know that I’d lost my job because I couldn’t keep my personal and professional life separate. Or that I’d gotten a promotion, then immediately blown it. I had to reframe the whole thing quickly. “The magazine got sold, and Gabriella didn’t take me with her to her new job.”
“Sweetie, I am so sorry.” My mom was at least good at admitting when she was wrong. “I would never have joked—”
“It’s okay, I know,” I reassured her. “There’s more. Just stick with me.”
“You’re not...” Mom’s voice lowered. “You aren’t pregnant, are you?”
“No!” Not anymore. That was my mom’s number one fear; that I would end up a single mother, like her. Any time I had bad news to break, pregnancy was her first guess. “I’m seeing somebody. It’s pretty new, but things are moving kind of fast.”
“And you’re missing Christmas with us to be with him?” Mom sounded a little accusing.
“Yes,” I admitted. “But like I said, I have a good reason. He has cancer, and he has to start chemotherapy soon. It’ll be nice to spend the holidays together just, you know. In case.”
“Oh, honey.” My mom was more shaken up about it than I was. Of course, I was mostly ignoring the cancer part right now, and probably would until the day we set foot in a hospital. It was easier to delay the unpleasantness than to face it and deal with it.
“I didn’t even know you were seeing anyone. Why didn’t you tell me? You must be so scared.”
“I’m not, he’s going to be fine.” If I just kept telling myself that, it would be true. “He’s going home to England to have chemo, and I’m going to go with him.”
“He’s English?” Leave it to my mom to concentrate on the important details. “I bet he has a cute accent.”
Oh, barf. I did not need my mom to be attracted to my boyfriend. Especially when she was closer to his age than I was. That added a whole new level of creepy. Besides, cute wasn’t the word I would have used to describe the way Neil spoke, but I also wouldn’t use the word I would have used
to describe it to describe it to my mother. “I don’t know about cute, but I like it.”
“Well, we’ll miss you.” There was no way I would get out of a little guilting, so I endured it as my mother went on. “But you’re not moving permanently, right? You’ll be able to come home at some point? Maybe for Easter?”
“It depends on how Neil’s doing, but maybe. I just... I don’t want him to be alone.” And I didn’t want to be an ocean away, wondering every minute if the man I loved was miserable or suffering or dying.
“I understand. Sweetie, if you really care about this guy, then you’re making the right choice.” Mom laughed softly. “I’m just relieved you’re finally showing an interest in somebody. I thought you would be single forever.”
If I’d been feeling a little less down, I would have lectured her about how being single forever isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and how I would still have value without a man. Instead, I accepted it as she intended it, as a misguided but very genuine expression of worried mom love.
“So, tell me about him,” mom prompted. “Does he work in publishing?”
“Um, yeah. He does. We met on the job.” I felt like I was stepping through a minefield, but I didn’t want to tell mom I had gotten involved with my boss. The way my emotions were running haywire, I couldn’t handle her disappointment.
“What are you going to do in England? You can’t work there, right? Because you don’t have a green card?”
“I can freelance. If I have to stay longer than six months, I’ll have to get a visa and it’s this whole pain-in-the-ass process that Neil’s lawyer is going to work on.” Was that the kind of thing a normal guy could do? Call up his lawyer and have things fixed? How did it work when you weren’t moving overseas with a billionaire? It was probably exhausting.
I wasn’t sure I should spring the money conversation on her at the moment, but luckily she fixated on an entirely different detail. “Six months is a long time.”
“Maybe longer.” If there was one person on this entire Earth that I could trust myself to say this to, it was... well, it was Holli, but it was also my mom. “Honestly, if he wanted me to stay permanently, maybe I would. I really love him. But nothing is set in stone yet. We’re just trying to get through right now.”
“Oh, honey.” My mom has a great mom sigh, and she unleashed it then. “If you’re happy, then I’m happy for you. I trust you to make the right decisions.”
“I am.” And surprisingly, despite the hellacious bad week Neil and I had just weathered and the nightmare of chemotherapy looming ahead, I really was happy. My heart swelled up, and I felt like my mother and I were closer than we’d been in months.
And then she said, “I’m just so worried about you being so far away from home. You’re still very young, and some of those countries are just not safe.”
I would be a hundred and my mom would think I was too young. And I was going to England, for fuck’s sake. I didn’t even have to learn a different language.
“I hate to point out that Ricky is twenty and he just spent a year in Afghanistan, which is a lot further away and a lot more hostile than England,” I said in as patient a tone as I could manage.
“But it’s different, honey. You’re a girl, it’s more dangerous out there for you.”
My hand rose in the air beside my head, clenched into a fist, and I bit my lip hard before responding. “I hear the buzzer, I have to go get the door.”
“Okay, good-bye, honey. I love you!”
“Love you, too, mom.” I clicked the button on the phone and hoped my irritation at mom’s predictably misogynist comments would get me through my inevitable Christmas homesickness.
CHAPTER FIVE
Billionaires are horrible at moving.
I had every piece of my five-piece luggage set open on my bed, in an impressive game of suitcase Tetris. We had two more days before we left for England, and I seriously had to get my shit together, but Neil mostly stood around, looking helplessly at my room and complaining about the manual labor.
“I don’t see why you’re doing all of this yourself. You could bring some essentials for the holiday week and we could purchase anything else you need once we’re in London. We can hire movers for the rest.” Neil said all of this like the concept of moving one’s own belongings confused and horrified him.
“Um, I’m not entirely comfortable with the whole, ‘buy new things’ plan. I don’t have a job, and I’m on severely limited funds right now.” Before he could protest, I held up a hand. “I know, you’re a billionaire. But I really don’t want to spend a bunch of your money on stuff I already have. That’s so wasteful.”
He sighed wearily. “All right. There’s no reason we can’t get this sorted, between the two of us. I assume you’re not planning on bringing furniture?”
“No, I figured you had some of that. I just want my clothes and some of my books. My computer, of course. And an obscene amount of shoes.” I smiled sweetly at him. Gosh, today felt so much better than the day before. I was starting to feel... dare I say it? Normal. The pregnancy seemed like just an irritating nightmare now, nothing so truly horrible as to have caused a lasting impact on us. “You know... I’m finally feeling like we’re us again?”
A smile spread slowly across Neil’s face. “I’m very glad.”
I grinned at him and held up a pair of frilly pink panties. “Do you think I’ll need these?”
“Oh, I’m sure we could find a use for them.” But his smile faded. He cleared his throat, a red flush creeping up his neck. “I assume you’re aware that our sex life might be impacted by chemotherapy.”
I had thought about it, but I wasn’t sure it was something I should bring up. I nodded, shoving the panties into my bag. “I looked it up online. It really sounds like you’re going to be miserable.”
“I did some research, as well. I’m not sure what approach Dr. Grant will take, but I know he plans to be fairly aggressive. We’ll discuss all of that when we meet with him on the twenty-eighth.” He flipped through the clothes in my makeshift closet. “It’s going to be a bit of a whirlwind once we get there, I’m afraid.”
“Hey, it’s that or sit around here and be unemployed.” I grabbed my strapless bra and dropped it into the suitcase. “Besides, I have a feeling your whole life is kind of a whirlwind.”
“That is the unfortunate downside to dating the owner of a multimedia empire.” He considered a floor-length black silk dress, one I’d never worn because it skirted a fine line between haute couture and lingerie. He raised an eyebrow, pulled it down, and laid it across the open garment bag.
Huh. I was expecting to spend most my time in t-shirts and jeans in hospital waiting rooms. Were they really fancy over in England or something? Had Bridget Jones lied to me? “So... Here’s something I don’t understand. You said you were going to London for treatment. But we’re flying into Bristol and going to a house in Somerset?”
“My country house,” he said, totally casual, like everybody had two houses. “We’ll be going there for Christmas, but we’ll stay at my place in London while I undergo treatment.”
I considered a moment, tilting my head as I regarded him. “You know, I’ve always wondered... when you have two houses, and you’re staying at one, do you have stuff you only keep in one place? Like, do you have two of everything in your clothing and your DVDs and stuff?”
“No. I have what suits me for each location, and anything else I might need, I pack and take with me. I rarely find myself in need of an anorak in London, so those stay at the house in Reykjavik. I don’t often need a suit and tie in Somerset, so I don’t keep them there.”
“Um, how many houses do you own?” And how the hell did he keep track of them all? I lost things in my tiny shoebox of a room and never saw them again. I couldn’t imagine trying to find something if there was a chance I’d left it accidentally on a different continent.
The fact that he didn’t have a number at the ready was even more startling. �
��Well, there’s the apartment here, the houses in Somerset and London, one in Reykjavik, my lodge outside of Akureyri-“
“I don’t even know where that is,” I interjected.
“Iceland.” He continued, “There’s an apartment in Venice, but that’s obviously not a residence, I keep it as a vacation home... so... five?”
“You own five houses.” I sat down on my bed. I suppose the number could have been significantly higher, but it was still quite a shock.
“Well, six, because I own my sister’s in Kensington, but for all intents and purposes it belongs to her. I’m not about to make her give it back.” He sat beside me. “Are you upset?”
“No, not upset. I just don’t really know how to deal with the fact that my boyfriend has five houses in four countries, when I grew up in continual fear of losing the trailer I lived in.” I shrugged. “I’ll get there.”
“Can I confess something?” he asked, looking at the floor. “I’m having a bit of the same problem, from the opposite side. I’ve never lived a life where money was an issue. My parents were rich, their parents were rich... I was raised the way you were, in terms of work ethic. We were always taught to be grateful for what we had, but we never needed or wanted for anything. I can’t imagine living the way you do. It sounds so unbearably horrible.”
“No, you sound unbearably snobby.” I laughed to soften the statement, because it really wasn’t his fault. He was like an alien trying to comprehend Earthling life. “The most difficult part, for me anyway, is the fact that I have some preconceived notion about how rich people are supposed to act, and you don’t fit into that. You’re just Neil, most of the time, and then I get confronted with something like, ‘Oh, I have five houses,’ and it throws me. Honestly, I don’t even know how much a billion dollars is.”
“One thousand million,” he said, and he sounded embarrassed.
“I can’t get my head around that. And you have six of those, and you’re making more money every day. I’m unemployed.” I sighed.
“I should warn you, then... my house in Somerset is quite large. And old.” He said this like it pained him to admit it. “It’s not a ‘normal guy house,’ as you would put it.”
The Girlfriend (The Boss) Page 6