“Nothing. You can get in here. Bring a notepad.”
“OK,” Diana grunted. There was a low chuckle from the phone.
“Careful, you’re sounding a little too enthusiastic,” Michael’s disembodied voice said.
Diana hung up on him and marched into his office. She shut the door behind her, and the whirring sounds of the Xerox and their constantly ringing fax machine were silenced. Almost involuntarily, she drew in a long, shuddering sigh of breath.
Michael was standing looking out of his window at the wet, crawling traffic marching slowly up Seventh Avenue. Diana regarded the stocky, firm set of his back, the muscles visible even through the newly tailored cloth. He turned around and gave her a broad smile, tilting his head and showing her his busted-up nose.
“I read your dress code report,” he said. “Take a seat.”
Diana flopped into the chair in front of him and scowled. “There’s something wrong with the report? I do think, Mr. Cicero, you might have said something before now.”
“I only just got around to reading it,” Cicero said flatly. “I had more important things to get to.”
Of course you did, you patronizing jerk, Diana said to herself. “I see.”
Cicero lifted her two pieces of paper in one large paw and waved it at her. “I read this. I was quite surprised.”
“It can’t have been that bad,” Diana protested, angrily.
Hell, Michael thought, look at that girl. He told himself not to start thinking about how a female employee looked. She’d annoyed him when she swanned in this morning looking so gorgeous and polished and disturbing, and now that she seemed to have gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson, she was … stunning. Undeniably. And still, so arrogant. The aristocratic, upward tilt of her head, the soft, defiant slight pout of her lips … Cicero had an intense desire to crush her to him and kiss all that rebelliousness away.
“It wasn’t,” he said, as coldly as he could manage. “Why don’t you let me finish before you interrupt me?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Cicero.”
“It was actually quite well done. I gave you very spare notes and you produced something clear and businesslike. You’ve got a crisp turn of phrase.”
Thanks for the English lesson, Diana thought. “I’m glad you were pleased. Does this mean I get a promotion?”
She crossed her legs, the wrong way, to hide her busted strap as best she could, and tossed her blond hair behind her shoulders.
“No, it doesn’t. You need more than one job done well to get promoted. It might mean that I increase your workload, though. Give you some other basic duties and rosters to type up. Such as guidelines for ordering in office supplies. We don’t have an office manager here, so all my executives take care of that stuff themselves.”
“Sounds thrilling,” Diana grunted.
“Don’t be sarcastic, please, Diana. Everybody starts at the bottom.”
“I suppose you started at the bottom, did you?” Diana demanded. She knew she should drop it, but somehow her mouth was no longer listening to her brain.
“That depends.” Her boss lolled back in his chair in that confident way of his. His dark eyes on her made her shift in the chair. “If you call working eighteen-hour days and cycling for miles with two boxes of books, going door to door trying to shift them, starting at the bottom, then yes, I qualify.”
Diana shrugged. She didn’t particularly care to hear about Michael Cicero’s struggles. Nobody here gives a damn about me, she thought. Why should I care about them?
“Now, take this down. These are our rules about calling in sick, vacation planning and reordering supplies. I’d like you to type them out like you did with the dress code. Maybe you could put together a small folder for everybody with all our separate policies in. It can be your project.”
My, how thrilling, Diana thought. “What about all my filing and typing?”
“You’ll still be doing that. This will be additional.”
Diana pushed herself to her feet, furious, and took a step toward Michael Cicero. To her extreme annoyance, he did nothing but grin.
“You want to quit?” Cicero asked. There was a gently amused note in his voice. “It’s OK, really. This is very basic, very easy work that lots of kids would like to do. I can see why you wouldn’t want to persevere. You hardly need the salary.”
“It’s got nothing to do with the salary,” Diana said, fuming. “It’s to do with the work.”
“What work? All you have to do is file and answer the phones and make some coffee. You should see the hours Susan Katz put in when she first came to work for me. You maybe think writing up a few reports is too tough?”
“Of course it isn’t.” Diana sat down again. “I wasn’t going to quit—Mr. Cicero.”
“Then why were you standing up, glaring at me?”
Diana shook her head. “I was—just stretching. I’m perfectly happy here,” she said, bristling with hostility, “and I’ll be happy to organize all your reports.”
“Good.” Michael looked down at his notepad, which offered some refuge for his eyes, away from the serious double threat of her breasts. “Then let’s get started.”
*
It was only half past four when Diana left the office.
“Do you mind if I leave early, Susan?” she asked. “My head is splitting. I think I have a migraine coming on.”
Susan Katz smirked. “Of course not. I’ll be here for at least another two hours. If the refrigerator is clean, you can go home now.”
The look on her face said she just couldn’t wait to tell Michael about this.
Well, thanks, ma’am. “See you tomorrow, then,” Diana said, as cheerfully as she could fake. She switched her computer off at the wall and tidied up the papers on her desk, rather than give the bitch any more ammunition. She was so enervated, she could hardly think straight. All she wanted to do was to sink into the limo, go home and get into a spa bath. What madness had possessed her to tell Michael Cicero she didn’t want to quit? Oh well. Time enough for that tomorrow. All Diana cared about was getting out of that door.
As the elevator doors hissed shut behind her, Diana felt her spirits lift. Tomorrow she’d quit, and that bunch of catty secretaries could go to hell with their herbal teas and their filing. She would have to find another way to be interesting to Ernie. A vacation, for example. Yes. Right now that sounded really good. Diana poked her head out of the door and saw the familiar, comforting sight of Richard, her driver, with the limo purring sedately at the curbside, waiting for her. As he opened the door for her, muttering something about a pleasant day, Diana felt as though she were shrugging a backpack full of heavy weights from her shoulders. A bath was what she needed. Americans didn’t bathe, they showered, but she needed a soak, an hour with a cloud of scented water courtesy of Floris and then a long rubdown with some shea butter from L’Occitane. Once I’ve changed for dinner and taken off these shoes which pinch like hell, Diana told herself, firmly, I’ll feel more human. She might call Felicity and see if she wanted to do something, maybe catch a last-minute show, like Rent, or Chicago again. Possibly the answer was just to make an emergency call to Anne-Marie, her French reflexologist, and have her rub her feet for an hour.
Ernie liked to keep a full bar stocked in the back of the car, although he rarely drank during the day. It was just there to impress other CEOs. Right now Diana was grateful for it. She poured herself a bourbon and coke and sipped it through the heavy crystal, watching midtown slip noiselessly past her soundproofed, darkened windows.
Eventually she started to relax. The tight coils of pressure in her back began to unwind. It was dark and cold outside, but their building loomed up in front of her, well-lit, friendly and welcoming. Her stupid little job suddenly seemed a total joke. She would quit tomorrow, definitely. Let that bitch Susan make her own goddamn coffee.
The doorman blinked at her as she swept into the lobby, giving him an automatic smile. Diana didn’t talk to the help much, but s
he made a point of smiling and being friendly. Ernie tended to ignore them. The heavy, gold-decorated elevator hissed open, and Diana stepped inside and pressed the button for the penthouse, turning her key in the lock.
The apartment was well-lit even though Consuela had a half day off. Maybe she had forgotten to switch off the lights. Diana kicked off her shoes, groaning pleasurably in anticipation of her long soak.
Then she froze. There was a voice coming from the bedroom. A woman’s voice. Diana knew her staff and her friends, and this wasn’t one of them. A prickling burst of adrenaline crackled through her skin. Could it be a burglar? But that was impossible. Security here was outstanding. Even the elevator shaft was wired with alarms. Maybe Consuela had invited one of her friends over while the lady of the house was at work. If so, she would have to deal with it herself. Ernie would fly into a rage. Sighing, Diana slipped her shoes back on and walked quietly over to her bedroom.
It was a woman. Tall and much thinner than Diana, almost bony from the back. She was standing bent over in front of Diana’s exclusively designed walk-in closet, the small inner sanctum that was just hers, where even her husband and her best friends never came. A tight fist of anger closed around Diana’s heart as she noticed what the woman was wearing; one of her dresses, a silky, red velvet evening gown by Richard Tyler, cut to drape over her voluptuous curves like a toga over a Roman goddess. It hung loosely off the bony shoulders of the intruder. With a simmering wash of rage bubbling up inside her, Diana glanced down to the woman’s feet. They were poking out of her brand-new Manolos, the strappy sandals she had so delighted in when she picked them up in his boutique last week. Diana was disgusted now. She would never wear them again, she knew that. Were jobs so easy to come by in America these days that Consuela would do this to a good employer?
Diana found the voice that seemed to have frozen in her throat.
“Excuse me,” she said, loudly and coldly. “Exactly what do you think you’re doing?”
The intruder spun around, mouth open, starting with a little jump.
It was Mira Chen.
SIXTEEN
Diana stared down at her. Her brain seemed to be as frozen as her body.
How repulsive. How disgusting. How—how silly. Mira Chen. The name had been haunting her suspicious thoughts for days, and now she was here in the flesh. A small part of Diana, a small corner of her brain—the part that said “you’re drunk” when she was—couldn’t help but run over the face and figure of her rival. She had hardly noticed her at the last dinner party, there was nothing there but a vague memory of hating the tight, tarty dress the woman had worn.
Diana’s red dress hung off Mira like a nasty smell hanging in the air. It was so much too big for her. She felt a sudden pang of insecurity about her body. The extra folds of fabric, peeling back off Mira, seemed like a fresh insult. I should lose a few pounds, Diana admonished herself. No more sour cream and chopped egg yolk with her caviar. She tried to shake herself out of her random thoughts. The fact was that there were only three keys to the elevator. Consuela would not pal around with a woman like Mira Chen, and the second key was sitting tight in Diana’s purse.
Ernie had let Mira in. Ernie had let her try on Diana’s clothes. Maybe Ernie had given her her own key.
Mira was red-faced, sputtering like a landed fish.
“We didn’t think you’d be home,” she muttered, eventually.
Diana steadied herself against the solid oak of her doorway. There was a rush of blood to her head and her heart. Desperately she tried to pull herself together. We?
“Is Ernie here?” she managed to say.
The door from Ernie’s private bathroom swung open and he entered their room. His skinny frame was wet from the shower, and he was wrapped in his navy-blue cashmere bathrobe. I gave him that for Christmas, Diana thought.
“You’re early,” he said, looking at her stupidly. “Why are you home?”
“I had a headache.”
She didn’t ask him what they were doing. It was painfully, embarrassingly obvious. The girls’ voices came back to her. Everybody knew. It was all over town.
She dug deep for a reserve of dignity. How little he must really care about her, to do this to her. Fucking that tramp in her apartment. Letting her try on her clothes. What other things of mine has she worn? Diana wondered. Paraded around in?
She turned to Mira.
“Get out of my things, and then get out of my apartment.”
The small, compact little body was already struggling out of the dress.
“Hurry up,” Diana said coldly, “or I’ll have to call security.”
She looked at Ernie. He had gone red-faced with embarrassment and now, as he faced her, with spite.
“You can’t call security,” he said nastily, “I asked her here.”
“I realize that.” Diana’s voice seemed to be coming from someone else, some other girl located at the far end of a tunnel. “But I didn’t, so if you don’t want this all over the front page of the papers I suggest you let me handle it.”
Ernie fell sullenly silent. Tears had started to prickle at the backs of Diana’s eyes and she fought for better control. She turned on her rival. “Hurry up, Mira, would you? Hadn’t you better get going? I think some of your regulars down on Forty-second Street will be getting impatient.”
She was rather proud of that sally. Maybe not the wittiest, but not bad at the last minute. Diana regarded Mira Chen. She was super-skinny and her hair was broken and tattered at the ends. And this was who her husband had been with all the nights she’d waited up alone?
“Ernie is my only regular,” Mira said smugly.
“Somehow I doubt that. Now get out,” Diana snapped. “I want to talk to my husband.”
Mira looked over at Ernie as she struggled back into her pants, but he avoided her eyes. “I’ll see you later, honey,” she purred, and swept out past Diana, deliberately jostling past her shoulder.
“Oof.” Diana pinched her nose. “Next time try and use a little less of that lavatory air freshener you’re wearing. You’re going to stink up my clothes.”
Mira opened her mouth for a catty comeback, but Diana wasn’t having it. “Get out. Your lap-dancing job is waiting. Plenty of dirty old men in booths want value for their Viagra.”
She shoved Ernie’s mistress into the elevator and punched the lobby button, then turned back to her husband. Ernie was busily tightening the robe’s soft belt around his skinny little frame. His hair was plastered with sweat. Hell, she thought. She knew she’d never get that image out of her mind. Sexuality was something best avoided, in Diana’s opinion, but although she didn’t know what turned her on she knew what turned her off. Mira in her clothes? Her stomach was churning. She wanted to vomit.
Weakly, Diana steadied herself on one of the wide sofas. Now that the bitch was gone she felt she had nothing holding her up. Central Park swam outside their huge windows, and Diana’s knees buckled and she sank onto the leather.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Ernie had righted himself and now he was shouting at her. His plucked brows knitted together and his face was purple. He wiped the sweat off his forehead. “You came back early. It’s your own fault.”
“Oh, right,” Diana said, faintly. “I see. It’s my fault you were unfaithful, fucking some slut in our bedroom?”
“She might be a slut,” Ernie said nastily, “but at least she can fuck.”
Diana breathed in. Time had stopped for her.
“Then that makes one of you, I suppose,” she snapped. She was completely adrift. What was the smart, groomed, pulled-together woman’s response to catching her husband in flagrante? Her style was failing her. She had no idea how to act. Those betraying tears were thickening her voice in the back of her throat and squeezing out of the corners of her eyes, no matter how she tried to blink them back.
“I’m a fantastic lover,” Ernie insisted. His voice had gone high-pitched and wavery
. “You’re the one with the problem. Mira says I’m the best she ever had.”
“And how much are you paying her to tell you that?”
“You can talk. You don’t exactly come cheap, darlin’.”
“I am your wife. I deserve more than this.” Diana sobbed.
“Oh, you do?” Ernie’s tone was nasty. “You deserve what, exactly? After going and talking about our personal business to a bunch of slappers that have blabbed it all round town? You couldn’t come to me, love, could you? No—you have to make me look like a fucking idiot and have girls ring me up—”
“What girls? Who rang you up?” Diana wept. “I did come to you, Ernie! And you lied to me!”
“But not until you’d already gone to a bunch of harridans. Let me give it to you straight, girl.” Ernie folded his thin arms and stared at her. “You aren’t made for sex and a man needs that. I thought you’d be discreet. Understanding. If you hadn’t shoved your nose in my business you would never have been hurt.”
“You have to give up that whore. I want her fired,” Diana said, trying to ignore the large tear that had splashed off her lashes onto the end of her nose. Thank goodness she’d had to wipe off her mascara earlier. Waterproof never was.
“Well now, that wouldn’t be fair. She could bring a sex-harassment suit, too. And she’d win. I don’t want to take the chance.”
“At least have her transferred. To another country.”
“No,” Ernie said reflectively, “I don’t think I will. It’s not her fault. Maybe I like having her here. Maybe if you were better in bed I wouldn’t need her. Anyway, I work fucking hard and you need to deal with me ’ow I am.”
Diana drew herself up to her full height and wiped the tears from her eyes. “You’re going to have to make a decision, Ernie. If you really need a little slut like that, go ahead. But you’ll have to choose. Her or me.”
“Don’t you try to threaten me,” Ernie screeched at her departing back. “And don’t think I’m moving into a hotel either. I paid for the bloody pad and I’ll come home when I feel like it.”
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