by Elle Kennedy
Maybe the rest of the day wouldn’t be so boring after all. She had some digging to do to find out exactly who it was that had messed up her assignment.
And it seemed she’d be starting with a call to Suz…
Chapter Five
Emma spent the rest of the day trying to focus on work, which proved impossible when her mind was still obsessing over Dean Colter. Instead of getting anything done, she found herself pacing her rented executive suite, wearing a hole in the carpeting as she wandered, too antsy to sit down.
She was renting the suite until the New Year, and although she’d only been living there for a couple of weeks, it was already showing signs of her organized-mess approach to life. Sketchpads and tracing paper were strewn on the dining-room table, along with the hundreds of photographs she’d taken around the city since she’d gotten there. She still wasn’t sure which direction to go in, but she’d found inspiration usually struck when she least expected it, and she had no doubt the Bay Area line she was in the process of designing would be as successful as her previous creations.
But no inspiration was striking today, not when she couldn’t stop obsessing over everything Suz had told her.
I don’t think you could make the man blink with any request, but no matter what he’s doing, it’s all about worshiping women. In bed and out.
Suz was wrong, though. Dean didn’t worship anyone but himself. He’d made that painfully clear eleven years ago.
But before then…God, he’d been so wonderful to her. Emma still remembered how she’d wait for Dean by the window in her childhood bedroom. How the moment he climbed through it, the excited butterflies in her stomach would take flight and send her heart soaring. It helped that her parents went to bed early and slept deeply—she and Dean would have hours together. Hours to talk and cuddle and kiss and share their secrets.
Sometimes she really missed the girl she used to be. So open and full of hope. But life had jaded her. It had started with Dean’s betrayal, the slap in the face that had taught her things didn’t always turn out the way you’d hoped. And then it just got worse, as work and stress and bad experiences crept in over the years to turn her from a naïve optimist to a reluctant cynic.
The ringing of her cell phone jarred Emma from her depressing thoughts, and when she saw the caller ID, her spirits sank even lower. Shit. It was eleven o’clock on the East Coast, far too late for Stella to be calling with a work-related emergency.
Which meant it was a Lorenzo-related emergency.
Though these days, those were one and the same.
“Hey, Stella,” Emma said after she’d picked up. “What’s going on?”
Her assistant’s misery-laced moan echoed through the extension. “I’m so sorry, Em. I effed up.”
Despite her growing concern, Emma had to smile. Stella was the only twenty-two-year-old she knew who didn’t swear like a sailor. In fact, the young Brit went out of her way not to curse, which Emma certainly appreciated considering the girl dealt with clients and buyers on a daily basis.
“What happened?”
“What didn’t happen?” Stella burst out.
Oh crap. Emma briefly closed her eyes. What the fuck had Enzo done this time?
“This day has been pure hell from start to finish! I didn’t call you earlier because I thought I’d be able to put out all the fires myself and I didn’t want to bother you while you’re working on the new line, but…I’m at the end of my rope, Em. I can’t…I…” Stella was audibly gasping, as if she’d started to hyperventilate.
Emma experienced a pang of alarm. “Stella. Honey. Calm down. Breathe, okay?”
Rapid, breathless pants met her ears.
“Now exhale and tell me what happened.”
“He showed up drunk at the Cosmo photo shoot,” Stella said in a wobbly voice. “But it wasn’t too bad. The photographer and creative director just laughed it off, and we ended up getting some good shots of Enzo posing with Christina.”
Emma nodded to herself. That was good, at least. The piece in Cosmo was a very minor one, just a small sidebar snippet of Enzo with the model who was going to be the next face of the Fire and Ice label.
“But he was definitely too tipsy to do the interview with the Times,” Stella went on, “so I rescheduled it for tomorrow morning, and then I drove him back to the penthouse and ordered him to sleep it off. Oh, and I also rescheduled the Vogue interview to this evening, because he insisted he’d be fine after a few hours’ sleep. So I went to run a few errands, and when I came back, he was gone!”
A groan slipped from Emma’s mouth. Goddamn it.
“I called every bloody person in Manhattan trying to track him down!” Stella wailed. “But then an hour before the interview, he texts to say he went to meet a friend and would be at the hotel in time for the meeting. So I go to the hotel and then me and the journalist waited around for forty minutes, and Enzo didn’t show!”
Stella’s British accent grew more pronounced the more upset she became. “I went back to his apartment, and he was there! Having a party! He invited some models he met at Cosmo, and some skeezy guys he met Lord knows where, and they were all snorting cocaine when I got there. Well, Enzo wasn’t, but all his slimy friends were.”
Hell, shit, damn, fuck, motherfucker. All the expletives Stella refused to voice blared at top volume in Emma’s head.
Fucking Lorenzo. Normally Emma was the one who stuck to Enzo like glue and made sure he didn’t get out of hand, but when he’d rejected her suggestion they spend the winter in San Francisco—claiming it was too “pedestrian”—she’d sacrificed her own personal assistant so Stella could serve as Enzo’s handler.
Clearly the young woman was completely out of her element.
And it was official—Lorenzo Fuoco was out of control. Emma had known their success was going to his head, but in the past, she’d always been able to keep a firm grip on his self-destructive bullshit. These days, it was like trying to rein in a wild stallion that was fighting the restraints with everything he had.
“Where is he now?” she asked in a calm voice that in no way matched her not-calm mood.
“He’s asleep in his bedroom.”
“Are you sure?”
Stella’s heavy breath thudded over the line. “I’m positive. I…” There was a long pause.
“You what?” Emma demanded.
“Don’t get mad, but…I slipped some Ambien into his champagne.”
Despite the sheer WTF-ness of that statement, Emma couldn’t help but snort. “Oh Jesus. Stella…”
“I know!” the girl blurted out. “I shouldn’t have done it. I’m so terrified it will cause a bad reaction combined with the alcohol, but I didn’t know what else to do. He kept pawing at me and trying to get me to join the party. He called me a party pooper! And then something in Italian that did not sound nice!”
“Oh, sweetie.”
“So I pretended to cave and then I knocked him the eff out and ordered everyone to leave.”
“Okay.” Emma let out a slow breath, then ran a hand through her hair. God, this was the last thing she wanted to deal with this evening. “Chances are he’s out for the night. And I wouldn’t worry about the drug having any kind of reaction. I’ve seen that idiot pop painkillers and sleeping pills with alcohol before and he’s always survived…”
Unfortunately, she almost added. Because at the moment? Lorenzo dying didn’t sound so bad, and she hated the thought the instant it entered her mind.
Pushing away the glorious images of a world without Enzo, she forced herself to focus on damage control.
“…but I think you should stay at his place tonight,” she finished. “Be there just in case.”
“I was already planning on it.”
“And tomorrow morning, I’m going to arrange for someone else to play babysitter,” Emma said firmly.
“I’m so sorry—”
“Not because you can’t handle it,” she assured Stella. “But because you sh
ouldn’t have to. Besides, I need you here, okay?” That was a lie, since she didn’t have much need for her assistant during the creative process, but she refused to saddle Stella with Lorenzo any longer. “I want you to get Enzo to call me the second he wakes up tomorrow. I don’t care if it’s four in the morning my time. Make sure he calls, all right?”
“I will,” Stella promised. There was a soft sniffle. “Thanks for not being mad, Em. He’s…impossible.”
Yep, that was definitely the word for it.
Emma hung up and set the phone on the coffee table, then inhaled another calming breath. Okay. There wasn’t much she could do from all the way on the other side of the country, especially when Enzo was currently in a Stella-induced slumber. Tomorrow she would phone the Vogue editor and apologize for Enzo’s unprofessional behavior. Maybe blame it on a miscommunication? No, that sounded equally unprofessional. Better to simply apologize and hope they accepted it.
And once she got off the phone with Vogue, she’d get a reputable temp service on the line and try to find an assistant-slash-handler who was tough enough to deal with a loose cannon like Lorenzo. Maybe the CIA was contracting out people?
Or the Central Park Zoo monkey handlers.
Emma sank onto the sofa and began to do the breathing exercises her therapist in Manhattan had taught her.
Slow, even breaths. Count them out. Clear your mind.
Several minutes later, she was feeling centered again, but the sense of serenity didn’t last long. Emma was mid-inhale when a knock sounded on the door. Her meager allotment of calm vanished. She wasn’t expecting company, she hadn’t ordered room service, and she didn’t want any visitors.
The phone she’d abandoned on the table lay silent. No messages from the front security desk, and since no one could reach this level of the hotel without clearance, at least whoever it was wouldn’t be here to chop her into pieces and hide the evidence.
Emma grimaced at her oversized yoga shirt before deciding it was as decent as any dress. She headed toward the door, already planning to deal with this interruption and then call it a day. A fresh start—that’s what she needed. A brand-new day with no drama and no stress.
She could really go for no stress right about now.
Dean had stared at the carved wood of the suite door for five frickin’ minutes before tapping his knuckles against it.
He’d faced down death dozens of times. Hell, he’d walked into an ambush once, found a gun pointed at his chest and laughed before getting his ass out of the impossible situation with no more serious repercussions than a great drinking story.
And yet as he waited for the door to open he had an entire battalion of winged creatures working maneuvers in his gut. Damn Suz and her need for dramatics. This wasn’t how he operated. He didn’t go into situations without information. He didn’t trust blindly and then simply go for it. Yet here he stood, outside his mystery woman’s door, still without her name because Suz had refused to spill the beans.
Fuck, he even had flowers in his hand.
Damn Suz to hell. He was going to demand she do something terrible to make up for the—
A loud rumble rang overhead, and he pivoted on the spot, checking the wall and ceiling. A moment later the noise repeated itself, and he caught just the briefest note of laughter and voices. The penthouse suite. Someone arriving, or more than one as the elevator moved again. A party?
“Can I help you?”
The soft feminine voice at his back jerked him to attention. Surprised twice in one evening? Parker and Jack would give him hell for losing his focus. Dean turned, thrusting forward the flowers he’d brought along, because after three years of running DreamMakers, he couldn’t justify arriving to any date with empty hands—
“Fuck.” The word escaped before he could stop himself, his jaw threatening to smash into the floor.
Holy. Shit.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
The woman on the other side of the threshold stared back, her perfectly pouted lips breaking apart as her own jaw dropped. Long black hair lay smoothly over her shoulder, so deep in tone that blue highlights sparkled in the light from the wall sconces.
The sight of her hit his nervous system like a Taser. He ran hot, then cold, then hot all over again as Emma Lee raised a brow.
And slammed the door in his face.
Goddamn it.
“Emma?” He put his fist to the door. “Emma, is that you?”
“Go away.”
Her muffled response grew fainter, as if she were walking away.
He banged again. “Emma, open the door.”
No answer.
He dropped to the floor and tried to peer under it, but there wasn’t much of a gap to see anything more than a faint ray of light from where he’d seen the open balcony door behind her in that brief instant she’d stood gaping at him.
“Jesus Christ, what the hell is going on?” He rolled to a seated position and hauled out his phone, the flowers strewn over the floor like in some cheesy romantic melodrama. He hit a couple of buttons, drumming his fingers on his knee as he waited.
“Your dime, spend it as you—”
“Give me Emma’s phone number, Jonesy, stat.”
What he wanted was for her to rattle off a set of numbers. What he got was grief.
“Why do you need her number?” Suz’s laissez-faire attitude vanished and her tone sharpened. “Why don’t you ask her for it yourself? What did you do, Colter?”
“Pony up, already. And don’t think I won’t turn you over my fucking knee for this the next time I see you.”
“Just a minute,” she cooed. “I have another call coming in on the other line.”
“Suz—” He swore as she clicked him over to hold, helpless to do anything at this point but wait for her to give him a break. He dropped to his belly again, but there was still no movement in the room that he could spot. That was when he realized exactly what a dumbass he must look like, and scrambled to his feet, pacing the hall impatiently between bouts of knocking that got as little response as before.
When Suz finally reconnected them she spoke before he could, her disapproving tone cutting him hard. “What a coincidence. Guess who was on the other line?”
“Connect us,” he demanded. “Put us on a group call or something—I need to talk to her.”
“Screw that. She doesn’t want to talk to you. She barely wants to talk to me.” Her feminine snarl was protective and pissed off, neither of which boded well for his dire need to get to the other side of the door and finally talk to Emma. “I’m mad at you, Colter. I tried to do something nice for you, and it turns out you’ve been keeping secrets from me.”
“We all have secrets, so don’t try to guilt me there, Jonesy. You going to help or what?”
“Or what.” She hung up.
Fucking hung up.
Doors in the face, dead air—he was batting a thousand tonight. But after years of trying to get in contact with Emma online so he could explain and apologize, and getting nowhere at all, one locked door was not going to stop him. He knew where she was, and he was not calling it quits until they’d cleared the air once and for all.
Dean scooped up the flowers from the floor, organizing them as best he could as he made his way down the hallway to the nearest fire exit. He took the stairs two at a time to the next floor, pausing to straighten himself up before knocking firmly on the door of the suite directly above Emma’s.
The swirl of music and voices grew louder as the door eased open and a young woman in a neat black uniform eyed him with approval. “Flowers?”
Dean flashed his best smile, stepping forward into the suite as if he did this all the time. “I need to take them to the kitchen first,” he whispered. “Little accident in the elevator—don’t want to get in trouble with my boss for leaving behind anything that looks shoddy.”
The girl giggled conspiratorially and led him into a discreetly positioned galley that was nearly the size of his apartment.
He moved to the sink and pretended to work as the girl grabbed a tray off the island.
“You okay? I need to get back out on the floor.” She looked him up and down quickly even as she lifted the serving tray into position. “If you have time, stick around for a few minutes,” she offered with a wink. “I’ll be back in about ten.”
He didn’t say he’d stay, but he grinned, the expression fading the instant she left the room. He plopped the flowers haphazardly into the vase she’d placed on the island, then slipped to the door, peering around the corner to scope out the situation.
The serving girl was working the far side of the room while elegantly dressed partygoers mingled around the perimeter. Dean grabbed a glass of champagne off the sideboard and sipped as he casually sauntered across the floor toward the rooftop garden area.
Outside, the warm air moved against his skin as the ocean breeze picked up, dragging the scent of salt and smoke into his lungs.
“Amazing view.”
Dean nodded at the man who was just stubbing out a cigarette. He leaned forward, elbows resting on the railing as he pretended to admire the horizon.
“Going to be a fabulous night.” Dean glanced over the edge of the railing, delighted to see that, as he’d suspected, the rooftop suite was set back from the rest of the hotel, leaving him a clear view of the balcony below.
The other man stood and headed back inside. Dean waited all of five seconds after he was officially alone to grab the railing and swing himself over it. He glanced down, sliding farther to the building side as he skillfully lowered himself hand over hand. Opening his hands, he dropped, freefalling ten feet to the balcony one story below. He landed like a cat, absorbing the shock as he crouched low and stared into Emma’s suite.
He was just going to talk to her, then he’d leave. There was nothing creepy about him breaking in to her hotel room—not too creepy.
Okay, fine, it was creepy, but it was also too late, since he was already stepping through the open door into the living room.