Mandy turned from the windows with a breathless laugh. Just as she faced Ethan, he grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her in for a kiss. Whew.
Chapter Ten
“Interesting,” Jessica Charles said with a discerning twist of her thin, red-coated lips. She tossed the celebrity gossip sheet on the desk, the one with Ethan kissing Mandy on the cover.
It was the Monday after the concert and Mandy was having her early morning briefing with the zesty Jessica, whom Mandy had found thumbing through the very same magazine moments earlier when she came in.
Now seated in front of Jessica’s desk, Mandy squirmed in her chair even as her boss went on in a businesslike tone. “I guess there’ll be no questioning your enthusiasm for the upcoming London assignment. Well…maybe this can work to my – our - advantage. Convince Ethan to get my firm as the band’s sole stylist, and I’ll open doors for your career like you’ve never dreamed of. With your ambition and my tutelage, you’ll be running your own firm in a year. You’ll be the ‘It” girl of celebrity fashion styling. With the right springboard – that’s me – there’ll be no stopping you in as little as five years.”
Jessica rose to pace her ultra-modern glass-themed office. “It took me fifteen years to get where I am today. No one gave me any leg-ups in my time, but I did do a lot of leg-opening of my own, if you catch my drift.” She smiled thinly in Mandy’s direction. “And it didn’t matter to any of those big-shot jerks that I was married or not. To them, I should be ready to do whatever it took. And they were right; I was ready.”
She squared her narrow shoulders, which were encased in her black and white patterned trouser suit. When she faced Mandy, her eyes were cool slates. “Now I don’t know what your game is with Ethan. I could go on about the errors of mixing business and pleasure, but then you strike me as smart. You know what you’re doing, so all I can say is what I always say: whatever happens, don’t you dare fuck this up for me. Now get back to work.”
It seemed incredible that her boss had just given her a proposition, Mandy thought wonderingly as she nodded and stood from her chair. She could see that Jessica wasn’t kidding. She’d meant every word she’d said about shooting Mandy’s career forward if she got The Strum on board. Mandy didn’t even want to think of what would happen if she didn’t succeed.
Mandy heaved a sigh of relief once she’d shut the door to Jessica’s office behind her. But Mandy’s feeling of relief was only short-term. She was thinking of her upcoming lunch date with Marcus.
He’d rung her at work just that morning, insisting that they needed to meet. Mandy had no excuse why she couldn’t make it and had reluctantly agreed. She’d held it back for too long and would have to face the truth sometime.
When the hour came, Mandy was ushered to the table where the handsome, well-dressed Marcus stood waiting. Once she was settled in he retook his seat, his expression calm. “Hello, Mandy.”
Mandy found it wasn’t as hard as she’d feared to tell Marcus the whole truth. They ordered lunch and spoke calmly about Marcus’s trip and how he’d cut it short after a client had withdrawn an offer on a deal. “I could have stayed to drive home my bid, but I decided to return. I had a feeling something was wrong. I just never expected I’d lose you so entirely.” He sighed heavily. “I saw the photos, Mandy. The story is in Mob Celebrity magazine. You and Ethan Tyler at that concert on Saturday.”
“I’m sorry,” Mandy said, lifting her eyes and squeezing her fists on the table. “Really sorry for causing you any kind of pain or embarrassment. And you haven’t lost me entirely. We can still be friends. You’ll never be my enemy, Marcus.”
To her surprise, he suddenly reached out and placed a hand over hers. “Don’t do this, Mandy,” he said softly. His eyes were pinned on hers. “It doesn’t have to end like this.”
“Marcus, it already has,” she said firmly, pulling away with an almost imperceptible shift of her hand from beneath his.
He looked down on his plate for a few moments before he spoke again, his tone brisk. “In three days, you’ll be going to London for the festival that Ethan’s band is headlining. When you get back, we can talk again. I’m not prepared to let you go, Mandy. So if you want to have your fling with the rock star, that’s fine. But this isn’t you, not really. And I want to be there for you when it all falls apart. And we both know it will.”
Mandy’s teeth clamped tight together as she fought back the pang of hurt in her chest. “Don’t be hateful, Marcus.”