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It occurred to Nick, and he hastily suppressed the though even as he thought it, that he was actually turning her into his vision of the ideal woman.
There had always been, somewhere towards the back of his mind, an image of this elusive creature, a woman who was a combination of sexiness and sophistication, of brains and beauty. She would come to the opera with him and discuss it afterwards with intelligence and insight. She would dress like an angel, but have a bit of a past. She would be sweet yet sensual, cultured yet down to earth, she would be well behaved in public and badly behaved in the bedroom.
He had nicknamed this creation Sabrina. He had never met her and Zoe was certainly nothing like her, but he now realized that his model in this project was less and less Vanessa, and more and more the fictional Sabrina. Could Zoe be shaped into his image of perfection? There was work to be done but she seemed receptive and open to improvement. He had thus far in life had no luck in finding the ‘real’ Sabrina, maybe constructing one was a good second choice.
There was much to like about Zoe, and the rest could be fixed.
Chapter Five
If there was one thing that life had taught Zoe Blanchard about herself it was that she was not to be trusted around men. To clarify: other people could trust her around men – she was not a boyfriend thief or even a boyfriend flirter – but she could not trust herself around men.
Zoe had horrendous taste in men.
More accurately, she had optimistic taste in men – she had a habit of thinking that them to better than they at first appeared. Perhaps it was because she was such a nice person herse
lf, but Zoe found it hard to see the jerkiness in others. When she saw someone acting like a dick, she immediately wondered what could be wrong in their life to make them act that way. Surely no one could just be a jackass for no reason. And she clung to this bright-eyed world view even after dating a procession of world class jackasses, in all of whom she had tried and failed to find some mitigating reason for their jackassery. In a room of men, Zoe knew that she could be trusted to find the biggest jerk amongst them and be attracted to him. It was not that she liked bad boys – she really didn’t – she just lacked the ability to spot them.
It was with trepidation therefore that Zoe found herself looking at Nick differently. Worse still; she was starting to make excuses for him.
Of course she had found Nick attractive from their first meeting in the bar. He was a handsome man, a very handsome man – he was tall with chiseled good looks, hair that looked good when combed and amazing when not, and a body that Zoe had started sneaking frequent looks at just to make sure she hadn’t been imagining how good it looked.
He was hot, he was rich (not important but it didn’t hurt), he was intelligent, he was funny, he was cultured, and… he was an asshole toward her much of the time. The fact that she had spotted this was a great comfort to Zoe. She never noticed when guys to whom she was attracted treated her poorly – at least not until it was too late. So the fact that she had already picked Nick out as a slimeball meant that she was not that attracted to him. Which made is what she told herself to feel reassured, anyway.
But if she was not attracted to Nick then word had not reached her libido. Nor had it reached her dreams, which had started constructing some increasingly wild, physically challenging, and borderline impossible fantasies about her and Nick (and, on one occasion, an enthusiastic ballet dancer).
These were not the dreams of a disinterested woman.
On reflection, Zoe had finally decided that the reason for this breaking of her usual pattern of failing to recognize jerkiness in the jerks she invariably fell for was down to the unusual situation in which she was getting to know Nick. This was not a guy she had been set up with by Alisha, or someone she had met in a bar with Alisha, or someone Alisha had met on the bus and brought home on the off chance this was someone she was working with. (As she thought about it further, perhaps Alisha was the one with terrible taste in men since she was the one who kept setting up all those terrible dates. The thought was mildly comforting.)
While she failed to recognize assholes whom she dated, Zoe had always been quick to spot the ones she worked with. And while the assholes she dated usually had the decency to try and hide it – for at least long enough to get into her pants – Nick had flaunted his dickish behavior from the first. While he had been cordial enough at their initial meeting, by the end of it he had implied that she was stupid, ill-educated, fat, and ugly.
She disliked him immediately.
But then, as her cultural lessons had progressed, Zoe had found him to be surprisingly charming company. Was this because he was actually a charming man? Or was it because she was becoming more attracted to him and so had started making excuses for his behavior? Either way, he lost it again on the day they went sailing – Zoe was convinced she would never forgive him for that and that he had become set in stone as a jerk in her eyes. But then came the night of the ballet, and somehow (Zoe was still not altogether sure how) by the end of that night they were laughing and happy and she was once again looking at him with that pleasantly uncomfortable knot of attraction in her stomach.
Being around Nick was a rollercoaster ride for Zoe. She never knew how she was going to feel from one day to the next. It also occurred to her that part of the reason for this must surely have been that Nick himself did not care how she saw him. If he did care then his inconsistent behavior made no sense whatsoever. She was just a project to him and when this unusual assignment was over then that would be that.
The makeover day changed things, there was no denying that. But Zoe, once again, found herself confused – she was not sure if they had changed for better or worse. Actually she was not sure of anything.
The hair dressing had been irritating – largely due to Steven – but you couldn’t argue with results and she had looked fabulous, even if she looked like a completely different person. But, she reminded herself, that was the point, right? The makeover had been agonizing in more ways than one but, again, you couldn’t argue with results – she looked like a different person. She looked stunning, even to her normally critical eyes.
The clothes shopping had been fun. Zoe had never thought of herself, nor ever wanted to think of herself as one of those girls who define themselves by the clothes they wear, but she had to admit that shopping without a budget for clothes had been a riot. The fabrics, the embroidery, the perfectly tailored cuts—the fact that one outfit was more than her monthly salary—all of it had been exhilarating. And the clothes themselves had been wonderful, and they had made her look wonderful. She knew, logically, that the clothes had not actually changed her, but they had seemed to take what already existed of her and had reorganized and redistributed her into a much better looking version. And a result like that, you couldn’t argue with.
At the end of the day Zoe had looked into a mirror and seen this extraordinary, and frankly unfamiliar, woman looking back at her. That of course was the point – she was supposed to be a different woman, she was supposed to be Vanessa. And she admitted she was starting to do a fairly good impression of her.
But still, the sight took Zoe’s breath away for reasons that had nothing to do with the success of Nick’s plan. This woman who stared back from the mirror had a stylish hair-do, every hair perfectly in place and complimenting the luminous glow of her sharply made-up face, her dress was professional and yet sexy, showing off the best of the body beneath whilst coyly keeping it hidden. The woman was… well maybe not quite gorgeous, but she had taken a big step towards gorgeous from what she had been at the start of the day. And Zoe found herself thinking; maybe Nick was right. Maybe a few more salads instead of Big Macs wouldn’t hurt. She could drop a bit of weight, change this, adjust that - think how she could look by the end of it!
And in that moment Zoe found herself frightened by what she had inadvertently become.
Like most women, she was insecure about aspects of her body and her appearance, but she had fought hard to embrace who she was without compromise. Now suddenly she was looking for things to change? And all it had taken was a makeover and a few pointed suggestions from Nick.
More worryingly perhaps was that when she had looked into the mirror, she had also seen Nick standing behind her, and the way he looked at her now was very different to the way he had looked at her when she had been just ‘Zoe’. If he had not been attracted to Zoe herself, then Zoe now saw that there was a chance that he might be attracted to the woman she was becoming. And for a fleeting moment Zoe wondered if it might be worth letting her old self go… if it meant she could be with Nick.
There were definite plans in Zoe’s mind as she went up to Nick’s office the following morning – she was not about to let Nick down or let the company down but she wasn’t going to let herself down either, and she needed a break before things got out of hand. But her plan would have to wait as, when she got to the top floor and said good morning to Eddie, she saw that all was not well.
“What’s wrong?”
It did not take a genius to spot when something was wrong in Eddie’s world. Some people wore their hearts on their sleeves but Eddie wore his panic there. When it came to things wrong in his world, Eddie was a human weather vane, waving desperately in the direction of trouble.
“Mr. Rothberger’s in the office!” he hissed conspiratorially.
“Okay,” said Zoe slowly; that Nick was in his office did not seem like earth-shattering news (although it didn’t take much to spook Eddie).
“Not Mr. Rothberger,” Eddie shook his head fast. “Mr. Rothberger!”
“Ad
am Rothberger?” suggested Zoe, who had, over the last week or so, learned to decode Eddie.
Eddie nodded. “I don’t think it’s going well.”
Zoe now heard the muffled sound of raised voices that issued from behind the door. “Any idea what they’re talking about?”
“No,” Eddie shook his head. “I tried listening at the door, but apparently that’s unprofessional and I could get reported for that kind of thing.” He shot a meaningful sidelong glance at the other desk, which was a hive of activity as ever. “I think it’s about money. It’s usually about money.”
Most things are, Zoe though ruefully. “In what way?”
“Mr. Rothberger keeps spending it.”
“Mr. Rothberger…?”
“Mr. N. Rothberger.”
“You could call him Nick?” suggested Zoe.
Eddie looked warily at the other desk again as if to say that there were spies everywhere. “I don’t think I could.”
“Just to facilitate this particular conversation.”
“I don’t think I could.”
“How about Mr. N and Mr. A?”
Eddie accepted this as a reasonable compromise and continued. “Mr. A doesn’t like the way Mr. N spends his money.”
Zoe frowned. “Isn’t it Mr. N’s money?”
“Opinion is divided on the subject.”
“How so?”
“Mr. N thinks that he should be able to spend his own money any way he wants. Mr. A thinks that since the money comes from the family business then that should come first. Oh, says Mr. N, and by ‘family business’ you mean the one you run? So I just hand my money over to you, do I? Well, says Mr. A, that’s better than you handing it over to bookies and bartenders and loan sharks and liquor salesman and hoo… ladies of easy virtue.”
Eddie looked around again to ensure no one was eavesdropping, though the irony of that particular act seemed to pass by him unnoticed. “Then Mr. N went on for a bit about how he’d never been with a… lady of the night, and he’s never paid for sex. (Or at least not with money – he slept with his college roommate’s sister and he paid for that. Plus there was this girl in San Francisco who turned out to… but that’s probably not important.) Anyway, Mr. A said, you don’t spend your money wisely. And Mr. N said, well it’s my money – its right there in my bank account – and there’s nothing you can do about it fat face.”
