“He said yes.”
“Yes!” she cheered, and I heard her moving on the other side, probably getting up and doing her little happy dance. “I’ll see you both there. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to chat to him, introduce him to people, get him drinking, so you don’t have to babysit him the whole time.”
“I can’t believe you,” I groaned. “But… thank you.”
“I promised you I’d help get you out seeing the world a little. So? Party time?”
I took a long breath, looking up at the sky, thinking soon, I’d be seeing this part of the city from across the river. “Party time,” I said.
Chapter 4
Julie
“A king doesn’t back down,” I said in the elevator mirror as it climbed the building up to a dizzying floor number.
Kingmaker had told me to practice the affirmation ritual. This affirmation ritual wasn’t doing jack shit for me. I groaned, turning away as the elevator slowed with aping.
“A king wouldn’t be doing this shit,” I muttered, but I pulled myself together with my best attempt at a smile as the doors opened, leading me out into a room with big glass walls that had the most breathtaking view of Manhattan from across the water. My stomach dropped, a fluttery sensation in my chest looking at it as the doors closed behind me and the elevator rolled on back down.
Thiswasbullshit, and I was so stressed I wanted to cry, spiraling into catastrophic thoughts about what would happen if I couldn’t pay Daniel back, but—at the same time, damn if this wasn’t exactly what I’d come to New York dreaming of. The rooftop past the doors gleamed with glossy polish, and the Manhattan skyline that dominated the night sky, glistening likegemstones, it was all so much bigger in real life than it had ever been in pictures.
“Good evening, ma’am,” a woman in a neat uniform at the door said, a restrained smile at me. “Can I get your name?”
Well, my life depended on this. No pressure. I tried for casual and breezy. “Cassandra Evans-Pierre,” I said. “Is Krysten here?”
She glanced at her clipboard with eyebrows raised. “Mrs. Evans-Pierre,” she said. “Ms. Adesina said you wouldn’t be able to make it tonight.”
Shit. I was dead. Organs carved out, floating in the river. I got a cold flush in the back of my head, and I didn’t know what came over me, because I wasn’t a liar, but apparently on some level, I was. I put a finger to my lips. “It’s a surprise,” I said. “Don’t tell her I’m here.”
She stared at me for the most terrifying second in my life before she broke out into a small smile. “Of course, ma’am,” she said. “I’ll let the rest of the staff know.”
“Oh—there’s no need for that.” That came out sounding like the old Julie Branch. I cringed.
“Don’t worry. It’s a professional operation, ma’am. Is your husband attending today?”
Kingmaker didn’t want to tell me I had a fucking husband? Jesus Christ. “Oh, no, he’s quite busy tonight. You know how men are.”
She nodded sagely, like we were in on a secret. I didn’t know the fucking secret. To make matters worse, the door pinged again behind me, and the elevator doors opened to where three sets of footsteps came out, and I looked back at where my heart jumped at the eeriest sense of déjà vu I’d ever felt.
In the middle of the three, a man I’d have guessed as a Chinese businessman, maybe forty years old, with a hot mid-twenties girl on his either side, talking and laughing like hewas the most interesting person they’d ever met, and I made awkward eye contact with the taller of the two, a woman who had been staring at me just a few hours ago.
Oh, god. You really did walk into this kind of place and lock eyes with a Vanity Fair cover model. The receptionist spoke behind me.
“Good evening, may I get your names?”
“Helena Warrick?” I was the one to blurt it. Oh, god. One hot girl looked at me and I lost it. My face burned. Was the blush going to show? I had a lot of foundation, thank god. The woman who couldnotactually be the one I’d just seen on a magazine cover earlier today smiled flawlessly at me.
“Hi—I’m so sorry, I don’t think we’ve met,” she said.
Oh, god. Why the hell had I spoken? I swallowed, taking a second to push out words. “Oh—no, of course not. It’s just… what a small world this is sometimes. I’d just seen your Vanity Fair cover earlier today. Your tell-all. Very enlightening.” I needed to shut the fuck up. But Jesus Christ if this wasn’t the hottest woman I’d ever talked to. I’d thought she was photoshopped to look sexy in the picture. If anything, I think they’d photoshopped her to make her less attractive. Make sure their readers wouldn’t get too jealous. She was tall and impossibly hourglass-shaped, long brown hair that had the kind of perfect lift and wave I thought you could only have for a couple hours after going to the salon, slightly tanned skin that practically glowed, and the most smolderingly sexy green eyes that would make a lesser woman lose her mind. Like me, for example. A lesser woman who was losing her fucking mind.
Helena Warrick gave me an odd look. Maybe I’d said something stupid or maybe she could tell I was having a heart attack over how hot she was. “My Vanity Fair interview? That was years ago now.”
Well, apparently it was years ago now. Maybe that was why she looked even hotter in person, because she just got hotter every day, because that was what people like her did. “I’ve been getting into reading old issues,” I blabbered. “I love seeing how the brand changes over the years. I’ve become something of a connoisseur over the past few months.”
I guess that did it, because she smiled. She had a smile that could kill someone. Namely, me. I think I died. “Have you?” she said. “Maybe I should ask you for your insights.”
“Please do.” Please don’t.
