She scrolled back up to the picture and looked at it.
There was something very odd about that picture. She wasn’t used to seeing herself look so happy and at ease when she was photographed. Stephanie was very aware of her appearance at all times—it was an important part of her brand—and though she was happy with her well-tended skin thanks to the products she’d helped develop, she had other insecurities. Most of them had to do with the fact that she couldn’t relax when there was a camera on her, so her smiles were always stretched and awkward, not quite reaching her eyes.
How long had it been since she had seen a picture of herself like this one? A picture in which she looked perfectly relaxed?
I was relaxed with Elijah. As strange as it seems to think that I could have been that way on a date with someone I hardly knew… I really was.
Maybe it had been in part because the stakes were simply so low, because she hadn’t needed to worry about whether the date was going to go well or not. She hadn’t cared about that. It had been enough for her to know that she was living up to the expectations of her agreement with Oliver.
But in that moment, the moment the camera had captured, she hadn’t been thinking about Oliver. She’d been thinking about the game, yes, but also about the man next to her and the good time she was having with him.
What a strange realization.
She closed the tab on her computer before she could fall into the trap of spending the rest of the morning pondering this. It wasn’t that deep. So someone had taken a good picture of her, a picture in which she looked happy. She had been happy. She’d been courtside at a good ball game. Anyone in her position would have been having a good time in this picture. It wasn’t indicative of some larger point.
She opened the computer again and pulled up her email.
Mr. Norcross,
Would it be possible to get a clearer timeline regarding your app launch? I’ll make plans to go out with Elijah again, but in the meantime I’d like to know how long we can expect this setup to continue.
I read the article—looks like things are going the way we wanted them to.She paused, then added,I had a really good time at the basketball game, so it’s kind of win-win.
She hit send before she could think too hard about what she had written. The reply came back almost immediately—Oliver must have been sitting at his computer.
It’s looking like the app might be ready sooner than we expected! We’ll be ready to launch on Monday morning, if nothing goes wrong. I’d like you to be there, if you’re open to it. You’ve been kind of a good luck charm to me in all of this, so I’d feel a sense of fate being on our side if you were there for the launch. Elijah will be coming. Maybe I’ll talk to him and tell him to bring you with him, if you’re open to that. Let me know if you have any conflicts. If I don’t hear from you about it, I’ll go ahead and offer up the idea to Elijah.
Stephanie leaned back in her chair and let out a sigh, closing the computer again. So the app was going to launch next week.
Did that mean that her time with Elijah would already be over?
She was surprised by the sense of disappointment she felt at the notion.
It can’t be true that I want our time to go on longer, can it? This was all just an arrangement to get what I wanted, and the fact that it’s ending means I’m one step closer to the payout.
And yet, shehadhad a good time with Elijah. Maybe it would be tough letting go of what they had experienced together. At least she would always have that tabloid picture, the one in which she was smiling so readily, as a reminder.
Even the papers know him for what he is. He’s a playboy, famously. It was never going to be serious between the two of us, so it’s for the best that it’s coming to an end before I get in too deep.
And besides, money would be coming in soon, and she would be able to focus on taking SilkSoft to the next level… and that was what all of this had been for in the first place. She had to remember that.
The coffee was ready. Stephanie got up and poured herself a cup, thinking about what she would do with the rest of her day. One thing was clear—she was going to have to reach out to Elijah. She would need to arrange a second date with him so that he would have the impression things were going well between them. That way, when his father asked him to bring her along to the product launch, he would agree readily.
She couldn’t help wondering, though, whether or not she was doing something she was going to regret somewhere down the road. Something she was going to look back on and wish she had handled differently. If this was the way business was done, if this was the way people got ahead in life, then Stephanie was going to have to play the game—but it was certainly not the way she had pictured her own career moving to the next level.
Just get through it. After the product launch, you’ll break things off with Elijah, and then there won’t be anything left to feel uncomfortable about.
She hoped that would be true. Right now, it was hard to feel much faith in it. Glancing back at her computer, she felt the strange urge to open it up and look at that picture one more time. To see herself smiling as Elijah had leaned in and whispered in her ear.
They had looked like a happy couple.
That was going to be a hard thing to forget.
CHAPTER 9
ELIJAH
“You don’t know how weird it is that he let me bring a date at all,” Elijah murmured to Stephanie. “Do you need another drink, by the way?”
