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From his expression, I gather James is not on board with Operation Look the Other Way. And his horror triggers an uncomfortable dissolving sensation in my stomach. I’m mad and sad and frankly horrified by what we just saw, but I can’t help but feel embarrassed and slightly protective, too. I shove my hands into my pockets.
“They’re about to release their book on relationships,” he says, voice high and tight. “Their book of marital advice.”
I shift on my feet. “I know.”
“And launch a new show that’s based almost entirely on their brand!” he says, struggling to keep his voice down. “That brand being their blissful marriage!”
I work to hide my irritation. To be honest, I don’t see James often because, whether he likes it or not, so far he’s good at his job and keeps Rusty in line. So much so, in fact, that I didn’t realize Rusty was having another affair.
I narrow my eyes. “You’re sure you didn’t know about this? You were awfully reluctant to go looking for him.”
James flushes. “I thought I’d catch him eating a sandwich, Carey, not”—he points behind him, back to the room—“that.”
I deflate. “Yeah, me too.” I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and then look around the empty hallway. “We can’t let anyone else down here.”
“You’re not going to tell her,” he guesses, frowning. “Are you?”
Defensiveness is my default: “Melly made it clear a number of years ago that she wants me and all assistants to stay out of her private life. That includes you.”
I can see by the way his chest rises that his first instinct is to correct me—yet again—that he is not an assistant, but self-preservation wins out. “This could all blow up in our faces,” he tells me. “You get that, right?”
“What do you want me to do?”
He takes another deep breath. “I think we need to tell Melissa.”
“You also thought we should go find him, and you can see how well that turned out.”
He gives me a long stare.
“I am not telling Melly that we saw her husband plowing their cohost.” I laugh. “Hell no.”
Talking to them about this would be like talking to my parents, but multiplied by the Also My Employer factor of awkward. James probably doesn’t realize that my relationship with the Tripps isn’t just employer-employee. How would he? We barely interact.
But I can’t be the one to rat out Rusty. My dad died when I was seventeen. He’d been noticing some swelling in his legs and feet but brushed it off as a hazard of working on his feet all day, climbing up and down ladders and sometimes having to work on his knees. He put off seeing a doctor until it was too late. Years of smoking had left him with stage-four lung cancer, and he died within just a couple of months. Rusty tried not to be obvious about stepping in, but he’s always been there when I needed him. Not to mention he distracts Melly when she goes off on one of her tirades, and he gives me free rein in his shop whenever I have time. I really don’t want to do this.
James looks at me, silently disappointed. “Carey.”
“Maybe she already knows?” I ask hopefully.
“If she knows,” he begins, “then she needs to tell him to be more discreet. It could have been anyone walking into that room, and someone with less loyalty and a cell phone camera could have blown up their entire livelihood, and ours, with a single tweet.”
It’s physically painful to admit that he’s right. Freaking Rusty.
“Fine,” I say, but decide to give myself a temporary reprieve. “We’ll check in with her tomorrow after the meeting.”
“Check in with her?”
“God, why are you like this? We’ll tell her after the meeting. Are you happy?”
He wearily pushes a hand through his hair. “Not even a little bit.”
We both jump at a voice coming out of the quiet hall. “Tell who what after the meeting?”
It’s Robyn, the Tripps’ publicist: a tightly coiled, neurotic busybody.
“Nothing.” I wave her away with false ease.
“Come on,” she says, face pinched. “You’re down here hiding when you should be getting things organized and packed up out there.” She looks between us. “Clearly something is going on.”
I resent the reminder that I need to be cleaning up after all these people and mentally give Robyn the finger. “James and I were saying that we need to talk to Melly tomorrow. I’ll let her know—”
“Why does James need to talk to her?” Robyn asks, too astute for her own good. Melly has never needed James for anything that didn’t need to be opened or reached on a high shelf. “Is it a big deal?”
I give a breezy “No” just as James utters an emphatic “Yes.”
I turn to glare at him. He glares back at me.
“Robyn should know,” he says quietly, and in my head I’m grabbing my hair at the roots, yelling, Goddammit, James, be cool!
