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Smith’s question caught Roark off guard. His first impulse was to toss off a careless answer, but after what his buddy had done for him both today and in the past, Roark decided he owed him better than that.
“Very good.”
“Love her?”
“Don’t know.”
Smith shook his head. “Idiot.”
“Yeah.” Roark sighed as the door closed on his friend. “Damn straight.”
Ten
Elizabeth’s hand hovered over the pint of ice cream in her freezer. At seven in the morning, it was too early for her to get started, but today’s Page Six article gave her a solid excuse to indulge in Cherry Garcia.
Her first phone call this morning had come from Allison, warning her that Sabeen’s indiscretion last night had indeed been overheard. That call had been followed by one from Charlotte and three from Josie. Elizabeth had let those calls go to voice mail. After speaking to Allison, she’d been unable to face anyone else.
Shutting the freezer door before she surrendered to self-destructive eating, she took her phone back to bed. Curled beneath the warm comforter, she scanned through the dozen texts Roark had sent her the previous night. As low as she felt at the moment, reading the messages gave her mood a minor boost. In his autocratic way, Roark did appear somewhat remorseful that he’d abandoned her to the wolves. But this was his fight to wage, not hers, and just because he was conveniently missing in action didn’t mean she had to be the one to clean up his mess.
An hour later she grew tired of moping and decided to bake the pumpkin pie she’d intended to bring to Thanksgiving dinner at Vance and Charlie’s home. After reading the Page Six article, there was no way she was leaving her apartment, but no reason why she couldn’t celebrate the holiday.
She was rolling out the pie dough when her doorbell rang. Dusting flour from her hands, she headed to the front door. Josie stood in the hall.
“I suppose you thought to make a fool of me by pretending to be engaged to Roark Black,” her boss began without even a hello. “Well, I’m here to tell you that not only am I never going to make you a partner, but you’re fired, as well.”
On the heels of everything else that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, Elizabeth saw Josie’s pinched mouth and accusatory, close-set eyes through a glaze of red. “Fine. Then I guess I’ll be opening my own event planning company. And my first client will be Sonya Fremont. She’s agreed to let me plan her gala.”
The sheer insanity of the boast shocked Elizabeth out of her fury. She had no idea if Sonya would even agree to take her call once she read the Page Six story. For that matter, Elizabeth had no idea if any of the society women who’d hired her would let her continue working on their projects.
Josie’s mouth opened and closed. She looked thunderstruck. “Sonya agreed to hire us?”
“She agreed to hire me,” Elizabeth corrected, emphasizing the last word. Or she prayed that Sonya’s offer still stood. “She refuses to have anything to do with you.”
Having an important client like Sonya Fremont would make it easy enough for Elizabeth to find a job with another event planner.
“I can’t believe you’d turn on me like this,” Josie said. “After everything I did for you.”
“You fired me.” Granted, Elizabeth hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep, but was she hearing things or had her boss fired her thirty seconds earlier. “How have I turned on you?”
“You said terrible things to Sonya about me, didn’t you? That’s why she won’t work with me.”
“I didn’t say anything to Sonya about you.” What the hell had she been thinking to continue working for someone as crazy as Josie?
“What about your events this weekend? Are you planning on abandoning all of those, as well?”
“I guess you should have thought about that before you fired me.”
As she shut the door in her boss’s face, Josie’s last words struck her. “I’m going to make sure that no other event planners will dare touch you,” Josie yelled, her voice carrying loud and clear through the door. “You’re going to rue the day you messed with me.”
Rue the day?
Between her former boss’s poison and the outing of her pretend engagement to Roark, what if Elizabeth couldn’t find another job? Earlier in the week she’d gone to the fertility clinic to have blood work done in the hopes that she could start the process towards another in vitro attempt. The third round had to be the charm. But if she had no job, it wouldn’t matter if Roark’s money helped her get pregnant—she wouldn’t be able to support a child on unemployment.
Covering her mouth with both hands, Elizabeth set her back against the door as her knees
gave way. She slid down the door. When her butt hit the floor she collapsed in a fit of giggles. It wasn’t until she was gasping for breath that she realized she was crying. Yep, it was official, she’d hit rock bottom.
On the one-year anniversary of the worst day of her life, she’d celebrated by becoming a social pariah and slamming the door in her boss’s face instead of begging for her job back. It was perfect.
