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“Hey there. Got a second?” Lilly asked, hovering in the doorway of her office, an uncertain look on her face.
Caroline looked up at her and frowned. “Yeah, boss. What's up? Is everything okay?”
A pained look on Lilly's face, she sighed. “No. It's not okay. I didn't want anyone to bring this up and blindside you. One of the blogs that reviewed the event... Uh. It's not good. I think you need to read this.”
Caroline took the print out from her and read by by-line. “I don't even remember giving this interview. This must've been the one Magnus handled the day after the party.”
“I'd say he handled it, alright.”
Cautiously, she continued to read. The introduction was standard. Usquebaugh. Fantastic ambiance. Delightful food. Unique and well-designed additions to the drink menu. Then she saw what Lilly was talking about. Magnus had not only taken credit for the whole idea of the drink and Prix Fixe menu but he'd gone so far as to say that some of the drinks had been his doing. He thought the flavor combinations had been somewhat uninspired, so he fixed them. Later in the piece, when asked about the scene, he'd said, 'It was inappropriate and I was bloody embarrassed. It's a place of business at the end of the day.'”
There were some of his other normal comments woven in there. He talked about how it was difficult to not believe the hype about yourself. His thoughts about the disconnect between the front and the back of the house was mentioned.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Caroline said, setting down the paper without finishing the article. “It's one thing to throw me under the bus professionally,” she said, her voice cracking. “Why would he have said that about my family? Fuck, Lilly.”
“On a personal level, I'd like to kick his ass. On a professional level, I can't fire him for being a dickhead. I'm tempted though.”
“Lilly. I told my parents to fuck off for him.”
Lilly arched an eyebrow in the same way that Talan was prone to doing. “You did that for him?”
“For me, too. Mostly for me. The fact that my mother was so unforgivably rude to him was the final straw, basically. Jesus. How could I have been so stupid? He joked with me about things. Being an egomaniac or whatever. I didn't think he was serious,” Caroline said, her forehead resting on her forearms.
“I don't know what the hell happened. I think you need to have a long talk with him, though. This isn't the way to start out a relationship.”
“I just gave notice at my apartment. He asked me to move in the other day. I was going to wait until December, but I talked to my landlord last week and he said he'd let me out early because there was a tenant in need of a two bedroom. Fuck!”
“I saw the way he looked at you, honey. This doesn't make sense. I don't know what happened but I find it hard to believe that he'd be so callous. Magnus can be a jerk sometimes, but this is really extreme.”
Caroline took a shaky breath and said, “Maybe you're right. Maybe it's a misunderstanding. I'll ask him about it and see what he says.”
“I waffled over showing you this when the planner sent it to me, but I didn't want you to stumble onto it. I know you've been reading all the reviews.”
They'd talked about several of them, so it made sense. “Thanks for giving me the heads up, Lilly. Really.”
Lilly waddled over and squeezed her shoulder. “If you need to talk, then I'm here.”
“Thanks,” Caroline said, her heart aching.
Lilly left with a somber wave, leaving Caroline alone with her thoughts. How the hell could she have screwed up so badly? Magnus had been a bit of an asshole during their first meeting but he'd redeemed himself. At least, it seemed like he had.
Maybe Lilly was right. Maybe there was some sort of explanation for this. Magnus was kind of a dick to the media. Perhaps he'd pissed the reporter off. But, that didn't really make sense because she would have trashed the food, right?
Caroline checked the byline one more time. Kathleen Church. She turned to her computer and quickly typed her name into a search engine. Several articles popped up, including the one written about Usquebaugh. She clicked on it.
She scanned the article in the vain hope that it was a misprint, but it wasn't. It was all there in black and white, along with some artfully taken pictures of the food and drinks. If she overlooked the quotes from Magnus, it was a glowing piece.
Impulsivel
y, she clicked on the contact link and filled it out. She'd never gotten to speak to Kathleen and didn't have any real contact information. The last thing she wanted to do was to ask Lilly's party planner for the information. How would she even explain that? “Well, I really just wanted to find out whether my boyfriend really said all of this awful shit and I was hoping she'd be able to tell me.” Yeah. That wasn't exactly professional.
She explained in the body of the message who she was and that she had some questions about the interview and gave a phone number. Hopefully the woman would call her back before she talked to Magnus about this.
Maybe it was a mistake. No. It had to be some sort of mistake. Caroline found it difficult to believe that Magnus would say those things. Not after he'd asked her to move in with him. He'd told her that he loved her. The other morning, after the interview, he'd come upstairs and told her he was never letting her go.
Granted that was during sex, but still. He didn't seem like the type to say anything in the heat of the moment that he hadn't thought long and hard about. They were planning a future together. Why would he trash it in some stupid blog article? This had to be some sort of mistake.
In her heart, she couldn't believe he'd do something like this to her. It just didn't make any sense. Above all things, Magnus was a logical man.
