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“You’re looking . . . glamorous,” Camille said, as Emma crossed her legs and carefully made sure her short satin dress didn’t ride up.
“Long story,” Emma said. Though her friends had an easy relationship with Camille, Emma was newer to the group—newer to Stiletto—and she wasn’t quite secure enough in her position at the company to run her mouth.
Not that Emma was ever one to run her mouth. She
was more the live-and-let-live type.
It was a natural evolution for someone who’d grown up with a twin sister who’d had more than enough personality for the both of them. And speaking of her twin, Emma had no doubt that Daisy’s southern belle sensibilities would probably be all why, I never! if she could see Emma’s current state of dishevelment.
Emma’s perfectly coiffed sister would have found a way to emerge from a flooded apartment looking every bit as darling as she had at the daffodil parades. All the daffodil parades.
It hadn’t been easy being Daisy Sinclair’s quiet, boring sister. When they were growing up, Daisy had been the quintessential little princess. She always wore dresses, and the dresses would never have lemonade spilled down the front like Emma’s. Daisy knew exactly what to say to boys to make them fall all over themselves, whereas Emma had been horribly shy around the opposite sex.
When Emma had gotten engaged first, she’d been braced for Daisy’s resentment. Not because Daisy was generally resentful, but because everyone—Emma included—had assumed that Daisy would be the first sister down the aisle. But nobody had been happier for Emma and Cassidy than Daisy. Because as if it weren’t enough that Daisy were the charming one, she was also good. Emma would be annoyed if she didn’t love her sister so damned much.
And as it turned out, Daisy had been the first—and only—twin to walk down the aisle after all. Of course, she’d also been the only sister to get divorced. Daisy always joked that the twins had two unshakable things in common: a face and a shit-ton of heartache.
Except Daisy hadn’t actually said the “shit-ton” part. That was Emma’s special profane spin on the situation.
“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” Camille said.
“Sorry?”
Camille pointed a coral fingernail at Emma’s still-damp hair. “You tell me why you’re rocking the fresh-outta-the-shower look, and I’ll tell you while I’m leaving my darling magazine in the hands of one of the Oxford buffoons.”
Emma pursed her lips. Couldn’t argue about the buffoon part. Although she was pretty sure that, despite her boss’s words, there was plenty of mutual respect between Cassidy and Camille. Still, Camille always saw Oxford as a bit of an enemy. The competition, so to speak.
“My apartment flooded,” Emma said, since her news wasn’t much of a secret. “It started with the pipe above the bathroom and my closet, but it’s an old building, and there was some sort of chain reaction thing, and before I knew it, the entire apartment was six inches deep in water.”
Camille tapped her fingernails on the desk. “Everything ruined?”
Emma shrugged. “I’ll know more when I get back today. But it didn’t look good when I left. My landlord is bringing some people in to survey the situation. Figure out what’s salvageable.”
“Hmm.”
Emma waited for her boss to say more, but Camille fell silent.
“Your turn,” Emma prodded.
To her surprise, Camille’s usually intense, take-no-prisoners expression transformed into a girlish grin. “I met someone.”
Emma’s eyebrows lifted. “You’re taking three months off work because you met someone?”
Camille merely leaned back in her chair and grinned wider. “So skeptical, Emma. You’re one of my Love girls. Surely you can understand what it’s like to fall, and fall hard.”
“Actually, I’m more like your breakup, single-life girl,” Emma corrected.
“Which is why I brought you in here,” Camille said, straightening a bit.
Emma held up a finger. “Your story first. ‘I met someone’ isn’t nearly enough information.”
“Fine. But for the record, your little flood story wasn’t worth this exchange of information,” Camille said, without much heat.
Emma had the feeling her boss wanted to talk about her sabbatical. Emma just wasn’t sure she wanted to be the one doing the listening. She’d had quite enough of other people’s luck in the love department lately.
“He’s a photographer,” Camille said. “Ken. Kenny.”
Kenny?
