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“Do you need a—”
“Don’t be soft.” She directed at me using her boss tone, something I hadn’t heard in a while. “You may be young but you are the boss. You can’t have these kids walking all over you, alright?”
The way she spoke you’d think she was sixty. She was actually forty-four, but that didn’t seem old to me. She was one of those people born with a long and bold nose, but she had a small frame. She kept her hair at shoulder length and her bangs fell right over her eyebrows to make her nose stick out more, to show it off. Every time I saw her I couldn’t help but think she looked like Anna Wintour.
“Esther?”
“Do you want to drink with me?” I asked her as I opened the drawer and grabbed the bottle of red wine I’d replaced my grandfather’s brandy with, along with two glasses.
“It’s ten past three.” She glanced at her watch.
“It’s ten past eight in London.” I rose from my chair up and handed her the glass, which she took and sniffed.
“Is this—?”
“Roma Lemur? Yes. It was a gift from Melton.” With a smile, I walked around the desk, sat in the leather chair beside her and crossed my legs.
“Melton? As in Ryan Melton, the director?”
I nodded as I took a sip. “He tried to seduce me for the rights to one of my grandfather’s plays. He had dollar signs in his eyes. But at least he had a good taste in wine, right?”
I lifted my glass and tapped it against hers.
“Heavy is the head that wears the crown.” She drank and the moment it touched her lips she groaned. “Can someone please try to seduce me with wine? I don’t have billions to my name or anything.”
I laughed. “Not billions, but you come with class and sophistication and a steady job—”
“And an eighteen-month-old whom I love dearly but I’d love to…you know.” She winked at me and I knew what she was implying.
“I don’t know.” I winked back as I finished my glass and set it on my desk. “I kind of wish I did though. I haven’t been with anyone since…geez. I guess since I broke up with Howard, who is still avoiding eye contact with me and I have no idea—”
“He slept with Li-Mei when you were gone last year,” she confessed as she licked the wine from her lips, and her eyes suddenly went wide as she realized what she’d said. “Crap. See, this is why I don’t drink in the daytime.”
“Li-Mei? Is that why she asked to be transferred to the London branch after my grandfather’s funeral?”
She didn’t comment so I took the bottle from my desk and refilled her glass. “Tell me everything.”
“Esther…”
“Think of this as making good with the boss,” I nodded for her to keep talking.
Sighing, she drank again and like a sinner in church, she began to confess, turning to me completely. “Okay. Last year, when you went to Indiana—”
“Montana.”
“Even worse.” She made a face like she’d never go someplace like that. But then again if it wasn’t a city of at least a million, most people in New York would rather stay in New York. “Remind me why you were in Montana again?”
“Anyway…”
“Anyway.” She went on. “Li-Mei was feeling her usual Carrie Bradshaw way, and Howard was just heartbroken. It was like two days after you left—I came in because both you and your grandfather were away. I don’t trust these kids to keep this place afloat without someone to blame if anything went wrong. They—Li-Mei and Howard—kept, you know, avoiding eye contact and then they would steal glances at each other. But this isn’t just gossip. One night I left the office and right on 4th their tongues were down each other’s throats. And it didn’t look like a first kiss between two people. His hand was practically up her skirt.”
“How could she…?” I whispered.
“I know! You guys hadn’t even been broken up for a week?”
“Not to me. To him.”
“Who?”
