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“Uh,
you guys want to talk about it?’ she’d finally asked.
The answers had been no and no, and when the call ended, Emily had shaken her head the same way she had in the past and wondered how her bright, beautiful, talented sisters could be such fools when it came to men.
Right.
And now, after—what?—one kiss from a stranger, she was suddenly an expert on what men and sex were all about?
“Ridiculous,” she muttered. And flinched. Because ridiculous wasn’t even close to describing what had happened last night.
She had humiliated herself.
He’d kissed her. OK. People kissed all the time. She could have stood still and let it happen. She could have turned her face away. She could have said, with Victorian indignation, that driving her home did not entitle him to take liberties.
Instead, she’d—she’d wrapped herself around him like an octopus. He’d had to peel her off. Then he’d mumbled something polite and escaped as fast as was humanly possible.
Humiliating didn’t come close to describing it.
Emily groaned and burrowed deeper under the blankets.
“Stop it,” she whispered. “Just—just put it out of your mind. You’ll never see him again so why keep thinking about what an absolute fool you made of yourself?”
What she needed was sleep. A couple of hours, anyway. The day looming before her was going to be tough enough to handle without adding in a brain drained by exhaustion. She’d have to face Nola. Call Max Pergozin and if he had nothing for her, start the horrible thing known as searching for employment. And as what? Who would employ her? The city was filled with women like her, their heads packed with useless academic nonsense.
Emily yawned. Yawned again. And drifted, mercifully, into sleep. And, unmercifully, into a dream about a tall, gorgeous hunk of masculinity, with dark hair, dark eyes and a sexy accent, who kissed her and then didn’t stop at kissing her.
She was moaning when the piercing ring of the telephone jolted her awake.
Let voice mail take the call. She’d just lie here, close her eyes, see if she could recapture the dream.
At the sound of the tone, please leave a message.
“PICK UP THIS PHONE, MADISON! YOU HEAR ME? PICK UP THE GODDAMNED PHONE!”
Emily shoved the covers aside, flew to the wall of ancient, Lilliputian-sized appliances that passed for a kitchen and grabbed the receiver.
“Mr. Pergozin?”
“YOU ARE FIRED, GIRLY. FIRED! YOU GOT THAT?”
Emily winced, propped the phone against her shoulder, opened the cupboard and searched for a bottle of aspirin.
“Mr. Pergozin. I know you’re annoyed but—”
“ANNOYED? ANNOYED?”
“Please. If you could just lower your voice—”
“Fine. I’ll lower my voice. Is this low enough? YOU WILL NEVER WORK IN THIS TOWN AGAIN!”
Emily wrenched open the aspirin bottle, dumped three tablets on the counter, turned on the water in the sink, popped the tablets into her mouth, bent down, angled her head, slurped at the water and swallowed hard. The tablets stuck in her throat and she coughed, dragged in a breath and said, “Look, I don’t know what Gus told you but—”
“He told me what I already suspected. That you’re a dainty prima donna with no more brains than a cockroach!”
“If you’d just listen—”
“Didn’t you hear me? You are fired!”
