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He knocked his knuckles on the bar again, and the bartender materialized another double before Lucy blinked twice. Leo downed it in a gulp as his phone rang from his back pocket. He held up a finger and winked at her, sliding down the bar to take the call.
He left her with a hundred thousand dollars burning a hole in her hand. Her dress, like 99 percent of the ones she owned, didn’t have pockets, so she had nowhere to put it. She took a step toward the table and the appetizers watering her mouth from fifteen feet away when yet another person appeared on the rooftop.
Annie approached like a timid deer. Her look was as sensible as Lucy’s: a breezy cocktail dress, wedges, and a fishtail braid. It was the first time Lucy had seen her since that morning without the threat of tears in her eyes.
“You made it.”
“Yes, well, I figured I could use a night out before anyone really knows who I am. My parents weren’t too happy about letting me leave the house. God, I feel like I’m in high school again.” She weakly smiled, and Lucy was glad to see her.
“What’ll you have to drink?”
Annie looked at the pink cocktail swirling in Lucy’s hand. “One of those would be nice.”
Lucy waved at the bartender and pointed to her drink. She noticed Annie nervously look over at the party table gradually filling with her coworkers. “Joanna,” she whispered under her breath, as if she was afraid.
“Will be happy you are here,” Lucy assured her. “She’s officially CEO now. Jonathan is out, and the company is finally in the right hands. Speaking of which, I’ve been promoted to senior publicist and I will need an assistant.”
Annie blinked the big brown eyes she’d been staring at Lucy with all day. Her eager innocence was still there, but the past ten hours had seasoned her. Her lips pulled into a coy grin. “Well, I happen to be in the market for a new boss. Mine recently got fired.”
“Is that so? How convenient.”
“Sure is.”
The bartender delivered her drink, and she lifted it to clink glasses with Lucy. They sipped and silently sealed the deal.
The pivotal role she played in progressing change was not lost on Lucy. In offering her a job, she provided Annie the very support she herself feared being denied should she ever speak up. Annie leaped, and Lucy caught her. And Lucy leaped, and Joanna caught her. Not to mention all the other open arms that offered support—Chase, Amanda, Oliver, Leo. For the first time, Lucy felt a swell of hope for the future.
Before she could continue celebrating, she needed to do something with Leo’s check. Short on options, and no stranger to undergarment trickery, she whipped around to face the bar and discreetly stuffed it in her bra in a fluid motion that no one even noticed. She turned back just in time to see Jonathan Jenkins charging at her and Annie like a wild boar.
Lucy gasped, and Annie’s cosmo slipped from her hand. If the shattering glass didn’t turn heads, the fury flying from Jonathan’s mouth did.
“Is this a goddamned party?” he roared, nearly shoving the poor hostess out of the way. He scanned the rooftop with the humiliated indignation of a guest discovering he’d been left off the invite list. He zeroed in on Lucy and Annie, as they were closest in his path. “You,” he seethed. “You’ve been in this together from the start, and now I’m ruined!”
Annie sealed herself to Lucy’s side, or maybe Lucy moved first, she wasn’t sure. Either way, they stood together like a tower in an earthquake as Jonathan stomped toward them, accusatory finger pointed. Rage contorted his face; spittle flew from his slick lips. “Do you have any idea what you’ve cost me? I—”
“Jonathan!” Joanna stepped in. The cool calm normally custom in her voice was nowhere to be found. “What do you think you are doing here?” she hissed, pointing at the floor like she was telling a bad dog to sit.
His face twisted into a deep furrow as he glared at her, contemptuous. “Joanna.” He said her name like it was poison. “I followed you from the office after you finished ruining my life, not knowing you were coming to her party. I should have known! My own fucking sister. Does loyalty mean nothing to you?”
Lucy was too stunned to check, but she felt every single eye on the rooftop staring at them.
Joanna stepped closer, lowering her voice to an even more terrifying hiss, doing her best to maintain control. “You don’t deserve loyalty when you’re hurting people, Jonathan.”
“Hurting?” he crowed, making no effort to keep his voice down. “Do you want to talk about hurt? Do you know what I’ve lost because of this? My clients, my career, my company, probably my house, my—”
“Those are things, Jonathan. Things!” Lucy cut in, shocked to hear the sound of her own voice. It came crying out from the outrage rippling inside her, and she could not stop it. “Do you know what we’ve lost because of this—because of you? Dignity, self-worth, our sense of security. All because you thought you had some right to—”
“Shut up!” he barked, and Lucy jumped. His usually passive intimidation tactics erupted into action. The reserve he always showed in his office vanished. He stepped toward her like he wanted to strangle her, a vein pulsing in his forehead and his hand like a claw. “This is all your fault. You should have taken the money and kept your mouth shut, you little—”
A flying fist cut off his final word. A fist decorated in silver rings and chipped black nail polish.
The rooftop collectively gasped, and if Lucy weren’t so shocked, she would have worried about someone pulling out a phone to take a video of Leo Ash’s latest scandal that she would have to clean up.
Jonathan stumbled and landed on his backside, arms sprawled to catch himself and an angry red welt in the shape of a signet ring bruising his cheekbone. He blinked in a daze as Leo stood over him. Lucy couldn’t tell if he was more shocked that he had been punched in the face or that he had been punched in the face by a rock star.
“Do not talk to Lucy like that,” Leo spat with an authority Lucy did not know he possessed. His jaw set hard, and his fist stayed clenched. Worry that he had injured his Grammy-winning hand on her behalf flitted through her mind, but she assured herself he could at least still sing if he had to give up the guitar. Though he didn’t look fazed at all. “I think it’s best that you leave now,” he rasped like an unreasonably attractive sheriff in a Western.
Jonathan crab-walked away from them, silent, and slowly got to his feet, holding his face and still looking confused. Watching him scurry away, pride obliterated, was perhaps the best birthday gift Leo could have given her.
