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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“For God’s sake, Heather,” Noah said, his voice burrowing underneath the bathroom door. “What are you doing in there?”
“I’m almost done.” Heather checked, then rechecked, her makeup in the round magnifying mirror on the wall beside the large, rectangular mirror over the sink. Was that a blemish forming underneath her skin, right smack in the middle of her right cheek?Damn it.She hadn’t had a pimple in years. It had to be stress. Her father’s upcoming party, her escalating brushes with her supervisor, the humiliating encounter with Chloe, the rain. She reached for her concealer, dabbing at the offending imperfection until it almost disappeared, then applying an extra coat of the concealer under her eyes for good measure. She’d already had to redo her makeup after today’s fiasco with Chloe, her supposedly waterproof mascara having left a trail of telltale black tears down her cheeks. The stains had been removed, but the sting remained, and was now translating into a giant pimple below the surface of her skin. “Damn you, Chloe,” Heather said, applying yet another stroke of concealer.
She fluffed out her hair, tamped it down again, and promptly fluffed it back up, but it still didn’t look right. The rain had indeed done a number on it. “Damn frizz,” she mumbled, wetting the sides of her hair, then removing her hair dryer from its cramped quarters inside the cupboard beneath the sink. This was all Paige’s fault. She’d obviously convinced Chloe to go along with her little scheme to embarrass her cousin. “Sore loser,” Heather muttered, lifting the hair dryer to her head and turning it to maximum strength.
“What are you doing now?” Noah wailed from outside the door.
“Hold your horses. I’ll just be a minute.”
“You said that ten minutes ago.”
“You’re slowing me down,” Heather warned.
“We’re already twenty minutes late.”
“So, another few minutes won’t make any difference. Who shows up right on the dot for dinner, anyway?”
“I guarantee you that everybody else will be on time.”
Heather rolled her eyes at her reflection and continued blow-drying her wet ends, trying to corral them into some sort of style. Since when had Noah turned into such a whiner? Although he was probably right. The lawyers of Whitman, Loughlin were a very conservative bunch. They’d undoubtedly arrived en masse at the restaurant in Little Italy at precisely seven o’clock. So reliable. So predictable. So boring.“Bor-r-ing,”Heather said over the continuing blast of hot air from the dryer.
“What did you say?”
“I said that if you wanted me to be on time,” she shouted, “you should have gotten an apartment with more than one bathroom! I can hardly move in here.”
“The bathroom is not the problem.”
He was right. The bathroom was not the problem. Heather hatedeverythingabout Noah’s apartment. Traces of Paige could be discovered in virtually every room: the carpet she’d chosen for the bedroom, the floral throw pillows on the living room sofa, the pewter salt and pepper shakers in the center of the glass dining room table, even the goddamn mirror over the goddamn sink in the tiny, cramped, goddamn bathroom. Not to mention, could the lighting be any less flattering? How could Noah expect her to be ready on time?
“Two more minutes,” she said, shutting off the dryer and shoving it back into the cupboard, spying the remainder of a joint hidden behind a bottle of nail polish remover. She tucked her hair behind her ears, wondering if she had time to smoke it.Better not,she thought. Noah had made it very clear he didn’t approve of her propensity for weed, despite the fact that it was legal now in Massachusetts.Damn it,she thought, closing the cupboard door. Why did everything in her life have to be so damn difficult?
She’d returned from Cambridge only to find Marsha Buchanan waiting at her desk, her meetings having wrapped up earlier than expected. “I’ve scheduled a performance review for you this coming Monday at ten o’clock,” she’d told Heather. “Be on time.”
Heather knew that a performance review was merely a formality, the first step toward being dismissed. She’d be given a stern warning and the chance to shape up. If her superiors didn’t see a significant improvement in the coming weeks, she’d be out of a job. And she wouldn’t have the excuse of a New York takeover to make her firing more palatable, thus handing her father yet another reason to compare her unfavorably with her cousin.
Heather had returned home, exchanged her orange blouse and leather skirt for sweats, and wolfed down a cold piece of pizza from the fridge, looking forward to sex with Noah to make her forget her shitty day. Except she’d forgotten about the scheduled dinner with Noah’s colleagues.
Damn that Chloe anyway. She might be Paige’s mouthpiece, but would it have killed her to be nice? Or at the very least, more forthcoming? But no, Heather had been forced to waste half the afternoon driving to Cambridge and back, risking both her job and her life—Boston drivers were the worst—and what had she learned? Nothing! Paige’s mystery man had remained a stubborn blank. The news that Chloe and Matt were likely headed for divorce had made the afternoon only slightly more palatable.
“What’s going on in there?” Noah asked.
“Can you back off? You’re making me crazy.”
“I’m makingyoucrazy?”
Heather gave her hair one final toss and took a deep breath, tucking her tight red jersey inside her dark blue designer jeans. Considering everything she’d had to deal with, she didn’t look bad at all. She pulled open the bathroom door. “Okay. Ready to go.”
Noah’s hand reached toward her cheek. “Is that a pimple?” he said.
—
“So, then, Shiloh says, ‘Stop singing, Lance. You’redistractingme from my sleep!’ ” Brianne Palmer brought both hands to her chest in a gesture that combined both shock and delight. “Can you imagine? She’s only three! What three-year-old uses words like ‘distracting’?”
“Unbelievable,” Nicole Barry said, dropping her fork to what little remained of her chocolate lava cake dessert. “She’s so smart.” Nicole pushed herself away from the table, patting her eight-months-pregnant belly.
“Shiloh is definitely gifted,” Kaitlin Seymour agreed. “I’ve always said that. You could tell from the minute she was born—eyes wide open—that she was special.”
