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“No wonder you’re so angry at the world,” Alanna murmured. She must be absolutely cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, but she felt like she and the cat were having a real moment. Surprisingly, it felt good to talk, even if only to a cat.
“You know, there’s this really cute guy coming over to the house today,” Alanna admitted. “I mean, it’s nothing,” she quickly amended. “He’s just doing some handiwork, and I’m not going to be here long enough for anything to happen, but I don’t know.” She rolled onto her side and remembered how Sully had looked yesterday when he’d pulled open his front door. Those honey-brown eyes had widened, his soft mouth going slack with surprise. And that guitar hanging from his shoulder.Mmmmmm.
“He’s not actually my type, at all,” she admitted to Petunia. “I’m getting huge nice-guy vibes from him. I don’t do nice, but…” She chewed her lip. Where in the hell was this all coming from, and why was it so easy to spill her idiotic high-school swoony crush to a cat? “But, he’s different,” she confessed to Petunia. “I don’t know why, but he is.”
Sully’s wavy brown hair had practically begged for her fingers to run through it. And the way his jeans sat just right on his trim hips was making her mouth water. Even his adorable stammering had warmed her heart. His quiet inner confidence was so different from the loud, cocky men who roamed the corner offices of L.A., each trying to out-piss the other. Sully wasn’t playing that game, and it was sexy as hell.
“What am I even saying?” Alanna pushed herself into a sitting position. “He doesn’t even have a job. Huge red flag. Just… forget I said anything. This convo never happened.”
Was it her imagination, or did she see understanding in Petunia’s blue eyes?
“You really aren’t so bad, after all,” Alanna murmured. Her phone buzzed, and the cat was gone, leaping off the bed and scrambling into the darkness beneath.
“Damn,” Alanna hissed, though that was progress, right? She and the cat had shared some deep history and no one was bleeding. One-day win streak!
“You’re going soft, Sandoval,” she muttered to herself and picked up her phone to see what had shattered her moment with Petunia. She unlocked the screen and her eyes landed on a Google News alert she’d set up for a certain skeevy CEO.
“Ooooh shit,” she whispered as she read the title of an article just released by theLA Timeswebsite,Jordan Boon, CEO of Momentum Therapeutics, Accused of Sexual Assault By Female Employee
Alanna shot out of bed and immediately began pacing the room. This was it. The very thing she’d predicted just over a week ago in her agency’s conference room. She clicked on the story and quickly scanned the article. Her eyes snagged on the third paragraph.
“Jordan has no memory of this encounter,” said Chip Rupert, a spokesman for Mr. Boon. “He sincerely apologizes if his words and actions were misconstrued by the individual in question, but he categorically denies that any assault took place.”
“Misconstrued my ass,” Alanna growled. She kept reading. No comment from the company, but the reporter had an anonymous source who admitted that the company had signed non-disclosure agreements with several other women. An ex-employee went on the record saying he’d heard young women at the company complaining about Boon’s advances.
Alanna dropped the phone on the bed. Her feet kept moving, trying to catch up with the whiplash of her thoughts. Now that the ball was rolling, other women would almost certainly come forward. Jordan Boon’s days at Momentum Therapeutics were numbered.
Alanna’s blood boiled like a tea kettle in hell. Chip had to see the writing on the wall. Sure, Jordan Boon would probably be fork lifting pallets of cash to the PR agency for all-hands-on-deck crisis management, but it wasn’t worth it. Fresh Perspective’s reputation would be soiled along with Jordan Boon. Once he inevitably went down, they’d never be able to get another decent client again.
Alanna grabbed up her phone. She still had a few people in the agency who would take her calls. She needed to know what Chip was planning and how the other clients were reacting. She should also probably call Thomas. This would be great for her arbitration case.
She glanced up and noticed something out the window. Her mother knelt in front of her rose bushes, gloved hands on her knees, head tilted down. Alanna couldn’t see her mother’s face beneath the brim of her straw gardener’s hat, but she sure as hell saw Dede’s thin shoulders shaking.
Without a thought, the phone was tossed onto the bed, and Alanna alighted down the stairs in her socked feet, clutching the wobbly banister. The screen door that led from the kitchen to the back yard was slightly ajar. The rails beneath the door were so old it took a Herculean effort to fully close the door, and her mother’s hands weren’t always up to it.
The chill morning air cut through Alanna’s silk pajama pants, and she wrapped her arms around herself.
“Mom, what are you doing?” she called.
“The rose bushes…” her mother’s voice quivered.
Alanna ducked beneath the row of bird feeders and hummingbird feeders swaying gently from the back porch. “Is something wrong with them? They look fine to me.” Then again, what did she know about rose bushes?
“I came out to prune them,” her mother said simply.
“Okaaaaay.” Alanna made it to her mother and waited for more explanation. The older woman turned her face to her daughter, and her eyes were round and sad.
“And I can’t.”
“Can’t what?” Alanna shivered in the cold.
“I can’t prune them.” Her mom looked helplessly at a pair of sheers with worn handles sitting on the ground next to her.
“What, did they break?” The sheers looked about a hundred years old.
“No.” Dede held up her gloved hands. “These are broken.”
“Oh, Mom.” Alanna sunk to her knees. “Mom.”
