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She unclenched her jaw and tried so hard not to let her frustration show. “I just want what’s best for you.”
“I know,” Starla said earnestly. “But right now, this feels like what’s best for me.”
Lola swallowed back the arguments rising in her throat. She wasn’t listening to anything she was saying.
“Why don’t we just take some time and think this over?” Lola suggested instead of screaming. “Weigh all the options.”
Starla nodded, leaning over to give Lola a quick hug. “You’re the best, Lola. I knew you’d understand. I hope to see you at the wedding.”
Lola plastered a smile on her stunned face as Starla rose to leave, mind spinning with how to undo whatever mind-fuck Carmen’s client had pulled on her.
Carmen. This was all her damn fault. Why did she have to be in that damn elevator with her damn client?
Sitting at her desk, she repeatedly turned the moment in the elevator over in her mind. Carmen didn’t have a satisfied, shit-eating grin on her face the way she usually did when she tried to get one over on her. Carmen had looked as stunned as she was, and Lola didn’t think Carmen was much of an actress.
A memory flashed through her mind. Carmen underneath her, head tossed back and a devastatingly sexy moan floating up from her parted lips. No, Carmen couldn’t fake it for shit.
Lola shook off the distraction of her last mistake and forced herself back to the moment. Fortune had been in there too. What the hell was she even doing in the building? They didn’t have anger management that day. Erasing everyone else from the elevator, Lola tried to isolate Fortune.
In hindsight, Fortune had looked beside herself with joy at the moment between Carmen’s client and Starla. But why? She didn’t know them. What did she care if two strangers got together? It didn’t make any—
“Hey,” Adriana said from her doorway, yanking Lola out of her analysis.
“What?” she snapped, hoping to cover the fact that she’d been lost in thought. That she was feeling pulled along by some unseen tide.
Adriana smiled a pitying smile. God, she hated to be looked at like some stupid kid that had fallen off a bike after being told it was too soon to remove the training wheels. Lola straightened, waiting for Adriana to declare her purpose in her doorway.
“I just heard Starla on her way out,” Adriana explained without taking another step inside, soulless blue eyes boring into her. “Remember that we can’t save people from themselves sometimes. All we can do is—”
“I don’t need help with managing my clients,” Lola said when she wanted to growl. “Don’t worry, if I need advice on how to get in her pants, you’ll be the first to know.”
Holding her hands up like some martyr, Adriana tipped her head to the side and backed out of her office like Lola was a cornered cobra primed to strike. Good, Lola decided. She probably wanted her to admit her weakness so she could use it against her later. Too bad for her, Lola wasn’t a naïve dope.
The phone on her desk buzzed before Lola could get back to figuring out how to talk sense into Starla.
“Lola, you have flowers up at reception. Do you want me to bring them to your office?” The receptionist paused. “Oh, wait, you have another one. Um… you might want to come up here.”
Lola hit the speaker button to end the call without responding. Striding to the reception area, she was already drafting a note to Starla. Flowers weren’t any consolation for her imploding career. She had plenty of time to fall in love and fuck-off to whatever island she wanted once she was established. Couldn’t she see that?
As soon as she flung open the frosted glass door separating the heart of the agency from the waiting room, Lola stopped dead in her tracks. “What the hell is this?”
Half a dozen enormous flower arrangements were lined up on the reception desk and obscuring the poor girl they’d just hired from view. Before anyone could answer her, the elevator dinged again. More flowers, but these were the monstrous wreaths reserved for funerals.
“Whoa,” Adriana said from somewhere behind Lola’s overwhelmed body. “Are these all for you?”
“Only one of them has a card so far,” a disembodied voice said from beyond the wall of flowers. The receptionist’s hand appeared above a bouquet of blood-red poppies, their black centers staring at Lola like creepy, hollow eyes.
Adriana was plucking the card from the little plastic stand before Lola could move. “Thank you for your commitment to observing the building’s parking rules and protocols. Signed, CV.”
Laughing, Adriana looked at Lola, who should have stayed home that morning. “Is this from Hot Lawyer?” The elevator dinged with three more delivery people and increasingly larger wreaths.
Choking on the nauseating perfume of so many fresh flowers, Lola’s rage combined with the desire to puke. This was a step too far. Carmen had crossed the line by interfering with Lola’s workplace. Mind racing, Lola was cycling through the appropriate payback when Adriana got closer to her and feigned concern.
“What’s going on with you two?” Adriana asked, all holier-than-thou and trying to lure her into the illusion of camaraderie.
Eyes darting from Adriana’s face to the stupid colorful silk ascot around her neck in Miami. In June. “I’d be more concerned with your own problems.” She pointed at her neck. “We all know why you started wearing those.”
Adriana’s fingers went to the fabric, shifting it, confirming Lola’s suspicions that Adriana had started wearing the stupid things not because she wanted to dress up like flight attendant Barbie, but because she let Roxy mark her like some Anne Rice character.
