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“Hi, Megan!” the receptionist said with forced brightness from behind her desk. Megan knew she was trying, but her voice was like cut glass to Megan’s ears. Over the past week, she’d doled out careful snippets of her dating life with this woman, knowing it would spread over the whole company. She admitted to anything the papers had already published and smiled and shook her head if anyone pushed their luck.
But she was done smiling this time. This had gotten way too important. She’d lost too much. “Good morning,” she said without her usual fervor. She just didn’t have it in her.
All eyes were on her, and no one was moving. They were probably stunned that she wasn’t immediately racing around the room, asking everyone how they felt and if there was anything she could help with.
She wasn’t going to do that today. The very thought made her long for her bed again.
Britney stopped by, and Megan was so taciturn, she might have permanently damaged their friendship. Friendship? What had Britney ever done for her?
All morning, colleagues with various degrees of curiosity “happened” to stop by her cubicle. Most just fished for information. To the one or two who actually asked outright how Alessandro had been, she raised an eyebrow and looked at them, unsmiling. “You don’t really expect me to answer that, do you?” And their eyes got big and they stammered a little, and New Megan felt a shot of power at their discomfort while Old Megan begged her to smile.
Eventually, a messenger came to her desk, accompanied by Terry, with a burner phone as mandated by Yasmin. Megan dropped it into her bag without looking at it and held her head up with her hands, closing her eyes at her buzzing computer screen.
♦
Chapter 16
Alessandro could think only of going to the Studio. He’d been the first to text Megan’s burner phone, whose number Yasmin had given him “and no one else, ’Sandro!”
“Who else would I give it to?”
“Your buddies at the Studio? They know way too much about her as it is.”
“Because she volunteered for them. And they like each other.” He thought of what Megan had said about Yasmin running his life, and he started pacing his hotel room again. “You worry too much,” he said.
“The last time I relaxed,” she said with an acerbic tone, “George Michael took an unscheduled trip to the bathroom.”
He laughed because she wasn’t that old. Was she?
“But now you are dealing with a woman who knows where you’re coming from,” he argued. “She works in your world.”
“The corporate world and my world play by different rules.”
“So teach her the new rules. She is very clever. She will learn fast.”
“’Sandro,” Yasmin said. “I want this to work for you. I do. She seems like a good kid. But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t warn you: civilian and celebrity romances rarely work out. You’ve both got reasons to do this that don’t have to involve any kind of commitment to each other.”
“You were the one who said Hollywood loves a romance.”
“I did, but I didn’t think you guys wereserious.”
Alessandro paused in his well-traveled walk from the bedroom to the living room to the tiny kitchen and back to the bedroom. He was about to reply, but then he realized. Yasmin was fishing. She wanted to know what he and Megan were planning to do with their futures. Well, hell. So did he.
So with no answers for Yasmin and only a short text interaction with Megan that day, he had to accept he couldn’t see her until that night, if then.
He could spend the day reliving Friday night: recollecting every soft inch of Megan’s skin, moving his fingers as though he could touch the tips of her hair, remembering her scent and how she’d writhed when he ran his lips up her thigh. He’d never loved making love to a woman more. And he’d never loved sitting in bed with her the next day, talking, sharing the problem they’d created and finding solutions. Even when her family had interrupted their bliss and shaken Megan’s confidence, the fact that she’d allowed him to see her fall apart—he’d loved that too. In fact, if he hadn’t had only two weeks to get to know her better, he’d be tempted to say he—
Alessandro grabbed his phone and his sunglasses. He had to do something with himself instead of obsessing over Megan.
The Studio’s schedule that afternoon included acting classes for the kids who’d attended the fundraiser, so Alessandro called Nelson to drive him to the community center. For the sake of Yasmin’s blood pressure, he decided not to walk through town.
His reception at the Studio was gratifying if a little embarrassing. Charlene risked the height of her blond curls to all but throw herself across her counter to hug him. Susie held him for what felt like five minutes. And Etta—somehow this was worse—Etta took his hand and squeezed it, and her eyes welled up, and she said nothing at all.
“Come on, guys,” he said in his best American accent. “Gimme a break, will ya?”
“Pretty good,” Susie said, recovering enough to laugh at him. “You’ve been practicing.”
“You know they speak with a different accent in LA?” he asked, eyes wide, hoping that jokes would cover his embarrassment. “I had to learn English all over again!”
