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Neil called me a car, and on the ride home I leaned my forehead against the tinted window and closed my eyes. Another night without enough sleep, but it was worth it. I felt energized, and weirdly renewed. I guess I’d never had enough mind blowing sex to realize what a great stress buster it could be.
* * * *
The next afternoon, I was squirming in my office chair, trying make my sore ass more comfortable, when Rudy came in and stood expectantly in front of my desk.
“You just missed him,” I said, gesturing toward Neil’s office. “He went down to the seventh floor to check out the stilettos shoot.”
“I know.” Rudy’s perfectly plucked and filled eyebrows raised a fraction. “I came here to talk to you. And where is little miss...”
“Deja?” I supplied for him, bristling at his “little miss” comment. “He took her with him.”
They had left me behind to start cleaning out my desk. I was glad for the time alone, because it was definitely bittersweet to be moving to the beauty department. I’d been with Porteras for two years, all of them in this very office. I was just going across the floor, but it might as well have been Mars.
“Good.” Rudy thumped the desk with the side of his fist. “I needed to talk to you and not have the busy-body blabbing it all over the office.”
“Busy-body?” I remembered my conversation in bed with Neil. Had he mentioned it to Rudy? “Why would you say—”
I don’t think I’ve ever been the focus of so withering a stare. “We can cut the bullshit, Sophie. I know you’re sleeping with Neil. He’s my best friend, he tells me everything. And apparently, Deja knows you’re sleeping with him too?”
“She suspected,” I said quietly. “Will you lower your voice? Deja is a professional. More professional than I am, because she’s not sleeping with her boss. She just picked up on the vibe.”
“I didn’t come in here to talk about her, anyway. Tell me what you can about Jake Kirchner.”
“Jake?” I frowned. “Not a lot. He’s got a girlfriend, he does some freelancing on the side, lit crit essays, mostly—”
“No, no, no. Tell me something useful. Does he still talk to your old boss?” As he spoke, Rudy’s eyes narrowed, slowly punctuating his sentence.
“Ah. As in, is he someone to worry about?” That wasn’t a question I could really answer. I liked Jake a lot, and he’d never done anything to openly sabotage anyone, but he wasn’t happy with the changes being made to Porteras, and he had always been at Gabriella’s beck and call. If he had a chance to put her back on the throne, I knew which side of the revolution he would be on, without a doubt.
Still, I wasn’t about to tell that to Rudy. Jake hadn’t done anything to breach my trust, and Rudy hadn’t done anything to earn it, yet. “I really couldn’t tell you. I’m not in contact with Gabriella these days.”
“But you are in contact with Jake.” Rudy wasn’t going to let me off the hook that easily. “Look, you may not realize exactly how much work it took to pull off the sale and restructuring of Porteras, but I have been working on this with Neil and Valerie for over a year.”
Valerie? Who the hell is Valerie? I guess I really didn’t have any clue as to what was going on behind the scenes. “I know you guys did a lot of hard work. I promise, I’m not being purposefully reticent. I just don’t know. But I care about this magazine. And I care about Neil. If I were privy to any information that could hurt him, I would tell him immediately.”
Rudy looked surprised at that, and uncomfortable. I put that down to him not experiencing surprise all that often. He momentarily pursed his lips then said, “Fine. We’ll leave it at that. Thank you for your honesty.”
He was nearly to the door when I said, “By the way, I saw Giulio Cesar last season. Your costumes were amazing.”
“I know. Thank you.” But he couldn’t hide his smug little smile behind the glass door.
Alone in the office, I continued my slow removal of my stuff from what would be Deja’s desk, and considered my options. I didn’t want to purposefully wheedle information out of Jake for Rudy. That was completely off the table. But the fact that Jake had become a concern— or a liability— was something I should keep an eye on. I liked Jake, but I didn’t want my association with him to put my new job in jeopardy. I also didn’t like to think that Gabriella was trying to infiltrate the magazine through her former employees.
One thing was for sure, though. Jake had helped me out for two years, and it would be shitty of me to know that he was under scrutiny and not give him a heads up. As much as I truly did care about Neil, my friends— even just work friends— were more important than a guy I just started a casual relationship with.
