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“I don’t. My manager does. Enough on this. You didn’t answer my question. Did you like writing the book? It’s about fashion. You tell people what to wear.”
No, he didn’t understand, but I’d not expected him to. “I would never tell someone what to wear.”
“Then what is the point of the book?”
Well, now that was a loaded question. But what was the point of anything when it came down to it? Why did we read anything? Do anything? “I tell people how to feel great in the clothes they already own, in their own style, and to make them feel really incredible in their own skin.”
He opened and closed his mouth. “Why would you do that? Why make people feel good in their own stuff?”
I stared at him a long moment. Did I dare say what I wanted in response to his question? “Listen, maybe you’ve spent your whole life feeling incredible. I mean…look at you. You were probably always gorgeous. Even as a kid. Then you grew into how you are now. You wear the best cut suits and you wear them…they don’t wear you. In jeans, you look like they created denim just so you could put them on your body.”
“Layla, you’re going to make me blush.”
Hardly. He wasn’t the type. I could tell. I was a redhead. We blushed better than anyone. Or worse, depending on your feelings on the subject. I ignored the jab. We both knew he wouldn’t blush. “But most people go around feeling barely adequate in things they spend hours trying to decide if they want to buy. They stand there, and they can’t decide what they hate themselves less in. I work on that with them. In the book.”
“Because you feel so wonderful all the time.” His eyes were practically daggers to my soul.
He couldn’t have been more wrong if he tried. However, I wasn’t going to enlighten him. Why should I? Zeke could see me as he wished, the way everyone saw me, even those who claimed to love me. They’d never see how I saw myself, how I felt inside.
I hated getting dressed, despised my clothes. The mirror was constantly my enemy, and there was never a time I had any clothes that I actually felt like wearing.
All of that being true, I answered him just the way he’d want me to, just the way everyone did. “Sure, I love getting dressed. It’s so much fun.”
“I see.”
But he didn’t. And he never would, which was utterly disappointing. But men were only ever tuned to your soul in fantasy. In real life, they didn’t know how to touch you, didn’t cater to your wildest desires, and certainly didn’t know what it was that you didn’t say aloud. Marriages were business arrangements, and I’d just been slow to figure it out.
“So, yes, I wrote a book and people liked it. But I think I said everything there was to say about that subject, and I’m not sure that there is anything left to write.”
He rose. “There’s always more to say. Textbooks are updated and celebrities seem to publish three or four autobiographies in a lifetime. We’ll find you another ghost writer and go again.”
If only it had been that easy. “Okay.”
“I’m going to go into your bank accounts tonight and figure some things out for you. Can you be up by nine and ready to go get some coffee and breakfast?”
Nine? That was easy. I never slept very much. I was up way before nine most days. I chewed on my lip. “You can’t get into my bank accounts without my information, passwords, whatever.”
“My guy can get in. Frankly, it’s shocking he hasn’t been able to get your dad’s yet. With your permission, I’ll just have him do that. Unless you want to write them all down.”
The sad thing? I wasn’t certain I knew what they were. I just kind of signed on through my computer which had all my stuffstored, but I didn’t remember what the passcode actually was or even know how much money I had.
What had he called me this morning? Pathetic. Yes, that fit.
I shouldn’t have slapped him. He’d just seen me more clearly than I’d seen myself.
“Layla? Is that fine?”
I smiled. The one I gave reporters who wanted my fall picks for fashion and I wanted to gauge out their eyes, because most people would never get to wear the fall picks either because of money or because they couldn’t fit in the sizes that kept getting smaller and smaller. Hence, my need to run.
“It’s fine. Thank you for your help.”
He took his napkin off his lap. “You look like I just asked you if you wanted to go have a filling drilled in your mouth. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I’m sorry. Long day. I appreciate the help.” When in doubt, be polite. One of the nannies had taught me that.
Zeke shook his head. “You’re lying, but that’s fine. Keep your secrets. I don’t want them if they don’t apply to our arrangement. I think tomorrow night we’ll start to be seen, to be photographed together. We’ll go to a club that’s opening. I’m over that scene, but I sometimes have to take clients to them. They like to be wined and dined. So we’ll go tomorrow night.”
I’d been to enough clubs in my life that I could actually choke on them. They were all the same when it came down to it, just the themes changed. “Sure. I brought clothes for Bali, not Paris at night. I am going to have to go shopping tomorrow.”
