He laughs at me. “You speak off the cuff every afternoon on television with more than half a million viewers a week, but you have to practice how to say it’s nice to meet you.”
“Because, obviously, I can’t just say nice to meet you. It has to be witty and charming and smart. Definitely smart.” I’m flustered thinking about all the ways I can embarrass myself.
He leans over from his chair and k**ses my shoulder. “Whatever you say, sweet girl.” His gaze slides across the pool landing briefly on a particularly buxom redhead before continuing to a group of men we spoke to earlier. “I should put my money where my mouth is.” He stands up. “I’m going to catch up with Joe and Arman. I believe that’s Steele Seymour they’re talking to.”
I try to remember the family tree. Hadrian’s little brother. “Samuel’s youngest?”
“His youngest son, anyway. I heard he’s working in development. Might be nice to have his ear.”
“Okay.” My focus is back on Jessa. Back to thinking what my best approach should be. But when Elvis stands up, I think to add, “Good luck, honey.”
Then I lift up my book and pretend to read it while getting up the nerve to speak to my idol.
“Excuse me, I don’t mean to interrupt.”
Rarely, but on occasion, procrastination works in my favor. When I shade my eyes from the sun, it’s Jessa Jones standing there, asking for my attention.
“Hi. Hi!” I scramble to sit up, flinging my book on the ground as I do. “I’m sorry.”
She apologizes at the same time, bending over to grab my copy of The Witching Hour for me. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
She hands it over to me, my place lost. Annoying, but who cares? It’s Jessa f**king Jones. “No, it’s fine. I just…hi. No bother. Really.”
See? I didn’t have this planned, and so I’m fumbling.
“You seemed really caught up in your book, but I couldn’t help myself. I had to come over and meet the woman that finally snagged Elvis Endlich.” She glances down at my bare fi**ger, and suddenly seems horrified. “You are the wife, aren’t you?”
There’s nothing to do but laugh. “Yes. I’m the wife.”
“Phew. I thought I stepped in it for a minute.” She sits down on the edge of the lounge chair next to me. “Well, let me tell you, girl, if you didn’t know, you are the envy of many a woman.”
“I’m aware.”
“He worked on the show that filmed after me—when was that? Ten years ago, now, at least. He might not even remember. God, that hint of German in his accent. Is there anything sexier? Unf.” She puts her hand to her ch*st, swooning.
“Tell me about it.” Strangely, it’s not weird to have someone salivate over my husband. It’s a nice change from all the bitchy stares I usually get from women wondering how I landed someone like him.
“Everyone I knew in the studio had a plan to get a ring on his fi**ger. The general consensus in the end was that he was never going to settle down. So congrats to you.”
“I’m not sure that he’s settled down. And neither of us wear rings, so the general consensus was not really wrong. But there was a ceremony, and I do have a certificate that says we’re legally wed.” I glance in his direction and notice that, although he is indeed talking to Joe and Arman, the busty redhead has also joined them. “If that counts for anything.”
Quickly, I move my eyes back to Jessa, but it’s too late. She’s already tracked my gaze. “It counts. Trust me, it counts more than you think.”
Not sure that’s true, but I’m not unloading my petty doubts on the goddess of SNC. “You know—I can’t believe I’m admitting this—I was trying to get the nerve up to come over and introduce myself. I’m sure you get this all the time, but I’m really a big fan of your work.”
She waves her hand at me. “Oh, please. I’m so approachable.” After a beat, she laughs, and I join in with her. “Fine, maybe I’m not. But these are supposed to be mixers. Honestly, until I saw you with Elvis, I thought you were one of the bunnies.”
“Bunnies?”
“The ‘Bastian Bunnies? That’s what we call them.” She nods toward the redhead who has shifted so her focus is on Elvis. “It seems like there are always a handful of them here when I visit, none of them the same as the girls here the time before. They’re basically Seymour groupies, though I don’t know that any of them have ever read anything related to the news. I don’t even know if they know that’s what SNC is.”
She looks back at me. “Sorry. That was catty, and I don’t like to be someone who demeans other women. My point was that I was happy to realize that you were not just a bunny.”
I appreciate both her cattiness and her apology for it. “Nope. Not a bunny. Just a wife.”
“No, not just a wife. Am I wrong, or aren’t you in the biz? I thought that’s what I’d heard.”
“Oh, geez.” I’m suddenly shy. “It’s a small show. New Jersey Now. I feel like I’m telling a Broadway star about my little high school production.”
“Stop. We all have to start somewhere. How old are you? Barely thirty?”
“Thirty-three.”
“And you already pulled an invite to a development weekend. Is the team pulling you over to SNC for something?”
Not wanting to put the horse before the cart, I shrug. “I’d gotten the imp**ssion we’d talk about it, but I don’t know.”
“Who invited you? Samuel? Richard? Steele?”
“Hadrian.”
“Ah.” There’s a lot of subtext in that single syllable, and though I can’t decipher it, I can tell the tone of it.
“I shouldn’t get my hopes up. I get it.” I thought I was being reasonable with my expectations, but disappointment sinks in my stomach like a heavy stone.
“No, no, I’m not saying that at all.” Jessa stretches out on the lounge chair, keeping her body turned to the side to face me. “Look, I came on when Samuel was in charge. Samuel was…I’m not going to make him out to be a hero. It’s a man’s world, we both know that. But he’d keep his eyes above the neckline when he talked to you, and he based his pay on viewership rather than gender—sometimes there isn’t much difference bet**en the two. But he was consistent. He played by the rules—rotten rules, but he didn’t deviate. With him, you knew what to expect.”
“And with Hadrian…?”
She shakes her head, unsure. “He’s only been in the position for a year now, so really too soon to say.”
“Soon enough for you to have an opinion, it seems.”
She grins as though she’s been caught. “The King-Kincaid scandal was a big win for him. But that wasn’t his journalists who brought that to the station—it was Hadrian himself. With an anonymous source, to boot. It all checked out in the end, but where did he get the info? He’s in the billionaire club, so he has connections, but the billionaire club generally protects their own. Exposing one of the brothers is…”
“Against the rules,” I finish for her.
“Right.”
I consider the new details of this story. As an outsider, I’d assumed the info had come from one of the reporters who broke the story. Jessa is presenting it as a minus about the CEO. I’m not so sure. “Maybe he really cares about the truth.”
She seems dubious. “I think he cares about the scandal. Either way, he’s a disrupter, and that means he’s unpredictable. And unpredictable means I have no idea what Hadrian plans to do with you.”
Once again, my gaze turns toward Elvis. It’s no surprise he’s getting cozy with a hot young bunny, and I have to wonder…is unpredictable really such a bad thing?
* * *
Hadrian still hasn’t arrived when I retire to my bedroom for the night.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.
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