Entry-Level Mistress - By Sabrina Darby Page 0,50

… I don’t know.” I looked up, trying to blink back the tears. “But being in love, it changes that. Because how can he really love me when that’s not who I want to be?”

Chapter 15

I slept in Monday, and then still in my night clothes, exchanged bed for the futon and the fan. I lay there, with only the loud whirring as backdrop, and wondered about the morning marketing meeting. Imagined Daniel in his office, doing his work, taking meetings, making phone calls. I pictured the dimly lit thirtieth floor and a deep, nostalgic longing rushed through me.

The day passed without a text, a phone call, or an email even. If this were last week and I was still working there, he would have texted me a half dozen times. I would have seen him at least once already. Made love.

I scrolled to his name in my contacts list a dozen times at least but each time I pressed cancel and flipped my phone closed.

And then it rang.

Leanna.

“I can’t believe this!” Leanna’s voice was difficult to hear amidst all the background noise. “At work, what are people talking about? About you! And Daniel! There are pictures of the two of you on the Internet. You haven’t even debriefed to me yet and I already know you were at some socialite’s party, ate at an Italian restaurant and were making out on the beach.”

“There are pictures of us making out on the Internet?”

“Um … ” I was scared to ask what that hesitation meant. Then I didn’t have to. “I don’t think anyone will have any doubts about the level of intimacy between the two of you. And Emily, I … I think maybe you were right.”

“Right about what?” I held the phone between my ear and shoulder as I pulled my laptop onto the futon and flipped it open. I was terrified to see if I was naked, or if the paparazzi or whoever had taken the pictures had gotten some sort of money shot.

The gossip website was taking a ridiculously long time to load.

“The way he’s looking at you, Em. It’s like a movie or something.”

I pressed reload three times even though I knew it wouldn’t make the page show up any faster.

Then the glitzy, photo-heavy site came up.

Boston’s Hottest Billionaire With Mystery Woman in Hamptons.

There were six pictures there, one big one and five thumbnailed below. Of course, in the largest, my dress was halfway up my thighs, Daniel’s hands right below that line. And his expression— It was just as I had remembered it and, even as it hurt to see it, that crazy joy welled up within me.

“Heh, I’m just an unknown woman, Lee,” I said with a forced laugh. “A nobody.”

“Un unh, honey, read below.”

The paragraph of text had apparently been updated after the first caption was written.

Mystery woman identified! Emily Anderson,

Someone had identified me. Which one of the dozens of wealthy Hamptonites had taken time to gossip to the press? I kept reading.

daughter of disgraced Rocklyn Corp Exec, Mark Anderson, makes her first appearance on the New York social scene in ten years on the arm of Daniel Hartmann. Their fathers used to be business partners; is this another partnership in the making? The young sculptress will be a Barrows Farm Fellow in the fall, so expect to see more of her around. Welcome to the party, Emily.

Partnership in the making. Like marriage? The thought freaked me out enough that I shut the lid.

“Em?” Leanna’s voice came over the phone, startling me into realizing I was still clutching the thing between ear and shoulder. I grabbed it with my hand and stretched. “You there? Or have you fallen to the ground or something?”

“I’m here.” I flipped the computer open again, stared at the picture of Daniel and me. Partnership. “Lee, how do they know so much about me?”

“I have no clue.”

Daniel certainly wasn’t thinking about marriage, and at twenty-one, I shouldn’t be. Wouldn’t be under normal circumstances. Artists don’t just settle down. Artists … I stopped there. I was full of all sorts of mythologies about what artists should or shouldn’t do. Had Picasso or Rodin or Van Gogh worried about those things?

No, they did whatever they wanted and let the pieces of everyone else’s lives fall where they would.

So would I? Marry Daniel? The question in my mind was a whisper. I was embarrassed to even be thinking such a thing.

But … on the off chance that there was more to us?