Loverboy (The Company #2) - Sarina Bowen Page 0,16
I hedge. “She didn’t go into details. She didn’t say she was—” I gulp.
My sister flinches. “Maybe she isn’t. Like I said—mind games.”
“Yeah,” I agree quickly. “I just wish she’d play them on someone else.”
“She will,” Ginny says forcefully. “A woman like that needs multiple victims to fuel her ego.”
“Let’s hope she’s a poor multitasker.” I yawn. “I have to call Gunnar’s reference before I can go to bed.”
“Night,” my sister says, swinging off the sofa and standing up. “I’m going to bed, too. Tomorrow I’m playing the role of your hot barista.”
“So hot,” I say, fanning myself.
She rolls her eyes and leaves the room, heading for the staircase down to the fourth floor, which Ginny and Aaron share. My bedroom is up here on the fifth floor, where the living room, kitchen and my bathroom are, too.
Strange family. Strange apartment. But it works for us.
With wine coursing through my veins, I locate my phone and dial the 650 area code number that Gunnar left on his application.
It rings twice, then I hear, “This is Joe speaking.”
Well, that was easy. “Hi there. Um, I was given your number by someone I interviewed for a job today. He listed your name as a reference.”
“All right, miss. Which hooligan was it?”
I think I like Joe. “His name is Gunnar Scott.”
“Ah, Gunnar. Took himself off to New York, did he? I'm glad to hear it. He has a sick father who needs looking after.”
“Right. Okay.” Guilt stabs me right in the breastbone. When I first met Gunnar, he would never have begged for work the way he did today. I need to work, he’d said. “The job is for a barista position. Can you verify that he worked at your cafe?”
“Sure did. Good guy. Hard working. Never late. We're not a fancy cafe, mind you. But Gunnar is smart. He can figure out anything if you give him a chance.”
Oh man. It’s like he’s seeing right into my tortured little soul. “I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you for your time.”
“Have a nice evening, miss.”
“You too.”
5
Posy
I lie in bed a half hour later, trying not to think about my ex-husband and his new girlfriend. If she’s pregnant, though, that’s going to hurt.
A lot.
I married Spalding when I was twenty-two, after two years of dating. He was a couple of years ahead of me at Columbia. He worked in advertising on Madison Avenue. Still does.
We were pretty happy for several years. At least I thought we were. Although our social life was a little dull, since there were a lot of business dinners with advertisers. And Spalding liked vacationing at golf resorts. We lived a nice life.
Then, when we’d been married several years, I was starting to think about leaving my soul-sucking corporate job to have children. Eighteen months ago, I was on the brink of telling Spalding my plans. But then he had a health scare on the ninth hole at Shinnecock, where he’d gone to try to close a deal with a major airline.
He felt chest pains, and he had trouble breathing. They summoned an ambulance and whisked him away to the cardiac care center at a Long Island hospital. I was summoned from my desk at work, rushing to his side.
After two days of tests, it was determined that Spalding had not had a heart attack.
“Panic can masquerade as a coronary event,” the specialist told me. “It’s very common, and surprisingly scary for the patient. But he was lucky. All he needs is some lifestyle changes to feel better. Therapy wouldn’t hurt. Or at least some meditation and stress relief.”
Spalding got the message. No—he got religion. He took a leave of absence from work to “get healthy.” He joined a gym. He took a retreat to Mexico, where he studied yoga and the Spanish language.
“I am uno con el universe,” he wrote to me during his three weeks away, while I toiled at my desk.
It became a very bad time to quit my job, since Spalding had effectively quit his. My plans would have to wait. Meanwhile, Spalding began talking to a life coach. “Your advertising firm sent me,” she said the day she knocked on our apartment door. “I can help Spalding recover his health, his wellness, and his positivity.”
Her name was Saroya.
I hated her on sight. But she and Spalding became confidantes. He began spouting wellness aphorisms in every conversation. “What you are is where you have been. What you’ll be is what you do now.” And so on.