to a shooting range or a dirty hook-up bar and Jane him up a little,” she mused.
“You two have gotten pretty close,” I observed.
Jane lolled her head to the side on the back of the couch. “You’re the one having toe-curling sex with Tea and Crumpets.”
“Do you like him, though? I mean, what do you think of him?” I asked.
She propped her boot-clad feet on the coffee table. “You really like him, don’t you?”
I took a breath, let it out. “I do. A lot. And it scares me. I feel like I’m missing some gigantic warning sign.”
“Not everyone is out to get you or to use you,” she said.
“Is that your read on him?”
She gave me a baleful look. “If you’re asking me as a skeptical security hood, the guy manipulates peoples’ feelings and opinions for a living. He picks pockets and paints phony pictures.”
“And if I’m asking you as my friend,” I pressed.
“My read is his feelings for you are real, and they are scaring the shit out of him.”
I sank back in my chair, relief softening the rigidity of my shoulders. As long as we were both scared shitless. As long as we were both in this. As long as this was real and not some challenge or conquest or spin.
Jane’s opinion mattered. I trusted her, and she was telling me I could trust Derek.
“Dammit, now I’m wasting a Derek-free morning analyzing my relationship with him instead of getting actual work done,” I complained
“You’re banging a sex god, and your hair is perfection. I feel zero sympathy for you,” she said.
A moment later, Valerie entered with the espressos and, sensing my impatience, hurried right back out.
“Finally,” I muttered to myself. I sipped my coffee and opened up the slew of files for the product development team meeting this afternoon. I had the new designs from the e-commerce department waiting for my approval and the god-awful IT report on recommended upgrades to our infrastructure. There was a very long Urgent column.
I also needed to touch base with the sales managers. A conference call would do it. But those tended to run very, very long. People in sales loved to talk. And talk. And talk.
There was also my never-ending updates from legal. As of last night, the SEC hadn’t asked for any additional documentation, and I was taking it as a hopeful sign that all of our I’s were dotted and T’s crossed. Given the upswing in public perception, this IPO might just happen after all.
I thought about Esther in the lab, bopping to the Grateful Dead while she waded through the data coming in from the cohort labs. My sigh was mighty.
“You blowing up balloons over there, boss?” Jane mused over her coffee and self-defense magazine.
“Nope. Just loving my job,” I said, skimming the last quarter’s sales on our Nouveau Face cream. It was selling like crack-laced hotcakes in the European market. We were outselling our direct competitor’s product—La Sophia’s Skin Riche—by a two-to-one margin. That was satisfying. La Sophia was a company with a seventy-year history, and Flawless was beating them at their own game. At least internationally. They still edged us out domestically, but their days were numbered. When Flawless’s scar treatment made it to the market, I planned to leverage the attention for brand-wide recognition.
There was a tap on my door, and then Easton poked his head in. “Excuse me, Ms. Stanton?” He stepped inside, closing the door behind him.
“Yes?” I said, without looking up.
“There’s a journalist from Building Fortunes here. She says she has an appointment.”
I dropped my highlighter. “Why does she have an appointment?”
Journalists didn’t get appointments with me. They got returned phone calls from my publicist who fed them benign, boring information. Building Fortunes was the biggest online business magazine in the country. It was run by a media heiress who had the foresight to shift her family’s print holdings to digital. While newspapers around the country folded or scaled back to skeleton crews, Building Fortunes aggressively snapped up readers and advertisers.
Easton looked wary. “Mr. Price made the appointment last week.”
Mr. Price was a dead man.
“Oh, good,” Jane muttered from the couch. “I remembered to charge my stun gun last night.”
“Why is she here?” I asked.
Easton shifted his weight on his feet. “She’s here to do a three-day, in-depth interview. The story will run on the front page of the website next week. All-access.”
In-depth. All-access. I hated all of the words echoing in my head.
There was a brisk knock, and the three of