that. Kit was too exhausted to even change into nightclothes so she just stripped down to her underwear and the T-shirt she’d worn under her sweater, and crawled into bed.
She lay in the dark for a while, listening to the spring wind rattle the windows. She thought of the kiss again. Part of her regretted letting down her guard, and yet she couldn’t deny how strong the urge had been to reciprocate. And on the way home in the cab she’d realized that the desire had not just been physical. Despite the fact that she couldn’t fully trust Kelman, she felt drawn to him. Not Death Star drawn to him the way Baby had suggested, but something. He absorbed what she said, seemed to read her mind at times, seemed to get her.
She thought for a while about what she’d confessed to him. It was utterly true, not just words spoken in the drama of the moment: she didn’t want to return to her old life. As much as she was still reeling from Avery’s death, and from Healy’s, as well, those events had woken her up, forced her to be more aware, made her take charge. That didn’t place her in the same league as the kind of badass, ruby-lipped characters Angelina Jolie played in movies, but she didn’t feel like Miss Goody Two Shoes anymore.
She’d come to realize, too, that she was stronger under adversity than she would have anticipated, and the potential to be so may have been there all along. She didn’t have a single regret about the career path she’d chosen, but she could see now that if she’d really wanted to attend college, she could have pulled it off somehow. The reason she hadn’t was that she’d lost her nerve, curled up in a ball. There was no way she’d let that happen again.
From sheer exhaustion, she fell asleep more quickly than she had in many nights.
She was up by six, roused by a dream she couldn’t recall. After showering and dressing, she made her way to the kitchen and dropped a piece of bread in the toaster. A few minutes later Baby strolled in. If she was feeling overwhelmed by everything, she was doing her best not to show it. And thanks to the rollers, her head was now a crown of champagne blond curls.
“I spoke to Dara and she’s coming at ten,” Baby said. “Since you’re cooped up here, why don’t you use her to do as much shopping as possible?”
“There’s only so much I can delegate to her. I need a few small items to finish off the Greenwich Village apartment, but they have to be absolutely perfect.”
“What about Barry the Bachelor’s pad? I thought you were behind on that. Could Dara shop for that?”
“Yes, but I don’t even have a concept for him yet. How is Dara, anyway?”
“As we know, Dara’s a trooper, but I could sense from her voice that she’s still quite upset, and not just about Avery. I explained to her that we were concentrating on only existing clients at the moment, and I’m sure she’s worried her job is in jeopardy.”
“I can’t let it be.”
But that wasn’t all that concerned Kit in relation to Dara. She regretted withholding so much from her. She’d been trying to protect Dara, but all the mystery had only added to her assistant’s anxiety. And even worse, every day Dara worked with Kit she was in some ways vulnerable, just like Baby.
Kit set herself back up in the dining room and checked online for any updates regarding Avery’s death. The story seemed to be everywhere now. Avery’s PR business had serviced just enough boldface name clients for her death to warrant coverage with the kind of hysterical tone usually afforded to cheating politicians or celebrity butt-crack sightings. Most of the press items now pointed out that Avery had died leaving the office of Finn-Meadow. And the most recent ones contained a chilling detail: the police considered the death a possible homicide.
Kit had suspected that even before she’d overheard the investigator, but seeing it confirmed made her heart skip.
Glumly, she checked email next, something she’d neglected to do last night. There was a frantic email from her friend Amy saying she’d heard the news and had tried to reach her several times to no avail. There was a message from Chuck, as well: “WTF. Are you OK? Call me right away.” She quickly emailed her friends back, reassuring them she was fine