A solid gold, diamond-encrusted net, thanks to my magnificent negotiating skills. But that wouldn’t matter to my sister becauseshe was a rule follower. Sarah believed in protocol and being careful when it came to big life decisions. I mean, I did too, but Sarah was a scientist who’d worked for the same research aquarium since graduation, so compared to her I was the equivalent of a nomad wandering through life in a van.
She loved me, supported me, was the biggest cheerleader I’d ever had—but she was also a worrier to the core who believed that coloring precisely within the lines was the best way to prevent disaster. She was probably scandalized I’d neglected to give two weeks’ notice to the firm that had been putting me in a corner since day one.
“Well?” Sarah asked, splaying her hands in front of her. “What are you going to do now?”
She sounded like a concerned parent. Honestly, she was better at mothering than our actual mom, but in moments like this the tendency bugged me. She was only three years older than me, a fact she liked to hold over my head as if those three years equated a lifetime of experience.
“Give me some credit,” I said. “I listen to my gut, and it’s rarely wrong.”
Minus some choices I made in my personal life, admittedly. But when it came to my work life, I was rock solid.
“Okay, so you have a plan. Good,” Sarah said as she followed me into our small living room. “Spill it.”
We’d outgrown the space ages ago, but we agreed that we couldn’t beat the five-minute walk to the beach. And we’d made it our own, doing as many DIY home improvements as we could without breaking the tenancy rules. The Ikea shelves looked built-in thanks to our handiwork, and the painted floorwas a masterpiece. Every time I cursed our tiny kitchen and crap appliances that ruined my baking experiments, I reminded myself we stayed for the beach.
I plopped down on the couch. Sarah perched on the edge of a chair opposite me expectantly. The freezer fan wheezed on in the next room, filling the silence between us with the most grating white noise ever.
“I’m going to work for Ashford Jets.”
Sarah jerked backward and frowned at me. “Wait…Ashford as inHarrisonAshford? The man who poured a gallon of water on your boobs before a big meeting and didn’t apologize?”
I nodded, grimacing a little as I waited for her to freak out in one of two ways: silent judgment or screaming.
“Gwendolyn Meredith Ackland!”
Full mom mode. I kept my mouth shut and waited for the rest of her tirade.
“This is so unlike you! Why in the…how do you think…” she sputtered.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket—because of course my dress had pockets, as God intended—navigated to the notes app, typed out my new salary and held it up to her.
“That’s why.”
Her mouth snapped shut.
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” I said. “How could I not?”
She finally relaxed a little and pulled her feet up beneath her, ready for a full rehash.
“But how are you going to deal with your…history?”
I shrugged. “We’ll figure it out. He’s a much bigger a-hole in the real world, which helps, believe it or not. The man I met in Aspen was the fanfic version of Harrison Ashford. Now that I’m dealing with the actual personality rather than the Photoshopped one, I’m definitely not going to be swooning over him.”
I think we both knew I was lying.
“What about the Jetliner Jackass stuff?”
“That’s exactly why he hired me, to help him craft a PR strategy that’ll shift the narrative back in his favor.”
Sarah nodded. “You do know your Scarlet lore. I think if you had more spare time, you’d be a super fan. As it is, it’s more like you…microdose super fandom.”
I wrinkled my nose, not sure if I liked that comparison. But given that I regularly played her full catalog on repeat on Spotify, maybe I didn’t have room to argue.
“Honestly, that’s one of the main reasons why I agreed to do it. I know how to fix what’s wrong.”
“I’m sure you do, but why do you want to help him? You hate him.”
