“Maybe I should walk away.”
“How much does she … know?”
“A lot.” I hesitated. “She met my mom.”
“You’re talking to your mother?” Marius almost dropped his glass.
“I just mean she went to the restaurant with me. We ate there on Tuesday.”
“Wow,” Marius said, crossing his arms to regard me. “You never took Sam there, not that you two dated all that long. A few months, but still. That was the most serious I’d ever seen you with anyone.”
“I didn’t take Lexi there. She just … she just showed up. She wants me to go to Florida with her.”
“That’s random.”
“She thinks I’m sad and I need the sunshine.”
“Look,” Marius said, resting a hand on my arm. “You deserve to be happy, or at least not miserable, and if Lexi is that person for you, go for it. I’m here for you.”
“But …”
“But she needs to find a new job. Yesterday.”
47
LEXI
“Did you see her?”
I jumped as Anthym barked at me.
“That blouse looks amazing on you!” I was as chipper as could be when I turned to face her.
“Why are you evading the question?” The secretary’s voice was harsh.
“Who?” I asked, hoping my face didn’t give me away.
“The woman Grayson—I mean Mr. Richmond—brought to his penthouse yesterday. I assume she stayed the night?”
A good assistant always anticipates the needs of her clients.
I pulled out my phone and swiped to a staged photo.
“I don’t know, but I found these.”
Anthym snatched the phone from me and swiped through the photos I had taken of the skimpy lacy thong. Yes, it was mine, another aspirational purchase during those first few heady weeks when I’d first moved to Manhattan and had been planning on embracing my new life as a single girl in the city. It had lasted about as long as it took for the first credit card bill to come due.
“Where did they go? What did he plan? What did they do for a date?” Anthym fired off the questions.
“Um, well, obviously I wasn’t, like,thereor anything,” I stammered out.
“Of course you weren’t there. God, I can’t believe I hired you.”
“I staged a very nice candlelit bath and had Alessio catered. They …” I fished around. “Watched a movie, I think, and she made him breakfast. I made sure there were berries for pancakes and champagne for mimosas.”
My armpits were soaked in sweat.
Anthym stared at me a beat. I tried to project “innocent girl who was totally not banging her boss on the reg.”
