"Better," I say. "Significantlybetter."
Jenn stares at me. I can just tell she’s drafting a story she's going to tell her friends tonight and laughing about for years.
"Seven o'clock," she repeats flatly.
"You don't have to—"
"I'll be ready at seven." She picks up her water bottle with enormous dignity, turns, and walks to the other side of the gym.
I stand there.
The woman on the treadmill puts her earbuds back in.
I need to call my therapist.
CHAPTER FOUR
BLAIRE
"Blaire, here's your coffee. The car is here and your bags have been picked up from your apartment. Flight leaves in an hour and a half."
Camille sprints to keep up with my long strides through the Monroe Communications lobby, which tells me she's wearing the wrong shoes for a Monday morning. I take the coffee and the drive she's holding out without breaking pace.
"Thanks, Cammy."
After speaking with the board of Sullivan and Associates, none of them were comfortable with anyone junior level taking this case. Unfortunately, other than leadership, my associates are what would be junior level in their eyes.
I’m the only senior level PR Manager, and considering my life is on fire at the moment, I didn’t need to think too long when they offered to put me up for two months to go to LA and handle Mr. Sullivan’s case personally.
I wouldn’t call it running, necessarily. It does give me the optics I need to get the hell away from my parents and soon to be ex-husband. A win is a win.
"Where do you have us booked?" I ask Cammy. "This is going to be two months of our lives, Cammy. We can’t do a single."
"No, I booked us lofts. Walking distance to the Sullivan building, good neighborhood, private entrance." She's slightlybreathless but keeping up — I'll give her that. "I've had the fridge stocked and hired a maid and a cook for the duration. The cook does a rotating menu, but I flagged your dietary stuff, so she knows."
I don't have dietary needs. What I have is a decade of Colt deciding what went into my body after a doctor's appointment revealed I'd gained ten pounds. Couldn't have that. So, carbs and sugars and basically anything worth eating ended up on a heavily monitored list he called my dietary restrictions and I called surviving.
I stop walking.
Camille stops a half-step after me, catching herself.
I turn and look at her. She's twenty-six and has worked for me for six years, and she is, without question, the most quietly competent person I have ever employed. She anticipates. She executes. She does not wait to be told the same thing twice.
She's also a beautiful woman with no children and no boyfriend, and I wonder sometimes, guiltily, if that's partly because of the hours she keeps on my behalf.
"What would I do without you?" I say.
She grins. "Starve in a hotel and lose the Sullivan account."
"Accurate." I start walking again. "What do I need to know before I land?"
She falls back into step. "Sullivan has a reputation for being—" she hesitates.
"Say it."
"Difficult. Uncooperative. The PR firm they hired last year lasted eleven days."
"What happened on day eleven?"
