Chapter 13
13
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
THE ART OF WAR , SUN TZU
Bella rushed out into the frigid winter’s morning, blindly hitting the call button on the Just Desserts WhatsApp group icon, hoping that at least one person picked up.
Oh God, she hoped it was Astrid. She really needed to speak to Astrid.
Astrid picked up.
And Bella burst into tears.
‘Oh my God, love, what’s wrong?’ Astrid’s voice floated to her from the screen that Bella couldn’t see from the tears flooding her eyes.
‘I’ve messed up. I’ve really messed up. We’ve really messed up .’
‘What’s going on?’ Sienna asked as she clicked onto the call.
‘Shit, Bella are you okay?’ Paige’s voice demanded.
‘No, it’s all wrong. It’s all so, so, so wrong,’ Bella said, near hysterical. She really wasn’t good at being bad at all.
‘Bella Carmichael, you stop crying this minute,’ Sienna snipped through the phone, which had the desired effect. Bella sucked in a breath of air and swallowed the sob that had risen in her chest. ‘Now find a bench, sit down and tell us what happened.’
‘What is she doing in New York in the winter without a coat?’ Paige hissed to Astrid, who simply shrugged, looking as confused as the others.
‘He wasn’t married,’ she hiccupped. ‘I mean, not really.’
‘Who wasn’t?’ Sienna asked.
‘Oh shit!’ Paige exclaimed, realising who she was talking about.
‘Yes, he was,’ Astrid bit back. ‘She told me. She had a ring and everything.’
Bella swallowed. ‘She was after more money in the divorce. She’d cheated on him. With his best friend.’
And as she said each extra bit, she felt worse and worse and worse.
‘Wait. What, Chase? Chase wasn’t married? Oh shit ,’ Sienna said.
‘No, he was married,’ Astrid insisted. ‘Because if he wasn’t, then…’
‘Then we just got revenge on a man who walked in on his wife shagging his best friend,’ said Paige. ‘ Fuck .’
‘Can everyone please stop swearing?’ Bella practically shouted down the phone.
All the girls stopped talking and looked at Bella, shocked by her or the situation, she didn’t know. Bella wiped at her cheeks.
‘I’ve got to get back to work,’ she said, taking a deep breath of frigid wintry air.
‘You’re going back to work?’
‘Fu— I mean, screw that?—’
‘That’s still technically swearing?—’
‘You should get out of there. We’ll make up some excuse for you. Just pack up and get out of there,’ Sienna said.
Bella shook her head. ‘I can’t do that. I’ve literally destroyed this man’s career. I can’t leave it like that.’
Astrid bit her lip. ‘You weren’t to know.’
‘I know but…’ Bella took another deep breath, reason returning as she realised what she needed to do. ‘I’m going to make this right.’
‘How?’ Paige asked.
‘I don’t know yet,’ Bella admitted, her lip wobbling a little.
‘I can be with you in minutes. Just say the word,’ said Astrid. ‘If you want me to go in there and explain the entire situation to him, I’ll?—’
‘God no, I need to save his career while he still trusts me to do it. If he gets wind of this, there’s no chance he’ll let me anywhere near him or the gallery ever again.’
‘Of course.’
‘I just need time to think.’
‘But if you need anything…’
Bella nodded.
‘It’s going to be okay,’ Sienna assured Bella.
‘It really is,’ Paige echoed.
They just had to bring Chase’s reputation back from the brink and assure that from the ashes of almost assured destruction, Nayak New York would rise like a phoenix.
She didn’t have the faintest idea how, but if she could get him into this mess, then she would get him out of it.
She could do this. She had to.
* * *
Bella would never know how she got through the rest of the day at the office after Tej dropped the truth bomb on her. But she did know that she strong-armed the PR company back in line, barely letting Chase or Tej get a word in.
‘What kind of PR firm can you call yourself if you fail to handle one single defamatory article for your client? One . Has anyone come out of the woodwork with anything other than rabid curiosity? No. Has Julia made any statements to any kind of misbehaviour on behalf of Nayak’s Gallery Director? No. Have clients? No. Have fellow artists? No.
‘And are you not currently representing one aspiring senator with several pending criminal charges and one banking CEO with five fraud charge? Yes.’
‘They were just charges.’
‘And this is just an article . Pull up your sleeves, and get to it.’
Despite taking a chunk out of Magenta for getting cold feet, she and they both knew that ignoring the article would get them only so far. They’d brainstormed a few ideas throughout which Chase had rolled his eyes and groaned, stopping only when Bella had glared across the table at him. He was still frustrating her at every turn, even now that she was trying to save him rather than ruin him.
What they currently had planned for the promotion leading up to the opening would stay in place, but they needed something more .
When Bella had mooted the Harrison’s annual charity gala at the end of the month, Magenta had scoffed, and Chase had growled. Tickets sold out usually on the day of release which was an entire eleven and a half months ahead of the infamous event that was the Met Gala of the charity calendar.
Cara from the PR firm had suggested that she call her father and the room had gone deathly quiet.
‘I won’t have to call my father if you do your job,’ she’d said snappily and conversation had been quickly steered towards what Nayak could offer. It was at that point that Chase had reached his limit and she had closed down the meeting before it could get any worse.
As they’d left the office, she could have sworn Tej you go girl ’d her, under his breath. Chase had simply watched her, his gaze unfathomable.
Bella let out a half growl, half urgh, that sounded something like someone being murdered and stared at her computer screen two hours later. It was all very well and good to bring publicity to the gallery. But what they needed was something very specifically about Chase . They needed something redemptive. A Good News Story. Which of course he would hate. Which had her growling again.
‘Go home, Bella,’ Chase ordered as he stalked past the office that she was in alone.
‘You’re still here,’ she yelled back.
‘Go home. I need you back here bright, sparkly and slightly less murdery tomorrow,’ he said, stalking back past the office on the way into his.
She glared at him, but he was right.
She needed to get out of here. She needed to get back to her apartment and she needed the girls.
* * *
‘How’s she doing?’ Tej asked, passing Chase a beer and lifting the lid on the most delicious pizza any New Yorker had ever known.
Chase leaned back into the only seat in his office he could trust – because it wasn’t on wheels and wasn’t actively trying to kill him – and rubbed a palm over the stubble along his jaw. Shit, he’d forgotten to shave again.
‘I’m a bit worried about her. She seems to be taking the article personally,’ he admitted, looking to the top of the stairs he’d practically forced her down almost an hour ago now. ‘It’s a bit like she expects strangers to come up to me on the street and start throwing rotten vegetables at me.’
Tej huffed out a laugh around a mouth full of pepperoni, onions, cheese and olives. Now this he had missed while in the UK. Not Tej’s verging-on-unholy topping combo, but the pie.
‘There’s still time,’ Tej warned after swallowing.
Chase took a long pull on his beer, relishing the hoppy taste explosion on his tongue. It was better than the acrid bitter taste that he’d been left with following their meeting with Magenta. He’d promised Tej that he’d stay and fight this. But he was honest enough to admit that the PR firm’s response had him a little more rattled than he’d been before.
Instead of the furore dying down, it was only seeming to increase, and just this little taste of it made him think about what Bella had experienced following the wedding that she’d had to cancel for her crappy, gutless fiancé.
She’d not had a PR firm, or a team of staff around her when the press had descended. Worse, she’d been sent away by her family because of the impact she was having on their charity work.
She’d borne rabid intrigue, spiteful gossip and running commentary bordering on slanderous with the grace and poise of a beauty queen. The last thing Chase had felt reading that one article was graceful or poised, and his respect for Bella and how she had dealt with things had skyrocketed.
He’d been worried that dealing with Chester’s article was reminding her of all that. She’d seemed distracted, but determined in a way he’d not seen before. Obviously she was doing excellently in her role, and it wasn’t just him thinking so either. Maurice had sent him an approving nod earlier, and Ali thought that the sun rose and set with Bella Carmichael. After her initial shock, she’d hit the ground running and handled the majority of the incoming queries herself which cannot have been easy.
But still…
‘I’m surprised she hasn’t tried to pull some kind of publicity stunt to try and redeem my reputation,’ he thought out loud.
‘Yeah, I can just see it now,’ Tej said. ‘Children?’
‘Of course children,’ Chase said, half laughing.
‘It might not be so bad.’ Tej shrugged.
‘It’d be fucking terrible, Tej,’ he replied without missing a beat.
Tej pulled a face. ‘It happened on her watch. Maybe Bella feels responsible.’
Chase picked at the bottle’s label. ‘That how you see it?’ he asked, keeping himself in check so as not to jump down his friend’s throat in Bella’s defence.
‘Fuck no.’
‘Good,’ Chase replied, a little heat escaping into his tone.
The sudden strike of protectiveness unsettled him. Bella could certainly take care of herself. She’d proved that and then some. But…
I am not a menace and I wasn’t making a scene.
He’d seen it. The vulnerability. The fear. He hated that for whatever reason, she’d not let herself be… loud. Be… relentlessly physical.
He coughed and spluttered as his beer went down the wrong way.
Tej ignored him as he died not so quietly, thumping his chest to try and ease the congestion.
‘But think about it though,’ Tej said, his eyes on him.
‘What?’
‘The children.’
Chase threw the label at him, which Tej expertly ducked, and reached for a slice of pizza.
* * *
‘I vote we track down the ex-wife,’ Astrid growled later that evening on the video call they’d all scrambled to get to.
All the girls replied with a strong and very definitive, ‘No.’
Astrid looked awful. Bella knew that the guilt over her part in instigating his downfall was eating at her, but how could she try to assuage it when her own guilt was an iceberg-sized wedge pressing on her chest?
God, Bella was unspeakably thankful for them. The girls’ support had been near constant since they’d discovered Chase’s ‘innocence’.
‘I mean, I’m not sure he’s entirely innocent, but certainly less so than we’d thought and planned for , ’ Sienna had conceded.
There was, the girls were beginning to discover, mitigating circumstances, degrees of guilt and therefore varying appropriateness of vengeance, all of which needed recalibration in Chase’s case.
But they were all in firm agreement that he needed rescuing from their overly successful serving of just desserts, and that a serious act of redemption in the public’s eye needed to happen sooner rather than later.
‘It has to be natural. It has to come from him, otherwise he’ll sulk and look even more like an ass,’ Bella had told the girls, completely missing the way they smiled when she unconsciously cursed.
‘What about money? Can’t Tej throw some money at something?’ Sienna suggested.
‘I’m not sure that’s going to help,’ Paige pointed out.
‘I mean, like, some good-will charity thing.’
Astrid scrunched her nose. ‘But that’s Tej, not Chase.’
‘We’re already on that. I have the PR team securing tickets to the Harrison’s charity gala.’
Appropriate whistles, wows and awe were produced by the girls.
‘It’s a start, but it’s not enough.’
‘It needs to be about him.’
‘But also not something he thinks is about him. He’s less tetchy when he’s doing things for other people.’
I want people to come in and have the same look on their faces as you did when you came in.
Chase, who was secretly working with Sascha. Mentoring.
‘Everyone loves kids,’ Bella said.
‘Yes, well. Most people,’ Astrid replied. ‘You’re not going to have him adopt a kid for sympathy?’ she asked sceptically.
‘What? No,’ Bella replied, half outraged.
‘Well, it’s just that since, you know, you went all Jane Bond on us?—’
‘More like Bella feld ,’ Sienna interrupted with a laugh.
‘Hey!’
‘Sorry,’ Sienna mumbled.
‘We’re just trying to pull you back from the dark side,’ Astrid insisted.
‘I wasn’t that bad!’ Bella cried out in defence.
‘No, you weren’t. You were that good ,’ Paige insisted unhelpfully. ‘But you were talking about children.’
‘Children. New Yorkers love nothing more than a gruff man that’s good with kids.’
‘Who doesn’t?’ asked Sienna like anyone who didn’t would be utterly unreasonable.
‘Yeah, but would Chase be any good with kids?’ Astrid asked sceptically.
Bella thought back to the way he was with Sascha, and okay, she wasn’t a kid, but Bella believed that he would be. She could see how much he would enjoy their unfiltered and uncensored creativity.
Chase disliked people for their duplicity. Something she was beginning to understand more and more, after Tej told her about his wife’s betrayal. Children – young children – were much less likely to be duplicitous.
‘But who in New York would let their children anywhere near Chase at the moment? He’s toxic right now,’ Paige pointed out.
Bella anxiously nibbled the edge of a nail bed that she promised to file down properly later.
‘What if they think it won’t get out?’ Sienna suggested.
‘What do you mean?’ Bella asked.
‘Like, what if you do an event that isn’t an event, but then you’re “found out”?’
‘Ohh,’ Astrid cooed, ‘I get it. Like Chase is “caught” doing “good works”.’
‘Yes,’ Sienna replied.
Finally catching on, Bella’s mind moved at a million miles an hour. Words from all the research she’d done on Chase, sentences, opinions, the conversation at the gallery warehouse, the divide between who got to see art, to do art…
‘What if we did something at the gallery with a local school?’ she began. ‘If we invited them to the gallery, got them to create some art and then while they’re at lunch, we could hang their pieces on the walls and after lunch they can tour their work in our gallery?’
‘Ohh, you could invite the parents too,’ Astrid added.
‘But how do you get that news out?’
‘You don’t have to,’ Astrid said smugly. ‘In fact, the harder you try to keep it a secret, the more likely the press will uncover it, especially if you do this soon.’
‘But we can’t guarantee that, can we?’ Sienna asked.
‘And I’m not actually sure I want to subject children to anything remotely press related…’ Bella realised, backing away from the idea.
‘No,’ the girls all hastily agreed.
‘But if we could make sure that it wasn’t a press gang? If the news didn’t get out until after the event, so the press would be nowhere near it. And of course, the “source” would want to protect the children and wouldn’t name the school, but I’m sure some “photos” could leak.’
Bella could see it in her mind. Could see how much fun the kids would have. How good it would be and how well it fit with what Chase wanted for the gallery, for art, for a mechanic and a school teacher…
‘Okay. What would that look like?’ Bella asked and the girls got to planning.