Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Hope
A week later
My heart stirred as I headed to work. I would never see Charlie again, but the past few days replayed in my mind like a dream.
I’d gone to a fashion show for work then a museum opening and somehow managed to do my job between getting fucked in hidden corners of the Louvre.
The statues were the only witnesses, but the memories played out sweetly.
Somehow, he’d been wherever I needed to be, and now I would forever hold this secret in my heart of a fling in Paris. No one would ever believe me if I told them anyhow.
I worked to pay the bills, and advertising was a twenty-four-seven job. This was how I defined myself. I’d inherited my grandfather’s condo, and if I held on, then it was my retirement plan to sell. Otherwise, I didn’t remember leaving New York city… ever.
I walked into the lobby and waved at the security guard. Others filed into the elevator with me, and I disappeared in the crowd until the ding meant we'd reached the twenty-second floor.
I slipped out, headed to my desk, changed into my heels, and grabbed myself a cup of the free but horrible office coffee. Loretta passed, holding a folder to her chest, but she stopped and whispered, “They're talking about you in a meeting.”
My eyes widened. “Me?”
I’d accomplished my work goal. Clients had signed the contracts. I took a deep breath and wondered if maybe I would get a raise.
Loretta’s lips thinned. “I smell trouble.”
No reason that should have worried me came to mind. Loretta must be mistaken. My heart thumped, but I headed back to my desk and turned on the computer. My phone rang, and I answered the boss’s demands. “I’m just walking in the door.”
He yelled for me to go to conference room C.
My stomach twisted. I put down my cup. “Okay, I’ll be right in.”
Loretta’s face was white as I passed her. “Good luck, honey.”
My heart raced a mile a minute. My boss, Layla, with her short, no-nonsense bobbed hair and thin lips, stared with me with red in her eyes.
Then two of her coworkers made pinched faces as I sat.
I was so confused. I’d done everything right.
I folded my hands on the table to make a deal as I asked, “Why am I being called in? I landed the account.”
Then Layla slid a folder to my side and asked me, “Do you deny this is you in these photos?”
I opened the folder. Someone had snapped photos from my hotel balcony.
Charlie and I were entirely naked as he kissed me.
I flipped to the next one, and it was us on that yacht on the Seine with his hands on my breasts.
Heat coursed through me as I flipped to a more innocent one of us kissing on the Eiffel Tower.
I closed the folder and met her gaze. “Charlie… This wasn’t on company time.
I was at the beck and call of the designer until I got her signature. ”
Layla shook her head and showed a picture at an art gallery, where I'd been with both Charlie and the fashion icon. “This is still him.”
It was the first night after my flight where he’d bumped me to first class. I let out a sigh. “He knew Claudette. She’d invited him, not me.”
She put down her phone and stared at me without blinking. “Look, we have a fraternizing policy in your employee contract.”
My heart crashed onto the floor like it was glass. I had no argument to offer, except I had no idea, but it felt like a losing argument. I sighed. “He’s a pilot, and we don’t own or represent an airline.”
Layla glanced at her two other partners then said, “No, but we represent the Norouzi banking interest in this case, and the blog that published you clearly with Charles Norouzi was already starting fires for his family that we’d had to quell.”
My eyes were as wide as saucers, and I couldn’t quite close them to pretend I had a poker face. “Norouzi? Charlie?”
Layla closed her folder and sat back. “You’re fired, Hope Williams.”
I flinched and moved to go. Then I froze, pressing my hand to my heart. “What?”
The guard from downstairs stood outside the door, holding a box with my sneakers on top.
“Effective immediately," Layla said. "Security will see you out.”
My mind was blank, and I was unable to feel or think. I followed, feeling completely hollow.
Loretta stopped me at the door. “I’m sorry, Hope.”
“Me too. Bye,” I said, but I saw she was feet away and keeping her distance. I waved and walked out.
On the way down, there were fewer people, and at the door, the security guard handed me my box. It was mostly empty, since I had no mementos. Memories only stopped forward motion, so I refused to hold on to pictures or anything that might trigger me.
On the street, I trashed my notebooks, which I had no need for, and kept the sneakers. I went home to my condo in a daze.
In New York, nothing was free. My rides cost. My food cost. My credit cards were still high from my stupid twenty-one-year-old version of myself. Then the student loans. I still had to pay insurance and fees on the condo. If I sold out, I would have nothing either way.
And there was nowhere to go. As I walked in, I tossed my shoes and glanced around. I’d stripped the walls bare and had some blue metal art on walls to give them dimension. My furniture was all new. I’d donated everything that was Grandpa’s. He’d raised me here to stop living in the past.
Half of me wanted to grab ice cream and cry, but I wasn’t even able to process that. Instead, I walked right back out and headed down the street to the office of one of my best friends on Wall Street.
I usually only popped in here on a Friday to sneak her out, but security buzzed for her, and Britney came down to see me. “What are you doing here, Hope?”
I wrung my hands. “I’m… fired.”
She walked with me out the door to the busy street as she shouted, “Are you kidding? You just flew to Paris and got their designer.”
She directed me into a restaurant next door.
“I’m in shock.”
Even though we were the only customers, she tapped the bar. “Drinks. I’m buying.”
Now, I was charity. I’d been getting my life together with that job and had hopes of a raise. Now four years of work were just gone. I glanced at the clock. “It’s ten.”
The bartender offered the menus as Britney asked, “Are you now a puritan? Text our friends.”
Fair enough. I shook my head as I tried to wrap my mind around what had happened. “No. I could use one.”
I quickly texted Avril, Kelly, Isabel, and Miley, since we were always together for everything as we navigated the dating scenes of New York. I ordered an Aviation, and Britney ordered her cosmopolitan. Neither of us said anything as the bartender mixed our drinks.
I mostly answered texts that promised to come check on me after work got out. I’d come to Britney because she had more control over her own hours.
Now I needed to write a new resume and start calling former competition for possible openings. However, my boss loved to blackball former employees, and she’d probably spent her morning ensuring I was frozen out of everywhere.
Britney opened Regina's page. She was a blogger who was clearly targeting either Charlie or me. “So, who was the hot guy in your pictures? I approve. He’s way above your usual losers in looks.”
My phone rang. I opened my purse as I started to explain. “He… Charlie…” My eyes widened as I showed her my screen. “He’s calling?”
She read the article as I pressed the speaker phone button.
Charlie said, “Hope, I was thinking, since we’re both in New York, I could take you to dinner.”
In Paris, I’d known he was the kind of guy I would never get to keep. It hadn’t mattered there. But flirting and teasing were definitely the old me. I lowered my head. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
I imagined him staring at me with those wide eyes of his that made my legs wobble, but then I also understood he would be the first to leave when an easier woman came around. Patterson—I refused to even think about his first name—had been exactly the same. A player.
Britney spoke into my phone. “Because, Charlie, she lost her job, and you’re why.”
“Britney!” I called out fast and shook my head.
She was usually the leader of the girl group, but this was too much.
“I’m on my way," Charlie said. "Don’t go anywhere.”
I hung up and closed my eyes. At least him showing up was impossible. I smiled at Britney then picked up the stem of my drink. “I didn’t even tell him where I was. Whatever.”
She waved for me to have a second.
I sighed. As soon as I figured out my life, I would buy for her. For now, I only said, “Thanks for the drinks.”
The bartender handed us our second glasses, and this time, I sipped more slowly.
Britney asked me, “What are you going to do now?”
I let out a small laugh as my next steps started to form. “I’m going to have to apply and explain my lack of references.”
She winced. “That’s going to be hard.”
I closed my eyes and put the drink on the bar. I let out a small laugh. “Rent is due, and I have no backup plan. In movies, this is where I have to work in a bar or something and figure out who I am, but I have zero time for that, and no bar is going to pay my bills.”
A familiar warm hand pressed on my back, then Charlie said, “Hi.”
“Oh God.” I glanced at his profile. He was still the sexiest man I’d ever seen. With his broad shoulders and muscular frame, he was clearly a heartbreaker. My heart thumped as I asked, “How did you find me?”
He reached into his back pocket. “Tracker app on my phone, and I was two blocks away. Usually, my family used it to find me, but today, I had need of it.”
“Don’t you need my permission for that?”
“My family helped fund the app. I have privileges.”
Part of me knew I should be annoyed, but I was still on a Paris high of being his. Then he slipped into the seat beside me.
Britney reached over me and offered her hand to shake. “Hi. Are you Charlie?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“You’re cute.” Britney stood. “I can see why you were tempted. I’ll go to the ladies' room.” She winked at Charlie. “Keep her company.”
“Of course.” He sat straighter.
I tilted my head; the suit and tie look, which fit him perfectly, still seemed odd. He was more the wild-and-free type. I blinked.
He said, “Hope, I have a plan.”
I laughed, shook my head, and finished my drink. “You have a plan? Just like that?”
He nodded and took my hands. The spark of electricity that bolted through me forced me to take my hand back. I knew where touching him led me.
He apparently had no idea of my thoughts, though. “From the rundown I just had—and I might have missed a few details from the sixty-second investigation I put my brother on—you worked at Horner and Wallace Advertising.”
I rubbed my temples and tried to focus on him. “I didn’t tell you in Paris?”
He shrugged. “Well, I didn’t tell you about my last name in Paris, so we’re even there.”
Honestly, his being with the designer the night I went to meet her had gotten me the one-on-one time with her. Maybe I should have asked him more questions about himself. I hadn’t asked why he was there because I was more interested in discovering what he tasted like.
Now I knew I’d thrown myself in this fire and only nodded. “Right.”
He brushed against my shoulder. “So my plan is pretty simple. You pretend to be my fiancée for a few weeks, and you take a temporary job of transforming my public image from playboy to stable.”
“That sounds more like publicity, and I’m more advertising.”
“We both know you can pull it off.”
True. My mind cleared. He was here because he wanted something. I should have guessed. No guy I liked had ever only wanted me for me. I sat straighter. “You need to fool someone?”
He shrugged, but I saw a flash of pain in his expression as he said, “My brother, Kir. I was at my new job when we texted, and he keeps telling me to get out of the building and do my own thing. I think he doesn’t trust me to handle any of Father’s work.”
That explained the clothes, which were perfectly tailored and probably cost more than my entire wardrobe, including my splurge office shoes. I raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
He whispered like he was lost in a fantasy. “He’s traditional, like many of the people in the office, and since people already know we met in Paris, we have a gateway to a fast romance.”
Maybe I was the one lost in a fantasy. I sighed, wishing I believed him. “How long is the job?”
He nodded. “Six months, maximum. And I’ll get you a reference from my dad, since his name is much more influential than mine.”
His last name was currently the reason I was jobless, but he would have way more pull everywhere in Manhattan than my horrible ex-boss.
I crossed my arms and stared at him. “You know you’re asking for the impossible.
I read the blog, and it said you usually had a different woman every night, sometimes more. ”
“That was the old me. The one who didn’t know you.” He took my hand. “You can pull off anything. I know it.”
I half wanted to throw myself in his arms and kiss him senseless, but that was how I'd gotten here now. I slipped out of his gentle grip and ignored how my body was pulsating. “Playboys are known for womanizing. There is no way you can swear you’ll keep Big Charlie there in your pants near any other female, and we both know we’d never work out. ”
He cocked his head. “Since I met you, I’m a one-woman man.”
No man ever was that, at least with me. Patterson made it clear that he and Stein, the ex before him, had both cheated on me because I was "pretty for a side piece but not the kind to bring home to Mother.
" Maybe it was because I didn't have a mother or a father, just a grandfather who'd left me right after I finished college.
Britney returned. “What’s going on?”
I laughed and turned toward her. “It seems I’m getting married.”
Britney smiled brightly, like she was actually happy for me. “And I’m the maid of honor at your Norouzi wedding.”
Wait. Fuck. She was taking me seriously. I waved her off. “Of course.”
My head was pounding. Maybe drinking without even having a proper breakfast had been a horrible idea. I needed to go home, sleep, then figure out how to fix this new mess too.