30. Elyse
Elyse
Itext Sylvie that Olivia wanted to introduce me to a hotshot creative director.
It’s kind of true, and I don’t want her to worry.
But I can’t stand to head home without at least trying to talk to Sinclair.
I pull out my cell and drum my fingers on it as I consider.
Usually, we just message each other. I’ve never called him at work before.
He’s busy and important and I don’t want to be that girl who tries to lay claim to him when he’s got bigger stuff going on.
Only… I’m busy too. Sinclair isn’t the one caring for his sister, or working late, or commuting in and out from Jersey, or running all over the place for casting calls that amount to nothing.
He gets to sit there in his big, fancy office.
I’m sure the stakes are high, but the stakes are high for me too, and the idea that he might be the person who single-handedly killed my chances at this huge freaking opportunity is honestly making me lose my mind.
In the end, I chicken out and text him, standing on the corner of Mulberry and Prince, my foot tapping the whole time.
Hey
R u busy rn? I’m downtown but I need to talk 2 u
I’ll give him fifteen minutes to reply. If I don’t hear from him, I’ll call him.
My cell lights up almost immediately, and my heart rate cranks up. I answer immediately. “Hey.”
“Hey, sweetheart. Is everything okay?”
“Kind of. I dunno. I’m sorry to bother you.” I feel about twelve years old.
“You know it’s no bother. What’s wrong? Where are you? Want me to come find you?”
“I’m downtown—NoLIta. Are you at work?”
“Yeah, but I can get Andrew to give me a ride down there.” Andrew is his driver.
That makes me roll my eyes. It would take forever in a car. “I’ll come to you. It’s quicker on the subway.”
“Come to my office,” he says, and I hesitate.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. We can chat privately there. I’ll text you the address.”
I don’t tell him that I’ve been there before.
Last time I set foot in Voss, Inc.’s headquarters, I was full of hope.
Now, I’m full of dread.
Even so, the Elyse who attended the casting call a few weeks back could not have foreseen me walking up to the front desk, pulling off my beanie, and telling the sparkly, perfect woman there that I’m here to see the freaking CEO.
Clearly, the sparkly, perfect woman couldn’t have foreseen it either, because she gives me an openly skeptical once-over before tapping on her keyboard. Her face visibly falls when she presumably sees my name.
“Take the express elevator to the fortieth floor,” she says flatly, dumping a lanyard in front of me.
A security guard swipes me in, and I ride the elevator alone.
It really is an express: the only button is the fortieth floor.
It spits me out in a huge, white, shiny space that’s filled with sunlight, and I look around, disoriented.
This is the exact opposite of the floor where I did my test shoot.
No cameras or clutter or exposed pipes along the ceiling: just polished floor for miles and white couches and huge windows.
I look around, past the people at their sleek white desks—assistants, maybe?
—and see Sinclair coming out of an office at the far end of the floor.
He hurries toward me, looking concerned and affectionate and downright gorgeous, and it feels like my entire body heaves a giant sigh of relief.
He’s here, and he’s looking at me like that, and everything is going to be okay.
I start walking toward him. We meet in the middle, and he cups my face and kisses me full on the lips in front of all the assistants.
He does not smell or taste like a monster.
He smells and tastes like the man I’ve been falling hopelessly in love with.
Like my Sinclair. And that has to stand for something, surely?
He pulls away, ignoring the people who are definitely staring at us.
“You okay? You worried me.”
“Yeah.” I sound breathless. “Can we… go somewhere?”
He leads me by the hand into his office and shuts the door behind us.
“Wow,” I say in spite of myself. This room is huge and gorgeous.
One whole wall is floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on Park Avenue.
A bigger, sleeker version of the desks outside stands at one end, while a white leather couch and matching armchairs surround a low glass table at the other.
On the glass stands an arrangement of flawless white lilies, and I can’t help but wonder what it must be like to work somewhere that always has fresh flowers.
“Come.” He points to the couch. “Sit.” He sits down beside me and clasps my hand, and it makes me feel a little better. “What’s going on, darling?”
I take a deep breath. “We got photographed last night. I saw it on Page Six.”
Surprise flickers over his face, and there’s a beat before he speaks. “Yeah. I’m sorry about that. You okay about it?”
“Yeah, I mean, you warned me it might happen,” I say weakly.
“Hey. It’ll be fine. I told you I was ready to move forward with this. How come you saw the photo?”
“My agent showed it to me,” I say. “I saw her for coffee. She recognized me.” I’m not quite sure where I’m going with this; all I know is I want to play my cards close to my chest for now. Instinct is telling me not to mention Vanessa just yet.
“Ahh,” he says. “Makes sense.”
“She wanted me to spill some tea,” I say, playing for time. “But I didn’t know if I could tell her anything… because of the NDA.”
He frowns. “Shit. That’s on me. That was a cautionary measure when I didn’t know you, darling. If we’re going to make a go of this, I don’t want to gag you, obviously. I trust you.”
I nod. “Okay. Thanks. That’s good. The thing is”—I clear my throat—“I found out just now that I very nearly got the Voss campaign.” I feel like I’m going to throw up.
I’m so nervous. “I never mentioned it because I didn’t want to bother you about it, but it sounds like I got super far—except that you vetoed me. ”
Heart hammering, I watch his face. He is watching me just as carefully, his eyes growing wider and wider. I’ve taken him by surprise, and I’m glad of it. I’m glad I get to watch him react in real time.
“Um, that wasn’t quite how it went.” He frowns. “Your name came up, from what I remember, but I thought it would be a bad idea for us to work together, given our personal relationship. So… I believe the team ended up going in another direction.”
He’s lying.
Well, either he’s lying, or Vanessa was lying—and, while I wish like hell I didn’t, I believe Vanessa.
“What I heard,” I begin, trying to sound like I’m relaying information and not interrogating him, “is that I was the only candidate. I was locked and loaded. And you did everything you could to make sure I didn’t get the job.
” I’m shaking so hard, but I’m determined to stand my ground.
I don’t know why, but I’m suddenly afraid of Sinclair—not the man sitting next to me, holding my hand, but the man Vanessa painted as some kind of tyrant.
“That’s not true,” he blusters. “It would have been a conflict of interest, and it would have made things messy. My priority was protecting my relationship with you. I assume you would have wanted the same.”
It’s the “assumption” that has me barking out a kind of disbelieving cough. “I was told that campaign could earn me at least a hundred thousand dollars, possibly more. That is a very big assumption to make on my behalf.”
He rears back a little, eyebrows winging up, as if he’s surprised that I’m challenging him. “Well, it was early days, so it’s not like I knew you that well then. I was simply trying to advocate on your behalf.”
I snatch my hand away and stand up. My body is coursing with all this nervous energy, and I cannot sit there and snuggle with him while I have this conversation.
“Exactly! From what I heard, you saw the pitch before I even went to your apartment for the first time. It was super-early days! So, what, you thought you’d turn down the biggest career opportunity I’ve ever had in nine years of trying to cut it in this industry on the back of two fucks at Alchemy? ”
His face goes kind of stony. When he speaks, his voice is cold too.
“If you’d gone along with my proposed rate for sessions at my apartment, you would have made that money back already.
I was trying to look out for you. I’m not completely devoid of morals.
Of course I didn’t want you out of pocket. ”
My jaw drops. Oh, no, he didn’t. “Sessions? Are you freaking kidding me? Just out of interest, how much could I have gotten for a whole weekend at Fairwater?”
He pushes to his feet like he’s had enough and towers over me, shoving his hands in his pockets. “That’s not what I meant, darling, and you know it. What I’m trying to say is I would have looked after you.”
“Oh, right.” I’m nodding my head like an out-of-control bobblehead dog. “Of course. I don’t need to work or look out for myself when I can let you look out for me instead.”
“You’re twisting my words.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Look.” Angrily, he raises one hand and pushes his fingers through his hair.
I wish it wasn’t so hot. “I have the utmost respect for your professional ambitions, but I don’t have to defend the calls I make in my job to you.
If we want this thing between us to go anywhere, then we have to be able to leave work stuff out of it. ”
“Like killing a campaign I’d won on my own merits at the eleventh hour?
” I challenge. He’s talking down to me, and he’s trying to intimidate me, and I don’t like it, even if it’s working.
There’s no way I win against Sinclair in a battle of wits.
Still, he’s going all CEO on me, and it reminds me of what Vanessa said about her not liking men who make women small.
It’s time to show my trump card. “I met Vanessa this morning. She joined us for coffee. It was very informative. She said you told her I was meh and unmemorable and that you guys could do better, so I guess it’s no surprise you can never remember my face, right? ”
He scoffs loudly and throws his head back, staring at the ceiling in a Give me patience-type way. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. Vanessa has a vendetta against me, for some unknown reason. She’s also not legally at liberty to discuss any of this. Ignore her.”
I squeeze one hand so hard with the other that I’m cutting off my circulation.
I don’t know much, but I’m pretty sure vendetta is a term you throw out there to undermine someone who has a legit grievance against you.
“That’s not what she said. She said you’d try to get her to sign more NDAs later this week so she can get her payout, which was why she wanted to talk to me immediately. ”
I have his full attention again. His blue eyes zero in on me with such terrifying force that I feel like they could turn me to a pile of ashes on this thick rich-guy carpet. “She said what?”
I’m hoping he’s not expecting me to say it again.
Instead, I say something worse. “She also said that she point-blank asked you if you’d talked to me about killing the campaign and that you could barely look her in the eye.
” I swallow. I can’t feel the fingers in my left hand anymore.
“So I’m asking you. Why the hell did you play God with my career?
That job would have changed everything for me.
Do you have any clue how badly my family needs that money?
Of course you don’t! You don’t waste your time thinking about poor-people problems.”
He’s staring at me in horror, and I have the weird feeling that only now is he realizing what sins he’s actually committed against me here. He steps forward, gripping my upper arms and searching my face. “Elyse, I—”
“No. You treated me like an object, like—Ugh, I don’t know!
” My nose is running, and I sniff hard and wetly, which isn’t sexy at all, but I don’t care.
“Like I was some stupid little toy that you didn’t want anyone else to play with.
You crushed my career under the heel of your stupid, pretentious Gucci loafers like an insect and then tried to pay me off—which didn’t work, by the way!
Because I have actual integrity! And worst of all”—I wrench myself angrily out of his grasp and take a step backward—“I bet you didn’t lose a moment’s sleep over it until this very second.
Because I guess you do things like that every single day to people you don’t consider important. Am I right?”
“You are very important to me,” he insists brokenly. “Jesus, darling, you’re all I care about. That’s why I—”
Bingo.
“That’s why you what?”
“That’s why I nixed the job,” he admits, breaking my gaze. “I thought it would be too much, too soon. I wanted to get to know you without you going stratospheric—it could have ruined everything. So I did what I needed to do.”
I was right.
He can’t even look me in the eye.
“What I’m hearing,” I say, tapping my forefinger against my cheek as if I’m deep in thought, “is what I said at the start—that the only way this could have worked is if you kept me small and unsuccessful and totally dependent on you.”
“No. That is not what I—”
Oh, sweet Jesus, enough.
“You warned me, to be fair.” I fling my arms out wide. “You warned me exactly what your family was like. You literally admitted that no one gets to where you guys are without being willing to do whatever it takes. I guess I should have listened harder.”
“I did what I thought had to be done,” he repeats woodenly. “Like I said, I wanted to give us a real shot. I was willing to do what had to be done, but I did it for us. I knew even then that we had a future.”
But I’ve had enough. I pick up my bag and sling it over my shoulder before looking up at him.
His face is beseeching, and he looks like an angel once again, and jeez, am I glad that my family is in such dire financial straits, because if we weren’t, I’d be tempted to lose my backbone and give him a chance to make it up to me.
But we are. And if we have to foreclose on our family home, I’m holding Sinclair Voss personally responsible.
“I hope you got enough photos of my face to remember me by,” I say as I turn my back on him and make for the door. “Because you’ll sure as hell never see me again.”