“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Nick, because I’m engaged!”
“But you don’t love him.”
“You’re wrong, Nick. I do love him. I love Tom very much. I do.”
It hurt to hear her say that – worse than any of the punches I’d just taken – but I wasn’t about to stop now. She meant too much to me. If I hadn’t known that before, I sure did now.
“I don’t believe you,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t, Courtney.”
“You need to, Nick.”
“No. You may want to believe that you love him.”
I looked at her. That’s all I had to do. The big white elephant was back in the room. I hadn’t meant for it to happen; neither had she. But it had happened. Courtney and I had slept together. We had made love. Not just lust – which had been part of it, I’ll admit – but love. We’d been intimate with each other. Very much so. We had talked until dawn.
“I told you, that was a mistake,” she said.
“It didn’t feel like a mistake. Not to me, anyway.”
“Nick, it did to me.”
I got up from the couch. That one hurt, too.
“Do you really mean that?” I asked her. I was trying desperately not to let my eyes plead.
“Yes,” she said again.
“Are you sure?” I asked, taking a step toward her. She raised her hand. “Stop,” she said. “Don’t.”
I took another step toward her. She didn’t say Stop this time. She didn’t say Don’t. She didn’t say anything. All she did was stare at me with those amazing blue eyes.
But before I could take another step, the door to my office suddenly swung open.
“There you are!” said Thomas Ferramore, Courtney’s fiancé, the man she said she loved.
I GUESS I couldn’t blame him for not knocking or, for that matter, acting as if he owned the room the moment he stepped foot in my office. Thomas Ferramore literally did own the room. The entire building, in fact. What better way to cut down on rent for his Citizen magazine than to buy the building that housed it?
I stood and watched as Ferramore, with his salt and pepper hair and perennial tan, strode over to Courtney, planting a kiss on her lips. It seemed to last for a couple of eternities, and probably would’ve had Courtney not finally pulled back.
“Tom, what are you doing here?” she asked. Very good question. Didn’t Ferramore realize that Courtney and I were falling in love now?
“What else would I be doing here? I’ve come to see the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“You know what I mean,” she said, rolling her eyes playfully. (Ugh.) “You told me you were coming home tomorrow.”
“Change of plans,” said Ferramore. “Aren’t you happy to see me, Courtney?”
“Of course I am,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I be? Even here at work.”
He was still supposed to be in Paris making his latest acquisition. For all I knew he was buying the Eiffel Tower.
Now here he was in my office. You do know this is my office, Mr. Ferramore, right? Or that I’m standing here, too?
Apparently not.
Not until Courtney shot me the world’s most uncomfortable glance. She didn’t say a word, but I could read her mind like the first line of an eye chart. Did my fiancé just walk in on another man professing his love for me?
Yeah, he sure as hell did.
“Sorry, Nick, I didn’t see you standing there,” said Ferramore before his eyes immediately collapsed into a squint. “Holy shit, what happened to your face?”
“You should see the other guy,” I said, dusting off the old joke, which happened to be accurate in this case.
Ferramore humored me with a quiet chuckle, but as he resumed his full attention on Courtney, it was clear he couldn’t care less what actually had happened to me or my face.
He reached out, taking both of Courtney’s hands in his. (Ugh again.) “Actually, sweetheart, there is something I need to discuss with you.”
I took that as my cue. (Shit.)
“Why don’t I leave the two of you alone,” I said with a step toward the door.
“Nonsense. This is your office, Nick,” said Courtney. “Come, Tom, we’ll go to mine. Nick has a lot of work to do.”
Before Ferramore could even nod in agreement, though, my office filled with the sound of Courtney’s cell phone. Instinctively, she reached into the pocket of her Chanel suit to check the caller ID.
Out of the blue, Ferramore’s entire personality changed. He looked anxious and concerned. Now what was going on? Was it about me? Or Courtney and me?
“Who is it?” he asked Courtney.
She seemed momentarily baffled that he would want to know, let alone ask her outright. “It’s Harold Clark,” she finally answered him.
Clark was a seasoned reporter with the Associated Press. His nickname was “Baskin,” short for Baskin-Robbins. In other words, he was known for his scoops.
“Don’t answer it!” Ferramore practically shouted at her.
“Why not?” asked Courtney. “What’s going on, Tom?”
“That’s what I need to talk to you about, sweetheart.”
Chapter 40
“MORE COFFEE, NICK?” asked the waitress behind the counter at the Sunrise Diner near my apartment the following morning. She had the glass pot hovering and ready to pour as she waited for my answer.
“Absolutely,” I told her. “Thank you, Rosa.” I was going to need the extra caffeine today.
There was no way I could’ve known what Courtney and Ferramore had discussed once they’d left my office. Even if I had been so nosy as to approach Courtney about it afterward, there was still no way I could’ve known.
That’s because I couldn’t find her.
Courtney had basically disappeared – poof! – for the remainder of the day. Her terrific assistant, M.J., said she’d stormed out of the office without saying a word. That night she didn’t answer her phone at home.
But then came the morning. And now I understood everything.
So did the rest of Manhattan, if not the world.
Someone had posted a video on YouTube. It starred the French supermodel Marbella, backstage a few days earlier at the Hermès fashion show in Paris. The stunning brunette had a cigarillo in one hand, a glass of champagne in the other – and next season’s must-have Jimmy Choo shoe planted firmly in her mouth.
A voice off camera asked the supermodel who the richest man she’d ever slept with was.
After a sip of the champagne and a puff of the cigarillo – removing the shoe from her mouth first – she looked straight into the camera and answered with her French accent. “Thomas Ferramore. Far and away, him!”
“When was that?” the off-camera voice asked.
She giggled and whispered, “Last night.”
Whoops.
I hadn’t actually seen the video, but news of it was splashed all over the papers, especially the New York Post that was opened on the diner counter in front of me as I gobbled up my fried eggs over easy and a stack of wheat toast. How do I stay at my current weight of 175? A very good gene pool. There’s no other possible answer.
Anyway. Of course I felt horrible for Courtney that she would have to endure such a public humiliation, but at the same time I couldn’t help selfishly hoping that this would change everything between her and Ferramore.
“Excuse me, is this your phone?” I suddenly heard to my left.
I turned to see a man sitting on the stool next to me. He must have just sat down, because I hadn’t noticed him. He was pointing at my iPhone on the counter between us.
“I’m sorry,” I said, moving it closer to me.
“No, it’s fine, it wasn’t in my way. I only wanted to make sure it was yours and not the person who was sitting here before me.”
“Oh,” I said. “Thanks. It’s mine, all right.”
I was about to turn back to my newspaper when he motioned to the article about Ferramore.
“That’s pretty amazing,” he said, “don’t you think?”