Chasing Harry Winston

“He’ll tell you to come,” Jesse said.

“Pardon me?”

“Henry. He’ll tell you to come. Don’t worry, Leigh, it’s not so very far away, and I promise to take good care of you. There’s even a Starbucks.”

The waiter returned her card and receipt. She carefully placed each in its own compartment in her wallet and gathered her things.

“I haven’t upset you, have I?” Jesse asked.

Leigh got the distinct feeling that he couldn’t care less.

“Of course not. I’m just late for another appointment. I’ll call you later today or tomorrow and set up our next meeting.”

He grinned and stepped aside so she could walk ahead of him. “Sounds good to me. And Leigh? Try not to panic, okay? We’re going to work just fine together.”

It was raining when they stepped outside, and as Leigh fumbled in her gigantic tote for an umbrella, Jesse began jogging toward Sixth Avenue. “Talk later,” he called without turning around.

Leigh seethed. He really was a conceited, pompous prick. He hadn’t even bothered to ask if she needed a cab or offered to walk her back to the office-he hadn’t even thanked her for lunch! She didn’t know how she was going to coddle a man with such a mammoth-sized ego. She could be diplomatic and lead with the carrot, but the gentle, wide-eyed, I’m-so-impressed-with-your-brilliance-Mr. Bestseller approach just wasn’t her. Not now, not ever, and certainly not for someone as obnoxious as Jesse Chapman. Hell, Adriana could probably do a better job with him, never having edited-or possibly even read-a single book in her entire life. This thought plagued her for the eight-block walk back to the office, a walk made even more miserable by her now-soaking-wet three-inch heels. By the time she stepped into her building, she was ready to call the entire thing off-a fact that she didn’t exactly hide from Henry.

“Eisner, get in here,” he called to her as she walked by his door. There was no way to get from the elevator to her office without passing Henry’s, a maddening design he’d no doubt orchestrated deliberately.

Leigh would have liked a few minutes to compose herself and, truth be told, maybe tone down her outfit by adding a cardigan or a pair of flip-flops, but she knew Henry had cleared his entire afternoon in anticipation of her return.

“Hello,” she said brightly and arranged herself as modestly as possible on his love seat.

“Well?” he asked. Henry looked her up and down but, blessedly, remained expressionless.

“Well, he certainly is a handful,” she said before realizing how positively asinine that sounded.

“A handful?”

“He’s arrogant-just like you warned-but I’m sure it’s nothing we won’t be able to work through. When I tried to set up our next meeting, he blatantly refused to come back to Manhattan.”

Henry looked up. “Doesn’t he live in the West Village?”

“Yes, but he claims he can’t concentrate here, so he bought a place in the Hamptons. He just assumed that I’d go there…” Leigh trailed off with a laugh.

“Of course you will,” Henry snapped, something he didn’t do often.

“I will?” Leigh asked, surprised more at Henry’s vehemence than anything else.

“Yes. I’ll reassign your other projects if necessary. From now until his pub date, you’ll make this your only priority. If that means meeting at the Bronx Zoo because he’s inspired by baby lion cubs, so be it. So long as that manuscript is in by deadline and it’s publishable, I don’t care if you spend the next six months in Tanzania. Just make it happen.”

“I understand, Henry. I really do. You can count on me. And reassigning my authors isn’t necessary,” Leigh said, thinking of the memoirist with chronic fatigue, the novelist whose book was out for endorsements, and the stand-up comedian turned writer who called with new jokes no fewer than three times a week.

Henry’s phone rang and a moment later his assistant announced over the intercom that it was his wife. “Think about what I said, Leigh,” he said, his hand over the mouthpiece.

She nodded and scurried out of his office, barely even noticing the searing pain she felt in both heels. Her own assistant, clutching a fistful of messages and memos, pounced on Leigh the moment she collapsed into her desk chair.

“This contract needs to be signed immediately so I can FedEx it before close of business, and Pablo from the art department said he needed any cover notes for the Mathison memoir as soon as humanly possible. Oh, and-”

“Annette, can we hold off on this stuff for a minute? I need to make a call. Will you close the door on your way out? I’ll only be a moment.” Leigh tried to keep her voice calm and even, but she felt like screaming.

Annette, bless her heart, merely nodded and quietly pulled the door closed behind her. Not sure she would ever again have the strength to make the call if she didn’t do it that second, Leigh picked up the receiver and dialed.

“Well, that was fast,” Jesse answered. It sounded like a taunt. “What can I do for you, Ms. Eisner?”

“I’ve checked my schedule, and I’ll see you in the Hamptons.”

He demonstrated enough restraint not to gloat, but Leigh could feel him grinning. “I appreciate that, Leigh. I’ll be out of town for the next couple weeks doing research. Would the second weekend in August work?”

Leigh didn’t bother looking at her planner or the calendar she kept open on her computer screen. What did it matter? Henry had made it clear enough: If it worked for Jesse, it worked for her.

She took a deep breath and bit down on her thumb hard enough to leave a tooth mark. “I’ll be there,” she said.

mommy drinks because i cry

Izzie led the way to the elevator in her building and punched the number eleven. “So you’re telling me that some gorgeous Australian took you for a walk on the beach late at night after hours of drinking and dancing and that-despite your solemn pledge to yourself and your friends that you’d, pardon my French, fuck anyone in possession of a foreign passport-you still didn’t sleep with him?”

“Yes.”

“Emmy, Emmy, Emmy.”

“I couldn’t, okay? I just couldn’t! We were rolling around in the sand, making out like crazy. He was such a good kisser. He took off his shirt, and my god-” Emmy groaned audibly and closed her eyes.

“And? I’m not hearing anything bad so far.”

“And the second he went to unbutton my jeans, I freaked out. I don’t know why, I just did. It was so…so surreal to see this guy on top of me, about to enter me, and I didn’t even know his last name. I couldn’t do it.”

Izzie unlocked the apartment door and Emmy followed her into the small marble-floored foyer. “Did you really just say that he was about to ‘enter’ you?”

“Izzie,” Emmy warned. “Can we stay focused here? I wanted to do it, I really did. I was so attracted to him. He was totally sweet and non-threatening and Australian, and it would’ve been the perfect vacation fling. But I still made him stop.”

Kevin looked up from the desk where he was sitting across the living room and smiled. “This conversation sounds significantly more interesting than my patient who just e-mailed to describe the consistency of her discharge.” He closed the laptop and crossed the living room, kissing Emmy on the cheek and then enveloping Izzie in a warm, welcoming bear hug. “I missed you, baby,” he murmured quietly into her ear.

Izzie pressed her lips to his and stroked his face with the back of her hand. “Mmm. I missed you, too. How was the shift?”

“Um, excuse me?” Emmy interrupted their private exchange. “I hate to break up this sweet reunion, but as you two are already married and I have no one to confide in, I’d like to focus on me for a little