Okay, one last chance to walk away. Ignore Carmen’s message and cut her out of your life.
No. I can do this. She’s a great person to hang out with, and it doesn’t have to mean anything more than that. I can do this.
Carmen answered on the third ring. “Ash! Hi!”
“Hi there. How are you?”
“Oh, I’m fine. And you?” Carmen’s voice croaked.
“All good.”
“You listened to my message?”
“I did.” Ash didn’t plan to play hardball, but she was hoping to pull a little more out of Carmen with her short answers. If nothing else, some hint as to what had led to the non-communication would be good to hear.
“Again, I’m so sorry for not contacting you earlier than now. Things have been a tad difficult.”
Ash’s armour cracked. “Are you really okay?”
“I am. I promise.” Carmen’s voice strengthened. “So what do you think about meeting up?”
Carmen almost sounded convincing with her answer, but Ash was well aware of the diversionary follow-up. She’d let it slide for now. It was obvious Carmen wanted them to meet up, and she’d focus on that positive element. She opened the calendar on her laptop. “Coffee or a drink sounds great, but I’m pretty booked up for the rest of this week. How about Saturday?”
“Ah, sorry, no can do. I have dinner with some clients on Saturday.”
“Monday?” Ash scrolled through the calendar. “My last client comes in at six, and we should be done by around seven thirty. Want to meet me here at the studio again, and we can go on from there?”
“That sounds great!” There was a catch in Carmen’s voice that Ash couldn’t interpret.
“Great. I’ll see you then.” After hanging up, Ash tapped the phone against her chin while her mind whirled. Is this a mistake? The last thing you need is another hot-and-cold friendship with a straight woman you find attractive. If Carmen was going to give her the runaround with a big push-pull thing, Ash would have to stop it in its tracks. And quickly. But equally, if she had any suspicion she herself was feeling more than she should, she would back away just as fast. She would know the signs, and she’d be able to act before it got out of hand.
So she’d give them this chance to see how things were between them and then take it from there. It didn’t have to mean anything more than that. At all.
She could just imagine Damian rolling his eyes at her.
Carmen sprayed some perfume on her wrists, then tugged her dress down. She took one step back from the mirror. Yes, that will do .
The dinner tonight was hugely important for Matthew Hemmings’s burgeoning acting career. At the moment he was in the lower ranks of B-list British actors, but with the right exposure, the right deals, the right contacts, he could hit the A-list very quickly. She needed to bring her best game tonight to get him the big step forward he deserved. All her experience, honed over the last fifteen years of running her own agency, would come into play.
It was such a pity that she couldn’t find an ounce of motivation to make all that effort tonight.
Oh God . She breathed deeply, one hand pressed against her roiling stomach. What is wrong with me?
She’d been fine in the office the night before, fine-tuning her strategy and the plans she’d been thinking about for weeks now. The producer they would meet tonight was big-time Hollywood. Major blockbusters littered the man’s resume, and Carmen knew exactly what to say and how to say it to get Matthew through that door. But when her alarm had failed to go off this morning and she’d slept through until eleven, her first waking thought hadn’t been panic about the hours she’d missed. Instead she’d relished the feel of the cotton sheets on her naked skin and luxuriated in the sheer joy of having slept for ten blissful, uninterrupted hours.
She should have cared about how much work she could have completed between eight—her normal waking hour on a Saturday—and eleven. But no, she’d simply strolled downstairs at a languid pace and put the coffee machine on. She’d taken a large steaming mug of coffee out to the terrace and—almost beyond belief—read the newspaper for an hour. It was as if she’d been body-snatched. The part of her brain that would normally scream at her to keep going, get back on that treadmill and work, work, work had been silent.
Come on. This is what you do. It’s what you love, remember? The thrill of pushing someone up the ladder—and of earning herself a nice rate of return in the process—had propelled her on for so many years now, she was at a loss to figure out why it had deserted her tonight, of all nights.
Her phone chimed, and her stomach flipped once more; her taxi was outside.
Well, I can’t delay any further.
She walked downstairs, picked up her handbag, and left the house.
Carmen felt as if she were on a knife-edge: one wrong word, one tiny slip in concentration and she could blow this entire thing. Although it had taken every iota of energy and professionalism she possessed, the evening had progressed well so far. Matthew and Ivan, the producer, seemed to get on famously, and Carmen knew they were almost there.
As the two men chatted about a play they both admired, her mind drifted to her…date?…with Ash on Monday. Is it a date? I mean, there will be drinks, probably, but friends drink together, don’t they?
“Wouldn’t you agree, Carmen?” Ivan asked.
Um, what? Shit, what did he just ask? Praying her face didn’t colour, Carmen cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, I missed that?”
Ivan
