Authors: Rhonda Sheree
“Which one?”
“Uh, well,” she stammered, “I don’t know. I like a few of them. Look, let’s put it like this: I’m not crazy about school but once I’m an attorney I’m going to be passionate about representing my clients.”
He grinned that boyish smile again. “What kind of law will you be practicing?”
“Corporate. Probably.”
“Mm-hmm. And have you discussed that aspiration with Professor Asher, by chance?”
He took a sip from his cup but kept his playful eyes squarely on her. If he felt the slightest bit threatened by her schoolgirl crush on the professor, he didn’t show it.
“What is he, my guidance counselor? Of course I haven’t spoken to him about my plans. What’s it to you if I had?”
“He’s a jerk, y’know.”
Stay cool.
“Why do you say that?” Syeesha slid her laptop into her backpack and avoided his eyes.
“I’ve heard the talk, and I hear he’s a jerk. He thinks he’s younger and cooler than he is. He looks all right, I guess, if you’re into that kind of look.”
“What kind of look?”
“You know. John Travolta in
Saturday Night Fever
. Asher looks like the black version of him.”
“He doesn’t look like a pimp,” she said.
Christian chuckled. “Wasn’t thinking a pimp, but won’t disagree.”
He licked foam off his top lip.
Sweet Jesus.
“
So what kind of fiction? Romance?”
“Why would you guess that?”
Now it was his turn to roll his eyes. For some reason she wanted to reach out and touch the thick brow that had the scar slicing through it.
“Just a hunch.”
“It’s kinda private,” she said. Today was not the day she was going to witness him gloat. “Y’know, I don’t even know your last name.”
“Chambers.”
“Christian Chambers. It’s time I put you on the spot. What was all that talk in the subway about being infatuated with someone who doesn’t know you’re alive?”
Just then Syeesha’s cell phone buzzed. “Yeah?” she answered.
Christian slid a napkin from beneath his cup and borrowed her pen.
“Got a minute?” asked Ray Templeton.
“Yeah, Ray. What’s up?”
Christian scribbled on the napkin.
She held up a hand, but Christian was already smoothly gathering his things. He gave her a casual farewell salute as he slid away from the table. Syeesha tried to focus on both what Christian had written on the napkin and Ray’s voice congratulating her on the other end of the phone.
“The client wants to interview you,” she finally understood him to say as her brain simultaneously processed the note Christian had left.
Passion can be covered over coffee. Infatuation needs an entire dinner.
In neat cursive, he’d left his number on the napkin.
“There was supposed to be a first round of interviews with an intermediary but the client is anxious. Good luck, kiddo.”
Kiddo? Who is he calling a kiddo?
The way Christian’s note had made her heart thump and her fingertips quiver confirmed that she was very much a full-grown woman.
***
Chapter 12
Seven interviews and none of them were perfect. Close, but not perfect.
One candidate, for example, had been far too seasoned to be a personal assistant. She had been attractive and smart, but also cold and militant. Undoubtedly, she would be efficient at her job. But Jade had known what her real job would entail, and a sexually repressed workaholic simply would not do.
Another woman had been crossed off the list before she had even sat down. A model turned executive assistant. British. Probably waiting to be discovered, though she wouldn’t cop to it during the abbreviated interview no matter how much Jade had baited her. There was a certain irony in the fact that Jade was looking for a woman who could seduce her husband, yet she had bristled at the unblemished, statuesque mannequin sitting across from her, oozing sex with every English-accented word uttered from her wet lips. If she let a woman like that in her home, Rodney would be suspicious. After all, she made Maria wear hospital scrubs to obscure her sexuality. No, the woman had to be luscious, but low-key.
Yet another candidate, pretty in a nonthreatening manner, had had a good résumé and a pleasing demeanor. Her body language had hinted at just enough desperation to pique Jade’s interest, but ultimately, she had been below Jade’s standard. Her name alone— Beauticious Eboneek Graham—had been like a tattoo that unwittingly marred the young woman in the eyes of a society that demanded a basic level of conformity to traditional mores. The drudgery of urban plight buried in the pores of Beauticious’s otherwise attractive face had brought back memories of hardship that Jade had long buried. Just watching her struggle to enunciate each word properly had confirmed to Jade that she didn’t want a daily reminder of the ghetto in her penthouse. Her eyes had found the résumé of the next candidate.
“Syeesha.”
She elongated the three syllables as she said them, threw the résumé back on the table, and resigned herself to beginning her search again with another agency than Templeton Temps. Maybe firing them would be a lot easier than firing her assistant had been. Rich kid or not, Kim would stay pissed at Jade for a while—maybe forever—but she was too talented a girl to not get ahead.
Poor girl probably hasn’t figured that out yet.
Kim reminded her of Rodney. With little faith in talent and hard work alone, he believed in making his own luck. It was with acute clarity that she recalled how he had landed the breakout national commercial that got a mega-agent like Lou Leibowitz at Creative Actors’ Agency to call him up and offer representation.
“You are so fucking high.” Jade took a long, satisfying drag of the joint then slid it between his lips.
“I’ve got agents calling me for once. Shit, I deserve to be high.”
She leaned down and slid a lazy tongue around his nipple. The bed was a mess of tangled limbs and sweaty sheets. The pungent aroma of marijuana swirled around them. She knocked the blanket from his body, leaving him nude and exposed. Clumsily, he leaned up and brought the blanket up to cover his lower torso. Jade began to say something, but decided they were both better served just enjoying the high. Now was not the time to fault him on his self-consciousness. After all, her man was on a one-way train to stardom. No more unseen low-budget films. No more off-off-Broadway shows. And it was all thanks to being the new It guy for the latest Gillette aftershave campaign. Her tongue swept over a tiny hair curled just above his nipple. For some reason she found it incredibly funny that the new Gillette guy had a stray hair on his otherwise smooth chest.
“Looks like Cornelius Cafferty is officially dead,” she said, referring to Rodney’s birth name.
“Welcome to stardom, Rodney McCann.”
Jade giggled, a little at first and then in a fit.
“What’s so funny?”
“Sorry,” she said, sucking in air. “Just thought of all the ways to become famous. Who would’ve guessed it would start with Gillette?”
“I bet my old roommate is so fucking pissed.”
“Why wouldn’t he be? It could’ve just as easily have been him. God, I’m thirsty.”
“Not just it could’ve been him,” Rodney said. Smoke billowed from his lips. “It was him.”
He leaned down and picked up a Budweiser bottle. He jiggled it, then handed it to her.
She sucked down the last of it and wished for more.
“What do you mean it was him?”
He sat up in bed, carefully arranging the sheet just below his chest.
“We’ve got the same agent. Angela called and told me to give him the message that he’d landed the part.”
“I still don’t get it.” Jade’s mouth felt as if it were filled with cotton. She was thirsty and hungry, in equal measure.
“I never told him.” He snickered. “The costume fitting was for the very next day. I showed up and told the crew my agent sent me over.”
“They bought that?”
He shrugged. “Darryl and I have similar features. He was already a replacement for another actor. The commercial needed to be shot. I was there for the fitting. Clothes looked good on me. Gillette reps were on-site with the production team and they said fuck it. A good-looking black actor is a good-looking black actor. Two days later we shot the first commercial.”
He stretched, purring like a cat, and wrapped her up in his arms.
“And Angela didn’t care all that much ‘cause she reps us both. She’s getting paid either way. But I’m about ready to drop her.”
“Because?”
“Number one, she didn’t send me on that audition and number two, she’s proven to me what a shady slimeball she is.”
Jade was buzzed, but not so much that she couldn’t recognize the manipulations of a real shyster. And it wasn’t Angela she was thinking about.
“The lesson to be learned here,” he continued in between slathering wet kisses on her neck. “Is that sometimes the best time to make your move is when the other guy isn’t looking and isn’t suspecting. Not my fault he was so trusting.”
A soft knock on the door brought Jade into the present and set her plan back into motion.
Helen Gurney, Rodney’s long-time friend who happened to have office space available so that Jade could conduct the interviews, poked her head into the office.
“Everything going okay?”
“Could be better, but we’ll see. Have one more to go.” Jade adjusted her short-sleeved cashmere sweater and checked her watch for the third time in under a minute.
“I would’ve been happy to conduct this first round of interviews for you. Save you some trouble.”
“I know but I thought it’d be easier if I just knocked it out myself.” Jade had little intention of divulging any unnecessary information.
Helen shook her head, her silver bob swinging in perfect unison. “Can’t believe Kim just up and quit on you like that.”
Jade shrugged. “It happens.”
“Business is brisk?”
“I’m in the planning stages of starting my own cosmetics line. So between that, work, charities, and also being available for Rodney’s political duties, everything gets pretty crazy for me to handle alone.”
Helen turned her head for a second. “I think I just saw your next interview come in. I must say, they are a beautiful bunch.”
Jade smiled and slid a manila folder over the résumé with a picture stapled on back. “I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.”
“I’ll let you get back to your work.”
Jade opened a small bottle of Perrier from the silver platter service at the center of the table and filled her water glass. The glimmer from her three-carat engagement ring bounced off the silver and erupted into a brilliant rainbow.
“God,” she lamented. “And His jokes.”
“Ms. McCann?” A voice called from the telephone mic. “Your next appointment is here.”
“Send her in.”
Seconds later, the receptionist ushered in a young woman Jade suspected was roughly twenty-five, thirty tops.
“Oh my gosh!”
Jade lowered her extended hand.
“Yes?”
“I recognize you,” the woman said.
Jade slid the manila folder aside and looked at the résumé again.
Syeesha Green.
“This is nuts! Ray didn’t tell me I would be interviewing with a celebrity.”
A smile crept onto Jade’s face before she could stop it. “I’m not exactly a celebrity. My husband is. I’m a worker bee. Just like you.”
Nice smile
, Jade thought.
Teeth so white they looked bleached. Eyes a brilliant hazel. The picture was a poor representation of the woman who stood before her. It was good enough for her to make the cut and land her the interview, but it did little to capture her approachable beauty.
“Have a seat,” Jade said.
The applicant had a good body. Even though she was wearing an inexpensive pinstriped suit, Jade could make out full breasts. Not large, but certainly more than a mouthful. Rodney would appreciate that. She was above average height, dwarfing Jade.
“During your husband’s race,” Syeesha said, “I remember thinking how beautiful you looked all the time. Never a hair out of place. Makeup superb. Style. Grace. Perfection.”
“Stop, please.” Jade raised a hand. Of all the women she’d interviewed, Syeesha was the only one who had recognized her. Most people didn’t notice the wife of a representative. Still, she didn’t want this woman thinking that flattery would get her the job. Yet, inexplicably, Jade’s hands quivered like a schoolgirl on a first date.
“I’m sure you’re anxious to find out about the position, but before I begin, I’d like to know more about you.”
Like an actor who’d just heard “Action!” Syeesha slipped back into a professional demeanor as she summarized her educational and professional background.