Claim Me (Stark Trilogy, #2)(37)

I grimace. “Well, you can star in it. Personally, I’d rather have another leading man.”

“You do,” Jamie says. “And as much as it pains me not to talk about either of our f*ckalicious men, I want to hear the rest of this story first. How did the camera-vultures know you were there? Did Tanner tell them? Have you told Damien about the corporate espionage comment? Was he totally livid?”

“I’m going to tell him when I see him,” I say. “And yeah, he’ll be livid.” I bite back a grimace. This wouldn’t have been prevented by Edward driving me to work, but I have a feeling that simple fact isn’t going to matter when Damien hears what happened and goes ballistic.

“As for Tanner …” I trail off with a shrug. I suspect he’s the source, but I can’t prove it. “Doesn’t matter much. They know now. Yay,” I add dryly.

Jamie leans closer to me, her brows pulling together as she studies my face. “Are you okay? I mean, really okay?”

I almost put on my practiced smile and nod and say that everything will be fine. But this is Jamie, and she’s been my best friend since about forever. More important, she knew how much my big sister meant to me. How much I’d relied on Ashley to survive all the shit my mother put me through. The nights locked in my room with no way to turn on the light because my mother was convinced I needed my beauty sleep. The interminable hours walking with a book on my head. The second weekend of the month when I was allowed only water with lemon so that I would detox and “keep that nasty cellulite at bay.” The big things, the little things, and so much more.

I was the one to win the ribbons and the tiaras, but it was Ashley I’d envied. Ashley, who’d been allowed to live a normal life, or so I’d thought. Ashley, who’d tended to her little sister even before tending to herself.

I hadn’t thought about how my mother’s harping must have been drilled into my sister’s head, too. Or, at least, I hadn’t thought about it until it was too late and I was holding Ashley’s suicide note in my hand and looking at her neat, precise handwriting blaming her husband leaving her on the fact that she must have failed at being a woman and a wife. That somehow, she hadn’t managed to be the lady our mother had tried to train us to be.

Bitch.

I close my eyes and realize that my hand is resting on my thigh—right over the scar beneath my skirt. I’d cut before Ashley died, but once she was gone, I’d kicked it up a notch.

There are so many memories tied up in those scars, as if each small ridge of tissue represents an emotional mountain. Mostly, though, there’s Ashley.

“No,” I finally say in answer to Jamie’s question. “I’m not okay. But I was—before they brought up Ashley, I was dealing with it. I didn’t like it, but I was coping. And I’ll be okay again. I just wasn’t prepared today.”

“It will pass, you know. That’s the good and the bad about publicity. It goes away.”

“And like Tanner said, I’m the flavor of the month.” I smile, and this time it’s genuine. “Maybe next month they’ll leave me alone and focus on the rising starlet who’s dating Byron Rand.”

“Bryan Raine,” she corrects. “And don’t even try to change the subject. So come on—forget the stupid paparazzi. I want to hear the rest of what happened at the meeting.”

“Right,” I say, then finish off my martini. I’ve been telling Jamie what happened once Tanner and I reached Suncoast, and I was up to the actual meeting with the clients.

“I’ll field that,” Tanner had said when the head of IT asked me a conceptual question. “Ms. Fairchild is coming at this from a purely administrative point of view.”

“The little prick,” Jamie says when I get to that part of the story.

“No argument from me,” I say. “But I probably should have said nothing. I mean, the whole idea was to get the client to take the product and the team. That would get Tanner out of my hair for six months.”

“So what did you do?”

“When he finished, I just casually pointed out that while Tanner’s overview was entirely accurate, he left out some key information. Then I spent the next fifteen minutes running through ways to tweak the algorithm to give them a huge variety of options. I mean, conceptually, the program is brilliant, but when you get down to the actual coding, then all you really—”

“Okay,” Jamie says, lifting her hand. “I get the idea. Techie stuff. You impressed them. Tanner looked like a doofus.”

“So sweet and so true,” I admit. “But the beauty is that he didn’t look like an ignorant doofus. He knows his stuff. He just left out some important details.”

“Which is good, because they wouldn’t want some bonehead moving in-house for six months,” Jamie says.

“Exactly. I think I’d have to quit if Tanner were working down the hall from me. The guy’s toxic.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want you to quit,” Jamie says, rolling her eyes. “How on earth would you live? A million dollars just doesn’t go as far as it used to.”

I toss my napkin at her, but I’m smiling as I do it.

The bartender comes over and Jamie orders another martini. I go with a sparkling water.

“You have no sense of adventure,” she says.