Emily McKay – It Happened in Manhattan: Affair with the Rebel Heiress / The Billionaire's Bidding / Tall, Dark & Cranky (страница 17)

He could do this for her. He could fix her professional life.

God knew there wasn’t much he could do for her personal life.

Eight

From the blog of New York gossip columnist Suzy Snark:

Fiddling while Rome burned. Polishing the brass on the Titanic. Both phrases imply great negligence in the face of disaster. New Yorkers may want to add a new idiom to that list: Getting a massage while your company is being bought out.

I know, we usually eschew the nitty gritty business details for outright gossip, but this tidbit was too salacious to keep to myself. Besides, the business geniuses at FMJ have scheduled a press conference for this afternoon to announce their acquisition of Biedermann Jewelry. I thought you might want something to consider while they’re trying to convince their stockholders it’s a good thing they’re squandering their own resources to bail out Ford Langley’s girlfriend.

Readers will be shocked to learn that while Biedermann Jewelry stock prices continue to plummet, heiress Kitty Biedermann continues to receive daily spa treatments. Sources say she spends upward of two thousand dollars a week on mani-pedis and facials. In a time when her personal finances must be taking a hit, that’s got to hurt.

Is the heiress addicted to pampering? Is she simply careless? Or is there something else going on here? Perhaps she sold all her Biedermann stock back when it was still worth something. Too bad she didn’t see fit to tip the rest of us off, as well.

“Is any of this new blog true at all?” Ford asked.

She glanced at the image on his iPhone. Her stomach clenched at the sight of the scarlet swirl at the top of the screen. Another Suzy Snark blog. Just what she needed.

“Ah,” she quipped, trying to sound completely blasé. “Suzy Snark. What fun.” “Have you read it?” “I don’t read trash.”

He held out the iPhone. “You need to read this.”

Panic clutched her stomach. Her gaze darted from the phone to his face. She wanted nothing to do with any of that rubbish.

“Why don’t you try to sum it up for me?” she suggested in her best spoiled-brat voice.

“It accuses you of negligence.” Ford continued to hold out the phone as if he expected that to be all the encouragement she needed.

Though her heart seemed to stutter in her chest, she didn’t reach for the phone. What exactly had Suzy Snark discovered?

Ford continued, his tone full of exasperation. “She says you’ve been spending your days at the spa. Getting massages and pedicures when you should be working.”

“Is that all?” Her heart started thudding again, a rapid tattoo she was sure Ford would be able to hear.

“What do you mean ‘is that all?’ Is there more?” he demanded. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Instead of answering, she tried to sidestep the question. “It’s just a stupid gossip blog. You and Jonathon place entirely too much importance on what this woman writes. What does it even matter?”

He shoved his phone back in his pocket. “It matters. It may just be a gossip blog, but who knows how many people read it. This woman maligns you every chance she gets. Has it occurred to you that Suzy Snark may be the reason Biedermann’s stock is in free fall?”

She sucked in a breath. “No. It hasn’t.”

“I did some preliminary research. Every time she posts about you, the stock price dips. Starting with today’s press conference, we’re going to defend you against this woman’s lies. Now why don’t you—”

But he must have seen the truth in her expression, because Ford broke off. He studied her in silence for a moment before slowly shaking his head. “She’s not lying, is she?”

“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t read the blog.”

Ford ignored her comment. “Is she right? Have you really been spending hours of every workday at the spa?”

“I’m not going to defend myself to you.”

“You’re going to have to defend yourself to someone. The fact that you haven’t denied any of this makes me think it must be true.”

“What is it you want me to admit to? Going to the spa sometimes? Fine, I do that. Every woman I know gets regular manicures and pedicures. Most men I know, too. It’s not a crime.”

“No. But if you’re doing it during office hours, every day, then it looks bad. It looks like you’re not doing your job. It looks like you don’t care about the company. And if you don’t care about it, then why should anyone else?”

“Is that what you think? That I don’t care about Biedermann’s? I would do anything for Biedermann’s.”

“So you keep saying. But, frankly, I’m not seeing it.”

“Are you kidding me? Since I took over as CEO, I’ve poured everything I have into this business. I’ve spent every waking moment trying to educate myself on how to be the best CEO I can. I’ve listened to every damn business book published in the last decade, from Barbarians at the Gate to The 4-Hour Workweek, none of which have been remotely helpful, by the way. I’ve worked eighty-hour weeks. I’ve abandoned my social life completely.

“None of that made any difference. The stock price just kept going down. So I decided to buy whatever stock I could in hopes of keeping the price up. I liquidated all of my assets. Sold everything I had. Furniture, art, jewelry. Things that had been in the family for generations. I quietly auctioned it off piece by piece. A year ago, I moved out of the townhouse where I grew up, where Biedermanns had lived for over a hundred years. I sold it and moved into a walk-up.”

To her embarrassment, her voice, which had been rising in pitch steadily, broke on the word walk-up. She knew where she lived was the least of her worries, but somehow it signified all the things wrong in her life.

Knowing she was being ridiculous didn’t make it sting any less when he said, “Come on, you make it sound like life without a doorman just isn’t worth living. Surely it’s not that bad.”

“Have you ever lived without a doorman?” she asked.

“I live in a craftsman remodel down by campus in Palo Alto,” he deadpanned. “I’ve never had a doorman in my life.”

“Well, I now live on the fourth floor in a building without an elevator. I grew up with staff, for cripes sake. Our housekeeper worked for my family for forty-five years. After I let Maggie go, she couldn’t even afford to pay the tuition for her granddaughter’s college.”

Maggie had been like family. No, more than that. To a girl who’d never known her mother, Maggie had been family. And Kitty had had to fire her. Sweet Maggie had tried to comfort her, made her hot tea and murmured optimist platitudes like, I’ve always wanted to travel. Maggie had been too proud to accept a handout once she was no longer employed, so Kitty had done the only thing she could do. She’d tracked down Maggie’s granddaughter and hired her at Biedermann’s.

“Then why did you sell the house?” Ford was asking her. “And if you had to sell it, why not move someplace nicer?”

At his question, she bumped her chin up defiantly.

“Because,” she shot back. “When the stock price started to drop, I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. So I bought as much as I could. And then when it kept dropping, I couldn’t even pay the taxes on the townhouse. Selling the house was the only option.”

“You should never have invested your personal assets in—”

“I know that, okay?” she snapped. “I was trying to help Biedermann’s and I made a stupid mistake. I’m really good at making stupid mistakes, thank you very much.”

It was just one of many, many stupid mistakes. Sometimes she felt buried under the weight of them.

“I’m just trying to—” he began.

But she cut him off with a belligerent glare. “I don’t need your help.”

He talked over her protests. “If Biedermann’s really does go under, you’ll have lost everything.”

What could she say to that? All she could do was shake her head and blink back the tears. “If Biedermann’s really does go under, then I’ve lost everything anyway.”

But that wasn’t entirely true anymore, was it? She’d have the baby. She’d have the family she’d always wanted. It was a small consolation that was turning into everything.

“So tell me this,” he said. “If you’re so desperate to keep Biedermann’s afloat, why this elaborate act? Why don’t you want anyone to know what you’re doing? Why spend your days at the spa getting massages and facials? You’ve got to know how bad that looks.”

She met his gaze. “I can’t—” she began before breaking off. Then she swept a hand across her forehead, pushing her hair out of her face. “I can’t explain that.”

“Well, try. Make me understand what’s going on here. Give me something, anything, that makes this make sense.”

“This is just what I do.”

Whenever the influx of written material got too much to handle, she took Casey, went to the spa and had her assistant read aloud to her. The paperwork was so overwhelming. Business documents were the worst. She just couldn’t wrap her head around the pages and pages of words. Listening to them read aloud helped. But what kind of CEO had her assistant read everything aloud? Christ, it was like she was a preschooler at story time. How could she explain that to Ford?

Instead she said, “It’s like a … a coping mechanism or something.”