Isabel Sharpe – All I Want... (страница 2)

She began her nightly routine by standing in mountain pose, tall and still in the fairly small space between her bed and the wall, and concentrated on clearing her mind, concentrated on the sensations in her body and the play of her muscles holding her up. Spine straight, chin parallel to the floor…

Next, she started the sun salute, breathe in, out, arms in prayer position; breathe in, reaching up, palms facing; breathe out, swan dive to a forward fold, bent at the waist, trying to get her face to touch her knees.

As if.

Breathe in, right leg back in a runner’s lunge….

Maybe she should do an article for a women’s magazine on the benefits of a daily yoga routine, couching it in humor, focusing on spiritual satisfaction as a way to reduce spending for things one didn’t need, not being preachy, just—

Mind clear, Krista.

Breathe in, breathe out. Her body followed the positions automatically. Breathe in, breathe out….

Tomorrow she would research the article she was proposing to Budget Travel magazine, about off-the-beaten-track, affordable holiday getaways. Romantic escapes from the pressures of the season. She could jot down a few ideas for the yoga article, too. And she needed to get going on one for Food & Wine about the country’s love affair with oversalting and artificial flavor. She was thinking about calling it “Chemical Attraction.”

Mind clear, Krista. Damn. She could never quite manage it.

Her phone rang and she gave up attempting inner peace and grabbed it. Only Lucy would call at this hour, home from her Tuesday night gig singing at Eddie’s.

“Hey, Krista.”

Krista frowned. Her younger sister didn’t exactly sound jubilant. But then, she’d been sort of a pale imitation of herself for a while. “Bad show tonight?”

“Not terrific. Usually it’s such a nice crowd. Tonight this drunk guy kept propositioning me during When I Fall In Love, and a few too many people acted as if I was a videotape in their living rooms and they were free to shout to each other whenever the mood hit.” She sounded close to tears.

Bingo. An article or blog about technology-saturated people’s newfound unfamiliarity with live entertainment and audience etiquette. Krista kept the phone to her ear and dragged off her sweats, letting the silence lag so her sister would fill it. Something else was really bothering Lucy. She knew the pitfalls of her business and had dealt with crowds much rougher than this one sounded.

“Then I got home and Link and I…we’re barely speaking.”

Krista cringed. Lincoln Baxter had been Lucy’s unofficial fiancé for four years. Krista was sorry, and maybe she was being overly judgmental, but if you really wanted to marry someone, why didn’t you do it? They’d been together six years, since their senior year at Tufts, and in Krista’s opinion, the shine was off and they’d do better finding someone new. Link hadn’t even managed to come up with a ring yet.

“He spends every evening watching TV. I just wish he’d spend some of that time with me. He never comes to hear me sing anymore, not that I blame him, but it would be nice, and I’ve asked him to. He stays up until all hours, we almost never go to bed at the same time, and when we do…well, nothing happens.”

Krista winced and tossed her sweats on the chair next to her bed. She was getting the message. No sex, no intimacy. Might as well buy a male blow-up doll.

Hmm, maybe an article about artificial behaviors in men during courtship. Or make that artificial behaviors in women, too, so she wouldn’t go on record as a man hater. Since she was, in fact, definitely not one, though with the mostly off-again unsatisfying state of her love life she was starting to consider it.

“Lucy, I think it’s time to take a look at this relationship.”

“No, no.” The fear in Lucy’s voice made Krista’s heart sink. “It’s not that bad.”

“You can’t stay with him because you’re afraid of being alone.”

“He’s the man for me, Krista. I’ve known since the second I set eyes on him.”

Right. Krista fumbled for her pink flannel nightgown under her bed pillows. She believed in that love-at-first-sight stuff exactly not at all. Chemistry she believed in, instant attraction she believed in, but love took time. Love was what was left when infatuation finally got bored and took a hike. Love was what she saw in her parents’ eyes every time they looked at each other.

Okay, not every time. When Dad put off cleaning the garage too long or mom took three days to make a simple decision…

“Neither of you is the same person as in college.” She lifted her arms one at a time to slip the nightgown over her head, whipping the phone around the neckline and back to her ear. “People change. You grew apart.”

“We’re just in a rut right now. We need something. I don’t know what.”

“Counseling?”

“He won’t go.”

“Lucy, you really—”

“I gotta go, he’s coming to bed. Lunch Thursday?”

“Sure.” Krista hung up the phone and scrunched her face in a scowl. Her sister was incredibly sweet and incredibly talented and deserved to be riding the wave of love and stardom all the way to happy ever after. Instead she’d been upstaged by a bimbo and had shackled herself to a man indifferent to what made her so special. Loyalty, talent, intelligence, empathy, sex appeal, beauty, sparkle—well, she used to sparkle. Now she just glowed dully through mucky layers of disappointment.

Krista put in her earplugs and slid into bed. If Lucy had gotten the part in Sweatshock, she’d be in a position of power, and Krista would bet a million she’d have the strength to leave Link and find someone who deserved her. A new love that fit the dynamic, fabulous person she was now.

Just another grudge to hold against the inimitable—thank God—Aimee Wellington.

SETH WELLINGTON SAT sprawled in his favorite black leather chair, set near the giant living room window of his South Boston condo, whose view of the harbor reminded him daily there was more to the world than gray four-walled corporate boardrooms. A timely thought. He grimaced at the computer screen on his laptop, which showed the blog fellow board member Mary Stevens had sent him the link to. This Krista Marlow woman had a serious grudge against his stepsister, Aimee. He’d seen Sweatshock the previous week, and while Aimee would never be Renée Zellweger, neither was she as bad as this sarcastic, clearly unhappy person made her out to be.

Bad timing. As the interim CEO of Wellington Department Stores while his father recovered from a stroke, he’d spent his tenure trying to convince the board of directors to update the stores’ stodgy image. The trouble with inheriting a dinosaur—er, dynasty—that stretched back into the late nineteenth century was that, like the dinosaurs who went extinct rather than adapt, some members of the board seemed to want everything to stay the same as when Seth’s ancestor Oscar Wellington opened the first store near Copley Square in 1889.

Seth and Mary were the newest and, at thirty-six and thirty-nine respectively, by far the youngest board members. Over the last year-plus they’d fought long and hard for the changes, territory won, territory lost, two steps forward, one back. Finally their efforts would pay off, God willing, with the official reopening of the stores, December twenty-first. Of course he would rather have launched the new image before the most profitable time of the year, but the board had been a bigger problem than he’d anticipated and the contractors hadn’t shared his sense of urgency.

Aimee had been Seth’s choice for the stores’ new spokesperson. She’d done a great job in the hip, upbeat musical commercials that would begin airing in sync with the reopening. Given that Aimee was Aimee, her duties representing the stores publicly could be a dicier prospect. But she was family, the all-important connection so vital to Seth’s dad; she sported the Wellington name via Seth’s father’s remarriage. And her performing experience made her a natural in front of the cameras, where she’d get most of her exposure—literally, given her skimpy outfits. Aimee could bridge the gap between older loyal customers and new ones the stores hadn’t been attracting in large enough numbers no matter how up-to-date they kept their merchandise.

But Krista Marlow was making Aimee look more like a joke than Aimee did herself. The board members were not amused. They felt Krista’s potential for damage was minimal when her war had been waged locally, focusing on Aimee’s notorious shopping exploits and her enthusiastic if misguided obsession with performing and self-promotion. But with media attention surrounding the reopening and with commercials scheduled to air throughout New England, the board feared Krista’s biased opinions would reach a much wider audience and make a mockery of the new image they’d been against from the beginning.

Could Krista really do the stores any damage? In his view, most likely not. Ironically her rants might even help. No publicity was bad publicity, as the cliché went. But he had to admit, Krista’s vitriol rankled. Had to admit he took it personally, not only being Aimee’s stepbrother but also having invested so much of his life into the Wellington stores. Given that he hadn’t exactly volunteered for this CEO job, he’d be damned if his sweat and sacrifice led to failure of any kind.