Lynda Curnyn - Bombshell

“I believe he’s coming to escort Courtney,” she said, feasting her gaze once more on the magazine before her.

“Courtney?”

“Courtney Manchester. The new director of R & D?” she said, looking at me again. “I guess he feels responsible for her. Or something,” she continued. “After all, he did, in a sense, acquire her, right along with the Sparkle line. Knowing him, he probably wants to claim the company’s new baby as his own so he can reap all the glory once Roxy D takes off.” She snorted. “But I suppose with the amount of money this company is dropping on this product, something glorious is bound to happen.”

As Claudia moved on to her typical rant about how Michael—or even Dianne, for that matter—didn’t know a thing about successfully marketing a product beyond throwing a bunch of money at it, I nodded absently, my mind whirling with the implications of what she had just told me. For a brief moment, I wasn’t even sure what bothered me more: the fact that I suspected Michael was openly wooing his next conquest or the fact that, clearly, I was not a main player in Roxanne Dubrow’s next big campaign. I hadn’t even been invited to this fucking lunch.

Before the steam visibly shot out of my ears, I interrupted Claudia’s tirade with a hurried excuse about a call I needed to make to a sales rep, then headed straight for my office, closing the door behind me.

And while I sat there contemplating the fact that my future at Roxanne Dubrow was not as rosy as I had once thought, I found myself clicking on the e-mail archive where I had filed the semiannual corporate newsletters we received.

Glancing through the file, I quickly located the newsletter announcing Roxanne Dubrow’s acquisition of Sparkle and opened it up, my eyes seeking out the article—and more specifically, the photo of Courtney Manchester I had barely glanced at when it first arrived. But I took it all in now.

Like Courtney Manchester’s winning smile. Her russet hair and sparkling green eyes.

Michael always was a sucker for a pretty face. And this one was downright irresistible to him, I was sure.

If he wasn’t sleeping with her yet, it was only a matter of time.

To think I had once let this man inside me without a condom.

But not even my anger could squash the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Why did this bother me so much? I had dumped better men than Michael since, at least in terms of how available Drew or Ethan had made themselves to me.

Because you loved him, a little voice whispered, as I remembered how many nights I had lain awake during our affair, wishing he weren’t so powerful, so ambitious, so hard to nail down for more than just some fleeting yet utterly intimate encounters.

Is that what love was? Longing followed by pain and loss?

If that was true, I didn’t want any part of it.

“A man in love is incomplete until he is married. Then he is finished.”

—Zsa Zsa Gabor

If I could have flung myself wholeheartedly into the new campaign, I would have. Anything to avoid thinking about what a disappointment the men in my life were.

But since Claudia had carefully excluded me from any meaningful role in the Roxy D campaign, I no longer felt compelled to work late reviewing advertising firms and drafting proposals. If Claudia wanted this baby all to herself, then she could deal with it all by herself.

I had better things to do. It wasn’t like Roxanne Dubrow was going to survive next year on the strength of Roxy D alone. There was still, according to our market research, a whole segment of women in the 35-to-50-year-old range who had yet to discover the wonders of Youth Elixir, our flagship moisturizer. I decided to concern myself once more with the demographic that needed me most, at least from a skincare perspective. Besides, the Youth Elixir campaign needed all my creative energy if I hoped to keep it afloat now that the budget for it had been cut nearly in half.

I had carefully explained to Shelley the challenge of promoting the Youth Elixir on a drastically reduced budget that week during our session. I could see she was looking for an opening to talk about something with a bit more emotional depth than whether or not I could single-handedly raise Youth Elixir to new sales heights, but I didn’t give her the chance. What was the point of wallowing in whatever problems she imagined remained beneath the surface?

Still, I was aware of some lingering malaise over Michael, one I could not erase as effectively as I had Ethan.

No less than three times that week, I caught myself fantasizing about some big scene in which, with one or two killing statements, I revealed to Courtney as well as to Michael’s doting sister, Dianne, that Michael Dubrow was a womanizing jerk. Which was why I decided to disappear for the few hours that I lived in danger of running into Michael and his entourage.

So, at eleven-thirty on the appointed day—a full forty-five minutes before the Dubrow clan was due to arrive via car service from Long Island—I went to Bloomingdale’s.

In case you think I was shirking my duties out of emotional distress, trust me, I did have some competitive shopping to do. Some of the major manufacturers had come out with new gift packages, and I needed to see what Roxanne Dubrow’s competitors were up to, didn’t I?

The fact that I dawdled in the designer section on Two once I was done in cosmetics had nothing to do with anything. After all, September was now fully upon us, and I could already feel the cooler weather creeping in. I needed to stock up on this season’s trousers and sweaters if I hoped to make it through the coming winter.

By the time I left Bloomingdale’s a full two hours later, I was armed with enough shopping bags to make my time away from the office look suspiciously like a personal shopping spree. So I opted for a quick cab ride across town to my apartment, where I relieved myself of all non-work-related expenditures, and took a few moments to dust powder over my face and freshen up my lipstick. Because if I was unfortunate enough to run into Michael, I needed to look gorgeous enough to fill him with a pang of regret that he would never, ever, have me in the horizontal—or otherwise—again.

Take that, I said, standing before the full-length mirror in my bedroom and studying the way my light sweater hugged my curves, the way my narrow skirt accentuated my legs. My well-cut jacket that balanced the vamp element the skirt lent the whole outfit, setting me firmly in the tastefully-corporate-yet-supremely-feminine camp. A dab of lipstick (just a refresher, mind you—I didn’t want to look like I was trying too hard) and I left the apartment, more than ready to face whatever Michael Dubrow had to dish out.

Of course, one glance at my watch as the cab rolled toward Park Avenue indicated that I had been gone almost three hours and was likely in no danger of running into any of the Dubrows. The way I calculated it, lunch had ended by two o’clock and Dianne et al. were on the L.I.E. no later than two-fifteen.

Which was why my eyes practically popped out of my head when my cab pulled up and I spotted the Dubrows’ shiny dark luxury sedan parked in front of the building. The driver sat inside reading a newspaper, as if he didn’t anticipate leaving anytime soon.

I paid my cab fare and stepped out onto the sidewalk, knowing full well there was no way I could avoid the Dubrow clan any longer.

The first thing I noticed when I entered the office was that it was eerily empty—and surprisingly quiet. Lori’s desk was vacant, and if not for the furious tapping of keys that I heard coming from Claudia’s office, I would have thought the building had been evacuated.

I stopped in her doorway. “What’s going on?”