Lauren Weisberger - Chasing Harry Winston

“Hello,” she said brightly and arranged herself as modestly as possible on his love seat.

“Well?” he asked. Henry looked her up and down but, blessedly, remained expressionless.

“Well, he certainly is a handful,” she said before realizing how positively asinine that sounded.

“A handful?”

“He’s arrogant-just like you warned-but I’m sure it’s nothing we won’t be able to work through. When I tried to set up our next meeting, he blatantly refused to come back to Manhattan.”

Henry looked up. “Doesn’t he live in the West Village?”

“Yes, but he claims he can’t concentrate here, so he bought a place in the Hamptons. He just assumed that I’d go there …” Leigh trailed off with a laugh.

“Of course you will,” Henry snapped, something he didn’t do often.

“I will?” Leigh asked, surprised more at Henry’s vehemence than anything else.

“Yes. I’ll reassign your other projects if necessary. From now until his pub date, you’ll make this your only priority. If that means meeting at the Bronx Zoo because he’s inspired by baby lion cubs, so be it. So long as that manuscript is in by deadline and it’s publishable, I don’t care if you spend the next six months in Tanzania. Just make it happen.”

“I understand, Henry. I really do. You can count on me. And reassigning my authors isn’t necessary,” Leigh said, thinking of the memoirist with chronic fatigue, the novelist whose book was out for endorsements, and the stand-up comedian turned writer who called with new jokes no fewer than three times a week.

Henry’s phone rang and a moment later his assistant announced over the intercom that it was his wife. “Think about what I said, Leigh,” he said, his hand over the mouthpiece.

She nodded and scurried out of his office, barely even noticing the searing pain she felt in both heels. Her own assistant, clutching a fistful of messages and memos, pounced on Leigh the moment she collapsed into her desk chair.

“This contract needs to be signed immediately so I can FedEx it before close of business, and Pablo from the art department said he needed any cover notes for the Mathison memoir as soon as humanly possible. Oh, and-”

“Annette, can we hold off on this stuff for a minute? I need to make a call. Will you close the door on your way out? I’ll only be a moment.” Leigh tried to keep her voice calm and even, but she felt like screaming.

Annette, bless her heart, merely nodded and quietly pulled the door closed behind her. Not sure she would ever again have the strength to make the call if she didn’t do it that second, Leigh picked up the receiver and dialed.

“Well, that was fast,” Jesse answered. It sounded like a taunt. “What can I do for you, Ms. Eisner?”

“I’ve checked my schedule, and I’ll see you in the Hamptons.”

He demonstrated enough restraint not to gloat, but Leigh could feel him grinning. “I appreciate that, Leigh. I’ll be out of town for the next couple weeks doing research. Would the second weekend in August work?”

Leigh didn’t bother looking at her planner or the calendar she kept open on her computer screen. What did it matter? Henry had made it clear enough: If it worked for Jesse, it worked for her.

She took a deep breath and bit down on her thumb hard enough to leave a tooth mark. “I’ll be there,” she said.

Izzie led the way to the elevator in her building and punched the number eleven. “So you’re telling me that some gorgeous Australian took you for a walk on the beach late at night after hours of drinking and dancing and that-despite your solemn pledge to yourself and your friends that you’d, pardon my French, fuck anyone in possession of a foreign passport-you still didn’t sleep with him?”

“Yes.”

“Emmy, Emmy, Emmy.”

“I couldn’t, okay? I just couldn’t! We were rolling around in the sand, making out like crazy. He was such a good kisser. He took off his shirt, and my god-” Emmy groaned audibly and closed her eyes.

“And? I’m not hearing anything bad so far.”

“And the second he went to unbutton my jeans, I freaked out. I don’t know why, I just did. It was so…so surreal to see this guy on top of me, about to enter me, and I didn’t even know his last name. I couldn’t do it.”

Izzie unlocked the apartment door and Emmy followed her into the small marble-floored foyer. “Did you really just say that he was about to ‘enter’ you?”

“Izzie,” Emmy warned. “Can we stay focused here? I wanted to do it, I really did. I was so attracted to him. He was totally sweet and non-threatening and Australian , and it would’ve been the perfect vacation fling. But I still made him stop.”

Kevin looked up from the desk where he was sitting across the living room and smiled. “This conversation sounds significantly more interesting than my patient who just e-mailed to describe the consistency of her discharge.” He closed the laptop and crossed the living room, kissing Emmy on the cheek and then enveloping Izzie in a warm, welcoming bear hug. “I missed you, baby,” he murmured quietly into her ear.

Izzie pressed her lips to his and stroked his face with the back of her hand. “Mmm. I missed you, too. How was the shift?”

“Um, excuse me?” Emmy interrupted their private exchange. “I hate to break up this sweet reunion, but as you two are already married and I have no one to confide in, I’d like to focus on me for a little while…”

Kevin laughed and patted his wife on the ass. “Fair enough. I’ll throw your stuff in the second bedroom and get some drinks. You girls wait outside.” He headed toward the kitchen and Izzie looked after him wistfully.

“He’s nauseatingly amazing,” Emmy said.

“I know.” Izzie sighed with a barely suppressed smile. “He’s so fucking nice. It would probably be unbearable if I didn’t love him so much. Come on, let’s sit on the balcony.”

Emmy could envision places she’d rather sit than at the balcony’s wrought-iron table in a wrought-iron chair under the blazing South Florida sun, the air thick with humidity. Like on the carpet directly in front of the air-conditioning vents, for one.

“Does one ever stop sweating here?” Emmy asked Izzie, who appeared completely unaffected by the swelter.

Izzie shrugged. “You get used to it after a while. Although I have to say, not many people choose August for a visit to Miami.” She turned to catch the sun, but only after winking at Emmy. “Okay, so we were at the part where he was about to enter you…”

The sliding glass door opened and Kevin, a tray full of drinks and accessories in his hands, shook his head in dismay. “I can’t seem to escape this conversation. Seriously, Em, can we fast-forward a little?”

As Izzie jumped up to help Kevin, Emmy wondered where the girl found her energy. The unrelenting heat and humidity made Emmy feel like her entire body was liquefying.

“There’s not much more to say,” Emmy said, grabbing a handful of grapes from Kevin’s tray. She plucked a bottle of water from a small ice bucket he had set down and said, “Are we not boozing? I thought neither of you was on call.”

Izzie and Kevin exchanged a quick look. “Yeah, we’ll open something in a minute. But first”-he handed Izzie a canvas tote bag-“we have something for you.”

“For me?” Emmy asked, confused. “I should be bringing you guys something… I’m the guest.”

Izzie opened the canvas bag and handed Emmy a small box, festively adorned in yellow paper and rainbow-colored ribbons. “For you,” she said.