STEP BY STEP (9 page)

Her face twisted as my comment had
rendered her speechless. Satisfied and tired of the conversation, I turned on
my heel and headed back out to join Preston.

PRESTON

“No, no, you can’t go in there,” I heard
Ruthie’s voice trail from down the hall. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

I looked up from my computer desk and sat
back in my chair. I knew who it was. I didn’t even have to think twice about
it.

The door flung open and there stood Sapphire
Hart, all five foot seven of her, in a curve hugging
Herve
Leger bandage dress and sky high, nude
Loubotins
. Her
shiny, platinum hair was cropped and perfectly coifed, and her dark blue eyes
burned into mine.

“I’m sorry, Mr.
Woodfield
,”
Ruthie mumbled from behind Sapphire.

“It’s fine, Ruthie,” I said, my eyes
locked in Sapphire’s. I stood up and walked around my desk. “Go back to your
desk. I’ve got this.”

“Do you want me to call security, sir?”
she asked.

“Not yet,” I replied. “Go on, Ruthie.”

Sometimes she was a little too loyal.

“What do you need, Sapphire?” I asked,
arms folded. “You know you’re not supposed to be here.”

“I saw her, Preston,” she said with
narrowed eyes. “God, I’m not even out of your life three months and you’ve
already lined up a replacement? She’s practically a clone of me! I find that
really disturbing.”

I cocked my head to the side. How did she
know about Mirabelle?

“It’s actually pretty creepy, Preston,”
she said with a snicker. “I mean
,
I knew you were
obsessed with me, but that just sort of blows everything out of the water.”

“I wasn’t obsessed with you,” I seethed
through gritted teeth. “I loved you.”

She tossed her head back and a maniacal
laugh fell from her full, red lips. “You don’t love anyone but yourself, Preston.
Who are you kidding?”

I shook my head, my blood beginning to
boil. “I loved you, Sapphire. You were the first woman I ever said those words
to. And you lied. Everything about you was a lie.”

She sauntered up to me and wrapped one
manicured hand around my tie, pulling me closer to her. “Not everything.”

She slipped her hand down and cupped my
cock. We had an amazing sexual chemistry, almost inexplicable, but that was it.
Everything else I thought we had was all an illusion and Sapphire was the
greatest illusionist who ever lived.

“Don’t touch me,” I growled. “What do you
want, Sapphire?”

“I want to know what you’re doing with
that girl,” she said, her eyes glowing with jealousy.

“What does it matter to you all of a
sudden?” I asked. “Not that it’s any of your business, but it’s not what it
looks like.”

“Oh, yeah?” she said with a half-smirk.
“You’re not grooming her to be the next big thing?
Your cute
little protégé?
Someone to help you fly high in the
world of advertising?
Someone to please your little fantasies every time
the mood strikes you?”

“Get out,” I said in a low tone. “Now.”

She wouldn’t budge. She
stood,
Louboutins
planted, and
locked horns with me.

“I mean it, Sapphire,” I threatened. “If
you don’t leave, I’m calling security.”

“I made a mistake, Preston,” she said,
her eyes looking defeated for the first time ever. “I picked the wrong guy.”

“That’s nice,” I said. “Now leave.”

I placed my hand on her lower back and
ushered her towards my office door, which I’d then realized had been open the
entire time. Sapphire turned, flashing me a seriously phony apologetic look,
and stepped down the hall, heels clicking behind her. My eyes glanced over to
my right, where Mirabelle was seated at her desk. Both our doors were wide
open. She’d heard everything.

MIRABELLE

I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I wasn’t
usually so nosy, but when the ex-girlfriend and former employee of the man
who’d just fucked me on my desk the day before was screaming at him in his
office, I couldn’t help it.

“
Miri
,” Preston
said as he stood in my doorway. He knew I’d been listening. He walked into my
room and shut the door behind him. “I’m sorry you had to hear that.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I bit my
lip and looked down at my computer.

“It’s not how it sounds,” he said. “I’m
not…interested in you because you look like my ex.”

I shrugged my shoulders and looked up at
him with my big, blue eyes. “The resemblance is rather uncanny, wouldn’t you
say?”

He sighed. “I know it seems that way.”

“She was in the bathroom at
Giatta’s
last night,” I said. “She recognized the blouse.”

“Oh, geez,” he huffed.

“She said
Giatta’s
was your restaurant. You used to take her there on dates,” I continued.

He ruffled his fingers through his thick
hair, leaving a disheveled mess in its place. It was so unlike him to ever have
a single hair out of place.

“It does seem bad,” he admitted. “But
it’s not like that at all.”

I wanted to believe him. I did. But I
couldn’t.

“Look,” I sighed. “We’re both adults
here. We can move forward from this and pretend it didn’t happen. We’re
professionals. Let’s keep our relationship that way from now on.”

Preston looked like I’d just run over his
dog. His normally straight posture slumped down as he stuck one hand in his
pocket and stared at the ground.

“What if I don’t want to?” he said in a
low voice, his eyes still averted.

I laughed. Was he joking?

“I have to have you,
Miri
,”
he said. He stepped closer to my desk and came around to my side. His hand
reached down and pulled me up to a standing position, face to face with him. “I
always get what I want. It’s what I do.”

“Why me?” I asked. “You barely know me.
I’m just some girl who looks like your ex-girlfriend. I’m just some thirteen
year old girl who used to daydream about kissing you.”

He shook his head, frustrated, and
probably trying to figure out how to dig himself out of that giant crater of a
hole he’d made.

“You put me in her old office, you dress
me in her clothes, you take me to your special restaurant…” my voice trailed
down to nothing. “What am I supposed to think?”

“You’re not her,” he said. His hands
slipped down around my hips. “And thank God for that.”

“We’re walking a fine line here,” I
replied. I felt safe in his space, but at the same time blurring those lines
was dangerous and potentially lethal to my career. “I don’t want to be another Sapphire
Hart.”

“Just don’t lie to me and you won’t be,”
he replied, pressing his lips hard onto mine.

PRESTON

“Here you are, sir,” the older man in the
gray suit behind the jewelry case said as he handed me a small envelope.

I unfastened the envelope and dumped the
contents into my hand: Mirabelle’s diamond pendant on a brand new, 14k gold
chain.

“Perfect,” I said to the man. I pulled
out my wallet and slid him my Amex.

That night, after dinner at
Giatta’s
, I’d sent Mirabelle home in a cab and headed back
to the office. I crawled around on my hands and knees for hours looking for
that pendant, her grandmother’s diamond, until I found it wedged into some dark
crevice underneath her desk. I almost missed it until I caught a glint of the
reflection of the moon that poured in through the window.

I signed the receipt and shoved the
envelope in the interior pocket of my suit jacket and imagined the look on her
face when I’d give it to her. I loved seeing her smile, and the way her face
lit up was nothing short of magical.

I stepped out to the sidewalk, leaving
the jewelry store in the distance, and rounded the next corner. Up ahead, a
woman with long, ash blonde hair was strutting along the sidewalk. I squinted
my eyes. I’d recognize
those curves
anywhere. I picked
up my pace, trying to inch closer to her, when she stopped dead in her tracks
at a garbage can. As she moved to the side, I saw a little girl with her. The
girl couldn’t have been much older than three, and she clung onto Mirabelle’s
hand tightly, staring up at her adoringly as Mirabelle unwrapped some sort of
food item and broke off a piece for the little girl. I didn’t have to be any
closer to see they shared identical smiles and the same big, doe eyes.

She fucking lied to me. I told her not to
lie and she did. She never mentioned she had a kid.

I thought about all those long nights she
spent holed up in the office with me. She was always the first one to arrive
and the last one to leave, well, besides me. The thought of Mirabelle
neglecting her child in the name of her career left me disgusted. I’d been that
kid. I’d experienced that first hand, and in more ways than one…

I slipped back behind the cover of an
awning and hoped she wouldn’t see me. She and the little girl carried on and
went about their way. I waited until I could barely see them again before
emerging and heading to the office.

My feet stomped the pavement, angrily, as
memories of Sapphire Hart replaced the vision of Mirabelle and her daughter. It
was happening all over again.

“What’s this?” I asked Sapphire one night
after dinner. She’d left her phone out on the table and someone named “Bryan”
had sent her a picture message of a man holding a little girl who was the
spitting image of her.

“Nothing,” Sapphire said, her cheeks
slightly red and her words quick and distracting. She shut her phone off and
threw it in her purse. “What are we ordering tonight?”

“That little girl looked just like you,”
I said. “And who was that man holding her?”

Sapphire flashed her fakest smile. “I
said nothing.”

“I don’t believe you,” I told her, my
voice raised.

“Keep your voice down,” Sapphire said in
a hushed tone. People in the restaurant around us were beginning to stare.
“This is not the time nor the place.”

A sickened, nauseous feeling flooded my body
in that moment and a bitter taste filled my mouth. The feeling that my entire
world, everything I thought I knew, was crumbling down. And I never even saw it
coming.

I stood up, tossed my napkin on the
table, and left the restaurant.

“Preston!” Sapphire called after me as
she chased me down outside. It was December and paper thin, white snowflakes
were falling gently from the starry sky. It was supposed to be our Christmas
dinner. I was going to propose. A five-carat diamond sparkler had been burning
a hole in my pocket for months as I waited for just the right moment to ask
her.

I stopped and turned around to face her.
I wanted her to see my face, to see the pain she’d inflicted on me. I didn’t
want her to ever forget it.

“Look,” she said with a sigh. “I’m
married. I live in Jersey. I have a three year old daughter.”

Her words weighed heavy as they hit me
with one blow to the chest, and I couldn’t breathe.
A year of
fucking her brains out every night over my desk.
Vacations.
Late nights lying in hotel beds spouting out plans for the future
and how we were going to take over the world together.
How did it never
occur to me that she was married?