That being said, I was fairly sure it wasn’t possible to ‘cheat’ on someone, when you weren’t technically in a ‘relationship.’
That being said, I didn’t know why Nick would really care either way.
True, I’d asked the same thing of him not long before—it had been one of the conditions I’d insisted on before we left Barcelona. But in my case, it made sense. The entire point of this little dalliance was to keep a positive spotlight on Mitchell Hunter’s son until his company’s grand awakening in three months. Every move Nick made would be scrutinized. The paparazzi fishbowl he already lived in would get even smaller—trapping him under a microscopic lens.
But the same rules didn’t apply to me.
I wasn’t a Hunter. I wasn’t the heir to anything. And even on my best of days, I was pretty damn sure the rest of the world didn’t think of me as an international celebrity.
I was, however, a world class talent at playing with the perceptions of the press. Even if I did happen to have a boyfriend on the side—it wouldn’t be a problem. If anyone knew how to keep a thing like that under wraps, it would be me.
Nick knew that. Of all the people in Manhattan, he knew it best of all.
And yet, he’d expressly forbidden it.
...why?
You don’t cheat on me either.
As if the words weren’t enough, then there was the look on his face. It was a look I had seen many, many times before. He might have been smiling, but there wasn’t an ounce of compromise anywhere in those twinkling blue yes.
It was not a request. It was a command. As simple as that.
I was still mulling it over a few minutes later, when there was a quiet knock on my door.
What the hell is going on today? Am I having an open house I don’t know about?
Cautious, and after double checking again that I was wearing pants, I padded my way over to the door. “Who is it?” I called through the double dead-bolts.
In Brooklyn, you could never be too careful.
“It’s Stacy.”
Stacy?
To say that Stacy Heathrow was a stylist, was like saying that Michael Phelps liked to play in the pool. The woman was a fashion goddess. A true icon. It was as if all of Manhattan had gotten together and compiled all their beauty standards into this one, bionic woman. A woman who somehow managed to encompass them all.
Tall, gorgeous, and with so little body fat I was amazed she wasn’t seasonally restricted indoors, she stopped the conversation of every room she walked into. Turned every head, unhinged every jaw. It was for this reason that Mitchell Hunter had hired her seven years ago.
That and the fact that she was one of the only women in the world who was impervious to his son’s devilish charms.
“Stacy—hey!” I yanked open the door, terrified to keep her waiting even a second longer than was necessary, “is everything okay? Did you and Lily have a fight?”
She swept inside, drenching me in a cloud of Chanel No. Five. Sure enough, despite the icy sidewalks, she was wearing a miniature cocktail dress paired with eight-inch heels. She had to bend down almost a foot to do her obligatory double-cheek-kiss.
“Lily—gosh no. Everything’s fine. She’s off in France or Spain or something—fighting against corporate interests with the rest of her little friends.”
(Lily’s ‘little friends’ happened to be a United Nations Human Rights Commission.)
“Oh, well that’s—”
“You know, this is actually a cute place.” Her ice blue eyes swept around appraisingly, as she shed her coat on a hook by the door. “Even if it is in Brooklyn...”
Knowing Stacy, that was as much of a compliment as I was ever going to get. At any rate, it was certainly as kind as she was biologically capable of.
“Uh...thanks.”
Now that she mentioned it, it was bizarre seeing her in a place like this. Was this her first time venturing over the bridge? I imagined her circuitry turned off once she left Manhattan. Like a broken robot, leaving her frozen and twitching on the far shore.