Laurie clicks on the Wikipedia link and starts to read his biography out loud. But I’m looking at the picture at the top right of the page. This one shows him in a tuxedo outside a building that looks like the Met. He looks like a movie star, only more handsome than any of the ones I can name. In all the pictures, he looks detached, remote even. Like a solitary man in a room full of strangers. I remember his smile from last night, and suddenly I feel privileged to have been on the receiving end of a familiarity he obviously denies the public.
Even if he thought I was a hooker.
“I can’t imagine why he would want to sleep with a hooker,” Laurie muses beside me. “No offense to you, obviously. You’re not a hooker.” She sticks her tongue out at me. “But he’s been linked with lots of attractive women. I’m sure he can have anyone he wants without having to pay for it.”
I remember asking him the same question. “Maybe he was being adventurous,” I tell Laurie. “After all, I was supposed to be a birthday present.”
Laurie sighs sadly. “Now I feel bad for your sake that you didn’t leave him your number. I mean look at that body! I’d pose as a hooker to hit that.”
“Jeez Laurie. Remember Brett? Your boyfriend, who loves you. He’s in the next room.”
She giggles. “If he hears me, he’ll probably challenge Mr. Rich and Handsome Hotel owner to a duel or something.” Going back to the Wikipedia article, she starts to read again. “He’s only twenty-nine,” she says. “Fancy being so rich so young.” She pauses. “His mother was Alicia Creighton, OMG!” She turns to me, eyes wide, then realizing that I have no idea who she’s talking about, she shakes her head, “The prima ballerina. She died in a car crash before I started dancing, but my ballet teacher practically worshiped her.”
“He must have been very young at the time,” I say with a small frown. I can’t imagine life without my mom, or even Aunt Jacie, even if they both drive me crazy at times.
Laurie reads on. “He supports various charities, and likes opera, ballet, and the theater.” She looks at me. “Rachel, I believe this man is exactly your type.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say, “It was only a one night stand. I’m never going to see him again.”
“Said Cinderella, but then she got drunk and ‘forgot’ her glass slipper,” Laurie does her thing where she winks continuously for a few seconds. “Seriously, if you had a chance to date him for real, you’d say no?”
I gaze at the Wikipedia picture. “I don’t… After Jack, I don’t need another guy to fixate on.”
“Jack again,” Laurie says wryly. “Forget about him Rach.” She looks back at the screen. “A man like this would reboot you with his hard drive.”
“Jesus!” I exclaim, shaking my head. I have no idea where Laurie picks up her references. The law firm where she works while attending her final year of law school is as old fashioned and staid as it is possible to be in twenty first century New York, so it’s definitely not at work.
I turn back to the screen. She’s right though. Landon could probably help to wipe Jack off my mind, but then I would likely fall for him. Who wouldn’t? And I’d be right back where I started, hung up on a man.
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell Laurie, pulling my eyes away from Landon’s face on the screen. “I don’t have his number, and he doesn’t have mine. We hooked up for a night, and as hot as it was, we’re never going to see each other again.”
LANDON COURT.
No matter how hard I try not to think about him. I can’t help myself. The memories, his name, everything just hovers at the borders of my mind, waiting for the slightest opportunity to come in and torment me with images from the night we spent together.
It’s been almost a week, but I’m still no closer to forgetting him than I was when he was right in front of me.
Landon Court. Even the name is sexy. And his voice... It makes me shiver to remember.
“Top ten travel apps,” Mark Willis, senior features editor, says musingly, looking at a sheet of paper on the table. It’s Thursday, and we’re in one of the small meeting rooms, going over last minute articles for next week’s publication on the website version of Gilt Trave
ler. “That one’s yours Chelsea.”
Chelsea, my fellow features associate, beams and makes a note on her writing pad. She’s startlingly beautiful, with cornflower blue eyes and waves upon waves of platinum blond hair. She always gets the simplest and most unchallenging articles, because of the combination of her wide-eyed sweetness, the fact that her father is a Kentucky billionaire oilman and rancher, and the southern accent she displays no desire to get rid of. She doesn’t mind. She uses all the resulting free time to work on her historical epic novel about the power-hungry noblemen of renaissance Italy, and the women who loved them.
The articles I write aren’t much better. My last assignment was to write about a cruise on the Colombia River. I interviewed Evelyn Hart, a former Broadway star who’d taken the cruise. It was a promotional article, sponsored by the cruise company. Evelyn Hart even admitted to me that she’d spent most of the trip holed up in her cabin, recuperating from her most recent plastic surgery. Luckily, her assistant, who’d experienced the cruise while her boss was hiding out in her cabin, had been able to provide some details.
I don’t really mind what I do. I’d been over the moon when I got a job at Gilt publications, even though I didn’t get my dream position in Gilt Review, the literary magazine where I’d hoped to work as an editor. There was just something about the organization and the atmosphere at Gilt that made it more than just magazines. Gilt was a lifestyle, embodied by so many of the tastemakers who worked here. From the enigmatic editor-in-chief of Gilt Style, who could make or break a fashion designer’s career with just a word, to Grace Conlin, the no-nonsense boss at American Homes.
Mark looks up at me. He’s a slightly built man with an earnest, serious face that sometimes makes me imagine that he’d rather be teaching journalism at some college than working at Gilt. “You have another promotional article, it’s a lounge called Insomnia, the newest lounge in Manhattan, apparently. You’ll write one of those ‘Top Ten Reasons to Visit Insomnia while in New York’ kind of articles. They requested for you, particularly.”
I frown. “Really?”
He shrugs. “Your prowess at putting out promotional articles isn’t going unnoticed, it would seem.”
The words could be interpreted as anything between a compliment and an insult. I purse my lips and make a note of the assignment, resigned to my fate. At least I’ll get to visit the ‘newest lounge in Manhattan.’
As soon as I leave the meeting, I call the manager of the Insomnia Lounge and make an appointment for later in the evening. She informs me that a VIP access will be delivered to my office so I wouldn’t have to wait in line.