Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 147128 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 736(@200wpm)___ 589(@250wpm)___ 490(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147128 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 736(@200wpm)___ 589(@250wpm)___ 490(@300wpm)
‘And you believe she is telling the truth.’
I nodded, meeting his eyes again. ‘I’m a little like you. I had Gayle look into it and I think this host tried to pull the same thing on a few more B-list celebrities, but they didn’t take it to the press so it never got out like this. But Laurel is… a firecracker is a good word to describe her, I think, and she isn’t good at controlling her emotions that well. I’m okay with her sharing what happened on social media, but she handled it the wrong way and now she is the one who looks guilty. Which pisses me off. I don’t know what she was thinking, but she thought she could handle it herself and it just didn’t work out in her favour.’
‘Okay.’
‘Okay?’ I asked sceptically. He had just spent five minutes trying to get her to work with someone else and now it was just okay?
‘Yeah. If you believe her and if Gayle looked into the whole thing and thinks it’s legit, we’ll work with her together. Tell me why does she want you this badly again? Do you two know each other?’
‘I worked with one of her friends last year. She saw me around and liked how I handled the situation, I think. That’s what she told me when she got in touch with me anyway.’
‘I’m guessing it’ll be an ongoing thing and you were considering your long-term strategy? Does she have a problem with alcohol or was this a one-time thing? Does she actually listen when you’re talking?’
A little flustered, I cleared my throat. We were gonna work on this together? In close quarters? Just the two of us? ‘Yes, I mean no. Yes to the first thing, no to the second, yes to the last. She just got drunk when she was out with her friends for a bachelorette party and they pushed a camera in her face. And William, I heard that you prefer not to work with celebrities, it’s okay for me to handle her myself.’
‘It’s fine,’ he said after hesitating for a second. ‘I don’t want anyone in the team to work alone on something. I need your focus on the team as a whole. We’ll have a meeting with her when she gets back from… Spain?’
‘Yes. She has family there, she was ready to come back but I wanted her to lay low and get away for at least a few weeks just so she wouldn’t be hounded by the paparazzi. She is bound to say something that’ll end up hurting our work. She agreed, so she’ll be there for another week I think.’
‘That’s good. Something else will happen in the celebrity world by the time she’s back and the focus won’t be on her as much. We’ll have a meeting outside the office just in case she is seen coming in here. I don’t want everybody to see she is getting help before we actually talk to her. This is good. You and I will sit down and talk about what we can do a day or two before she gets here. You’re okay with that?’
Nodding, I smiled. He smiled. It was smiles all around. And maybe for the first time in two days it wasn’t so bad. Or at least so weird.
Eyeing the door, I started moving towards it while still facing William. ‘Okay, now that we decided on that, I’m going to head out then. Anything else I can help you with?’
‘No, I’m fine. We have the meeting with Michael Ashton at ten tomorrow, don’t for—’
‘I won’t forget.’
Before he could finish his words I was already out the door, half-running to my own office to pick up my stuff. Excited and nervous as never before.
6 William
It was finally the morning of the meeting we had scheduled with Michael Ashton. Ending my call with him, I walked into the conference room and found that Stan was already seated and busy working on his laptop, and Rick was hovering around the coffee station that was set up at the far end of the room against the windows. Our client had landed in New York without a problem, but he was stuck in traffic and would be late by ten or twenty minutes. I looked around, but couldn’t spot Trisha or Charlie anywhere.
‘Morning,’ I greeted the guys as their eyes landed on me and got two distracted chin lifts. ‘Charlie and Trisha are on their way, I assume?’
Without waiting for an answer, I headed straight for Rick and the coffee station, hoping it was a fresh brew. Rick mumbled his good mornings and moved out of my way.
‘Any reason why we needed to be here an hour early? I thought the meeting was at ten.’
I gave him an amused look. ‘Couldn’t get your beauty sleep?’