I Heart Paris (2 page)

‘Thanks.’ I couldn’t really be offended, it was true. I’d already broken two glasses in a week. ‘Won’t Paris be super expensive though? I’m still broke from LA.’

Broke, but beautifully dressed, I thought, just not today.

‘You don’t need to worry about anything.’ Alex started to plait a section of my hair. ‘I’m hardly gonna ask you to come away with me and then expect you to pay for it.’

‘But I want to.’ I frowned. ‘I don’t want you to have to pay for everything. You know I’m really not that girl.’

‘I thought every girl was the “let my boyfriend take me to Paris for the weekend” kind of a girl,’ Alex said, pulling my hair. ‘Or is this just an excuse for you to weasel out of the trip the same way you’re trying to weasel out of moving in with me?’

‘I’m not weaseling out of anything,’ I pulled the loose plait out of his hands. ‘I do want to go to Paris, I just don’t want you to have to pay for me to go to Paris. I’ll find a way to make it work. And if it’s next weekend, we’ll be away for your birthday. Your big three-oh.’

Alex’s thirtieth birthday had been looming on the horizon for months and, while he was pretending to be super cool about it, the official line was that I wasn’t allowed to ‘make a big deal out of nothing’, which I had translated from boy-speak to mean ‘if I don’t acknowledge it, it won’t actually happen’. Typical boy-logic that could be applied to many, many of his actions.

‘Yeah, well, who doesn’t want to be in Paris for their birthday?’ he shrugged. ‘The record company want us to play a couple of warm-up shows, the festival is on Sunday, but I’ll keep Friday night free so we can do dinner or something. What could we do in New York that we can’t do just as good in Paris? Or even better?’

He kissed me lightly on the lips and waited for a response. Sneaky tactics, he knew I wasn’t at my full mental capacity when there was kissing involved.

‘I don’t know, I told you, I’ve never been to Paris,’ I managed to get in, between kisses. ‘When would we leave?’

‘Monday?’

Untangling his hands from my hair, I pulled away slightly trying to remember what day it was. That was the problem with working from home, I had absolutely no sense of time. ‘Today’s Tuesday, there’s too much to organize with work and the flat and, really, Alex, it’s only six days.’

‘It turns me on when you are so smart.’ He persisted with the kissing, moving on to my neck and pushing me backwards against the sofa. ‘There’s nothing to freak out about, Angela. You pack a bag, you tell work that you’re blogging from Paris for a week, you leave Vanessa in the apartment, we go to Paris. And if you’re gonna go all feminazi on me paying for your flight, you can make it my birthday present. Seriously, how many times do I have to tell you to stop over-thinking everything?’

‘At least once more,’ I said, giving up. I reached my arms up around his neck and shifted around on to the sofa as his hand moved up my thigh and under the thin cotton of my dress-slash-vest. ‘So you say you missed me this weekend.’

I felt his breath against my ear, giving me an altogether different case of goosebumps.

‘Like you wouldn’t believe.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘What is that noise?’ Alex groaned from underneath his covers.

‘My phone,’ I staggered out of bed the next morning and rolled into the living room, swearing and following the beeps. ‘Go back to sleep.’ I plunged an arm into the darkness that I hoped was the sofa until I felt my vibrating phone.

‘Yeah?’ I answered eloquently.

‘Hi, Angela?’

‘Muh?’ I mumbled, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. What time was it anyway?

‘Angela, it’s Cici? From the office? Were you still in bed, sleepyhead?’

There was no wonder I was shocked. If I had to name a New York nemesis, it would be Cici. She was my boss’s assistant at
The Look
, tall, skinny, loaded, desperately ‘On-Trend’ and, God bless her, she might hate me with a fiery passion, but at least I could rely on her to be consistent. Until today. Shit.

‘Erm, I was in the shower,’ I lied for absolutely no reason. I pulled the phone away from my ear. According to the clock flashing on bedside table, it was eight-thirty a.m. There was no conceivable reason why I wouldn’t still be in bed. Was there? Had I forgotten something? ‘What’s wrong, Cici?’

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ she giggled. Actually giggled. ‘Mary just asked that I give you a call to see if you could make an early lunch meeting today. Well, not really a meeting, more of a get-together. Twelve? Pastis?’

I almost dropped the phone. Mary Stein, my editor at Spencer Media, had never so much as walked me out of her office let alone taken me to lunch. ‘Yes?’ I asked as much as confirmed.

‘Awesome.’ Cici giggled. Again. ‘Oh, Mary said to let you know that Mr Spencer, as in Spencer Media, will be joining the two of you. So…and I just want you to know that I say this with love, you should dress up. You know, just don’t wear what you usually wear here. Or anything you’ve ever worn here. It’s kinda fancy.’

And there was the Cici we all knew and loved. Before I could even sigh in reply, she’d hung up. Sitting in my knickers on the cold laminate flooring, I stared out of the window at the city in front of me. Lunch with Mr Spencer as in Spencer Media? What was that supposed to mean? Surely it had to be good though, there was no way it could be a bad thing.

What was a bad thing, was the state of me, I thought, peering at my reflection in the window as I pushed myself back up. I couldn’t really show up at Pastis in a vest and flip-flops with just-shagged hair. Bedhead was great in theory, but in reality, it just looked as though I hadn’t showered.

‘Do I have any clothes here?’ I asked a sleepy-looking Alex, as I dropped to my hands and knees in the bedroom to search for a stray dress or errant smock under his bed.

‘Pretty sure you came in clothes,’ he mumbled, throwing his forearm over his eyes. ‘I know you lose shit all the time, but surely you haven’t managed to lose your clothes in a one-bedroom apartment overnight.’

‘You’re hilarious.’ I pulled the slightly worse for wear strappy dress from yesterday out from under the pile made up of Alex’s jeans and T-shirt. ‘Work just called, I have to meet Mary for a meeting at Pastis at lunch. I have to go home and get changed.’

‘If you lived here you wouldn’t have to,’ he replied without moving.

‘You make a fine point,’ I said, wriggling into my dress. Leaning over the bed, I gave him a quick kiss and a gentle slap around the head. ‘I’ll call you later.’

‘Yeah yeah,’ he smiled, still with his deep green eyes closed. ‘I know I’m nothing more than a booty call to you. You callous, British heartbreaker.’

I paused in the doorway, slipping my feet into my Havaianas, and watched him shuffle back under the thin white sheet on his bed. I was being stupid. Imagine waking up to that messy black bedhead every morning. And imagine not having to leg it back to Manhattan to use a decent brand of shampoo, conditioner of any kind, and find something to wear. How did boys keep their hair so soft without conditioner? Was the whole industry a sham? I shook my head and tried to concentrate. Now was not the time to worry about the effectiveness of Pantene.

‘You planning on going soon or are you just gonna stand there and freak me out all day?’ Alex asked from under his covers, making me jump.

‘Going,’ I said, grabbing my handbag from the sofa. ‘Gone.’

‘I’ll come over tonight? We’ll talk Paris?’ he called.

‘Tonight,’ I agreed, closing the door behind me. Shower and Pastis first. Alex and Paris later.

Putting myself together for my lunch meeting would have been a lot easier if I hadn’t started running through a million different terrifying scenarios in my head on the way home, during my shower, through every wardrobe change and while applying the few scraps of make-up that might not melt off on my way downtown to Pastis. I hailed a yellow cab outside the apartment in my LA-purchased dandelion yellow Phillip Lim dress and gold strappy flats, and tried not to think about all the reasons Mr Spencer might want to see me. Maybe he just wanted to meet the girl that had interviewed and inadvertently outed James Jacobs. Lots of people did. Mostly women, young and old, who wanted to give me a really, really filthy look and then ask me incredibly inappropriate questions about his boyfriend.

Or maybe he was a fan of my blog. My slightly random English-girl-living-in-New-York-rambling-on-about-her-everyday-life blog. Yes, that would definitely appeal to a sixty-something media magnate. Or perhaps he was a massive fan of the Shakira album review I’d just filed? Or perhaps he was a massive Shakira fan and didn’t like the album review? Surely not, I’d been super kind. No, there were just too many possibilities even to begin guessing.

I hoped and prayed all the way downtown that Cici would have booked us a table inside the restaurant, very near an air-conditioning unit, and not one of the see-and-be-seen tiny tables outside looking out on to the cobbles of the Meatpacking District, but as the cab swerved across the street, I could see Mary’s steel-grey bob sitting opposite an equally authoritative head of icy white hair. Not only was I the last to arrive, I was going to be stuck sweating like a pig in the street. Fantastic. Attempting to get out of the cab in a ladylike fashion and failing, I stumbled forwards, snagging the front of my sandal in the cobblestones. I caught myself at the last minute, stood up, straightened my skirt and gave Mary a half wave. I couldn’t see behind her massive black sunglasses, but I was fairly certain the smile she gave me in return did not make it all the way up to her eyes.

‘Angela Clark, this is Robert Spencer,’ she said, rising out of her chair as I hobbled around the table.

Mr Spencer held out his hand and gave me a very, very firm handshake. Ow.

‘Well, hello Angela,’ he said, gesturing for me to take a seat beside Mary. ‘I have to say, I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for a while. And please, call me Bob.’

I gave Mary a quick sideways look, but she was too busy spitting her water back into her glass to respond.

‘Thank you, uh, Bob,’ I replied, setting my handbag between my feet, underneath the table. ‘It’s really lovely to meet you. A real privilege. An honour, really.’ Mary kicked me sharply under the table before I could carry on. It seemed fair.

‘Not at all,’ he said smoothly, nodding to the waiter at his elbow to pour three large glasses of white wine. ‘I always like to take time out to meet our rising stars here at Spencer Media.’

He held up his glass. ‘To you, Angela.’

‘Thank you.’ I tried not to think about what could happen if I started drinking wine on a completely empty and panicky stomach and took a small sip.

‘So, Mr Spencer wanted to meet with you and talk about some new opportunities,’ Mary said, folding the menu with which she was clearly very familiar. ‘Things you might do outside the blog, outside
The Look
.’

‘He did?’ I asked, staring into the opaque glass of her sunnies. Was she serious?

‘Ladies,’ Mr Spencer folded up his own menu and placed it in front of him. ‘Shall we at least order before we talk business?’

‘Of course, Bob,’ Mary smiled tightly and sipped her wine. It was so strange. I’d never seen her outside her office and she did not look comfortable at all. In fact, nothing about this entire scenario was comfortable. I was starting to feel as if I were at dinner with my mum and dad while they were in the middle of a particularly nasty argument. And no one who’s ever argued with my mum would want that.

‘Have you eaten at Pastis before, Angela?’ Bob asked.

I shook my head and chugged my wine. I had a feeling that it was just going to be better to avoid talking whenever possible.

‘Then I’d recommend the scallops to start and then maybe the
pasta puttanesca
?’ Bob folded up his menu.

‘You know
pasta puttanesca
means whore’s pasta?’ I dropped in casually.

Mary coughed into her wine glass.

‘I mean, it’s what whores would make after they’d you know, worked.’ I looked from Mary to Bob and back to Mary again. Yep. Should have stuck with the no talking plan.

‘Perhaps the
moules frites
,’ Bob said quietly.

Before I could agree, someone’s mobile started to chirp. Bob pushed out his chair and took a tiny phone out of his jacket pocket. ‘So sorry ladies, that’s me. Excuse me for a moment?’

‘Of course, Bob,’ Mary said again, this time through gritted teeth as he left the table.

‘How is he even wearing a jacket?’ I asked, turning in my seat to watch him walk out into the street. My head span as I turned back around. ‘It is so bloody hot.’

‘If I were you, I wouldn’t drink quite so fast, Angela,’ Mary said, pouring me a glass of water. ‘This isn’t a social lunch.’

‘Arses. I was really, really hoping that it was,’ I reluctantly swapped my, wow, more than half empty wine glass for a tumbler of water. ‘So what is it?’

‘It’s a pain in my ass, is what it is.’ Mary drained her wine glass and returned my raised eyebrow with a look of her own. ‘I can hold my liquor, don’t you worry. This, Angela, is a “Big Deal For You”. Apparently one of Bob’s granddaughters is your “biggest fan” and she seems to think you should be doing more, I don’t know, “legitimate journalism” for some of Spencer’s other magazines like
Icon
or
Belle
.’

‘Legitimate journalism?’ I didn’t enjoy the number of times she had made air quotes during her last sentence. ‘
Belle
? They want me to write on a fashion magazine?’

‘Apparently so. I don’t know what though, so don’t ask me.’ She poured herself more wine. ‘I’m only here because I heard about this through Cici and called Bob to find out what the hell was going on.’

‘Hang on a minute, how did Cici hear?’ Now I was really confused.

‘Cici Spencer. She’s one of Bob’s granddaughters.’

I was sober in a heartbeat. ‘Of course she is.’

‘You don’t think I employ her for her charm, do you?’ Mary gave me an understanding grimace. ‘Bob and I are old friends.’

It took everything I had not to raise an eyebrow. Old friends. That old chestnut.