Scandalous (22 page)

“Does this mean I’m unfired?”

Bob Massey hugged her. “It certainly does. Congratulations, Sasha. You can go back to your desk now. We still have some other business to discuss.”

Twenty minutes later, Jackson stormed out of the boardroom with a face like thunder. He found Sasha by the water cooler and pulled her to one side.

“That must have been quite a blow job you gave Morgan Graham,” he hissed.

“How dare you!” said Sasha.

“Oh, cut the Pollyanna crap, would you,” Jackson shot back. “The rest of them might not see through you, but I do. Hiring you was the worst decision I ever made.”

“Why? Because now you have to interact with one woman who doesn’t think you’re God’s gift? Anyone else would be pleased I salvaged that deal.”

“It’s because of you that it needed salvaging!” snapped Jackson. “You get to keep your job. For now. But you will have no further part in this joint venture.”

“You can’t do that!” Sasha flushed with indignation. “I worked my ass off on that deal.”

“I can do whatever I like. This is
my
company,” said Jackson. “And
I
don’t want to work with you. The sooner you get that through that thick, feminist skull of yours the better.” He looked at her, and for a moment Sasha saw a flash of genuine pity in his eyes. “You know, whoever the guy was who did a number on you? He really screwed you up.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Sasha blushed.

“Sure you do,” said Jackson. “Some guy broke your heart and you’ve never gotten over it. Well guess what, sweetheart?
It wasn’t me.
Maybe if you pulled your pretty head out of your ass sometime, you’d realize that.”

After he walked away, Sasha stood by the water cooler, shaking.

She ought to feel happy. Morgan Graham had caved,
without
her having to sleep with him. She would keep her job. She would keep her bonus. But Jackson’s words stuck in her heart like a switchblade. “
Some guy broke your heart and you’ve never gotten over it.
”

He thinks I’m a victim.

Jackson’s anger she could take. In some twisted way, she even enjoyed it. But his pity? That was unbearable. Even more unbearable was the fact that he was right. Everything came back to Theo Dexter in the end. Until she made Theo suffer as she had suffered, she would never be able to move on. But the truth was she still had no idea how to do it.

Sasha was lost.

And Jackson Dupree knew it.

“A
ND
EASE
FORWARD
into downward dog.”

The yoga teacher’s voice wafted mellifluously through the light-filled room. Theresa Dexter stuck her bottom in the air and thought that “ease” was probably not the word she would have chosen. Yoga was about as much fun as having root canal work. She couldn’t understand why everyone kept smiling.

“Breathe. Find your center.”

My center. Presumably that’s somewhere under all the rolling layers of fat?

It was the Make-A-Wish ball that had prompted Theresa to sign up for the torturous Ashtanga class at Maha Yoga in Brentwood. She’d left the house that night feeling like a million dollars, then realized that, even at her best, she was still an appalling blubbery heifer compared to every other woman in Los Angeles. Her depression was compounded by a visit to Dr. Yeardly’s office the following morning. Stanford Yeardly was
the
top fertility specialist in Beverly Hills, and he’d spoken to Theresa sharply about what he called her “lifestyle choices.” She could hear his disapproving, headmasterly voice now as she contorted her limbs into the even more torturous plough pose.

“I’m struggling to understand why anyone who’s serious about having a baby is still drinking,” he looked down at his notes, “two to three drinks
a day
, and getting zero exercise.”

Because they’re homesick, lonely, and depressed, their husband’s too busy fucking around to come home at night, and if it weren’t for the double gin and tonic at six o’clock, they’d probably have jumped out of a window two years ago?
thought Theresa. Out loud she mumbled something about work pressure and promised to join a gym. Not that it mattered. Since starting yoga again four weeks ago, Theo hadn’t come near her sexually. Short of an immaculate conception, there would be no baby, however many early nights she had or wheatgrass shots she gagged on.

“Hold on to that strength now as we move into plank pose.”

Theresa’s upper arms began to shake. She could feel a collective sneer from the limber, flat-bellied blondes all around her.
It’s not just for a baby. It’s for Theo. And for me. If I don’t get a grip soon I’ll lose him.

Tomorrow morning Theo was leaving for a promotional tour in Asia. He’d be gone for almost three weeks, signing books, making public appearances, and trying to sell
Dexter’s Universe
’s third season to all the major networks in China and Singapore. To Theresa’s utter amazement and joy, he was also going to visit two orphanages in Singapore, having done a complete about-face on the idea of adoption.

“Maybe we should consider it,” he said one morning at breakfast, out of the blue, pouring skimmed milk over a half bowl of Kashi Go Lean cereal. Theresa almost choked on her bacon sandwich.

“Really?”

“Sure. Ed thinks I need to soften my image, particularly in the Far East. I mean, I wouldn’t want to go crazy and adopt an entire Benetton advertisement. But one kid…you could cope with one kid, couldn’t you?”

It wasn’t exactly the romantic outpouring of paternal love Theresa had fantasized about. But she still danced onto campus that morning.
He wants a child! He wants a child with me!
Surely Theo wouldn’t have brought up adoption if he were contemplating divorce? It wasn’t too late after all.

The Asia tour was three weeks long. If she went on a properly hard-core crash diet, laid off the booze and went to yoga
every single day
, Theresa reckoned she could lose fifteen pounds in that time and tone herself up. By the time Theo came home she’d be a new woman. He would have met an orphan child and fallen in love. Harry Meister’s words still rang in Theresa’s ears:
Get pregnant. Give him a family and he’ll soon settle down.
She couldn’t get pregnant. But she could give Theo a family.
When he sees what a loving, devoted mother I’ll be, he’ll fall in love with me all over again.

Dita Andreas looked at the clock on her dashboard:
12:55 p.m.
She should have been on set over an hour ago. Carl Sams, the director of
Lies
, Dita’s latest blockbuster (not to mention her sometime lover), would be spitting teeth. But that was no bad thing. Recently, Carl seemed to have gotten it into his head that he was Dita’s boss. Dita checked her flawless makeup in the rearview mirror of her vintage Aston Martin and thought,
I’m the star of this picture. It’s about time somebody reminded Mr. Sams of that fact.

Not that today was about Carl. Carl Sams was an afterthought. Even more of an afterthought than Brett Graham, Dita’s soon-to-be-ex-husband and the director of her last film,
Heaven’s Gate. Note to self
, thought Dita,
stop sleeping with all your directors. Or at least stop marrying them.
Dita’s passion for matrimony was proving to be one of her more expensive hobbies. Her divorce attorney, Lorna McIntyre, had become one of her
closest friends. Lorna had told her in no uncertain terms that her divorce from Brett would be the most costly yet. “He’ll go for the house, Deets. You do realize that?”

“I don’t care.” Dita shrugged. “He can have it. All I want is my freedom.”

It was unlike her to be so devil-may-care, at least when it came to money. Born to working-class parents in Detroit, the youngest of four children and the only daughter, Dita Andreas knew what it meant to be poor. Sure, she had always had a roof over her head and food on the table. But there were never any luxuries in the Andreas household. No brand-name sneakers, no hired limos on prom night, no out-of-state vacations. No vacations at all. Dita’s parents were good people who worked their fingers to the bone to provide for their kids. Dita loved them but did not understand their choices, especially her mother’s.

“But you’re beautiful, Mom,” Dita used to tell her, watching her mother brushing her hair before bed. “You could have married anyone. A millionaire or a rock star. You could have gotten out of here.”

It was true. With her Swedish blonde hair, endless legs, and full, sensual mouth, Mimi Andreas was the prettiest girl at every school she’d ever been to. She could easily have married or modeled her way out of Motor City. But Mimi was a romantic. One smile from Georgious Andreas, Dita’s charming car mechanic father, and it was all over.

“Why would I want to marry a rock star, baby? Your dad’s worth a hundred Mick Jaggers to me. Besides, where you live is just geography. And you can’t measure happiness in dollars and cents. You’ll learn that as you get older, Dita.”

Dita hadn’t learned it. In fact she’d learned the opposite. Geography was important. Who wanted to waste their life in Detroit, a dying city full of factories and despair, whose very name sounded like a
grind
, when they could choose to live in Malibu or Bel Air or Beverly Hills? And why would anyone
choose to love a poor man when there were so many rich men out there to love?
Too
many, Dita sometimes thought. At fifteen Dita signed her first modeling contract, courtesy of a married, forty-two-year-old agency boss named Nick Capri. Nick Capri was obsessed with the young and (he thought) innocent Dita, moving her into an apartment downtown and eventually leaving his wife for her on Dita’s eighteenth birthday. By then Dita was already earning a seven-figure salary as the face of Lancôme’s teen makeup line. A few months later, Nick was showing her off to one of his Hollywood friends at a party, a producer named Mike Reynolds, and boasting about how incredible his teenage girlfriend was in bed. Dita celebrated her nineteenth birthday in Los Angeles, in Mike Reynolds’s bed. She got her first leading role in a movie the next morning and never looked back.

But as far as Dita Andreas had run from her past, there were pieces of it that she still carried with her. She would never forget what it felt like to be poor and anonymous. Unlike most of the leading box-office actresses of her generation, Dita had no interest in making the occasional art-house movie, still less in taking a prestigious but low-paid role on Broadway. Not only did she never lower her fees on a movie, no matter how awesome the director, but she always clawed herself a piece of the action on merchandising as well, milking the studios she worked for every last possible cent. If Dita Andreas showed up at a party or a club opening, the chances were she’d been paid to be there. Her avarice and business acumen were matched only by her extortionate spending. The girl who’d gone to grade school parties in Target jeans and Kmart sneakers now dropped more on designer clothes in a week than her parents spent on food and rent in a year. Dita’s closet was full of Marc Jacobs originals and exquisite vintage Chanel pieces, still with their price tags attached. She spent not for the pleasure of owning things but for the thrill of buying them. With every purchase her craving intensified, like a junkie coming down after a hit.

As much as she spent on herself, Dita Andreas was notoriously mean when it came to spending on others: her staff, her friends, even her family. In the case of her latest divorce, however, she’d thrown caution to the wind. Brett could take whatever he wanted, just as long as he disappeared. All Dita cared about was being with Theo.

Theo Dexter was unlike any of Dita’s previous lovers. For one thing, he was a genius. Dita had always been more of a six-pack-abs and eight-figure-bank-balance girl than an IQ whore, but Theo had it all: fame, looks, money,
and
brains.
I’m maturing
, Dita thought with a smile.
I’ve outgrown Brett and his shallow aspirations. Brett Graham wants to change Hollywood. Theodore Dexter wants to change the universe.

But it wasn’t only Theo’s intelligence that attracted her. It was his arrogance. In Theo Dexter, Dita Andreas had found something she had come to believe did not exist in nature: a human being more ambitious, more self-obsessed than she was. Dita was used to holding all the cards in her relationships and having the men in her life do all the running. Being with Theo made her realize how
bored
she’d become of being the goddess. For the first time in her life, she’d found a man who wasn’t prepared to jump when she said jump. Yes, Theo adored her; yes, he worshipped her. But when Dita had asked him to come on vacation with her he’d point-blank refused.