Chapter Two
Justine slung down her purse and slammed her mother’s front door. Thea, busy boxing up Better Homes & Gardens from the seventies, quirked an eyebrow.
“Mom, tell me I’m crazy.”
Thea narrowed her eyes and looked Justine over. “Your skin is dry.” She went back to the magazines.
“Seriously.” Justine followed her mother’s trail of boxes and newspapers into the blue parlor. “Dad counter-offered me!”
Thea pursed her lips and nodded, clearly unsurprised.
“See, you think it’s a bad idea to even consider his counter-offer.”
“This is not my judgment face. This is my you-should-do-what-you-think-is-best face.”
Justine flopped down on the thirty-year-old couch. Covered in blue silk damask, it looked as worn as she was right now. “Well, Dad wore his judgment face today.” Justine took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, like her therapist had taught her. “Did you move the couch?”
“Yes. Listen, I’m saying upfront, no matter what he offered you, I don’t want you doing this for me. So, you told him about the job?”
“I told him. And he talked to me in his wrath of God voice and reminded me of everything I’ve ever done wrong.”
Her mother flipped her hands in the air and went back to the magazines. “He’s your father. He said he thinks you’re crazy?”
“I think I’m crazy. Because—”
“Help me with the crystal, sweetpea.”
Justine huffed at the interruption then joined her mother. Together, they wrapped the glasses in newspaper, taped the ends, and placed them in a cardboard box. “Because he offered me a job. Even after the judging part.” Justine paused to scowl at the glass. “He offered me a job.”
“And why are you crazy?”
“Because I’m considering it.”
“What kind of job?”
“Producer. Like his job. Not his job, a producer on a talk show.”
“Hmm.” That’s all her mother had to offer. She was too busy boxing up all this old junk to comment.
Justine, distracted by her own problems, took a closer look around the room. No pictures hung on the wall. None of those old Waterford crystal goblets her grandmother had collected on the shelves. “Why are we packing?”
“They’re taking my home in a week.”
The wrongness of the bare walls and shelves shook Justine. This room, this house never changed. “I told you. I’ll fix this.”
Thea picked up the box of glasses and carried it into the kitchen. Justine followed, darting glances into other rooms filled with waiting boxes.
“I don’t want you to. I want you to let me stay with you. Until I get on my feet. I’m starting a business.”
“I know. That’s very proactive.” At least this room remained untouched. The cast iron skillet her grandmother had brought with her when they moved north to be closer to Thea still hung on its hook by the stove. “What kind of business, anyway?”
“A school.” Thea poured them both coffee and handed Justine a mug with an eager grin.
Did the coffee, just the way she liked it, mean more bad news? She couldn’t let herself focus on that, so instead she said, “You’re not a teacher, Mom.”
“Some of my friends, they have granddaughters. Don’t look at me that way. I’m not implying that you’re—”
“A childless freak?” Justine finished her mother’s sentence and hopped up onto the counter where she’d once learned how to roll out dough for pies.
“Exactly. But some of my friends, they do have granddaughters. They want to compete in pageants and who better qualified to teach them how to do that than a former Miss Beauty America?”
“Um…no one.” Justine forced a smile and tried to be the essence of neutrality. “No one.”
“You’re making a judgmental face.”
“No. This is my…” Justine lowered her eyebrows back to a normal level and offered Thea a small smile, just enough to get rid of the face. “My good-for-you face.”
“Your good-for-you face needs work.”
“I know.” Justine hated that she couldn’t shut up and be supportive. “A pageant school seems so negative. Like you’re making clones.”
Her mother shrugged. She’d been competing, singing and dancing, smiling and waving, dazzling everyone tasked with judging girls with her big hair and bright smiles since she could walk.
“Mom, ignore me. Life handed you lemons and you’re making lemonade. We’re both making lemonade. We rock, frankly.”
Thea chuckled, and her eyes lit up. “I have champagne.”
“We don’t need champagne.” Justine held up her mug. “We have coffee.”
Her mother ignored her and began opening cabinets and drawers until she held up a box of matches. “We’re starting over, baby. We need luck. New, better luck.”
“Not the secret luck thing.”
“It’s not a secret luck thing, Justine. Secret…that makes it sound silly. It’s the Mysterious Fortune Conversion Ceremony.”
Mustering every ounce of sternness she could manage after this terrible, long day, Justine held up both hands and came up with a weak, “No.”
“Yes. We need it.”
“We don’t. We’re making our own luck.”
“Go find some paper.”
“I hate the secret…” At Thea’s withering stare, Justine started over. “The Mysterious Fortune Conversion Ceremony.”
“This is how I was crowned Miss Beauty America.”
“I know.”
“Paper. Go.”
Justine slid off the counter and pulled a pad and pen from the cabinet by the phone. It took a little more digging through old pens and letters to find the scissors, and by the time she’d turned around, Thea had poured two glasses of champagne.
Every time something had gone wrong in her mom’s life, she’d done this ridiculous thing. Justine could remember being eight years old and taking a small sip of the champagne while her mother lit a fire as tears streamed down her face. What had the crisis been that year? Justine couldn’t even remember. There had been too damn many.
Outside on the back terrace, they wrote down their goals in silence. Justine considered writing something silly, like become Miss Beauty America, but she held herself back. What if the damned thing worked? That would so be her luck. She settled on simply be happy.
They both folded up their papers and dropped them into the fire pit her Nana had installed, already full of wood placed in a crisscross fashion. In unison, they sipped the champagne, and then Thea leaned at the waist, flipping her hair forward, exposing the nape of her neck. Justine snipped off a tiny lock of hair and dropped it into the pit.
Thea stood up and looked at Justine expectantly. Justine fought the strong urge to roll her eyes and leaned down, hands on her knees while Thea clipped a piece of her hair.
Paper and hair in the pit, they took another swig of the champagne. “At least there’s no chanting.”
Thea ignored her remark and dropped the match. The paper curled into flame. She tossed some kindling into the pit, and the fire picked up. Smoky scents of sulfur hung in the air. They sat, side by side, on the swing. Thea was the first to break the silence. “Are you taking the job?”
“Maybe.”
“Don’t do this for me.” Watching her out of the corner of her eye, Thea asked, “What else?”
The fire danced, the hair and paper long gone. “What else what?”
“He’s Daniel, and he has to control everything. Everything. What are the conditions?”
“I have a week to try the job, make up my mind, which is fair. He’ll pay off the mortgage if I do the week, so that helps. After that, if I quit…” she paused, letting the weight of it settle on her as she said it out loud, “I lose my inheritance. Not the money, we didn’t even talk about that—except I told him I didn’t care. I will lose his stake in the company. Also, he’d be satisfied if I married Travis.”
Her mother sputtered her champagne, but in a very ladylike manner, as she did everything. “Travis? Is he mad? You hate Travis.”
“I don’t think he ever received that memo.”
“Oh, your father. His head is like…like a block of cement. And his ego? His ego is bigger than the Grand Canyon.”
“I know.” If there was a way to understand the way her father’s mind worked, she’d never found it.
“This is why we got divorced.”
“This is why I don’t even accept birthday gifts from the man. So, now I’m crazy, right?”
“You do what you need to do. I’m not telling you what you should do, but if you do this, yes, crazy thing, do it for you. It’s your choice.”
“I get it, Mom.” Fine, her mom didn’t want her doing this for her. But Justine had to save the house. This wasn’t about a choice; it was about what had to be done.
“So, are you?”
“Maybe. Probably. It’s just a week, right? I’ll call the Tattle TV people and tell them I need another week to decide. No big deal.”
No big deal. Her life was in tatters. Her mother was a week from being homeless, and she could fix it. She had to do something, right?
She could protect her mom’s house, the only real home she’d ever known, by accepting her father’s terms. She could maybe even have her chance to work at Montgomery-Chase to create something worthwhile. Except, her dad was right. She had been a quitter. Ignoring everything else, the home, hot talk-show guy, being in the same building as Travis, did she actually believe enough in herself to take it on? The fire burned, and Justine wondered.
****
Justine pulled her jacket together at her waist and crossed her arms while she looked at her father’s building. Somewhere, up on the top floor, he waited for her.
And here she was stalling because it was decision time.
Instead of entering, she crossed the street, bought a coffee, and sat on a bench to think. The warmth of the cup in her hands, the bitter scent, helped her think. It grounded her in the moment.
She glared at the brown paper cup in her hand. She needed a decision here. Even she was tired of waiting for herself. And wasn’t that the problem, she wondered, inhaling the pungent brew.
This wasn’t simply about her mother’s home, not anymore. She’d made a life without her father’s money and, consequently, without his input. She’d been content enough, in her tiny apartment with her enormous wardrobe, selling the pieces she wore for ten times their value because people saw her in them on the front page of tabloids. But lately she needed a purpose, to work for something that mattered.
Justine tossed the half-drunk coffee into a green canister, tucked her hands in her pockets, and crossed the street. She repeated the words in the elevator. The mirrored images confirmed it, the Justines on all sides agreed. “I need more.”
Monique looked up with a smile when Justine approached. “Hi, honey. He’s expecting you.”
“Of course he is.” She made her way over and knocked with hesitation. It seemed like an eternity before he opened the door and stepped aside. “Come in.”
Justine took a seat at the desk. They faced each other and, before she could forget that she needed more, she spat it all out. “All right, one week. After that, I can walk away, if I want.”
“But if you stay?”
“If I stay, then…I see it through. And you change your will.” She lifted her chin with resolution. She could do this.
He sat back. “And if you quit?”
“I have no intention of quitting.”
“Nobody ever plans on quitting.”
“What do you want me to say?” The tension in the room was rising again, and an argument seemed unavoidable. She looked past him, out the window, and tried to slow down her breathing. “We both know what happens if I quit.”
“Will you reacquaint yourself with Travis, while you’re here?”
Ah, there it was, his end-game. “Not a chance.”
“Justine, he loves you.”
“That’s creepy.” Justine shuddered at the very idea of Travis harboring feelings toward her. “We broke up right after I got the right to vote.”
“Mature love can last a lifetime.”
“You’re messing with me, right?” She stood up, exhaled, and tried to count to ten. God, he could be so condescending. “I was in love, once. But you paid him to leave me, because no one could be good enough for your daughter, of pure enough motives, of significantly good breeding, besides Travis. So maybe that wasn’t love.” She crossed to the window and looked down on her little bench, so far away now. “And you got divorced, often, so maybe you’ve never been in love, either. Maybe neither of us has ever been in love, and Travis is the only one who knows what true love is.”
Daniel sighed and neither of them spoke until she turned around. He said, “Maybe I’ve made mistakes with you. I don’t make a habit of second-guessing myself.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“But I hope you’ll be happy, I want you to be happy. It’s all I’ve—”
“Dad, don’t. Just don’t.” Justine abandoned her window, all hope of avoiding a fight gone, and slapped a hand down on the desk. “I resent that you still feel the need to control me. I’m trying hard to accept that if I want to save the house I grew up in, my mother’s home, if I want this opportunity, I have to allow you a little more leverage in my life. You, being who you are, this is how you choose to use that. But let’s not pretend that you being a control freak is about me.”
Daniel steepled his fingers together through her monologue, letting his lips rest against them. Maybe that was the only way he knew how to keep quiet. “Fine. But let’s also not pretend that this isn’t as much about your mother’s irresponsibility. Or that you couldn’t have had more for yourself if you’d settled down, or finished college”—he ticked the points off on his fingers—“or let me help you, ever, or finished anything you started.”
Like a slap in her face, his words struck the part of her that cried out for change. Had everyone but her realized this void of more-ness? “You know, we should not have this discussion. We’re clear on this, right? Let’s move forward.”
“That seems to work best for us.”
“So, what is my salary?” Justine asked.
“I told you, whatever that ridiculous network offered you.”
“Mmm, no. I want whatever the other guy makes.”
“What other guy?”
“Mr. Sawyer. I want the same.”
“He’s been with me for over ten years, baby.”
Justine cocked an eyebrow. She detested when he called her that because it wasn’t ‘baby,’ like child-of-my-loins, it was baby, as in you’re-still-an-infant. “And yet we have the same job, and we’ll be doing the same thing. Plus, he won’t have to be sexually harassed by his ex.”
Her father consented with a shrug. “Fine, I’ll let personnel know.”
Justine narrowed her eyes at him. That had been far too easy. “You don’t think I can do this.”
“I wouldn’t have offered otherwise.”
“Of course you would have. You don’t think I will. You think that it won’t matter how much I earn, because I won’t be here long enough for it to make a dent.”
“We’ve had our share of arguments for the day. I don’t have the energy to keep up with you. Maybe I do think that. Prove me wrong.”
“I will.”
“Wonderful.” He picked up the phone and dialed. “Sawyer? Could you step into my office?”
She turned toward the door, eager to find out if the attraction she’d experienced yesterday had been a fluke. Did she just need sex to get out her anger and aggression with the first hot guy she met? Or was there a deeper attraction?
The door opened, and there was her new co-worker. He wore a black tailored suit like a well-dressed outlaw. Her brain took a vacation, hand going out to him on autopilot. “Hi. I’m Justine.”
He ignored her hand. “We met yesterday.”
“I don’t think we spoke. And as meetings go, I wasn’t at my best.”
“Right. But we did meet.”
“I suppose so.” She withdrew her hand. It was probably for the best that she’d given him such a bad impression. They needed to work together, but she didn’t need any encouragement here. If he was a complete ass, maybe her lust would fade.
Her father was already flipping through folders on his desk, ignoring the two of them. Sawyer sat down in the other chair and leaned back.
Justine followed his lead. After a moment, she said, “Daddy?”
“Mmm? Just a minute.” He handed a folder across the desk to Sawyer. Sawyer examined it with a frown.
Justine laid a hand over her stomach to settle the nerves jangling inside her. Doing her best to ignore them, she waited and looked around the room in discomfort. “So, I’m working with you now.”
Not turning his head, Sawyer took a snotty pause, drawing in a deep breath and blinking. “I got the highlights yesterday.”
“Fabulous.” And so she began her new career.