By Design (27 page)

“Emmaline Helen Brewster, what did you do?” Trish demanded.

Emmie wasn’t sure it was safe—structurally or health-wise—to sit on the caved-in, stained mattress, but she was beyond caring. She plopped down. Way down. “I was trying to be mean.”

“To?”

“To Graham.”

“What?”

Emmie flicked Graham’s note at Trish, who plucked it out of her friend’s fingers and read it. “You were mean to him and he got back at you by sending you this? Doesn’t seem like him.”

“No.” She sighed. “He never even saw it.
I
bought it because he asked me to choose his bedroom furniture. I had something really nice picked out—an Eastlake tall-post bed, dressers with tiger maple inlay on the drawers, washstand with a marble shelf, rocking chair, the whole shebang. Gorgeous stuff. And then I saw him with Juliet and I just . . . lost it. So I switched the nice stuff with the worst thing I could find in Rod’s loft. But it turned out he really intended to give it to me the entire time—as a housewarming present.”

Trish let out a stunned grunt and sat beside her friend. “Wow.”

“Yeah, wow.”

“Why did you let them bring it into the house?”

“Because I totally deserve it. I deserve to stare at this nasty shit for the rest of my life, as a reminder that I’m a jealous, petty, horrible person, and Graham . . .” She couldn’t finish her sentence.

“Oh, you are not. And—wait. You saw him with Juliet? Are you sure?”

Emmie looked down at her lap and nodded. “I saw them outside Juliet’s shop. I was walking back from Rod’s, and I saw them from a distance. They didn’t see me. They hugged and . . .” Her heart ached all over again as she related what she saw. She groaned. “I’m an idiot. I blew it. If I had stood by him while he tried to help her, we might still be . . . But instead I just pushed them back together.”

“Hey,” Trish said, putting her arm around her. “No. That’s not true. You were right—he was being stupid, letting her control him, running off to her every time she whined, putting her first instead of you. That was no way to start a relationship.”

“But if I had waited . . . just a little longer . . . maybe he would have gotten rid of her.”

“Or maybe not.”

“Ultimatums are stupid things. They never get you what you want.”

“Pssht. Sometimes they’re necessary. It’s how Rick got me to marry him.” Trish rested her chin on the top of Emmie’s head.

“What?”

“Oh, yeah, don’t you remember? I was dragging my heels something fierce. He had to give me a deadline. If he didn’t, I’d probably still be waffling about it.”

Emmie laughed a little. “Twelve years later?”

“Maybe so.”

“No. That wouldn’t have happened. Because you, Patricia Ann Campo, are one smart cookie. I envy you so much; you always make the right decisions.”

Trish shook her head ruefully. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” she growled.

Something in her tone made Emmie forget her troubles for a moment. She looked her friend in the eye and demanded, “What is it?”

Trish shook it off. “Nothing. Come on, let’s get the groceries out of the car—and get away from this ridiculous furniture. And what’s that weird smell, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” Emmie said, following her out of the room. “I think it’s thirty-year-old Polo.”

Despite her long weekend, Emmie overslept on Monday morning. By a lot. When her eyes focused enough to read the time on her new alarm clock, she jumped out of bed in a panic. The last thing she needed was to piss Wilma off even more.

But it seemed she had. The very second the front door bell jangled as she entered, her boss stalked out of his inner sanctum and struck a pose, arms crossed, a piece of paper in his hand. Not good. Not good at all.

Emmie glanced his way, then tried to act nonchalant as she hung up her coat. “Hi, John,” she said, crossing to her desk. She busied herself with turning her computer on so she wouldn’t have to look at him while she recited the lie she had concocted on the way over. “Sorry I didn’t call—I was, you know . . . out getting . . .” And then she trailed off as the day’s calendar loaded. There it was, already shaded out, as the time had passed: the meeting with Scrapbooking Wife and Plasma TV Guy.

Crap. Crappity crap, crap, crap.
Was it that day already? On the one hand, she was glad she had missed it; on the other, apparently it hadn’t gone well—Wilma’s gargoyle grimace communicated as much.

Her boss held his pose in the middle of the room. She tried to keep her attention on her computer screen as if nothing was wrong, but that wasn’t going to work. She decided to dive in and get it over with. “How was the meeting with the Hudsons?”

Bingo. Wilma waved the piece of paper sharply, slicing the air with its edge. “Would you care to tell me what
this
is all about, Emmaline?”

“I would if I knew what it was,” she said disingenuously. He
couldn’t
have her drawing. She had made it disappear—took it out of her work bag and hid it in her old bedroom at her dad’s. So what was he holding?

Wilma got just close enough to slam it down on her desk, then stepped back as though she might take a swing at him. Somewhere in the back of her mind it occurred to Emmie that he might be frightened of her. But she didn’t have a chance to examine the thought, because her attention was arrested by the piece of paper before her. It
was
her concept for the Hudsons’ remodel, only a little smaller, and black-and-white. A photocopy.

She looked up at her boss; his nostrils were pinched, as were his lips, and he was breathing heavily. She asked carefully, “Where did you get this?” But she knew. At the end of her disastrous meeting with the Hudsons, she’d left them alone long enough for Scrapbooking Wife to run her drawing through the copier while she was mucking about in the kitchenette. That woman didn’t trust Emmie to leave the drawing in their file (well, she had been right about that), so she had made a backup.

Wilma said, “Mrs. Hudson said she wanted
this design
.” He gestured at it with disgust. “Which she thought
I
had created. I assured her I had done no such thing, but she insisted the original had been in their file,
you
told them that it had been done for someone else, and you were trying to get more money out of them by acting reluctant to commit to this design unless they paid extra.”

Emmie’s jaw dropped. “John . . . no. I swear—”

“Are you contradicting a client, Emmaline?”

“You bet I am!”

“I certainly didn’t draw this. So that leaves you. Now, did you push your design on the Hudsons? Or have you been moonlighting, working for one of their neighbors?” he demanded.

Emmie rubbed her forehead. He was expecting her to confess to one false scenario or the other, but all she said was, “No.”

Emmie felt queasy. “I did not draw this for the Hudsons. Or anyone else. I did it for
myself
.”

That stopped Wilma in his tracks. It was clear from the expression on his face that he didn’t understand that in the slightest.

“I
do
have ideas, you know, John. In this case, after our meeting with the Hudsons, I put them down on paper, just to get them out.”

“And then you waited until I was out of town, called them for a meeting, and proposed your concept over mine.”

“No,”
Emmie insisted again. “
They
called and wanted . . .” She couldn’t continue. She couldn’t stand there and explain what had happened that morning. Wilma wouldn’t believe it. Hell,
she
couldn’t believe it, and she had been there. So instead, she said, “I never meant for them to see it.”

“It’s terrible,” he sniffed. “Amateurish. A five-year-old could do better.”

Emmie knew he was trying to get a rise out of her, and she had to admit that it was working. She forced herself to take a breath. “What did you tell the Hudsons?”

He snapped, “I told them that if this is the sort of thing they want, they can take their business elsewhere. I recommended they take a decorating class at Home Depot and stop wasting my time.”

“Wow,”
she marveled.

“Emmaline,” he said in a clipped voice, “your excuse is unacceptable. And unbelievable. I cannot trust that you will not try to influence another client in the future, thereby jeopardizing my business and my reputation. Collect your things. You’re fired.”

Wilma couldn’t look at her, as though he were ashamed of his decision. But he said it anyway. And when he was through, he marched back to his office, tossing over his shoulder, “I want you out of here in ten minutes.”

 

“How do you feel?”

“. . . I’m not sure.”

Fifteen minutes of quiet later, Trish ventured, “How about now?”

“Kinda numb.”

Half an hour of tea drinking later, Trish tried again. “Now?”

“You know, I’m a little hungry, actually.”

“There we go. I’ll make you a sandwich.” Trish got up from the dining room table to poke around in the fridge.

“Can you make some pudding, too?” Emmie called.

“Honey, after what you’ve put up with for the past four years—”

“Nearly five.”

“—nearly five years, I’ll make you a vat of pudding so big you can swim in it.”

Over the sound of Trish clattering around in the kitchen, she called, “Shouldn’t I be more . . . I don’t know . . . devastated?”

“Curled in a fetal position, wondering where your next meal is going to come from?”

“Something like that. Although I know I can always show up at your house for dinner every night.”

“Absolutely you can.”

“So how come I’m not blubbering and frantically trying to figure out what to say to Wilma to convince him to give me my job back?”

“Because, first of all, your tears reservoir has gone dry because of Graham.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“Second, you should have told Wilma to stuff it years ago,” Trish declared, setting a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on honey wheat in front of her. “Getting fired is the best thing that could have happened to you. Now you can do whatever you want.”

Emmie considered for a moment. “I suppose I could go back to work at Michael’s,” she said, thinking of her first post-college job at a craft store, back when she didn’t know what to do with her design degree except sell yarn and hope to work her way up to the framing department.

“Er . . . no.” Trish took the plastic clip off a half-full bag of potato chips. “I think you’re beyond that, don’t you?”

Emmie shrugged. “Somebody’s gotta restock the bead racks.”

“And what about that little conversation we had, about going into business for yourself?”

“Maybe I can return all my new appliances for the cash,” Emmie mused, ignoring her friend.

“Honestly, woman!”

Emmie’s phone rang from deep in the pocket of her coat, which was draped across the end of Trish’s sofa. Emmie got up, dug out her phone, and turned it off. Then she calmly went back to eating her lunch.

“Hey, what if that was Wilma—he’s seen the error of his ways and wants to beg you to come back to work?” Trish grinned.

Emmie shrugged. “I didn’t look. Not interested.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Well, now we’re making progress.”

But Emmie’s curiosity got the better of her. Before she pulled out of Trish’s driveway to head home, she put in her earpiece, fired up her voice mail, and listened to her messages as she started down the road. Both were from Graham, which made her catch her breath.

The first was, “Emmie? It’s Graham. I was just, uh, calling to see . . . how you’re doing, if you’d slain your dragon. Or whatever. Hope you’re all right. Please give me a call, okay? Okay. Uh, bye.”

In the second message, he sounded more worried. “Emmie, I just talked to John. He wouldn’t tell me anything, just that you don’t work for him anymore. I’m really concerned about you. I know you don’t want me to be, but I can’t help it. I care. So
please
call me and tell me what’s going on. I need to know you’re all right. If you don’t call me, I will hunt you down. I know where you live, you know.”

Emmie found herself melting, so much so that she had to pull over and get herself together. But she couldn’t, just couldn’t let herself fall into this once more. Not after seeing him with Juliet again . . . still. Maybe someday he really would get rid of her (or she’d drop off the face of the earth—that’d be fine, too), and Emmie could have another chance. But there wasn’t any indication that was going to happen, and she’d be a fool to wait around, nursing her broken heart. She had been right to shut him down the other day, Emmie insisted to herself. She needed to get him out of her system. Even talking to him as a friend would kill her resolve. So she wasn’t going to call him back. Definitely not. Nope. Not going to call him back. If her finger just
happened
to scroll through her list of contacts, and then just
happened
to hit the “call” button, well, that would just be a crazy coincidence.

When her phone rang again, right in her hand, she yanked that wandering finger away as though she’d been burned. Was it Graham? Did they have some sort of psychic connection? Did he know she was thinking of calling him just then? She looked at the name on the screen and groaned.
Some
body was psychic, but it wasn’t Graham.

“No fucking way.”

“Emmie? It’s Juliet! Juliet Winslow! Well, of course, you knew that, right?” Emmie was speechless as the voice she least wanted to hear peppered her ear with laughter. As though nothing were wrong. As though she hadn’t threatened to overdose on dog suppositories or stick her head in her electric oven because Graham wanted to break up with her. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you, young lady!” Juliet was saying in a mock-scolding voice. “I’ve been looking all over for you! When are you going to put me on your schedule, Miss Busypants? We have
got
to get together—I want to hear your ideas for the shop!”

Stunned, Emmie could only choke out, “Um, I—I don’t . . . I hadn’t—”

“Where are you?”

“Er, on the road.”

“Well, I’m at the shop. You get over here right now, ma’am! Do you hear me?” And Juliet laughed again to take the edge off her demands. “I won’t take no for an answer!”

Graham had once called Juliet a force of nature, and he sure knew what he was talking about. Juliet was like a tsunami of chatter, an avalanche of intense energy, and Emmie felt overwhelmed, powerless against her. Before she could stop herself, she heard herself say, in a voice far duller and more vacant than Juliet’s, “Um, all right. I can be there in about five minutes.”

 

Emmie sat in her car in a parking space just down the block from Juliet’s shop and wondered what the heck she was doing there. Had she really buckled, just like that, obeying the commands of the Almighty Juliet just because she was more forceful? What was the
matter
with her? This was the
last
place in the world she wanted to be. Juliet was
last
person she wanted to work with. What had happened to her newfound independence, the inner strength she had been so proud of? Beaten out of her by the events of the past few weeks, she supposed. After all, she had stood up for herself, and it had gotten her nowhere, except broken up with Graham and fired from her job.
So much for the New Emmie,
she thought. Lesson learned.

So she took a deep breath, reminded herself it was a paying job (even if it was Juliet), which she could use right about now, and forced herself out of her car. She headed down the block toward Juliet’s shop, feeling very much like the Old Emmie once again. So this was what it was going to be like from now on, then? Juliet was still the golden girl, still the perfect female who called all the shots, got whatever she wanted, just like in high school? Juliet won, she got Graham after all. And Emmie was going to be relegated to the background, an extra in Juliet’s big movie—
All About Juliet
, of course. Shit, she might as well apply for the job as Juliet’s lady’s maid. The guys working on Graham’s house hadn’t taken out that little hamster run of a servant’s bedroom yet. Maybe they could leave it there, just for her. If she lost her house because she couldn’t make her mortgage payments, she could live in it. She didn’t need much space.