Freudian Slip (7 page)

K
ATE'S COUSIN
M
ALLORY
called her at two o'clock, just as Kate was heading into a cover design meeting.

“Kate? How's it going, sweetie? Up for cocktail therapy after work?”

Kate paused. She had felt rattled but strangely thrilled all day by her interaction with Leslie. Then her budget-busting shopping spree at lunch. Cocktails were definitely in order.

“Sure. Where do you want to meet?”

“My treat. I'm taking you to that new sushi place in Tribeca. Sake and sushi will purge that asshole from your mind.”

“Actually—” Kate smiled, liking the feel of her new silk boy shorts against her skin “—I think I've already started to exorcise him. But I'll tell you all about it over dinner.”

She hung up and went into her meeting, where the new Isabella Lopez cover was unveiled. The concept was all wrong. A pink tutu?

“What do you think?” Tammy from marketing asked.

“Too, too much,” Kate said, uncharacteristically honest. She usually couched everything with, “I like it, but maybe we could tweak…”

Everyone laughed, but then all eyes were on Tammy, who hated to be crossed.

“You have something better?” Tammy arched an expertly plucked eyebrow. “This I'd like to hear.”

Emboldened, Kate said, “Actually, if you'd read the book or my notes, you'd know the centerpiece is the heroine's journey to her grandmother's hometown in Mexico. It's about embracing her roots. Not pink. Not trendy. Why not embrace some of its cultural aspects?”

“I thought the tutu was a metaphor for her as a little girl. Maybe it's just a little
above
your level. You don't get the vision we have, the metaphor.”

“Really?” Kate asked. “The metaphor for not trying anything new or daring up there in design?” Kate blinked hard. Where was all this bravado coming from?

She was just about to apologize, when Helen, her publisher cut in. “I have to go with Kate. Maybe an old-style cantina. Something. I don't think Isabella will go for the tutu anyway. She'll hate it.”

That shut Tammy up, and Kate, trembling
slightly from the confrontation, felt vindicated. Her author would hate it.

After the meeting, a glare from Tammy, and a late afternoon checking back-cover copy for three upcoming releases, her publisher called her into her office.

“Yes, Helen?” Kate sat down on one of the club chairs facing the polished cherrywood desk. Helen was a legend in the book business, one of the last of a dying breed that passionately courted new talent and nurtured them. She was about fifty-five, never married, no children. Books were her children, she liked to say.

“Bad news travels fast,” Helen began.

Flushing slightly, Kate nodded. “I'm trying to be professional about it.”

“David's called me. He still, for now, wants you to edit his next book. He says you're his muse. He can't finish this book without your help.” Helen rolled her eyes. “My question for you is…can you? Can you do it, Kate?”

This type of thing is what separates the men from the boys, Kate. Say yes, and she'll think you're a pro. Say no, and she'll lose respect for you. This is a career-defining moment.

That voice again. Every bit of her wanted to say no. Wanted to scream no and run from the room.
But she couldn't. Books were her children, too. She would never forget getting David's manuscript from his agent.
The Jackal's Feast
was an intelligent thriller, and though it benefited from her editing—particularly a subplot that went nowhere that she'd had him excise—it had given her goose bumps. She just
knew
in her gut that he was gifted. Her instincts were as good as anyone's.

“Of course I can. I know that book inside and out. I know it and it's good and it will make the company money, Helen. I know it could be a bestseller.” She heard the words leave her mouth, and she wondered, who was this woman standing on her own two feet?

Good job, Kate. Show the bastard you can do it.

“Kate, you remind me of me when I was starting out. Passionate about what you do. Keen instincts. My door is open if you need me.”

“Thanks, Helen.” Kate stood and exited Helen's office. In the hallway she exhaled. And smiled.

Leaving uncharacteristically on time—she usually stayed until well past five—Kate headed home. In her apartment, she flicked on all the lights. She was grateful, in a sense, that the place was small. Knowing she'd been burglarized made her uneasy, but with the lights on, she was reassured no one was in her apartment. She was safe.

Again, Honey barked as if fixated on some
thing. Kate chalked it up to trauma, put the leash on the dog and took her for a walk. Coming back into the building, she scooped Honey into her arms, and then spied Zack.

“Thanks again,” she said to him as he stood at his mailbox, pulling out the day's mail.

He smiled at her. “I'm just glad the little guy found my doorstep.” He patted Honey on her head.

It's a girl, you jerk.

“She's a girl. Her name is Honey.”

“I like dogs. Sometimes I think I should get one—for some company, you know?”

“You should. Then Honey would have a friend.” She smiled at him and walked into the building.

Maybe rushing into dating is the wrong thing. Don't get any ideas.

She changed into one of her new outfits. Besides the outrageously expensive thongs, and the one doubly outrageous splurge—a La Perla lace demi-bra—she'd gone and bought two dresses and a couple of shirts. She stepped out of her skirt from work, pulled her shirt over her head, and pulled on skinny jeans and a new V-neck kimono tunic that plunged low up front, with dramatic sleeves. She took the bobby pins out of her hair and ran her fingers through it. From being pinned up, it had curled perfectly.

She was just about to walk out the door when her cell phone rang. Assuming it was Mallory, she answered without looking at Caller ID.

“Don't hang up,” the voice on the other end pleaded.

Kate grabbed at the sideboard next to the door to steady herself. “Hello, David,” she whispered.

“Five minutes. Five minutes is all I'm asking. I've been a total jackass, a heel, a scumbag, the most awful boyfriend ever…but I love you and I want to have a chance to prove that.”

Kate felt her insides lurch, and she ran to the bathroom, feeling as if she might actually vomit. She flicked on the lights, and no longer saw herself looking sexy and beautiful, the way she had felt all day. She saw herself pale and pathetic. She turned off the light and stood there, breathing in and out, trying not to get sick.

“Kate? Five minutes. Five minutes…that's all I'm asking.”

What is it, Kate? It's him, isn't it? The bastard.

She exhaled. “What is there to say, David? You fucked my best friend—former best friend. We have nothing left to say.”

“We do. Five minutes. And then you can tell me to get out of your life forever, and I will never bother you again.”

“No. I don't owe you anything, David. Not even five minutes.” She felt as if she were clawing her way out of a bog, trying to get back on firm ground, back to the place where she felt good. The place where she was this afternoon—which now seemed a lifetime away.

His voice was soothing. “No, no, baby. You don't owe me anything. Not one thing. I owe you so much. So much better than I've done by you. But if you could find it in your heart to give me five minutes, to meet me for coffee. I just don't want to end like this.”

Closure. Was it psychobabble? Could there be any more closure than seeing his firm naked ass, then seeing Leslie half-naked by his unmade bed where he and Kate had made love just that morning? There could be no more closure than that.

“No.” She heard herself as if from far away.

“We still have to work together.”

“We can do it all by e-mail. There's nothing to say, David.” Then she closed her cell phone.

She still felt like throwing up. She turned on the bathroom light and stared at herself in the mirror over the sink.

You owe him nothing.

Put on your best fuck-me pumps and a smile and go meet Mallory.

She flicked off the light and considered canceling the whole thing. She stared at her bed, where her purchases lay strewn across her comforter. Buyer's remorse hit her in her gut. About the same place where David's voice hit her.

She shook her head. “No,” she said out loud. “Today I was…” She searched for the word.

Fabulous.

Say it out loud.

“Fabulous.” She said it resolutely. She slipped into a pair of sandals with a sexy sling-back heel and walked over to the bed to pick up one of her new dresses. “I'm worth every penny.”

Damn straight.

 

“N
O OFFENSE
, K
ATE
, but if this is what breaking up does to you, you should break up with guys more often.” Mallory picked up a piece of tuna with her chopsticks.

“What?” Kate shot her cousin a look.

“The outfit is awesome. And totally not what you usually wear. It's funkier. And I love the hair. The makeup.”

“I bought some new Stila products today. The makeup counter woman had me do this whole smoky-eye thing. I feel like one of those makeup ads—definitely not me.”

“Well, maybe you should make it you, because there isn't a guy in here who's not staring at you.”

Kate rolled her eyes. Mallory was petite and dressed like a rock star in tight black pants and even tighter tops that showed off her graceful collarbone and neck and well-toned arms. Thin without being gaunt, she had enormous brown eyes that had a slightly feline appearance, and black hair she wore in a near buzzcut, with tips of platinum on the ends. Her mother was Korean. Her father was Kate's dad's brother. The resulting genetic mix—Irish-Korean—made Mallory intriguing and exotic with a hint of punk thrown in for good measure. Her eyebrow was pierced and she had five small stud earrings in each ear.

“Mal, I think you're getting plenty of looks.”

“I get the ‘that girl is probably wild in bed' looks. I get the ‘I bet that girl would do a threesome' looks. You're getting ‘that girl is totally hot but maybe out of my league' looks.”

Kate sipped her sake, ignoring her cousin. “He called me.”

“The bastard?”

She tells it like it is, Katie Girl.

“Yes, the bastard.”

He's worse than that. He's a prick.

“And?”

“And he wants to meet for coffee.”

“Why?”

“I suppose to grovel for forgiveness.”

“He wants you back?”

“Something along those lines. He says he still loves me.” Kate swallowed hard at the last three words. She told herself she would not cry.
That voice
told her she would not cry.

“Look, Kate, I'll be the first to admit that infidelity sometimes happens. You know, a business trip, a lonely night, a drunken mistake. Doesn't make it right, but it happens. When I was with James last year, I cheated on him once while I was in Hong Kong. It was a total spur-of-the-moment thing with a hot guy I met in my hotel bar. The guy was from London, an economist, brilliant, funny, sexy. It was one night. But here's the thing, Kate…cheating with someone's best friend, where you are really destroying any chance for trust again, destroying a friendship and your relationship? That's a whole different kind of cheat. He lacks a moral compass, Kate.”

“But what if it was just a mistake? A stupid mistake?”

“No. People don't make those kinds of mistakes. That's like detonating a nuclear bomb in your life. You don't detonate the bomb by accident.”

Listen to her. Listen to her. Listen to me, Katie Girl. Listen to me.

“Well, I told him no.”

“Good. I'll drink to that.” Mallory lifted her saketini. Kate held up her sake cup and clinked Mal's glass.

“But Helen asked me if I would still work with him. On the book.”

“She didn't.”

“She did.”

“Did you tell her you can't?”

“No. I'd be really hurting my career.”

“I don't know, Kate…”

“I have to at least try.” Kate shrugged. “Can I tell you something, Mal?”

“Anything, you know that.”