Entry-Level Mistress

by Sabrina Darby

  “On that I’ve evened the score.” His expression was dark, almost frightening. Surely, he meant the past, destroying the company, sending my father to jail, but maybe he meant this. After all, sex as a revenge for sex was a far better analogy than money for sex. I formulated the question in my mind. Imagined asking him to clarify just how he had evened the score. He slid my legs apart, shifting so that he was crawling between them, covering me with his body. The weight was welcome, familiar, and strange all at once. I could feel him hard against me through the thin barrier of his cotton pajamas.

  “Are you using me?” I whispered, struggling to stay strong, to remember what I wanted to ask even as his mouth found skin.

  “Are you using me?” he returned, his voice a breath against my ear.

  I didn’t answer because I didn’t know. And maybe he didn’t know. Maybe we were both simply drawn together because of the past and because of this attraction.

  It might be wrong, terribly, terribly wrong, but it felt so ridiculously good.

  “I don’t want to talk about the past,” he whispered, which of course made me want to do exactly that.

  But the tip of his tongue was trailing across my neck and I was nearly gasping as I prodded. “But the past is everything that’s between us. If you take that away, what’s left?”

  “An enjoyment of each other’s company.”

  I laughed. More likely, he was simply enjoying the nipple he was now sucking on through the thin barrier of his shirt. “You talk with world leaders and celebrities. I still don’t understand what you can find interesting about anything I have to say.”

  “Sex.” There was humor in his tone and I knew he was teasing me, but hearing it said aloud still hurt. I struggled to cover my emotions.

  “Which you could have with anyone,” I said lightly. Not that that was exactly true. This kinetic desire between us wasn’t something that happened every day. But was it that charged because of the past? “So it’s not enough.”

  “I disagree.” With what he was doing to me, I had to disagree as well. “I need to start keeping condoms in every room in this house,” he said, the words a bit muffled by the fact that his mouth was now in the vicinity of my hipbone. I sucked in a sharp breath.

  “My purse,” I said, waving a hand vaguely to the left where the pink bag sat on the floor.

  He was naked and back between my legs in a moment, pulling me down by my hips so that my head rested flat on the cushions. It was strange to be doing this right after discussing, or barely discussing, the old history, but that was our relationship: strange. I reached for him and at the sharp surge of pleasure as his body filled mine, I wrapped my legs around him and welcomed him in.

  Chapter 8

  It was odd going to work the following day knowing that Daniel was nowhere in the building. He’d left on an early flight to make some sort of dinner meeting in Paris. I didn’t know what and he hadn’t elaborated. A secret part of me had almost hoped he’d invite me. One of those last-minute romantic gestures one always sees in movies. We can shop when we land.

  It took a full quarter hour of silent lecturing to rid my mind of backward thoughts like that. I was not some kept woman. If I were, I wouldn’t be sitting here in the morning marketing meeting in my stupid sweater set. All of this, Hartmann Enterprises, my affair with Hartmann himself, was only temporary. Come August I’d be in upstate New York starting my real life. After that, maybe Manhattan or London. If I managed to save the excess money from the next few paychecks, instead of squandering it on lingerie, I could even take a month and travel sooner than later, visit friends. There really weren’t any limits to what I could do.

  “For me, global means round.” Jillian was pointing to the easel where she’d placed a poster with six circular logos. “When I worked for Balson, we always underscored the importance of finding a theme.”

  There was a flurry of nodding and a chorus of assenting murmurs. Jillian had apparently been stolen away from Balson Designs, Boston’s premier branding consultants and she liked to remind everyone of her experience. But for me, round just didn’t seem big enough. Not for what they said Daniel was trying to do. Neither did an arrow, or a cube or a bunch of interlocking squares in primary colors.

  “Yes, Emily?”

  Lance, Jillian, James, and everyone else were staring at me. Startled, I lowered the hand I’d raised as if I was in high school.

  “I was thinking that maybe it would be interesting to do a skyline for the logo.” I heard a snicker from somewhere to my left. Yeah, just like high school. “Something futuristic though, like buildings that don’t even exist yet.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence. I realized abruptly that they all knew I was sleeping with the boss.

  The heat of embarrassment flooded my body.

  “Logos need to be simple, elegant,” Jillian said, almost as if I hadn’t spoken. “The classics, the ones that stay in people’s minds, have real meaning. They need to be translatable across a wide range of mediums.”

  I looked down at the yellow legal pad on the table before me, my shame still painfully present. Jillian was right. I knew nothing about logos, and of all the people here, I was the last who should be giving suggestions. I had no investment in the success of the company, in Daniel’s success. In fact, I should be doing exactly the opposite. I should be trying to tear him down.

  “Good point,” I said with a fake, bright smile. I caught Lance staring at me and he raised an eyebrow. I looked down, focusing my attention on crossing out a daisy I’d doodled a minute earlier.

  “Futuristic is a good word to think of.” My hand stilled at Lance’s voice. “But not sci-fi, we don’t want to go too far. How can we make Hartmann Enterprises look like it knows where the world is heading?”

  Did the company know where the world was heading? Did Daniel? Or was it all really a show, an attempt to make everything simply appear “as if”?

  Like me … as if I knew what I was doing working a desk job … and a night job. The thought that had been meant to chastise me made me smirk instead.

  I forced myself to be serious, to look around the room, study the faces of people who had chosen their positions as real careers, not as whimsical excursions.

  Simply three weeks earlier, I had thought I knew where my world was going, what all the experiences in my life arrowed toward. But where did this tangent lead? How would I ever bring it back around to the idea I once had of myself as a visionary artist? The only vision that was filling my head these days was Daniel’s naked body.

  As if …

  As if by the cool light of early morning that body was drawn by watercolors, and by the yellow glow of interior lamps it was painted in oils, darker and richer. Sometimes, between my legs, I felt him as a living sculpture, marveled at the places his hard, taut body curved, melded, into long bows of muscle.

  He was beautiful and I could have easily spent hours watching him, studying him.

  That night, back in my own apartment, on a night I would not see him, those images of him tortured me. As if I hadn’t had a life before him, almost didn’t know what to do with myself.

  Flat on the futon, with my head to the side, I watched the images of a reality TV show flicker across the screen and thought about what he had said. About how his father had supposedly committed suicide because of my father. If Daniel truly believed that story, no wonder he hated my father. But it wasn’t the truth. Had his mother or someone else lied to him? Or was it Daniel who was lying? Lying to himself even?

  Leanna’s laugh dragged me out of my contemplation.

  “To see you now, one would have no idea they were looking at a future Barrows Farm Fellow,” she commented dryly.

  I couldn’t take offense at that because Leanna was right. Not once in our two years of living together had I ever simply sat down and watched television. In fact, there had been a time or two that Lee had yelled at me for getting clay or ink or some other substance all over the living room. I was losi
ng my artistic edge and I most likely should be worried. This wasn’t the time in my life or career to lose myself in a man. Especially this man. But in two months I’d be at Barrows Farm. I’d get back in the groove, surely. I needed life experience to create, didn’t I? This was definitely life experience.

  “There’s a party tonight for some new blue jeans company. My boss gave me her invitation. You could be my date?”

  I thought about it. Glanced back at the television on which three bikini-clad women were jumping into a pool.

  “There will likely be gift bags,” Leanna added.

  “OK,” I agreed, standing and stretching. I’d seen Leanna bring back enough bags packed with cool products to know the perk was worth my time. “Should I assume it is verboten to wear jeans by any other brand? And for real? There is a jeans company based out of Boston?”

  “I think you can wear whatever you want,” Leanna said. “But this isn’t Los Angeles, so I’d skip the jeans anyway.”

  The party was in a converted warehouse space. Rough concrete and exposed pipes. It felt like a strange mix between corporate, art school, and club. Whispering that there would be a few models and minor celebrities there for sure, Leanna pulled me past the blinding lights of the red carpet and photographers. A DJ booth and dance floor took up one-third of the room. There were tables and a buffet. Three bars. The space wasn’t very crowded yet. Against one wall were two racks full of jeans and hiding behind that, I could see the gift bags Lee had advertised.

  I didn’t see anyone I knew as we made our way across the floor to one of the bars. We did, however, know the bartender. Scott worked weekends at the dive we had frequented the most in college. Apparently he moonlighted as a catering bartender the rest of the nights.

  The bar had five special denim-themed cocktails and I settled on the Original Blue, which tasted suspiciously similar to a Blue Hawaiian. I peered over the rim of my carefully held martini glass and scanned the room. Froze.

  “Lee?” I leaned closer to her. “Is that Tatiana over there?” I didn’t point but Leanna followed my line of sight to where two of the photographers were flashing non-stop at a tight knot of tall, well-dressed people.

  The woman was stunning in real life.

  “Yes, she’s the face for the line.”

  “Oh.”

  “What?” Leanna made an impatient gesture that sent some of her Blueberry Stretch sloshing over the side of her glass. She looked sadly down at the rest of it.

  “They were dating not so long ago. I mean, like, maybe two, three weeks?” I took another sip of my drink.

  “They, as in—” Leanna’s eyes widened. “Are you telling me Daniel Hartmann dumped Tatiana for you? Because oh my god if that is true!”

  “No! That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying it’s weird to see her. She’s this famous, gorgeous model, and here I am in your dress—a complete nobody.”

  “Ah.” Leanna drained the last of her drink. “At least we know the bartender, right?” She whirled around, ordered another from Scott.

  An hour later, a bit tipsier, having made the rounds of the space a few times, had a few random conversations with the few people Leanna knew and with the few people to which we were brave enough to introduce ourselves, I found myself dancing two feet from Tatiana, who had let her hair down from her high ponytail and now looked like the sort of sultry woman that would be hanging on Daniel’s arm.

  “We should go,” I whispered, both fascinated and appalled. And sickly jealous. After being with a woman like Tatiana, with several women like Tatiana, what on earth could Daniel possibly see in me?

  Except the chance for more revenge?

  The thought chilled me, but the movement of the crowd on the dance floor, a round of shouts above the music and noise of the party, drew my attention.

  There was some sort of fight. Leanna grabbed my arm, but then that gorgeous, nearly six-foot tall, pole-thin model came crashing into us, and sent all three of us stumbling back.

  Tatiana offered a slurred apology and then stalked drunkenly away. But the fight was still happening, only it was another gorgeous, tall woman and an almost-as-gorgeous man yelling and gesticulating at each other.

  Leanna tugged at me and we moved away just as the photographers were moving in. We fought against the crowd that seemed to be going in the opposite direction, as if what was happening on the dance floor were the planned entertainment for the night.

  The bathroom was nearly empty with only one of the five stalls filled. Leanna closed a stall door behind her. I waited by the sinks, staring at myself in the mirror. I looked good in the black shift dress, with chunky eighties-inspired jewelry. But my hair was damp at the temples from dancing and my face looked a little softer after two Original Blues.

  I pulled my cell phone out of the clutch, half-hoping there would be a message on it that I hadn’t heard in the din of the party. Only the time in red, digital numbers glowed back at me. It was nearly midnight and both Leanna and I had to work in the morning.

  How different from six months earlier when, as students, we’d stay up all night and then stumble into class.

  “Home, right?” Leanna called from inside her stall.

  The door to the handicapped stall opened and Tatiana stepped out. Of course she would. It was exactly the sort of bizarre event that happened on nights like these. The Czech model scanned me in a quick glance, as if she didn’t recognize the person she had crashed into moments before. Then with an imitation of her catwalk stride, she stumbled toward the sinks.

  “Yeah, home,” I called back to Leanna, trying desperately to act like I didn’t care that Tatiana was inches away, also staring in the mirror. Staring at me.

  “You might not want to go out there,” I said finally, breaking the uncomfortable, all too aware silence. “That fight drew a lot of attention.”

  Tatiana laughed, shook her head, which sent her professionally-managed honey-blonde mane shaking down her back as if she were in a commercial for shampoo. My comments seemed to have broken whatever reflective mood she was in.

  “Don’t worry about me, honey,” she said with a smirk. “Not all of us are uncomfortable with attention.”

  • • •

  The words stuck with me. I’d never thought of myself that way but after Daniel lecturing me about my art and now this, I was questioning myself. Maybe my method of keeping my head down and working wasn’t working. Maybe to be an artist, to have success, I needed to have more of a persona.

  Maybe to be with Daniel I needed to have more of a persona.

  Which was a stupid thought because he meant nothing to me.

  Sure, with Daniel, flirting, sneaking around at work, playing dress-up and dress-off, I felt powerful. But that was sex, and that didn’t matter in the reality of my life. This time at Hartmann Enterprises with Daniel was a world apart. At some point it would be this dream-like interlude I’d once had. With any luck, it would be a dream tinged with triumphant revenge.

  Any other thought of him should sicken me. Because the last thing I needed was to get any attention while I was with Daniel Hartmann.

  On Wednesday, mid-afternoon, my phone vibrated with the longest text he’d sent me yet.

  My driver will pick you up at seven from your apartment and bring you to the loft. I’m hosting a small party for a friend and want you there. Daniel.

  I hadn’t even known he was back yet. It wasn’t until I’d mentally run through all my fashion options that I realized I hadn’t once considered telling him I was busy. Or that I didn’t want to go. I’d grown so used to his high-handed ways that I was simply pleased he wanted me to attend. Tonight, for the first time, I’d meet his friends.

  He wanted me to meet them.

  Why? Why did he want me, Emily Anderson, daughter of the man he admitted to hating, to be there? It was one thing to have sex, to have an affair, but to take it public in any manner?

  What was his game?

  Fine, I’d go. And no matter what
Tatiana said, I wasn’t afraid of attention.

  Besides, I would finally see the infamous loft. The place decorated by his art buyer and ex-girlfriends, the supposedly impersonal showplace intended for the magazine spreads. Seven couldn’t come soon enough.

  By the time I spied the Bentley from the window, I was dressed in another outfit from Leanna’s closet, my hair upswept and my makeup flawless. I felt a bit like Cinderella going to the ball. Which suggested Daniel was my prince. Which sent me on a thought path I didn’t want to be anywhere near tonight. Instead, I wished only to do as I had been doing: live in the moment, revel in the experience.

  The lobby of the building was shiny, glossy and dizzying. Not entirely dissimilar from the lobby of Hartmann Enterprises, although in a waterfront loft sort of a way. This was the kind of place my art school friends would call fake, because to them, the whole loft, live/work concept was about making new out of old, reclaiming old and deserted spaces. Whatever warehouse had once occupied this space had been torn down, and in its place a very modern, architectural building had been erected.

  The attendant peered at me over frameless glasses, scanned a list for my name and then waved me on.

  Daniel owned the penthouse, of course. The glass elevator had an incredible view of its own and when it glided smoothly to a stop at the top, a melodious beep announced the floor.

  The corridor beyond was all steel and crushed concrete. Bamboo-paneled walls.

  Two steel double doors stood open, the inside surface designed and sculpted in a way that made me want to study it closer. But I heard voices from within and stepped across the threshold. The living room, the same one I’d seen in that magazine, stunned, and had a breathtaking view of the harbor. To the left was an open kitchen and in there were a half dozen uniformed men and women whose conversation quieted at my approach. Caterers?

  I was about to ask where Daniel was when I saw him step out a doorway and into the hall. In a suit, of course, and so handsome the sight nearly took my breath away. His head turned and his gaze found me.