by Miles, Amy
Slade confuses her. That confusion has only increased tenfold since she allowed Tamsin and Sophie to push her into what she fears will be the worst decision ever made. Today she will find out just how bad it really is.
She grabs a hair tie from beside her laptop and winds her hair up into a messy bun. The black smartphone on her dresser begins to vibrate behind her, skittering across the polished cherry wood surface. Ashlyn sighs and crosses the room to answer the phone. “Hello?”
“Please tell me you’re already on your way.”
Leaning her hip against her dresser, Ashlyn laughs. “That screeching voice sounds dangerously familiar…”
“Do you have any idea what time it is?” Ashlyn can hear the rapid staccato of Sophie Turner’s high-heel shoes in the background. Glancing down at her watch, she realizes it has just gone eleven and Sophie must be on her way to meet Tamsin for lunch. They’re supposed to be going over all of the finer details of their trip while Ashlyn is stuck taking Slade on a shopping trip for a new, more Ender James-friendly wardrobe. This is going to be a nightmare.
Ashlyn hates clothes. Unless they are comfy or sporting an array of basic earthen tones, she is not interested.
“I’ve got a watch, you know.” Ashlyn huffs as she grabs her purse and room key. The phone teeters the between her cheek and shoulder as she unzips the garment bag and pulls out her coat. Tucking it over her arm, she rushes to the closer and slips her feet into her slip-ons and then heads for the door. “I’m on my way. Chill out.”
“Okay,” Sophie says, sounding far too relieved.
“When have I ever let you down?” She jabs at the elevator button and waits for it to arrive.
“There’s always room for a first, and today is not going to be it. Just take Slade to Oxford Street. Buy him some nice clothes and come back. Piece of cake.”
“Says the woman who lives to shop,” she grumbles as the elevator dings and the golden doors slide open. “I’m heading down now. Gonna lose the signal—”
She pulls the phone away from her ear and sighs. Zero bars. “Too late.”
As soon as she reaches the lobby, Ashlyn waves at the doorman and crosses the street. After a few trips to London, she has managed to get a fairly decent lay of the land from the Covent Garden Hotel. She loves that she is only a few blocks away from the beautiful Royal Opera House or dozens of quaint shops and street performers.
At the corner, she turns to head for Charing Cross Road, which will lead her to Tottenham Court Road underground station where she will hang a left. From there, it’s an easy half-mile walk to meet up with Slade at the Oxford Circus tube station.
On a warm day, this walk would be lovely, but the breeze is a tad more blustery than Ashlyn cares for. By the time she reaches the first of the shops on Oxford Street, her nose has begun to drip and her cheeks feel a bit chaffed.
“How do I get myself talked into these things?” She groans as she attempts to push her way through the lunch crowd that has begun to spill out of offices and shops in search of a hot meal. Her stomach growls, reminding her that the bagel and jam she had for breakfast won’t hold her over for long.
Weaving through the proverbial rat race, Ashlyn mutters her apologies as she is bounced from person to person, feeling very much like a human pinball. She hates crowds, well, actually anything that involves five or more people at a time. Already she can feel sweat clinging to her palms and her heart palpitating in her ears.
As a child she was locked in a basement on accident during a friend’s birthday party. The music had been loud so no one heard her screams. To a five-year-old, a dark and damp basement is the epitome of every conceivable nightmare, and she was stuck down there for nearly three hours before her mother returned to discover her daughter missing.
When her mom informed her that she would never be allowed over to her friend Jean’s house again, Ashlyn didn’t put up a fight. Since that day, she has been terrified of closed-off spaces. Anything dark, suffocating.
Why she is terrified of large crowds, though, is a mystery. It’s true she possesses some rather extreme introverted tendencies, but that doesn’t account for why she gets nervous even sitting in a movie theater on opening night.
Ashlyn ducks her head, trying to use her hair for protection from the crowds. A couple years ago when she moved to L.A., she was talked into chopping off her hair into a stylish bob. For nearly six months she was terrified of going to the grocery store during the day for fear of being trapped by moms with shopping carts filled with screaming kids barreling down a narrow aisle. She learned then that she would never cut her hair again.
The flow of lunch traffic nearly carries her beyond her stop. She leaps onto the door front of a building and tries to peer over the mass of heads. Friends and coworkers chat about their day’s activities as they funnel past. The congestion at this stop is made worse by the nearly constant flow of people rising from the underground at the Oxford Circus station.
She leans back against the wall and checks her watch: 11:50 a.m. Giving the area a quick onceover to make sure Slade hasn’t miraculously arrived early, she settles in to wait.
From time to time she stomps her feet, wishing she’d been smart enough to wear socks with her slip-ons. The damp cold has begun to creep through her jeans and settle into her bones.
Peering down the street, she can see countless stores that would offer anything from casual sports socks to neon pink-and-black zebra-print thigh highs, but she can’t risk leaving her spot and risk missing Slade. So she waits until the tips of her fingers and toes have gone completely numb.
The lunch crowd has begun to die down a bit. Most of them now cram into sandwich shops, sushi bars, pubs, and bakeries to get out of the cold. Oh, how she envies them.
Ashlyn checks her watch for the fifth time in less than two minutes. Her foot taps with impatience on the concrete path just a stone’s throw from Oxford Circus tube station. People file out of the underground station like a herd of cattle jostling for position, but not a single one of them captures her attention.
Slade is late.
She was told that he would be taking the Victoria line to meet her at noon, and it is already ten past the hour and he is nowhere to be seen.
“Typical,” she mutters as she tucks her scarf back into the neckline of her coat. She shoves her hands deep into her pockets, clenching them into fists as she bounces on her toes.
And then she sees him. He stands a few inches taller than the other men exiting the underground. His hair is whipped about his forehead, his black scarf flapping behind his back as he pauses on the side of the street to look around.
“Over here!”
He turns at her call. As he approaches, his eyes widen with surprise as he takes in her gray wool coat and pink scarf. “You’re that girl. The one who ran into me at the coffee shop.”
“Actually, I believe it was you that barreled into me,” she corrects without thinking. The instant the words pass her lips, she bites down on her tongue and blushes. Thankfully, he appears to be too busy searching for the coffee stain on her side to notice the added flush to her cheeks.
When his gaze lifts to meet hers, she sees confusion. “You’re my assistant?”
She bristles and thrusts her shoulders back a bit. “I am not your assistant. I work with Tamsin, not that you ever realized that little detail the other day.”
“Pardon?”
“At the registration table…” Her hint doesn’t seem to turn on any light bulbs. “I checked you in, took your shirt, told you where to go…”
“Really? That was you, huh?” Slade shakes his head and laughs. “You looked… different.”
“Yes, it’s amazing what a stain-free shirt can do for a girl,” she snaps. She rubs her hands down the front of her jacket, smoothing away imaginary wrinkles. She can already feel a slight tremble building in her hands and knows she’s starting to get antsy. Next will come the quaking in her voice, followed by the inevitable squeak that she will
never live down.
“Let’s just get this over with, shall we?”
She plunges headfirst into the tube crowd and doesn’t pause to see if he is following. She marches ahead, too distracted by his presence to even be fearful of the people around her. He is even more handsome than she remembered.
His three-quarter length black coat makes his eyes appear dark and inviting. The light stubble along his chin keeps drawing her attention back to him over her shoulder. His smile… Oh, if only he would stop smirking at her like he knows exactly what she’s doing!
All she wants to do is get his clothes and go back to her hotel so she can take a hot bubble bath to soak her cares away. And maybe drown herself in a good chick flick. Tears and chocolate make everything better.
Slade grabs her arm and pulls her abruptly to a stop as she steps forward to cross the street. She’s heading for H&M, sure they’ll be able to find something suitable for him there. “What?”
“I didn’t mean to offend you.” His hair blows wildly about his forehead as a gale whips down the street. Ashlyn huddles deeper into her coat. “I was just really nervous about the shoot. I wasn’t exactly at the peak of my form that day.”
“That I could tell,” she says and pulls her arm out from his grasp. She tries not to think of how strong his grip is, or how nice his apology feels. The fact that he even thinks to give her one takes her by surprise and leaves her oddly unsettled.
Her plan of action for the day was to race through a couple of stores and talk as little as possible. She figured if she didn’t get to know him, she could forget him easier, but catching him from the corner of her eye as she looks for oncoming traffic, she knows that hope was dashed the moment he arrived. Slade Collins isn’t the sort of guy you can just forget.
When he steps up beside her, she can see that he’s still waiting for a response. “You got the job so you have nothing to worry about now.”
“Yeah, about that…” He starts but cries out as he is slammed from the back and knocks into Ashlyn. They tumble back into the wall, his weight crushing her.
“Get off me!” She shoves against his chest but finds him to be an immovable wall of solid muscle.
“I’m trying.” Slade pushes back off the brick and Ashlyn sucks in a breath. His hand grasps her elbow as she fights to regain her balance. “Sorry about that. Guess someone was in a manic rush.”
“Don’t worry about it.” She gingerly rubs her stinging elbows where the brick chaffed her through her coat. “Being pushed around seems to be my new M.O.”
Slade snickers and gently releases her arm. “Probably something you should work on, huh?”
Ashlyn smiles and averts her gaze. Cocky, rude, and yet sensitive all wrapped into a very confusing bundle. That sounds like the makeup for a perfect disaster if she’s not careful.
“What were you saying?” she asks, brushing loose strands back from her face. Her hair has begun to fall out of its haphazard bun, but she can’t find any way of fixing it without being painfully obvious. Sliding her hand up the back of her neck, she tugs at the hair tie and lets her loosely curled strands just fall down by her face. She prays she doesn’t have a massive crease going along the back of her head as she tucks her hair behind her ears.
“I was wondering why I got the job.”
“Oh.” Ashlyn blows out a breath, suddenly wishing she hadn’t reminded him. “Um, well, you got the job because you look like Tamsin’s character. With a new wardrobe, a slightly messier hairstyle, and a bit of work on your manners, I think you can pull it off.”
A slow smile spreads along his lips. “So you think I’m the right guy for the part?”
Ashlyn chews on her lower lip, not the least bit comfortable with answering that question. “I think you have potential,” she hesitantly admits. “Just do me a favor and don’t screw this up. I’ve… we’ve put way too much time and effort into this marketing plan for you to waltz in and tear it all to pieces.”
Slade’s confident smile falters slightly. His eyes narrow as he leans over her just enough to make her feel intimidated. “You don’t like me very much, do you?”
“Can’t say that I know you well enough to make that decision.” She chews on her lower lip, wishing her voice wouldn’t waver so much and give her away.
She starts to walk past him, but he grabs her arm to stop her. “First impression?”
Ashlyn takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. She is going to kill Sophie and Tamsin when she gets back to the hotel!
“I think your apparent arrogance is a cover-up for insecurity. Your swagger seems to be used to try to impress people because deep down you are actually rather self-conscious. I think you need people to like you.” She stares down at his hand still wrapped around her forearm. “Case in point.”
He instantly releases her with a smirk. “You sure seem to think you know a lot about me with hardly ever being around me.”
“I watch people,” she says simply and waits for him to move out of her way. She tucks her hands into her coat pockets so he doesn’t notice how they tremble. The way he looks at her does strange things to her stomach. Her chest feels tight as his gaze roams across her face. “Can we just get this shopping trip over with? I’ve got a date with a very large bottle of wine tonight.”
Eight
With the photo shoot behind them and the first batch of proof books in hand, Ashlyn turns her attention to next weekend’s book signing in the heart of London. Tamsin Archer has been invited to an event being held at the London Book Fair in Earls Court.
Concerns with security alone have managed to give Ashlyn quite the headache over the past days. When she adds the swooning fan girls who will chase after Slade, the whirlwind that follows Tamsin everywhere she goes, as well as the nearly 25,000 people who annually attend the fair, Ashlyn has to resist the urge just to curl up in a corner and cry.
Perhaps a prescription for Xanax is in order.
She’s never been very good with people, not in large quantities at least. Her ability to get tongue-tied at the drop of a hat makes it nearly impossible for her to communicate with Tamsin’s fans or coordinate anything more intricate than a lunch order. She’s even been known to screw that up from time to time.
Slade isn’t helping things either. His flamboyant personality only attracts an ever-growing squealing mob of teen girls and middle-aged moms still trying to cling to their prime. Any hint of bare skin or rippling muscle on Slade’s part and the crowds press in tight enough to leave Ashlyn searching for her inhaler.
“Don’t tell me you’re still sweating this signing.” Tamsin rolls her eyes as she flicks her cigarette toward the ashtray on the table beside her. Gray embers flutter to the floor, making Ashlyn grit her teeth.
She slips from the couch and scoops the ash into her hand and places it in the tray. Why is it that Tamsin always feels the need to crash her room? Is it so much to ask for her to use the room registered to her own name? “This is a hotel, you know, not your home.”
“Whatever.” Tamsin waves her off. She knocks back the contents of a small shot glass and winces, pressing the back of her hand to her lips as the fiery liquid goes down.
“That’s good stuff,” she grunts, lifting the bottle to read the label.
“It’s hardly noon,” Ashlyn scolds, holding out her hand for the bottle. “Don’t you think you should wait a bit? You have a fitting this afternoon?”
“I do?” Her gaze seems unfocused as she stares at Ashlyn through a mess of pomegranate-red curls. Tamsin’s roots have begun to show just enough to remind Ashlyn that she needs to be booked in for another hair appointment. A couple of her nails have torn off as well, no doubt sometime over the weekend when she was out enjoying London’s nightlife with Slade.
“Yes, you do.” Ashlyn scribbles an address onto a small notepad and tears off the sheet. “You need to be at this address by four. Please, don’t be late this time.”
“I won’t.” Tamsin scowls, snatching the addres
s out of her hand. “Anything else on my schedule?”
Running her finger down the agenda, Ashlyn makes note of a dinner date with Slade this evening at Apsleys, a fine-dining restaurant within this luxurious Lanesborough Hotel. It is only when she thinks of the wonderful Italian food Tamsin and Slade will be dining on that she realizes she forgot to eat both breakfast and lunch, again. Her schedule has kept her far too busy this week.
“A dress will be sent up for you at 8:00 p.m. You are to meet Slade in the Garden Room at 9:00 p.m. I have already made the reservations for you.”
Tamsin twirls a thick lock of hair around her finger. “You won’t be joining us?”
Ashlyn winces at the thought of being forced into small talk with Slade all evening long. No thank you! “You know that really isn’t my scene.”
“And it’s not mine either.” Tamsin huffs as she rises in a billow of silk. Her emerald robe flows seamlessly behind her as she crosses the room to stare out of the window onto the street below. The rich wood paneling on the walls look warm and inviting in the early afternoon light as Tamsin leans against it. “Why can’t I just go out tonight instead? I’m sure Slade would feel more at home in a pub. I’ve been dying for a good pint.”
“I’m sure he would, but this isn’t about him.” Ashlyn looks up from her planner. Bits of paper and Post-it notes jut from its pages at odd angles as she closes it in her lap. “We both know what’s at stake with this book tour. You agreed to keep your partying to a minimum, remember? We have appearances to uphold.”
Tamsin chews on one of her broken nails, looking far more like a little girl than the sultry vixen who flaunts off her collection of Victoria Secret lingerie in public every chance she gets. “Fine, but just tonight. I’d rather order room service tomorrow. I’m exhausted from all of this traveling.”
