Hartford, the gangly kid with her head in the clouds, now a woman who walked up to me and wrapped me in a hug like she was my best friend. Her shapeless scrubs hid what felt like quite the grown-up body beneath. I’d tried to think of something else as her breasts pressed against my chest, but I found myself swapping my thoughts of her breasts to the feel of her lips ever-so-close to my neck.
“Right, and why are we talking about her?” Tristan asked.
“Joshua picked her up from the airport and he’s not been himself since,” Dexter said. It was meant to be a joke but it cut a little too close to the truth for my liking.
“Is she hot?” Tristan was nothing if not on-brand.
“Not my type.” That was true. Nothing about Hartford reminded me of the women I usually spent time with. I was accustomed to women who looked like they just stepped out of the pages of Vogue, and sometimes they had. Glamorous, beautiful women.
Hartford, on the other hand, clearly didn’t give a crap about her appearance. Her hair looked like it had gone five rounds with a cat before being piled on top of her head, and there was no trace of makeup or carefully chosen wardrobe.
But there was no doubt she was beautiful.
I didn’t like surprises. But everything about Hartford’s high cheekbones, full pink lips, and very grown-up body had knocked me off my feet. I wasn’t sure whether it was the way she was so open and unfiltered, or the way she clearly wasn’t impressed with me, but something about her had thrown me sideways.
As we drove home from the airport, she’d chattered away. I’d been trying to figure out what exactly it was about her that was so unsettling. Then she bit into her apple and groaned at the taste, the noise shooting sparks right to my groin. Images swooped into my brain of her naked, riding me, her head thrown back, her nails digging into my chest.
That’s what was disconcerting. I was imagining having Hartford naked in my bed.
Hartford, the gangling kid sister of a girl I practiced my flirting on.
Hartford, the daughter of my mother’s closest friend.
Hartford, my new neighbor.
I needed to give her some space. Or more accurately, I needed to give myself some space from her.
There was no way I was going to cross the line with Hartford. There were too many reasons why it was a bad idea. First, she was so far from my type it was actually comical. Second, I wasn’t about to have casual sex with someone who might end up hurt, especially when that someone was so inextricably linked to my family, and most importantly, I didn’t do relationships. Ever.
Hartford was only next door for three months and then she’d be gone. Between now and then, my time would be taken up trying to stop my business from going under.
I glanced up as Andrew took a seat at the table. I hadn’t expected him to make it.
“So, why are we here?” Andrew asked, peeling off his suit jacket and carefully placing it on a free seat behind him.
“I’m trying to figure out a way of stopping my business from collapsing.”
“Collapsing?” Dexter asked. “What’s happened?”
“My biggest client just bought a pharmaceuticals business.”
“Who? GCVB?” Tristan picked up his pint. “Why would a luxury goods company buy a pharma company?”
“Maybe they want to repackage the muscle relaxants?” It wasn’t the right time for Dexter to crack jokes. “Apart from that not making business sense—why is that a problem for you?”
“It’s more than a problem.” I told them how Eric wanted to appoint one agency for the entire enlarged group.
“Right,” Andrew said. “But you’ve won the pitch every time. You’ll end up doing Merdon’s branding and advertising as well as the rest of the companies in the group.”
“We brand and market luxury goods,” I said. “Not pharmaceuticals. We have zero experience. There’s no way Eric is going to have us do the branding and marketing for Merdon.”
“Looks like you might have to go full time and figure this out,” Dexter said.
I couldn’t suppress an eye-roll. “I do work full time. I’m in a creative industry; number of hours at my desk doesn’t correlate with productive output.” I wasn’t in the mood for Dexter giving me a hard time about not working long-enough hours. I needed to try to devise a plan, a way out of what was sure to be wreckage.
“First step, hire some people who know pharma,” Andrew said. “GCVB obviously knows and likes you. It’s not a foregone conclusion that they’re going to drop you. I know a few people. I’ll put you in touch.”
Luca Brands was the best there was in the luxury goods market. Eric knew that. But he also knew that I didn’t know anything about pharma. Then again, I hadn’t gotten to where I was by giving up. If Luca Brands was going to go down, we’d go down fighting.