“I can assure you,” the HR director continued, “there’s a very generous compensation package.”
“I was too slow, right?” she whispered, blinking back tears. “I took too long to finish my work.”
The man shook his head, his ponderous jowls wobbling. He didn’t look as if he wanted to fire her. He looked as if he wished the earth would swallow him up beneath his desk. “You did a good job, Miss Smith. You were popular with the rest of the staff. Yes, you took longer than the other file clerk, but your work ethic—” He took a deep breath, tapping a file on his desk. “That’s neither here nor there.” His voice was clipped. “We will give you an excellent recommendation and I can assure you that you’ll find a job soon. Very, very soon.”
He started to explain the details of her severance package, but Lilley barely listened. The sick feeling was starting to win, so she focused on her breathing, staring hard at the little gray trash can on the floor by his desk. Fighting the desire to throw up into it.
“I’m sorry it turned out this way,” he said finally. “But someday you’ll be glad that …” He saw that she wasn’t listening and was clutching her stomach with one hand while covering her mouth with her other. He sighed. “Please sign this.” He pushed a paper towards her on the desk. Grabbing the pen he offered, Lilley skimmed the document—her father had drummed that much into her, at any rate—and saw she was basically promising not to sue the company for sexual harassment. Harassment?
She sucked in her breath. That meant it wasn’t her work that was at fault, but she was being fired by—
She cut off the thought, unable to bear his name. Scribbling her signature, she rose to her feet. The HR director shook her hand.
“Best of luck, Miss Smith.”
“Thanks,” she choked out. Grabbing the file he held out, she fled to the women’s bathroom, where she could be sick in privacy.
Afterward, Lilley splashed cold water on her face. She looked at her wan, green expression in the mirror. She tried to force a grin, to put the cheerful mask back in place that she’d worn for the last month while enduring teasing and innuendo about Prince Alessandro. But today, she couldn’t even smile.
Fired. She was fired.
Numbly, she walked to the elevator. She exited on the third floor and went to her desk in the corner of the windowless file room. Other employees had pictures of family or friends or pets hanging at their desks. Lilley had a lonely pink geranium and a postcard that her cousin’s wife, Carrie, h
ad sent from Provence a few weeks ago. On the tidy surface of her desk, she saw someone had left a gossip magazine for her to find. Again.
Her body felt cold as she looked down at the latest issue of Celebrity Weekly. The cover had a picture of Alessandro in Mexico City, where he’d been living for the last month in his attempt to keep the Joyería deal from falling apart. But last week, Lilley’s cousin Théo had made a successful counterbid. It should have made her feel glad, but it didn’t. Her heart ached to think of how Alessandro would feel after failing—at anything.
At least she was used to it.
Her eyes moved to a smaller picture at the bottom of the magazine’s cover that had been taken at the Cannes film festival months before. Alessandro wore a tuxedo, looking darkly handsome, holding the hand of a beautiful blonde dressed in black. Olivia Bianchi.
Playboy Prince to Wed at Last, the cover blared. Someone had underlined the words with a thick black pen.
Ever since she’d been Alessandro’s date at the ball, she’d been paying for it. Some of her coworkers had worried Lilley might think too well of herself for briefly being their boss’s mistress. Well, she thought bitterly, no chance of that.
Lilley jumped as she heard a man clear his throat behind her. Turning, she saw Larry, a security guard she knew. Just yesterday, Lilley had given him advice about how to get ink stains out of fabric, something she’d dealt with fairly often as her cousin’s housekeeper. But today, his face was regretful and resigned.
“Sorry, Lilley. I’m supposed to escort you out.”
She nodded over the lump in her throat. She gathered up her geranium, the magazine, the postcard from Provence, her nubby old cardigan and the large bag of toffees she kept at the bottom of her desk for emergencies. She packed up her life in a cardboard box and followed the security guard from the file room, trying to ignore all the employees staring at her as she was escorted from the building in a walk of shame.
In the lobby, Larry checked her cardboard box for contraband—what did he think she might take? Pens? Copy paper?—and then took her employee pass card. “Sorry,” he mumbled again.
“I’ll be fine,” she whispered, and was proud she managed to leave the building without either crying or throwing up.
Numbly, Lilley took the bus home. As she reached her apartment, her cell phone rang. She glanced at the number. Nadia had missed all the action, so Jeremy must have told her the news. But Lilley couldn’t face her roommate’s sympathy right now. Or the suspicions Nadia had voiced lately, which Lilley was desperately trying not to think about: the reason for her frequent nausea over the last week.
Turning her phone to Mute, she threw it on the counter. She gulped down some dry crackers and water to help her stomach calm down, then changed into flannel pajamas and a pink fleece robe. Wrapping herself in her mother’s quilt, she lay down on the couch and closed her eyes, even though she knew she was far too upset to sleep.
She was woken by the rattle of her cell phone on the kitchen counter. Sitting up, she saw the deepening shadows and realized she’d slept for hours. Pulling a pillow over her head, she tried to ignore the rattle. The phone finally stopped buzzing, then after a brief pause, it rudely started again. Muttering to herself, Lilley got up and grabbed it. She blinked when she saw the out-of-state number. Alessandro, she thought, still half confused by her dream, the dream she’d had over and over all month. She could still feel the heat of his lips against her skin. She swallowed.
“Hello?” she said almost timidly.
“Lilley Smith?” a jovial voice boomed at the other end. “You don’t know me, but your résumé has come to our attention, and we’d like to offer you a paid internship with our company in New York.”
By the time Lilley hung up the phone, her dreams about Alessandro were gone. She finally understood. He wasn’t just ridding her from his company. He was completely erasing her from his life.
Her eyes fell on the magazine, visible from the cardboard box on the kitchen counter. Snatching it up, she stared with narrowed eyes at the picture of Alessandro with Olivia Bianchi. The blond Italian socialite looked like a smug, satisfied Persian cat who’d just licked up a whole bowl of cream.