“Yeah,” I murmured. “My apologies, Mr. Caldwell.”
Grant stared at me with those luminescent green eyes that I couldn’t read and said in a normal voice, “No apologies needed.”
I wasn’t sure if he was speaking to me or the consultant.
His ran his thumb over my bottom lip before turning to the consultant. “What Leah wants, Leah gets.”
My God, if that were only true.
If it were, I’d start with getting naked with Grant in the next five minutes and end with me accepting a Tony award.
Then having sex with Grant after the award ceremony. Then again the next morning on a private plane while we flew to the Caribbean to escape the last gasp of a brutal New York winter and celebrate my crowning achievement.
Not to be too specific or anything.
“I may have to get that in writing,” I said.
“You don’t read contracts, remember? I could change it to anything and you’d never know.”
I gave him an eyeroll and put my feet on the floor and stood up.
He gave me a boost with two hands on my ass, and while the experience of shopping at Prada was surreal, us dating felt very real.
It startled me to the point where I said to the consultant, “Do you have any champagne? I’m thirsty.”
“So am I,” Grant said.
I knew by the look on his face he was not referring to bubbly.
I was so in over my head and loving every second of it.
Chapter 7
“OMG, that was like your own personal makeover montage,” Savannah said, her glass of wine halfway to her mouth. “You’re living a rom-com. Maid in Manhattan!”
We were grabbing drinks after my show on Saturday night. I should have been exhausted after all the shopping and the excitement of performing but instead I was wide awake and super happy my friends had all come to see my show and hang out.
It was rare that all five of us were in one place anymore and I had a buzz from both the wine and my happiness. Savannah’s reaction was appropriate for her. She loved a good rom-com and believed vehemently in happily ever after, which was ironic given that she’d dated a steady stream of useless men, including the last guy, who had disappeared after she had told him she was pregnant. Savannah now had the most adorable six-month-old baby in the history of babies and a successful career as a lifestyle stylist.
She’d always been the “mom” of our group. She held hair back when there was vomiting after cocktails, opened her arms for hugs after breakups and bad auditions, and reminded everyone to drink water between each glass of wine. She generously doled out compliments and thought every single man in the room was checking out whichever one of us was feeling lousy that day.
“More like Pretty Woman,” Isla said, pushing her glasses up her nose. “And I don’t mean in the sense that they got together in the end. I mean in the way that he’s a prick who
thinks he can buy a woman.”
“Shh, shh,” Savannah said, waving her hand. “You cannot shit on Pretty Woman. I won’t listen. I love that movie!”
“She has no value until she meets him. That’s the message of the movie.”
That was Isla. She didn’t believe in romance. She was jaded from dating apps, where she only seemed to attract the most patronizing men on the planet. Ironic, given Isla was never going to do anything other than speak her mind.
She was the friend who had told a director to go fuck himself when he’d suggested she wasn’t feminine enough and who had gone after a guy in a bar who would not stop harassing us while dancing. Baseball-hat-sideways-guy had put his hand on Savannah’s butt and that had been the end of his fun. Isla had his arm behind his back in two seconds while he protested in pain and she asked him if he liked being touched without his permission.
Isla had left the cutthroat entertainment industry for the equally cutthroat restaurant business and was thriving there.
Savannah covered her ears. “I told you, I’m not listening!”
“They’ll do this all night,” Dakota said. “So ignore them and tell us how it felt to play a rich man’s girlfriend for the day.”