‘Thank you.’
‘Was that blunt? Darn. I’m trying to be less blunt.’
‘Blunt works for me. And you’re right—my personal life is a mess.’
Charlotte patted her hand. ‘Just to say it’s okay for you to talk about it if you want to. You’re always listening to everyone else, but you keep all your own personal stuff inside. I’m here for you if you need a listening ear. Instead of vodka I could give you a great big hug. I always find a hug is the best thing when I’m scared about something.’
‘Charlotte—’
‘And I never gossip, so you don’t need to worry about that. You’re probably afraid someone will go straight to the press with a story about your mom, but I would never do that.’
‘I know.’
‘You never talk about your mother, and I understand why.’
‘You do?’
Should she be pleased or alarmed? Could it be that someone had actually seen beneath the surface?
‘Of course. It’s obvious. Gayle Mitchell is a legend, and if you mention her everyone is going to want to talk about her, or get you to pull a favour and have a book signed or something. You’re afraid people will only be interested in you because of your mother—but you shouldn’t think that. You’re an inspiration in your own right. Look at what you’ve built here! Although…Choice not Chance.’ She beamed. ‘I read it three times. And I have Brave New You on pre-order.’
Choice not Chance. Samantha wished her mother had never written that damn book.
She made a mental note to store a bottle of vodka in her office. She could invent a new drinking game. One shot when someone said something flattering about her mother. Two shots when someone said those three dreaded words.
‘Let’s get those calls done, Charlotte.’
‘Right. And I think you’re amazing, being able to focus on work at a time like this.’
‘Thank you.’
She waited until Charlotte had left the room and then picked up the glass.
What was she doing? Was she really so bad at dealing with emotional issues that she needed a drink to get her through?
Maybe she should have said yes to the hug…
She put the vodka down on her desk. It wasn’t the solution. She did not need it. She’d call Kyle, and then she’d treat herself to a double-shot espresso from the Italian coffee shop down the road before she headed to the airport.
She was nervous, and she had her mother to blame for that.
Gayle Mitchell had drummed into both her children that any relationship was the death of ambition and goals—an anchor dragging you to the bottom of the rough seas of life. Every time Samantha ended a relationship it made her doubly uncomfortable, because part of her felt as if she was pleasing her mother. Was that why she’d stayed with Kyle for so long? Because breaking up with him felt like something her mother would approve of?
Her phone lit up and she took a deep breath. The best way to handle this was to dive right in.
‘Hi, there. Firstly, I am so sorry about last night. I was buried in work and to be honest I didn’t even look up from my desk until midnight—’ She wasn’t going to say she hadn’t even realised she’d missed their date until Charlotte had told her, ‘Anyway, I apologise. But it did start me thinking.’
She heard an indrawn breath and ploughed on.
‘Before you speak, let me finish. Please. The truth is, this isn’t working for me. I mean, you’re great company, and we always have interesting conversation and a good time, but we’re not exactly setting the world on fire, are we? We have these sedate dinners, or evenings at the theatre, where we behave like a middle-aged couple and you occasionally hold my hand on the way home. It’s all very civilised and restrained, and that’s probably my fault because we both know I’m not great at showing emotion. But I want to. You have no idea how much I want to be great at that. I want to feel stuff. But when you and I are together I just don’t feel it—and that’s my fault not yours.’
She was probably saying far too much, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
‘Maybe we don’t have the right chemistry, or maybe I’m never going to feel anything because there’s something wrong with me.’ Thank you for that, Mother. ‘But I owe it to myself to at least hold out for more. I’m not expecting a storm of passion, but a light breeze would be nice. And you deserve that, too. We both deserve better than this bland, neutral, polite relationship. I think we should acknowledge that something is missing.’
She stared through the window at the swirling snowflakes, wondering how it was possible to feel lonely in a city that was home to hundreds of thousands of people. But among all those people how did you find that one person who was going to change your world? Honesty. That had to be a good start.
‘I want to have a love affair so all-consuming that I forget to go to work—instead of forgetting the man and the date because I’m at work. I want to sneak off in my lunch break and buy sexy lingerie, instead of eating at my desk and taking calls. I want to drink champagne naked in bed, not seated in a theatre bar surrounded by strangers. I want to have wild, desperate sex without caring when or where.’