Just the Tip - The Manning Brothers

“No, I’m not sure that I do,” I ground out. I’ve been surrounded by gold-diggers all my life, and this wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear.

“Well,” she said helplessly, trying to continue. “I met Jake Manning at a party in San Francisco, you know the CEO of Manning Pharmaceutical, and I thought we were in love. I swear, I thought he loved me.”

“Did he propose?” I asked flatly.

“Not exactly,” she mumbled. “I went to Harry Winston and bought myself a diamond and pretended that Jake gave it to me. I just wanted to believe it so badly, he was handsome, rich, and I dunno … we seemed perfect together, like the charmed couple you see in movies.”

“You’ve been watching too much Lifetime,” I said sternly. “That shit doesn’t exist in real life.”

“I know,” she said softly. “But I was poor, I was desperate, so I clung to a man who embodied my wildest dreams. We were engaged until my sister got pregnant with his baby, and then boom! Jake was out of the picture.”

“And are they married now?” I asked, my voice dangerous.

“Yes, they have a baby named Janie, she’s beautiful. She was born prematurely and wasn’t well for the first six months of her life. I guess the stress pulled Jake and Tina together, being new parents to a sick child and all.”

Okay, so at least the girl was somewhat honest about her goldigging past. Of course, there were two sides to every story, and that fucking Manning scumbag impregnating his fiancee’s sister was no walk in the woods, I’m sure. But I still hadn’t heard what I was looking for.

“Is there anything else?” I asked, deceptively casual. This was her time to fess up, to let her deepest, darkest secrets out. Surely she realized that as CEO of Levast, I’d already done a good bit of fact-checking into her past. Surely, Jenna didn’t think she could hide something like nude pix from the CEO of a media conglomerate.

But Jenna shook her head slowly, her long blonde hair swaying gently.

“No Rafe, that’s it,” she said. “I’ve been around some in my twenty-four years, but there’s nothing that crazy. Why, is there something you want to ask?” she said curiously, tipping her chin to look into my eyes, blue eyes clear.

“Nothing,” I said smoothly. “It’s all good, I understand about the broken engagement,” I said in a deep voice. But the truth was that our relationship was essentially done. I’d given her the opportunity to open up, to confess the error of her ways, and she’d pretended like nothing was amiss. How could I trust her anymore?

11

Jenna

I haven’t heard from Rafe in six weeks. I haven’t eaten, drank, or slept, and my body’s looking haggard, although of course industry rumors are that I’ve lost weight because people won’t hire me.

At one fitting, they didn’t even try to disguise their comments. The atelier employees spoke Italian, thinking I couldn’t understand, but actually I’d studied the language during college and understood every word.

“She looks fabulous, doesn’t she?” said one gay guy, giving me a charming smile. “Emaciated, just the way we like it.”

“She does, but look at the poor thing,” clucked an older woman while draping a length of fabric across my chest. “Bags under her eyes, her skin is dull, and this hair! That blonde hair she was always known for, it’s now like straw, we’ve got to tell her agency she’s got some serious psychological problems.”

“She’s not our responsibility,” scoffed the gay guy, turning me around this way and that, as if studying a piece of meat. “The agency should be keeping tabs on her, and what do we care? As long as our clothes look good and fly off the rack, why should we give a shit if she dies?”

I almost cried then, this was how people talked about me when they thought I couldn’t understand. Again, as my old self, I would have raged back at them in fluent Italian, telling them to fuck off, I was going to tell my boss, his name was Rafe Connor and wasn’t he their boss too?

But the new me was different. Knowing my place, I bit my tongue even as a flush rose up my chest, my cheeks flaming.

“Would you mind if I went to the bathroom for a moment?” I murmured. “I’ve been standing here for an hour and really need to use the loo.”

“Of course not, honey,” said the older woman through a couple of pins in her mouth. “Let me just get this off you.”

Of course the gay guy was shooting daggers at me with his eyes, but I was beyond that. I needed a moment of privacy to re-group, to steel my shoulders against this new assault.

Because I felt like I’d been at war for the last six weeks. Not that Rafe ever fought back, it was the wall of silence that was killing me. I’d left countless messages on his cell, on his work phone, with his secretary, and all for nothing. All I got was a polite murmur of acknowledgment from his personal assistant, and one day a package came in the mail.