“What other things?” What else was there she cared enough about?
He pulled the cuffs of his shirt down so they aligned properly with his suit coat. He was always so well put together, where Bryan always managed to look untucked and was the more loveable because of it.
“What other things, Tom?”
“Exactly.”
She gasped a noise of annoyance, and watched him leave. He’d been able to get under her skin when they were kids as well, not that they’d grown up together, always living in separate homes; they’d had a holidays and occasions relationship before they had a working one, but he’d done it again. It shouldn’t have mattered what Tom thought and he was wrong anyway.
“Mel.” She needed to eat something crushingly sweet to take away the bad taste of the morning.
Mel came to the doorway. “Chocolate?”
She rocked the chair back and sighed. There was no subtlety Mel missed. “Please.”
“See Em while I’m gone.”
Em peered around Mel’s shoulder. “Have you got five?”
“Of course.” She waved Em in for the second time that day and for the second time, Em was unable to make eye contact. Either Malcolm did a number on her or she’d been poached and was about to quit.
“Is there anything I should know?”
Em sighed and put her notepad on the desk. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“So you’re not about to leave us for greener pastures?”
“No,” she said that with an emphatic headshake and Jacinta believed her.
“So what have I done?”
“I don’t want to. I don’t.” Em sighed. “Sorry, I’ll just come out with it. Are you on the market?”
“Me! You mean am I looking for another job? Hell, no. Where did you get that idea?”
“Malcolm told me you weren’t to do any more interviews and to cut back on your public profile. He wants me to start raising Tom’s. I thought maybe you were.” Em plucked at the buttons on her red suit jacket. “I don’t know what I thought, except, wherever you go, take me with you.”
Jacinta stood and walked around her desk to sit in the chair next to Em’s. “I’m not going anywhere.” Em swivelled to face her, their stockinged knees almost brushing. “Malcolm has decided to include Tom in board meetings now, that’s all.”
“That’s all?”
She shrugged. “It’s perfectly reasonable.”
It was, and that was part of the problem. She might be jumping at shadows; Malcolm’s, Tom’s, her own and the one Em just dragged unwillingly into the room. She needed to stay focused, rational and unemotional. She needed Mel and whatever calorie laden atrocity she’d gone in search of.
“You’d tell me if there was more to it?”
Jacinta nodded. She twitched to tell someone, damn Jay for being unavailable this week, and though she trusted Em implicitly, spilling her fears on her media chief was both ill advised and unprofessional.
Em left as Mel arrived. The woman was a saint. She’d added cream and brought coffee. “I’ll hold your calls till you’ve pigged out,” she said and pulled the door closed as Jacinta took a bite of the double chocolate custard cream pie. If she ate it all she’d feel sick, but no less woozy than she already did.
She took another bite and imagined the sugar rushing around her body, giving her superhuman powers to detect bullshit and to make the right choices. She rang Henry. “Is there anything I should know?”
“Jacinta, are you eating?”
She swallowed. “My lunch, sorry, Henry. Don’t stall. Is there anything I should know other than I annoyed Malcolm enough to elevate Tom?”
She heard Henry’s sigh and the sugar rush became a heart attack warning.