“What if we had an urgent meeting or you were stuck in traffic? Anything could’ve happened?”
Natalie’s phone rang and she stepped away to answer it.
I could barely see straight. My anger was all consuming. I had trusted Dana and she had betrayed me. How long had she been meddling in my life, trying to drive a wedge between Natalie and myself?
“You’re fired,” I said, feeling the fury receding and being replaced by a cold hatred.
“I don’t want to see you or hear from you ever again. Don’t even try working for anyone in this industry again.”
“Sam, please!” Dana was in tears now. “I did it for you, for us!”
“What are you talking about?” I snapped. “There is no us!”
“Of course, there is! We have always been unstoppable as a team! And that night in the hotel room in New York… “
Her voice trailed away. Natalie had finished her call and walked back to us. When she heard Dana’s last sentence, her face went pale.
“Nothing happened,” I said quickly. “Dana threw herself at me and I walked away.”
“You never told me,” Natalie said, in a small voice.
“It wasn’t important.”
Dana protested, “It wasn’t important?! You said you wanted to, but you felt sick! I’ve been waiting for another opportunity for us to be together but this… fool… kept spoiling everything!” She glared at Natalie.
“You were my PA!” I shouted at Dana. “I never gave you any reason to think there was anything more between us!”
“You called me whenever you needed anyone to help you,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “Who helped you with Ethan? Who fetched your dry cleaning? Found the special vitamin supplements you wanted? Took you for sushi lunches when you were feeling down?”
“Those were working lunches, Dana!”
I had no idea that she had these feelings for me, that she had constructed a relationship between us in her mind, in which Natalie was the only obstacle. How much time had she wasted on this obsession? How much of her interest in work was motivated by a desire to seem more professional and committed to Luma than she really was? I thought of how she’d come to work for me when Luma was little more than a two-man show. It was me and Trevor on the technical side and then Dana. After our first client, when we needed a bigger office, Dana had been the one to find them. When we needed to hire more staff, Dana did the recruitment. I had been relieved that she was willing to take on so many of the tasks I didn’t want to do. I liked to tell myself I was too busy, but the truth was, I didn’t feel like doing them. Dana was helping me and in return, I paid her well. But she wanted more, and I didn’t realize that. That night in New York, I thought it was clear that I wasn’t interested. I had hoped that would be that.
I knew everyone didn’t feel about Luma as I did.
When Trevor couldn’t take the pace and told me he wanted out of our business, I was taken aback. I thought he loved Luma like I did. But he said it wasn’t worth it. He had a girlfriend; they had a baby on the way, and I recall him saying to me that this was just a job. I had taken it personally, as if he’d insulted me, instead of a product we’d developed. “I want a life, Sam,” is what he’d said to me. My thoughts at the time were that the business was my life. My company was my life. What else was there? But, for the first time, I started to see what Trevor had meant. Luma wasn’t my life. Natalie and Ethan were. The rest was not nearly as important as I thought it had been.
I felt incredibly tired.
“Please go,” I said, quietly to Dana.
“But, Sam...” I held up a hand. I didn’t want to hear anything more from her. I turned to Natalie who had turned away and was walking back into the house. I picked up my pace to catch up with her.
“Natalie.”
She turned with a sad smile.
“It’s okay, Sam. You didn’t know. I only figured it out myself this morning.”
“So, we’re fine?”
She shook her head. “Things lately have been, I don’t know. You’ve been working so hard, and I’ve felt like we weren’t really connecting.”
“I know,” I said.
“But we can talk now,” I said. “If there is one thing I have learnt from all of this, it is that I love you.”
Her eyes softened and I took her hands, pulled her to me. She let me hug her, hold her, but I could feel her holding back.