Jacyn didn’t speak again until her drink had reached the low-tide mark. As the alcohol sank in the glass, so did her mood. Sienna had a way of making everything look like it wasn’t as bad as you figured, but this was terrible. “Oh girl, what am I going to do? What about the business?” She waved her arm around to encompass the rows of card tables lined up in the living room, and the jars and boxes piled up on top of them. “Just as I was about to get it off the ground.”
The scent of perfumes and essential oils hung heavy in the air, filling their nostrils: Lavender, geranium, basil, cedarwood, sandalwood, frankincense. The entire range of citrus; from the cloying neroli to bergamot to the sting of lemon. And the base oils; olive and coconut, evening primrose, black castor, and hemp. The baskets of carefully and lovingly dried botanicals, petals, herbs, and tree gums. All melding together to create a unified, divine scent that gladdened Jacyn’s soul.
And now, everything had gone sideways. She didn’t just need the job at the gym to live. She’d been meticulously saving until she had a large enough nest egg to invest in the launch of her line of hand-blended, natural haircare products,Napturally Beautyful. Since she’d been a teen, all she’d ever wanted was to create a wonderful line of products that would set the whole naturalista world on its end. The planned launch was just months away. Surely Gregg had known this, and how much that launch had meant to her.
He’d known, she reminded herself. He just didn’t care.
Like every good best friend in history, Sienna knew exactly what was on her mind. “Did you explain to him that you needed the next few paychecks for your product launch? Come on. He could have stayed his hand a couple of months.”
“I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of begging.” She pursed her lips, trying to contain her disappointment. It felt as if she’d lost everything. First her man, now her job.
Things between her and Gregg had ground to a halt three months ago, starting the moment Jacyn had held aloft the torn shred of satin underwear from one finger and asked how the hell it had wound up in his car. When he’d lied like the dog he was. She’d reacted with a parade of emotions: shock, doubt, denial, hurt and anger. She’d broken things off with Gregg and to her chagrin, he didn’t seem the least bit concerned.
“Fine by me,” he’d responded cruelly. “I was getting tired of you anyway. I mean, you’re a pretty girl, and a great cook, but Lord, you’re boring in bed.”
She’d flinched, cut to the quick by his cruelty. Maybe there’d been a sliver of truth to that, she’d thought bitterly. She thought sex was okay, but had never been the type to fling her drawers into the air and swing from the chandeliers. But, ‘boring’? Really?
Word was, Gregg and Delia had hit the clubs the very next weekend, grinding up a storm to the latest tracks. It was a no-brainer to assume that the other woman, younger than she was by a year and a half, kept an entire arsenal of sexual tricks under her garter belt.
“He wasn’t worth it, you know,” Sienna broke into her thoughts.
She glared at her friend, weirded out by how accurate the woman’s perceptions always were. “What are you, part witch?”
Sienna played along with the witch story. She fluffed her thick head of natural black hair until it looked like an old hag’s rat’s nest, and then pressed her fingertips to her temples, squinting as if she was receiving a message from the great beyond. “You will soon meet a stranger,” she began, swaying like a palm tree in a gentle breeze.
Jacyn snorted. “When? Some enchanted evening?”
Sienna ignored her. “He will be tall, rich… and have a butt you could bounce quarters off of.”
Jacyn laughed, draining her glass. “Do tell, Elvira. You got any more of this green stuff, or do I have to drag you by the hair into the kitchen to make me some more?”
“Duh. Made an entire jug. It’s in the fridge. Have at it, hunny bunny.”
As Jacyn returned with two fresh drinks for them both, Sienna asked, “And how are you for money?”
Jacyn shrugged. “I’ve been saving at least a hundred a month since my first job at fifteen.” At first, the money was for a one way plane ticket to Germany, but her planned migration had never transpired. “Should cover me for the next six months or so. I won’t starve.”
Sienna patted her shoulder, and she felt it oddly comforting. “We can do better than to plunder your savings.” She withdrew her phone and began poking at it. “We’re gonna get you a job.”
CHAPTER 2
EVEN THOUGH SOME OF the best popular music was pounding away in the background, most of the people at the party fell silent when Alexandre lifted his glass. He paused before speaking, enjoying the attention. It was one of the perks of being good-looking, powerful, and wealthy beyond measure. When you opened your mouth, everyone listened.
He took a hefty swig of the Dom Perignon Rosé he’d had flown in from Reims especially for this occasion. At more than $10,000 a bottle, he hoped they were savoring the exquisite taste as much as he was.
In his mild French accent, he announced, “I want everyone to raise their glasses in toast to Nathanael, one of the best friends and business partners a man could have, on this occasion as he prepares to do the most damn-fool thing a man can do. Getting married.”
Everyone in the room laughed, including Nathanael and his beautiful fiancée, Shaundra. He smiled as he said it, as if he was sharing the joke, but the only people there who knew he wasn’t kidding were Nathanael and himself because in private, his reaction to his partner’s announcement that he was taking the leap had not been subtle.
Love, as far as Alexandre was concerned, was a type of mental illness that was easily cured by being forced to live in close quarters with the object of your desire. But this wasn’t the time to be peevish; he was bigger than that. A gentleman, just as his mother raised him to be.
His handsome face split in a wide grin and he brushed a stray lock of dark chestnut hair out of his eyes and said in a jocular tone, “I tried to talk him out of it,” which was true, “but he seems to be dead set on spending the rest of his life with one gorgeous, smart, talented woman, instead of several.” He paused for the inevitable laughter and ended with, “Good luck to you,mon frère,and may your home be filled with many little bare-footed brats.”
As the laughter died down, he stepped aside to allow his best friend to take the floor. Immediately, a svelte, sloe-eyed Asian beauty in a midnight-blue Chanel gown sidled up to him and slid her arm into his. He gave her a vague smile, not even minding when she swiped the glass of champagne from his hand and sipped it coyly, her black eyes fixed on his the whole time, clearly sending a message that she was very good at doing things with her mouth.
We’ll have to test that theory later,he thought, but it was neither here nor there with him. If he didn’t take her home tonight, someone else would. And she could just as easily be replaced with any of the dozens of scantily dressed hangers-on who glided around the dance floor wearing impossibly high heels, all of them eying him and circling, like sharks around a lost swimmer.
He allowed the woman—what was her name again? Chloë? Zoë? — to nuzzle the dark smattering of stubble on his chin. But his mind had drifted off to the place it always did: the plans he and Nathanael had to expand their hotel chain, Sapphire International, into Asia. They were thinking they would start with Hong Kong and Tokyo, and then, in about three years, move on to Bangkok and Shanghai.