tag line under the photo was worse. Will going to bed with the boss put this former model on the fast track to success in corporate America?
She grabbed the tabloid with a jerk that almost tore its front cover and yanked it open. She flipped the pages with angry flicks until she found the article. It was a two page spread with more pictures. Lots of them. Every one insinuated sexual intimacy between her and Angelo.
One showed them coming out of their hotel room at the coast. Angelo’s arm was around her, his body language and expression possessive. The implication was unmistakable, but the editorial copy spelled it out anyway.
Like two years before, she was painted as a money-grubbing whore, only this time with her eye to the main chance at Primo Tech. An unnamed source in the management training department was quoted as saying it looked like Tara was hoping to gain her promotions via an avenue even older than hard work and perseverance.
It was all there…her affair with Baron, further speculation on her being the other woman when he courted his oil heiress. There was even some nonsense about how he’d been keeping her under surveillance since the breakup and innuendo that she might be at fault for the rumored possibility of imminent divorce.
Tara’s stomach somersaulted and it took a full minute of shallow breathing before she was sure she wouldn’t lose what little she’d eaten that day. She’d skipped lunch, trying to get ahead at work so she could take a half day off on Friday and keep her weekend free. Angelo was due in early the following afternoon.
Had he seen the article? She had no way of knowing. Surprisingly he had not called her all week. She had expected him to at least attempt to sway her decision with frequent phone calls, but he hadn’t. She only knew when he was due back because he’d told her before leaving when to expect him.
Her gaze re-focused on the article. How many people had seen it?
The weekly didn’t have the highest circulation in the country, but it was a national publication.
She couldn’t believe this was happening all over again and it made her furious. She hadn’t done anything wrong, but she was being painted as a scheming tramp who used her body to get ahead instead of relying on her brains. That made Tara angriest of all. She’d graduated at the top of her class and was darn good at her job. She didn’t need the company owner’s patronage to get a promotion.
She was perfectly capable of securing one on her own merits, thank you very much.
The whole situation would be ludicrous if it didn’t hurt like a knife to the gut. Twisting that knife was the knowledge that whoever had sold the picture and information to the tabloid had been at Danette’s party. And one of her co-workers had been willing to be quoted, if anonymously, saying something extremely nasty. Betrayal burned through her.
She didn’t know who she worked with that felt that way, but only one person had gone around taking picture after picture at the party. Ray…the budding journalist.
He’d told her he was a serious journalist and that photography was only his hobby. The weekly was hardly an impressive example of journalistic solemnity and those photos had been paid for, which made the little hobby a job.
An ugly, despicable job…but one that could not be denied. Her stomach cramped again as an even less palatable thought assailed her. Had Danette known about it?
Two years ago, a couple of models that Tara had thought were friends had betrayed her to the press. One going so far as to tell out and out lies about her, exacerbating the piranha like media frenzy feeding off of her misfortune. That had hurt almost as much as Baron’s rejection.
So, maybe Tara was being hopelessly naïve now, but she simply could not accept that Danette had been in on Ray’s scheme. Danette was too forthright and she had too many stars in her eyes when she talked about Ray.
Which meant she was probably hurting as much as Tara was right now…if she’d seen the article.
It wasn’t fair. The rat. The absolute rat! She’d like to see him right now and she’d cut off his tail.
“Miss, it’s your turn!”
She looked up, realizing from the expression on the faces around her that was not the first time the checker had told her to move forward. Apparently the big chili controversy had been settled.
She tossed the weekly down in front of the checker. “I’ll take this, too.”
He nodded, his expression bored and then finished ringing her up. She paid and left, anger and hurt sizzling through her in alternating waves.
Those waves took on monumental proportions when she got to work the next day to discover she was being fired. She was told the order came from Angelo’s office in New York, but she refused to believe it. First of all, the man was too smart to fire a woman he’d slept with over getting caught out by the media.
Such an action put both him and his company too much at risk for retaliation and a sexual harassment lawsuit, if the woman in question was in the least bit dishonest.
The human resources manager assigned to the task of letting her go had finally admitted that Angelo was currently in Puerto Rico dealing with a natural disaster emergency that had affected one of his supply plants. Apparently even phone communication was iffy.
Which explained why he hadn’t called all week.
When he didn’t arrive that afternoon, or call, she tried his office. His secretary confirmed that he was calling in only sporadically for messages. Tara left one, bothered by his absence and her inability to get ahold of him. And she had to admit that an emergency like the one he faced in Puerto Rico wasn’t something he could dismiss or delegate.
She’d made a decision not to be hampered by her past in every judgment she made. That meant continuing to believe in the tycoon she missed more than she wanted to.
At least until he proved himself unworthy of her trust.
Wanting to get one issue of trustworthiness resolved, she tried to call Danette, but got her friend’s home voice mail instead and was forced to leave a message.
The phone rang the next morning and woke her out of a fitful sleep. She’d spent too many dark hours thinking about her best friend and the man who wanted to marry her.
Hoping it was Danette, she grabbed it. “Hello?”
“Tara?”
The voice was familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it.
“Yes?” Her voice came out scratchy and she cleared her throat.
“I need to see you, darling.”
“Who is this?” she demanded, her sleep fuddled mind sure of one thing.
The voice at the other end of the line was not one of the two men in her life with a right to call her by endearments: Angelo and her stepfather, Darren.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the sound of my voice. I haven’t forgotten anything about you, Tara. I never could. Not the sweet way you smell, or the taste of your lips—”
“I am not in any mood for obscene phone calls,” she inserted with
