LANDON COURT.
No matter how hard I try not to think about him, I can’t help myself. The memories, his name, everything just hovers at the borders of my mind, waiting for the slightest opportunity to come in and torment me with images from the night we spent together.
It’s been almost a week, but I’m still no closer to forgetting him than I was when he was right in front of me.
Landon Court. Even the name is sexy, and his voice…it makes me shiver to remember.
“Top ten travel apps,” Mark Willis, senior features editor, says musingly, looking at a sheet of paper on the table. It’s Thursday, and we’re in one of the small meeting rooms going over last minute articles for next week’s publication on the website version of Gilt Traveler. “That one’s yours Chelsea.”
Chelsea, my fellow features associate, beams and makes a note on her writing pad. She’s startlingly beautiful, with cornflower blue eyes and waves upon waves of platinum blonde hair. She always gets the simplest and most unchallenging articles, because of the combination of her wide-eyed sweetness, the fact that her father is a Kentucky billionaire oilman and rancher, and the southern accent she displays no desire to get rid of. She doesn’t mind. She uses all the resulting free time to work on her historical epic novel about the power-hungry noblemen of renaissance Italy and the women who loved them.
The articles I write aren’t much better. My last assignment was to write about a cruise on the Colombia River. I interviewed Evelyn Hart, a former Broadway star who’d taken the cruise. It was a promotional article, sponsored by the cruise company. Evelyn Hart even admitted to me that she’d spent most of the trip holed up in her cabin, recuperating from her most recent plastic surgery. Luckily, her assistant, who’d experienced the cruise while her boss was hiding out in her cabin, had been able to provide some details.
I don’t really mind what I do. I was over the moon when I got a job at Gilt Publications, even though I didn’t get my dream position in Gilt Review, the literary magazine where I’d hoped to work as an editor. There’s just something about the organization and the atmosphere at Gilt that makes it more than just magazines. Gilt is a lifestyle, embodied by so many of the tastemakers who work here. From the enigmatic editor-in-chief of Gilt Style, who can make or break a fashion designer’s career with just a word, to Grace Conlin, the no-nonsense boss at American Homes.
Mark looks up at me. He’s a slightly built man with an earnest, serious face that sometimes makes me imagine he’d rather be teaching journalism at some Midwestern college than working at Gilt. “You have another promotional article. It’s a place called Insomnia, the newest lounge in Manhattan, apparently. You’ll write one of those ‘Top Ten Reasons to Visit Insomnia while in New York’ kind of articles. They requested you specifically.”
I frown. “Really?”
He shrugs. “Your prowess at putting out promotional articles isn’t going unnoticed, it would seem.”
The words could be interpreted as anything between a compliment and an insult. I purse my lips and make a note of the assignment, resigned to my fate. At least I’ll get to visit the ‘newest lounge in Manhattan’.
As soon as I leave the meeting, I call the manager of the Insomnia Lounge and make an appointment for later in the evening. She informs me that a VIP access pass will be delivered to me so I won’t have to wait in line.
By the time our conversation is over, I’m back in my office. My inbox is full of mail, and one of them is from Laurie.
Look what I found. His brother is even more delicious.
There’s a link, and I click on it to see an article on one of the online gossip sites. There’s a picture of Landon with a younger man as they walk out of a popular Manhattan restaurant.
Hotel Magnate Landon Court Celebrates Birthday With Baby Brother Aidan.
He’s wearing the suit he had on when I met him, complete with the discarded tie I saw in his living room. He does look delicious. My eyes don’t even go toward the brother. Instead, my mind travels back to that night in his apartment, to the memories my body isn’t ready to give up yet.
I sigh. I’m not going to obsess over my one-night stand. I should be more concerned with planning how to act with Jack when I inevitably run into him again. Already the office is buzzing with news of his engagement. Chelsea, as nice as she is beautiful, and one of the few people who saw past my friendship with Jack to the fact that I was in love with him, already asked how I’m doing and assured me that she was always available if I wanted to bitch about Jack.
It’s tempting, but the less I say or think about him, the better for me. He hasn’t called me, and I haven’t seen him since Chadwick’s party, so whatever the reason he came to my apartment that night, it probably wasn’t important.
The email from Laurie is still open on my screen. I type my reply.
Yeah whatever. I see how productive you are at work. Anyway, get ready, we have a VIP pass to Insomnia tonight.
She replies via text with a long Yay!
I spend the next few minutes answering the rest of my work emails. I’m almost done when my phone rings.
It’s my mom.
“Darling.” Her voice is low and smooth. “How are you?”
I imagine her washing paint off her arms as she speaks, phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear, her red hair pinned up. That’s the image I always have of my mom. She’s a successful painter, artsy and sometimes silly, the direct opposite of my dad, who is serious and a little nerdy. He was the business side of Trent & Taylor, the ready-to-wear clothing line he founded with his twin brother, my uncle Taylor, until they sold a large percentage of the company to a multinational chain. He totally adores my mom. Together, they’re a walking true love cliché.
I grew up dreaming about having a love like theirs. I waited for it, and when I found Jack and fell so hard, I thought I’d finally found it. How wrong I was.
“I’m all right Mom. You?”
She laughs. “Oh! I’m fine. How’s work?”
I shrug. “Perfect.”
“It doesn’t sound all that perfect from the tone of that voice—not that I blame you. You must be the only travel writer in New York who has never been outside the city for work.”
“I’m not a travel writer, Mom. I just—”
“Write for a travel magazine. I know.” She sighs. “I hope you can make it this Sunday. I’m making lunch. Laurie already confirmed that she’s coming with Brett. She also said you’re free this weekend so don’t bother to give me an excuse. Your brother won’t be there, but your uncle and aunt will.”
I roll my eyes. Mom likes to plan these family reunions at least once a month, and she connives with Aunt Jacie to waylay us into coming. She probably told Laurie I’d already agreed to come.
“Fine. I’ll be there.”
I hear a pause in her voice. “Laurie told me about Jack’s engagement.”
I close my eyes, unsure whether to channel my annoyance toward Laurie for telling my mom, toward Jack for breaking my heart in the first place, or at myself for letting him.
“Aren’t you glad I finally got the wake-up call I’ve needed for almost two years?” I ask. My mom’s opinion on my fixation on Jack has always been the same as Laurie’s.
“Oh sweetie.” She sighs. “I just hate that you’re hurting. I remember how excited you were when you first started seeing him. Of course, you romanticized him, and you were more in love with your idea of him than with who he really was.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know more than you think I know. I’m your mother. Anyway, now you’ll get over him.”
“How’s Dylan?” I ask, eager to change the subject. My baby brother is the apple of my mom’s eye.
Her voice perks up. “He’s fine. Sometimes I worry that he’s studying too hard…” She launches into a long monologue about my brother, and thankfully doesn’t bring up Jack again before she has to go.
Afterward, I wonder what she would have said if I’d told her about Landon. She’d probably have been excited and, like Laurie, disappointed that I hadn’t left him my number. Again, I can’t keep my mind from drifting back to that night, and a wave of heat courses through my body. It was only sex—great sex, yes—but thinking about it, it felt like so much more.
Maybe if I had come clean and told him I wasn’t actually a hooker, we could have come to some sort of mutually beneficial and sexually rewarding arrangement. Maybe I could have kept on pretending to be a prostitute, hooking up with him whenever he called. I’d be Rachel Foster, Gilt employee by day, Landon Court’s whore by night.
The prospect is disturbingly appealing.
Shaking the thought out of my head, I turn back to my screen. Landon Court has probably forgotten that I exist, which means the only reasonable thing to do is to forget about him too.