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Well, heartbreak for one. And betrayal. And the worst mistake of her life. How to explain this to this coiffed and styled woman, who probably never set a foot wrong in her life unless she intended to, that Chiara had crossed lines that should have never even been seen, not to mention touched?
Under her fingertips, Binoche stretched, and the warmth of her fur soothed, the sensation grounding Chiara. For the millionth time, she wondered why she’d taken the cat who reminded her of nothing else except how she had done things she’d had no business doing, and how those things came back to haunt her.
She could have given Binoche away to a number of people who would have cared for her and loved her and been amazing humans to her. But Chiara held on to the cat, who now purred reluctantly under her caress.
What’s the worst that could happen?
Her thoughts tangled. Maybe it was time to move forward, though? Maybe the worst had already happened when she’d crossed a line and gotten burned in a way not even Frankie could have accomplished? And what did it really say about her marriage when a few months of flirtation and one night with a twenty-five-year-old girl had left more scars than her wife cheating on her for years?
Chiara shook her head and her predictable anger at herself, at Vi, at Frankie, reared its ugly head again. Well, perhaps she needed to face some things. And to let go of others. With absolutely no one respecting her wishes and treading lightly and letting her rest, maybe she was due a resurrection?
With one last pet to Binoche’s fuzzy belly, she turned to face Arabella, standing surprisingly quietly by the worktable, tactful enough to give her time and space. One look at Chiara’s face and Arabella’s own shone with triumph.
“Splendid! Benedict will be in touch about the pesky details—”
“Pesky?” Chiara wanted to laugh. The logistics of preparing an entire issue of a magazine in under two weeks? Mind-boggling.
“Dearest, what do I care about any of it? I have people for that. And Benedict Stanley is a shrewd man who has performed greater miracles than this. Plus, I’m not certain this will be a miracle to begin with. He and I were discussing a wedding issue anyway. It’s so de rigueur. So very trendy right now. The same trend that you yourself helped usher in. Neve Blackthorne may have kept her wedding dress to herself and her bride, but the new Queen Consort of Savoy? Dearest, that gown alone changed destinies.” Arabella took a few steps around the studio, pointing at the various works in progress displayed on assorted mannequins.
“One, two, three… eighteen… You have over what? Twenty? Just here on display? Some may be spoken for, but we will work around that. Between what’s already here and what you can deliver, creating an issue of Poise will not be a problem. Plus, you’re the true star anyway. A forty-five-year-old who reinvented herself and rose from the ashes. The public loves a sob story, dearest. Ask anyone.”
Chiara wanted to protest at the manipulative narrative she was being fed, but then Arabella winked at her, and she shook her head again instead. No, she had no idea how to act when in the eye of this particular storm.
“So an interview?”
“Oh, dearest, an interview and so much more. A photoshoot. Several, in fact. You, you and your team, you and this fickle city that is welcoming you twenty-five years after it laid itself down at your feet. My very best photographer—you can call her a project of mine—will make it all perfect. She has that touch. A unique talent. Quite the perfect match to yours, dearest. Oh, I can already see the copy for this. The story really writes itself.”
Apprehension and excitement warred within Chiara. In the end, caution won.
“I will only sign on, on condition of final red pen approval rights.”
Arabella’s eyes shone with the satisfaction of a cat that got into the cream and found that an entire canary was dunked into it.
“Dearest, I do not give a flying fuck what you say in those interviews and what you want to keep to yourself. You can recite poetry for all I care. Read the damn phone book. Do they even make them anymore? Red pen, blue pen, rainbow pen! Have at it. Just say yes.”
Chiara smiled at the boisterousness and extended her hand, which Arabella shook with surprising strength for someone so pampered.
“Wonderful. Wonderful, dearest. Now, where is that exceedingly unpleasant receptionist of yours that my secretary had to wear down to get to you?”
Chiara felt the corners of her mouth twitch at the thought of Renate, who ran the show, being mistaken for her secretary, and pressed a button on her intercom, connecting her with the CEO office at the lower floor. At Renate’s clipped answer, Chiara smiled into the speaker.
“Yes, hi, would you please come to my studio? I want to introduce you to Arabella.”
The line turned silent before it went dead, and Chiara again sensed that something was about to happen, something that had been bubbling under the surface at Chiaroscuro these past few weeks.
The click of high heels announced Renate’s arrival, and Chiara realized that it was possible she should have asked more questions about some of that very pointed hostility her former sister-in-law felt towards their new benefactor.
Because Renate walked into the studio, marched up to Arabella, took one sharp breath, and slapped her across the face with a resounding smack.
Chiara gasped and stepped forward—to do what she wasn’t quite sure since this was so unprecedented, so entirely out of character and out of anything and everything she herself had witnessed in her life. She was shocked when Arabella raised a hand and cradled her cheek before exhaling loudly.
“Well, I expected this to go slightly better, Rena. But really just slightly.”
The unsurprised tone, the lack of any kind of offense or reaction to the slap, was perhaps even more shocking than the action itself.
“Don’t you ‘Rena’ me, Bella. You walked out on me decades ago. Just marched out of there and into the arms of Archibald and told me I should have had zero expectations. After months of promising me the world. And now that you dumped Margo Dresden, you just waltz in here expecting exactly what? Your dance does not change despite the change of tune,dearest.” Renate’s mocking tone was cold as ice. “Of all people, you should know, I do hold a grudge.”
Chiara simply stared as Arabella approached Renate carefully, like one would another combatant holding a grenade.
