“The same as you.”
“Beckett doesn’t want to see you.” She turned toward me, blocking the elevator.
I felt dizzy, remembering that day so long ago when Julian’s mother stood on her front porch—a guard refusing to let me in. History was repeating itself. Another woman was telling me I’d been dumped. Tears burned behind my eyes, but I’d be damned before I let a single one fall in front of Fake Miranda.
Her eyes thinned to slits as she looked me over. “You should do yourself a favor and leave before he gets here. He won’t be happy to see you.”
Humiliation burned my throat and behind my eyes, but I was no longer the young girl whose heart could be broken by a third party. If Beckett truly didn’t love me, he would have to say it to my face. I wasn’t going to accept a relayed message. Not this time.
I turned my back on Sally and sat on a chair in the lobby.
Sally followed me. “What are you doing?”
I pulled open a book, not sparing her a glance. “I’m reading.”
“You can’t stay here,” she said.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, raising my eyes to glare in her direction. “Maybe you’re the one who should leave.”
“Beckett doesn’t want anything to do with you. He’s over you.” Her hand moved to her neck, and she slid the diamond-encrusted sapphire along the silver chain. “I don’t know what he saw in you in the first place. You’re not even his type.”
My muscles tensed, but I refused to respond. She wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. So what if Beckett and I weren’t each other’s types? It hadn’t seemed to put a damper on our fireworks.
“I’m calling him right now.” She brandished her phone in the air.
“Go ahead.”
“Is everything okay here, ladies?” the doorman asked.
Sally ignored him and cocked her chin at me, radiating superiority. “He ended things with you. You don’t belong here.”
A little cloud of doubt sailed over my blue skies.What if Beckett didn’t love me? What if Sally was right? What if Beckett had already moved on, forgotten me?
I gritted my teeth. “I thought Beckett fired you.”
Color swept up her neck to her cheeks. “Beckett would never fire me. He needs me.”
“You think very highly of yourself.”
“Beckett and I are a team.”
I bristled, anger flaring in my chest. This woman had been the face of Miranda Lockhart for too long. “What exactly do you contribute to the team? Beckett has the talent, the drive, the passion. He’s the genius. You’re only the face.”
Sally sneered at me, raising her phone to her ear. “He couldn’t publish without me.”
Neither one of us had heard the faint click of shoes on the tile, but there was no mistaking the ringing of the phone from a few feet away.
Sally’s face fell, her smug smile slipping away as we both turned to see Beckett coming down the hall, ringing phone in his hand.
His eyes swept over us, flashing furiously behind the black frames of his glasses. The room pulsed with tension as Beckett’s ringtone continued to blast. He frowned down at the phone and swiped the screen. Silence filled the air.
“You want to say that to my face, Sally?”
“Thank God you’re here.” She rushed over to him. “Can you get her out of here? I can’t work with her around.”
Beckett shoved his phone in his pocket. A vein pulsed in his forehead as he reached up and pulled off his glasses. “Your work is done.”
Sally tossed her hair over her shoulder, undaunted by Beckett’s rejection. “You don’t mean it.”
