“It’s real.” I gave my ring hand a wave then stared at the opposite wall.
“Wow.” Disbelief and confusion were pretty much everyone’s response, but Morgan somehow took to it a snooty, disdainful level. “Celeste is totally freaked out.” My least favorite coworker was high on the joy and victory of my scandal, sloshed on giddiness and petty glee. “Yesterday Celeste called me a dozen times asking if I’d heard from you.” Morgan shook her head. “I assumed you wouldn’t get the New York promotion, but I never guessed you’d go down in flames like this.”
“I—” What? What could I possibly have to say? My brain froze. My thoughts flatlined.
The elevator chugged to a stop, and the doors creaked open.
With a cheery smile, Morgan clapped me on the back. “Good luck in there. You’re going to need it.” And with that, she sashayed to her office, a woman confident in my demise.
The reality of what came next almost had me retreating into a corner of the elevator and riding it back down.
But I couldn’t. I’d made a career in facing problems head-on, and I wouldn’t run away now.
A trip to the bathroom, one lengthy visit to the staff lounge, two quick walks up and down the halls, plus three prayers later, I finally stood at Celeste’s door and knocked.
“Come in.” Sitting at her desk, Celeste spared me a quick look over her cat eye glasses. She was Miranda Priestly inThe Devil Wears Prada, bidding me entrance and rejecting me with a single withering glare.
I stepped inside, an unarmed innocent walking into the battle zone. “Good morning, Celeste.”
She put down her phone and raised one perfectly waxed eyebrow. “Shut the door.”
The only time Celeste closed her door was on the rare occasion she wanted to yell. I’d never been the recipient of her raised voice…until now.
She crossed her arms over her slender waist, her straight spine pressed into the back of her chair. “You bid me good morning. But is it, Olivia? Is it a good morning?”
Flair Survival Rule Number 27: Never answer Celeste’s rhetorical questions. “I can explain.”
She held up a hand, her red nails glistening beneath the dangling lights. “You are my sane one, my levelheaded one. All this time I thought you were so like me—my young protégé. But this drama? These are not the actions of a Celeste Coulson.”
I wanted so badly to tell Celeste everything. Surely she’d understand if I explained we’d been drugged and were simply trying to make the best of it—for the sake of Lachlan’s businessandFlair.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was getting married,” I began. “But please understand—”
“I don’t care if someone hijacked the Strip, held you at gunpoint, and forced you to marry Lachlan Hayes.” I was surprised Celeste didn’t breathe fire. “For the simple fact that it went viral, it does not matter.”
There went my plan to gain her sympathy with the truth.
Celeste turned her laptop around so I had a view of her screen. “Peoplemagazine reports you two had dated for two whopping days.”
“That’s not accurate,” I said. And itwasn’ttrue. We hadn’t dated at all.
She pushed play on a video. “This is footage of you kissing Hayes, then kissing the minister, then cartwheeling down the aisle, baring your Victoria’s Secrets for all to see.”
The video continued to play, and my voice could be heard shouting, “Don’t tell my boss!” while a sloppy cartwheel took out two chairs and a fern.
“If you had married a no-name individual, I would not have cared what you did in Vegas,” Celeste said. “But you married a tech mogul who has millions watching his every move.”
“I’m sorry the wedding was so gauche.”
“Gauche I could handle.” Celeste maximized another photo that showed me face down in the chapel souvenir cake. “All of this just makes you look like a total kook.”
I had zero memory of the cake, and right now that seemed like a shame. “I’m aware I look out of control, but—”
“People do not entrust their reputations, brands, and businesses to cartwheeling women who flash their bloomers. They want stability. They want people who do not get married by Cher.”
“It was Celine.”
“Excuse me?”
