But before then…God, he’d been so wonderful to her. Emma still remembered how she’d wait for Dean by the window in her childhood bedroom. How the moment he climbed through it, the excited butterflies in her stomach would take flight and send her heart soaring. It helped that her parents went to bed early and slept deeply—she and Dean would have hours together. Hours to talk and cuddle and kiss and share their secrets.
Sometimes she really missed the girl she used to be. So open and full of hope. But life had jaded her. It had started with Dean’s betrayal, the slap in the face that had taught her things didn’t always turn out the way you’d hoped. And then it just got worse, as work and stress and bad experiences crept in over the years to turn her from a na?ve optimist to a reluctant cynic.
The ringing of her cell phone jarred Emma from her depressing thoughts, and when she saw the caller ID, her spirits sank even lower. Shit. It was eleven o’clock on the East Coast, far too late for Stella to be calling with a work-related emergency.
Which meant it was a Lorenzo-related emergency.
Though these days, those were one and the same.
“Hey, Stella,” Emma said after she’d picked up. “What’s going on?”
Her assistant’s misery-laced moan echoed through the extension. “I’m so sorry, Em. I effed up.”
Despite her growing concern, Emma had to smile. Stella was the only twenty-two-year-old she knew who didn’t swear like a sailor. In fact, the young Brit went out of her way not to curse, which Emma certainly appreciated considering the girl dealt with clients and buyers on a daily basis.
“What happened?”
“What didn’t happen?” Stella burst out.
Oh crap. Emma briefly closed her eyes. What the fuck had Enzo done this time?
“This day has been pure hell from start to finish! I didn’t call you earlier because I thought I’d be able to put out all the fires myself and I didn’t want to bother you while you’re working on the new line, but…I’m at the end of my rope, Em. I can’t…I…” Stella was audibly gasping, as if she’d started to hyperventilate.
Emma experienced a pang of alarm. “Stella. Honey. Calm down. Breathe, okay?”
Rapid, breathless pants met her ears.
“Now exhale and tell me what happened.”
“He showed up drunk at the Cosmo photo shoot,” Stella said in a wobbly voice. “But it wasn’t too bad. The photographer and creative director just laughed it off, and we ended up getting some good shots of Enzo posing with Christina.”
Emma nodded to herself. That was good, at least. The piece in Cosmo was a very minor one, just a small sidebar snippet of Enzo with the model who was going to be the next face of the Fire and Ice label.
“But he was definitely too tipsy to do the interview with the Times,” Stella went on, “so I rescheduled it for tomorrow morning, and then I drove him back to the penthouse and ordered him to sleep it off. Oh, and I also rescheduled the Vogue interview to this evening, because he insisted he’d be fine after a few hours’ sleep. So I went to run a few errands, and when I came back, he was gone!”
A groan slipped from Emma’s mouth. Goddamn it.
“I called every bloody person in Manhattan trying to track him down!” Stella wailed. “But then an hour before the interview, he texts to say he went to meet a friend and would be at the hotel in time for the meeting. So I go to the hotel and then me and the journalist waited around for forty minutes, and Enzo didn’t show!”
Stella’s British accent grew more pronounced the more upset she became. “I went back to his apartment, and he was there! Having a party! He invited some models he met at Cosmo, and some skeezy guys he met Lord knows where, and they were all snorting cocaine when I got there. Well, Enzo wasn’t, but all his slimy friends were.”
Hell, shit, damn, fuck, motherfucker. All the expletives Stella refused to voice blared at top volume in Emma’s head.
Fucking Lorenzo. Normally Emma was the one who stuck to Enzo like glue and made sure he didn’t get out of hand, but when he’d rejected her suggestion they spend the winter in San Francisco—claiming it was too “pedestrian”—she’d sacrificed her own personal assistant so Stella could serve as Enzo’s handler.
Clearly the young woman was completely out of her element.
And it was official—Lorenzo Fuoco was out of control. Emma had known their success was going to his head, but in the past, she’d always been able to keep a firm grip on his self-destructive bullshit. These days, it was like trying to rein in a wild stallion that was fighting the restraints with everything he had.
“Where is he now?” she asked in a calm voice that in no way matched her not-calm mood.
“He’s asleep in his bedroom.”
“Are you sure?”
Stella’s heavy breath thudded over the line. “I’m positive. I…” There was a long pause.
“You what?” Emma demanded.
“Don’t get mad, but…I slipped some Ambien into his champagne.”