A Courtesan’s Guide to Getting Your Man (18 page)

Piper’s father sputtered. Her mother dropped her fork onto her plate, and a wad of sautéed ginger cabbage landed with a splat on the tablecloth.

Oh boy. Oh shit
. Piper hadn’t meant to say that
out loud
. And note to self:
the word “peeps” has no place in my lexicon.

She shoved herself to a stand. She threw the damaged napkin to the table, grabbed her bag, and squared her shoulders.

Her parents’ faces remained frozen in disbelief. Maybe she should’ve waited until she was sixty.

“Look, I’m sorry I spoke to you like that.” Piper forced back the tears. Her shoulders sagged. Her chest felt hollow. “I’ll just go now.”

Before she reached the door, Piper heard her father offer a one-word explanation for his daughter’s uncharacteristic outburst.

“Dairy,” he said.

Later that night, Piper took no joy in preparing for her return to work. She chose her outfit, packed her matching bag, and laid out her cosmetics on the bathroom countertop, but all she could think about was how she’d failed.

Sure, she’d screamed at her parents. Real mature. But then she’d
apologized
! As if it were
her
fault that her parents were emotionally freeze-dried!

Piper leaned her hands on the edge of the countertop. She raised her eyes to the mirror. The new woman in her life glared back, and boy was she pissed.

You’re going to explode if you don’t find the courage to stand up for yourself. Without apology. The way Ophelia did. Damn the consequences.

As Piper studied the anger and grief in her own eyes, she was suddenly struck by the irony of it all.

She wasn’t brave enough to tell the truth about another woman’s life, let alone her own.

Thirteen

The instant Mick saw Piper, his knees gave out. The room went dim. His ears clanged like the bells at Holy Cross Cathedral. His body collapsed into a conference room chair. He struggled to catch his breath.

Piper Chase-Pierpont had just kicked the wind out of him.

A few people in the conference room gasped. One fellow dropped his Styrofoam cup of hot coffee. A couple others scrambled to mop it up with paper towels while their jaws hung slack. One guy even took a picture of her with his smartphone.

But Linc Northcutt, the arse-kisser who’d been assigned as Mick’s assistant and then spent all of last week annoying the fuck out of him, was the first person to say anything.

“Piper?”
Linc’s voice got a bit squeaky in the higher decibel range. “Is that really
you
?”

Mick kept his eyes locked on Piper as she strolled through the conference room like a cat, all shiny and glowing and poised and looking like a shot of eighty-proof sex poured into a pair of heels.

Heels. She was wearing feckin’ heels. And a real dress.

Mick’s palms began to sweat. This apparition couldn’t be real. He blinked, but she was still there, still moving like a hot knife through melting butter. He decided to pinch the inside of his left thigh as hard as he could to be sure he wasn’t dreaming. It hurt so bad his eyes watered.

Jaysus feckin’ H., Piper Chase-Pierpont was one fine woman
.

The conference room was in chaos by the time a sweaty-looking Louis LaPaglia shuffled in, juggling a stack of papers, a laptop, and a cup of coffee. He began talking before he’d gotten himself organized or even put his arse in a chair.

“All right, people. Let’s get this going. I have an interview with public television at ten-thirty. Oh, and welcome back, Piper,” he said, opening his laptop and hitting the power button. He chuckled to himself, then finally raised his eyes to the assembled staff. “So how’s the ink poi—”

The room went silent. Piper stood behind her chair and smiled pleasantly. It was then Mick noticed she’d chosen the seat farthest from him. In fact, any farther away and she wouldn’t be attending the same meeting.

“A lot better, thanks,” she said.

“No shit.”

LaPaglia slapped a hand over his mouth. His eyes bulged in embarrassment. Everyone but Mick and Piper began to howl with laughter. Mick imagined only three little words were now dancing around in LaPaglia’s tiny brain.
Sexual. Harassment. Complaint.

“Er … ah…” LaPaglia shook his head. He’d gone pale. “That’s enough, people. Oh God. Damn. I’m really sorry, Piper. Er … It’s just a shock. But you look so…”

Mick filled in the blank in his head:
Lovely. Sexy. Pulled together. Delicious.

“… nice,” the museum’s executive director said. “Now, ah, let’s get started, shall we?”

While everyone else had been laughing, Mick continued to study Piper. Truly, she was a feast for the visual cortex. She wore a clingy wrap dress in ivory with tiny brown dots, and though it was a perfectly businesslike dress, it did nothing to hide the potential for sin that lurked beneath.

She’d chosen neutral-colored open-toed high-heeled sandals. Her face seemed cheerful and healthy. Her smile was blinding. Her hair was dark and lustrous and he suddenly couldn’t recall how she’d worn it last week and why it seemed so shockingly
there
today. And her eyes—

He heard himself gasp.
Contacts
. Piper was wearing contacts. And her gorgeous green eyes were large and luminous and looking right … at … him.

His elbow slipped off the table.

She smiled sweetly.

Fuck me
.

*   *   *

Piper slipped daintily into her chair, folded her hands on the table in front of her, and continued to smile benevolently. She didn’t mind the stares, the gasps, the spilled coffee. She didn’t even mind LaPaglia’s oafish slip of the tongue. None of it mattered—because Mick Malloy sat limp in his chair, flattened by the steel-belted radials of the lust bus, just as Brenna had promised.

Piper wasn’t the only one who noticed this. Linc had looked sideways at Mick and exploded with a combination choke and guffaw that had him reaching for his coffee. “Excuse me,” he said to the group, thumping on his chest.

“We need to move along, people,” LaPaglia said impatiently. As Piper’s boss raced through the agenda items as if his pants were on fire, Piper felt Mick’s eyes bore into her.
Bore away,
she thought.

“Any update on the Ophelia Harrington installation, Piper?”

“Of course.” She stood, took a breath, and launched into her much-rehearsed statement. “This exhibit promises to be a moving experience for our visitors, both visually and orally—I mean aurally.”

Piper wanted to die from shame. Linc snickered. She hated that little ferret. She charged ahead.

“I’ve contracted with a British female voice-over artist who’ll read excerpts from Ophelia’s Harrington’s speeches and personal letters. I think it will add a touch of immediacy to the museum experience.”

LaPaglia scowled. “I don’t remember seeing that in your budget.”

Her boss had made a simple statement. And she knew how to respond. But for some reason, Piper had frozen where she stood, her head now echoing with a British woman’s words, husky and thick with desire.
“He brought me to orgasm while the spanking intensified. I went willingly, panting and moaning and screaming my release.”

That whisper Piper heard didn’t belong to the voice-over artist, and the sentiment sure as hell wouldn’t be part of the exhibit. Piper shook her head, trying to shoo the words away. She was losing it. “Yes, it was in the budget.”

“Go on.”

But she was drawing a blank. What was wrong with her? She’d practiced this update a thousand times at home, and at no time had the Seven Sins of the Courtesan hijacked her frontal lobe. “Uh, the lighting design is well under way.”

LaPaglia tilted his head and stared at her. “And?”

The voice came back. This time it was edged with ladylike fury.
“Why have I not been allowed to speak?”
the voice demanded.
“Do you not think that these fine citizens deserve to hear what I have to say?”

No, no, no,
Piper thought. Ophelia said those words in a courtroom in 1825 while on trial for murder. They had nothing to do with Piper, this staff meeting, this exhibit, or the Boston Museum of Culture and Society. Piper absolutely refused to go insane. Not now.

What was the point of being hot if she went batshit-crazy?

“Are you all right, Piper?”

“Fine.” She looked over at Mick. He gave her an almost imperceptible nod, as if he were telling her it would all work out.

She truly appreciated that. It was nice to have an ally for once.

Piper smiled. She squared her shoulders. “My initial floor plan calls for a half circle of six partially enclosed chambers fanning out from a central focal point. Each chamber will tell the story of one component of Ophelia Harrington’s surprisingly … uh—”

LaPaglia waved his hands. “What’s so surprising about Ophelia Harrington? Every fourth grader knows her story.”

Oh no they don’t …

“Each chamber will illustrate one aspect of her surprisingly layered life,” Piper said, staying on point. “Central to each will be an integrated media display of her thoughts and words, complemented by a contextually appropriate artifact collection—clothing, household items, furniture, treasured personal belongings.”

LaPaglia’s brows arched in concern. “Is this going to require headsets? I didn’t see headsets in your budget.”

“I’ve always planned for five stationary units per chamber.”

“And the central introductory element? The focal point?”

“I’m experimenting with several design options, but I haven’t locked into that one, single, perfect concept that symbolizes the essence of Ophelia Harrington’s story.”

Piper paused. That was an understatement. The truth was, her brain hadn’t yet wrapped itself around the inherent duality of the woman in question. Would Ophelia Harrington make her BMCS debut as a bonneted matron entreating an assembly of Quakers, or would she welcome patrons to the exhibit in gartered silk stockings, a corset, and morning-after hair?

“My only crime has been to be a woman with a mind of her own,”
the voice whispered.

“I find that odd,” Linc said.

Piper flashed her eyes at him. “Excuse me?”

“The core display sets the tone and overall context of any installation,” Linc said to LaPaglia, ignoring Piper’s question. “It’s the most critical part of any elevation design. How could Piper move forward without it?”

The conference room stilled. Piper swallowed. She looked at LaPaglia. “I thought it prudent to avoid discussing specifics at this stage of design development.”

“Well, ah, as long as your initial presentation to the board isn’t delayed.”

“No problem,” she said with a confident smile. “The trustees will see the mock-up in three weeks, as planned.”

LaPaglia nodded. “All right. Good work.” Then he shot his eyes to Mick. “Dr. Malloy? Anything you’d like to share with us today?”

Piper was relieved to be out of the spotlight. She sank back into her chair and listened to Mick discuss his plan to link the fund-raising campaign to the Fall Gala, always the museum’s biggest annual event, and ask for everyone’s feedback. Soon after, the meeting was adjourned.

Piper stayed seated while the staff filed out. Mick nodded politely in her direction and offered her a small smile before he left the conference room.

Eventually, Piper was alone, well aware that one piece of unfinished business remained.

She shook her head. “Here’s the problem, Ophelia,” Piper whispered, gathering up her papers. “There aren’t many women in your league, I’m afraid. What makes you think I’m one of them?”

*   *   *

Linc rapped on her door. “Got a minute?”

He watched Piper look up from her computer and squint at him. Apparently, she didn’t like drop-in visitors.

“Is there something I can do for you, Linc?” Piper rose from her chair. She hurriedly began collecting papers, and shoved the stack of documents into a drawer. Next, she came around to the front of her desk and leaned back on her hands, arms splayed wide, as if she were hiding something.

Oh please. Like you have anything I’d want to see.

“I came to apologize,” Linc said, moving farther into the huge basement storage space she’d managed to commandeer for the Harrington exhibit. The workroom was packed with all the crap Claudia Harrington-Howell had turned over—settees, candelabras, boxes of old letters and photographs, a pianoforte, travel trunks—Linc had no idea what Piper planned to do with all of it, and after today’s meeting it was obvious she didn’t know, either.

The Harrington installation sounded like a yawn-fest. Linc had been expecting her to choke with this assignment, and it looked as if she’d be living up to his expectations. Obviously, her recent failure had left Piper too afraid to do anything original.

Poor, pitiful Piper and her switchboard girls. Seriously, who did she think would pay money to go look at twenty-five black-and-white photograph enlargements of Boston’s telephone operators and a bunch of moldy old equipment, even with audio? The exhibit had been touted as a tribute to the female army at the front lines of American telecommunications. It was so bad, Linc had had to run to the men’s room, where he could laugh his ass off.

Immediately following the opening, Linc had overheard the trustees questioning their decision to promote Piper. But all that didn’t matter anymore. The nerd princess was about to prove herself spectacularly expendable. How kind of her.

“I only wanted to help,” he said earnestly. “I think it came out the wrong way, and I sincerely apologize.”

Linc stopped a few feet from Piper and smiled shyly, all the while taking in the details of her sudden transformation. Whoever helped her pull this off—probably that blond sex professor friend of hers—knew what they were doing. Linc had spent the last four years being entertained by this girl’s heinously hilarious fashion offenses, and then,
bam
! She suddenly shows up looking like she just stepped out of the pages of
Elle
magazine.