Page 55 of Turning Up the Heat

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THEUSUALNOISE of the distillery was no match for the pounding inside her skull. It might have been fun hanging out with Celia and Lila, but she’d stayed out too late and drank too much sangria. Gemma didn’t go out often, and this was a clear reason why.

She was still upset by how her conversation with Tom had gone the night before. And she’d ignored him and the missed calls and the voice mail notification that showed on her phone with his message. She needed a little bit of space to give herself time to figure out how she felt about him. She was in love with him, but her own reaction to him not visiting her had scared her. She didn’t want to be the obsessed girlfriend who couldn’t go longer than a week without seeing her long-distance boyfriend.

She looked at the clock. It was barely 1:00 p.m. She envisioned going home, lounging in her bathtub, soaking off the rest of the hangover, and then she made big plans to order a pizza and lie on the couch in front of her TV. She wouldn’t have thought so yesterday, but a small part of her was glad that Tom wasn’t coming down this weekend. She realized that space was what she needed. She wasn’t mad at him, but she was madder at herself for being bothered by it. He was allowed to take a weekend off from their relationship, and so was she.

Her office phone rang, and she squeezed her eyes shut against the trill. Not opening her eyes, she answered it. “Gemma Rexford.”

“Hey, Gem,” Quin said on the other end. “Reid and I are in my office.” He paused, and she knew from his tone of voice that something was wrong. “We think you might want to come up here.”

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

“Um, just get up here.”

“Yeah, sure. Just give me a couple of minutes.” She hung up and shook off her coveralls. “Jose,” she called to the floor supervisor. “I’m heading upstairs for a few minutes. You’ve got this under control?” He shot her a thumbs-up in response.

Despite her fatigue, she jogged up the stairs. When she walked into Quin’s office, he and Reid were both seated—with matching deep frowns on their faces. “What’s going on?”

“You look like hell, Gemma,” Reid said, frowning.

“Gee, thanks.”

“Yeah, were you out late or something?” Quin asked innocently, obviously knowing what time Celia had come home last night.

“You can both ask your women about last night,” she muttered, taking a seat in the chair next to Reid. “Is that why you called me up here? To ask me about my hangover?”

“No, we wanted to see if you’ve seen this.” Quin handed over his tablet.

“What is it?” She looked at the screen and saw that it was on Cain Rum’s website. At first, she saw the images, and thought momentarily that they were the ones she’d shot for Men’s Lifestyle. But she looked closer and saw it was another woman. She looked up at her brothers, not understanding, but then she saw the ad copy that accompanied the pictures. We don’t need sex to sell fine rum... But it doesn’t hurt.

“What is this?”

“Cain’s new campaign,” Reid said.

She came to a quick conclusion. “It’s obviously a dig at me,” she said.

“We thought so, too.”

She laughed without humor, trying to act like it didn’t bother her. How could Tom do this to her? “And look at the copy. It’s not even good. These guys are failing at everything.”

“Gemma,” Reid said, reaching out and putting his hand on her shoulder. “Have you spoken to Tom?”

“No,” she said. “Not today. Not since last night before I went out.”

“Last night,” Quin repeated. “And he didn’t mention any of this?”

“No.”

“He had to have known about it, though, right?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.” Even though she was trembling with anger, she calmly put the tablet back on the desk. “I’d better get back to work.”

“Don’t you want to talk about this?” Reid asked her, standing as well.

“Why?” she asked equal parts confused, angry and weary. “So you can say ‘I told you so’?”

“We wouldn’t.”

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