Page 93 of Happily Never After

He leaned forward and put the tips of his fingers together. “I’ve decided to go without a planner. Most of the big stuff is already in place. I’m sure my receptionist can handle the rest.” Light glinted off a gold pinky ring as he tapped a binder on his desk.

Here it was. The worst thing that could have happened. If the floor had opened up into a black hole and sucked her in, she would have welcomed it. Images flashed through her mind—disabled dogs rounded up and swept into a van. A hard look in Luke’s eye as he set her suitcase on the front porch. The stuffy guest bedroom at her mom’s house in Florida. This was the first domino in her personal apocalypse. Everything was going to come crashing down.

Claire gripped the arms of her chair so hard that the wood creaked. A rage she had never known was bubbling inside her. Howdarehe? She had sacrificed so much for this project—her sanity, sleep, countless date nights, family dinners. And now he was going to take credit for everything she slaved over for months andfire herdays before she pulled off the crowning achievement of her career? Not today. Not ever.

She rose to her feet like a volcano bursting from the earth and reached across his desk to snatch the gift basket back. Brad didn’t deserve it. The Middleswarth bag crinkled as she yanked it away from him, sending a spray of chips across the carpet. Good.

A thousand words flowed through her mind, threatening to come tumbling out in an unintelligible scream of rage. She could flip his stupid mahogany desk over. Or smash his tacky art prints. Her fingers twitched, like they might start hurling things of their own accord. She paused, mouth pursed. The inside of her cheek throbbed from her teeth clamping down.

The last time she had lost control of her anger and punched someone, they had almost taken her business from her. And Brad had far more resources than Wendy. She needed to get out of here before she fed Brad through his industrial-sized paper shredder.

“Good luck to you, Brad. Coming?” she asked Mindy.

Mindy stood with a testicle-shriveling glare. She reached out one elegantly manicured hand and slapped the pencil holder off Brad’s desk. Highlighters and fancy pens rolled out of sight. She linked arms with Claire, and they walked out of the office together.

Claire resisted the urge to pick up one of Brad’s stupid hand-shaped chairs and punt it through a window. His assistant’s desk was unoccupied, a half-finished matcha latte sitting next to the unlocked computer.

Claire glanced around, but none of the other people at their cubicles were paying attention. She slid behind the desk and glanced at the computer screen. Brad’s schedule. Tingles ran up and down her spine as she clicked through the rest of the week. Perfect. In two days, Brad was meeting Rita at the ranch. She tucked this information in the back of her mind and backed away from the desk.

Instead of relief, the California sun brought panic as they burst through the double doors. Everything they had worked so hard for had been eviscerated. Spots appeared in Claire’s vision and her ears rang as if Brad had dismissed them with a giant gong.

“Mindy?”

“Hmm?” Had Mindy sprinted to the end of a tunnel? Her voice was so far away.

“Is there an unscheduled solar eclipse happening, or am I about to pass out?”

“Whoa.” Mindy caught Claire’s arm and guided her to a bench, then pushed her head down between her knees.

Slowly, the spots receded from her vision. But nothing abated the panic. “They’re going to die. All those dogs. We have interviews and vendors to cancel and now we need a Plan B and—I just—I really didn’t think he’d fire us.”

Mindy’s shoulders slumped. She plunged her hand into the open bag of chips and popped one in her mouth. Why was she so nonchalant? Normally a betrayal of this magnitude led to her threatening to drive a vehicle through someone’s home.

Claire jumped up, and a new wave of dizziness almost took her to the ground. She whirled around, heart thudding against her chest like a drum line. “What are we going to do? We have to cancel the interview. Do you have Ashley’s phone number?” Her synapses were already firing, half-formed plans spiraling out like a spider’s web.

Mindy rolled the top of the bag of chips down and put it back in the basket. She took a deep breath and rolled her shoulders back. “I say we do the interviews anyway.”

Claire spluttered. It was an insane suggestion. “Why? We have no clients. There’s no money to pay a new person.”

Mindy waved a hand. “We have the loan. And we weren’t planning to utilize this person during Brad’s proposal anyway. We’ll get more California clients, Claire. We kind of have to, because our entire stock of items in West Haven were burned to a crisp. You said yourself it’s going to take months to get everything replaced. We’d have to charge West Haven clients way more if we had to rent everything again, and then we run the risk of only being able to plan proposals for rich douchebags. And you’re going to be out here anyway for Bri’s premiere and Luke finishing up his doc. We have nothing to lose. We might as well find some replacement clients out here while we’re waiting for the insurance company. Maybe a B-list celebrity oran influencer like I mentioned earlier. Someone who can get the word out.”

Claire stared at her. “Why the hell are you so calm? We just lost our biggest client ever.”

Mindy shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m angry and I think Brad’s a self-righteous douchebag. But I’m not worried about it. You know why?”

“Because you have carbon monoxide poisoning from Luke’s guest room?”

“No. Because you’re Claire Freakin’ Hartley. And we’re Happily Ever Freakin’ Afters. We’ve been through so much worse. This—” she pointed at the studio—"isn’t the end.”

Claire slumped. It sure felt like the end.

“An interview doesn’t necessarily mean we need to make an offer. But we might be surprised. Not to mention an LA native would be better equipped to find the best local spots and know the reputable companies to deal with. No matter what way you look at it, we still need someone else.”

Claire collapsed on the bench again. “But how will we even attract any clients?”

Mindy snorted. “I guarantee if I go through the email right now we’ll have a dozen requests from LA alone. And I’ll ramp up our location-based social media campaign.”

Claire was silent. All that work. The ranch, the Hollywood sign, Santa Monica, the Getty, the friggen New Jersey ice cream. Hours upon hours of painstaking planning and micromanaging from Brad. And now they were starting over with nothing to show for it.

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