CHAPTER ONE DUFFY

CHAPTER ONE

DUFFY

As I sat in front of Love Is Blind, crying into a sleeve of overpriced digestive biscuits, mourning my breakup with the man I thought was the love of my life, it was clear to me that my night couldn’t possibly get any worse. Maybe if I died. Even then, I’d get a much-welcome relief from my pain and anguish.

Was love blind? Quite possibly. There was no other way to excuse how I’d failed to read the writing on the wall. To be honest, it wasn’t even on a wall. It was on a bloody flashing neon billboard in Times Square, accompanied by a jingle: Duffy, you’re a fool / you are dating a tool / He’ll never ask for your hand / how daft are you not to understand?

All rights reserved, et cetera.

And, it wasn’t even a proper breakup. More like a quasi breakup. A half breakup. A don’t-expect-me-to-wait-for-you-even-though-we-both-know-that-I-will breakup. A Rachel Green, we-were-not-on-a-break breakup. You get the drill.

“Silver lining? That’s as bad as my life is going to get,” I mumbled aloud to my biscuit, which in answer crumbled onto my pajama-clad chest.

Don’t tempt me, you cow,the universe replied in the form of my mobile buzzing next to me on the couch.

“Sod off,” I muttered, before my gaze landed on the phone screen, on which Gretchen’s name flashed.

Gretchen Beatty, my boss, was the anchorwoman of The World Today, WNT’s flagship show. As her executive assistant, I was in charge of her entire life. Until six months ago, when Gretchen announced that she was taking a position as the White House press secretary and would be leaving New York for DC. Which also meant WNT was not going to renew my work visa. The worst part was, I couldn’t afford to tell my tyrannical boss just what I thought about her, even though I had only a few days left of work. She was the type of woman who would refuse to give me a reference if I so much as dared to order her grande iced americano with half-and-half instead of a dash of oat milk.

More on my woes later.

Clearing my throat, I swiped the screen. “Hello?”

“Good God, Daphne. Slacker much? It took you ten minutes to answer.”

I checked my new watch. It was eleven o’clock at night. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

I was certain there was. If making me work odd times was an Olympic sport, Gretchen would have been its Serena Williams.

“It just dawned on me that it’s Lyric’s sixth birthday tomorrow, and I was so busy with the handover to Claire, I forgot to buy my baby a gift.”

Busy with the handover, my foot. I was the one liaising with the woman who’d inherited Gretchen’s throne—investigative journalist Claire Scott—and her flock of assistants.

Since I could see where this was going from two planets away, I gave her my assurance. “I’ll buy Lyric presents first thing tomorrow morning. Do you have a budget in mind?”

Gretchen had given me her credit card two days into my employment. Ever since, I’d been in charge of running her entire life. This included getting groceries for her Manhattan flat and paying her bills. I also attended parent-teacher conferences, filled out her ballots, and wrote her op-eds for prestigious newspapers. Truly, to keep my job—and visa—I had done everything short of birthing her children myself. And only because, fortunately for me, they were already in existence.

“Tomorrow?”Gretchen slurped her drink noisily. “Time is of the essence. It has to be tonight. I’m driving up to Greenwich first thing tomorrow morning. Jason is making me attend the birthday, even though we literally have a show to shoot that same evening.” She groaned, as she did every time she spoke about her husband. “I told him I’m heading back to the city before she opens her presents. I have a business to run. Why can’t he understand that?”

Because you’re the mother of his children?

I’d only met Jason a handful of times, but I suspected he was a lot kinder than his wife. Which was something I could also say about a handful of stale nuts.

“You’d like me to go shopping for presents for a six-year-old in the middle of the night?” I asked tonelessly.

Wow, Karma. Wow. What did I do in my previous life? Skin babies for a living?

“What?”Gretchen yelled into her speaker over the loud music. “I can’t hear you, I’m at this god-awful pub. Full of peons. No one even recognized me here. Uncultured swine.”

“About the presents .?.?.?,” I said, raising my voice. “I don’t think I can find anything open at this hour.”

“Of course you can!” Gretchen sounded appalled. “This kind of attitude is why you Brits lost an empire, Daphne. Step up to the challenge. You can, because you must. I believe in you. Now I ask you—do you believe in yourself?”

I believe I should’ve accompanied these biscuits with some wine. And maybe an Adderall.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

“And make sure the gifts are with me before I leave for Greenwich at six tomorrow.”

“Six in the evening?”

“Six in the morning, silly.”

“What?” I shrieked. “I can’t—”

But it was too late. The line had gone dead.

I stared at my mobile, calculating my next move. Not that I had many options to choose from. Gretchen was still my boss for the next two weeks. Knowing her, she’d tarnish my name in every news agency in New York if I crossed her now.

Reluctantly, I picked up my mobile and called BJ.

My ex-boyfriend, BJ. The same BJ I broke up with tonight. Yup, that prat.

“Duffy!” He sounded both delighted and smug. Why wouldn’t he be? My parting words were that I never wanted to speak to him again. And that was forty-five minutes ago. “Changed your mind, huh? Why don’t I call you an Uber, and you can come to my place and discuss everything?”

“Actually, I need your help.” Bold assumption, though. “It’s an emergency. Do you know anyone with a toy store, or someone who could pull strings to open one this time of night?”

The only reason I felt comfortable asking him for a favor was because I’d bailed BJ out of loads of trouble over the years. I’d written his entire dissertation when we both attended Cambridge, made last-minute birthday cakes for his family members, and once physically expressed his mum’s elderly Yorkshire terrier’s glands.

“Adult toys or toy-toys?” he asked.

“The latter.” I reared my head back and scowled at the phone. “Purchasing a vibrator is not usually an emergency.”

He let out a grunt. “Gretchen again?” Were we really having a normal conversation, like he hadn’t told me earlier that he was leaving for Kathmandu, Nepal, within the next few days, as if we hadn’t spent the last half decade together?

“Lyric has a birthday tomorrow,” I confirmed.

“Give me a few minutes. I’ll hook you up.”

“Cheers.”

Brendan Ronald Jr. was an Abbott, which meant privilege simmered out of his ears, he was so fortunate. The Abbotts were a well-known family in New York. Their last name opened doors .?.?. and wallets. BJ being connected gave him a shine I’d only ever seen on telly shows. Me, I grew up in a council flat in Tooting Broadway, with my parents only recently graduating to a semidetached a block away from the flat we grew up in. When I first met him in Cambridge all those years ago—me on a full ride, him with a library section under his family’s name—all I could think about was how to keep him. To make his good fortune my own. Literally and figuratively.

My stepdad owned a chippy, and Mum was a homemaker. We were the opposite of influential. What would that be called? Outfluential. Mum would buy discounted potatoes at the Portuguese shop downstairs and constantly try to find Lidl coupons to buy milk and bread.

My mobile vibrated three minutes later.

I swiped the screen. “Yes?”

“Midnight. FAO Schwarz. A woman named Kayleigh is going to open the store for you. But you only have ten minutes, and the lights are gonna stay off,” BJ said reluctantly. He must’ve been pissed about my not falling at his feet.

“Oh, come on, Duffy. You know I’ve been working my ass off for the past few years. I deserve this vacation. And it’s only for six months. I’m gonna hang out with monks. Learn how to meditate.”Fractions of our breakup conversation, which had taken place at our favorite restaurant, assaulted my memory.

“That’s more than I’ll need. Thank you.”

“.?.?. you promised, BJ. You said you’d pop the question. I counted on you. That’s why I stayed put. My visa expires in two weeks. You can’t do this to me.”

“So .?.?.” BJ seemed reluctant to hang up. “I feel like you’re still mad at me. Are you ever gonna hear me out?”

“Jesus, Duff, talk about putting me under pressure. No wonder I’m second-guessing our engagement. I feel like a walking, talking meal ticket. Besides, you can always come with me to Nepal.”

“No, I cannot. I can’t leave the US if I want to stay, you wanker.”

“I heard you out at the restaurant,” I clipped out. “Honestly, I’d bleach my own ears if it meant unhearing some of the things you’ve said.”

“If all you care about is the freaking visa, just find some other sucker to marry, Duff. Just because you and my mom are pressuring me to do it doesn’t mean I’m ready for marriage. I know I said I would be, but people change their minds. It’s called growth.”

“I wasn’t being snarky. I know how much you love this city. That should show you how much I care!” he protested. “I gave you permission to do something that’d hurt me badly so you can reach your full potential. This is the ultimate sacrifice. You marrying someone else.”

Permission. Someone needed to buy the man a calendar. And a clue. We weren’t in the nineteenth century anymore.

“Cheers for the help again, BJ. Have a grand night.”

“So we’re not even gonna hook up before I leave? One last time for the ride?”

I hung up the phone, shaking my fist at the ceiling of my five-hundred-square-foot Madison Avenue flat.

God had failed me. He could well forget about me ever going on Lent again.

It was half past midnight when I cabbed it from FAO Schwarz to Gretchen’s ritzy flat on the Upper East Side. If I were lucky—which, as you could suspect by the way this evening was unfolding, wasn’t a characteristic of mine—she’d be fast asleep, and I could quietly dispose of the wrapped gifts.

“Must be a special birthday girl to get so many presents.” The cabdriver eyed me in the rearview mirror. I was buried in pastel-colored gifts—anatomically correct baby dolls, Barbie fanny packs, a ride-on unicorn, and a life-size kangaroo. (Was civilization ever going to address the fact that kangaroos were aggressive arseholes and not cute? I needed their PR person.)

“Wouldn’t you think,” I muttered, peering out the window as skyscrapers zinged by. Manhattan was especially lovely at night. Elegant, gritty, and dewed with promise and opportunity. “Throwing money at children isn’t love. It’s an admission of guilt.”

The cab pulled up at the curb. I saluted Terrence, the doorman, as I zipped past him. He was used to my coming and going at all hours of the night. After practicing mindful breathing and telling myself that the worst of the night was definitely behind me, I stuffed myself and Lyric’s gazillion presents into Gretchen’s elevator.

When the elevator slid open, I was greeted by four overrun garbage bags my boss had decided to position outside her door. Gretchen once explained to me she didn’t believe in taking out her own trash. As though keeping her flat tidy was aliens or cryptids.

Sidestepping the leaky things, I balanced Lyric’s gifts as I punched in the code that unlocked Gretchen’s door.

I swung the door open. The bloody kangaroo slipped from between my arms to the floor. I tumbled over it, diving headfirst on a gasp. Luckily—and I use the term loosely—I landed on the fluffy thing. My dress rode up, giving my bum some airtime. To make matters worse, I was still wearing the sexy knickers I’d bought last week in hopes BJ would propose tonight. Black and lacy, with a red bow just above the crack.

With my face buried in a kangaroo’s knob (of course I didn’t fall atop it missionary-style; that wouldn’t have been quite as humiliating), I thought tonight really, truly, undoubtedly couldn’t get any more disastrous.

Yet again, the universe rose to the challenge.

Because as soon as I lifted my face from the kangaroo’s crotch, I realized what I had walked into.

My married boss having sex with a man who definitely wasn’t Jason.