That Night with the CEO. Karen Booth

I certainly don’t think he’s capable of love. I feel sorry for him. I hope someday he can figure out how to be with a woman and finally give of himself.’”

      Adam shot up from the couch, marched over to the fireplace and began anxiously jabbing the logs.

      “I know you’re mad, but setting the house on fire won’t solve anything,” she said.

      “Do you have any idea how hurtful that is? I’m not capable of love? She was my fiancée. We were going to get married and have kids.”

      Call it an occupational hazard, but Melanie often had to look past clients’ hurt feelings over the way they’d been treated by the media. It was far more difficult in Adam’s case, because she’d experienced the same rejection. She knew how hard it was to go on, alone, living a life that bore no resemblance to the one you’d thought you’d have. No wedding bells, no home to make together, no children to love and care for.

      “You obviously loved her very much.”

      “I did. Past tense.” He returned to poking at the fire. “The minute she walked out on me, I knew she never really loved me.”

      Melanie had to wonder if that was true, if he’d known right away that it hadn’t really been love. It’d taken her months to figure that out when Josh left, and in many ways, that made the pain far worse. “Why did she break it off? If you don’t mind me asking.” Her curiosity was too great not to ask.

      “She said I was too wrapped up in work.” He shrugged and left the fire to blaze away. “If you ask me, I think she was disappointed I didn’t want to feed off the Langford family fortune and jet around the world, going to parties. It’s ridiculous. I work hard because that’s the way I’m built. I don’t know any other way.”

      “There’s no shame in working hard.”

      “Of course not, but I don’t get to tell my side of the breakup in the papers. I just have to accept the awful things she said about me.”

      “I’m sorry. I know it’s difficult to have your personal life on display like this.”

      “I’m not the guy in those pictures. You do realize that, don’t you?”

      “Unfortunately, that’s all people care about.”

      Adam shook his head in disgust. “The whole thing is so ridiculous. Can’t we go back to my plan? Ignoring it?”

      “Not if you want Portia Winfield’s lady parts to be the first thing people think of when they hear your name.”

      He groaned and plopped down on the couch again. “Let’s keep going.”

      Melanie closed her notebook and set it on the coffee table. She needed to switch gears for both of their sakes. “Let’s discuss wardrobe. For most of these photo shoots, I’d like you to appear polished, but still casual. We’ll do a suit for the business publications, but for the lifestyle magazines, I’m thinking dark jeans and a dress shirt. No tie. I’d love to see you in a lavender shirt. It will bring out your eyes, and women react well to a man who isn’t afraid to wear a softer color.”

      “You have got to be kidding. I wear blue, gray and black. I wouldn’t know lavender if it walked up to me and started talking.”

      “I’m not asking you to pick the color out of a box of crayons. I’m asking you to wear it.”

      “No lavender. No way.”

      Melanie pressed her lips together. There were only so many battles she could win. “We’ll do blue. A light blue. Nothing too dark. You’ll have to wear makeup too, especially for the TV appearances, but you don’t need to do anything other than sit there and let them take care of it. It’s painless.”

      “How’d you learn all of this, anyway?”

      “Public relations? I studied it in college.”

      “No. The things about lavender and women liking softer colors.”

      “Let’s just say I grew up in a family that cared a lot about appearances.” That may have been underselling it a bit, but she wasn’t eager to open up this particular can of worms.

      “Oh, yeah? Like what?”

      She dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “Trust me, it’s boring.”

      “Look, I need a mental health break after the mock interview and the quote from the paper. Just tell me.”

      She didn’t want to dismiss him, mostly because she hated it when he did the same to her. Maybe the highlights, or lowlights as she referred to them, would be okay. “Both of my parents were big on appearances, although my mother passed away when I was little, so I don’t remember being lectured about it by her.” The way Melanie missed her mom wasn’t what she imagined to be normal. She’d been so young when she lost her, that it was more like losing a ghost than a real person. “I definitely remember it from my dad.”

      Adam frowned. “Like what?”

      Melanie shrugged, looking down into her lap. She’d told herself many times that she shouldn’t allow these memories to make her feel small, but they did. “He’d order me to put on a dress, or try harder with my hair, be more like my sisters. I’m the youngest of four girls and I was a little bookish growing up. They were all into beauty pageants. My mother had won tons of pageants as a girl, but she was stunning. I knew I’d never live up to that.”

      “Why? You’re pretty enough.”

      She blushed. It was silly, but she enjoyed hearing Adam say she was pretty, or at least pretty enough. “There’s more to it than that. You have to walk up on stage and smile perfectly and wave your hand a certain way and follow a million rules that somebody, somewhere, decided were the ways a girl should present herself. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be that plastic girl.”

      He rubbed the stubble along his jaw. “And yet you chose a profession that involves an awful lot of smoke and mirrors.”

      She’d never really thought of it that way. “But I can make my own rules when I need to, make my own way. It’s creative and strategic. I love that part of my job. It’s never dull.”

      “Did you participate in any beauty pageants, or did you rebel from the beginning?”

      A wave of embarrassment hit her, quite a different type of blush from the one she got when Adam had said nice things. “I did one pageant. I actually won it, but that was enough for me.”

      “Little Miss Virginia? You’re from Virginia, right?”

      “Yes. Rural Virginia. The mountains. And I can’t tell you what my title was or I’ll have to kill you. It’s far too humiliating.”

      “Well, now you have to tell me. No one gets past me without sharing at least one humiliating story.”

      She shook her head. “Nope. Sorry. We’re discussing business. Let’s get back to your wardrobe.”

      “Come on. We already had to talk about me and the girl who can’t keep track of her own undies. And one could argue that this is business. These are your qualifications for being my wardrobe consultant.”

      “It’s dumb.”

      “What if I say I’ll wear a lavender shirt? One time.” He held up a single finger for emphasis.

      She really did want him to wear lavender. It would make for some great pictures. “Okay. Fine. I was crowned Little Miss Buttermilk. I was five.”

      Adam snickered. “I can’t believe you won the coveted Little Miss Buttermilk title.”

      Melanie leaned forward and swatted him on the knee. She’d never told any man this stupid, stupid story, not even her ex. “If you must know, I think I largely took it based on the talent portion. I was an excellent tap dancer.”

      “I have no doubts about