Chapter 3

Zoe spun the swivel chair to face the mirror in the hair salon. Maybe an extension was in order with new colors, she pondered. She needed something completely different, shocking even.

“Rainbow streaks instead of the highlights, with one extension to the right,” she told the hairdresser.

The shop was a few meters from the hotel. After she tried to relax and failed, she felt that she needed to do something to change her mood altogether, and doing her hair always seemed to do the trick.

“Rainbow, like just throw some colors together or rainbow pride?” the girl asked.

Zoe nodded. “The last one.”

“Do you want permanent or washable?”

“Washable. Florine would kill me if I weren’t able to get rid of it easily.” She giggled.

“Are you …?” the girl did not finish the question, but her eyes narrowed as she waited for an answer.

“Does it matter if I am?”

The girl smiled. “Not at all. Most of our clients are. You just don’t come off as gay; that’s all.”

Zoe laughed, a light, pleasant, acoustic-like sound. “I’m disappointed. I was hoping that the look would suit me fine.”

“I can’t believe I’m actually doing your hair. I splurged on the last issue of Sheer Fusion.”

A groan escaped Zoe. When she’d walked in half hour ago and the girl rushed to attend to her, she knew the girl recognized her, but thought it was due to the memes.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Manda.”

“Well, Manda, I’m glad you liked the magazine, but are you crazy? That magazine costs three hundred and seventy-five dollars!”

Manda shuddered with excitement. “Yes, isn’t it great!”

In addition to Manda spending all that money on one magazine, she doubted the girl could afford anything in it. The cheapest handbag in the darn thing cost two thousand five hundred dollars. Even the underwear was expensive, ranging from eighteen hundred to three thousand dollars per pair.

Even she, Zoe, wasn’t foolish enough to spend her money there. Whatever she owned from that magazine was gifted to her as a part of her deal. She much preferred the simpler things in life. Her hooded sweat suit tops and jeans were enough. She didn’t think it necessary to dress in expensive clothing to go shopping or to the hairdressers. She spent an entire year modeling these clothes. Some days her photoshoot would last thirteen or fourteen hours. Therefore, in her own time, she needed to feel normal.

Her mind returned to what Manda was doing, and it looked pretty darn awesome. The rainbow hair was fabulous, striking even.

“You should have gone for the long extensions,” Manda suggested.

“I’m in a short hair kinda mood lately,” she replied with a grin, remembering Gael’s face as he took in her streaked hair. “Why do men like long hair so much?”

“I don’t know, beats me. Why?”

“Nothing.” She shrugged. “Just some guy silently dissing me and my hair.”

Manda shook her head. “That guy’s an idiot. Hasn’t he seen your face? Look at you, what guy would resist you?”

“Apparently, a man who liked blondes and big busts,” she replied, her tone sour.

Manda’s cheeks stained red, and Zoe’s eyes traveled over the girl. Her bleach blonde hair was straight, falling well below her shoulders. Her voluptuousness wreaked of Gael’s type.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” she apologized.

“It’s no problem; I’m not offended,” Manda replied. “I know men see us as sex objects, but why is it that they end up marrying women who are the complete opposite?”

“What?” Zoe’s brows knitted.

“I dated Charles for three years. I thought we had something, but he never introduced me to his parents. Then six months ago, he broke up with me. And you know what happened? Two months later, he was walking down the aisle with a brunette. She was the complete opposite to me.”

Zoe grimaced. “I’m sorry. That’s terrible.”

“Your guy may end up marrying you when he comes to his senses.”

“I doubt that. It was an audition, and men like that don’t marry girls like me. I’m just not their type.”

“You never know; things have a way of working out. Moreover, I doubted he knew who you were. You didn’t wear these clothes to the audition, did you?” Apparently, the guilt showed on Zoe’s face. “You did, didn’t you?” Manda’s eyes widened.

“He didn’t even give me a chance. He took one look and said, ‘you’re not what we’re looking for’,” she mimicked Gael’s deep baritone voice. “I admit I could have dressed differently. But those darn memes are making life hard. I can’t go anywhere without someone saying, ‘hey, aren’t you the girl from the meme?’ Jeez man, give me a break!”

“Yes, people can be cruel. Why’d they have to use your photo for those sex memes?”

Zoe gave Manda a sharp look, and then scanned the room to see if anyone heard. “Shush.”

“Sorry. But there are other great memes with your photo. I like the one where you’re smoking pot.” Manda grinned.

Zoe jerked her head away. “What? There’s one with me smoking pot?”

“Yes, that one looks real. I tell you, some people swear it’s not shopped.”

This wasn’t good. That darn bastard Tony promised he wouldn’t release those photos and video. If Sheer Fusion got wind of those, it could cause problems. The sex memes were fake; everyone knew that. But she’d been dumb enough to let Tony talk her into taking a puff of the weed. Then to top it all off, he’d videoed the entire thing without her consent. Now he was using it to blackmail her.

“When I get my hands on that son-of-a … damn it!”

“Hold still,” Manda scolded. “I’m just about done.”

Zoe loved the new hair. It gave her a completely new appearance, definitely different from a few minutes ago. The hair was still boyishly short, except for one extension on the right side, which partially covered her eye and cheek, cropped at her jaw.

She decided that she’d surprise Florine with the new look. By the time she left the salon, Gael Matheson became a thing of the past. She pushed him to the back of her mind and concentrated on enjoying a couple of days of sun before returning to freezing Cleveland Hill, NY.

By a sheer miracle, snow came early, especially in Eastern New York. It was snowing from mid-December with more than three inches of snow already. Zoe didn’t like Christmas much as she lost her mother close to the holidays over a decade ago. Her father had long since moved on to greener pastures after her mother died. She was alone until she met Florine.

Usually, she’d spend the holidays with her guardian and boss, but for the last two years, she decided to go it alone. This year was no exception. Zoe planned on making hot chocolate and snuggling up with a nice book or two. She would also watch a couple of action movies, as she hated chick-flicks.

Returning to her hotel, she spent the rest of the day lounging on the balcony. At some point during the afternoon, she took a stroll on the beach, which lifted her mood.

Gael released the top two buttons of his crisp baby blue shirt. The jacket had long been discarded, neatly hanging on the back of his chair. Rolling up his sleeves, he began reading through the file Beth had given him earlier.

However, his mind kept returning to the model that never showed. Did she come in with the girls and decide that this wasn’t the assignment for her? If she was as Miss Anderson had described, the highest paid in their company, she could have superiority issues. Perhaps she thought a shipping company wasn’t good enough.

Unable to concentrate, he closed the file. Lifting himself from the chair, he strode to a cabinet about three feet from the desk. His office was ten feet squared, with the bare necessities of desk, a filing cabinet to the left, and a beverage cabinet to his right. There was a single shelf on the wall behind his desk which had four books. These included; The 7 Traits of Highly Successful Leaders, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, From Pennies to Billions, and the fourth was Forrest Gump.

Inside the beverage cabinet was a mini fridge, which he opened, picking out a bottle of mineral water. Unscrewing it, he poured the contents into a glass and strode to the glass panel overlooking the bay.

As he pondered on going to NYC, his past came back to haunt him. His thoughts flicked back two and a half decades to his parents’ divorce. It didn’t take his mother long to find herself a man to marry, leaving him behind and traipsing off to God knows where with her new husband. Then when he was fifteen, his father married an eighteen-year-old. He’d left home shortly after and never looked back.

Now, going so close to home brought back all those memories and the resentment that went with them. He hadn’t seen his father in over ten years after the man went off the deep end. David Matheson lost his company, fell into deep debt, and drunk himself into oblivion.

Gael clenched his jaw, his chest tightening at the memories of his past life. Downing the water in one gulp, he returned to the cabinet and set down the glass before going back to the window.

It wasn’t only that his father got married, but that he married a girl no more than three years older than Gael. Every time he remembered the girl’s face, he seethed. Then there was his mother. No sooner had the ink dried on the divorce papers than she was off with her new husband, not bothering to look back. For years he’d thought that his father was the reason for the break-up of the family, only to learn later that his mother was at fault.

A buzz from the office intercom alerted him that Beth was on the line. He knew she was calling to remind him of the board meeting. In three strides he was behind the desk, pressing the button.

“Yes, Beth.”

“Sir, the meeting in Buffalo has been moved up to nine in the morning. Your flight time has been changed to one thirty.”

“One thirty in the morning?”

“Yes, sir. They insisted on moving up the time as they had plans to leave the state later in the afternoon.”

He sighed, taking a seat and pondering the situation. That meant he’d need to be at the airport by midnight. He could make it back to California by nightfall.

“There’s only one problem, sir,” Beth’s voice broke through his thoughts.

“What’s that?”

“The next available flight back is on Christmas Day. Unless you want to drive to Akron Airport,” she informed him.

“How far is that?”

There was a moment of silence before she came back on the line. “Thirteen miles, sir.”

“Book it,” he replied.

“Yes, sir.”

If Gael could help it, he would rather not spend more time than necessary in the city that hid his painful past. He knew that with this deal, he’d perhaps have to fly there often, but he was hoping for a swift handover, and then he’d appoint a manager for the branch.

“Sir?”

“Yes,” he came back to Beth’s soft voice.

“The board meeting will start in five minutes; you’d better get going.”

“Right.”

He lifted his finger from the intercom button and straightened his shirtsleeves. He then buttoned his shirt and replaced the tie. Within two minutes, he was in his jacket and out the door. The boardroom was across the hall, and he was there within another thirty seconds.