might take a while before she felt as if the world wasn’t going to fall apart around her at any moment.
Jordan parked on a quiet residential street and she looked at the house, which wasn’t what she’d expected. It was built in a homey style and there were hanging baskets of flowers on the front porch. She wasn’t sure where she’d thought a supermodel would live, but it wasn’t something so...so cheery and normal.
The door opened as they came up the walk and Nicole stepped out. “Hi, Jordan. Hi, Chelsea. Let’s see if the guesthouse suits your needs.”
Following Nicole toward the garage, Chelsea sighed with relief. The way things had happened seemed almost too good to be true; deep down it had been difficult not to wonder if Nicole would change her mind about both the job and the apartment.
Exterior stairs climbed up the far side of the three-car garage into an apartment that was even nicer than Chelsea had hoped.
“It’s furnished, but the house isn’t?” Jordan asked, glancing around.
“The guest apartment came this way. The previous owners used it for their in-laws, but they didn’t need the furniture in their new place. Everything was nice and in good condition, so I agreed to buy it as part of the house purchase.”
Chelsea listened as she explored the pretty apartment. A bouquet of fresh flowers sat on the dresser in the bedroom, and she thought it was awfully nice of Nicole to have done that. And there was a small balcony in the back, looking onto the neighbor’s stand of evergreen trees.
“It’s perfect,” she declared, turning around. “Thank you so much. I’ll take really good care of everything.”
“I’m sure you will.” Nicole handed a key to her. “Move in whenever you like. Right now, I need to get somewhere.”
Chelsea’s fingers closed around the key as if it was a lifeline. In a way it was—a lifeline that would help her stay away from the dark memories lurking around every corner in Los Angeles.
“Look around some more,” Jordan said when they were alone. “I need to check on something.”
He hurried out the door.
Curious, Chelsea went to a front window and saw him catch up with Nicole on the front walk. He seemed to be talking very fast and she bobbed her head before hurrying toward the house. A few minutes later a sleek silver-gray car appeared, practically below Chelsea’s feet, backing down the driveway.
Jordan was still standing at the side of the drive and the vehicle stopped. He put a hand on the sedan’s roof and spoke again. Even from her vantage point Chelsea thought he looked tense and she wondered if something was wrong.
Letting the curtain drop in place, she tried to stop trembling. How could she be twenty-seven and still feel like a scared child all the time? Over the past year Terri had been saying that Ron was gaslighting her, making her believe that everything was her fault. She’d finally realized her sister was right, but it wasn’t easy to stop feeling as if she was the one who’d done something wrong.
“You okay?” Jordan asked when he returned.
“Fine.” Chelsea loved her brother, but he’d always seemed so confident and bigger than life. He and Terri had reacted differently to the tension between their parents—they’d gotten angry and fought back. She was a mouse, which was something a lion like Jordan probably couldn’t understand.
“What’s that?” he asked, gesturing to the sheet of paper she was examining.
“The bus schedule. Nicole must have printed it out for me. She offered to give me rides when her schedule isn’t too crazy, but I want to use mass transit until I get my car up here.”
“I’ll give you rides,” Jordan said firmly, but Chelsea shook her head.
“Taking the bus will give me a better feel for the city.”
“All right. This place seems move-in ready. Let’s have dinner, then pick up whatever you need to get settled.”
She followed, locking the door carefully behind them. Maybe she was just fooling herself, but moving to Seattle really did seem to be a good decision.
So far.
Tears threatened at that mental caveat. She desperately wanted to feel like a normal person again...someone who wasn’t always expecting something horrible to happen.
* * *
NICOLE DROVE TO the agency where she and Adam were having a conference call with Rachel and Logan. She hadn’t felt like dealing with Jordan’s questions about Chelsea’s employment beforehand, so she’d agreed to talk before her run the next morning. Right now he was meeting all her low expectations of reporters.
“Even bad press is still advertising,” Logan quipped when she finished explaining the situation. He was in Venice for a wedding shoot. Weddings weren’t his thing, but he’d known the groom forever and was doing it as a gift to the couple.
“Besides, we don’t want to toady to reporters,” Rachel added. “Kevin McClaskey never did.” Rachel was at her home in Southern California.
“And his agency never grew,” Nicole felt obliged to point out, troubled that her friends could be harmed by the way she dealt with Jordan. The only consolation was that they were the ones who’d urged her to do the interviews with PostModern. “I don’t want to mess this up for you guys.”
“You aren’t going to mess anything up,” Logan assured her. “Kevin wanted Moonlight Ventures to stay a mom-and-pop type of business. That’s why it didn’t grow. We can’t worry about every biased reporter out there.”
“We knew it was a risk to agree to the articles, no matter what they promised us,” Adam said. “The editor wasn’t playing straight to send someone who wasn’t impartial, but it is what is. Besides, if we object, it’ll just make us look defensive. We trust you, Nicole. Handle Masters the way your instincts say you should. Blow him off, argue, whatever feels right.”
“I agree,” Rachel added firmly. “Just be yourself.”
“Except I’ve never been ‘myself’ with reporters,” Nicole reminded them. “I’ve always put on a polite, distant act. That isn’t going to be easy to do around Jordan.” She didn’t add that by the time she’d left modeling, she’d viewed reporters as conscienceless vampires who didn’t care if they destroyed lives as long as they got their story. It wasn’t fair, and she believed in a free press, but she just wished they’d stay away from her.
“Don’t try to put on a polite show,” Logan advised. “The magazine editor said Masters might want to talk with all of us. I think we should be upfront with him.”
“There’s also the issue of hiring his sister.” Nicole pointed out. “Maybe I screwed up by letting Chelsea apply.”
“I don’t think so,” Adam said. “I got great reports from her former employer and have a good feeling about her. Besides, it might be some form of discrimination if we hadn’t given her a chance.”
Nicole had wondered about that as well. It didn’t seem likely, but there were a number of laws regarding employers and she was still learning.
“I don’t think she’ll operate like a spy,” Adam continued, “though Masters may think we have ulterior motives for employing his sister.”
Nicole made a face. “I already know he has questions about us giving her a job, but I doubt he trusts me regardless, so it probably doesn’t make a difference.”
“How about doing our own article?” Adam suggested.
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“We’re launching our Beneath the Surface blog before long. Why don’t you write about Jordan and the process of being interviewed? You’ve always had good suggestions for fixing advertising material,