Page 50 of Chandelier Enthralled
“After work?” I thought about it. “Maybe.”
“I see you’ve met Chad.”
I grimaced. “Is he like that with you?”
“He was promised a move to this department.”
“A junior journalist position.” I flinched. “Don’t tell me he thinks I’m in his seat.”
“He’s been passed over because of his attitude.”
I rested my head in my hands, mortified as everything became obvious now. He was just plain rude and until he had a personality shift, he would stay in the mailroom.
“Is it true Jewel personally interviewed you?” Chloe looked impressed.
“How did you… Joe told you?” I realized.
“It’s who you know.”
“I’d never met Jewel before yesterday,” I said in my defense.
Something on her computer screen distracted Chloe and she clicked an email. She typed quickly, her fingers flying across the keys, a clear sign of her speed on the keyboard.
Jewel had to know I was a Cole. She’d hired my name, not me.
Guilt, shame, and the weight of a thousand unspoken expectations dragged me into a depression. I glanced around as though I could feel everyone staring at me. As though the very air had grown thick with the bitter proof of my privilege.
“What are you working on?” I asked Chloe, to soothe the moment.
“Jewel put me on this. I’m researching a bachelor, and so far, his background is weird.”
“Weird?”
“He doesn’t have a birth certificate.”
“Maybe he was born in another country?”
“Adopted, I think. But there’s no adoption certificate either.”
A long silence followed, thick with an unsettling sense of mystery.
“It’s like he…doesn’t exist, not in any official way,” she murmured. “There’s no trace of him until he turns up in Oxford, England.”
“So he was born in England?”
“No, we had our foreign affairs check on it. He just turned up at the university with everything paid for, but he is American.”
Thespace felt colder, somehow. “Are you going to interview him?I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation.”
“I’m no-contact right now, waiting on permission to pounce. But something doesn’t add up.”
“Let me know if you want any help with it.” Which was a strange thing to say. I was supposed to be quitting.
She smirked. “This one’s going to get me noticed.”
“Why?”
“The press will be all over him next week, but I’ll be the one with the scoop.”
