Her Perfect Lips
LISA FOX
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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2014
Copyright © Lisa Fox 2014
Cover images © Shutterstock.com
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to be identified as the author of this work.
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available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are
the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is
entirely coincidental.
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Ebook Edition © December 2014
ISBN: 9780008115500
Version 2014-10-06
Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.
To booze, beads, and New Orleans.
Contents
Stacy took her usual seat at the long conference table and arranged her notes in front of herself. Her coworkers filed into the large, airy boardroom, cups of coffee, water bottles, and tablets in hand, ready for the monthly All-Staff meeting. She smiled vaguely at them all, tapping her fingernail against the glass tabletop, waiting to begin. These multidepartment progress reports were informative, and very often fun, but her time could be better spent today. There was a mountain of paperwork waiting on her desk and her own part of the meeting was going to be small, she only had one minor update to offer, but it was a positive one. The staff-focused Instagram account she had opened for Sharpe Designs last month was getting some quality followers and loads of great comments. Her goal today was to encourage everyone to keep posting new, amusing pictures. Maybe there was some way she could deliver that message and then sneak out.
She gave Kat Greer a little wave as the stunning blonde graphic designer entered the room. Kat’s boyfriend, chief programmer, Dean Kirkwell followed close behind. Stacy made a mental note to grab Dean after the meeting and get an update on the Fisher account he’d been promising her for days. He must’ve known she was thinking about him because he caught her eye and winked. She smiled back, watching them settle into seats at the back of the boardroom. They were such a gorgeous couple, a perfect picture of contrasts. Kat was a New York goddess in her black Anna Sui dress and Trash and Vaudeville heels, while Dean looked like he had just stepped out of GQ, the hottest new face of “urban preppy.” But despite the seemingly outward differences, everything about their relationship could be summed up in the way they looked at one another. It was as though they were always sharing a wonderfully secret joke. She envied them a little bit.
The CEO and co-owner of Sharpe Designs, Ron Sharpe, entered the room, and the meeting was quickly called to order. Ron’s partner and husband, CFO, Alan Altman, started things off with an announcement that the company was doing better than ever. He explained that they were already outearning their projected figures and this was going to enable them to spend more freely in areas they thought they would have to neglect this financial year.
The lights dimmed for Alan’s PowerPoint presentation and Stacy’s thoughts drifted as the slides flicked across the screen in a blur of colors and graphs. She really needed to pick up her dry cleaning tonight or the place was probably going to sell all her stuff. She had no excuse for letting it sit there for so long either, the shop was only about two blocks away from her Ludlow Street studio. It wasn’t like she had to travel across town or anything. She had a good pile going at home now too, maybe it was time to do a trade. Go to the dry cleaners, pickup and drop off, then grab her tablet and reward herself with dinner at that new little Austrian café on Delancey.
Alan’s