It wasn’t like Henry to be late. If anything, it was Juliet that was the one running behind schedule most of the time, even though that drove Ella crazy. She checked the time on her phone again and took another drink of her cocktail. The vodka wasn’t well mixed, and it stung the back of her throat slightly. Where the hell was he? If he didn’t show up soon, she was just going to go. Maybe it would teach him a lesson about wasting her valuable time.“Juliet? Juliet!” 

“I don’t understand,” Rome said, sinking down on the bed next to her. Ella had taken a shower and washed the night club off of herself before she put on an oversized T-shirt and joined him in the bedroom. He had been pacing as she recounted most of the night’s events to him, but now, when she told him that she’d given Parker Thompson permission to call her, he was confused. She couldn’t blame him. She was a little confused herself. “What exactly is bringing a third guy into this supposed to accomplish? I’m not willing to be part of one of those weird reverse harem trendy things people have going on now.”

Ella sat on the couch, her mouth hanging open, the remote in her hand as she prepared to pause the recording of Rome’s interview with Cliff and watch it again. She’d already been through it three times; once, the night before, when she’d watched it on its initial airing. This morning, she’d watched it two more times. Why she was obsessed with watching her husband lie to the world about Henry Caron’s intentions, she wasn’t sure, but she wanted to make sure she had every nuance of the conversation engrained in her mind because Henry had called her the night before, leaving a scathing message on her voicemail. She had yet to call him back, but when she did, she wanted to make sure she was sufficiently angry at all of the details Henry was surely

Thinking about all of the other places in the world he’d rather be than headed to the set to film movie number two in his ten part litany of horrible movies had given Rome something to do as he’d ridden in from the solace of his beautiful beach home back to the sound stage where he was all set to make a film about zombie unicorns. While his explanation about why he’d decided to make the awful robot movie had gotten him a lot of positive press, and left Henry trying to make excuses as to why he’d chosen that particular script, there wasn’t going to be any saving himself from whatever torrent of bad reviews this piece of shit movie resulted in. Not unless Juliet’s plan worked, and he was able to manage to crawl out from underneath this mess. He

The second show from Montage, Inc. was an even larger success than the first one had been. It was clear, not only from the excessively large crowd, but also from the bids registering, that Juliet’s team had done a tremendous job securing pieces the art world was thrilled to have a chance to acquire and had invited the right people. While Juliet had expected there to be quite the turnout, she was shocked to see that nearly every single person of the five hundred or so that had received invitations was present and accounted for. Even more had been invited to make bids over the telephone or via the new app her team had created. She could see what each piece was going for, though it took a while to update so it wasn’t exact. Currently, it looked like the piece that had b