Guilty Pleasures Read Online Free PDF Page B

She wanted to go back to Boston, to Mark and her own life as quickly as she could.

3
    Cassandra Grand had a dream, a dream that she had been nurturing since the age of thirteen. She wanted to be the greatest fashion legend since Coco Chanel, a style maven whose name was a billion dollar brand. She wanted to be fashion’s Martha Stewart, a female Tom Ford. She wanted it all and she wasn’t going to let anyone stand in her way. Magazines were just the very start for Cassandra; she was already recognized as one of the top editors in the world and now she was ready to expand her empire. Some of the top luxury brands in the world had already come knocking, begging her to take on a consultation role, while her talent as a stylist meant she was still greatly in demand to style the hottest fashion advertising campaigns in the world. But there was one fly in the ointment: Emma Bailey.
That bitch.
Taking control of Milford had been a major part of Cassandra’s carefully laid plans. She’d known for years that the company was ripe for re-invention and had planned to rebrand it
Cassandra Grand by Milford.
Obviously, after a few years she would drop the fusty
Milford
label entirely, but by then, Cassandra Grand would be the hottest name in fashion. But of course, it hadn’t happened that way. Silly, foolish Saul had put a stop to that and it made her almost physically sick with fury; all the time, energy and expense she had wasted playing the dutiful niece! All those lunches at Claridge’s, the gifts on birthdays and at Christmas, the bottle of Petrus she had been sent by a French importer which had gone directly to Saul. And those dull family Christmas days spent with the family at Saul’s chalet in Gstaad when she could have been on a lover’s yacht in St Barts or at a friend’s villa in Mustique.
    And hadn’t Saul promised the company to
her?
She remembered his words vividly.
    ‘One day, all this will be yours.’
    He had
promised
her. He
couldn’t
just have meant the villa. Saul’s treachery, for that is how she viewed it, was like a body blow so hard it made her muscles ache. It was she, Cassandra, who was in fashion! She was the one with the contacts, the vision! She could have made Milford into a global force. The new Dior – bigger! And now it was over.
    The lift pinged, the light flicked to ‘Floor 25’ and Cassandra was brought back to the present.
This isn’t over,
she thought, as the doors whooshed open and she strode into the
Rive
office.
This is just a setback.
Her spike heels clacked along as she looked out of the floor-to-ceiling windows at the north side of the office. At least she had her job; it would see her through while she regrouped and planned how she would seize Milford back. And no jumped-up, middle-management nobody like Emma Bailey was going to stand in her way.
Yes,
she thought smiling,
there was always another way.
    ‘Morning, Cassandra!’ said a voice to her left. The smile dropped from her face and she glared back, annoyed by the interruption to her thoughts. She was unusually late for a Monday morning and the office was already buzzing. Normally she would have been first in, usually before 8 a.m., but she had been obliged to start the day with a breakfast with the MD of Cartier. She enjoyed beginning the day alone, free from disturbances to collect her thoughts. To plan, to strategize. Cassandra was not a team player; she rated her talent and vision so far beyond the rest of her staff that she would gladly have crafted the whole magazine herself if time allowed. But even though she had cherry-picked her staff, she still sometimes felt as if she was dealing with amateurs and halfwits. As she passed through the glass doors into her plush office, her senior assistant Lianne met her halfway.
    ‘Art need to see you immediately,’ she said handing her a coffee; black, filter, scalding hot. Cassandra nodded and moved into her corner office to take her seat. It was a beautiful space, painted