Color of Love Read Free Page A

…”
    “Oh,” Jill repeated.
    “There’s a reception and I really have to be there. I’m leaving a little early this afternoon to get ready. Maybe I can ask Gail if you can—”
    “Oh, no. Don’t bother.” Jill laughed awkwardly. “We’ll do it some other time.” She got up to leave.
    “Jill?” Leah detained her a moment longer. “How about next week?”
    “How about next week for what?” someone asked from the doorway.
    Leah sighed patiently and rolled her eyes heavenward. It was Jill who responded to Mike Berger, the assistant art director, as he approached Leah’s worktable. He looped an arm around Jill’s shoulder with familiarity. He didn’t wait for an answer to his first question.
    “What are you working on?” he asked Leah.
    She placed her arms flat on the drafting table, effectively covering the designs she’d created that morning. “Illusions, that beauty book by the former Ford model.”
    Mike chortled. “Jill probably gave it to you ’cause the model was black.”
    “How about because you know nothing about makeup?” Jill countered. She slipped from under his arm. “Come on. You want to fight, fight with me …”
    Leah watched as Jill deftly led Mike away, telling him that she had another, more important project for him to work on. Leah disliked that Jill found it necessary to stroke his ego, but she disliked and distrusted Mike Berger even more.
    Mike Berger was, as one of the editors had once phrased it, a poor excuse for a modern man. He was white, male, and not without talent. He was also sexist, spoiled, exuded a sense of entitlement and privilege, and was laughably unenlightened. Leah had learned to work around him with the same kind of equanimity with which she managed most situations she had little control over: by not taking it seriously.
    Leah liked her position at a small publishing house in Midtown, near the United Nations. She was an assistant art director, a position equal to Mike’s, but she was also considered the senior designer. She no longer considered that she might have gotten the job by virtue of being black and female in the right place at the right time. The bottom line was, she was talented and had proven her capabilities. She had been told many times by other artists, even in off-the-record remarks by editors, that it was she who was really the creative motivation behind the output of book designs and promotion. Jill was the real art director with a management style considered warm and fuzzy. Probably a smart tactic, Leah had always reasoned, given everyone else’s propensity for climbing over other people’s backs to advance their careers.
    Leah knew that she could do the senior position job and do it well, but as far as she knew, no one had as yet suggested or supported that idea to management. It didn’t matter to her. Justice was relative. She was happy not attending management meetings and dealing with the promotion department. And Mike was more than enough interference.
    As her mind segued from one thought to the next, an idea insinuated itself into the free-flow. Leah quickly pulled forth a blank sheet of paper and began to quickly sketch in the basics for the cover of the Illusions beauty book. All because she’d been rehashing her history with Mike Berger. But she certainly wasn’t going to thank him for the memories.
    When Leah had first met him, Mike had been spending a lot of time pursuing anyone with breasts, although it took him a little longer to turn his pursuit to her. Leah suspected that Mike had decided she was too dangerous. But perhaps for want of any other opportunity, he did eventually make her a target. The thought spurred her idea as the sketch took shape. She could have written the scenario; the chase was steamed with jungle fever, as it were. She was black, still sweetly forbidden, taboo, and that must have made the pursuit all the more exciting to Mike. But Leah had no intention of being an experiment for anyone’s ego or