Chapter Eleven

Elle

~THREE YEARS LATER~

“DON’T FORGET, YOU have that dinner meeting with your father, Mr. Robson, and his son tonight at the Weeping Willow.” Fleur smiled, hoisting another armful of contracts and financial portfolios.

I removed my reading glasses and took the folders from her. The heavy thud as I placed them on my desk ricocheted through me. “Yes, I remember.”

~And I want nothing to do with it.~

For the past year, my father had used every business meeting with his right-hand man, Steve Robson, to try to set me up with his son.

He thought I couldn’t see through his tricks, but the way he kept finding excuses for us to be around each other wasn’t subtle.

“Anything else, Ms. Charlston?”

“No, thank you. Please don’t put any calls through. I have too much work to finish.”

“Of course.” Turning in her pretty purple dress, Fleur left my office. Her wardrobe was smart but flirty, reminding me that outside the thick glass windows existed sun and heat and summer.

I hadn’t been away from an air-conditioned building for more than a few minutes at a time for months.

If I wasn’t being driven from office to office, I was in store warehouses or shop-fronts or doing my best to catch up on sleep, that for some reason, had become elusive for the past three years.

Ever since my one night of freedom, sleep had evaded me. Dreams never came. Nightmares visited often. The damn guilt because I wasn’t able to help him eroded me day by day.

~You said you wouldn’t think about him anymore.~

I said that every morning.

And by every lunchtime, I failed.

The best I’d been able to do was realize how stupidly idealistic I’d been.

My dad, bless his heart, had helped show me that it wasn’t Nameless who I thought I’d fallen in love with that night but the ~idea~ of love.

No one could fall for a stranger in a few hours. Especially a girl who’d been attacked and molested and then corralled into breaking and entering a national treasure.

My nerves and adrenaline would’ve heightened every experience, making it so much more than what it was.

I’d read into things. I’d imagined the heat behind the kisses and painted a perfect romance, when really, all there’d been was a dirty boy and a baseball field.

~That’s all.~

I recognized myself for what I was.

I was young, fanciful, and Dad was entirely right that work took precedent over a silly infatuation.

He was nothing to me.

Just a man from my past who took my first kiss.

~Got it, stupid heart?~

I sank heavily into my chair. My elbows stabbed into the desk as I rested my head in my hands. Even now, with all my pep talks and conclusions, I still felt guilty for not doing more.

~That’s why I think about him.~

Not because I still believed we were meant to be, or the craziness between us was serendipitous, but because I’d failed and left him alone in a prison that no doubt took whatever good was left in him and spat him out cold, cynical, and cruel.

I hadn’t lived up to my oath.

A life for a life.

He’d saved me.

~And I haven’t saved him.~

For months, I’d tried to track him down. I’d called the police stations, the county jails, even a few lawyers who worked pro bono to see if they’d been given his case.

But nothing.

I had no name and only a vague description—hampered by his beard, the night, and his hoodie.

The picture in my mind was of mystery and infatuation rather than a crystal image helpful for sketch artists or explanations.

It was as if he never existed.

But I knew he did because I still thought about the sapphire star necklace, and every time I snuck a piece of chocolate, Nameless exploded into my mind. I should get over it. It was one night.

A nineteen-year-old’s stupid crush.

I was more mature now.

Overworked and completely wrung out.

Sage was getting older, but she still came with me to the office every day, still purred on my lap when sums and figures made my head spin, and still cuddled with me in bed when loneliness for a life I’d never have overtook me.

Two years ago, when my father had had a heart attack, I gave up my adolescent immaturity and no longer resented my role.

The doctors said he would get better, but he should step down from being the boss.

The Last Will and Testament I’d signed came into full effect, and he placed me as the sole controller with the majority share of our stocks and the final say on all decisions.

To say I was scary to men of my own age when I was just an heiress was one thing, but to date now I was a conglomerate commander was utterly impossible.

Dad believed in love.

I didn’t.

Not because I didn’t want it but because my life’s work had stolen that possibility from me.

I had to accept that I had no time for romance, no patience for dating, and no prospects at partnership other than business expansion.

I was so lucky compared to most.

~Love is a small price to pay.~

I lived and breathed for my company, and on the rare evenings I had off, Dad was determined to play matchmaker with me and Greg—Steve’s son.

It didn’t matter that I had no interest in Greg.

I didn’t care he was only three years older than I was and held a bachelor’s in business from Yale.

He was dry and humorless and the exact opposite of Steve, who’d been in my life from the start with his quirky nicknames and jokes when I started running Belle Elle.

He was my uncle in every way apart from blood.

Greg was the unwanted cousin who I wished was related to me so I had a legitimate reason for denying his advances.

Sage nudged my ankles, meowing softly beneath the desk where she hung out in her basket full of blankets and stuffed mice.

“Yeah, yeah. I know he’s only looking out for me.”

Dad wanted me to marry and find a partner to help run Belle Elle with. He’d met Mom when he was twenty, and it’d been love at first sight.

He couldn’t understand why I was still so very, very single at twenty-two.

It obviously didn’t cross his mind that I was a powerful woman in a still sexist world where men—even if they didn’t come out and admit it—were emasculated by a woman with a bigger salary than them.

My thoughts remained tangled as I diligently worked through the reports on our Hong Kong division before Fleur knocked on my office door, wrenching through my concentration.

“It’s six p.m. You need to leave in thirty minutes.”

“Wow, really? I thought it was two p.m. only five minutes ago.”

She giggled, her long brown braid jiggling over her shoulder. “Like you always do when you get in the zone—you lost time.” She waltzed in with a dry-cleaner's bag covering a black dress.

Placing it on the arm of my rolled leather couch, she said, “I don’t know why you don’t let me bring you something more fun and vibrant from the shop floor.

“I have a sneaking suspicion you’d look great in green.” She held up her hands to make a frame around my face. “A rich emerald.

“Or perhaps a deep sapphire like that star you keep sketching when you’re on the phone with suppliers.”

I waved her away. “Black is fine.”

“Black is all you ever wear.”

“Black is business and no-nonsense.”

“But life isn’t.” She smiled sadly.

“Life is fun and chaos.” Backing toward the exit, she added, “You should remember that sometime….” She left before I could fire her—not that I ever would because without her and Sage, I would have no one I could actually talk to who wasn’t my father.

I glared at the black dress.

I wouldn’t lie and say wearing another color wouldn’t be fun, but I didn’t have time for fun or shopping or fashion.

I did the work so other people could do those things while leaving their money in our cash registers.

Sighing, I rubbed the back of my neck, saved my progress, and closed my laptop.

Sage slunk around my ankles, knowing the routine and that work was over for the day. “We’re not going home, I’m afraid.”

Her little face pouted, her whiskers drooping from her tiny nose. Picking the silver cat from the floor, I placed her on my desk as I stood to prepare for this sham of a date.

I kissed her soft head. “Don’t look at me like that. At least you get to snooze in the car. I actually have to talk to the jerk.”

She stuck her tongue out, coughing with a hairball.

“Yes, exactly. I feel like vomiting, too.” Heading to the couch to collect the dreaded dress, I murmured, “The sooner this dinner is over, the sooner I can go home and forget.”

~And try to dream.

Of being nineteen again and kissing a man with no name.~