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Despite the growing coffee stain, a laugh slips out.
The tension leaves his shoulders so quickly you’d think I’d handed him a pardon. “Thank you.”
I blink. “For what?”
“For laughing. You have no idea how much worse this conversation usually goes.”
I glance at the coffee dripping down my sleeve. “Should I be more upset?”
“I’d support it.” He winces again. “I was answering an email.”
“An important one?”
“That’s the truly humiliating part. It was a reminder about a meeting I was already walking to.”
“Multitasking claims another victim.”
“Two victims.”
He reaches into his jacket pocket and hands me a business card. “If the stain survives dry cleaning, send me the bill.”
I take the card and turn it over. “Do you always carry these around for coffee-related emergencies?”
“No, these are my standard workplace apology cards. The coffee incident is just today’s featured event.”
I laugh again.
“Seriously,” he says, starting to back away. “Send me the bill. I’d like to avoid becoming part of your villain origin story.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Appreciated.”
A grin flashes across his face before he heads down the corridor, leaving me with a stained blouse, a business card, and the uncomfortable suspicion that my first day is already trying to set a record.
Ten minutes later, the coffee stain is still there, I’m completely lost, and I’ve somehow ended up on a floor that definitely isn’t where the interviews are meant to be.
An office door stands open nearby.
At this stage, asking for directions feels considerably safer than continuing whatever misguided expedition I’ve been conducting for the last half hour, so I head inside.
The office is enormous.
Floor to ceiling windows frame the city beyond the glass. Bookshelves line one wall. Awards fill another. A desk large enough to seat a small board of directors occupies the center of the room.
The man behind the desk looks up as I step into the room, and my feet stop moving before my brain catches up with the reason.
I know him.
The certainty arrives first, long before the explanation does.
My gaze catches on storm gray eyes beneath dark hair threaded with silver, and a memory I haven’t allowed myself to revisit in months rises so quickly it knocks the breath from my lungs.
A dressing suite backstage at a charity gala. Mascara streaked down my face. A conversation that should’ve meant nothing.
I’d spent an entire three years convincing myself it meant nothing.
People don’t carry around memories of almost-strangers the way I’ve carried that one. They don’t lie awake at two in the morning replaying a ten-minute conversation or wondering what became of a man they met once and never expected to see again.
