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mind, or she didn’t know as much as she let on. It left Christina to wonder

how anyone could accurately assess risk for funding when they didn’t know

the ins and outs of the actual business side of things. “Yes, well, please let

me know.”

“I will.” Christina hadn’t known much about managing a project like

this either, but she knew enough from sitting through proposal after

proposal and pitch after pitch, from reading through file after file and

assessing business models, and plans, that she’d had to do fairly minimal

research when it came to helping Taylor out with her project.

“Thank you.” Michelle left Christina to finish packing her things into

her tote. She grabbed her water bottle from behind her desk and looped the

silver clasp through her purse strap. She hefted everything onto her

shoulder and walked out of the office.

It was warm outside. The sun was out, and it was almost hard for her to

believe that this was the first week of October. New York could be quite

cold in the fall. Blustery snow squalls weren’t unheard of. That was one

thing that Christina wasn’t going to miss. The

cold weather. She thought it

might be strange having a brown Christmas, but she was sure she’d get over

that. She’d never liked the holiday much anyway.

Once she jumped in her car, Christina turned her thoughts away from

how she was going to let her dad and brothers down by telling them she

wasn’t coming home for the holidays because she was too busy with work

— even if she wasn’t, she was going to tell them she was— back to the

building that she was going to check out with Taylor.

Taylor had approved the changes to her business model on the first go-

round. Just about everyone had pitched in to fine tune it and Taylor was

more than impressed. She waited patiently for her funding. Up until then,

Christina had settled for calling and emailing. It struck her that Taylor

didn’t really like her, though she wasn’t sure why.