Page 38 of Ashes

“Trust me,I know. But she doesn’t wear a ring, so my guess is he thought she was available.”

Ah putain, j’ai oublié de lui donner une bague de mariage.

“Fuck, I forgot,” I chastised myself.

“Yeah, well, we can discuss that later. We need to get going if we don’t want to be late.”

“Yeah, I’m coming.”

I transferred my coffee into a to-go cup, rinsing the empty mug before retrieving my car keys from my pocket and walking out the front door.

God, I hated meetings.

I didn’t see the point in having them after our clients had signed the contract, but Kai thought it was a nice personal touch to our business model. He’d insisted that if we were more hands-on with our clients, they would be more likely to trust us.

Thank God for Kai and his love for talking because if it weren’t for him, I’d barely make it through these. I’d most likely send them away after the first few minutes in their company.

Don’t tell him I said that I was grateful for him.

My mind drifted to this morning again and how it felt to be in her arms before I ruined it and made her flee. I thought about her more than I wanted to, especially after what Kai told me earlier this morning before we left the house.

I wanted to reach for the inside pocket of my suit to settle my thoughts, but we were at a café and I wouldn’t be able to conceal my playing with fire.

Williams’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts. “So it’s settled?” he asked us, eager to have us as his new security firm.

“Yes,” I replied curtly, wanting to be done with this already.

Kai chuckled nervously, kicking my shin under the table. “What he meant to say is that we’ve installed thesoftware into your company’s system and should be able to find out who’s been leaking your data to your competitors.”

Yeah, what he said.

“Good,” was all Williams said before we shook hands to say goodbye and he left Chez Arthur, the Belgian café that was a few blocks away from our office building.

The owner was a sweet older woman, Marianne, and she made the best waffles I’d ever tasted in my life. Well, except for my mom’s. Although I hated these meetings, the only good thing about them was that the smell in this place reminded me of her.

Marianne was not only an angel, she also happened to be from the same town my mother grew up in. I’d never been to Spa since my father’s job didn’t leave much time for out of the country vacations, but the various pictures of the city plastered on the walls here were the closest I could be to my mother’s roots.

Kai kept his wide smile fixed in place until Williams stepped into his car and his personal driver veered into the busy streets.

Then his smile faltered, quickly replaced by an annoyed look. “Why do you always have to be like this?”

“What do you mean? You know I don’t do people.”

He groaned. “Of course I do, but you’re insufferable. Even more so since becoming a newlywed.”

I got out of my seat, not wanting to venture more into this topic of conversation.

“I have some things to do, but I’ll meet you at the houselater,” I told him. I didn’t wait for his answer and walked over to the parking facility next door, waiting for the valet to bring my car around.

Then I slid in and pulled away, joining the afternoon traffic.

I was ten minutes away from the boutique when my dashboard flashed with a phone call. Noah’s voice boomed through my speakers. “I heard congratulations are in order,” he said playfully, the loud chatter I heard behind him dimming to a quiet hum.

I slowed to a stop at a red light. “Yeah,” I grumbled.

“What’s with the ‘yeah’? You get married and don’t invite your favorite uncle?”

“How can you be a favorite of anything when you’re only competing with yourself?”